Such things as Structured Design, and OOP have made coded reuse better.
What hasn't improved:
1) Programmers STILL refuse to use tools that could help them in productivity. (i.e. source debuggers, instead of writing printfs around everything and printing out your variables)
Tools tools TOOLS people. Use a source debugger and save yourself a great deal of time.
If you can't use a different language or infrastructure to write the code.
Sadly, many programmers still do not use source debuggers, citing a waste of time. But they will sit there and hack over and over again trying to understand the code they write with printfs!
Tsk tsk.
2) Cost Time Estimation. Wow, talk about almost zero improvement there. Almost zero, but not quite zero. After all, most people are now adopting an open source strategy so that even if your estimates are off, the cost penalties are reduced. Furthermore, most people are beginning to realize that you have to complete a full requirements document, and do some fact finding before you attempt to quote work.
3) Finally, the hardware we use to write software is vastly more powerful, and as a result we can run much nicer environments on our machines when we write code, such as API references, etc. I have far fewer references now days to things like Java for example than I use to have to keep on my desk. Primarily because with the rise of IDE's the development environment can answer alot of questions I might have about the language I am using to write the software with.
---
I would also like to point out things have got a little worse. If you believe like I do that 80% of the work in writing software is debugging it and maintaining it over its lifetime, then you like me have problems with our IDE's.
Primarily when our IDE's produce automated code for drag and drop environments. They produce horrible code, at the expense of saving time now, and end up costing a great deal of time later. (Anyone use the latest.Net Beta 3 to generate controls, will understand what I mean.)
I primarily write only Java code, but even my SunONE environment produces some pretty cruddy stuff if I am writing a desktop app.
I think automatic code generation is a step backwards in many ways, and ends up costing more money to fix or maintain it.
I still think a code "repository" built by humans, and nicely documented, like a cvs tree for example, is the better way. Time spent on the CVS code repository for building customized pieces is time much better spent IMHO.
I believe in many ways we already have "missed" the boat.
I think Arthur C Clark put it best when asked about the most amazing development of the 20th century was that "We went to the moon, and then, stopped."
No real progress has been made since then, except we have had better hardware to reach earth orbit. (More powerful rockets and robtics...whoop to do to day, yippy skippy.)
Rocket technology sucks. The whole concept stinks, in my humble opinion. So does Solar sails, that stinks as well. These stupid and dumb propositions to push physical objects around in space are just as quaint as the 300-400 year old laws that describe how to do it. (Newtons laws.)
Not GOOD ENOUGH though for an ark.
Those crucial 30-40 years that we sat on our laurels I believe represented a critical time window when, the world had enough resources, and was stable enough to continue invest HEAVILY in space research, without polticians and short cited people to notice.
Now, it is far too expensive, our governments are basically corrupt, and way too many people are overly concerned about how much consumerism they can accomplish in one lifetime, to worry about the future beyond 1 hour of thier lives.
We basically lost 30 years since the time of Apollo, and we will pay dearly for it as small bands of humans, seek to destroy civilization, even at the cost of thier own lives for thier impident God they worship.
The kinds and sorts of technology required for long term duration in space, is something we don't posses, nor will we I do believe for another 100-300 years. Space is just too hazardous, radiation wise, relativistically wise, that an Ark launched with todays technology could become easily sterile before it even leaves the solar system.
I think I also believe that we are on a cycle. We have just too many "fairy tales" of past civilizations describing "Gods in the Sky" that would travel around the world, to discount that perhaps, we have already been here, or near to here, in our development.
Then inexplicably, EVERYTHING gets wiped out, and those that survive, tell thier children about the time when we could fly, when people could be "raised from the dead" and that wars were fought using "Great Rays from the Sun".
No, no ark will save us, because the window of opportunity has passed us by. We have proven our selves as a species that we lack the will to continue and all our eggs will be in this one basket till someone drops the basket.
The only way to stop the cycle, is for our species to completely die off, not such a TERRIBLY bad thing considering our most recent accomplishments at building ever greater ways of destroying the planet at the push of a button. Or, perhaps next time around, we will get a little further, perhaps going to the moon, a half a million years from now and actually building a base below its surface.
OR perhaps we HAVE come this far before, and even further, but failed last time as well...
I am not interested in.Net development, I only study it to determine what sort of progress Microsoft is making with regards to its absolutely obsessive nature to destroy Java and "code reusability" technology that is platform independant.
But when I seen the side post about.Net I was naturally interested.
I am continually surprised, if not left agast, by the continual self destructive nature, not only of the architecture and design of a lot of.Net's components, but of Microsoft's seeming death wish with regards to how it regards its customers.
Honestly, in my pursuit of companies during the past year I have started my own company with regards to software development, I always seem to find a post about MS that makes my sales job a dream.
That sales job is convincing companies to dump, what I consider "old school IT policy" and consider something I call Open Systems Engineering Best Practices. Which builds IT systems companies actually OWN THEMSELVES. Lots of companies don't even know they can do this, and are surprisingly shocked and astounded when I point this out and what it means to even HAVE an IT department in your organization with an OSE philosophy.
I think, in recent SEC filings, it is quite obvious, that MS would be in serious, if not fighting for its life, if it wasn't being protected by the US government. So far MS has been able to pay the bills in washington to the right people, so it remains a monopoly that is legal, and can fund itself in some of the worst economic times in the past 10 years in the US.
Meanwhile, I continue to Microsoft were it hurts, and more and more companies everyday are recognizing the huge Penguin ARMADA that is gathering in "Rebel Space" to take out the Microsoft Death Star.:-)
We shall use the open source, and we shall prevail.
IMHO the vast majority of todays problems stemm from the fact that we have an increasing need for computer programmers, so we build systems that an idiot can run. So, we DO have idiots running and maintaining computers.
Case and point, Microsoft Products.
Microsoft Windows and its philosophy of design to try and make systems easy to use by making it a snap to put servers up and running in a jiffy with a minimal background of how any of the services actually works, is a HUGE problem.
No DNS admin of a Windows box I personally have run into actually understands how DNS works. They use Wizards to setup the DNS server and well, presto, usually a wrong DNS server with malformed records or BAD zone lists.
The problem with this approach, is that computing is not that simple.
It never will be that simple of a system, computing in general that is.
Microsoft's seeming objective is to code every possible wizard configuration for a Word processor, server or whatever so that it "just works". This enables people to turn services on without understanding Jack or Jill.
Why even Aunt Emma can be a XP server administrator.
The point is, that when you have computer code making decisions increasingly, you run into systems that are hugely monolithic, and dangerous form a security perspective. People make mistakes as IS, but making security policy from service Wizards that are designed by people is a recipe for DISASTER.
Case and point, even small changes or patches to such systems can have unintended consequences. Microsoft products are HUGELY monolithic, and the enourmous amount of computer code built into them making decisions automagically for the system operator through Wizard based services setup can get one into big trouble.
Linux is TOTALLY OPPOSITE. Linux is NOT monolithic. In fact, you can strip Linux down very easily because services are in affect partitions, seperate software packages that have NOTHING TO DO with kernel or OS services.
Linux is inherently, no, not inherently, IT IS more secure because you can strip it down to the bare essentials and have a smaller running server with fewer lines of code. Fewer lines of code, means fewer execution pathways and unintended bugs that could compromise security. Plus a human is at the helm and 100% in control. Not a wizard making all sorts of setup decisions automagically.
Out of the box, inherent in its design, Linux is more secure because you can run it with fewer lines of code to do many of the same things. In fact, you can run Linux without a video card, and many people do if you are building a router. (You use your wireless Zaurus to ssh into the box for example.) You can run Linux as a DNS server and not have a login keyboard of any kind, no Applications running or EVEN LOADED for that matter.
Fewer lines of code means the server is also simpler to maintain and recover. Hugely monolithic installs like Microsoft Windows XP means longer backup times and longer still restore times.
Whats more lots of software running in the background means you have to have very complex backup daemons running, using backup obscura kinda methods to unlock secret systems files by the THOUSANDS and all sorts of party dancing to get a server backed up. No WONDER it is a very complex and very expensive endeavor to backup and restore a Windows machine so that it actually WORKS if you lose the hard disk...
Linux is just the opposite. Since the system can be stripped and customized by the admin, Linux backups become a simple file system backup. The kernel doesn't interfere with your decisions to load or unload applications. In fact it couldn't care less.
In the end, I find Linux prevents many MBA's for example from waking up in the morning and saying "Oh, I am bored with my job. I think I will be a programmer..." Presto, they load up a Visual.Net Studio and start thier "Wizards..." (OK, so I had to deal with a MBA guy who decided he wanted to program in Java...for about 3 years and I couldn't take it anymore...the guys was thicker than a BRICK WALL when it came to Software Design.)
The final point I would like to make is that automated software construction makes for REALLY BAD software. Case N Point, more Wizards.
I certainly don't mind SOME help, but some of the drag and drop code I have seen in for examples, Microsoft's Visual Studio.Net (Beta 3) for COM, DCOM, Active X and.Net C# code is just plain BAD.
But it is OK because it allows you to put together an application in 2 hours? More and more I hear Microsoft Balmer explaining: "We have the finest tools that bring value to the development process, that our competitors can't match. TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is far lower because you can build systems much faster with Windows than Linux."
Man, don't get me started!
Anyone who knows anything about software engineering studies will tell you, the cost of owning software isn't in the design or construction portion, its the debug and MAINTANCE cycles of the softwares life span which is most expensive.
The code that these wizards pump out is not something I would like to try and maintain...
GOD HELP YOU if you should ever LOOSE the Visual Studio software because debugging the crap would drive any sane person to the old folks home for crazy and insane, burned out programmers!
(Note: Alot of the Java wizard tools for Swing are just as bad...maybe even worse than Visual Studio's code output...)
Most of the code output by Wizards is not very intelligible. Maintaining it is an invitation to a nightmare and cost that only a fool who would buy into that sort of argument.
Not too difficult anyway if you are already paying for Microsoft products, so fools are in good company long after they build.Net Studio software, in 3 different languages, with thier nice little wizards and three years from now exclaim: "Hey, we reused our Cobol, C, and Visual Basic code we invested in....Oh whats that? Yeah, we have 3 different guys here maintaining the same software our competitors use only 1 person to do the same Job because they ditched all those environments and used Java instead."
I can remember sitting in a library, looking at rocket ships, and planets and stars when I was smaller.
Now that I am simply small, what vision and dedication exists anymore in that classically romantic pursuit of truth and God that left a man deny all that was flesh?
Oh Newton, inscribe that which God has put forth in the heavens and transcribe it for all to read, who could not see and were blind for all recorded human history before thy was born. You are the Master of all, Mathematics, Physics, Optics, Fluid Dynamics, Astronomy.
Who has lived like thy has since? Thou was the first and last of your kind. When we are gone, the human race will not be forgotten, for Newton was here and stood upon our best and brightest and revealed peace and truth, in the pursuit of God, and placed our understanding in the heavens.
Sounds like Java too me, with browsers as a front end. You can do some really wonderful stuff, and it won't take a long time to build with Java IDE's that are around for free.
Java also is fairly easy to add multiple machines (spread out your Virtual Machines) to get more processing power out of commodity PC's. There isw simply no way your competitors could scale thier code on an equivalent Windows.Net implementation, it would cost way too much.
I gurantee you if you proceed along those lines your competitors investment in.Net tools alone will save you the cost over the long run they will have to endure to maintain thier systems.
Java 1.4 compiler technology (Virtual Machines) is very very good. If you are using numerical processing and large array types the effort you pour into C++ is simple not worth it.
I am skeptical of your claims that Java is too slow. I suspect you haven't really used it for much of anything lately, because the slow excuse is an old one.
You can go into any Barnes and Nobles book store and literally get a small stack on numerical procedures in Java and how to build distributed processing systems with Java, right off the shelf.
If you don't know how to do it, let me know (reply), my company does these seemingly impossible things with Java everyday.
So many designers that I ran into in my travels, still don't understand, that when you put Flash animations (Which I can't stand 99% of the time), large png files, or complex front pages, especially public pages, you increase you bandwidth costs.
Seems very simple to most. I am still surprised how many companies redesign sites, with gaudy graphics all over the place, and then find ALL OF A SUDDEN after deployment thier website goes down.
I can remember many customers I use to deal with, that had fixed contracts for hosting, yet they maintained thier own content, calling up and claiming our server was slow, and or down/experiencing technical difficulties.
I would usually say: "OH REALLY, I don't see any problems with the server per se. Did you happen to modify anything lately on the site?"
"Yes" they would reply: "We just put a flash movie movie on the front page..."
Immediately I knew what the problem is, they blew thier bandwidth budget. At times I would see companies quadruple the size of thier front pages, which reduces by about a quarter the number of users they can support at quality page download times. Especially if they are close to thier bandwidth limit as IS without the new pages.
The bigger the pages, the better the DOS or the easier the DOS is too perform.
In my design philosophy for my companies site, you can't get access to big pages without signing in first. If you sign in a zillion times at one or more pages, obviously that isn't normal behavior, and the software on my site is intelligent enough to figure that pout and disables the login, which then points you to a 2K Error page.
In any case, if you are trying to protect your website and you don't want to resort to highly technical and esoteric methods, to minimize DOS attacks. You might want to start with the design of the website content.
The lighter the weight of the pages, the harder it is for an individual to amass enough machines to prevent legitimate users from using your site.
IMHO, Flash plugins, and applets and other such features should be available only to registered users, and logins strictly controlled.
Cynicism about the US legal system? Have you been living in a cage lately?
The very same government who "legally" decided to allow Microsoft exist as a corporate entity, has broken the law. Thats why.
The very same government who's many tenticles that extend beyond and into everyones lives outside business also is destroying this country.
Case and point, the US government and its satellite governments who make LAW up on the fly about business practices and just about everything else, including the sniper case that killed many people.
The INS made thier own laws about who to accept in this country and disregarded what the law written on the books.
Many are dead now, with millions of people's lives who have changed forever in the DC area.
Tell me what law means in this country anymore if you don't have a dime or are not orchestrated above and beyond in the realm of priviledge in Washington these days?
Gimme a break guy. The US legal system is in crisis right now of porportions not seen since Nixon's days and his cronies in washington.
You my friend, need to take part more in reading and actively listening in your countries affairs because at the moment you are clueless and Rome is burning.
1) No real motion to do anything about Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop. They (MS) already bought most of the legal system to insure the ruling stands, regardless if it is legal or not.
So don't expect any of that to change, now or in the future. Yes, the legal system in the US is that bad, even after Enron.
2) Expect however, for Microsoft to set a number of legal precendents (such as the keeping of its monopoly power by this judge and others sure to come) that insure other very large companies to consider the same tactics to consolidate thier power in other markets in the US outside the tech industry. (i.e. clothing, energy, automotive...)
I expect as this unfolds, the US economy to become even MORE monolithic, and even MORE depressed as more innovation moves offshore to escape the corporate monoliths of invincibility in this country.
3) Expect other companies to use the same illegal tactics Microsoft has, and then use court rulings to either make "the law" (i.e. specifically anti trust law, cohesion, cartle laws..etc) irrelevant or insure the the legal costs are so high, defending companies will not intrude on companies with 51% market share anywhere.
Don't expect good news people. It is sad because I want my country to return to the good times. But that won't happen, when companies like Microsoft can sit on 30 Billion in capital and lock it away for the specific use to buy court rulings, and congreessional leaders. SInce this money isn't returned into the economy startups can't use it, ideas don't get funded, and little Johnny will continue to see the cost of the OS increase to the point it is 70% the cost os a home computer! (Which is comming by the way, as hardware prices continue to decline, Microsoft licenses continue to increase at never before seen rates...)
Monolithic economies, like the US, do not spur innovation, because large corporate entities who already own most of the market don't have to innovate anymore. They just sit on huge amounts of capital, and do nothing with it except harrass competition, startups, and illegally appropriate technology from other companies and figure out how to price fix thier products in the market place.
The harm that does to the technology investment sector in the US is incalculable, and the job losses are staggering.
Think about this while all you slashdot IT people sit at home unemployed.
Don't buy Microsoft products. Force Microsoft to return that ridiculously large pile of cash back into the tech sector.
Who knows, if the are forced to use all of it, maybe they will make a decent product with it, or improve the alpha quality of the.Net code I have been tinkering with.:-)
Hack
My Private Humble Personal Experience....
on
Suit Up Or Ship Out?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I have been through this.
My X business partners were a real problem in this sense. During the boomb time and the cray hours I was working to collapse the business technology into something manageable by one person, at times I put in 14 hours. Sometimes 20 hours.
What my X business partners would then say, " XXXX you know you should try and come into work a little bit more presentable."
I would of course smile, and say, " Sure **** I will try and do that."
Problem is, these two not only worked from 7-5PM, thier "contributions" to the business at the time STOPPED after 5PM.
As a business partner and technology guy, my SECOND JOB started after 5PM.
So, what I smiled and said was quite different from what I was thinking...I was thinking something like: "You MORON, I just got done refitting the customer systems ALL NIGHT LONG, what the F*** do you think YOU would look like if you did the same thing?"
This fell on deaf EARS of course, because the two guys I was business partners with not only had ZERO sense of any business, but they never really got the fact that I had far more responsibility than they did, and as a systems guy, contributed to the business far into the night while they had thier asses tucked away for a nice 8 hour sleep binge.
If I could have had the same kinds of responsibilities my X business partners had, I could look damn daper too in the morning, comming in all nicely dressed shaved and smellin like a rose.
In short my X business partners were idiots. However, they were nice people.:-) It was one of those things after 6 years, I knew they couldn't do the job required to bring the business to the next level. (They were control freaks to so they would get all defensive about things if I tried to get even the basic business information....).
But, what I think I am trying to say is that now that I own my own business, I REALIZE that my network guy, has two jobs. He has to be around during the day to help with systems, but I realize he has to maintain systems, and sometimes that means he has to take networks or groups of machines offline. You can't do that during the day, so he has to work at night as well.
So I always say: "I don't care when you come, or what your hours are, but I expect things to be working and keep working 80-90% of the time. If I have to get involved because you don't address peoples complaints, then you are going to have problems with THE BIG CHEESE. So don't make me get all Limburger over your ass....
I find this arrangement works nice. I have had a couple of people ask me why *** gets all the hours flexibility in his job and we as programmers, or sales people do not. I simple reply "Well, first of all *** works day AND nights, has two jobs, and well, if his systems don't work, that paper you push on your desktop don't mean shit. You guys have 9-5pm responsibilities and *** has 24 hours 7 days a week responsibilities."
Most people back off right away, those that don't I train as IT department network guru's and once they see the responsibility requirements, most quit after 3 weeks.:-)
So, management (which now includes me....) should think about network operations or IT operations as a 24x7 job requirement and as such, employees working under such high stress positions, get special favors. (No standard hours, no dress code (within reason of course but no suits or ties, but no Ripped clothing either sandals)......etc.)
They do at my company because the CEO has been there and done that and I KNOW it SUCKS.
If THAT were the case, such things as VCR's and CD-RW's would have coin deposit slots built into them or they would be outlawed as defined by the RIAA.
What this fight is over is who will control your computer because ALL other forms of information in the future will be computer generated. No more TV's VCR, DVD players, or Radio's...all existing media outlets and distribution channels will become exitinct.
Media giants know this, and they want to control your computer. They want to control:
What you see. What your opinions are of what you see. How much you can bear to pay for what you see. What you do with the information, and if you use it pay additional royalties for the use of that information.
Without this control, thier business models as they exist today won't work.
However, what they don't understand, is that if we as a society permit this sort of control, the internet will cease to exist, for one, and there can be no such thing as free speech, free software.
It will only be speech, and those who have the cash are the only ones that will be heard in this new vision.
Technology enables the individual to make decisions and to be much more indepedant from being tied to distributor resources, like Muscians for example. So all the money you normally pay the RIAA for distribution, is not valuable on the internet since one person can do exactly the same thing the RIAA does, at basically far less cost.
The RIAA wants to repserve the value of thier distribution channels as they exist today, so the muscian won't have a choice and won't get any ideas they can do it themselves, cutting out the RIAA.
THIS is what this whole thing is about, really.
The RIAA could care less about you guys copying music. You have been doing it for decades with tape decks. What has changed is that the internet makes them irrelevant.
The Billions that they make could be going to muscians pockets, and not into price fixing, which they do with thier distributors right now.
They MUST be stopped, or my very busines, and the software I use will become ILLEGAL in this country.
And STOPPED they will, if not by us, 3 Billion raging Chinese Linux users who will.
I do agree that Capitalism should not be applied to medicine which fools with the quality of humanity.
Capitalism always must have a price. Putting prices on people is not an ethical practice.
Taxes are bad in the US. I live in Wisconsin, which is pretty much the highest taxed state in the Union I do believe, or at least in the top 3. I also run a business here so I know exactly how much goes out if your an employer.
My comment on this is that we have a government that is too wasteful, and isn't focused on the things the original founding fathers expected government to focus on, which is military and domestic defense and the protection of trade.
We could add a Healthcare system, but there isn't any money in the US Economy to insure everyone at the moment.
I don't think people have a problem with High Taxes. If the people of Canada can point out they have high taxes because of Health care, I don't see a problem with that.
But in the US, we have High taxes because we build MultiMillion dollars stadiums for Multmillion dollar football players, base ball players. We pay taxes so we can be sensitive to illegal aliens in this country so THEY get the free health care not our own citizens.
Those sorts of things make people angry. Including myself.
As for your comment on Iraq, I couldn't disagree more with you.
Sadaam has to go, he has a history of making mischief in the region.
The Iraqi people need to rejoin the world community and take part in the trade and politics that make other nations healthy wealthy and wise. There is far too much suffering in Iraq, and it is about time everyone noticed it and decided to solve it.
If the UN can't do the job, then we will. I would pay very large taxes to remove that kind of misery from the world, we don't need anymore of it than we already have.
So support the war on Iraq if the UN can't find the balls to get rid of that man and free the Iraqi people.
The only reason why Microsoft did this, not that anyone I KNOW is writing.Net applications of any kind beyond HELLO WORLD....NOW FORK OVER YOUR CASH, is that they are desperate to generate SOME KIND of code base of thier extremely dubious economic competitor to Java.
That and them giving Barnes and Nobles a HUGE pile of cash to dedicate a section in thier bookstores, which is unprecedented, just to get.Net visible in the techy sections.
Literally over night there was a.Net section.
A very very QUIET section. I usually spend quite a while selecting and examining books for my staff. I spent about 4 hours, and not a SINGLE tech head picked up a book in that section.
A week later only ONE book has been purchased.
I think that speaks VOLUMES...(Pun intended) about.Net acceptance.
If Microsoft doesn't stop this sort of crap I am going to loose all my Microsoft ANTI Karma which people regularly give me a 5 or plus on...
I mean...why read ANY of Hackus's posts when Microsoft keeps putting fodder like this in the Web Machine that is Slashdot to turn out absolutely positively A PLUS quality entertainment.
More than a poor match for Hackus and his rants!!:-)
I guess that is what you see. It exists, I don't dispute that. But in quantity as compared to hacks I have seen in the Windows world, it occurs far more often, with much more devastating results for IT organizations with windows for the following reason:
Linux intrinisically requires a person to have a greater understanding of the science and operational aspects of a computer than Windows does.
What we have to think about here is that a BAD thing?
This requires a greater energy input to learn, and as a result, most Linux people usually come with a greater understanding automatically of the hows and whys of not how to do certain things a particular way.
Windows XP makes things so simple, that most people can setup services and do things easily, without understanding WHY they shouldn't.
This is because Redmond is attempting to put every single possibility of building IT systems into a bunch of dialog boxes built as part of a two directional decision tree governed by OK and CANCEL buttons and anything else the OS makes the decision GRATIS.
Linux has a very different approach and it DOES require a greater input of time and energy.
Is this bad? I am not sure, you decide but here is why:
It doesn't attempt to make anything easy or hard.
What Linux attempts to do, is make the person administrating the server directly responsible for its operational aspects/details, far more so than Windows.
This philosophy embodies 2 things:
1) The person can make the decisions much better than the OS.
2) Give the person the tools to enable his decisions via computer programming or systems language to manage his enterprise.
Very very different philosophy. I like this one better. Primarily because these program snippets can be contributed back into the user community as part of a "Best Administrative Practices" and can be refined by the Admins of Linux as well, because they get access to the source.
So, I guess I see poorly designed systems on the Windows side of things much more than the Linux side.
Except that, with Windows, the poor designs are primarily a result of Windows software, because of the fact that Windows tries to do everything for you, and as such must make a large number of Admin decisions for you.
The result is bad decisions and poor implementations, not just in Administrative side of the Windows OS but also in the software side as well.
What is ironic is the fact that high performance systems as defined by most Windows Admins is expense and security.
For Linux Admins it is speed and uptime.
At least that is what I get when I ask respective Admins what is most important.
So I think you can put your mind at ease and that hacks should be few and far between in our field. (But don't quote me on that...stupid people do what stupid people can do.):-)
Something I am seeing in my company, as a CEO and after spending the past year traveling around the midwest talking with other IT staff:
Java on Linux will lead the industry out of the bust, in at least one area.
1) By providing companies with business systems they can truly own themselves, and are not owned by other companies or cannot be purchased by competitors.
I mean, why pay $22 Million dollars for SAP when you can build your own system, for half the price, with Linux and Java.
Besides, your competitors can't buy what you build. What you do build will be truly an advantage.
2) You say SAP is too complex, too functionally rich to replicate? I say your are right. But most companies don't need SAP, they need a subset of SAP. They also need a system that represents a edge against thier competitors that can't be bought elsewhere.
Something you can get with a Linux and Java solution built homegrown, and probably at half the price.
3) Companies will do it. Why? Because they don't want to upgrade every 2-3 years and invest another million dollars because SAP or Microsoft says so.
The investment is also preserved over the lifetime of the hardware with the simple requirement you need a certified VM for your new target hardware and thats it.
4) Companies want to be able to upgrade when they require it, and when it makes business sense, not when Microsoft shareholders want more money.
This will make costs that are out of control right now, and outside the control of IT oragnizations, very much more controllable from year ot year.
Linux and Java delivers that promise.
In the end, Linux delivers this promise bacause it makes people the important part of this equation.
How?
Well, lots of people ask me how I make money with Linux? They don't seem to understand.
Which, for most of my competitors that wonder how I stay in business month to month, I am quite pleased they don't "Get It" as they gear up to write.Net applications and ship huge amounts of money to Redmond.
Meanwhile, I am paying health insurance benefits, bonuses, and paid vacations to my staff to keep them happy at only $80 bucks an hour for software development. All that and in the state of Wisconsin for that matter. One state that taxes businesses quite brutally I am afraid. (I think we are the top 3 or probably in the #1 spot right now....)
Why? Because I don't have those costs. Which are enourmous in respect to how much I spend on software with Linux and Java for my customers...which is ZERO.
I figured out I must be saving close to $50K per year per programmer by not using Microsoft products for example on one of my customers projects.
The point is, in closing, is that IBM figured it out. More specifically, Lou Gerstner, who you can all thank, if you are a IBM shareholder. If Lou didn't see many of these things comming, almost a decade ago, IBM would be a vastly diffferent company both in size and scope right now.
But like Lou, my company makes money by competiting on the value of your organization, in the open source world, not by:
1) How many units of software I shipped. 2) How many server hardware pieces I shipped.
as the primary revenue stream.
You know what? Thats the LAST thing I think about when doing my companies overall goals and improvements list every year.
Both of the points are out moded methods of producing, manufacturing and basing the future industry of IT on. At least if we want to go from a depression like the US IT market is now experiencing, to another good times market.
What single company is doing more to insure that software and shrink wrap software remains the top reason to buy computers and the status quo remains?
Microsoft.
Microsoft is the enemy of everyone on slashdot who is currently out of work, or is looking to a better economy and better times ahead. More specifically, the 28 billion in cash Microsoft has and what it is doing with it is the real problem.
Why? Because Microsoft desperately knows, that it cannot survive very much longer simply on the desktop if it wants to maintain a monopoly market it worked so hard to legalize in the courts and in dustry.
Instead of leadership at that company that is reorganizing and retooling Microsoft for the future, like Gerstner did for IBM in the 90's, the company is using its vast financial resources to:
1) Buy off congress, judges, and lawyers to rule in thier favor on software rights and patents. I won't go into detail HOW they do this, since they already HAVE done it.
If you have been on Slashdot, and have been keeping tabs, you already know the how.
This is thier first step and it involves the DMCA, EULA's. Specifically attack Linux and free software, and slow it down.
To kill Linux, and the widespread use of software that manages information on the internet they will need something else. Since Linux is free, they can't attack it buy illegally appropriating technology, or through illegal hiring practices or just plain threatening a single entity or startup to scare investors away.
What Microsoft needs, is something equivalent to RAT poison to killoff the vast army of pengiuns.
That poison will come in the form of a harmless DRM law.
But not just any DRM, a friendly to Microsoft DRM is what they are after, and in its current stages, lawyers and judges will provide Microsoft with what it needs to kill not only Linux, but any software produced anywhere in the US that isn't licenses by Microsoft.
What Microsoft is aiming to not just secure its OS, but to secure how information is processed and used.
They won't have to develop anything innovative, they will lets the court system establish precedent and cases, to insure that all future information is only handled by DRM approved systems that make software, handle Email, or browse web pages or process information of any kind.
How?
Simple.
By making it criminal to write free software of any kind. They will do this buy buying off and creating companies that insure information cannot be tranismitted or created without the proper ownership credentials.
They will build into thier OS this requirement, and DRM laws will require that all OS's in the US do the same.
However, the algorithms that implement the DRM, will be owned and licensed by Microsoft, and only Microsoft.
If you create any program or recieve any information created by a Microsoft system, that doesn't have a DRM approved license to determine if you have ownership rights, will be illegal.
You see how this is done? It is done from the desktop, where information is created. That way, all the inroads into the server room can be reversed, and Linux or any free derivative there-of. (BSD, Unix..Macintosh etc.)
Simply because Microsoft knows that is currently the only bastion of its Kingdom not under tremendous erosion right now. This way it can deal with Linux and all competitors, from a position to strength, to dictate how much each of us will pay for DRM right to read/write or create ANY information with our computers.
Sound too incredible to believe? It already is happening, although, what I really mean to say there is already precedent.
It is pretty hard write now to transmit information globally or easily without the USE of Versign certs in a secure way. Sure, you can make your own authority for these scripts, but truth is, it is a pain and is a "so called" security risk.
So Microsoft alread has some precedent to understand how a certain kind of information, that is created can be controlled by one or two companies on such a wide and vast scale.
If you look at how they are approaching this, you can see they are setting themselves up to be the "Versign" of information rights management.
Everyone here agrees, that Verisign is a racket. You pay them for a paper trail. Sure. Tell me though for all this added security, how many equitable "Versign Approved" certs last year do you think were used to rip people off online?
Don't know? Just ask a credit card company or look at your bill the next time you get it.
We are all paying for huge fees on our credit cards just to have the priviledge to use our Credit Cards online.
Doesn't really seem like $300 bucks and all that paper is really helping people or the credit card companies....does it?
Yet Verisign maintains a monopoly. I wonder how they can do that?
Interesting issue isn't it?
It forms many of the foundations for which Microsoft is currently building an attack against everyone here on slashdot, or any user in the world that uses a computer.
Imagine a Microsoft OS that has the same requirements, perhaps in partnership with Verisign, who would make the DRM database.
It would seem Microsoft has all the advantages.
But, for all these, they have one thing against them.
That thing is time and it is a very BIG disadvantage because we are living in a depression time in our industry.
You see, the legal system is not exactly fast, even when you are paying off congressional leaders. Our court system is extremely slow.
You can pay off judges, it has been done before, but I don't think paying off one judge would get Microsoft what it needs like in the AntiTrust case. It needs much more, something almost akin to a law that says you MUST use our software.
But IT in America is showing signs it doesn't want to wait. Many of the people I talk with are ready to chuck thier Microsoft servers and explore alternatives....even on the desktop.
Especially in such hard times.
But the hope for our industry lies in Linux, and where it can take us. To remove cost barriers that many IT professionals have always come to expect or think are requirements to run a business. The hope that people finally become the primary selling and buying points in organizations instead of software and hardware licenses.
Linux is growing by leaps and bounds, and provides a hope for our industry to defeat this madness before it shows up on all our budgets, whether we like it or not because Microsoft makes it illegal to do otherwise.
That is a world I would not want to live in and with a new found hope in Linux and Open Source born of hard times indeed, I think we will avoid it.
When we finally do, a healthy industry of many diversified companies will return, and replace the monopolized, expensive and extremely value poor industry we now have.
Until then, Linux will continue to change the rules, and will offer companies in these uncertain times true value that will allow them to compete on a more sound financial basis when building IT systems as part of a company business model.
Patents as they are defined in the US, are specifically designed to feed the collusion of business and government in this country to enforce monopolies, not innovation.
Innovation is the last thing on a patent lawyers mind, when filing a patent. The first thing on his mind is how to lock up the market and sue everyone who doesn't comply for the next 20-50 years.
One has to wonder, in this case when human lives are at stake, how many will have to die because a drug, being worked on by some company by a bunch of dolts, owns the patent and nobody else can work on the same research because it is simply to costly to feed the lawyers.
If you honestly think that a company that owns a patent on a drug or diagnostic process that could possibly improve the human condition, has the best brains in the world working on a solution for that drug, Mr. I got land in Florida real cheap I would like to sell ya.
Basically it comes down to this, millions will die. Why? Because the patent process has been bought by big drug companies and they also have our congress in thier pockets. No one else except in these companies can research be done on whatever the patent claims...(usually everything under the sun.)
So instead of world wide disemination of the information to some of the brightest Universities in the world....(all of them in Europe I am afraid..) we have a handful of dolts in a lab somewhere scratching thier heads over problems they will probably never solve in this DECADE because of the lack of synaptic activity between thier ears.
Meanwhile, our best and brightest in the US Universities are declining research in increasing numbers, simply because they cannot afford the risk of doing the research in the first place where said research could overlap with a commerical venture SOMEWHERE OUT THERE.
Millions are dieing from human conditions that could easily be solved much more quickly, dare I say much more cheaply if only the patent system and lawyers and our goverment got out of the way.
The artificial heart is a good example. An incredibly complex problem, being worked on by a very few PhD dolt heads because they own the patents on artificial hearts.
So I guess we will wait another 100 years before we can get a artificial heart that doesn't turn someone into a science experiment, all for the glory of the patent holder, instead of providing a solution to a person so they can live a normal life as everyone else does with healthy hearts.
Ironically, slowed research means fewer products.
What people are finding out, if you want to patent everything under the sun and sue, you maintain market share with steadily decreasing innovation and new products. Which directly translates into low or non existent profits or returns on research. Which translates into a sick economy and bad markets. Sort of sounds like the US telecommunications, computer, and now drug markets which are fairly mature, monolithic, sick, and produce high cost services for low value.
Anyone have a loved one here with lung cancer? I HAD one, but my Dad just died 4 weeks ago.
TAXOL, a key drug used to treat lung cancer, is patented. Imagine that. Ironically it comes from a tree, produced in nature!! They (the drug company) didn't even invent an original product! Nature made it yet the company that manufactures refines TAXOL owns the patent on it (TAXOL the Molecule) and no other company can sell it or do research on it without a license or they could risk getting sued!!!
Absolutely outrageous!
Whats even more outrageous, is the incredibly slow pace that this company who owns the patent on TAXOL is innovating it. Obviously a handful of PhD dolts are turning out improvements to TAXOL's effectiveness, in such small increments it could take decades to make it totally effective.
Whats its cost? Well, you can probably imagine, if only one company can produce it, and only a few idiots, chosen by a board of directors (many of them bankers not medical experts), can work on it...
What is the cost these jokers are charging people? TAXOL, a small bag, for one chemo treatment can go for as much as $3K-5K.
I point the fault of this directly at the patent system and congress who are greased nicely in thier leather chairs while people by the millions will die under these sorts of research conditions.
I personally believe that given the human suffering, that I personally experienced with my Dad, we as a society should make medical research an exception. An exception to ANY restrictions to information or access to information or research, and that it should be a society endeavor, not a motivation for profit.
Congress, could appropriate a budget much like defense, to do medical research and provide people with health care. I just can't see personally, any form of capitalism that is humanitarian, in the context of providing health care.
It is probably the only exception I can think of that makes Capitalism, even applied honestly look bad.
----
I won't even get into the broad band market place issues, why our industry can't move forward because the products that could use broadband are a direct threat to the entertainment industry in this country and therefore you have broadband prices that are high with few services that make use of them..beyond games.
I have pointed out many times that the US is headed for hard times when the Chinese and Russians wake up and decide not to play our little game and start producing technology under a much better system that values more rapid innovation and product time to market instead of a patent system that attempts to lock out markets and decrease innovation.
Linux is a good example. Not created in the USA, thank God because all of our home grown OS's created here
S U C K!
When these eastern asian countries wake up and begin to build thier own infrastructures without our products because they don't want to play or little game that keeps us at an unfair advatage, we are going to be in BIG TROUBLE BOYS AND GIRLS.
Congress is going to find out that it takes lots of dough to foot the bill for our navies, armies and military infrastructure. We defeated USSR, through economic means. Do you honestly think a society like the Chinese will NOT out GNP us eventually if they don't play by our game rules?
3 Billion of them?
They will economically crush the European Union and United States combined like a grape both in GNP, technological progress and innovation and, dare I say quality of life that comes with such a healthy economy!!
What do we do then when we start sending out children to China to learn in thier Universities, and start relying on China to police the world, because congress destroyed our economy with legalized monopolized with these patent systems and complete disregard of the law on Anti Trust issues such as Microsoft, and cannot afford a big navy or army?
Sound outrageous?
Look at the enourmous fraud, bad business climate and technology in our (US) country right now and tell me I am nuts! Turn on the news for example, and listen to the kind of business and political system "lock-in" business practices (Microsoft, PATENTS, Anti Trust laws with huge mergers that destroyed our economy etc.) that are being enforced legally in our country, simply because GREED drives our economy. Not hard work or innovation, why? Why do you need innovation if you can simply patent and freeze markets for 20 or so plus years at a time?
Look at.Net from Microsoft? This is innovation? It certainly is Microsoft tells you because if you invest in.Net you get to buy more Microsoft products that everyone can break into and we can make you pay for software that is crap over and over and over again on a monthly basis....
just as soon as we enact a DMCA law that makes it illegal to produce free software and get rid of Linux once and for all by making it CRIMINAL to use it in the US to make software of ANY kind with it!!!
Think I am nuts? We shall see...WON'T WE. But I would buy some land in China or India just in case if you want to be able to produce software or a script to read your Email without being sent to prison.
Whats the point in even considering a new cancer drug using the information from the Human Genome project for example if you could be sued in the next 20 years for making a drug that cures cancer from that information, only to loose in court because some idiotic company says they patented the entire genome because they sequenced it first???
Why even do cancer research for the next 20-50 years? Whats the point?
Which is what a lot of investors are feeling right now. Whats the point in investing in a market that has nothing but GREED driving the CEO's in this country instead of people with bright ideas?
After all its all about lawyers and market lock out and who owns the patent right?
Only this time around I am going to be like those nice snotty rich kids in college who can sit and study all day long, and not have to worry like I did about where my next meal, or if I was going to be able to have the money to pay for housing next semester.
You see, the intellectual challenge of attending and getting into college is just one aspect of the puzzle as a whole.
If you really are a smart person, chances are you probably don't come from a rich family that can afford to pay your way while you concentrate on playing the game, of jumping through the hoops to get into grad school....very hard to do if you were like me. (i.e. very poor, and very naive....a combination which made my college experience not very enlightening till I ran out of money...or went to debtors prison.)
I ended up quitting college and starting a company....well, several companies, actually.
After my third one, I have found success, in that I don't have to work now and I am still young...about 36. So...
I am considering, like yourself, storming the gates of academia, and not only using 15 years of experience in building and designing software, but also putting my considerable financial resources and gained free time to CLAIM REVENGE and teach those snotty 18 year olds a thing or too on the grade curve, now that the playing field is level.
Dare I say in my favor.:-)
I however, have a fairly realistic point of view in life about things....which I will suggest you adopt:
First of all, whenever you want something in life, in this case a degree, that requires a deep time commitment, you have to give up something. Having it all is not possible. (I here the OOoooooo's in the audience.) Well it is true. Do you want to be mediocre? Then spread yourself thin. Do you want to be the best? Do one thing then, and do it well and better than anyone else. The better your focus, the better you will obtain it. So while Joe academic is at the movies Saturday night pounding on his date when he gets home, brush up on next weeks final exam, and spend more time in the prof's office and running the class material through some personal what-if's to understand not just all the angles from the class material, INVENT NEW ONES, and get those too with the spare time....
For me I have given up for the moment, what the next 6 years will bring. My goal is to go to GRAD school, which requires upfront some realistic thinking: I will have to be a cut above the rest of the academic slobs in my class, if I want to get into GRAD school. That requires MORE time, and more commitment than the average BS candidate will make.
So the question is: What will I have to give up to do that? Answer:
1) A slowed down social life for the next 4 years. 2) A change of my circle of friends, from professional to academic and not so bad, maybe even meet more new friends. 3) A hold on any romantic interests that infers.
For me, 1-3 was a no brainer, as I don't want children, and am an over achiever....which drives most women I meet nuts anyway.:-)
But, in your case, you have tried going back to school more than once, and dare I suggest perhaps, you really aren't serious about it because you have failed to give up things in your life you value more than the degree.
I would seriously reconsider. Perhaps, you can find other forms of achievement just as secure or rewarding...(start up a different business in a different industry for example, like open a restraunt....etc.)
Nothing goes together quite as well as good food, and good coding.
Write a book? Isn't that what experience is best at doing in conveying knowledge to the younger who have yet to walk the road you have?
Writing a book is definately a intellectual pursuit I recommend. It also, requires lots of time and effort and focus.
Historically, it doesn't sound like you really want a degree? It will not buy you anymore security than what you already have, if you have seriously employed yourself and are successfuly at it. After all, employing ones self successfully in a field where by you can consider doing something else, is an expression of the ultimate achievement.
I think you are looking for a different challenge and to me, I don't think school is it. I think it is the fact everyone on Slashdot says, more education is always good.
Indeed it is, but not always for the same reasons. If you seriously built a company in this industry and you have achieved independance like I have, and employee PhD's like I have had, then getting a degree is questionable if you want to expand your background.
For myself, I am going back to school simply because I find it as something unfinished in my life, when at a time, I wasn't financially equipped to handle the year to year ongoing financialy requirements. That and my mom and dad dreamed I would go to college, and now that I just lost my last parent, I realize some of that dream I shared is incomplete.
But I don't delude myself, for one moment, I am going to discover something about computer science I don't already know, or somehow, will obtain information that will secure me financially or GOD FORBID, I have to work for someone else, simply by attending college.
That is a bunch of Bull, and don't let anyone here on Slashdot tell you, it is not possible to achieve knowledge without going to our finest institutions...
Most of the people who went to our finer institutions, of the 20th century, who worked for DECADES on some of the most secret parts of the Universe, essentially had thier entires lifes work INVALIDATED by a simple office clerk, who couldn't get INTO college. I am not talking about simple minded tasks of building a web site either here. This man fundamentally changed our entire view of creation and is the reason why we have our modern society. (i.e. HINT E=mc SQUARED)
If anything, the success I made over the past 13 years has made me permenantly UNEMPLOYABLE because I don't put up with "people who took the short bus to school" in a professional environment.
Those kind of people work for my competitors because I certainly don't hire them thank God.
But, in any case, I would seriously reconsider your reasons for going back too school beyond money matters, especially, if you say you are already financially independant enough to make that sort of commitment.:-)
I think the CML2 design is NOT what is at issue here. I also never said anything about CML2, I don't think CML2, itself is the issue here. I also never said that CML2 is a graphical interface.
I am talking about assumptions, issues in my previous post that Mr. Raymond, makes, all of which I think are irrelevant or bad assumptions about a CML2 implementation for building a kernel.
I am not interested in a graphical interface for a CML2 implementation, quite frankly.
As I stated earlier, graphical interfaces require too much baggage to implement when we are talking about "bootstrap" software such as an OS kernel configuration utility.
I also pointed to the fact that you can make very competent and very easy to use interfaces using simple menu's and windows with a curses library for example, in a CML2 implementation.
I finally make note of the fact that users shouldn't be and will never need to build thier own kernel. They are users, and by definition not systems people.
You can't give a calculus book to a kindegardener and then fault calculus for being TOO HARD, or designed WRONG, because the kindegardener can't figure it out.
Fundamentally the arguments for making kernels buildable by users are wrong, incorrect, and detract a lot of precious time from improving the system we have that works right now.
We have this mentality that everything should be driven using a mouse, and a GUI, which is fundamentally incorrect.
I can't tell you how many times I have watched over bloated Microsoft crap drive perfectly competent hardware costing thousands less into the ground, simply because the idiots at Microsoft think you have to have a GUI on a server for everything....
Just in case you want to load and run StarCraft or Dark Reign 2, on your SQL Server.
The primary problem I have with "graphical" anything, is that this is a Windows era issue of "every program written has to use a mouse and a window or it isn't user friendly."
Simply not true. When all I had was a VT100 command set, I wrote terminal interfaces that a 4 year old could use for fairly complicated pieces of software, no mouse required.
Although it did use windows....of a sort.
As for configuring and building a kernel, beyond:
1) Interfaces to remove and pull out components on demand....
2) The interface should provide optional documentation and guidelines as well as best practices for most kernel configs given the applications the machine is going to be running. (i.e. Will it be a router, firewall, an app server or database server?)
3) The configuration system should be easily scriptable with a minimal set of gcc utils. (sh, make, config..etc.) This is so that it requires less software to build the kernel.
This implies inherent reduced security risks, smaller kernel distribution and less dependancies for linux systems integrators.
Eric S Raymonds vision fails on all three accounts as far as I can tell, on how a kernel should be built and what the logical assumptions are for building a kernel in the first place.
Primarily, users, shouldn't be building kernels anyway. Which is what I think the root problem is here. No, I don't think either, that there is something wrong with Linux if a user can't do EVERYTHING with a mouse and windows.
Lets be realistic here: Users do not have the background to properly build a kernel, and building a nice graphical front end too build a kernel for a sophisticated developer gets in the way. It also, doesn't detract from Linux one iota simply because this fact exists.
That is what the argument here is, and that is why many people who write kernel programs don't use graphical tools ANYWAY. Which I think breaks another assumption made by Mr. Raymond about a new config system.
Dependancy graphics are nice, rules seperation parsers built to create such graphics with a language are nice.
But this is really OLD SCHOOL stuff. Any computer science/computer professional can buy a book on such theory and compeently learn everything there is to know about REINVENTING the wheel. (ISBN: 0-13-1555045-4 Start reading at 7.3.2)
And you too can write a configuration system similair to Eric's...
But WHY WASTE YOUR TIME?
The existing kernel configuration system is very scriptable, has supporting documentation available with each modules or options, and works with a very minimal set of build tools on the command line.
Very nice, simple and it works very well very nicely without Python, X, windows, Mice a supported video driver and a whole new set of tools that basically give us the same thing we have now, just a whole lot more complicated.
I would like to see Eric address points 1-3 and tell use exactly why we need all this stuff as kernel developers. He hasn't done so.
His website just shows pretty pictures of a kernel configuration system.
Yes, I understand there are other restrictions to industry in China for example.
But, the kinds and degree of restrictions I do not believe are the same as in Europe or USA. They don't have copyrights, DMCA laws, and patents to slow them down. They don't have a corporate legal system bent on destroying competition, or startups. They also don't have as many crooked politicians as we do.
Furthermore, I am will to bet, that the far east continues it progress that it has made, to even more open markets over the next 50 years.
The US markets are way to monolithic, and cannot really expand anymore. There is a variety of reasons for this.
As I have said many times before, this is OK when there is little outside competition.
But, the world grows smaller by the hour. Countries such as the far eastern block, will have massive production and technological break throughs that will crush our markets like a grape.
New innovations introduced by foreign countries, will create market upheaval on a scale that will make the market cap of Linux companies in the 90's seem like small potatoes...
This will result in the following:
1) No big tax revenues for the US.
2) No big armies or navies, or space programs, can't afford them.
3) No big investment in research infrastructure. Can't afford that either.
4) Have to send people to the far east to learn about new business methods and new technologies.
Sound familair? Thats what the up N comming nations of China and many far east countries do now.
All countries have a time and a place when they walk on the world stage and command attention.
The USA's era of dominance will come to a close in the 21st century. You WILL see it in your life time if you live in the US.
Primary reasons why this is:
1) Economic illness of the US economy due to the collusion between government and business is resulting in unhealthy markets for competition, slowing innovation to a crawl.
(i.e. examples include Microsoft, Cable Companies, Power and Energy, oil companies, etc.)
2) The corruption of our markets has just begun, and will continue as no real progress is made or planned by politicians who were bascially bought by the same people investors are screaming to be brought to justice.
A few executives will be sacrificed for scape goats to appease, but the vast majority of fraud, illicit and illegal business activities by major companies in this country will continue.
Just in a MUCH more secretive manner so that any bankruptcies are declared "bad business, bad economy, 9/11" and never a reason for corruption mentioned, with new and IMPROVED accounting measures congress is promising will "fix the situation".
3) "Bad business" will cause increasingly large flows of investor moneies in the US to foriegn markets that have FAR MORE future growth and the US has anyway.
This has in some ways already begun. It will simply speed up as people who invested in "blue chip" companies now, at 50, find thier entire retirement plans invested in some executives house, and is building his 4th one with thier retirement money.
4)As the US loses power and influence, do to the same strategies we imparted on our enemies in the USSR, economic warfare, we will be defeated by the very same people who were once our enemies. Not militarily, but by the sheer power of 3 Billion people unleashed in a much healthier free market system.
This will take about 50 years to come about, but it is plain too see, some of the largest projects in the world, are being built and attempted in the far east using construction and advanced computer technology never before applied ANYWHERE.
The future eyes of world look to the far east to lead us into the 22nd century, and our current politicians and CEO's and other business leaders, due to thier selfish interests, will hand that future to our Far East "friends" without batting a an eye lash.
At least I HOPE TO GOD they are our friends, because there will be very little we can do about if if they really DON'T want to be at that point.
It can get ugly quite quickly because of so much middle ware in between, which I pointed out.
Calling constructors for example. Constructors and accessor mthods don't exist in Structured Design. Only procedural or functiona abstractions which directly initialize your ADT for use.
I could provide two types of examples, but the Slashdot interface for dumping all that in would be painful for me to organize and type, so I won't support the above argument with a direct example.
This is my rant on the subject. You don't have to agree, but it comes from a guy writing software since he was 10 years old, who is now very old and crusty by comparison. This is what experience has taught me, perhaps your mileage will vary.
OOD, without risking and sounding like those "experts" is no silver bullet for software design. But it is a sound evolutionary advance in Software Engineering techniques. Yes, I do agree, that the OLDER generation, is more inclined towards Structured Design before implementing OOD/OOP techniques. However, I disagree that it is because that is the only thing we have been taught or have been teaching. Thats complete bonk.
Everyone in this field advances with the times. I would suggest, if it seems that way, the older generation, simply realizes what OOD/OOP is and what it ISN'T, and use OOD/OOP where appropriate in building software.
First of all, OOD/OOP builds heavily on Structured Design techniques. (i.e. Building software using ADT definitions and the 4 foundation sequences of computer science: statement, do-while, while-do, if then else, case or selector statement.) That is, a properly built OOD will embody in every one of its object interfaces, methods which are built using sound Structured Design methods. So it is a Myth that OOD/OOP gets rid of Structured Design techniques. In FACT, those who write POOR OOD/OOP's are those that have not mastered the 4 constructs of computer science and the ADT that goes along with Structured Design.
OOD does not a attempt to do away with Structured Design, it complements it by organizing Data AND Code in such a way that further increases the resulting code abstract properties. (i.e. it allows the resulting algorithms to be expressed in a way that makes said code even more reusable through inheritance for example. OOD is therefore impossible to implement without Structured Design.)
The resulting code is far more abstract, and therefore generalized to be more reusable, and therefore, theoretically, more reliable. (i.e. Code that is used over and over again becomes more reliable over time, and is an extensible property of the life cycle of software. Although structured design allows you to reuse code through simple function calls, OOD/OOP takes it one step further and allows function calls and data representation to be generalized as a functional unit.)
It has been pointed out, with good reason, that Java is a language which can help enforce good OO programming. However, it is not required and for example through the use of static methods, one can build Java code without using OOD/OOP techniques of any kind if one decides to do so.
This is important: OOD because of its abstract properties, (primarily the use of inheritance) can be used to create software patterns that lend themselves to creating certain types of software.
Certain types of software that benefit greatly from OOD/OOP implementations are for example, User Interfaces. Why? It is obvious. User interfaces are built using repeatable patterns themsleves application after application. (File, Edit, View, Window, etc.), at thier most basic level.
When an implementation in and of itself such as the building of a GUI, for example, has a clear pattern itself, OOD/OOP methods can get a great deal more mileage out of simplyfying and building code. This creates a better implementation of a GUI than just a Structured Design approach alone can provide.
With that said. You are probably thinking, what sorts of things is OOD/OOP NOT good at, and in fact SHOULD NOT be used. This is the part that gets controversial and you will decide, without knowing it, which camp you fall into by reading the next paragraph.:-)
Well, abstraction, which through inheritance in OOD, while it provides excellent reusability in the context of building software, does not always result in the most effective implementation. By an effective implementation, I mean most efficient.:-)
So what am I saying? Well, I am saying that you sacrifice some efficiency to gain the increased code reliiability that inheritance provides in OOD by compartmentalizing code AND data within an object vs Structured Design, which cannot do this through the use of simply an ADT and function/procedure calls.
(i.e. You can never directly modify data in context of a classic OOD/OOP, you have to overlap or build a middle man, as it where, to modify any data you declare private through the use of accessor methods.)
Althouh this enforces and corrects some deficiencies in Structured Design, it makes the program arguably slower to execute.
In the context of building, say an Operating System, for example, OOD/OOP is not the way to go if you want a highly speedy and effective OS implementation.
If you want such speed you invariable have to give up inheritance, and the benefits it provides, and resort to Structure Design principles only, to build your OS. (i.e. ALL function calls and procedures DIRECTLY access the data structures of the OS through passing parameters to functions or procedures, there by eliminating the middle man as above.)
Which, is not so bad, really. OS's and components of OS's such as kernels, etc...are designed to be speedy, as they should be.
So, my view on the topic is that OOD/OOP is best suited on top of the OS, vs IN the OS design.
Not everyone agrees with that, and that is fine.
Why? Well, because many argue that the sacrifice in speed is justified in the complexity of building a OS kernel, and that the reliability gained through the extensive use of OOD/OOP techniques in building the OS kernel for example, yields a better OS.
Which is not something to be taken likely if your OS is charged with the responsibility to keep systems software on the space shuttle for example working with the fewest number of defects, and human lives riding on what the OS may or may not do next.
On the other side, like I said, you have me and others who believe that OS should be very small and very fast, and that OOD/OOP shouldn't be used and that the realibility sacrificed is acceptable.
So, that is just one aspect of when and where and why OOD/OOP should and should not be used. But as you can see, it is far from cut and dried, and primarily is once based on IMPLEMENTATION and engineering REQUIREMENTS, not on methodology.
Which is how the real world works.
For the most part, which drives 90% of the disagreements is the fact that many people see OOD/OOP being a generalized approach to solving ALL problems, and not a specialized addition to Structured Design techniques, suitable for SOME problems, not ALL problems.
I personally, obviously, feel that OOD/OOP is NOT a generalized programming methodology for ALL cases.
However, some of my friends feel very differently, and we have a good discussion on the topic wherever we go when we start discussing OOD/OOP.
Things can get pretty heated, and most patrons at the local 3am diner wonder what all the screaming is about, particularly the buzz words.:-)
MSFT is indeed an American company, and it does employ people.
In fact I would estimate, judging from the court cases, that for every one MSFT employee, MSFT has excercised and destroyed about 100 peoples jobs in this country through the illegal use of its monopoly power.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I think things have improved.
.Net Beta 3 to generate controls, will understand what I mean.)
Such things as Structured Design, and OOP have made coded reuse better.
What hasn't improved:
1) Programmers STILL refuse to use tools that could help them in productivity. (i.e. source debuggers, instead of writing printfs around everything and printing out your variables)
Tools tools TOOLS people. Use a source debugger and save yourself a great deal of time.
If you can't use a different language or infrastructure to write the code.
Sadly, many programmers still do not use source debuggers, citing a waste of time. But they will sit there and hack over and over again trying to understand the code they write with printfs!
Tsk tsk.
2) Cost Time Estimation. Wow, talk about almost zero improvement there. Almost zero, but not quite zero. After all, most people are now adopting an open source strategy so that even if your estimates are off, the cost penalties are reduced. Furthermore, most people are beginning to realize that you have to complete a full requirements document, and do some fact finding before you attempt to quote work.
3) Finally, the hardware we use to write software is vastly more powerful, and as a result we can run much nicer environments on our machines when we write code, such as API references, etc. I have far fewer references now days to things like Java for example than I use to have to keep on my desk. Primarily because with the rise of IDE's the development environment can answer alot of questions I might have about the language I am using to write the software with.
---
I would also like to point out things have got a little worse. If you believe like I do that 80% of the work in writing software is debugging it and maintaining it over its lifetime, then you like me have problems with our IDE's.
Primarily when our IDE's produce automated code for drag and drop environments. They produce horrible code, at the expense of saving time now, and end up costing a great deal of time later.
(Anyone use the latest
I primarily write only Java code, but even my SunONE environment produces some pretty cruddy stuff if I am writing a desktop app.
I think automatic code generation is a step backwards in many ways, and ends up costing more money to fix or maintain it.
I still think a code "repository" built by humans, and nicely documented, like a cvs tree for example, is the better way. Time spent on the CVS code repository for building customized pieces is time much better spent IMHO.
-Hack
I believe in many ways we already have "missed" the boat.
I think Arthur C Clark put it best when asked about the most amazing development of the 20th century was that "We went to the moon, and then, stopped."
No real progress has been made since then, except we have had better hardware to reach earth orbit.
(More powerful rockets and robtics...whoop to do to day, yippy skippy.)
Rocket technology sucks. The whole concept stinks, in my humble opinion. So does Solar sails, that stinks as well. These stupid and dumb propositions to push physical objects around in space are just as quaint as the 300-400 year old laws that describe how to do it. (Newtons laws.)
Not GOOD ENOUGH though for an ark.
Those crucial 30-40 years that we sat on our laurels I believe represented a critical time window when, the world had enough resources, and was stable enough to continue invest HEAVILY in space research, without polticians and short cited people to notice.
Now, it is far too expensive, our governments are basically corrupt, and way too many people are overly concerned about how much consumerism they can accomplish in one lifetime, to worry about the future beyond 1 hour of thier lives.
We basically lost 30 years since the time of Apollo, and we will pay dearly for it as small bands of humans, seek to destroy civilization, even at the cost of thier own lives for thier impident God they worship.
The kinds and sorts of technology required for long term duration in space, is something we don't posses, nor will we I do believe for another 100-300 years. Space is just too hazardous, radiation wise, relativistically wise, that an Ark launched with todays technology could become easily sterile before it even leaves the solar system.
I think I also believe that we are on a cycle. We have just too many "fairy tales" of past civilizations describing "Gods in the Sky" that would travel around the world, to discount that perhaps, we have already been here, or near to here, in our development.
Then inexplicably, EVERYTHING gets wiped out, and those that survive, tell thier children about the time when we could fly, when people could be "raised from the dead" and that wars were fought using "Great Rays from the Sun".
No, no ark will save us, because the window of opportunity has passed us by. We have proven our selves as a species that we lack the will to continue and all our eggs will be in this one basket till someone drops the basket.
The only way to stop the cycle, is for our species to completely die off, not such a TERRIBLY bad thing considering our most recent accomplishments at building ever greater ways of destroying the planet at the push of a button. Or, perhaps next time around, we will get a little further, perhaps going to the moon, a half a million years from now and actually building a base below its surface.
OR perhaps we HAVE come this far before, and even further, but failed last time as well...
-Hack
Yikes!
.Net development, I only study it to determine what sort of progress Microsoft is making with regards to its absolutely obsessive nature to destroy Java and "code reusability" technology that is platform independant.
.Net I was naturally interested.
.Net's components, but of Microsoft's seeming death wish with regards to how it regards its customers.
:-)
I am not interested in
But when I seen the side post about
I am continually surprised, if not left agast, by the continual self destructive nature, not only of the architecture and design of a lot of
Honestly, in my pursuit of companies during the past year I have started my own company with regards to software development, I always seem to find a post about MS that makes my sales job a dream.
That sales job is convincing companies to dump, what I consider "old school IT policy" and consider something I call Open Systems Engineering Best Practices. Which builds IT systems companies actually OWN THEMSELVES. Lots of companies don't even know they can do this, and are surprisingly shocked and astounded when I point this out and what it means to even HAVE an IT department in your organization with an OSE philosophy.
I think, in recent SEC filings, it is quite obvious, that MS would be in serious, if not fighting for its life, if it wasn't being protected by the US government. So far MS has been able to pay the bills in washington to the right people, so it remains a monopoly that is legal, and can fund itself in some of the worst economic times in the past 10 years in the US.
Meanwhile, I continue to Microsoft were it hurts, and more and more companies everyday are recognizing the huge Penguin ARMADA that is gathering in "Rebel Space" to take out the Microsoft Death Star.
We shall use the open source, and we shall prevail.
-Hack
IMHO the vast majority of todays problems stemm from the fact that we have an increasing need for computer programmers, so we build systems that an idiot can run. So, we DO have idiots running and maintaining computers.
.Net Studio and start thier "Wizards..." (OK, so I had to deal with a MBA guy who decided he wanted to program in Java...for about 3 years and I couldn't take it anymore...the guys was thicker than a BRICK WALL when it came to Software Design.)
.Net (Beta 3) for COM, DCOM, Active X and .Net C# code is just plain BAD.
.Net Studio software, in 3 different languages, with thier nice little wizards and three years from now exclaim: "Hey, we reused our Cobol, C, and Visual Basic code we invested in....Oh whats that? Yeah, we have 3 different guys here maintaining the same software our competitors use only 1 person to do the same Job because they ditched all those environments and used Java instead."
Case and point, Microsoft Products.
Microsoft Windows and its philosophy of design to try and make systems easy to use by making it a snap to put servers up and running in a jiffy with a minimal background of how any of the services actually works, is a HUGE problem.
No DNS admin of a Windows box I personally have run into actually understands how DNS works. They use Wizards to setup the DNS server and well, presto, usually a wrong DNS server with malformed records or BAD zone lists.
The problem with this approach, is that computing is not that simple.
It never will be that simple of a system, computing in general that is.
Microsoft's seeming objective is to code every possible wizard configuration for a Word processor, server or whatever so that it "just works". This enables people to turn services on without understanding Jack or Jill.
Why even Aunt Emma can be a XP server administrator.
The point is, that when you have computer code making decisions increasingly, you run into systems that are hugely monolithic, and dangerous form a security perspective. People make mistakes as IS, but making security policy from service Wizards that are designed by people is a recipe for DISASTER.
Case and point, even small changes or patches to such systems can have unintended consequences. Microsoft products are HUGELY monolithic, and the enourmous amount of computer code built into them making decisions automagically for the system operator through Wizard based services setup can get one into big trouble.
Linux is TOTALLY OPPOSITE. Linux is NOT monolithic. In fact, you can strip Linux down very easily because services are in affect partitions, seperate software packages that have NOTHING TO DO with kernel or OS services.
Linux is inherently, no, not inherently, IT IS more secure because you can strip it down to the bare essentials and have a smaller running server with fewer lines of code. Fewer lines of code, means fewer execution pathways and unintended bugs that could compromise security. Plus a human is at the helm and 100% in control. Not a wizard making all sorts of setup decisions automagically.
Out of the box, inherent in its design, Linux is more secure because you can run it with fewer lines of code to do many of the same things. In fact, you can run Linux without a video card, and many people do if you are building a router. (You use your wireless Zaurus to ssh into the box for example.) You can run Linux as a DNS server and not have a login keyboard of any kind, no Applications running or EVEN LOADED for that matter.
Fewer lines of code means the server is also simpler to maintain and recover. Hugely monolithic installs like Microsoft Windows XP means longer backup times and longer still restore times.
Whats more lots of software running in the background means you have to have very complex backup daemons running, using backup obscura kinda methods to unlock secret systems files by the THOUSANDS and all sorts of party dancing to get a server backed up. No WONDER it is a very complex and very expensive endeavor to backup and restore a Windows machine so that it actually WORKS if you lose the hard disk...
Linux is just the opposite. Since the system can be stripped and customized by the admin, Linux backups become a simple file system backup. The kernel doesn't interfere with your decisions to load or unload applications. In fact it couldn't care less.
In the end, I find Linux prevents many MBA's for example from waking up in the morning and saying "Oh, I am bored with my job. I think I will be a programmer..." Presto, they load up a Visual
The final point I would like to make is that automated software construction makes for REALLY BAD software. Case N Point, more Wizards.
I certainly don't mind SOME help, but some of the drag and drop code I have seen in for examples, Microsoft's Visual Studio
But it is OK because it allows you to put together an application in 2 hours? More and more I hear Microsoft Balmer explaining: "We have the finest tools that bring value to the development process, that our competitors can't match. TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is far lower because you can build systems much faster with Windows than Linux."
Man, don't get me started!
Anyone who knows anything about software engineering studies will tell you, the cost of owning software isn't in the design or construction portion, its the debug and MAINTANCE cycles of the softwares life span which is most expensive.
The code that these wizards pump out is not something I would like to try and maintain...
GOD HELP YOU if you should ever LOOSE the Visual Studio software because debugging the crap would drive any sane person to the old folks home for crazy and insane, burned out programmers!
(Note: Alot of the Java wizard tools for Swing are just as bad...maybe even worse than Visual Studio's code output...)
Most of the code output by Wizards is not very intelligible. Maintaining it is an invitation to a nightmare and cost that only a fool who would buy into that sort of argument.
Not too difficult anyway if you are already paying for Microsoft products, so fools are in good company long after they build
Hack
Ah Newton,
I can remember sitting in a library, looking at rocket ships, and planets and stars when I was smaller.
Now that I am simply small, what vision and dedication exists anymore in that classically romantic pursuit of truth and God that left a man deny all that was flesh?
Oh Newton, inscribe that which God has put forth in the heavens and transcribe it for all to read, who could not see and were blind for all recorded human history before thy was born. You are the Master of all, Mathematics, Physics, Optics, Fluid Dynamics, Astronomy.
Who has lived like thy has since? Thou was the first and last of your kind. When we are gone, the human race will not be forgotten, for Newton was here and stood upon our best and brightest and revealed peace and truth, in the pursuit of God, and placed our understanding in the heavens.
Rest peacefully.
Hackus
Sounds like Java too me, with browsers as a front end. You can do some really wonderful stuff, and it won't take a long time to build with Java IDE's that are around for free.
.Net implementation, it would cost way too much.
.Net tools alone will save you the cost over the long run they will have to endure to maintain thier systems.
Java also is fairly easy to add multiple machines (spread out your Virtual Machines) to get more processing power out of commodity PC's. There isw simply no way your competitors could scale thier code on an equivalent Windows
I gurantee you if you proceed along those lines your competitors investment in
Java 1.4 compiler technology (Virtual Machines) is very very good. If you are using numerical processing and large array types the effort you pour into C++ is simple not worth it.
I am skeptical of your claims that Java is too slow. I suspect you haven't really used it for much of anything lately, because the slow excuse is an old one.
You can go into any Barnes and Nobles book store and literally get a small stack on numerical procedures in Java and how to build distributed processing systems with Java, right off the shelf.
If you don't know how to do it, let me know (reply), my company does these seemingly impossible things with Java everyday.
-Hack
If you design web sites pay attention.
So many designers that I ran into in my travels, still don't understand, that when you put Flash animations (Which I can't stand 99% of the time), large png files, or complex front pages, especially public pages, you increase you bandwidth costs.
Seems very simple to most. I am still surprised how many companies redesign sites, with gaudy graphics all over the place, and then find ALL OF A SUDDEN after deployment thier website goes down.
I can remember many customers I use to deal with, that had fixed contracts for hosting, yet they maintained thier own content, calling up and claiming our server was slow, and or down/experiencing technical difficulties.
I would usually say: "OH REALLY, I don't see any problems with the server per se. Did you happen to modify anything lately on the site?"
"Yes" they would reply: "We just put a flash movie movie on the front page..."
Immediately I knew what the problem is, they blew thier bandwidth budget. At times I would see companies quadruple the size of thier front pages, which reduces by about a quarter the number of users they can support at quality page download times. Especially if they are close to thier bandwidth limit as IS without the new pages.
The bigger the pages, the better the DOS or the easier the DOS is too perform.
In my design philosophy for my companies site, you can't get access to big pages without signing in first. If you sign in a zillion times at one or more pages, obviously that isn't normal behavior, and the software on my site is intelligent enough to figure that pout and disables the login, which then points you to a 2K Error page.
In any case, if you are trying to protect your website and you don't want to resort to highly technical and esoteric methods, to minimize DOS attacks. You might want to start with the design of the website content.
The lighter the weight of the pages, the harder it is for an individual to amass enough machines to prevent legitimate users from using your site.
IMHO, Flash plugins, and applets and other such features should be available only to registered users, and logins strictly controlled.
Hack
Look at todays ruling by the Judge.
Was I wrong? No, clearly not.
Cynicism about the US legal system? Have you been living in a cage lately?
The very same government who "legally" decided to allow Microsoft exist as a corporate entity, has broken the law. Thats why.
The very same government who's many tenticles that extend beyond and into everyones lives outside business also is destroying this country.
Case and point, the US government and its satellite governments who make LAW up on the fly about business practices and just about everything else, including the sniper case that killed many people.
The INS made thier own laws about who to accept in this country and disregarded what the law written on the books.
Many are dead now, with millions of people's lives who have changed forever in the DC area.
Tell me what law means in this country anymore if you don't have a dime or are not orchestrated above and beyond in the realm of priviledge in Washington these days?
Gimme a break guy. The US legal system is in crisis right now of porportions not seen since Nixon's days and his cronies in washington.
You my friend, need to take part more in reading and actively listening in your countries affairs because at the moment you are clueless and Rome is burning.
-Hack
Expect the following:
...)
.Net code I have been tinkering with. :-)
1) No real motion to do anything about Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop. They (MS) already bought most of the legal system to insure the ruling stands, regardless if it is legal or not.
So don't expect any of that to change, now or in the future. Yes, the legal system in the US is that bad, even after Enron.
2) Expect however, for Microsoft to set a number of legal precendents (such as the keeping of its monopoly power by this judge and others sure to come) that insure other very large companies to consider the same tactics to consolidate thier power in other markets in the US outside the tech industry. (i.e. clothing, energy, automotive
I expect as this unfolds, the US economy to become even MORE monolithic, and even MORE depressed as more innovation moves offshore to escape the corporate monoliths of invincibility in this country.
3) Expect other companies to use the same illegal tactics Microsoft has, and then use court rulings to either make "the law" (i.e. specifically anti trust law, cohesion, cartle laws..etc) irrelevant or insure the the legal costs are so high, defending companies will not intrude on companies with 51% market share anywhere.
Don't expect good news people. It is sad because I want my country to return to the good times. But that won't happen, when companies like Microsoft can sit on 30 Billion in capital and lock it away for the specific use to buy court rulings, and congreessional leaders. SInce this money isn't returned into the economy startups can't use it, ideas don't get funded, and little Johnny will continue to see the cost of the OS increase to the point it is 70% the cost os a home computer! (Which is comming by the way, as hardware prices continue to decline, Microsoft licenses continue to increase at never before seen rates...)
Monolithic economies, like the US, do not spur innovation, because large corporate entities who already own most of the market don't have to innovate anymore. They just sit on huge amounts of capital, and do nothing with it except harrass competition, startups, and illegally appropriate technology from other companies and figure out how to price fix thier products in the market place.
The harm that does to the technology investment sector in the US is incalculable, and the job losses are staggering.
Think about this while all you slashdot IT people sit at home unemployed.
Don't buy Microsoft products. Force Microsoft to return that ridiculously large pile of cash back into the tech sector.
Who knows, if the are forced to use all of it, maybe they will make a decent product with it, or improve the alpha quality of the
Hack
I have been through this.
:-) It was one of those things after 6 years, I knew they couldn't do the job required to bring the business to the next level. (They were control freaks to so they would get all defensive about things if I tried to get even the basic business information....).
:-)
My X business partners were a real problem in this sense. During the boomb time and the cray hours I was working to collapse the business technology into something manageable by one person, at times I put in 14 hours. Sometimes 20 hours.
What my X business partners would then say, " XXXX you know you should try and come into work a little bit more presentable."
I would of course smile, and say, " Sure **** I will try and do that."
Problem is, these two not only worked from 7-5PM, thier "contributions" to the business at the time STOPPED after 5PM.
As a business partner and technology guy, my SECOND JOB started after 5PM.
So, what I smiled and said was quite different from what I was thinking...I was thinking something like: "You MORON, I just got done refitting the customer systems ALL NIGHT LONG, what the F*** do you think YOU would look like if you did the same thing?"
This fell on deaf EARS of course, because the two guys I was business partners with not only had ZERO sense of any business, but they never really got the fact that I had far more responsibility than they did, and as a systems guy, contributed to the business far into the night while they had thier asses tucked away for a nice 8 hour sleep binge.
If I could have had the same kinds of responsibilities my X business partners had, I could look damn daper too in the morning, comming in all nicely dressed shaved and smellin like a rose.
In short my X business partners were idiots. However, they were nice people.
But, what I think I am trying to say is that now that I own my own business, I REALIZE that my network guy, has two jobs. He has to be around during the day to help with systems, but I realize he has to maintain systems, and sometimes that means he has to take networks or groups of machines offline. You can't do that during the day, so he has to work at night as well.
So I always say: "I don't care when you come, or what your hours are, but I expect things to be working and keep working 80-90% of the time. If I have to get involved because you don't address peoples complaints, then you are going to have problems with THE BIG CHEESE. So don't make me get all Limburger over your ass....
I find this arrangement works nice. I have had a couple of people ask me why *** gets all the hours flexibility in his job and we as programmers, or sales people do not. I simple reply "Well, first of all *** works day AND nights, has two jobs, and well, if his systems don't work, that paper you push on your desktop don't mean shit. You guys have 9-5pm responsibilities and *** has 24 hours 7 days a week responsibilities."
Most people back off right away, those that don't I train as IT department network guru's and once they see the responsibility requirements, most quit after 3 weeks.
So, management (which now includes me....) should think about network operations or IT operations as a 24x7 job requirement and as such, employees working under such high stress positions, get special favors. (No standard hours, no dress code (within reason of course but no suits or ties, but no Ripped clothing either sandals)......etc.)
They do at my company because the CEO has been there and done that and I KNOW it SUCKS.
Hack
This has nothing to do with responsible use.
If THAT were the case, such things as VCR's and CD-RW's would have coin deposit slots built into them or they would be outlawed as defined by the RIAA.
What this fight is over is who will control your computer because ALL other forms of information in the future will be computer generated. No more TV's VCR, DVD players, or Radio's...all existing media outlets and distribution channels will become exitinct.
Media giants know this, and they want to control your computer. They want to control:
What you see.
What your opinions are of what you see.
How much you can bear to pay for what you see.
What you do with the information, and if you use it pay additional royalties for the use of that information.
Without this control, thier business models as they exist today won't work.
However, what they don't understand, is that if we as a society permit this sort of control, the internet will cease to exist, for one, and there can be no such thing as free speech, free software.
It will only be speech, and those who have the cash are the only ones that will be heard in this new vision.
Technology enables the individual to make decisions and to be much more indepedant from being tied to distributor resources, like Muscians for example. So all the money you normally pay the RIAA for distribution, is not valuable on the internet since one person can do exactly the same thing the RIAA does, at basically far less cost.
The RIAA wants to repserve the value of thier distribution channels as they exist today, so the muscian won't have a choice and won't get any ideas they can do it themselves, cutting out the RIAA.
THIS is what this whole thing is about, really.
The RIAA could care less about you guys copying music. You have been doing it for decades with tape decks. What has changed is that the internet makes them irrelevant.
The Billions that they make could be going to muscians pockets, and not into price fixing, which they do with thier distributors right now.
They MUST be stopped, or my very busines, and the software I use will become ILLEGAL in this country.
And STOPPED they will, if not by us, 3 Billion raging Chinese Linux users who will.
Hack
I do agree that Capitalism should not be applied to medicine which fools with the quality of humanity.
Capitalism always must have a price. Putting prices on people is not an ethical practice.
Taxes are bad in the US. I live in Wisconsin, which is pretty much the highest taxed state in the Union I do believe, or at least in the top 3. I also run a business here so I know exactly how much goes out if your an employer.
My comment on this is that we have a government that is too wasteful, and isn't focused on the things the original founding fathers expected government to focus on, which is military and domestic defense and the protection of trade.
We could add a Healthcare system, but there isn't any money in the US Economy to insure everyone at the moment.
I don't think people have a problem with High Taxes. If the people of Canada can point out they have high taxes because of Health care, I don't see a problem with that.
But in the US, we have High taxes because we build MultiMillion dollars stadiums for Multmillion dollar football players, base ball players. We pay taxes so we can be sensitive to illegal aliens in this country so THEY get the free health care not our own citizens.
Those sorts of things make people angry. Including myself.
As for your comment on Iraq, I couldn't disagree more with you.
Sadaam has to go, he has a history of making mischief in the region.
The Iraqi people need to rejoin the world community and take part in the trade and politics that make other nations healthy wealthy and wise.
There is far too much suffering in Iraq, and it is about time everyone noticed it and decided to solve it.
If the UN can't do the job, then we will. I would pay very large taxes to remove that kind of misery from the world, we don't need anymore of it than we already have.
So support the war on Iraq if the UN can't find the balls to get rid of that man and free the Iraqi people.
Hack
The only reason why Microsoft did this, not that anyone I KNOW is writing .Net applications of any kind beyond HELLO WORLD....NOW FORK OVER YOUR CASH, is that they are desperate to generate SOME KIND of code base of thier extremely dubious economic competitor to Java.
.Net visible in the techy sections.
.Net section.
.Net acceptance.
That and them giving Barnes and Nobles a HUGE pile of cash to dedicate a section in thier bookstores, which is unprecedented, just to get
Literally over night there was a
A very very QUIET section. I usually spend quite a while selecting and examining books for my staff. I spent about 4 hours, and not a SINGLE tech head picked up a book in that section.
A week later only ONE book has been purchased.
I think that speaks VOLUMES...(Pun intended) about
Hack
Honestly..
:-)
If Microsoft doesn't stop this sort of crap I am going to loose all my Microsoft ANTI Karma which people regularly give me a 5 or plus on...
I mean...why read ANY of Hackus's posts when Microsoft keeps putting fodder like this in the Web Machine that is Slashdot to turn out absolutely positively A PLUS quality entertainment.
More than a poor match for Hackus and his rants!!
Hack
I guess that is what you see. It exists, I don't dispute that. But in quantity as compared to hacks I have seen in the Windows world, it occurs far more often, with much more devastating results for IT organizations with windows for the following reason:
:-)
Linux intrinisically requires a person to have a greater understanding of the science and operational aspects of a computer than Windows does.
What we have to think about here is that a BAD thing?
This requires a greater energy input to learn, and as a result, most Linux people usually come with a greater understanding automatically of the hows and whys of not how to do certain things a particular way.
Windows XP makes things so simple, that most people can setup services and do things easily, without understanding WHY they shouldn't.
This is because Redmond is attempting to put every single possibility of building IT systems into a bunch of dialog boxes built as part of a two directional decision tree governed by OK and CANCEL buttons and anything else the OS makes the decision GRATIS.
Linux has a very different approach and it DOES require a greater input of time and energy.
Is this bad? I am not sure, you decide but here is why:
It doesn't attempt to make anything easy or hard.
What Linux attempts to do, is make the person administrating the server directly responsible for its operational aspects/details, far more so than Windows.
This philosophy embodies 2 things:
1) The person can make the decisions much better than the OS.
2) Give the person the tools to enable his decisions via computer programming or systems language to manage his enterprise.
Very very different philosophy. I like this one better. Primarily because these program snippets can be contributed back into the user community as part of a "Best Administrative Practices" and can be refined by the Admins of Linux as well, because they get access to the source.
So, I guess I see poorly designed systems on the Windows side of things much more than the Linux side.
Except that, with Windows, the poor designs are primarily a result of Windows software, because of the fact that Windows tries to do everything for you, and as such must make a large number of Admin decisions for you.
The result is bad decisions and poor implementations, not just in Administrative side of the Windows OS but also in the software side as well.
What is ironic is the fact that high performance systems as defined by most Windows Admins is expense and security.
For Linux Admins it is speed and uptime.
At least that is what I get when I ask respective Admins what is most important.
So I think you can put your mind at ease and that hacks should be few and far between in our field.
(But don't quote me on that...stupid people do what stupid people can do.)
Hack
Something I am seeing in my company, as a CEO and after spending the past year traveling around the midwest talking with other IT staff:
.Net applications and ship huge amounts of money to Redmond.
Java on Linux will lead the industry out of the bust, in at least one area.
1) By providing companies with business systems they can truly own themselves, and are not owned by other companies or cannot be purchased by competitors.
I mean, why pay $22 Million dollars for SAP when you can build your own system, for half the price, with Linux and Java.
Besides, your competitors can't buy what you build. What you do build will be truly an advantage.
2) You say SAP is too complex, too functionally rich to replicate? I say your are right. But most companies don't need SAP, they need a subset of SAP. They also need a system that represents a edge against thier competitors that can't be bought elsewhere.
Something you can get with a Linux and Java solution built homegrown, and probably at half the price.
3) Companies will do it. Why? Because they don't want to upgrade every 2-3 years and invest another million dollars because SAP or Microsoft says so.
The investment is also preserved over the lifetime of the hardware with the simple requirement you need a certified VM for your new target hardware and thats it.
4) Companies want to be able to upgrade when they require it, and when it makes business sense, not when Microsoft shareholders want more money.
This will make costs that are out of control right now, and outside the control of IT oragnizations, very much more controllable from year ot year.
Linux and Java delivers that promise.
In the end, Linux delivers this promise bacause it makes people the important part of this equation.
How?
Well, lots of people ask me how I make money with Linux? They don't seem to understand.
Which, for most of my competitors that wonder how I stay in business month to month, I am quite pleased they don't "Get It" as they gear up to write
Meanwhile, I am paying health insurance benefits, bonuses, and paid vacations to my staff to keep them happy at only $80 bucks an hour for software development. All that and in the state of Wisconsin for that matter. One state that taxes businesses quite brutally I am afraid. (I think we are the top 3 or probably in the #1 spot right now....)
Why? Because I don't have those costs. Which are enourmous in respect to how much I spend on software with Linux and Java for my customers...which is ZERO.
I figured out I must be saving close to $50K per year per programmer by not using Microsoft products for example on one of my customers projects.
The point is, in closing, is that IBM figured it out. More specifically, Lou Gerstner, who you can all thank, if you are a IBM shareholder. If Lou didn't see many of these things comming, almost a decade ago, IBM would be a vastly diffferent company both in size and scope right now.
But like Lou, my company makes money by competiting on the value of your organization, in the open source world, not by:
1) How many units of software I shipped.
2) How many server hardware pieces I shipped.
as the primary revenue stream.
You know what? Thats the LAST thing I think about when doing my companies overall goals and improvements list every year.
Both of the points are out moded methods of producing, manufacturing and basing the future industry of IT on. At least if we want to go from a depression like the US IT market is now experiencing, to another good times market.
What single company is doing more to insure that software and shrink wrap software remains the top reason to buy computers and the status quo remains?
Microsoft.
Microsoft is the enemy of everyone on slashdot who is currently out of work, or is looking to a better economy and better times ahead. More specifically, the 28 billion in cash Microsoft has and what it is doing with it is the real problem.
Why? Because Microsoft desperately knows, that it cannot survive very much longer simply on the desktop if it wants to maintain a monopoly market it worked so hard to legalize in the courts and in dustry.
Instead of leadership at that company that is reorganizing and retooling Microsoft for the future, like Gerstner did for IBM in the 90's, the company is using its vast financial resources to:
1) Buy off congress, judges, and lawyers to rule in thier favor on software rights and patents. I won't go into detail HOW they do this, since they already HAVE done it.
If you have been on Slashdot, and have been keeping tabs, you already know the how.
This is thier first step and it involves the DMCA, EULA's. Specifically attack Linux and free software, and slow it down.
To kill Linux, and the widespread use of software that manages information on the internet they will need something else. Since Linux is free, they can't attack it buy illegally appropriating technology, or through illegal hiring practices or just plain threatening a single entity or startup to scare investors away.
What Microsoft needs, is something equivalent to RAT poison to killoff the vast army of pengiuns.
That poison will come in the form of a harmless DRM law.
But not just any DRM, a friendly to Microsoft DRM is what they are after, and in its current stages, lawyers and judges will provide Microsoft with what it needs to kill not only Linux, but any software produced anywhere in the US that isn't licenses by Microsoft.
What Microsoft is aiming to not just secure its OS, but to secure how information is processed and used.
They won't have to develop anything innovative, they will lets the court system establish precedent and cases, to insure that all future information is only handled by DRM approved systems that make software, handle Email, or browse web pages or process information of any kind.
How?
Simple.
By making it criminal to write free software of any kind. They will do this buy buying off and creating companies that insure information cannot be tranismitted or created without the proper ownership credentials.
They will build into thier OS this requirement, and DRM laws will require that all OS's in the US do the same.
However, the algorithms that implement the DRM, will be owned and licensed by Microsoft, and only Microsoft.
If you create any program or recieve any information created by a Microsoft system, that doesn't have a DRM approved license to determine if you have ownership rights, will be illegal.
You see how this is done? It is done from the desktop, where information is created. That way, all the inroads into the server room can be reversed, and Linux or any free derivative there-of. (BSD, Unix..Macintosh etc.)
Simply because Microsoft knows that is currently the only bastion of its Kingdom not under tremendous erosion right now. This way it can deal with Linux and all competitors, from a position to strength, to dictate how much each of us will pay for DRM right to read/write or create ANY information with our computers.
Sound too incredible to believe? It already is happening, although, what I really mean to say there is already precedent.
It is pretty hard write now to transmit information globally or easily without the USE of Versign certs in a secure way. Sure, you can make your own authority for these scripts, but truth is, it is a pain and is a "so called" security risk.
So Microsoft alread has some precedent to understand how a certain kind of information, that is created can be controlled by one or two companies on such a wide and vast scale.
If you look at how they are approaching this, you can see they are setting themselves up to be the "Versign" of information rights management.
Everyone here agrees, that Verisign is a racket. You pay them for a paper trail. Sure. Tell me though for all this added security, how many equitable "Versign Approved" certs last year do you think were used to rip people off online?
Don't know? Just ask a credit card company or look at your bill the next time you get it.
We are all paying for huge fees on our credit cards just to have the priviledge to use our Credit Cards online.
Doesn't really seem like $300 bucks and all that paper is really helping people or the credit card companies....does it?
Yet Verisign maintains a monopoly. I wonder how they can do that?
Interesting issue isn't it?
It forms many of the foundations for which Microsoft is currently building an attack against everyone here on slashdot, or any user in the world that uses a computer.
Imagine a Microsoft OS that has the same requirements, perhaps in partnership with Verisign, who would make the DRM database.
It would seem Microsoft has all the advantages.
But, for all these, they have one thing against them.
That thing is time and it is a very BIG disadvantage because we are living in a depression time in our industry.
You see, the legal system is not exactly fast, even when you are paying off congressional leaders. Our court system is extremely slow.
You can pay off judges, it has been done before, but I don't think paying off one judge would get Microsoft what it needs like in the AntiTrust case. It needs much more, something almost akin to a law that says you MUST use our software.
But IT in America is showing signs it doesn't want to wait. Many of the people I talk with are ready to chuck thier Microsoft servers and explore alternatives....even on the desktop.
Especially in such hard times.
But the hope for our industry lies in Linux, and where it can take us. To remove cost barriers that many IT professionals have always come to expect or think are requirements to run a business. The hope that people finally become the primary selling and buying points in organizations instead of software and hardware licenses.
Linux is growing by leaps and bounds, and provides a hope for our industry to defeat this madness before it shows up on all our budgets, whether we like it or not because Microsoft makes it illegal to do otherwise.
That is a world I would not want to live in and with a new found hope in Linux and Open Source born of hard times indeed, I think we will avoid it.
When we finally do, a healthy industry of many diversified companies will return, and replace the monopolized, expensive and extremely value poor industry we now have.
Until then, Linux will continue to change the rules, and will offer companies in these uncertain times true value that will allow them to compete on a more sound financial basis when building IT systems as part of a company business model.
Hack
I have written about this many times.
.Net from Microsoft? This is innovation? It certainly is Microsoft tells you because if you invest in .Net you get to buy more Microsoft products that everyone can break into and we can make you pay for software that is crap over and over and over again on a monthly basis....
Patents as they are defined in the US, are specifically designed to feed the collusion of business and government in this country to enforce monopolies, not innovation.
Innovation is the last thing on a patent lawyers mind, when filing a patent. The first thing on his mind is how to lock up the market and sue everyone who doesn't comply for the next 20-50 years.
One has to wonder, in this case when human lives are at stake, how many will have to die because a drug, being worked on by some company by a bunch of dolts, owns the patent and nobody else can work on the same research because it is simply to costly to feed the lawyers.
If you honestly think that a company that owns a patent on a drug or diagnostic process that could possibly improve the human condition, has the best brains in the world working on a solution for that drug, Mr. I got land in Florida real cheap I would like to sell ya.
Basically it comes down to this, millions will die. Why? Because the patent process has been bought by big drug companies and they also have our congress in thier pockets. No one else except in these companies can research be done on whatever the patent claims...(usually everything under the sun.)
So instead of world wide disemination of the information to some of the brightest Universities in the world....(all of them in Europe I am afraid..) we have a handful of dolts in a lab somewhere scratching thier heads over problems they will probably never solve in this DECADE because of the lack of synaptic activity between thier ears.
Meanwhile, our best and brightest in the US Universities are declining research in increasing numbers, simply because they cannot afford the risk of doing the research in the first place where said research could overlap with a commerical venture SOMEWHERE OUT THERE.
Millions are dieing from human conditions that could easily be solved much more quickly, dare I say much more cheaply if only the patent system and lawyers and our goverment got out of the way.
The artificial heart is a good example. An incredibly complex problem, being worked on by a very few PhD dolt heads because they own the patents on artificial hearts.
So I guess we will wait another 100 years before we can get a artificial heart that doesn't turn someone into a science experiment, all for the glory of the patent holder, instead of providing a solution to a person so they can live a normal life as everyone else does with healthy hearts.
Ironically, slowed research means fewer products.
What people are finding out, if you want to patent everything under the sun and sue, you maintain market share with steadily decreasing innovation and new products. Which directly translates into low or non existent profits or returns on research. Which translates into a sick economy and bad markets. Sort of sounds like the US telecommunications, computer, and now drug markets which are fairly mature, monolithic, sick, and produce high cost services for low value.
Anyone have a loved one here with lung cancer? I HAD one, but my Dad just died 4 weeks ago.
TAXOL, a key drug used to treat lung cancer, is patented. Imagine that. Ironically it comes from a tree, produced in nature!! They (the drug company) didn't even invent an original product! Nature made it yet the company that manufactures refines TAXOL owns the patent on it (TAXOL the Molecule) and no other company can sell it or do research on it without a license or they could risk getting sued!!!
Absolutely outrageous!
Whats even more outrageous, is the incredibly slow pace that this company who owns the patent on TAXOL is innovating it. Obviously a handful of PhD dolts are turning out improvements to TAXOL's effectiveness, in such small increments it could take decades to make it totally effective.
Whats its cost? Well, you can probably imagine, if only one company can produce it, and only a few idiots, chosen by a board of directors (many of them bankers not medical experts), can work on it...
What is the cost these jokers are charging people? TAXOL, a small bag, for one chemo treatment can go for as much as $3K-5K.
I point the fault of this directly at the patent system and congress who are greased nicely in thier leather chairs while people by the millions will die under these sorts of research conditions.
I personally believe that given the human suffering, that I personally experienced with my Dad, we as a society should make medical research an exception. An exception to ANY restrictions to information or access to information or research, and that it should be a society endeavor, not a motivation for profit.
Congress, could appropriate a budget much like defense, to do medical research and provide people with health care. I just can't see personally, any form of capitalism that is humanitarian, in the context of providing health care.
It is probably the only exception I can think of that makes Capitalism, even applied honestly look bad.
----
I won't even get into the broad band market place issues, why our industry can't move forward because the products that could use broadband are a direct threat to the entertainment industry in this country and therefore you have broadband prices that are high with few services that make use of them..beyond games.
I have pointed out many times that the US is headed for hard times when the Chinese and Russians wake up and decide not to play our little game and start producing technology under a much better system that values more rapid innovation and product time to market instead of a patent system that attempts to lock out markets and decrease innovation.
Linux is a good example. Not created in the USA, thank God because all of our home grown OS's created here
S U C K!
When these eastern asian countries wake up and begin to build thier own infrastructures without our products because they don't want to play or little game that keeps us at an unfair advatage, we are going to be in BIG TROUBLE BOYS AND GIRLS.
Congress is going to find out that it takes lots of dough to foot the bill for our navies, armies and military infrastructure. We defeated USSR, through economic means. Do you honestly think a society like the Chinese will NOT out GNP us eventually if they don't play by our game rules?
3 Billion of them?
They will economically crush the European Union and United States combined like a grape both in GNP, technological progress and innovation and, dare I say quality of life that comes with such a healthy economy!!
What do we do then when we start sending out children to China to learn in thier Universities, and start relying on China to police the world, because congress destroyed our economy with legalized monopolized with these patent systems and complete disregard of the law on Anti Trust issues such as Microsoft, and cannot afford a big navy or army?
Sound outrageous?
Look at the enourmous fraud, bad business climate and technology in our (US) country right now and tell me I am nuts! Turn on the news for example, and listen to the kind of business and political system "lock-in" business practices (Microsoft, PATENTS, Anti Trust laws with huge mergers that destroyed our economy etc.) that are being enforced legally in our country, simply because GREED drives our economy. Not hard work or innovation, why? Why do you need innovation if you can simply patent and freeze markets for 20 or so plus years at a time?
Look at
just as soon as we enact a DMCA law that makes it illegal to produce free software and get rid of Linux once and for all by making it CRIMINAL to use it in the US to make software of ANY kind with it!!!
Think I am nuts? We shall see...WON'T WE. But I would buy some land in China or India just in case if you want to be able to produce software or a script to read your Email without being sent to prison.
Whats the point in even considering a new cancer drug using the information from the Human Genome project for example if you could be sued in the next 20 years for making a drug that cures cancer from that information, only to loose in court because some idiotic company says they patented the entire genome because they sequenced it first???
Why even do cancer research for the next 20-50 years? Whats the point?
Which is what a lot of investors are feeling right now. Whats the point in investing in a market that has nothing but GREED driving the CEO's in this country instead of people with bright ideas?
After all its all about lawyers and market lock out and who owns the patent right?
Hack
I am considering a similair boat ride.
:-)
:-)
:-)
Only this time around I am going to be like those nice snotty rich kids in college who can sit and study all day long, and not have to worry like I did about where my next meal, or if I was going to be able to have the money to pay for housing next semester.
You see, the intellectual challenge of attending and getting into college is just one aspect of the puzzle as a whole.
If you really are a smart person, chances are you probably don't come from a rich family that can afford to pay your way while you concentrate on playing the game, of jumping through the hoops to get into grad school....very hard to do if you were like me. (i.e. very poor, and very naive....a combination which made my college experience not very enlightening till I ran out of money...or went to debtors prison.)
I ended up quitting college and starting a company....well, several companies, actually.
After my third one, I have found success, in that I don't have to work now and I am still young...about 36. So...
I am considering, like yourself, storming the gates of academia, and not only using 15 years of experience in building and designing software, but also putting my considerable financial resources and gained free time to CLAIM REVENGE and teach those snotty 18 year olds a thing or too on the grade curve, now that the playing field is level.
Dare I say in my favor.
I however, have a fairly realistic point of view in life about things....which I will suggest you adopt:
First of all, whenever you want something in life, in this case a degree, that requires a deep time commitment, you have to give up something. Having it all is not possible. (I here the OOoooooo's in the audience.) Well it is true. Do you want to be mediocre? Then spread yourself thin. Do you want to be the best? Do one thing then, and do it well and better than anyone else. The better your focus, the better you will obtain it. So while Joe academic is at the movies Saturday night pounding on his date when he gets home, brush up on next weeks final exam, and spend more time in the prof's office and running the class material through some personal what-if's to understand not just all the angles from the class material, INVENT NEW ONES, and get those too with the spare time....
For me I have given up for the moment, what the next 6 years will bring. My goal is to go to GRAD school, which requires upfront some realistic thinking: I will have to be a cut above the rest of the academic slobs in my class, if I want to get into GRAD school. That requires MORE time, and more commitment than the average BS candidate will make.
So the question is: What will I have to give up to do that? Answer:
1) A slowed down social life for the next 4 years.
2) A change of my circle of friends, from professional to academic and not so bad, maybe even meet more new friends.
3) A hold on any romantic interests that infers.
For me, 1-3 was a no brainer, as I don't want children, and am an over achiever....which drives most women I meet nuts anyway.
But, in your case, you have tried going back to school more than once, and dare I suggest perhaps, you really aren't serious about it because you have failed to give up things in your life you value more than the degree.
I would seriously reconsider. Perhaps, you can find other forms of achievement just as secure or rewarding...(start up a different business in a different industry for example, like open a restraunt....etc.)
Nothing goes together quite as well as good food, and good coding.
Write a book? Isn't that what experience is best at doing in conveying knowledge to the younger who have yet to walk the road you have?
Writing a book is definately a intellectual pursuit I recommend. It also, requires lots of time and effort and focus.
Historically, it doesn't sound like you really want a degree? It will not buy you anymore security than what you already have, if you have seriously employed yourself and are successfuly at it. After all, employing ones self successfully in a field where by you can consider doing something else, is an expression of the ultimate achievement.
I think you are looking for a different challenge and to me, I don't think school is it. I think it is the fact everyone on Slashdot says, more education is always good.
Indeed it is, but not always for the same reasons. If you seriously built a company in this industry and you have achieved independance like I have, and employee PhD's like I have had, then getting a degree is questionable if you want to expand your background.
For myself, I am going back to school simply because I find it as something unfinished in my life, when at a time, I wasn't financially equipped to handle the year to year ongoing financialy requirements. That and my mom and dad dreamed I would go to college, and now that I just lost my last parent, I realize some of that dream I shared is incomplete.
But I don't delude myself, for one moment, I am going to discover something about computer science I don't already know, or somehow, will obtain information that will secure me financially or GOD FORBID, I have to work for someone else, simply by attending college.
That is a bunch of Bull, and don't let anyone here on Slashdot tell you, it is not possible to achieve knowledge without going to our finest institutions...
Most of the people who went to our finer institutions, of the 20th century, who worked for DECADES on some of the most secret parts of the Universe, essentially had thier entires lifes work INVALIDATED by a simple office clerk, who couldn't get INTO college. I am not talking about simple minded tasks of building a web site either here. This man fundamentally changed our entire view of creation and is the reason why we have our modern society. (i.e. HINT E=mc SQUARED)
If anything, the success I made over the past 13 years has made me permenantly UNEMPLOYABLE because I don't put up with "people who took the short bus to school" in a professional environment.
Those kind of people work for my competitors because I certainly don't hire them thank God.
But, in any case, I would seriously reconsider your reasons for going back too school beyond money matters, especially, if you say you are already financially independant enough to make that sort of commitment.
Hack
I think the CML2 design is NOT what is at issue here. I also never said anything about CML2, I don't think CML2, itself is the issue here. I also never said that CML2 is a graphical interface.
I am talking about assumptions, issues in my previous post that Mr. Raymond, makes, all of which I think are irrelevant or bad assumptions about a CML2 implementation for building a kernel.
I am not interested in a graphical interface for a CML2 implementation, quite frankly.
As I stated earlier, graphical interfaces require too much baggage to implement when we are talking about "bootstrap" software such as an OS kernel configuration utility.
I also pointed to the fact that you can make very competent and very easy to use interfaces using simple menu's and windows with a curses library for example, in a CML2 implementation.
I finally make note of the fact that users shouldn't be and will never need to build thier own kernel. They are users, and by definition not systems people.
You can't give a calculus book to a kindegardener and then fault calculus for being TOO HARD, or designed WRONG, because the kindegardener can't figure it out.
Fundamentally the arguments for making kernels buildable by users are wrong, incorrect, and detract a lot of precious time from improving the system we have that works right now.
We have this mentality that everything should be driven using a mouse, and a GUI, which is fundamentally incorrect.
I can't tell you how many times I have watched over bloated Microsoft crap drive perfectly competent hardware costing thousands less into the ground, simply because the idiots at Microsoft think you have to have a GUI on a server for everything....
Just in case you want to load and run StarCraft or Dark Reign 2, on your SQL Server.
Hack
PS: Two of my personal Favorites by the way...
The primary problem I have with "graphical" anything, is that this is a Windows era issue of "every program written has to use a mouse and a window or it isn't user friendly."
Simply not true. When all I had was a VT100 command set, I wrote terminal interfaces that a 4 year old could use for fairly complicated pieces of software, no mouse required.
Although it did use windows....of a sort.
As for configuring and building a kernel, beyond:
1) Interfaces to remove and pull out components on demand....
2) The interface should provide optional documentation and guidelines as well as best practices for most kernel configs given the applications the machine is going to be running.
(i.e. Will it be a router, firewall, an app server or database server?)
3) The configuration system should be easily scriptable with a minimal set of gcc utils.
(sh, make, config..etc.) This is so that it requires less software to build the kernel.
This implies inherent reduced security risks, smaller kernel distribution and less dependancies for linux systems integrators.
Eric S Raymonds vision fails on all three accounts as far as I can tell, on how a kernel should be built and what the logical assumptions are for building a kernel in the first place.
Primarily, users, shouldn't be building kernels anyway. Which is what I think the root problem is here. No, I don't think either, that there is something wrong with Linux if a user can't do EVERYTHING with a mouse and windows.
Lets be realistic here: Users do not have the background to properly build a kernel, and building a nice graphical front end too build a kernel for a sophisticated developer gets in the way. It also, doesn't detract from Linux one iota simply because this fact exists.
That is what the argument here is, and that is why many people who write kernel programs don't use graphical tools ANYWAY. Which I think breaks another assumption made by Mr. Raymond about a new config system.
Dependancy graphics are nice, rules seperation parsers built to create such graphics with a language are nice.
But this is really OLD SCHOOL stuff. Any computer science/computer professional can buy a book on such theory and compeently learn everything there is to know about REINVENTING the wheel.
(ISBN: 0-13-1555045-4 Start reading at 7.3.2)
And you too can write a configuration system similair to Eric's...
But WHY WASTE YOUR TIME?
The existing kernel configuration system is very scriptable, has supporting documentation available with each modules or options, and works with a very minimal set of build tools on the command line.
Very nice, simple and it works very well very nicely without Python, X, windows, Mice a supported video driver and a whole new set of tools that basically give us the same thing we have now, just a whole lot more complicated.
I would like to see Eric address points 1-3 and tell use exactly why we need all this stuff as kernel developers. He hasn't done so.
His website just shows pretty pictures of a kernel configuration system.
Hack
Yes, I understand there are other restrictions to industry in China for example.
But, the kinds and degree of restrictions I do not believe are the same as in Europe or USA. They don't have copyrights, DMCA laws, and patents to slow them down. They don't have a corporate legal system bent on destroying competition, or startups. They also don't have as many crooked politicians as we do.
Furthermore, I am will to bet, that the far east continues it progress that it has made, to even more open markets over the next 50 years.
Leaving the USA and Europe, in the dust.
Hack
The US markets are way to monolithic, and cannot really expand anymore. There is a variety of reasons for this.
As I have said many times before, this is OK when there is little outside competition.
But, the world grows smaller by the hour. Countries such as the far eastern block, will have massive production and technological break throughs that will crush our markets like a grape.
New innovations introduced by foreign countries, will create market upheaval on a scale that will make the market cap of Linux companies in the 90's seem like small potatoes...
This will result in the following:
1) No big tax revenues for the US.
2) No big armies or navies, or space programs, can't afford them.
3) No big investment in research infrastructure. Can't afford that either.
4) Have to send people to the far east to learn about new business methods and new technologies.
Sound familair? Thats what the up N comming nations of China and many far east countries do now.
All countries have a time and a place when they walk on the world stage and command attention.
The USA's era of dominance will come to a close in the 21st century. You WILL see it in your life time if you live in the US.
Primary reasons why this is:
1) Economic illness of the US economy due to the collusion between government and business is resulting in unhealthy markets for competition, slowing innovation to a crawl.
(i.e. examples include Microsoft, Cable Companies, Power and Energy, oil companies, etc.)
2) The corruption of our markets has just begun, and will continue as no real progress is made or planned by politicians who were bascially bought by the same people investors are screaming to be brought to justice.
A few executives will be sacrificed for scape goats to appease, but the vast majority of fraud, illicit and illegal business activities by major companies in this country will continue.
Just in a MUCH more secretive manner so that any bankruptcies are declared "bad business, bad economy, 9/11" and never a reason for corruption mentioned, with new and IMPROVED accounting measures congress is promising will "fix the situation".
3) "Bad business" will cause increasingly large flows of investor moneies in the US to foriegn markets that have FAR MORE future growth and the US has anyway.
This has in some ways already begun. It will simply speed up as people who invested in "blue chip" companies now, at 50, find thier entire retirement plans invested in some executives house, and is building his 4th one with thier retirement money.
4)As the US loses power and influence, do to the same strategies we imparted on our enemies in the USSR, economic warfare, we will be defeated by the very same people who were once our enemies. Not militarily, but by the sheer power of 3 Billion people unleashed in a much healthier free market system.
This will take about 50 years to come about, but it is plain too see, some of the largest projects in the world, are being built and attempted in the far east using construction and advanced computer technology never before applied ANYWHERE.
The future eyes of world look to the far east to lead us into the 22nd century, and our current politicians and CEO's and other business leaders, due to thier selfish interests, will hand that future to our Far East "friends" without batting a an eye lash.
At least I HOPE TO GOD they are our friends, because there will be very little we can do about if if they really DON'T want to be at that point.
Hack
OOD/OOP is fragile.
It can get ugly quite quickly because of so much middle ware in between, which I pointed out.
Calling constructors for example. Constructors and accessor mthods don't exist in Structured Design. Only procedural or functiona abstractions which directly initialize your ADT for use.
I could provide two types of examples, but the Slashdot interface for dumping all that in would be painful for me to organize and type, so I won't support the above argument with a direct example.
Hack
This is my rant on the subject. You don't have to agree, but it comes from a guy writing software since he was 10 years old, who is now very old and crusty by comparison. This is what experience has taught me, perhaps your mileage will vary.
:-)
:-)
:-)
OOD, without risking and sounding like those "experts" is no silver bullet for software design. But it is a sound evolutionary advance in Software Engineering techniques. Yes, I do agree, that the OLDER generation, is more inclined towards Structured Design before implementing OOD/OOP techniques. However, I disagree that it is because that is the only thing we have been taught or have been teaching. Thats complete bonk.
Everyone in this field advances with the times. I would suggest, if it seems that way, the older generation, simply realizes what OOD/OOP is and what it ISN'T, and use OOD/OOP where appropriate in building software.
First of all, OOD/OOP builds heavily on Structured Design techniques. (i.e. Building software using ADT definitions and the 4 foundation sequences of computer science: statement, do-while, while-do, if then else, case or selector statement.) That is, a properly built OOD will embody in every one of its object interfaces, methods which are built using sound Structured Design methods. So it is a Myth that OOD/OOP gets rid of Structured Design techniques. In FACT, those who write POOR OOD/OOP's are those that have not mastered the 4 constructs of computer science and the ADT that goes along with Structured Design.
OOD does not a attempt to do away with Structured Design, it complements it by organizing Data AND Code in such a way that further increases the resulting code abstract properties. (i.e. it allows the resulting algorithms to be expressed in a way that makes said code even more reusable through inheritance for example. OOD is therefore impossible to implement without Structured Design.)
The resulting code is far more abstract, and therefore generalized to be more reusable, and therefore, theoretically, more reliable. (i.e. Code that is used over and over again becomes more reliable over time, and is an extensible property of the life cycle of software. Although structured design allows you to reuse code through simple function calls, OOD/OOP takes it one step further and allows function calls and data representation to be generalized as a functional unit.)
It has been pointed out, with good reason, that Java is a language which can help enforce good OO programming. However, it is not required and for example through the use of static methods, one can build Java code without using OOD/OOP techniques of any kind if one decides to do so.
This is important: OOD because of its abstract properties, (primarily the use of inheritance) can be used to create software patterns that lend themselves to creating certain types of software.
Certain types of software that benefit greatly from OOD/OOP implementations are for example, User Interfaces. Why? It is obvious. User interfaces are built using repeatable patterns themsleves application after application. (File, Edit, View, Window, etc.), at thier most basic level.
When an implementation in and of itself such as the building of a GUI, for example, has a clear pattern itself, OOD/OOP methods can get a great deal more mileage out of simplyfying and building code. This creates a better implementation of a GUI than just a Structured Design approach alone can provide.
With that said. You are probably thinking, what sorts of things is OOD/OOP NOT good at, and in fact SHOULD NOT be used. This is the part that gets controversial and you will decide, without knowing it, which camp you fall into by reading the next paragraph.
Well, abstraction, which through inheritance in OOD, while it provides excellent reusability in the context of building software, does not always result in the most effective implementation. By an effective implementation, I mean most efficient.
So what am I saying? Well, I am saying that you sacrifice some efficiency to gain the increased code reliiability that inheritance provides in OOD by compartmentalizing code AND data within an object vs Structured Design, which cannot do this through the use of simply an ADT and function/procedure calls.
(i.e. You can never directly modify data in context of a classic OOD/OOP, you have to overlap or build a middle man, as it where, to modify any data you declare private through the use of accessor methods.)
Althouh this enforces and corrects some deficiencies in Structured Design, it makes the program arguably slower to execute.
In the context of building, say an Operating System, for example, OOD/OOP is not the way to go if you want a highly speedy and effective OS implementation.
If you want such speed you invariable have to give up inheritance, and the benefits it provides, and resort to Structure Design principles only, to build your OS. (i.e. ALL function calls and procedures DIRECTLY access the data structures of the OS through passing parameters to functions or procedures, there by eliminating the middle man as above.)
Which, is not so bad, really. OS's and components of OS's such as kernels, etc...are designed to be speedy, as they should be.
So, my view on the topic is that OOD/OOP is best suited on top of the OS, vs IN the OS design.
Not everyone agrees with that, and that is fine.
Why? Well, because many argue that the sacrifice in speed is justified in the complexity of building a OS kernel, and that the reliability gained through the extensive use of OOD/OOP techniques in building the OS kernel for example, yields a better OS.
Which is not something to be taken likely if your OS is charged with the responsibility to keep systems software on the space shuttle for example working with the fewest number of defects, and human lives riding on what the OS may or may not do next.
On the other side, like I said, you have me and others who believe that OS should be very small and very fast, and that OOD/OOP shouldn't be used and that the realibility sacrificed is acceptable.
So, that is just one aspect of when and where and why OOD/OOP should and should not be used. But as you can see, it is far from cut and dried, and primarily is once based on IMPLEMENTATION and engineering REQUIREMENTS, not on methodology.
Which is how the real world works.
For the most part, which drives 90% of the disagreements is the fact that many people see OOD/OOP being a generalized approach to solving ALL problems, and not a specialized addition to Structured Design techniques, suitable for SOME problems, not ALL problems.
I personally, obviously, feel that OOD/OOP is NOT a generalized programming methodology for ALL cases.
However, some of my friends feel very differently, and we have a good discussion on the topic wherever we go when we start discussing OOD/OOP.
Things can get pretty heated, and most patrons at the local 3am diner wonder what all the screaming is about, particularly the buzz words.
Hack
MSFT is indeed an American company, and it does employ people.
In fact I would estimate, judging from the court cases, that for every one MSFT employee, MSFT has excercised and destroyed about 100 peoples jobs in this country through the illegal use of its monopoly power.
Those 100 people no doubt had families as well.
What about THOSE PEOPLE?
Hack