Google can search 'em! And whenever you have a problem, where do you usually go first? Google... Plus it's more community oriented. Lookit how BEA has tons of CSRs trolling the weblogic newsgroups. It's great. WebGain (TOPLink) has private newsgroups and there's NOTHING on google about toplink that's very valuable...
I think this is where we differ. I don't consider the the browser environment a market since:
- I don't pay for my browser
- browsers are not marketed to me
- I don't see advertisements for browsers.
Contrast that with your automobile example (which I do consider a market):
- I pay for my car
- cars are marketed for different segments of the population
- I see car ads all the time.
I'm not implying that the 3 conditions I listed are required elements of a market, but I'm just saying that in the browser arena, the context is slightly different. Hence I don't call it a market and hence competition applies.
But I believe we're just quibbling over the defn of competition and market.
In getting to work, is a car a competitor to a cycle? Similar mechanisms/products/languages/browsers that allow you to reach the same end-point does not imply competition. The only implication is that there are alternative choices you can make to get you from point a to point b.
I wouldn't say that python's a competitor to every other high-level language out there. Python's good at doing certain things. Certain things in Python are boatloads easier than in Java or even C++. Hence, if I have a task in front of me that I believe Python is the correct tool for, I won't even consider using Java or C++. To me, if Python, C++, and Java were really competitors then I would consider them. But I don't. They are alternative solutions (instead of writing 3 lines of python I wrote 20 lines of Java or 25 lines of C++) but I don't seem them as competitors.
Like many other authors, Jim Hu has failed to grasp the larger picture. While Mozilla could be a potential competitor to IE, it's more of an alternative to IE. Most of the people that I know who use Mozilla do so because they are under a platform that doesn't have an IE browser installed by default. (I don't mean to suggest that my colleaques would use an IE browser if it were installed on the box).
I run linux 99% of my uptime. And I use galeon on top of Mozilla. Why? Not because I hate the concept of IE (I hate IE for other reasons) but because it's an alternative. Sure I have a Sun that I could run IE on, but the velocity of the Mozilla and Galeon development is the alternative solution that I'm looking for.
OpenSource developers aren't "let's go give MS a run for their money!" people. They're "let's go make a browser that sucks less." Not everything is a competition - some projects exist just to provide alternatives.
What is Python a competitor to? I dunno... It's just an alternative... Just like Mozilla...
Very funny indeed... Although wouldn't surprise me if he resigned. He has received a lot of bitching, belly-aching, "my mommy never hugged me" complaints as of late...
Yup. Totally Dead. That's right I said it. This game was an exercise in disappointment for me. I obtained a copy of the beta, loaded it up, and went to work.
So what's different? 4 races. Big whoop. So they expanded the matrix they wrote an engine against to have 4 columns instead of 2. The friggin engine is the same.
I was hoping that the game engine would employ a combination of RTS, RPG, and FPS giving the player the ability to both strategize unit development, role play a hero as he fights against the enemy, and select where your hero would attack the enemy.
It appears as tho Blizzard did a damn good job repackaging an engine they developed 4-5 years ago when they put out WarCraft II. In fact, I'd argue that it was probably the same damn engine they used for StarCraft. Consider the parallels:
1.) You choose a race in both. 2.) There are 3 resources in WC and 2 resources in SC. 3.) Different buildings allow for different units to be developed in both. 4.) Research and improvement in buildings allow for more advanced units in both. 5.) Units are specialized in both. Some can only attack air, some only ground. 6.) Conclusion of a multiplayer game is based upon destruction of the enemy or a capture the flag scenario in both.
What's different about WC3? 1.) Better eye candy 2.) The heros.
AND THAT'S IT. I'm tellin ya - if Blizzard was smart they wrote this engine 4-5 years ago and have used it in 3 games now. Either their programmers are damn good at writing a meta engine , or the creative execs at Blizzard plain old SUCK.
I was heavily disappointed by this game, especially given the long (3 years?) lead-up type and hype by Blizzard. They otta just can it in my opinion.
I'm on a project where the management isn't necessarily always the problem. At times our project's direction seems foggy at best, but other times the path we're on seems clear.
Co-Workers can often times be a bigger problem. If you don't believe in the abilities of your coworkers (because they hard code things like user ids into regression tests) then you've got a bigger problem. No amount of management is going to fix incompetence. Layoffs fix incompetence...
However, there is another aspect to his. A double whammy if you will. If your team is poor, and your management doesn't stand up to them, you have a much bigger problem. I'm on a team where a small group of people carry 80% of the load. Yet in meetings, when the people who pull 12 - 14 hour days consistently argue with those pulling 6 - 8 hour days, management doesn't back us. Too democratic of a management style can lead to worker frustration and eventually to resignation.
And losing a 12 - 14 hour a day worker isn't a good thing from a business standpoint.
I'm not sure about open source projects, but error handling and reporting, always seems to fall by the way side. It's so integral, but rarely built rock solid.
What's amazing is that the programmers just don't get it. As the programmer, you would like people to use your tool, widget, whatever.
So, let's say Joe User comes along. He's your customer. He's "purchasing" your software. He's not paying you $$loot$$ for it, but you are receiving gain from it in the form of an additional user of your software. So, even open source programmers should treat Joe User like a business treats a customer.
First time customers are all-important customers. When they first fire up your app, your relationship with them is at a pivotal moment. Will the app work correctly and delight the customer? Or will it flame out and leave a charred core corpse?
If your app gives false error messages, or no error messages at all, the customer isn't going to trust that the app is a solid tool. Sorry programmer, you've just lost a customer.
To give you an idea of "just how bad bad can get", I work at a company where the programmers make assumptions about underlying errors. We use Java and there are locations in the code where programmers "catch (Exception e) {" and then the error message that gets generated is really specific like "Unable to find catalog item: 730".
You can imagine my disgust when I came across this error message when trying to order catalog item 730 after I had just queried and received catalog item 730 as a hit on my query.
Bring on the flames... I saw it this weekend with my younger brother. Maybe I liked it because it was the first movie I have watched in a theatre in about 2 years. Maybe it's because the special effects make cool eye candy. Maybe it's because I think NASA kicks a*s.
I don't know what it was: But I know I liked it. When I clicked onto slashdot today, and read all the "this movie has a plot centered around inertia and it defies Newton's laws!!!" and "a space-pack that has thrusters on the shoulders?!" I wasn't suprised...
It's a movie.
I get enough of the intellectual kind of stuff at work. Didn't anyone ever read the first fundamental of theatrical entertainment: Suspension of disbelief. I can understand why most of you have difficulty in this, but I beg you: Step out of the box.
Go to a movie, suspend disbelief, Newtonian physics, laws of inertia and conservation, and all the other things we have learned on our short period on this planet and enjoy yourself for 2 hours!
After all, it only cost you... heh... $7.50!
So bring on the flames - I liked the movie. Sure I recognized the scientific flaws and the liberties taken by the producer / director. Do you believe NASA pilots would honestly go out and mess around with a random face on a planet without going through years of tests?! Come on... How long did it take us to get to the moon? A decade? It wasn't because some hot shot said (while in orbit) "I ain't leavin 'til I gets me a piece of 'dat dere moon." Realisticly no NASA pilot would ever contaminate or corrupt a discovery as profound as what was proposed in the movie...
But when watching the movie I thought they might.
So please, sit back - grab a bag of popcorn that might have been popped at suboptimal temperature and salted with unpuritized NaCL and sip that 140 calorie Syrup and Caffeine mix. Light up the night for once and enjoy the emotion of the event, if only for 2 hours.
After all, DNS zones, the genome project, SETI, OR Mapping tools, initrd, and the 2.2.15 kernel can wait for just 2 hours.;-)
Goodnight. Yo, tell me what time it is now, It's our time
Slashdot Mirror
Google can search 'em! And whenever you have a problem, where do you usually go first? Google... Plus it's more community oriented. Lookit how BEA has tons of CSRs trolling the weblogic newsgroups. It's great. WebGain (TOPLink) has private newsgroups and there's NOTHING on google about toplink that's very valuable...
Argh - competition does not applies...
:/
Been writing too much code boolean logic today and my english conversion is off..
-c
I think this is where we differ. I don't consider the the browser environment a market since:
- I don't pay for my browser
- browsers are not marketed to me
- I don't see advertisements for browsers.
Contrast that with your automobile example (which I do consider a market):
- I pay for my car
- cars are marketed for different segments of the population
- I see car ads all the time.
I'm not implying that the 3 conditions I listed are required elements of a market, but I'm just saying that in the browser arena, the context is slightly different. Hence I don't call it a market and hence competition applies.
But I believe we're just quibbling over the defn of competition and market.
-c
In getting to work, is a car a competitor to a cycle? Similar mechanisms/products/languages/browsers that allow you to reach the same end-point does not imply competition. The only implication is that there are alternative choices you can make to get you from point a to point b.
-c
I wouldn't say that python's a competitor to every other high-level language out there. Python's good at doing certain things. Certain things in Python are boatloads easier than in Java or even C++. Hence, if I have a task in front of me that I believe Python is the correct tool for, I won't even consider using Java or C++. To me, if Python, C++, and Java were really competitors then I would consider them. But I don't. They are alternative solutions (instead of writing 3 lines of python I wrote 20 lines of Java or 25 lines of C++) but I don't seem them as competitors.
-c
Like many other authors, Jim Hu has failed to grasp the larger picture. While Mozilla could be a potential competitor to IE, it's more of an alternative to IE. Most of the people that I know who use Mozilla do so because they are under a platform that doesn't have an IE browser installed by default. (I don't mean to suggest that my colleaques would use an IE browser if it were installed on the box).
I run linux 99% of my uptime. And I use galeon on top of Mozilla. Why? Not because I hate the concept of IE (I hate IE for other reasons) but because it's an alternative. Sure I have a Sun that I could run IE on, but the velocity of the Mozilla and Galeon development is the alternative solution that I'm looking for.
OpenSource developers aren't "let's go give MS a run for their money!" people. They're "let's go make a browser that sucks less." Not everything is a competition - some projects exist just to provide alternatives.
What is Python a competitor to? I dunno... It's just an alternative... Just like Mozilla...
-c
Can't wait til I can buy it on ebay and use it to run my Ultima Online character.
Very funny indeed... Although wouldn't surprise me if he resigned. He has received a lot of bitching, belly-aching, "my mommy never hugged me" complaints as of late...
enjoyed reading his email.
How 'bout a self-heating can of WHOOP-ASS!
Like what the CAPS opened up on Toronto!
;-)
Yup. Totally Dead. That's right I said it. This game was an exercise in disappointment for me. I obtained a copy of the beta, loaded it up, and went to work.
So what's different? 4 races. Big whoop. So they expanded the matrix they wrote an engine against to have 4 columns instead of 2. The friggin engine is the same.
I was hoping that the game engine would employ a combination of RTS, RPG, and FPS giving the player the ability to both strategize unit development, role play a hero as he fights against the enemy, and select where your hero would attack the enemy.
It appears as tho Blizzard did a damn good job repackaging an engine they developed 4-5 years ago when they put out WarCraft II. In fact, I'd argue that it was probably the same damn engine they used for StarCraft. Consider the parallels:
1.) You choose a race in both.
2.) There are 3 resources in WC and 2 resources in SC.
3.) Different buildings allow for different units to be developed in both.
4.) Research and improvement in buildings allow for more advanced units in both.
5.) Units are specialized in both. Some can only attack air, some only ground.
6.) Conclusion of a multiplayer game is based upon destruction of the enemy or a capture the flag scenario in both.
What's different about WC3?
1.) Better eye candy
2.) The heros.
AND THAT'S IT. I'm tellin ya - if Blizzard was smart they wrote this engine 4-5 years ago and have used it in 3 games now. Either their programmers are damn good at writing a meta engine , or the creative execs at Blizzard plain old SUCK.
I was heavily disappointed by this game, especially given the long (3 years?) lead-up type and hype by Blizzard. They otta just can it in my opinion.
EA killed UO2 which had lots of potential...
Just my opinion (WARCRAFT3 SUCKS!)
I'm on a project where the management isn't necessarily always the problem. At times our project's direction seems foggy at best, but other times the path we're on seems clear.
Co-Workers can often times be a bigger problem. If you don't believe in the abilities of your coworkers (because they hard code things like user ids into regression tests) then you've got a bigger problem. No amount of management is going to fix incompetence. Layoffs fix incompetence...
However, there is another aspect to his. A double whammy if you will. If your team is poor, and your management doesn't stand up to them, you have a much bigger problem. I'm on a team where a small group of people carry 80% of the load. Yet in meetings, when the people who pull 12 - 14 hour days consistently argue with those pulling 6 - 8 hour days, management doesn't back us. Too democratic of a management style can lead to worker frustration and eventually to resignation.
And losing a 12 - 14 hour a day worker isn't a good thing from a business standpoint.
Heh. Oh well, let 'em sink they own ship!
Oh man I'm drunk right now. And it's only 9:52am!
I'm not sure about open source projects, but error handling and reporting, always seems to fall by the way side. It's so integral, but rarely built rock solid.
What's amazing is that the programmers just don't get it. As the programmer, you would like people to use your tool, widget, whatever.
So, let's say Joe User comes along. He's your customer. He's "purchasing" your software. He's not paying you $$loot$$ for it, but you are receiving gain from it in the form of an additional user of your software. So, even open source programmers should treat Joe User like a business treats a customer.
First time customers are all-important customers. When they first fire up your app, your relationship with them is at a pivotal moment. Will the app work correctly and delight the customer? Or will it flame out and leave a charred core corpse?
If your app gives false error messages, or no error messages at all, the customer isn't going to trust that the app is a solid tool. Sorry programmer, you've just lost a customer.
To give you an idea of "just how bad bad can get", I work at a company where the programmers make assumptions about underlying errors. We use Java and there are locations in the code where programmers "catch (Exception e) {" and then the error message that gets generated is really specific like "Unable to find catalog item: 730".
You can imagine my disgust when I came across this error message when trying to order catalog item 730 after I had just queried and received catalog item 730 as a hit on my query.
Bring on the flames...
... heh ... $7.50!
;-)
I saw it this weekend with my younger brother. Maybe I liked it because it was the first movie I have watched in a theatre in about 2 years. Maybe it's because the special effects make cool eye candy. Maybe it's because I think NASA kicks a*s.
I don't know what it was: But I know I liked it. When I clicked onto slashdot today, and read all the "this movie has a plot centered around inertia and it defies Newton's laws!!!" and "a space-pack that has thrusters on the shoulders?!" I wasn't suprised...
It's a movie.
I get enough of the intellectual kind of stuff at work. Didn't anyone ever read the first fundamental of theatrical entertainment: Suspension of disbelief. I can understand why most of you have difficulty in this, but I beg you: Step out of the box.
Go to a movie, suspend disbelief, Newtonian physics, laws of inertia and conservation, and all the other things we have learned on our short period on this planet and enjoy yourself for 2 hours!
After all, it only cost you
So bring on the flames - I liked the movie. Sure I recognized the scientific flaws and the liberties taken by the producer / director. Do you believe NASA pilots would honestly go out and mess around with a random face on a planet without going through years of tests?! Come on... How long did it take us to get to the moon? A decade? It wasn't because some hot shot said (while in orbit) "I ain't leavin 'til I gets me a piece of 'dat dere moon." Realisticly no NASA pilot would ever contaminate or corrupt a discovery as profound as what was proposed in the movie...
But when watching the movie I thought they might.
So please, sit back - grab a bag of popcorn that might have been popped at suboptimal temperature and salted with unpuritized NaCL and sip that 140 calorie Syrup and Caffeine mix. Light up the night for once and enjoy the emotion of the event, if only for 2 hours.
After all, DNS zones, the genome project, SETI, OR Mapping tools, initrd, and the 2.2.15 kernel can wait for just 2 hours.
Goodnight.
Yo, tell me what time it is now,
It's our time