I think it's worth pointing out that while an advanced degree in some random field is certainly not the same thing as real-world technical writing expertise... an advanced degree in technical writing should include a great deal of attention to technical writing, and is of substantial value.
I have to disagree. Training in technical writing is helpful. Say a bachelor's with a major or minor in technical communication. Or coursework sufficient for a certificate in technical communication. But amplifying technical writing into a graduate program is an exercise in academic lala-ism. It's just making too much out of a simple field. If you want to spend a year or two doing advanced coursework (which is the point of a Masters) or actual research (the point of a Doctorate), you're better of doing it in some subject you want to write about. There's only so much to learn about writing as such.
I don't want to sound like I have no respect for graduate education. I've often wished I had the research skills you get when you do graduate work in one of the humanities. But in my experience, the academic mindset is actually the enemy of good technical writing. Academic writers write to be appreciated by their academic peers. Technical writers write (or should write) for people who want to find out facts quickly, don't need a lot of theory, and do need a lot of nitpicking detail, all for the benefit of people who may not have good English reading skills (and I don't just mean folks for whom English is a second language!).
"Rogue Anti-Malware" (which seems to me should just be called 'Malware')
Uh, no. I think "bogus anti-malware" is a better description, but whatever you call it, it's not a useless term. Some malware disguises itself as anti-malware. Some disguises itself as email from your mother. Whatever it is, you need a term for the specific kind of malware, and that term doesn't deny the fact that it's malware, even if the term includes "anti-malware".
Dude, "Troll" means "You're full of it!". Yes, I know FAQ says it means the post is trolling for flames. But I've never seen "Troll" used that way, so the FAQ is obviously wrong!
Aside from your genuflection at the Altar of Advanced Degrees (graduate work is not the best preparation for this profession; academic writing is very very different from technical writing) you make a good point. In fact, it's so obvious an answer, one wonder why anybody felt an Ask Slashdot was needed.
The question I want answered is: WTF are developers so unwilling to deal with doc issues? When confronted with bad docs, they complain, but when they need to provide docs themselves, docs are an afterthought. It gets cobbled together at the last minute. Or it gets delegated to some clueless individual whose main qualification is knowing how to parse and spell. Or they kludge up technosolutions (wikis, Javadoc, Doxygen) and proclaim those as "fixing" the problem. This particular Ask Slashdot basically assumes that's the only approach!
(Note that I'm not saying the aforementioned tools are useless. I use them myself. But they're tools, not solutions.)
Documentation is important. If the user can't figure out a feature, the feature hasn't really been implemented. Developers know this, or say they do. So why doesn't it ever get the attention it deserves.
And yes, I do this shit for a living. So I have an agenda here. But does that make me wrong?
Oops! Though not yet a lawyer, you are actually able to deliver an opinion on legal matters with some authority. That's rare enough on Slashdot (which is full of people who don't understand the law as well as they think they do) that you need to notify people of the fact when expressing yourself!
I think you're probably right. Still, before stating a legal opinion, you really should state your legal training or (I assume) lack thereof.
Though maybe Slashdot should just come with a warning: "User's reserve the right to speak in an authoritative word on all subjects, regardless of the qualification to do so.
By the way, if your tummy aches, don't waste your hard-earned money on a doctor. A little calcium carbonate will probably clear it right up.
What, did somebody say "appendicitis"? Stupid troll.
Every time I read "grant", "advanced research", and "tax incentive", I see "gift", "white elephant", and "sleaze".
Right, and there's none of that in the private sector.
But anything the market can do, it should.
Well, let's see how the market handles development of new forms of energy: it doesn't. It's too busy chasing ever-diminishing sources of fossil fuel. That's because the current marketplace only does things that promise a return in the near future. Why spend billions on research for a return that might be decades in the future, when you can drill holes and dig up whole mountains for a guaranteed return in a few years?
This is actually a pretty old argument. Back in the first half of the 19th century, a lot of people thought the federal government shouldn't be spending so much money digging canals, building roads, encouraging railroads, and otherwise encouraging commerce between the states. This was particularly unpopular in the south, where the slave-based agricultural economy was poorly suited to leverage this new-fangled tech. This had a lot to do with secession and the ensuing war. Which, ironically, the south lost mainly because of all that industrial infrastructure they objected to!
For something as big as an electrical grid, the cost savings from having it fail once in a while could very well outweigh the costs of it failing once in a while.
Maybe for the kind of outage you get when a car knocks down a pole. But systemic issues always affect large numbers of people — and they basically halt all economic activity in the affected area.
And do recall that something that can happen by accident can happen by malicious intervention. If I were running a terrorist network, I'd want to stage a big series of coordinated attacks, one of which would be designed to deprive the affected areas of power. Imagine the nightmare for emergency responders. It's a good thing that Al Qaida seems to suck at anything that requires real planning.
Right you are. The people who run the networks seem to be a little better at anticipating this kind of problem, but the fundamental flaws are still there, and the big blackouts still happen from time to time. As with so many things, the will the make the fundamental changes is just not there.
To nitpick a bit, the comparison whould be against a modern monument, not a generic modern building.
You mean like the Washington Monument? The Lincoln Memorial? None of those would last long without constant maintenance.
but note that the pyramids, while still standing, are not in their original glory
True. But most of the damage isn't natural. The pyramids were originally faced with limestone, which was too valuable for later builders to leave alone.
Mount Rushmore, for one (sure acid rain etc will make then unrecognizable, and it's likely one or more will have sloughing issues, but note that the pyramids, while still standing, are not in their original glory).
Dude, that's a mountain. It will be there for thousands of years regardless. Carving into it probably shortened its life span slightly.
Personally, I consider the fact that the pyramids are still standing to be a factor of chance -- they are built in the desert, with low humidity and little to no plant life which could damage the structure (unlike the pyramids of central america).
OK, there you make a good point. It's also worth mentioning that the preservative quality of the desert probably had a lot to do with the ancient Egyptian's obsession with immortality, which motivated the building of the pyramids in the first place.
And of course another reason we no longer build stuff like that: a shortage of slave labor.
Uh, the ones on the page you linked don't look all that sound. They may have stood up well against Allied bombs and Soviet artillery, but give them a century or two of weathering and soil subsidence, and they'll just be piles of concrete and steel.
Really dumb thing to build. The same resources devoted to mobile AA guns would have been a lot more effective. What did Patton say? "Fixed fortifications are a tribute to the folly of mankind." Something like that.
Google seems to think you're talking about Snefru's Pyramid. There's some difference of opinion as to why it collapsed and when. Some authorities think it collapsed because of the steepness issue you describe (which may have been done to make it harder to pillage), and then was rebuilt to work around it. It then collapsed for good much later. Others think that it was badly designed, but that the Egyptians redesigned in mid-building to keep it from falling down. Either way, the second (or maybe only) collapse occurred in Roman times, or even the Middle Ages. That makes it a botch job by Egyptian standards (some of their earliest pyramids are still around after 4500 years!) but still better built than anything we have. I mean, can you think of a modern building that is still likely to be standing in 2000 years?
Uh, when exactly did that pyramid collapse? All the Egyptian pyramids are more than 3,500 years old. So if this one collapsed less than 3,000 years ago, it actually counts as a successful building project.
Well, do, you're right to be concerned. The thing is, our technology infrastructure has always been a nasty kludge. In 1965, some coincidental misconfigurations at two minor power plants took out the power grid for an area in the northeast U.S. and eastern Canada where 25 million people lived. It was 14 hours before the grid was fully restored. Our inability to keep our technical house in order is a very old problem.
I don't happen to agree, but that's actually another argument. Obviously when you spend money stimulating the economy, you'd rather spend the money on something with long-term value than on something that just keeps people busy. The point I was making is that spending money stimulates the economy whether it's doing something useful or not.
The thing I find really ironic is the right wing poo-pooing this concept when they were actually proclaiming it just a few years ago. After 9/11, a lot of people got all patriotic and wanted to quit their jobs in order to enter the military or become part of the national security establishment, or something else that they saw as combating terrorism. (Even going to Afghanistan and delivering economic aid counts; the Taliban hate western aid workers more than they hate the western military.) People who wanted to do this heard the same thing from multiple source: the Bush administration, right-wing pundits, their bosses when they tried to quit their jobs: Don't quit. The most patriotic thing you can do is keep working and stimulate the economy by going shopping.
When "stimulating the economy" meant buying useless crap in order to make big business even bigger, they were all for it. But now that it means spending money on actually stuff we can (maybe) use, it's a dirty word.
What's funny is that when I was in college (90s) Keynesian was thought of to be crap.
Did you go to University of Chicago by any chance. Regardless, you obviously went to a school where Keynsianism was out of favor. As it was in government during the anti-liberal Reagan and Bush/Bush administrations, and also during the We're-Not-Really-Liberals Clinton administration. But it was never totally rejected, and lately it's been gaining respectability again. Can you guess why?
The thing that really bothers me about economics is that it's supposed to be a science, but a given economist always seems to be able to use this "science" to back up whatever politics or ideology he's affiliated with.
You can bet that legislators, mayors, and city councilpersons everywhere will see this as an even-better source of income than red-light cameras. You've been warned.
Jeez, first they try to punish red light runners, then wantpeople to pay for the roads they drive on. It's socialism!
That's kind of a dumb question. (I might be excused from inferring your agenda from your question, but I'll refrain — we already have too much of that.) Anything that causes money to be spent stimulates the economy. The issue with the stimulus bill (including this part) is not whether it will stimulate the economy, but whether it will stimulate it enough to justify adding most of a terabuck to the national debt.
As for this particular question, have you been following the news at all? Part of the stimulus is building up our technical infrastructure. Do I have to explain how software fits into that? You may not agree that this will work, but how it's supposed to work should be obvious.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's worth pointing out that while an advanced degree in some random field is certainly not the same thing as real-world technical writing expertise... an advanced degree in technical writing should include a great deal of attention to technical writing, and is of substantial value.
I have to disagree. Training in technical writing is helpful. Say a bachelor's with a major or minor in technical communication. Or coursework sufficient for a certificate in technical communication. But amplifying technical writing into a graduate program is an exercise in academic lala-ism. It's just making too much out of a simple field. If you want to spend a year or two doing advanced coursework (which is the point of a Masters) or actual research (the point of a Doctorate), you're better of doing it in some subject you want to write about. There's only so much to learn about writing as such.
I don't want to sound like I have no respect for graduate education. I've often wished I had the research skills you get when you do graduate work in one of the humanities. But in my experience, the academic mindset is actually the enemy of good technical writing. Academic writers write to be appreciated by their academic peers. Technical writers write (or should write) for people who want to find out facts quickly, don't need a lot of theory, and do need a lot of nitpicking detail, all for the benefit of people who may not have good English reading skills (and I don't just mean folks for whom English is a second language!).
Great, now we're into the liar paradox. Oh Captain Kirk!
ROTFL. I'd be very curious to know what you think a "common carrier" is. God save us from amateur lawyers!
"Rogue Anti-Malware" (which seems to me should just be called 'Malware')
Uh, no. I think "bogus anti-malware" is a better description, but whatever you call it, it's not a useless term. Some malware disguises itself as anti-malware. Some disguises itself as email from your mother. Whatever it is, you need a term for the specific kind of malware, and that term doesn't deny the fact that it's malware, even if the term includes "anti-malware".
Dude, "Troll" means "You're full of it!". Yes, I know FAQ says it means the post is trolling for flames. But I've never seen "Troll" used that way, so the FAQ is obviously wrong!
Aside from your genuflection at the Altar of Advanced Degrees (graduate work is not the best preparation for this profession; academic writing is very very different from technical writing) you make a good point. In fact, it's so obvious an answer, one wonder why anybody felt an Ask Slashdot was needed.
The question I want answered is: WTF are developers so unwilling to deal with doc issues? When confronted with bad docs, they complain, but when they need to provide docs themselves, docs are an afterthought. It gets cobbled together at the last minute. Or it gets delegated to some clueless individual whose main qualification is knowing how to parse and spell. Or they kludge up technosolutions (wikis, Javadoc, Doxygen) and proclaim those as "fixing" the problem. This particular Ask Slashdot basically assumes that's the only approach!
(Note that I'm not saying the aforementioned tools are useless. I use them myself. But they're tools, not solutions.)
Documentation is important. If the user can't figure out a feature, the feature hasn't really been implemented. Developers know this, or say they do. So why doesn't it ever get the attention it deserves.
And yes, I do this shit for a living. So I have an agenda here. But does that make me wrong?
Oops! Though not yet a lawyer, you are actually able to deliver an opinion on legal matters with some authority. That's rare enough on Slashdot (which is full of people who don't understand the law as well as they think they do) that you need to notify people of the fact when expressing yourself!
I think you're probably right. Still, before stating a legal opinion, you really should state your legal training or (I assume) lack thereof.
Though maybe Slashdot should just come with a warning: "User's reserve the right to speak in an authoritative word on all subjects, regardless of the qualification to do so.
By the way, if your tummy aches, don't waste your hard-earned money on a doctor. A little calcium carbonate will probably clear it right up.
What, did somebody say "appendicitis"? Stupid troll.
Every time I read "grant", "advanced research", and "tax incentive", I see "gift", "white elephant", and "sleaze".
Right, and there's none of that in the private sector.
But anything the market can do, it should.
Well, let's see how the market handles development of new forms of energy: it doesn't. It's too busy chasing ever-diminishing sources of fossil fuel. That's because the current marketplace only does things that promise a return in the near future. Why spend billions on research for a return that might be decades in the future, when you can drill holes and dig up whole mountains for a guaranteed return in a few years?
This is actually a pretty old argument. Back in the first half of the 19th century, a lot of people thought the federal government shouldn't be spending so much money digging canals, building roads, encouraging railroads, and otherwise encouraging commerce between the states. This was particularly unpopular in the south, where the slave-based agricultural economy was poorly suited to leverage this new-fangled tech. This had a lot to do with secession and the ensuing war. Which, ironically, the south lost mainly because of all that industrial infrastructure they objected to!
Well, if you were making batteries out of iron, it's no wonder you got laid off!
For something as big as an electrical grid, the cost savings from having it fail once in a while could very well outweigh the costs of it failing once in a while.
Maybe for the kind of outage you get when a car knocks down a pole. But systemic issues always affect large numbers of people — and they basically halt all economic activity in the affected area.
And do recall that something that can happen by accident can happen by malicious intervention. If I were running a terrorist network, I'd want to stage a big series of coordinated attacks, one of which would be designed to deprive the affected areas of power. Imagine the nightmare for emergency responders. It's a good thing that Al Qaida seems to suck at anything that requires real planning.
Right you are. The people who run the networks seem to be a little better at anticipating this kind of problem, but the fundamental flaws are still there, and the big blackouts still happen from time to time. As with so many things, the will the make the fundamental changes is just not there.
To nitpick a bit, the comparison whould be against a modern monument, not a generic modern building.
You mean like the Washington Monument? The Lincoln Memorial? None of those would last long without constant maintenance.
but note that the pyramids, while still standing, are not in their original glory
True. But most of the damage isn't natural. The pyramids were originally faced with limestone, which was too valuable for later builders to leave alone.
Mount Rushmore, for one (sure acid rain etc will make then unrecognizable, and it's likely one or more will have sloughing issues, but note that the pyramids, while still standing, are not in their original glory).
Dude, that's a mountain. It will be there for thousands of years regardless. Carving into it probably shortened its life span slightly.
Personally, I consider the fact that the pyramids are still standing to be a factor of chance -- they are built in the desert, with low humidity and little to no plant life which could damage the structure (unlike the pyramids of central america).
OK, there you make a good point. It's also worth mentioning that the preservative quality of the desert probably had a lot to do with the ancient Egyptian's obsession with immortality, which motivated the building of the pyramids in the first place.
And of course another reason we no longer build stuff like that: a shortage of slave labor.
Uh, the ones on the page you linked don't look all that sound. They may have stood up well against Allied bombs and Soviet artillery, but give them a century or two of weathering and soil subsidence, and they'll just be piles of concrete and steel.
Really dumb thing to build. The same resources devoted to mobile AA guns would have been a lot more effective. What did Patton say? "Fixed fortifications are a tribute to the folly of mankind." Something like that.
Google seems to think you're talking about Snefru's Pyramid. There's some difference of opinion as to why it collapsed and when. Some authorities think it collapsed because of the steepness issue you describe (which may have been done to make it harder to pillage), and then was rebuilt to work around it. It then collapsed for good much later. Others think that it was badly designed, but that the Egyptians redesigned in mid-building to keep it from falling down. Either way, the second (or maybe only) collapse occurred in Roman times, or even the Middle Ages. That makes it a botch job by Egyptian standards (some of their earliest pyramids are still around after 4500 years!) but still better built than anything we have. I mean, can you think of a modern building that is still likely to be standing in 2000 years?
Uh, when exactly did that pyramid collapse? All the Egyptian pyramids are more than 3,500 years old. So if this one collapsed less than 3,000 years ago, it actually counts as a successful building project.
Well, do, you're right to be concerned. The thing is, our technology infrastructure has always been a nasty kludge. In 1965, some coincidental misconfigurations at two minor power plants took out the power grid for an area in the northeast U.S. and eastern Canada where 25 million people lived. It was 14 hours before the grid was fully restored. Our inability to keep our technical house in order is a very old problem.
I don't happen to agree, but that's actually another argument. Obviously when you spend money stimulating the economy, you'd rather spend the money on something with long-term value than on something that just keeps people busy. The point I was making is that spending money stimulates the economy whether it's doing something useful or not.
The thing I find really ironic is the right wing poo-pooing this concept when they were actually proclaiming it just a few years ago. After 9/11, a lot of people got all patriotic and wanted to quit their jobs in order to enter the military or become part of the national security establishment, or something else that they saw as combating terrorism. (Even going to Afghanistan and delivering economic aid counts; the Taliban hate western aid workers more than they hate the western military.) People who wanted to do this heard the same thing from multiple source: the Bush administration, right-wing pundits, their bosses when they tried to quit their jobs: Don't quit. The most patriotic thing you can do is keep working and stimulate the economy by going shopping.
When "stimulating the economy" meant buying useless crap in order to make big business even bigger, they were all for it. But now that it means spending money on actually stuff we can (maybe) use, it's a dirty word.
What's funny is that when I was in college (90s) Keynesian was thought of to be crap.
Did you go to University of Chicago by any chance. Regardless, you obviously went to a school where Keynsianism was out of favor. As it was in government during the anti-liberal Reagan and Bush/Bush administrations, and also during the We're-Not-Really-Liberals Clinton administration. But it was never totally rejected, and lately it's been gaining respectability again. Can you guess why?
The thing that really bothers me about economics is that it's supposed to be a science, but a given economist always seems to be able to use this "science" to back up whatever politics or ideology he's affiliated with.
Jeez, that would be terrible. Don't they know that speeding isn't speeding until a cop actually sees you doing it?
You can bet that legislators, mayors, and city councilpersons everywhere will see this as an even-better source of income than red-light cameras. You've been warned.
Jeez, first they try to punish red light runners, then wantpeople to pay for the roads they drive on. It's socialism!
The key words in your post: "that I've read". The stimulus is classic Keynesian economics. Not all economists buy into this model, but many do.
That's kind of a dumb question. (I might be excused from inferring your agenda from your question, but I'll refrain — we already have too much of that.) Anything that causes money to be spent stimulates the economy. The issue with the stimulus bill (including this part) is not whether it will stimulate the economy, but whether it will stimulate it enough to justify adding most of a terabuck to the national debt.
As for this particular question, have you been following the news at all? Part of the stimulus is building up our technical infrastructure. Do I have to explain how software fits into that? You may not agree that this will work, but how it's supposed to work should be obvious.
What he said.
Yes, I can read your mind. No psychic powers, just transparent thought processes.