De facto standards are all well and good, but why should your application require to use anything outside the feature set supported by all browsers?
Of course, if your spec says 'must work with IE' then you're stuck with it, I guess.
On the other hand, if the spec doesn't specify a browser (and I don't think it should), but the vendor assumed you were using IE, then the implementation is broken. Assumptions should not be made unless they are explicitly stated in the design documents, and agreed by all parties.
Speaking as a software vendor, if we deliver something that is not correct according to the spec, our customers don't tend to 'contract with the vendor to open the application' you 'refuse to pay until it's fixed'.
Of course, if they use code that only works on IE because you asked for a feature that was impossible to implement in any other browser, that's another matter.
But I doubt that would be the case in the Trouble Ticket application - I'd assume it's CGI and all the cleverness is in the database at the back, not the browser.
I wrote some automated test programs in my last job.
Used a very expensive tool (which we already had) to perform very simple regression testing on a new software package, and found more faults in an automated run over one weekend than we normally found in a two month period testing by hand.
Saved the company and customers untold amounts of money, and when the software went live we had at most 5% of the normal faults reported in that area. Customer was delighted.
For the next project I wanted to expand the tool to cover more of the functionality. Everyone appreciated the reasoning, and I asked for a month or two to develop it. (In a pinch I could have done it in a fortnight, but I'm an engineer, so I padded my estimate:)
The response? 'Do it the old way - our project timescales are too tight for this'.
Even a 'give me a fortnight and let me prove the concept' fell on stony ground. This DESPITE the fact I'd proved the concept already.
Shortly afterwards, I quit - this was the final straw for me.
All the wonderful automation, test tools and experienced testers count for nothing if management have an anus/cranium interface issue...
GIMP is widely hailed as the alternative to PhotoShop - it's not (as long as you just count features). By the time it catches up (if) then Photoshop will have moved on.
FreeCiv is nowhere NEAR Civilisation 2.0 (at least the last time I looked) and there's been Civ Call To Power and Civ 3 since then.
Wine can't keep up with Windows - they might run a large percentage of apps, but it's a moving target.
Of course, you can argue (and I do) that the usefulness compared to the price is what you should compare (bang per buck)... but until you offer all the features people want, you'll be seen as being behind the curve. Whining 'but we started late' is no excuse.
If you want a given OSS app to be compared to a given prorietary app, then expect to be compared with the current version.
On the other hand...
Mozilla caught up with MS, Linux caught the commercial Unices, and there's some other OSS programs out there that match or surpass their closed source counterparts. In my experience, this is for one of a few reasons:
1. Investing (e.g. Mozilla) If you spend money on a project, you catch up. As a previous poster said, a handful of people reviewing code in their lunch hour isn't going to cut it.
2. Simplicity (e.g. the GNU utils) Small, useful applications with a well-defined role can easily be 'copied' - the GNU utils were designed to replace tiny programs and add new features, and they succeeded!
3. Fixed target Linux was aimed at a Posix-compliant Unix kernel. Not 'the current version of Solaris' because they'd still be playing chase-up.
Please don't think I'm sneering at the work done by the people involved in OSS, I think Linux is great, Gimp is incredible for what it does, and the GNU utils changed my life (RMS, you can quote me:) But we're behind, and we won't catch a moving target unless we invest at a higher level to the people we're chasing.
Mark
PS Imagine a running race where I get to start 10 minutes after everyone else, but my first lap is quicker than them all - I can't claim I'm winning at that point, it's whoever's in the lead that matters. Complaining 'but I got here late' cuts no ice, but maybe I'll be noticed for my incredible turn of speed:)
I've seen all but two (Boys From Brazil, and Barbarella, although I saw the 1st half hour of the latter).
Anyone with an opinion on this, ought to read the book The Greatest SciFi Movies Never Made - a great list of films that should have happened, and details of the genesis of many familiar films, and how they could have been very different...
2. If such civilizations last a long time, and "They" are not "here" then it becomes necessary to explain why each and every technological civilization has consistently chosen not to build starships
Or maybe it takes the age of the galaxy so far, to get to where we (the human race) are now... and so no-one's been able to build starships yet.
I admit it's unlikely, after all - we're out on the fringes of the Milky Way, and so it might have taken longer for iron, carbon etc to form in stars out here, leading to rocky planets and sentient beings, but maybe it takes longer than we think... In other words, might we be the most advanced civilisation within detection range?
What if Aunt Tillie buys new hardware, that isn't already supported in her kernel...
Sure, she could hope that Debian/Mandrake/Red Hat/Slackware/etc bring out a new package that has a patched kernel in it, or....
she just hits the button, waits an hour & reboots.
I don't think this is aimed at computer-illiterates, just people who don't want to (or can't) spend the time learning what all the options in the kernel are for.
The last time I compiled one, I didn't know whether I should choose 'SoundBlaster' support, or 'OSS' - what about my CD? Is it ATAPI? LM-206? I thought it was IDE, but I didn't see that option until after I'd selected the wrong thing...
Anything that makes life easier is good, not everyone WANTS to 'learn how to configure and compile a kernel using the existing tools'.
And if she shouldn't do it, hide the button. When she finds out that recompiling a Kernel is required, she should find out where the button is, and not before:)
But if he's got a system, why not install Linux on it & then he can tune parameters to his heart's content, and easily add MP3 playback, or web-browsing or whatever.
If he doesn't already have a system, what's he going to burn the CD on?:)
I can only assume he wants a silent box in the living room, which is SO much easier to achieve with a real DVD player. Plus it'll give you better quality pictures and you get a remote control, so you don't have to buy a 30m mouse cable!
and a LOT of that 4.5 % were people buying a first computer! People who would not have bought a huge grey/beige box & hundreds of cables... The iMac made a niche in the marketplace - tell me that's not hard to do, and I'll ask you for some VC to make my own!
By Katz's argument McDonald's is better than the 5* Michelin-Approved restaurant down the road...
When was the last time someone said 'wow, I had a great burger yesterday?' - Mickey D's might make more money, be in more cities, may even be the staple food of millions, but no-one can ever say that THAT is the sole benchmark of success.
Jobs has a very different view of success, as was pointed out in a very insightful article by Bob Cringely. Mac & Linux users (deluded though we may be) choose not to use PCs or Windows because we prefer something which is different.
And let's not forget, you use a computer to do a job, you eat food to do a job (keep you alive). Linux or Apple may be a niche market, and might stay that way - but don't accuse Steve Jobs of FAILING, or of NOT UNDERSTANDING what he does, anymore than you criticise your favourite restaurant for not being a huge multi-national burger bar.
Try the BBC Radio production - it's abridged (shock horror) but you'd be amazed how much is still in it. And it's a damn sight easier to get through 13 CDs than 6 books...
If you've heard it, you've got the framework in your mind and can read it more easily. The BBC Radio Series definately increased my enjoyment of the books.
Re:optical detection sounds hard
on
Optical SETI
·
· Score: 1
> First of all, that laser beam would only sweep
> a circle, not a sphere.
True enough. And even multiple lasers all up the mountain at different angles wouldn't help us here (imagine they're aimed 1 degree of arc apart, there'd be huge gaps between them at the range you're talking about).
> How long would Earth stay in such a beam?
Yeah, I missed that:) I read the article which says they're looking for 'very brief flashes of laser light' and assumed that this 'beaconing' was the reason. In retrospect, I imagine they're using a laser that provides a very short, very high intensity beam. Compare a flash gun with a lamp bulb for instace...
Of course, if they manage to modulate their sun's output, we'd see that... And this is being considered by some SETI enthusiasts, just as Dyson Spheres are. If you alternately dim & brighten the sun's output in a clearly non-natural way, that's a good sign of intelligence. Just don't ask me how to do it - ask your local science fiction author!
Mark
Keeper of the Wedding Shenanigans Home Page
Re:optical detection sounds hard
on
Optical SETI
·
· Score: 5
> wouldn't we have to depend on the fact that
> the other civilization know that we are right
> here, and that we are able to pick up their
> signals?
Yes, that's true if we assume they're trying to contact US specifically. If they've just got a huge laser on the top of their local Everest-sized mountain & are relying on their planet's rotation to turn it into a beacon we have a better chance of spotting it.
If we try to pick up radio we can (in theory) spot their TV signals, satellite communications & Star Wars ABM radars:)
> No matter what kind of transmission ET is using
> he will have to hope that we are able to pick
> up the signals
Of course - and that's why the Seti League (http://www.setileague.org/) advocate lots of smaller dishes. Their argument is that while an Arecibo size dish can look further, this comes at the cost of seeing a smaller area of the sky. Their favourite statistic is 'even if we're looking on the right frequency at the right time, there's a 99.999% chance that when the call comes in, we'll be looking the wrong way'.
Of course, they're talking about radio waves, but the same argument holds for optical SETI.
The OMRLP stood in the recent elections in the UK - and many of their members had 'interesting' ministerial positions...(you will have to scroll down a bit) Keeper of the Wedding Shenanigans Home Page
All well and good the fix is out. I run Win98, IE 5.5 SP1. I just downloaded & installed the patch.
Why wasn't it on Windows Update? Why didn't the 'ever so clever' Critical Update Notification tell me about this?
Surely if I download an application from MS that claims to tell me about any new patches required for system security, it should do just that? And even if it was missed, why doesn't Windows Update tell me?
At first I thought I might already have it, but Help->About didn't list it as loaded & since it installed I assume it wasn't already present.
Kudos to MS for fixing it so quick. Raspberries that I had to find out from/. (of all places).
And don't get me started on why I had to reboot my PC to 'make the changes take effect'.
-- Keeper of the Wedding Shenanigans Home Page
Yep - I loaded a ZX Spectrum game from a flexible LP once. I forget what it was (for some reason I think it was related to the Thompson Twins), but the LP itself was part music & part game. Early ECD?:)
Of course it was almost impossible to do, as you had to get the data rate precisely correct, tricky when your average turntable doesn't indicate whether you're truly running at 33 1/3 RPM... Keeper of the Wedding Shenanigans Home Page
I have to agree....
I run QT4 on a K6-400 w/64MB & it's painful. Choppy, the audio goes out of sync almost immediately & pixelated to hell.
Interestingly, QT4 on a PowerMac 8500/150 (roughly equivalent to a Pentium 1 160) with 56MB runs about the same.
QT5 preview on the same Mac boots slower, but runs around 2x faster - I could watch the 640x480 Charlie's Angels trailer quite happily;)
Don't ask me why an outmoded Mac works better than a PC - I guess Apple don't care much.
It was launched over the weekend in the UK. Check Dixon's and Curry's stores
Disclaimer: I've not seen one, but the ads are everywhere (movie & so-called 'lifestyle' magazines). Oddly I can't find a web page... The US one had no mention of the UK last time I checked, and tivo.co.uk is not in service.
Feynmann also describes how they debugged the source code before the IBM Machines arrived - every secretary in the place with a single task (add the two numbers you're given together, double this number) and they passed cards back & forth. They reached very nearly the speed of the IBM by the time it arrived...
Not to mention the multi-pass arrangement of cards, colour coded so they knew which was which - successive approximations to override errors!
It's been said before (and probably better:) but what's required is a sort of SlashDot crossed with Amazon.Com for music.
People could submit links to their own work (MP3, streaming audio, whatever) and it'll be peer-reviewed, modded up or down depending on quality.
The Amazon bit comes in when you tell the system you like something, and it recommends other music you might like. Or it spots that you often have the same opinion as a particular reviewer, and show you his/her comments on other music.
And before someone says 'Amazon already does that' I'm talking about new, 'truly independant' music that doesn't get airplay, record deals, etc. There's a lot of great bands out there who stick their stuff on MP3.com or wherever, and never get heard because people get sick of trashing 90% of the stuff they download because it's terrible.
It's OK for you Americans with your free local calls, and high speed connections, but if I download 'free' music, I don't want to have to pay BT for the priviledge!
Of course there's no reason why this sort of system can't be extended to books, movies, cheese, wine, lego...
Keeper of the Wedding Shenanigans Home Page
Hundreds of people are doing this already! They're already finding weird things they can't explain (usually secret satellites, planes and so on) with just a dish, some relatively cheap electronics and an old PC & sound card.
Imagine the kudos the next time someone starts boasting about how many blocks they do in a day... "Well, I've just been focusing on the waterhole frequencies in the vicinity of Proxima Centauri..."
Slashdot Mirror
De facto standards are all well and good, but why should your application require to use anything outside the feature set supported by all browsers?
:)
Of course, if your spec says 'must work with IE' then you're stuck with it, I guess.
On the other hand, if the spec doesn't specify a browser (and I don't think it should), but the vendor assumed you were using IE, then the implementation is broken. Assumptions should not be made unless they are explicitly stated in the design documents, and agreed by all parties.
Speaking as a software vendor, if we deliver something that is not correct according to the spec, our customers don't tend to 'contract with the vendor to open the application' you 'refuse to pay until it's fixed'.
Of course, if they use code that only works on IE because you asked for a feature that was impossible to implement in any other browser, that's another matter.
But I doubt that would be the case in the Trouble Ticket application - I'd assume it's CGI and all the cleverness is in the database at the back, not the browser.
Go on, mod me down as flamebait, I deserve it
Mark
I wrote some automated test programs in my last job.
:)
Used a very expensive tool (which we already had) to perform very simple regression testing on a new software package, and found more faults in an automated run over one weekend than we normally found in a two month period testing by hand.
Saved the company and customers untold amounts of money, and when the software went live we had at most 5% of the normal faults reported in that area. Customer was delighted.
For the next project I wanted to expand the tool to cover more of the functionality. Everyone appreciated the reasoning, and I asked for a month or two to develop it. (In a pinch I could have done it in a fortnight, but I'm an engineer, so I padded my estimate
The response? 'Do it the old way - our project timescales are too tight for this'.
Even a 'give me a fortnight and let me prove the concept' fell on stony ground. This DESPITE the fact I'd proved the concept already.
Shortly afterwards, I quit - this was the final straw for me.
All the wonderful automation, test tools and experienced testers count for nothing if management have an anus/cranium interface issue...
That might be the REASON, but it's no excuse.
:) But we're behind, and we won't catch a moving target unless we invest at a higher level to the people we're chasing.
:)
GIMP is widely hailed as the alternative to PhotoShop - it's not (as long as you just count features). By the time it catches up (if) then Photoshop will have moved on.
FreeCiv is nowhere NEAR Civilisation 2.0 (at least the last time I looked) and there's been Civ Call To Power and Civ 3 since then.
Wine can't keep up with Windows - they might run a large percentage of apps, but it's a moving target.
Of course, you can argue (and I do) that the usefulness compared to the price is what you should compare (bang per buck)... but until you offer all the features people want, you'll be seen as being behind the curve. Whining 'but we started late' is no excuse.
If you want a given OSS app to be compared to a given prorietary app, then expect to be compared with the current version.
On the other hand...
Mozilla caught up with MS, Linux caught the commercial Unices, and there's some other OSS programs out there that match or surpass their closed source counterparts. In my experience, this is for one of a few reasons:
1. Investing (e.g. Mozilla)
If you spend money on a project, you catch up. As a previous poster said, a handful of people reviewing code in their lunch hour isn't going to cut it.
2. Simplicity (e.g. the GNU utils)
Small, useful applications with a well-defined role can easily be 'copied' - the GNU utils were designed to replace tiny programs and add new features, and they succeeded!
3. Fixed target
Linux was aimed at a Posix-compliant Unix kernel. Not 'the current version of Solaris' because they'd still be playing chase-up.
Please don't think I'm sneering at the work done by the people involved in OSS, I think Linux is great, Gimp is incredible for what it does, and the GNU utils changed my life (RMS, you can quote me
Mark
PS Imagine a running race where I get to start 10 minutes after everyone else, but my first lap is quicker than them all - I can't claim I'm winning at that point, it's whoever's in the lead that matters. Complaining 'but I got here late' cuts no ice, but maybe I'll be noticed for my incredible turn of speed
Anyone with an opinion on this, ought to read the book The Greatest SciFi Movies Never Made - a great list of films that should have happened, and details of the genesis of many familiar films, and how they could have been very different...
Good advice, but I did check the newsgroup FAQs before posting...
:)
CLIPS looks like a wonderful system, but as I stated in the original submission, I don't want to program an expert system, I just want to use it
Something like the 'animals' program suggested below is probably ideal... if a little simplistic.
I have the exact same combination on my luggage!
(No points for spotting the movie reference)
But if the set-up is easier... It depends how much value you put on the time of the people building this cluster!
Or maybe it takes the age of the galaxy so far, to get to where we (the human race) are now... and so no-one's been able to build starships yet.
I admit it's unlikely, after all - we're out on the fringes of the Milky Way, and so it might have taken longer for iron, carbon etc to form in stars out here, leading to rocky planets and sentient beings, but maybe it takes longer than we think... In other words, might we be the most advanced civilisation within detection range?
Seems unlikely though...
What if Aunt Tillie buys new hardware, that isn't already supported in her kernel...
:)
Sure, she could hope that Debian/Mandrake/Red Hat/Slackware/etc bring out a new package that has a patched kernel in it, or....
she just hits the button, waits an hour & reboots.
I don't think this is aimed at computer-illiterates, just people who don't want to (or can't) spend the time learning what all the options in the kernel are for.
The last time I compiled one, I didn't know whether I should choose 'SoundBlaster' support, or 'OSS' - what about my CD? Is it ATAPI? LM-206? I thought it was IDE, but I didn't see that option until after I'd selected the wrong thing...
Anything that makes life easier is good, not everyone WANTS to 'learn how to configure and compile a kernel using the existing tools'.
And if she shouldn't do it, hide the button. When she finds out that recompiling a Kernel is required, she should find out where the button is, and not before
But if he's got a system, why not install Linux on it & then he can tune parameters to his heart's content, and easily add MP3 playback, or web-browsing or whatever.
:)
If he doesn't already have a system, what's he going to burn the CD on?
I can only assume he wants a silent box in the living room, which is SO much easier to achieve with a real DVD player. Plus it'll give you better quality pictures and you get a remote control, so you don't have to buy a 30m mouse cable!
and a LOT of that 4.5 % were people buying a first computer! People who would not have bought a huge grey/beige box & hundreds of cables... The iMac made a niche in the marketplace - tell me that's not hard to do, and I'll ask you for some VC to make my own!
When was the last time someone said 'wow, I had a great burger yesterday?' - Mickey D's might make more money, be in more cities, may even be the staple food of millions, but no-one can ever say that THAT is the sole benchmark of success.
Jobs has a very different view of success, as was pointed out in a very insightful article by Bob Cringely. Mac & Linux users (deluded though we may be) choose not to use PCs or Windows because we prefer something which is different.
And let's not forget, you use a computer to do a job, you eat food to do a job (keep you alive). Linux or Apple may be a niche market, and might stay that way - but don't accuse Steve Jobs of FAILING, or of NOT UNDERSTANDING what he does, anymore than you criticise your favourite restaurant for not being a huge multi-national burger bar.
Try the BBC Radio production - it's abridged (shock horror) but you'd be amazed how much is still in it. And it's a damn sight easier to get through 13 CDs than 6 books...
If you've heard it, you've got the framework in your mind and can read it more easily. The BBC Radio Series definately increased my enjoyment of the books.
> First of all, that laser beam would only sweep
:) I read the article which says they're looking for 'very brief flashes of laser light' and assumed that this 'beaconing' was the reason. In retrospect, I imagine they're using a laser that provides a very short, very high intensity beam. Compare a flash gun with a lamp bulb for instace...
> a circle, not a sphere.
True enough. And even multiple lasers all up the mountain at different angles wouldn't help us here (imagine they're aimed 1 degree of arc apart, there'd be huge gaps between them at the range you're talking about).
> How long would Earth stay in such a beam?
Yeah, I missed that
Of course, if they manage to modulate their sun's output, we'd see that... And this is being considered by some SETI enthusiasts, just as Dyson Spheres are. If you alternately dim & brighten the sun's output in a clearly non-natural way, that's a good sign of intelligence. Just don't ask me how to do it - ask your local science fiction author!
Mark
Keeper of the Wedding Shenanigans Home Page
> wouldn't we have to depend on the fact that
:)
> the other civilization know that we are right
> here, and that we are able to pick up their
> signals?
Yes, that's true if we assume they're trying to contact US specifically. If they've just got a huge laser on the top of their local Everest-sized mountain & are relying on their planet's rotation to turn it into a beacon we have a better chance of spotting it.
If we try to pick up radio we can (in theory) spot their TV signals, satellite communications & Star Wars ABM radars
> No matter what kind of transmission ET is using
> he will have to hope that we are able to pick
> up the signals
Of course - and that's why the Seti League (http://www.setileague.org/) advocate lots of smaller dishes. Their argument is that while an Arecibo size dish can look further, this comes at the cost of seeing a smaller area of the sky. Their favourite statistic is 'even if we're looking on the right frequency at the right time, there's a 99.999% chance that when the call comes in, we'll be looking the wrong way'.
Of course, they're talking about radio waves, but the same argument holds for optical SETI.
Mark
Keeper of the Wedding Shenanigans Home Page
The OMRLP stood in the recent elections in the UK - and many of their members had 'interesting' ministerial positions...(you will have to scroll down a bit)
Keeper of the Wedding Shenanigans Home Page
Why wasn't it on Windows Update? Why didn't the 'ever so clever' Critical Update Notification tell me about this?
Surely if I download an application from MS that claims to tell me about any new patches required for system security, it should do just that? And even if it was missed, why doesn't Windows Update tell me?
At first I thought I might already have it, but Help->About didn't list it as loaded & since it installed I assume it wasn't already present.
Kudos to MS for fixing it so quick. Raspberries that I had to find out from /. (of all places).
And don't get me started on why I had to reboot my PC to 'make the changes take effect'.
--
Keeper of the Wedding Shenanigans Home Page
My birthday ;)
Keeper of the Wedding Shenanigans Home Page
Of course it was almost impossible to do, as you had to get the data rate precisely correct, tricky when your average turntable doesn't indicate whether you're truly running at 33 1/3 RPM...
Keeper of the Wedding Shenanigans Home Page
I run QT4 on a K6-400 w/64MB & it's painful. Choppy, the audio goes out of sync almost immediately & pixelated to hell.
Interestingly, QT4 on a PowerMac 8500/150 (roughly equivalent to a Pentium 1 160) with 56MB runs about the same. ;)
QT5 preview on the same Mac boots slower, but runs around 2x faster - I could watch the 640x480 Charlie's Angels trailer quite happily
Don't ask me why an outmoded Mac works better than a PC - I guess Apple don't care much.
Keeper of the Wedding Shenanigans Home Page
Check Dixon's and Curry's stores
Disclaimer: I've not seen one, but the ads are everywhere (movie & so-called 'lifestyle' magazines).
Oddly I can't find a web page... The US one had no mention of the UK last time I checked, and tivo.co.uk is not in service.
Keeper of the Wedding Shenanigans Home Page
Not to mention the multi-pass arrangement of cards, colour coded so they knew which was which - successive approximations to override errors!
Mark
Keeper of the Wedding Shenanigans Home Page
People could submit links to their own work (MP3, streaming audio, whatever) and it'll be peer-reviewed, modded up or down depending on quality.
The Amazon bit comes in when you tell the system you like something, and it recommends other music you might like. Or it spots that you often have the same opinion as a particular reviewer, and show you his/her comments on other music.
And before someone says 'Amazon already does that' I'm talking about new, 'truly independant' music that doesn't get airplay, record deals, etc. There's a lot of great bands out there who stick their stuff on MP3.com or wherever, and never get heard because people get sick of trashing 90% of the stuff they download because it's terrible.
It's OK for you Americans with your free local calls, and high speed connections, but if I download 'free' music, I don't want to have to pay BT for the priviledge!
Of course there's no reason why this sort of system can't be extended to books, movies, cheese, wine, lego...
Keeper of the Wedding Shenanigans Home Page
For once we can get something the Americans can't! ;)
Keeper of the Wedding Shenanigans Home Page
http://www.setileague.org/
Hundreds of people are doing this already! They're already finding weird things they can't explain (usually secret satellites, planes and so on) with just a dish, some relatively cheap electronics and an old PC & sound card.
Imagine the kudos the next time someone starts boasting about how many blocks they do in a day... "Well, I've just been focusing on the waterhole frequencies in the vicinity of Proxima Centauri..."