More like "Think They're Einsteins"
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Managing Einsteins
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· Score: 4, Interesting
And thats the crux of the problem. Often you have to deal with people who are not only immodest about their own abilities, but are often falsely immodest. I cannot begin to tell you how many Valley types think they are precious, irreplacable little snowflakes who wake up every morning knowing something new that us mere mortals simply could never divine.
Come on, no one is going to buy this thing because they think there is a gee-whiz factor associated with the development tools. If they just wanted to tinker, a Palm device would be a far better buy - there is way more documentation and existing code out there for that platform.
Until my portable audio device supports Vorbis, whats the point? Making a codec succesful requires deep industry support, and this has always been an area where open-source has not been very strong. At this point its an MP3/MP4 vs WMA issue, and really nothing more.
But perl is much more than a "product"
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Exegesis 4 Out
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· Score: 2
Yes your arguments (echoing Joel's) are apt for commercial software, where time is money and lost market share...but perl is more than this. Its a community. Its a group of hackers. Its an open environment for playing around with languages. They aren't in a rush and they aren't losing sales. They're doing what they want, which in this case was a rewrite. Thats the joy of free software- you are not encumbered by the market...or you are encumbered only as much as you want to be.
As for Joel, his former employer has made itself into the wealthiest software producer in history largely through continuous rewriting of code. Microsoft is famous for releasing an almost entirely new product by time its third revision is out. While I also agree that rewrites can be pointless exercises, it is not prudent to take Joel's argument too far.
Perl 6 will be a painful, but necessary move ahead
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Exegesis 4 Out
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· Score: 4, Interesting
perl6 is a total reset, and most people who claim to be perl experts are going to have to go back and relearn an almost entirely new language. That said, this is a healthy process. perl5 OO is horribly obtuse, and the perl internals are not inviting to modification as they should be.
Also, the perl6 project is introducing Parrot - a portable, language independent VM. As.Net and Java continue to evolve and prosper, the writing is on the wall - the next platform war will be in frameworks and VMs/JITs. There has to be a competitive open alternative in this market to keep the other players honest. Five years down the road I see Parrot as potentially more important than perl6 itself.
In any case it'll be nice to see how Larry and the gang put a perl twist on OO in the new language - knowing him there will be some useful enhancements for thinking programmers.
Unfortunately one of the saddest chapters of the Cold War/ wars by proxy was the overthrow of Allende and the placement of Pinochet as a US puppet. What followed was a sad tale of oppression that truly betrayed the good intentions of American citizens.
Its about -concentration- of wealth
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Globalism Post 9/11
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· Score: 2, Troll
Saudi Arabia has one of the worst divisions of capital in the world. As time goes on, the standard of living of average Saudis is falling, even as more and more money pours into the country, even given the absence of taxes on personal wealth. The wealth is so concentrated in the hands of the few that the monarchy requires US muscle to keep folks like Osama from turning the nation into a theocracy (which was one of his major goals).
Now compare this to the West, where standards of wealth for the average citizen have been improving for over a century.
While the US hasn't always been a moral paragon, you will find Americans first on the ground in times of strife elsewhere, and first on the gound putting muscle behind steel to back up what they believe in.
Note also that the US has been a more gracious victor in major military struggles than the European powers. WW2 was a direct effect of French unwillingness to create a useful peace for Germany after the first war, meanwhile Americans rebuilt Japan and Germany after the second.
Europe thumbs its nose at the US, yet the US is the product of the best thinking of Europe's greatest intellectual period, and now the EU is pushing forward on a federal system on the continent that will in effect create the United States of Europe.
Funny, I thought they hated us for sticking our noses in their business.
Modern Saudi Arabia wouldn't exist without the US sticking its nose very far into the Middle East. The regime is propped up with US aid and oil money, although paradoxically it is the Saudis funding most of the anti Western efforts.
The reason they hate the West is because the West, for all its trash culture, is a free culture, and their model of rule is a contradiction of freedom. Their culture is in decline, their power is eroding, and they know that if their own populaces were empowered, most of them would be executed.
Thank you for pointing out that what lefties in the West perceive as grass-roots poltical banter out of the Middle East is simply the same message they have promoting for decades: the destruction of Israel, the destruction of the West, the imposition of autocracy.
Now why the Islamic cultures despise the West is obvious - their culture is in decline, their dictatorial and dogmatic structures cannot withstand open examination, and they seek to villify what they see as the agent of change, instead of recognizing and adapting to change itself.
The sad truth: foreigners gobble up US culture
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Globalism Post 9/11
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Foreigners have an often contradictory relationship with American culture - they loathe it, yet they desperately want to absorb it as quickly as possible. Advertisers have known about this relationship for years.
As for the "culture war" between the West and the Islamic countries, it boils down to one simple truth - a closed repressive culture is being overrun by one that glorifies and even exploits openness.
These regimes are frightened by Western culture because they realize their rule cannot withstand open examination, but instead must be enforced autocratically or through religious dogma.
No, I'm sorry, you are wrong, cheaper always wins. No one will use Sun hardware for linux. I am not going to offer up any more support than the fact that cheaper always wins in the end and there is not one fact in the history of computing products to contradict this. Sun is committing suicide.
I have supported customers who went to Sun for database servers after IBM failed repeatedly to provide the "high end" solution they needed.
I've also supported customers whose primary admin workforce were IBM Global Services people.
Blah. I can find ten anecdotes that contradict every one of yours...and you can then contradict every one of mine. Its pointless. Lets look at stock charts instead and let the market sort it out. This comparison does not bode well for your company...and your defensiveness belies that you have heard the same points I am making come out of the mouths of other Sun employees.
I guess you missed the part where Sun announced that they'll be shipping Linux and supporting Linux sometime midyear.
Then they just committed suicide. There is absolutely no compelling reason to use Sun hardware for linux. At the low end you can get better price performance. At the high end you can pop linux on an IBM mainframe and get not only the top end of hardware but a superior services force.
Thats the crux of the issue for Sun - they're damned if they don't support linux, but doubly damned if they do - they're more or less endorsing commodity solutions, which will ultimately lead to commodity hardware.
Microsoft needs to make money to survive, as you pointed out, and they are running out of ways to do so.
Other than (among others) invading the game console market, eroding Oracle's share in databases, smoking past lycos and yahoo on the mediametrix charts with MSN, spinning off expedia, or gunning up their licensing fees? People have been saying "Microsoft is over" for at least five years now, but they keep moving into new markets.
Microsoft may get their technlogy up to par with Sun, though I doubt it, but they will never, emphasise never, beat Sun in the high end market as long as they pursue their "software as a service" strategy.
Huh? McNealy is pushing this model as strong as Gates is.
Microsoft can talk about their "freedom to innovate" all they want, but they have come to a place where they have innovated or stolen just about everything worthwhile already.
90% of the people in the city morgue had the right of way. So what? What matters is who is left standing.
Linux will be left standing because it doesn't need to make money to be succesful. Microsoft, Intel and IBM will be left standing be left standing because they will own the respective markets for software, CPUs and services. Moral legitimacy means zilch.
Gosling and McNealy need to tone down the vitriol - Sun is in major trouble. Not just a bad quarter (although they've had many of those), but key aspects of Sun's market position and future directions.
Linux is totally chewing up their low end. They don't want to admit it straight out - they have been playing nice with open source folks while quietly taking Cobalt off of the market and making it a bit player.
Meanwhile IBM is taking it apart at the high end with a proposition that focuses as much on services as hardware and software..because IBM knows billable hours are where the real renewable revenue is.
On the architecture side, Sun is pitting itself against an entire enconomy - Intel and Microsoft. Sun simply can't outresearch, outspend or outmarket either of these companies, let alone both of them and their attendent co-competitors (Dell, AMD, HP, etc). Once Microsoft gets Win2k up to par in every respect with Solaris (it will happen), they will start peeling high-price clients off of Sun with little contest (meanwhile linux will chew up Sun's low end more and more).
On top of all of this, they're playing mindshare catch-up with the half-hearted JavaOne. Sorry James, MS beat you to the punch on webservices by a year.
I just hope Java can't be opened up enough that it doesn't evaporate along with its owner.
Because Cavaliers outsell Bentleys. The proper response to Microsoft is not Solaris on Sparc - this is a dead platform soon to enter an SGI-like state. The proper response is an open, effective and cheaper solution (guess).
Actually you can have public and private events and folders. And yes you can check other people's calendars to see if they have time, and once again there are private and public calendar views.
As for security, you are likely already behind a firewall, or you can mandate a Yahoo secure login.
By deploying Exchange, you can make scheduling a meeting as easy as sending an email with a time and having everyone click to confirm the meeting, which is then added to everyone's calendar. There is no solution like this without using Exchange (and I've looked.)
Yahoo mail lets you embed yahoo calender links easily...in fact you can embed the Yahoo calender links in any type of communication.
Come on, you haven't looked very hard - most of the web calendar programs allow you to mail "add this event to my calendar links"...in fact its so obvious you are nearly in troll territory.
Added to which, the momentum of an installed base and brand name recognition. If a company with a little more visibility was behind this product it might have a chance, but as it stands, I give this product a five percent chance at best.
One thing with RealOne is that they will let you sign up online but won't let you cancel online! You sons of bitches at Real kept me on the line for forty five minutes and I know this wasn't an accident.
Real totally lost respect with me on this one - I felt like I was caught up in some low-rent scam, and I expected an easier exit strategy from a company that is trying to compete with Microsoft.
This of course besides the obvious fact that the service itself totally sucked - the only thing keeping most people from dropping it is the total hassle of having to phone and wait for someone at Real to cancel you.
Yes its pretty obvious that security is booming in software right now, but its about the only place that there is any demand on innovation. Web services are stuck in the white paper phase, games are in the incremental phase, and enterprise software is more or less a done deal as far as the market is concerned.
All a programmer needs to know these days to polish his resume is to continue to name the correct protocols and standards to get their resume through the HR text filter, and keep boning up on idiot languages like VB and Java.
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And thats the crux of the problem. Often you have to deal with people who are not only immodest about their own abilities, but are often falsely immodest. I cannot begin to tell you how many Valley types think they are precious, irreplacable little snowflakes who wake up every morning knowing something new that us mere mortals simply could never divine.
Come on, no one is going to buy this thing because they think there is a gee-whiz factor associated with the development tools. If they just wanted to tinker, a Palm device would be a far better buy - there is way more documentation and existing code out there for that platform.
Until my portable audio device supports Vorbis, whats the point? Making a codec succesful requires deep industry support, and this has always been an area where open-source has not been very strong. At this point its an MP3/MP4 vs WMA issue, and really nothing more.
As for Joel, his former employer has made itself into the wealthiest software producer in history largely through continuous rewriting of code. Microsoft is famous for releasing an almost entirely new product by time its third revision is out. While I also agree that rewrites can be pointless exercises, it is not prudent to take Joel's argument too far.
Also, the perl6 project is introducing Parrot - a portable, language independent VM. As .Net and Java continue to evolve and prosper, the writing is on the wall - the next platform war will be in frameworks and VMs/JITs. There has to be a competitive open alternative in this market to keep the other players honest. Five years down the road I see Parrot as potentially more important than perl6 itself.
In any case it'll be nice to see how Larry and the gang put a perl twist on OO in the new language - knowing him there will be some useful enhancements for thinking programmers.
Unfortunately one of the saddest chapters of the Cold War/ wars by proxy was the overthrow of Allende and the placement of Pinochet as a US puppet. What followed was a sad tale of oppression that truly betrayed the good intentions of American citizens.
Now compare this to the West, where standards of wealth for the average citizen have been improving for over a century.
Note also that the US has been a more gracious victor in major military struggles than the European powers. WW2 was a direct effect of French unwillingness to create a useful peace for Germany after the first war, meanwhile Americans rebuilt Japan and Germany after the second.
Europe thumbs its nose at the US, yet the US is the product of the best thinking of Europe's greatest intellectual period, and now the EU is pushing forward on a federal system on the continent that will in effect create the United States of Europe.
Modern Saudi Arabia wouldn't exist without the US sticking its nose very far into the Middle East. The regime is propped up with US aid and oil money, although paradoxically it is the Saudis funding most of the anti Western efforts.
The reason they hate the West is because the West, for all its trash culture, is a free culture, and their model of rule is a contradiction of freedom. Their culture is in decline, their power is eroding, and they know that if their own populaces were empowered, most of them would be executed.
Now why the Islamic cultures despise the West is obvious - their culture is in decline, their dictatorial and dogmatic structures cannot withstand open examination, and they seek to villify what they see as the agent of change, instead of recognizing and adapting to change itself.
As for the "culture war" between the West and the Islamic countries, it boils down to one simple truth - a closed repressive culture is being overrun by one that glorifies and even exploits openness.
These regimes are frightened by Western culture because they realize their rule cannot withstand open examination, but instead must be enforced autocratically or through religious dogma.
No, I'm sorry, you are wrong, cheaper always wins. No one will use Sun hardware for linux. I am not going to offer up any more support than the fact that cheaper always wins in the end and there is not one fact in the history of computing products to contradict this. Sun is committing suicide.
I've also supported customers whose primary admin workforce were IBM Global Services people.
Blah. I can find ten anecdotes that contradict every one of yours...and you can then contradict every one of mine. Its pointless. Lets look at stock charts instead and let the market sort it out. This comparison does not bode well for your company...and your defensiveness belies that you have heard the same points I am making come out of the mouths of other Sun employees.
Then they just committed suicide. There is absolutely no compelling reason to use Sun hardware for linux. At the low end you can get better price performance. At the high end you can pop linux on an IBM mainframe and get not only the top end of hardware but a superior services force.
Thats the crux of the issue for Sun - they're damned if they don't support linux, but doubly damned if they do - they're more or less endorsing commodity solutions, which will ultimately lead to commodity hardware.
Other than (among others) invading the game console market, eroding Oracle's share in databases, smoking past lycos and yahoo on the mediametrix charts with MSN, spinning off expedia, or gunning up their licensing fees? People have been saying "Microsoft is over" for at least five years now, but they keep moving into new markets.
Huh? McNealy is pushing this model as strong as Gates is.
Microsoft can talk about their "freedom to innovate" all they want, but they have come to a place where they have innovated or stolen just about everything worthwhile already.
90% of the people in the city morgue had the right of way. So what? What matters is who is left standing.
Linux will be left standing because it doesn't need to make money to be succesful. Microsoft, Intel and IBM will be left standing be left standing because they will own the respective markets for software, CPUs and services. Moral legitimacy means zilch.
Linux is totally chewing up their low end. They don't want to admit it straight out - they have been playing nice with open source folks while quietly taking Cobalt off of the market and making it a bit player.
Meanwhile IBM is taking it apart at the high end with a proposition that focuses as much on services as hardware and software..because IBM knows billable hours are where the real renewable revenue is.
On the architecture side, Sun is pitting itself against an entire enconomy - Intel and Microsoft. Sun simply can't outresearch, outspend or outmarket either of these companies, let alone both of them and their attendent co-competitors (Dell, AMD, HP, etc). Once Microsoft gets Win2k up to par in every respect with Solaris (it will happen), they will start peeling high-price clients off of Sun with little contest (meanwhile linux will chew up Sun's low end more and more).
On top of all of this, they're playing mindshare catch-up with the half-hearted JavaOne. Sorry James, MS beat you to the punch on webservices by a year.
I just hope Java can't be opened up enough that it doesn't evaporate along with its owner.
Because Cavaliers outsell Bentleys. The proper response to Microsoft is not Solaris on Sparc - this is a dead platform soon to enter an SGI-like state. The proper response is an open, effective and cheaper solution (guess).
All things in moderation. Get out there and exercise. Get a date. Paint your house. Its just text on a screen.
I thought it was pretty clear that Europa was off-limits. Oh well.
As for security, you are likely already behind a firewall, or you can mandate a Yahoo secure login.
Yahoo mail lets you embed yahoo calender links easily...in fact you can embed the Yahoo calender links in any type of communication.
Come on, you haven't looked very hard - most of the web calendar programs allow you to mail "add this event to my calendar links"...in fact its so obvious you are nearly in troll territory.
Added to which, the momentum of an installed base and brand name recognition. If a company with a little more visibility was behind this product it might have a chance, but as it stands, I give this product a five percent chance at best.
Real totally lost respect with me on this one - I felt like I was caught up in some low-rent scam, and I expected an easier exit strategy from a company that is trying to compete with Microsoft.
This of course besides the obvious fact that the service itself totally sucked - the only thing keeping most people from dropping it is the total hassle of having to phone and wait for someone at Real to cancel you.
All a programmer needs to know these days to polish his resume is to continue to name the correct protocols and standards to get their resume through the HR text filter, and keep boning up on idiot languages like VB and Java.