Re:Creation of a blue collar computing segment
on
More Cheap Linux PCs
·
· Score: 1
education with computers, practical or formal, should be reflected by higher wages.
Why? You want to have your cake and eat it too. If computing knowledge is to become commonplace, then wages should lower to reflect that. If you want to keep wages high for knowledge that can be gained "on the street", then you can't claim that you want computing knowledge to become ubiquitous.
To draw out the car mechanic analogy further, you get paid more for working on racing cars than you do for working on commodity cars, because more knowledge is required. However, racing cars are very rare compared to commodity cars. The same could apply to the computer industry. You get paid more for programming (for example), because it requires more knowledge than IT and is a more rare position. When you're dealing with commodity hardware and software in an IT position, there's only so much knowledge required to be effective. If more people have that knowledge, then wages will go down.
The interesting point to analyze is not how far IT wages drop compared to where they are now, or were three years ago, but how far average wages increase among blue collar workers if IT were to become a blue collar job class. You might take a wage decrease, but I'd bet quite a few others would be getting a relative increase.
I'll take "Posh 'n Snobby" suburban hell over "Redneck" Suburban hell. At least the Snobby suburb doesn't have a perpetual smell of ass lingering everywhere.
If you look around, you can find neighborhoods that are in-between and yet still have decent rent/mortgage, not be all the way out in Monroe, and be on the right side of the Lake (assuming you work on the Eastside, and not in the City). Ie, no cars on blocks and double-wides, but also no stuck up pretentious idiots and overzealous homeowners associations charging half your mortgage per month. I did (no, I'm not going to tell you where).
Renton is suburban hell. Des Moines is suburban hell. Kent (and pretty much anything near 167) is total suburban hell. I'll take the blonde soccer moms in Bellevue to the 80's haired, cameltoed proles in that shithole area south of I90.
It seems you've mixed up your definitions. Renton, Federal Way, Kent, etc are Redneck hell. Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, etc are Suburban hell. The difference is that the former has mullets, camaros, and trailers while the latter has expensively styled hair, SUVs, and look-alike two-story, four-bed, two-bath houses. Depending on what you prefer, both may suck, or one or the other may suck, or even neither may suck.
Post an essay topic, let the kids review the submissions with mod points given to your favorite students. Just like Slashdot.
Or better yet, use Scoop and let everybody moderate. Picking favorites is just asking for trouble. I'm sure you could give mod points to everyone in Slashcode as well, but I don't know how much hacking this would involve.
Anyway, both engines are probably excessive for the job at hand. Something along the lines of PHP-Nuke would likely be more than sufficient.
If you keep claiming nobody ever looks at OSS source code, then I'm starting to wonder who is making this stuff. But the answer is simple: a small group of programmers and a larger group of interested people, bug reporters, etc. that spam the programmers with bug reports as soon as they're not satisfied about something. Maybe looking at the source would still be the last thing they'd do, but the overall involvement is much bigger than in the case of "like it or just don't buy it" software.
I'm not saying that nobody looks at the source code. That'd be blatantly untrue. What I'm saying is that the commonly held idea that open source is good because you can audit the source code before using it is overstated. You can, but most people don't. Other than the hardcore, overly paranoid, or zealous open sourcer, few people care. They just want to use the software, not spend days poring over the code before they feel safe to use it.
As far as bug reports go, you don't need source code in 99% of the cases unless you're the kind of person that likes to submit patches with your bug reports. In fact, Microsoft's Dr. Watson is the best idea for reporting problems in closed source software. When you have a crash, Dr. Watson records a debuggable dump and gives you the option of sending it directly to Microsoft. Sure, they don't evaluate every dump they get, but getting a number of dumps on the same issue means there's a bug, and the dumps have enough information (not PII) that they can debug more easily without having to deal with vague and often incomprehinsible repro steps given by a customer.
There are certainly successful open source apps with lots of contributors and bug reporters and people who look at the code. However, given the total number of open source applications, the successful ones appear to be the minority. Yes, the same can be said about closed source software, but at least the guys writing that aren't working under the assumption that hundreds or thousands of people will help them debug the code. Ask the Mozilla guys about the harsh realities of open source. For the first couple years of the project (and even today, to some extent), almost all of the work done on Mozilla was by Netscape employees. They put the Mozilla source code out there, and aside from a few hardcore hackers who had been itching to get their hands on it, very few people stepped up to help. Yes, they did pull it off and released a rather nice product (XUL aside), but Mozilla is still largely Netscape code.
I find propietarty software restricted to what the developer originally had in mind.
That's not entirely true. Specifically, if your closed source app includes a decent plugin architecture and enough documentation to get going, you're no longer restricted to what the original developers planned. For example, take Winamp. In the broader sense you're still limited to playing media, but the original developers surely didn't write it with playing music from NES ROMs in mind. Yet because they build a decent plugin architecture for various components (input, output, visualization, general), winamp can do just that. Another good example would be Internet Explorer. It was designed to be a best-of-breed web browser, but you can do so much more with it. You can embed it in your own applications, you can extend it, you can write activeX objects that allow it to display other formats than HTML (like pdf or Word documents).
Having source code is not a requirement for extending an application to suit your needs if the developers had enough forethought to allow for that with proper architecture. Granted, if the architecture isn't there then you can't do much, but that's more the exception than the rule these days.
As soon as it gets used, it gets seen, which is not true for even popular closed source material.
That's true if you're actually using the source code, but in most cases that's not happening. Hell, even with your example of a library you're still not directly looking at the source code. You went to the source when you had issues, yes, but with a well-documented library you wouldn't need to do that. And that's not even saying anything about applications, which you wouldn't even be interacting with in code.
Open source advocates say things like, "I can audit the code myself to see what it's doing," but how many people do you think actually do that? Beyond the clinically paranoid or overly zealous, I'd suggest very few people actually do that. I know I don't, and I don't know anybody who does.
Is it directly proportional to the downward spiral of music quality?
Please remove your rose-colored glasses, thanks. Everything has always sucked. It's not a new phenomenon. Music, movies, games, TV, books, theater, etc, they've always sucked, and always will. The difference between "the good old days" and today is that all of the tripe that'll be forgotten in X years is in your face now, while you've already forgotten the tripe of yesteryear. Look back in ten years, and you'll be pining for the "good old days of the early 2000s", even though you're bitching and moaning now about how everything sucks, and it was so much better 10 years ago.
At the risk of sounding like an ass, have you or are you now working as a programmer?
Yes, I am currently working as a programmer. I'm young, and this is my first programming job (held it for three years, though), so I may be biased.
Testers are a valuable commodity, but are rarely used in the manner that they should be.
I don't know what other companies do, but I know what mine does, and our testers test. We do have a hybrid developer/tester position, who is generally responsible for writing the code the testers need for testing, but our testers do sometimes write harness code as well. Most of the time, however, testers write test cases, not code (generally in XML), and run those test cases, and then bug developers. The good testers provide excellent repro steps and a good explanation of the behavior they saw and the behavior they expected, so you as the developer can take the bug and run with it without having to do major investigations just to learn what the bug is about.
With OSS, you have an untold number of eyes viewing a project that can help catch problems in a more timely manner.
Your "untold number of eyes" is nearly indistinguishable from "0" unless your open source project is widely used. Sure, this may hold for the Linux kernel, or Apache, or even Mozilla, but what about all of the open source projects on SourceForge?
At my current company, we have 30 or so developers, but the modules I write are owned by me and usually only seen by me. Peer review sessions can alleviate this, but those are generally short and cover major functionality.
Sounds to me like you're working with an inadequate number of testers, or at least an inadequate unit testing plan for developers. Testers are invaluable because that's all they do -- test code. This frees up the developer to be able to actually write code while not having to sacrifice quality for lack of testing. Sure, it's more expensive to hire both testers and developers, but I'd bet that of your 30 or so developers, you could fire 10 of them and hire 15 testers for the same cost, and still have enough man power for development while increasing your code quality from rigorous testing. (Note: This isn't saying that developers can or should write bad code so long as they have testers. Developers should still aspire to writing quality code, so that the testers can focus on the really heinous parts, and not on trivial bugs or logic errors. But at least with testers and good unit tests, you're less likely to let slip a silly bug.)
The theory that your best work will be done when the most eyes are watching can also apply. I think we (developers) are all guilty of shoving some nasty code in a project at some time or another under the notion that no one else will ever see it. When the whole world can look at your work, sometimes those attitudes change.
That may be true in theory, but it doesn't pan out in practice. In practice, most open source projects will only be seen (code-wise) by the author(s). If you're lucky, you might have two or three active users that will submit bugs or patches, but often that's not the case.
And maybe after the Philosophers come up with a game philosophy SOMEBODY will define a common set of key controls so that I don't have different throttle and weapons key templates for all of my flight sims!!!!
I don't expect that to happen. The WASD/mouse combination for first person shooters became the de facto standard because it is intuitive (for a right-hander). Your right hand is on the mouse, so your left hand needs to be on the keyboard. You can't exactly use the arrow keys without moving the keyboard or having your left arm at an awkward angle. However, the WASD keys are right there under your left hand, ready to go, with plenty of other keys around them for auxillary functions (much of which can be moved to the mouse, with multi-button mice; 'use', 'reload', 'next/prev weapon', etc).
Flight sims have a lot more functions than even the most complex FPS, and generally work best with at least a joystick and preferably a throttle and maybe even pedals. When one hand is on the joystick and the other is on the throttle, there's really no intuitive keyboard positions you can easily use. Thus, no player-chosen standard has really arrived (that I know of). In contrast, the WASD standard was defined by players. Hell, I was shocked the first time I bought a game that defaulted to WASD (it's been so long, I don't remember which game I got that defaulted to that first). I was happy that I didn't have to spend five minutes going through the control setup before I could play the game, because my preferred setup had become the standard.
how does a post recieve a rating of (Score:5, Troll), am I missing something?
Lovely Slashcode. Mod the comment up to +5 (however you choose). Then mod it down by 1, for +4, Troll. Then mod it up again with Underrated (which doesn't get tagged). Suddenly you have a +5, Troll comment. Whee!
Worse than that, THG can't even get their facts straight. For example, when discussing fsutil.exe on page 4, the caption of the picture calls it a DOS app (it's not) and say it's from Sysinternals (perhaps they meant ntfsinfo, like the picture shows), yet the article text properly calls fsutil a "command line utility" (which it is) from Microsoft (which it is). While they do mention that it works on XP and not Windows 2000, they don't bother to mention that it's also available on Windows Server 2003, and that it's a system utility that's installed with the OS (c:\win[dows|nt]\system32\fsutil.exe). And just to add insult to injury, the "fsutil fsinfo" command they suggest you run is not quite correct. You need something more like "fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo c:". "fsutil fsinfo" by itself just gives you another help screen, and not "scads of fascinating statistical information on the file system, volume and MFT."
All this article does is reinforce my dislike for Tom's Hardware Guide, and gives me ammunition I can use to convince others that THG is crap, too. If you want good hardware reviews, go somewhere good like AnandTech or Sharky Extreme. Hell, you could even go to Blue's News for the daily Hardware Reviews and still get better info. (I've not once seen Blue's link to THG from the Hardware Reviews... I wonder why?)
1. Microsoft has yet to pull anything off to my satisfaction.
That's your problem, not Microsoft's.
2. This is probably just an excuse to break with NTFS as the kernel developers are nearing compatibility. I suspect WinFS will be completely closed "for security reasons" and anyone using it will be prohibited from writing Linux code as well.
Paranoia at its purest. If you were truly paranoid, you'd realize that Microsoft wouldn't go this far just to stop Linux from supporting NTFS. They'd just change a few important things about how NTFS works. They wouldn't throw it out unless there was a good reason to do so. And no, Linux having nearly decent support for NTFS doesn't qualify as a "good reason".
BeOS used indexing for certain attributes, and it is GREAT. Maybe someone is just sour that linux didn't do it first?
I gathered that the quote was alluding to the fact that while the BFS did initially use a full relational database backend, it performed very poorly. Be replaced the backend with a more conventional one, but kept the SQL-like interface to it. It increased performance, but just wasn't quite as cool anymore. Maybe now that PCs have increased in power by several magnitudes since Be last tried this, Microsoft may actually be able to pull it off.
Re:"Actively searching for new suppliers"?
on
iBox Episode 2
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Actually, it's a good analogy. Monopolistic practices are illegal and cannot be enforced. Unfortunately, the burden of proof has shifted.
Define "monopolistic practices", please. Monopolies are perfectly legal in the US, and certainly should be in any free market nation. In fact, that's the extreme towards which free markets strive (rarely getting there because the market doesn't allow it -- if a firm does attain monopoly status and follows suit with standard monopoly pricing and there are no major barriers to entry in the market, then other firms will enter and under cut the monopoly by pricing at the competitive rate). It's only when a monopoly acts illegally by using its existing monopoly to attempt to gain another monopoly in an unrelated market that there is a problem. That's not to say that a firm cannot hold two or more monopolies, either. That's certainly conceivable, if the firm did not use its existing monopoly to create the new one (difficult to do, but not impossible).
Please review industrial economics, monopoly economics (not the system of economics that govern the board game Monopoly (tm)), and the anti-trust laws of your country of origin (assuming the United States here, since we're discussing an American firm) before spouting, thanks.
Siding on the house, I guess that's a nice touch, but you spent the wad of dough on the house, and put yourself in a position to have to worry about how it looks (if that matters to you, of course).
Siding on a house is protectant against nature. Without some sort of siding (vinyl, aluminum, properly painted wood), structural pieces of your house are exposed to the elements. That we can make it look good is secondary to its function towards the soundness of the house. Besides, if you spend money on a house, why wouldn't you take care of it? Otherwise, you're just killing your own property values and losing money.
I guess we could all move into caves, or into high-rise condos where we don't have to worry about any upkeep (at least for the exterior), but I don't find either of those options very appealling. Neither do most people, else that's how the majority would be living. (okay, so maybe a majority of people do live in apartment complexes or condos, but what's the ideal that most people dream about? That's right, one day owning their own house.)
You know how an SUV or a full-sized van handles at > 65mph? How about a U-Haul? They don't. They go straight. They can't maneuver, because they're not designed for high-speed handling. (High CG) They can't stop because they're too heavy. An SUV is great if you're 4 wheeling. A van is nice if you want to carry a lot of stuff. But they have to be driven within their limits.
The same thing applies to semis. Most interstates have one speed for passenger vehicles and one for trucks. The big U-Hauls certainly should qualify as trucks, as should the larger of the SUVs, most vans, and large pickups. There are some SUVs that aren't bad (BMW X5, Porsche Cayenne, Nissan Murano, Infiniti QX-45 or whatever the model number is, etc) but those are all hybrid SUVs, and not the terribly-handling truck-based SUVs like Suburbans, Tahoes, or Hummers.
Now get on the freeway. Look at that big vehicle doing 85. Know what happens when he blows a tire? Ask Firestone. Know what happens when the car in front of him blows a tire, or has an engine failure, or otherwise has to stop suddenly? (Of course, this same SUV is usually tailgating.)
Most people that drive these things are idiots, I agree. Personally, I try to avoid them as much as possible when I drive (my car is small, and as far as the huge SUVs are concerned it's no different than a motorcycle -- they can't see it from their high perch, and so I'm the one who has to watch out for them rather than they watch out for me). Better education would do wonders for this. Most of Europe has much better driver education requirements than the US does, and are consequently safer. People like to blame speed or SUVs or other things for causing an accident, but 9 times out of 10 it's because the driver was uneducated (drunk driving is certainly being an uneducated driver).
The point of this rambling is that you can't use the speed of traffic as a good baseline when the majority of drivers aren't being realistic about what they're cabable of handling.
You're correct, and the only way to fix that is education. However, I wasn't really going there with my original point. To get back to that, in cases where there are no overriding reasons to have a lower limit, speed limits should be set at the 85th percentile of traffic. In other words, the people set the speed limit just by choosing how fast they're comfortable with driving, rather than having some arbitrary limit with no backing shoved down our throats. Is it dangerous for SUVs to be allowed to go 80mph+? Probably, but people are going to do it anyway. The speed limit doesn't stop them
Um, just a note on VW - VW is NOT "pretty small-time" - they're the largest auto conglomerate in Europe, and definitely among the largest in the world.
Yes, sarcasm doesn't translate well in text, does it?:)
Out of curiousity, I'd like to know what "ties" GM has to Subaru? Subaru is a subsidiary of Fuji Heavy Industries, and really, kind of an oddball in the automarket (Don't get me wrong, Subaru is my favorite carbrand:)). It'd be rather obvious if Subaru was sharing models with GM, as every Subaru comes with a boxer engine, and Subaru and Porsche are the only auto companies using that engine format.
I have no idea what ties they have, but the GM website said they did so I'll believe them. From a quick google search, I came up with this page that says GM purchased Subaru from Fuji. Here's another page that sounds more likely -- General Motors owns a 20% stake in Fuji. And as the owner of a boxer-engined car (not Subaru), I certainly do like that format. Does lead to some oil burning, though, just due to the configuration of the cylinders.
The whole point of having the speed limit is to set the MAXIMUM speed you can go... you can't arbitarily decide that you know better and really 70 is just as safe as 60 on this piece of road.
Why can't he? The government already did. Congress recommended some time back that speed limits be set to the 85th percentile speed for a given stretch of roadway if no other major factor dictated that the limit be less (ie, engineering surveys show that a certain turn cannot be safely negotiated over XXmph for the average car). In that vein, surveys are regularly taken showing the speeds for roads. Almost unilaterally, the 85th percentile speed is above the posted limit. Why is that? I'll give you an example. Interstate 405 going through eastside Seattle metro area (Kirkland, Bellevue, Renton) is 60mph. The most recent numbers I've seen from Washington state surveys (2001, I believe) showed that the 85th percentile was approximately 71mph (or so -- you can find the reports on Washington's DOL web site). Just driving that interstate will back up those numbers -- most people on that road drive around 70mph except when approaching known speed traps. Shouldn't the speed limit be around 70mph then, if Washington was trying to follow Congressional guidelines and not attempt to line their pockets with speeding fines?
Yes, there's the occassional bonehead that thinks he needs to speed like a moron. However, studies have shown that these extreme speeders are more likely to actually drive the speed limit when that limit is closer to a speed they're comfortable driving (the difference between 60mph and 80mph is much more than the difference between 70mph and 80mph, so the guy going 80mph would be more likely to drive at 70mph than 60mph). On the flip side, there are those that aren't comfortable going that fast, and that's fine. There's a reason there are multiple lanes. Follow the standard "Keep right unless passing" rule (or "keep middle", since you probably shouldn't block on-/off-ramp access), and you'll do fine. As well, reducing the difference in speed does a whole lot more than just reducing speed. I'd rather get hit by an 80mph car while I'm also doing 80mph than get hit by the same car while I'm only doing 60mph. Obviously this only pertains to wide, divided highways. Residential areas or two-lane non-divided highways are much more dangerous.
GM makes Saturn, Oldsmobile, and Buick vehicles, too.
And Pontiac, and Cadillac, and GMC, and Hummer, and...
I was just trying to point out the relationships that most Americans wouldn't recognize. How many people do you know who would associate Saab with GM? Or Lamborghini with VW? Or Aston Martin with Ford? Everybody knows that Buick, Pontiac, Olds, Saturn, etc are all GM-built.
There really isn't much to do in the way of research here. Most of the major manufacturers list their affiliations on their web sites.
Ford makes it easy. They list their brands right on the front page. Along with the previously mentioned Volvo, Jaguar, and Mazda, there's the surprise of Aston Martin (think it was a coincidence that the major cars in the last Bond movie were a Ford, a Jaguar, and an Aston Martin?).
GM makes you have to look a little more. Aside from the previously mentioned Opel, Isuzu, and Suzuki, GM also has ties to Fiat and Subaru, as well as owning Saab. (Toyota isn't listed, but I mentioned it before because Toyota sells the Cavalier under the Toyota brand in Japan.)
Chrysler/Dodge make you work harder. You have to know that they're part of Daimler-Chrysler, and then you'll see that they not only have Chrysler, Dodge, and Mercedes Benz, but also Maybach and Jeep as well as "strategic relationships" with Mitsubishi and Hyundai.
Similarly, Volkswagen makes it pretty difficult to find their list of brands, but it can be found. They're pretty small-time, only having Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, and Skoda alongside the Volkswagen moniker.
Porsche actually makes you have to learn history before you can get to its complex relationship with other brands. For instance, did you know that Dr. Ferdinand Porsche founded Volkswagen on Hitler's request? Also, before Porsche even formed Volkswagen, he did designs for Mercedes and Daimler. Over the years, Porsche (the company) and Porsche Design (separate company, same family) have consulted for quite a few different firms. As well, ties to Volkswagen have remained strong (the original 356 was based around a Volkswagen engine, as was the 914; lots of parts in all models of cars have been shared with VW; and the most recent model, the Cayenne, shares a base platform with VW's Touareg).
So how's that for convoluted? And I didn't even touch on the Honda/Acura, Toyota/Lexus, Nissan/Infiniti low-end/high-end dichotomy that most Japanese companies have, nor their relationships between and among each other. Crazy, huh?
Slashdot Mirror
It is true! People will pass up steak once a week for crap every day.
Why? You want to have your cake and eat it too. If computing knowledge is to become commonplace, then wages should lower to reflect that. If you want to keep wages high for knowledge that can be gained "on the street", then you can't claim that you want computing knowledge to become ubiquitous.
To draw out the car mechanic analogy further, you get paid more for working on racing cars than you do for working on commodity cars, because more knowledge is required. However, racing cars are very rare compared to commodity cars. The same could apply to the computer industry. You get paid more for programming (for example), because it requires more knowledge than IT and is a more rare position. When you're dealing with commodity hardware and software in an IT position, there's only so much knowledge required to be effective. If more people have that knowledge, then wages will go down.
The interesting point to analyze is not how far IT wages drop compared to where they are now, or were three years ago, but how far average wages increase among blue collar workers if IT were to become a blue collar job class. You might take a wage decrease, but I'd bet quite a few others would be getting a relative increase.
If you look around, you can find neighborhoods that are in-between and yet still have decent rent/mortgage, not be all the way out in Monroe, and be on the right side of the Lake (assuming you work on the Eastside, and not in the City). Ie, no cars on blocks and double-wides, but also no stuck up pretentious idiots and overzealous homeowners associations charging half your mortgage per month. I did (no, I'm not going to tell you where).
It seems you've mixed up your definitions. Renton, Federal Way, Kent, etc are Redneck hell. Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, etc are Suburban hell. The difference is that the former has mullets, camaros, and trailers while the latter has expensively styled hair, SUVs, and look-alike two-story, four-bed, two-bath houses. Depending on what you prefer, both may suck, or one or the other may suck, or even neither may suck.
Or better yet, use Scoop and let everybody moderate. Picking favorites is just asking for trouble. I'm sure you could give mod points to everyone in Slashcode as well, but I don't know how much hacking this would involve.
Anyway, both engines are probably excessive for the job at hand. Something along the lines of PHP-Nuke would likely be more than sufficient.
I'm not saying that nobody looks at the source code. That'd be blatantly untrue. What I'm saying is that the commonly held idea that open source is good because you can audit the source code before using it is overstated. You can, but most people don't. Other than the hardcore, overly paranoid, or zealous open sourcer, few people care. They just want to use the software, not spend days poring over the code before they feel safe to use it.
As far as bug reports go, you don't need source code in 99% of the cases unless you're the kind of person that likes to submit patches with your bug reports. In fact, Microsoft's Dr. Watson is the best idea for reporting problems in closed source software. When you have a crash, Dr. Watson records a debuggable dump and gives you the option of sending it directly to Microsoft. Sure, they don't evaluate every dump they get, but getting a number of dumps on the same issue means there's a bug, and the dumps have enough information (not PII) that they can debug more easily without having to deal with vague and often incomprehinsible repro steps given by a customer.
There are certainly successful open source apps with lots of contributors and bug reporters and people who look at the code. However, given the total number of open source applications, the successful ones appear to be the minority. Yes, the same can be said about closed source software, but at least the guys writing that aren't working under the assumption that hundreds or thousands of people will help them debug the code. Ask the Mozilla guys about the harsh realities of open source. For the first couple years of the project (and even today, to some extent), almost all of the work done on Mozilla was by Netscape employees. They put the Mozilla source code out there, and aside from a few hardcore hackers who had been itching to get their hands on it, very few people stepped up to help. Yes, they did pull it off and released a rather nice product (XUL aside), but Mozilla is still largely Netscape code.
That's not entirely true. Specifically, if your closed source app includes a decent plugin architecture and enough documentation to get going, you're no longer restricted to what the original developers planned. For example, take Winamp. In the broader sense you're still limited to playing media, but the original developers surely didn't write it with playing music from NES ROMs in mind. Yet because they build a decent plugin architecture for various components (input, output, visualization, general), winamp can do just that. Another good example would be Internet Explorer. It was designed to be a best-of-breed web browser, but you can do so much more with it. You can embed it in your own applications, you can extend it, you can write activeX objects that allow it to display other formats than HTML (like pdf or Word documents).
Having source code is not a requirement for extending an application to suit your needs if the developers had enough forethought to allow for that with proper architecture. Granted, if the architecture isn't there then you can't do much, but that's more the exception than the rule these days.
That's true if you're actually using the source code, but in most cases that's not happening. Hell, even with your example of a library you're still not directly looking at the source code. You went to the source when you had issues, yes, but with a well-documented library you wouldn't need to do that. And that's not even saying anything about applications, which you wouldn't even be interacting with in code.
Open source advocates say things like, "I can audit the code myself to see what it's doing," but how many people do you think actually do that? Beyond the clinically paranoid or overly zealous, I'd suggest very few people actually do that. I know I don't, and I don't know anybody who does.
Please remove your rose-colored glasses, thanks. Everything has always sucked. It's not a new phenomenon. Music, movies, games, TV, books, theater, etc, they've always sucked, and always will. The difference between "the good old days" and today is that all of the tripe that'll be forgotten in X years is in your face now, while you've already forgotten the tripe of yesteryear. Look back in ten years, and you'll be pining for the "good old days of the early 2000s", even though you're bitching and moaning now about how everything sucks, and it was so much better 10 years ago.
Yes, I am currently working as a programmer. I'm young, and this is my first programming job (held it for three years, though), so I may be biased.
I don't know what other companies do, but I know what mine does, and our testers test. We do have a hybrid developer/tester position, who is generally responsible for writing the code the testers need for testing, but our testers do sometimes write harness code as well. Most of the time, however, testers write test cases, not code (generally in XML), and run those test cases, and then bug developers. The good testers provide excellent repro steps and a good explanation of the behavior they saw and the behavior they expected, so you as the developer can take the bug and run with it without having to do major investigations just to learn what the bug is about.
Your "untold number of eyes" is nearly indistinguishable from "0" unless your open source project is widely used. Sure, this may hold for the Linux kernel, or Apache, or even Mozilla, but what about all of the open source projects on SourceForge?
Sounds to me like you're working with an inadequate number of testers, or at least an inadequate unit testing plan for developers. Testers are invaluable because that's all they do -- test code. This frees up the developer to be able to actually write code while not having to sacrifice quality for lack of testing. Sure, it's more expensive to hire both testers and developers, but I'd bet that of your 30 or so developers, you could fire 10 of them and hire 15 testers for the same cost, and still have enough man power for development while increasing your code quality from rigorous testing. (Note: This isn't saying that developers can or should write bad code so long as they have testers. Developers should still aspire to writing quality code, so that the testers can focus on the really heinous parts, and not on trivial bugs or logic errors. But at least with testers and good unit tests, you're less likely to let slip a silly bug.)
That may be true in theory, but it doesn't pan out in practice. In practice, most open source projects will only be seen (code-wise) by the author(s). If you're lucky, you might have two or three active users that will submit bugs or patches, but often that's not the case.
I don't expect that to happen. The WASD/mouse combination for first person shooters became the de facto standard because it is intuitive (for a right-hander). Your right hand is on the mouse, so your left hand needs to be on the keyboard. You can't exactly use the arrow keys without moving the keyboard or having your left arm at an awkward angle. However, the WASD keys are right there under your left hand, ready to go, with plenty of other keys around them for auxillary functions (much of which can be moved to the mouse, with multi-button mice; 'use', 'reload', 'next/prev weapon', etc).
Flight sims have a lot more functions than even the most complex FPS, and generally work best with at least a joystick and preferably a throttle and maybe even pedals. When one hand is on the joystick and the other is on the throttle, there's really no intuitive keyboard positions you can easily use. Thus, no player-chosen standard has really arrived (that I know of). In contrast, the WASD standard was defined by players. Hell, I was shocked the first time I bought a game that defaulted to WASD (it's been so long, I don't remember which game I got that defaulted to that first). I was happy that I didn't have to spend five minutes going through the control setup before I could play the game, because my preferred setup had become the standard.
Lovely Slashcode. Mod the comment up to +5 (however you choose). Then mod it down by 1, for +4, Troll. Then mod it up again with Underrated (which doesn't get tagged). Suddenly you have a +5, Troll comment. Whee!
Worse than that, THG can't even get their facts straight. For example, when discussing fsutil.exe on page 4, the caption of the picture calls it a DOS app (it's not) and say it's from Sysinternals (perhaps they meant ntfsinfo, like the picture shows), yet the article text properly calls fsutil a "command line utility" (which it is) from Microsoft (which it is). While they do mention that it works on XP and not Windows 2000, they don't bother to mention that it's also available on Windows Server 2003, and that it's a system utility that's installed with the OS (c:\win[dows|nt]\system32\fsutil.exe). And just to add insult to injury, the "fsutil fsinfo" command they suggest you run is not quite correct. You need something more like "fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo c:". "fsutil fsinfo" by itself just gives you another help screen, and not "scads of fascinating statistical information on the file system, volume and MFT."
All this article does is reinforce my dislike for Tom's Hardware Guide, and gives me ammunition I can use to convince others that THG is crap, too. If you want good hardware reviews, go somewhere good like AnandTech or Sharky Extreme. Hell, you could even go to Blue's News for the daily Hardware Reviews and still get better info. (I've not once seen Blue's link to THG from the Hardware Reviews ... I wonder why?)
That's your problem, not Microsoft's.
Paranoia at its purest. If you were truly paranoid, you'd realize that Microsoft wouldn't go this far just to stop Linux from supporting NTFS. They'd just change a few important things about how NTFS works. They wouldn't throw it out unless there was a good reason to do so. And no, Linux having nearly decent support for NTFS doesn't qualify as a "good reason".
I gathered that the quote was alluding to the fact that while the BFS did initially use a full relational database backend, it performed very poorly. Be replaced the backend with a more conventional one, but kept the SQL-like interface to it. It increased performance, but just wasn't quite as cool anymore. Maybe now that PCs have increased in power by several magnitudes since Be last tried this, Microsoft may actually be able to pull it off.
Define "monopolistic practices", please. Monopolies are perfectly legal in the US, and certainly should be in any free market nation. In fact, that's the extreme towards which free markets strive (rarely getting there because the market doesn't allow it -- if a firm does attain monopoly status and follows suit with standard monopoly pricing and there are no major barriers to entry in the market, then other firms will enter and under cut the monopoly by pricing at the competitive rate). It's only when a monopoly acts illegally by using its existing monopoly to attempt to gain another monopoly in an unrelated market that there is a problem. That's not to say that a firm cannot hold two or more monopolies, either. That's certainly conceivable, if the firm did not use its existing monopoly to create the new one (difficult to do, but not impossible).
Please review industrial economics, monopoly economics (not the system of economics that govern the board game Monopoly (tm)), and the anti-trust laws of your country of origin (assuming the United States here, since we're discussing an American firm) before spouting, thanks.
Siding on a house is protectant against nature. Without some sort of siding (vinyl, aluminum, properly painted wood), structural pieces of your house are exposed to the elements. That we can make it look good is secondary to its function towards the soundness of the house. Besides, if you spend money on a house, why wouldn't you take care of it? Otherwise, you're just killing your own property values and losing money.
I guess we could all move into caves, or into high-rise condos where we don't have to worry about any upkeep (at least for the exterior), but I don't find either of those options very appealling. Neither do most people, else that's how the majority would be living. (okay, so maybe a majority of people do live in apartment complexes or condos, but what's the ideal that most people dream about? That's right, one day owning their own house.)
I assume you're referring to the 911 Turbo? I just ran the numbers:
and just to be complete:
Of course, the WRX will run your ~$30,000 USD while a 996TT will run you ~$120,00 USD. I'm not about to do a $/hp comparison
The same thing applies to semis. Most interstates have one speed for passenger vehicles and one for trucks. The big U-Hauls certainly should qualify as trucks, as should the larger of the SUVs, most vans, and large pickups. There are some SUVs that aren't bad (BMW X5, Porsche Cayenne, Nissan Murano, Infiniti QX-45 or whatever the model number is, etc) but those are all hybrid SUVs, and not the terribly-handling truck-based SUVs like Suburbans, Tahoes, or Hummers.
Most people that drive these things are idiots, I agree. Personally, I try to avoid them as much as possible when I drive (my car is small, and as far as the huge SUVs are concerned it's no different than a motorcycle -- they can't see it from their high perch, and so I'm the one who has to watch out for them rather than they watch out for me). Better education would do wonders for this. Most of Europe has much better driver education requirements than the US does, and are consequently safer. People like to blame speed or SUVs or other things for causing an accident, but 9 times out of 10 it's because the driver was uneducated (drunk driving is certainly being an uneducated driver).
You're correct, and the only way to fix that is education. However, I wasn't really going there with my original point. To get back to that, in cases where there are no overriding reasons to have a lower limit, speed limits should be set at the 85th percentile of traffic. In other words, the people set the speed limit just by choosing how fast they're comfortable with driving, rather than having some arbitrary limit with no backing shoved down our throats. Is it dangerous for SUVs to be allowed to go 80mph+? Probably, but people are going to do it anyway. The speed limit doesn't stop them
Yes, sarcasm doesn't translate well in text, does it? :)
I have no idea what ties they have, but the GM website said they did so I'll believe them. From a quick google search, I came up with this page that says GM purchased Subaru from Fuji. Here's another page that sounds more likely -- General Motors owns a 20% stake in Fuji. And as the owner of a boxer-engined car (not Subaru), I certainly do like that format. Does lead to some oil burning, though, just due to the configuration of the cylinders.
Why can't he? The government already did. Congress recommended some time back that speed limits be set to the 85th percentile speed for a given stretch of roadway if no other major factor dictated that the limit be less (ie, engineering surveys show that a certain turn cannot be safely negotiated over XXmph for the average car). In that vein, surveys are regularly taken showing the speeds for roads. Almost unilaterally, the 85th percentile speed is above the posted limit. Why is that? I'll give you an example. Interstate 405 going through eastside Seattle metro area (Kirkland, Bellevue, Renton) is 60mph. The most recent numbers I've seen from Washington state surveys (2001, I believe) showed that the 85th percentile was approximately 71mph (or so -- you can find the reports on Washington's DOL web site). Just driving that interstate will back up those numbers -- most people on that road drive around 70mph except when approaching known speed traps. Shouldn't the speed limit be around 70mph then, if Washington was trying to follow Congressional guidelines and not attempt to line their pockets with speeding fines?
Yes, there's the occassional bonehead that thinks he needs to speed like a moron. However, studies have shown that these extreme speeders are more likely to actually drive the speed limit when that limit is closer to a speed they're comfortable driving (the difference between 60mph and 80mph is much more than the difference between 70mph and 80mph, so the guy going 80mph would be more likely to drive at 70mph than 60mph). On the flip side, there are those that aren't comfortable going that fast, and that's fine. There's a reason there are multiple lanes. Follow the standard "Keep right unless passing" rule (or "keep middle", since you probably shouldn't block on-/off-ramp access), and you'll do fine. As well, reducing the difference in speed does a whole lot more than just reducing speed. I'd rather get hit by an 80mph car while I'm also doing 80mph than get hit by the same car while I'm only doing 60mph. Obviously this only pertains to wide, divided highways. Residential areas or two-lane non-divided highways are much more dangerous.
Have a look at this.
Unmentioned there is that Rolls Royce is now owned by BMW, so that fits into the previous poster's comparison. Ferrari doesn't really fit, though.
It wasn't a very good analogy to begin with.
And Pontiac, and Cadillac, and GMC, and Hummer, and ...
I was just trying to point out the relationships that most Americans wouldn't recognize. How many people do you know who would associate Saab with GM? Or Lamborghini with VW? Or Aston Martin with Ford? Everybody knows that Buick, Pontiac, Olds, Saturn, etc are all GM-built.
There really isn't much to do in the way of research here. Most of the major manufacturers list their affiliations on their web sites.
So how's that for convoluted? And I didn't even touch on the Honda/Acura, Toyota/Lexus, Nissan/Infiniti low-end/high-end dichotomy that most Japanese companies have, nor their relationships between and among each other. Crazy, huh?