Requirements will always fluctuate throughout the development cycle, because users cannot entirely formulate what they want until they have seen something close. For the same reason, requirements can never be fully formalized--the more explicitly complex behavior is described, the more likely it is not exactly what the user wants.
(Note: I'm still on my Inmates... kick.)
Alan Cooper would seem to argue that this is not a license to take longer. Rather, users "have funny quirks . . . that interfere with the design process" (129) (emphasis added); "it is more important to define [an estimated user's requirements] in great and specific detail [and design based on these] than that the [user profile] be precisely the correct one" (129).
As in your second point, in the absence of any other data (e.g., no popular competing product the features of which you can copy) it may be better to take a guess and get something out there than spend 10 years making it "perfect."
Their lives don't revolve around this stuff like ours do. The user ends up resentful because you made them feel stupid for asking.
Great point. Most people simply want to be productive without feeling stupid.
For some wonderful insight on that very issue (among other things), I would highly reccommend reading The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper. (I'm reading it now and thoroughly enjoying it.)
Capitalism works because the money the supplier wants starts in the hands of the buyer . . .
Somehow over the past 10 years that system has flipped and the buyer also has money.
Because you, the buyer, have given it to them in exchange for goods and services.
It's not "We had better make this quality because then no one will buy it"
Because people don't say to themselves, "This is not quality; therefore I won't buy it." Instead, they'll say, "This is not quality, but--what the heck--I'll buy it anyway!"
In a democratic society, if you don't vote or write your elected officials, you've got no right to complain about your government. Likewise, in a capatalist economy, if you don't vote with your money, you're responsible.
Please pardon my spelling. I went to a public school with no computers.
Well put.
I'm a custom IC designer at a major international computer company. Yet I had very little exposure to computers in school. (We learned from these things called "books.") And I can write, spell, read, sing, play an instrument, draw, paint, sculpt, appreciate opera, talk about economics and history, find my state on a world map, and do a host of other things!
If only we had computers, I wouldn't have received such a poor education.
A friend of mine came up with a pretty nifty password creation scheme.. He lived on a rather busy street near a stop light.. So he would look out the window and pick out someone's licence plate number who was waiting at the light.....
This isn't all that secure though. For example in Minnesota--where the standard passenger vehicle plate is three numbers and three letters (e.g., 123 ABC)--there are only (by my reckoning) 17,576,000 possible permutations. A cracking program that could test them one per second starting Jan. 1 would be guaranteed to find the correct one by July 22.
I have every single password . . . written down [and] tucked in . . . my files.
Similarly, after I'm forced to change my many passwords at work (*), I write the new one down on a slip of paper which I keep briefly in my wallet. My wallet is always in the pocket of the pants I'm wearing unless I'm performing a monetary transaction or sleeping at home (or otherwise not wearing pants). If that piece of paper gets stolen, I've got bigger problems!
(*) Every 180 days, to something significantly enough different from your old one to cause trouble remembering
My mother is a REALTOR® in Iowa and I've worked with her quite a bit in getting a web site started.
At least in this part of the country, a seemingly common application for maintaining an area's multiple listing service (MLS) is using Technology Concept's Ultrex. (See, for instance, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls (IA) Board of Realtors and the Southeast Minnesota Association of REALTORS). The web sites are essentially a "web-ified" version of the MLS database. So this is probably your best bet for finding real estate on the internet.
Sites like REALTOR.com don't generally get updated nearly as often or as quickly.
Keep in mind, however, that in a lot of markets, agents can sell houses a lot faster than someone can enter them in the MLS database. My wife and I recently bought our first home -- doing so before it was even "officially" listed. It was never on the web, in the paper, or even had a sign. An agent will also have search capabilities in the MLS software that the web site probably won't provide. In most situations your best bet is probably to use an agent.
The reigning notion today is that the laws of economics are not, after all, suspended in cyberspace like the laws of gravity in outer space.
Oh dear God! The whole Universe is going to come apart! The earth will be flung from the solar system! I hope I can get a good winter coat.
Exactly: the laws of economics are not suspended, but since the force of it is proportional to the product of your internet business's mass and that of your VC -- and inversely so to the square of the distance between you -- to some kid that knows HTML and wants to sell garden tools on the web, economics and good business sense don't seem to matter much.
as the other replier mentioned, the cost to run extra, unneeded fiber is minimal. The cost to "light it up", however, is NOT inconsequential.
You're misunderstanding previous comments. The reason extra fiber is installed is because the incremental cost of laying extra fiber is small. In general, however, laying fiber (and the cost of fiber itself) is much more expensive than "lighting it up." This is one reason long-haul links (e.g., MAN, WAN, and transoceanic SONET) are serial, whereas for very short reach links at higher data rates groups like the Optical Internetworking Forum and the InfiniBand Trade Association are specifying parallel links. At short distances, fiber is "cheap." But for long distances, the fiber's more expensive than the optoelectronics.
While visiting CowboyNeal's
website I found
his music section and downloaded a few mp3s. Sweet!:)
Despite growing up in small-town Iowa, I managed to develop a taste for rap/hip-hop/techno/etc.especially scratching. (I think it all started with Run-D.M.C.'s "Peter Piper" from Raising Hell.)
Anyway, I listened to "CowboyNeal Meets R2D2" and "All That Scratchin'" and wanted to extend my complements! They're quite good! (I also noted the reference to DJ QBertfor Christmas I received one of Mix Master Mike's CDs, another of the Invisbl Skratch Piklz and DJ for the Beastie Boys)
I'd like to learn this skill. Jon, what sort of turntables do you own? Someday, perhaps I'll get some DJ-quality turntables. . . I've got a lot of vinyl that needs playing . . .
I think IBM's contribution (this time around) to SOI is that they have a way to do it without incresing costs dramatically.
From what I know (as an IBMer who had a brief introduction to the technology when the processor guys first started working on it), I think you're right.
Media coverage, press releases, and the like seemed to be citing it as the "first commercially viable" (read: cheap, "easy") SOI process. It's essentially the same process as the bulk Si CMOS process, with the extra insulation layer.
SiGe refers only to heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs). IBM's current SiGe offering is BiCMOS5HP ("BiCMOS" refers to its combination of HBTs and CMOS FETs in the same process.) The FETs in this process are only 3.3V, 0.5um devices (not exactly cutting edge). So unless one were to design a bipolar processor, you won't see any performance improvement from using SiGe.
Where BiCMOS5HP really shines (with its 47 GHz HBTs) is in applications requiring high-performance analog applications such as RF and 10 Gbps fiber optic chipsets.
While it is true that IBM licenses a lot of its technology to other companies, licensing may very well be a non-issue in this case. As the technologies mature (and certainly 0.13um CMOS is not what I mean by "mature"), the lower-k dielectric might very well be incorporated into all of IBM's lines. In this case, it will be available to any company that uses IBM's foundry services without a "licensing" fee. While the use of SiLK will affect device models used for design simulation, the technology to implement it in manufacturing (which is what patents would likely pertain to) will be transparent to the chip designers.
As for a monopoly, I guess. But their monopoly does not impact me in anyway I can see.
In a sense, the fact that you "cannot see it" is the very reason it impacts you. According to the Conclusions of Law, "there are currently no products . . . that . . . users could substitute for [Windows] without incurring substantial costs" and Microsoft has "the ability to price substantially above the competetive level." If Microsoft had not engaged in "a series of exclusionary, anticompetetive, and predatory acts to maintain its monopoly power," PC users (including you) would have had more choice and, as a result of competition among OS makers, lower prices (whether directly through retail purchases, or indirectly in the price of OEM systems benefitting from lower licensing costs). As it stands, many users don't see the impact of Microsoft's actions because they've never had a choice.
Slashdot Mirror
(Note: I'm still on my Inmates... kick.)
Alan Cooper would seem to argue that this is not a license to take longer. Rather, users "have funny quirks . . . that interfere with the design process" (129) (emphasis added); "it is more important to define [an estimated user's requirements] in great and specific detail [and design based on these] than that the [user profile] be precisely the correct one" (129).
As in your second point, in the absence of any other data (e.g., no popular competing product the features of which you can copy) it may be better to take a guess and get something out there than spend 10 years making it "perfect."
Great point. Most people simply want to be productive without feeling stupid.
For some wonderful insight on that very issue (among other things), I would highly reccommend reading The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper. (I'm reading it now and thoroughly enjoying it.)
Whoever moderated this (Score:3, Insightful) is smoking crack. Funny, yes. Insightful, no.
If conductor thickness were all that mattered, I'd be deploying networks using airplaines filled with lead shot or some such thing :)
Somehow over the past 10 years that system has flipped and the buyer also has money.
Because you, the buyer, have given it to them in exchange for goods and services.
It's not "We had better make this quality because then no one will buy it"
Because people don't say to themselves, "This is not quality; therefore I won't buy it." Instead, they'll say, "This is not quality, but--what the heck--I'll buy it anyway!"
In a democratic society, if you don't vote or write your elected officials, you've got no right to complain about your government. Likewise, in a capatalist economy, if you don't vote with your money, you're responsible.
Well put.
I'm a custom IC designer at a major international computer company. Yet I had very little exposure to computers in school. (We learned from these things called "books.") And I can write, spell, read, sing, play an instrument, draw, paint, sculpt, appreciate opera, talk about economics and history, find my state on a world map, and do a host of other things!
If only we had computers, I wouldn't have received such a poor education.
Postin' 'Me, Too' like some brain-dead AOLer...
This isn't all that secure though. For example in Minnesota--where the standard passenger vehicle plate is three numbers and three letters (e.g., 123 ABC)--there are only (by my reckoning) 17,576,000 possible permutations. A cracking program that could test them one per second starting Jan. 1 would be guaranteed to find the correct one by July 22.
Cake.
Similarly, after I'm forced to change my many passwords at work (*), I write the new one down on a slip of paper which I keep briefly in my wallet. My wallet is always in the pocket of the pants I'm wearing unless I'm performing a monetary transaction or sleeping at home (or otherwise not wearing pants). If that piece of paper gets stolen, I've got bigger problems!
(*) Every 180 days, to something significantly enough different from your old one to cause trouble remembering
At least in this part of the country, a seemingly common application for maintaining an area's multiple listing service (MLS) is using Technology Concept's Ultrex. (See, for instance, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls (IA) Board of Realtors and the Southeast Minnesota Association of REALTORS). The web sites are essentially a "web-ified" version of the MLS database. So this is probably your best bet for finding real estate on the internet.
Sites like REALTOR.com don't generally get updated nearly as often or as quickly.
Keep in mind, however, that in a lot of markets, agents can sell houses a lot faster than someone can enter them in the MLS database. My wife and I recently bought our first home -- doing so before it was even "officially" listed. It was never on the web, in the paper, or even had a sign. An agent will also have search capabilities in the MLS software that the web site probably won't provide. In most situations your best bet is probably to use an agent.
Oh dear God! The whole Universe is going to come apart! The earth will be flung from the solar system! I hope I can get a good winter coat.
Exactly: the laws of economics are not suspended, but since the force of it is proportional to the product of your internet business's mass and that of your VC -- and inversely so to the square of the distance between you -- to some kid that knows HTML and wants to sell garden tools on the web, economics and good business sense don't seem to matter much.
</crappy analogy>
You're misunderstanding previous comments. The reason extra fiber is installed is because the incremental cost of laying extra fiber is small. In general, however, laying fiber (and the cost of fiber itself) is much more expensive than "lighting it up." This is one reason long-haul links (e.g., MAN, WAN, and transoceanic SONET) are serial, whereas for very short reach links at higher data rates groups like the Optical Internetworking Forum and the InfiniBand Trade Association are specifying parallel links. At short distances, fiber is "cheap." But for long distances, the fiber's more expensive than the optoelectronics.
Despite growing up in small-town Iowa, I managed to develop a taste for rap/hip-hop/techno/etc.especially scratching. (I think it all started with Run-D.M.C.'s "Peter Piper" from Raising Hell.)
Anyway, I listened to "CowboyNeal Meets R2D2" and "All That Scratchin'" and wanted to extend my complements! They're quite good! (I also noted the reference to DJ QBertfor Christmas I received one of Mix Master Mike's CDs, another of the Invisbl Skratch Piklz and DJ for the Beastie Boys)
I'd like to learn this skill. Jon, what sort of turntables do you own? Someday, perhaps I'll get some DJ-quality turntables. . . I've got a lot of vinyl that needs playing . . .
See my post from the other SOI article.
From what I know (as an IBMer who had a brief introduction to the technology when the processor guys first started working on it), I think you're right.
Media coverage, press releases, and the like seemed to be citing it as the "first commercially viable" (read: cheap, "easy") SOI process. It's essentially the same process as the bulk Si CMOS process, with the extra insulation layer.
SiGe refers only to heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs). IBM's current SiGe offering is BiCMOS5HP ("BiCMOS" refers to its combination of HBTs and CMOS FETs in the same process.) The FETs in this process are only 3.3V, 0.5um devices (not exactly cutting edge). So unless one were to design a bipolar processor, you won't see any performance improvement from using SiGe.
Where BiCMOS5HP really shines (with its 47 GHz HBTs) is in applications requiring high-performance analog applications such as RF and 10 Gbps fiber optic chipsets.
While it is true that IBM licenses a lot of its technology to other companies, licensing may very well be a non-issue in this case. As the technologies mature (and certainly 0.13um CMOS is not what I mean by "mature"), the lower-k dielectric might very well be incorporated into all of IBM's lines. In this case, it will be available to any company that uses IBM's foundry services without a "licensing" fee. While the use of SiLK will affect device models used for design simulation, the technology to implement it in manufacturing (which is what patents would likely pertain to) will be transparent to the chip designers.
In a sense, the fact that you "cannot see it" is the very reason it impacts you. According to the Conclusions of Law, "there are currently no products . . . that . . . users could substitute for [Windows] without incurring substantial costs" and Microsoft has "the ability to price substantially above the competetive level." If Microsoft had not engaged in "a series of exclusionary, anticompetetive, and predatory acts to maintain its monopoly power," PC users (including you) would have had more choice and, as a result of competition among OS makers, lower prices (whether directly through retail purchases, or indirectly in the price of OEM systems benefitting from lower licensing costs). As it stands, many users don't see the impact of Microsoft's actions because they've never had a choice.