Too bad we can't continue this in person, because it wold be great fun! I just have one more assertion: As far as the "evidence" for macroevolution and the "Big Bang" etc., I find the "mystical explanation", as you put it, to require less faith due to many inconsitancies or holes that the scientific community glosses over. Again, this requires a lot more discussion and it's difficult (and time consuming - my boss hates it when I'm on/.!) to do via this forum.
Also, I find it interesting that you were raised Roman Catholic. I've discovered anecdotally that of all Christian based religions, the Roman Catholic religion has probably turned many to athiesm due to the amount of religiosity involved. I believe that Christ came so that we don't have to say certain words in a certain order on a certain day, or light certain candles, or make funny motions with our hands, or wear silly cloths, or create a giangantic hierarchy of sexually deprived "servants", and the list goes on.
Ask yourself this: "Why do I insist on the existence of God and the Truth of the Bible?"
It's difficult for me to question God at this point. I can question many things regarding my beliefs of God, what the scriptures say about him (given the appropriate evidence, of course), but not his existance (which of coures, we can't disprove). Not because it was how I was raised - I was raised to think for myself and I was not forced to go to church. It's because I've really seen him in a sense through people, and through the earth that he created. To those who think this is ludicrous I say that it's easily just as ludicrous to think that the amazing creatures on this planet are random acts of matter - matter which came from... nothing.
So there you have it. If you're ever in Seattle we should continue this conversation at a coffee shop. Thank you for your company!
What Apple management simply canot get into their heads is that the fanaticism of Apple users does not mean that the rest of the world is wanting to switch to Mac.
There is some truth to this. However, as a Windows user and early day Linux user this is the first time that I have EVER considered buying a Mac. True, the iPod should be cross platform (I'd have one by now), but at the same time it is a selling point (albeit a small one). Also, Mac's have been gaining some serious marketshare. The main reason I dropped Linux was all of the hardware issues (I appreciate the fact that it's gotten a lot better of late but I have yet to try the latest distro). With a Mac, I get a Unix with a very cool GUI all with true plug and play. Once the applications mature for OS X, I'm sure I'll be buying myself a used G3 to compliment my Win2K boxes. From my anecedotal evidence, I conclude that I'm definitely not the only one looking to buy a Mac for the first time.
Running a few tests with C# proves that in some cases C# is faster then C++. This is, however, the exception and not the rule. If we use "unsafe" C# with "pointers" (not _quite_ the same as a pointer in C), even graphics processing is a reasonably good speed. This is a speculative statement, but I theorize that for most applications it would cost more for a specific "VM as hardware" PCI card then it would be to upgrade from a 1Ghz Athlon to a 1.2Ghz Athlon because in many cases C++ is only 15-20% faster on average. Search the newsgroups and MSDN for some early performance comparisons.
One final point: I've found that some graphics applications, even with "unsafe code", perform a lot slower then it's C++ counterpart. This may be due to a general lack of experience with graphics programming (the technical barrier of entry is lower), and the relative immaturity of the CLR. Remember, the JVM is a lot faster then it was in the late 90's.
There are some parts of the Bible that are very obviously False - the Earth was not built 6 days, for example.
The earth could have litterally have been built in 6 days. There is no way to prove or disprove this. Or, the context in which the word "Day" is described does not mean a literal 24 hour day. Of course, this is all speculation, and we can't prove one way or the other. I think the important Truth that we learn from this passage is that God created the earth, and we get to learn a little background to help us understand this. As far as the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John being contradictory, this is a very large conversation, but I'm quite frankly surprised that people can't logically reconcile many of the seeming contradictions. Actually, there are far more difficult to reconcile contractions in the bible outside of the Gospels, so I wonder why the Gospels are picked on so much.
2) Given the lack of access to early copies (which may not necessarily track the original texts themselves) and the lack of ability of most Christians to read the ancient languages (usually Greek) in which they were written, most people must thus read the Bible in the translation to their native language
If you review the process in which these early copies are translated I would expect that translation is extremely accurate. There is also a belief that devine intervention is involved during said translation. This is, of course, not proveable, but it is logical. Also, many biblical scholsrs are fluent in both Greek and Hebrew. Although I don't find this necessary for myself to understand scriptures, it is invaluable to the "science" as a whole.
2) You have no way of determining what that probability is.
I believe that the Bible is God's word. It is he that speaks to me through the Bible. Although I make mistakes, that does not prevent me from seeing the Truth and learning. I believe that when someone is honestly seeking the Truth from scripture that there is divine intervention. Many times we are not seeking the Truth but we are seeking to be, "Right" in our (or our culture/relgion's) eyes, or selfseeking in some other manner. All I can do is try to seek the Truth, and understand what I don't yet understand or know.
Speaking of text being a limitation, I find it hard to express a lot of these ideas via this forum. Thanks for the challenges though. To finish I think the two biggest problems with religion is fundamentalism and religiosity (religion for the sake of the religion). This is what creates the fanatics that blow up buildings in the name of "God", and protest abortion clinics in the name of "God".
* People who somehow "Know" that to believe in such a savior is "obviously rubbish" and are closed to all related truths not immediatly proveable by science.
Really, it goes both ways. It's popular in science to bash Christianity. If I were you, I wouldn't be so smug about your "knowledge" of this alleged falsehood. Just because religious zealots believe in a bunch of unsubstantiated dogma doesn't mean that everything they believe is false. I'll be the first to critique religiosity, but I still believe that Christ existed, and is who he says he is. It's not an easy conclusion for a scientist to come to, but its worth the investigation, and it's definitely worth more respect then you're giving it.
A common theme amongst these fanatics is an insistance on the absolute infallibility of their scriptures
I am not a fanatic, but I do believe this in a sense about the Bible. I believe that the Bible holds only truth, and nothing false. However, this belief has little relevance when you consider the following points:
1) Humans are fallable. Therefore, even if the Bible is in fact infallable, our interpretation of it may be incorrect. Our interpretation must always be balanced with other forms of evidence and reasoning. Fanatics don't have these checks and balances and end up doing things like "murdering in the name of God".
2) Text in and of itself is a very limited form of communication. This releates to interpreation by considering aspects of historical context and culture. Although our translators have done an excellent job in this area, we have to be very careful about how we read these texts.
None of this means that it's impossible to learn truth from the Bible, it just means that I can admit that I may not fully understand a passage, or that I may be completely wrong about a passage. This is important because every fanatic I've talked to (even Linux fanatics!) "know that they're Right", and there's nothing you can say or no evidence that you can present to change their mind. And this, my friend, is why we have bin Laden, and Linux/RMS zealots:-). (Disclaimer: I'm not against Linux at all I just know a lot of ppl who wouldn't switch OS's if their life depended on it, and I find that quite interesting).
As posted earlier by another user, many corporations have change management restrictions that will not allow an install of a patch that's "hot off the compiler". Many patches that comeout within 24-48 hours in OSS have not gone through the necessary regression testing that a closed-source patch may have recieved. In this case, the only benefit you have with OSS is the choice to use an unstable patch, however, I know few admins who would make such a choice. So, while I agree that there may be a benefit with OSS in this regard, I contend that the benefit is minimal and pratically none in larger organizations.
Thanks for taking the time to answer my concerns. I guess, for larger projects, I'd rather spend my time helping a non-profit like World Concern with their Information Systems then I would helping a bunch of for-profit companies increase their margin and get nothing in return. In some senses I see how MS makes this sound "unamerican". When I was younger I was a lot more passonaite about OSS (MiniLinux), and Shareware, Freeware, Postcardware, etc. I still am for smaller projects. However, when it comes to a complete office suite or even an entire OS (however, I think the Apple model is great) I'm still not convinced that this isn't going to eventually cut into "our" bottom line as programmers. Most industries have unions to ensure reasonable compensation for their work, whereas some software developers want to create competition against themselves. It's a good thing that I didn't get into programming for the money! Thanks again for your enlightening responses. I've learned a lot and will continue to keep an open mind.
I'm very confident with my skills and intellect. I have a lot to learn, but that's part of life! Still, what if I can *add value*? What if I add said value to an Open Source project? Your philosophy assumes that comptent programmers won't keep giving things away. They will based on the open source model, which will continually erode the value of software.
I love some of the OS projects that revolve around little utilities for programmers or other fun things. But when it's targeted towards a mass market and a multimillion dollar market I get concerned for all of us, not just myself. It'd be like John Carmack open sourcing Doom3. It'd be stupid, and he won't do it for 3 - 4 years, which is after he's made a sizeable (and deserving) profit off of it. Since I work in Information Systems everything I do is proprietary anyway. I just wonder why we are trying to lower the value of our skills and hard work. (Disclaimer: I'm partly playing Devils Advocate here, but only partly).
The second point is that there is no god given right for software developers to be able to make great gobs of money.
I agree. But I want to. Maybe not "great gobs", but a healthy amount. And for the time, intellectual competance, and creativity it takes, I think I deserve it. Maybe I should get an EE degree and work for Boeing as a Areospace engineer. Are they going to build an Open Source airplane and all you have to pay for is the raw manufacturing costs? Personally, I like to contribute to the community in multiple ways. However, what other profession strives to make the product of their job virtually worthless?
Until there is a major loss of life due to an impact...
This is statistically improbable. After a supposed billions of years the earth is still here and flurishing without a <AustinPowersVoice>"fricken laser"</AustinPowersVoice>" to blow up incoming asteroids. Sure, it happend 100 years ago. This doesn't mean it's going to happen in another century. Even IF one makes it to earth, it somehow has to somehow land on the 30% of land mass. Of that land mass a very small percentage is densely populated. It's possible, yes. It's happend, yet. Personally, I'm more concerned about an earthquake or/bin/laden.
But really, "Office productivity suites" are not "mundane" nor trivial. The only reason Open Source has been able to create decent office suites is because they've copied MS Office (which in turn copied Lotus but that's a different discussion!). There's a ton of market research and usability analysis that just isn't done with OSS. Sure, Linux as server doesn't need market research because us geeks know what we want! We also don't need perfect usability, so it's been extremely succseful. However, with Mac OS X, the first truely user friendly and solid Unix on the Desktop, the "mundane" stuff is open source, but the rest is all proprietary. This seems to be a great and very successful model. Mac OS X still get's paid, because people aren't just giveing away hours and hours of innovation for nothing. When it comes to the more ubiquitous stuff like file IO and a TCP/IP stack, we keep it open. I'm starting to ramble and I've got to get going, but to me its ounds like Apple figured it out, but it's not quite in line with many OSS (esp. GNU/GPL) philosophies, because the entire OS is not OSS.
Okay, so I've contributed many hours as a developer to OpenOffice (hypothetically)? How do I get paid? Seriously. Sure, it's fun. Sure, I benefit from all the other cool free applications that others are working on. But, how, as a programmer, do I pay my bills and my family? Sure, some things like a companies e-commerce system will remain proprietary, but I'm honestly afraid that the ubiquity of OS's and productivity applications will threaten my ability to make a reasonably comfortable income.
Because we have a lot of people (end-users and internal staff) using our software. We have many channels for product improvement and bug reporting. We also have an extensive loging system that will report back to us if any exception is thrown and not handled properly (everything we do is Web based so we control the software side). We generally get very positive feedback about the functionality of our tools. Ironically, I just got one of the first bug reports in 9-10 months for one tool this morning:-(.
Wrong. In short, by choosing to create an "XBox-only network", customers will have one community, not several with a bunch of different UI's. They won't have 5 bills from 5 different game companies for the 5 games they play, they'll have 1 bill from The Bill (sorry I couldn't resist). XBox is not fundamentally less secure because it is one system. This is a philisophical blunder similar but worse then faith in security through obscurity. By this logic, you are saying because all ~1million XBox Live users (predicted within the first year) are using one system, there's more chance of them getting hacked as opposed to ~5+ million PS2 using one of 5 online systems in which there's... oh, ~1million per system.
Finally, like you mentioned, a fricken game console should NOT be on a public network. I hope that Sony and Microsoft educate their online users about the need for a good firewall.
And yet, MAC was ahead of the ball until thet got lazy. And please don't get me started about OS2/Warp. I would have rather had a MAC at the time. MS was a 3rd runner OS once upon a time. It's not MS's fault that the competition sucked for most end users. Now that Apple finally got their act together with OS X, plus the cool hardware designs (iMac and TiBooks), they're definitely gaining marketshare. I know more PC people switching to Mac's then ever before. The same goes for Linux, even though it's still 2-3 years away from being a good desktop OS. Guess what, the market is correcting itself.
MS has done some wrong things (integrating IE NOT being one of them... Netscape sucked get over it), and the should be A) Punished and B) regulated so abuse doesn't happen again. However, the concept that they didn't contribute anything or much of anything to technology and that they should be severely punished as a corporation is purely formed by animosity towards a successful company.
Having been on teams producing 24 X 7, bullet proof code for communication servers and credit card processing...Now most coders use massive OOP libraries from who knows where built by slackers
Although there's some truth to your point, I think your first statement is what really matters. You worked for a company that made software for credit card processing. This means that you A) probably didn't have to continually debate the importance of software quality and B) probably had a budget to allowed for decent programmers and reasonable project timelines.
Although MFC was originilly pretty bad (what a surprise), it really has stabalized. Win2K is objectively a stable (read: not secure, stable) OS from a software standpoint and it's full of software with these so-called "unstable OOP libraries using GUI app builders". Also, from my personal experience, the base class library of.NET is also extremely stable (albeit it hasn't been around too long). The Java libraries have also gotten a lot more stable and are used in many mission critical e-commerce or financial systems. Really, there's no point in reinventing the wheel unless we are concerned about the wheels quality. Five years ago I may have agreed with you more, but times have changed and class libraries have matured greatly.
Very good post. This is very typical of American culture though. Look at our health care. I just posted a rant a week ago about how we spend several orders of magnatude more on trying to cure preventable diseases (AIDS, many cancers, etc.), then trying to research how we can prevent them in the first place. Obviously we need cures, just like we need software testing, but that should be the absolute LAST line of defence. The company I work for is too small to have a QA or a Software Test Engineer, so we essentially "are not allowed to code bugs":-). This attitude has contributed to applications that have very few bugs, albeit we generally code Intranet apps so we don't have to worry about multiple platforms, OS versions, etc.
Amen. Although I'm a Windows user through and through (ditched Linux about a year after Win2K came out), I'd say the most compelling "Unix on the Desktop" for me right now is a MAC. As I'm looking at relatively lame PC laptops, the TiBook is looking very attractive!
everyone has my phone number. Or those with a phonebook at least.
That's not the point - RTFA. Do they know who you called and when, or who called you and when? Do they know your personal PIN that you dial for your voice mail? Do they know the bank number that you just dialed into our phone to check your balance? This isn't about a "special phonebook" that the FBI has access to.
Slashdot Mirror
Too bad we can't continue this in person, because it wold be great fun! I just have one more assertion: As far as the "evidence" for macroevolution and the "Big Bang" etc., I find the "mystical explanation", as you put it, to require less faith due to many inconsitancies or holes that the scientific community glosses over. Again, this requires a lot more discussion and it's difficult (and time consuming - my boss hates it when I'm on /.!) to do via this forum.
Also, I find it interesting that you were raised Roman Catholic. I've discovered anecdotally that of all Christian based religions, the Roman Catholic religion has probably turned many to athiesm due to the amount of religiosity involved. I believe that Christ came so that we don't have to say certain words in a certain order on a certain day, or light certain candles, or make funny motions with our hands, or wear silly cloths, or create a giangantic hierarchy of sexually deprived "servants", and the list goes on.
Ask yourself this: "Why do I insist on the existence of God and the Truth of the Bible?"
It's difficult for me to question God at this point. I can question many things regarding my beliefs of God, what the scriptures say about him (given the appropriate evidence, of course), but not his existance (which of coures, we can't disprove). Not because it was how I was raised - I was raised to think for myself and I was not forced to go to church. It's because I've really seen him in a sense through people, and through the earth that he created. To those who think this is ludicrous I say that it's easily just as ludicrous to think that the amazing creatures on this planet are random acts of matter - matter which came from... nothing.
So there you have it. If you're ever in Seattle we should continue this conversation at a coffee shop. Thank you for your company!
What Apple management simply canot get into their heads is that the fanaticism of Apple users does not mean that the rest of the world is wanting to switch to Mac.
There is some truth to this. However, as a Windows user and early day Linux user this is the first time that I have EVER considered buying a Mac. True, the iPod should be cross platform (I'd have one by now), but at the same time it is a selling point (albeit a small one). Also, Mac's have been gaining some serious marketshare. The main reason I dropped Linux was all of the hardware issues (I appreciate the fact that it's gotten a lot better of late but I have yet to try the latest distro). With a Mac, I get a Unix with a very cool GUI all with true plug and play. Once the applications mature for OS X, I'm sure I'll be buying myself a used G3 to compliment my Win2K boxes. From my anecedotal evidence, I conclude that I'm definitely not the only one looking to buy a Mac for the first time.
Running a few tests with C# proves that in some cases C# is faster then C++. This is, however, the exception and not the rule. If we use "unsafe" C# with "pointers" (not _quite_ the same as a pointer in C), even graphics processing is a reasonably good speed. This is a speculative statement, but I theorize that for most applications it would cost more for a specific "VM as hardware" PCI card then it would be to upgrade from a 1Ghz Athlon to a 1.2Ghz Athlon because in many cases C++ is only 15-20% faster on average. Search the newsgroups and MSDN for some early performance comparisons.
One final point: I've found that some graphics applications, even with "unsafe code", perform a lot slower then it's C++ counterpart. This may be due to a general lack of experience with graphics programming (the technical barrier of entry is lower), and the relative immaturity of the CLR. Remember, the JVM is a lot faster then it was in the late 90's.
Thanks for the well thought reply.
There are some parts of the Bible that are very obviously False - the Earth was not built 6 days, for example.
The earth could have litterally have been built in 6 days. There is no way to prove or disprove this. Or, the context in which the word "Day" is described does not mean a literal 24 hour day. Of course, this is all speculation, and we can't prove one way or the other. I think the important Truth that we learn from this passage is that God created the earth, and we get to learn a little background to help us understand this. As far as the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John being contradictory, this is a very large conversation, but I'm quite frankly surprised that people can't logically reconcile many of the seeming contradictions. Actually, there are far more difficult to reconcile contractions in the bible outside of the Gospels, so I wonder why the Gospels are picked on so much.
2) Given the lack of access to early copies (which may not necessarily track the original texts themselves) and the lack of ability of most Christians to read the ancient languages (usually Greek) in which they were written, most people must thus read the Bible in the translation to their native language
If you review the process in which these early copies are translated I would expect that translation is extremely accurate. There is also a belief that devine intervention is involved during said translation. This is, of course, not proveable, but it is logical. Also, many biblical scholsrs are fluent in both Greek and Hebrew. Although I don't find this necessary for myself to understand scriptures, it is invaluable to the "science" as a whole.
2) You have no way of determining what that probability is.
I believe that the Bible is God's word. It is he that speaks to me through the Bible. Although I make mistakes, that does not prevent me from seeing the Truth and learning. I believe that when someone is honestly seeking the Truth from scripture that there is divine intervention. Many times we are not seeking the Truth but we are seeking to be, "Right" in our (or our culture/relgion's) eyes, or selfseeking in some other manner. All I can do is try to seek the Truth, and understand what I don't yet understand or know.
Speaking of text being a limitation, I find it hard to express a lot of these ideas via this forum. Thanks for the challenges though. To finish I think the two biggest problems with religion is fundamentalism and religiosity (religion for the sake of the religion). This is what creates the fanatics that blow up buildings in the name of "God", and protest abortion clinics in the name of "God".
I'm sorry you feel that way. Could you please provide me with some evidence or is this purely speculation?
And the:
* People who somehow "Know" that to believe in such a savior is "obviously rubbish" and are closed to all related truths not immediatly proveable by science.
Really, it goes both ways. It's popular in science to bash Christianity. If I were you, I wouldn't be so smug about your "knowledge" of this alleged falsehood. Just because religious zealots believe in a bunch of unsubstantiated dogma doesn't mean that everything they believe is false. I'll be the first to critique religiosity, but I still believe that Christ existed, and is who he says he is. It's not an easy conclusion for a scientist to come to, but its worth the investigation, and it's definitely worth more respect then you're giving it.
A common theme amongst these fanatics is an insistance on the absolute infallibility of their scriptures
:-). (Disclaimer: I'm not against Linux at all I just know a lot of ppl who wouldn't switch OS's if their life depended on it, and I find that quite interesting).
I am not a fanatic, but I do believe this in a sense about the Bible. I believe that the Bible holds only truth, and nothing false. However, this belief has little relevance when you consider the following points:
1) Humans are fallable. Therefore, even if the Bible is in fact infallable, our interpretation of it may be incorrect. Our interpretation must always be balanced with other forms of evidence and reasoning. Fanatics don't have these checks and balances and end up doing things like "murdering in the name of God".
2) Text in and of itself is a very limited form of communication. This releates to interpreation by considering aspects of historical context and culture. Although our translators have done an excellent job in this area, we have to be very careful about how we read these texts.
None of this means that it's impossible to learn truth from the Bible, it just means that I can admit that I may not fully understand a passage, or that I may be completely wrong about a passage. This is important because every fanatic I've talked to (even Linux fanatics!) "know that they're Right", and there's nothing you can say or no evidence that you can present to change their mind. And this, my friend, is why we have bin Laden, and Linux/RMS zealots
As posted earlier by another user, many corporations have change management restrictions that will not allow an install of a patch that's "hot off the compiler". Many patches that comeout within 24-48 hours in OSS have not gone through the necessary regression testing that a closed-source patch may have recieved. In this case, the only benefit you have with OSS is the choice to use an unstable patch, however, I know few admins who would make such a choice. So, while I agree that there may be a benefit with OSS in this regard, I contend that the benefit is minimal and pratically none in larger organizations.
This is a horrible analogy as it trivializes the role that a Server plays and acts as if it's a simple appliance.
Unions cater to the least skilled individuals who are least capable of adding value.
So, all the Boeing engineers with BS or MS degrees fall into this category?
Thanks for taking the time to answer my concerns. I guess, for larger projects, I'd rather spend my time helping a non-profit like World Concern with their Information Systems then I would helping a bunch of for-profit companies increase their margin and get nothing in return. In some senses I see how MS makes this sound "unamerican". When I was younger I was a lot more passonaite about OSS (MiniLinux), and Shareware, Freeware, Postcardware, etc. I still am for smaller projects. However, when it comes to a complete office suite or even an entire OS (however, I think the Apple model is great) I'm still not convinced that this isn't going to eventually cut into "our" bottom line as programmers. Most industries have unions to ensure reasonable compensation for their work, whereas some software developers want to create competition against themselves. It's a good thing that I didn't get into programming for the money! Thanks again for your enlightening responses. I've learned a lot and will continue to keep an open mind.
I'm very confident with my skills and intellect. I have a lot to learn, but that's part of life! Still, what if I can *add value*? What if I add said value to an Open Source project? Your philosophy assumes that comptent programmers won't keep giving things away. They will based on the open source model, which will continually erode the value of software.
I love some of the OS projects that revolve around little utilities for programmers or other fun things. But when it's targeted towards a mass market and a multimillion dollar market I get concerned for all of us, not just myself. It'd be like John Carmack open sourcing Doom3. It'd be stupid, and he won't do it for 3 - 4 years, which is after he's made a sizeable (and deserving) profit off of it. Since I work in Information Systems everything I do is proprietary anyway. I just wonder why we are trying to lower the value of our skills and hard work. (Disclaimer: I'm partly playing Devils Advocate here, but only partly).
The second point is that there is no god given right for software developers to be able to make great gobs of money.
I agree. But I want to. Maybe not "great gobs", but a healthy amount. And for the time, intellectual competance, and creativity it takes, I think I deserve it. Maybe I should get an EE degree and work for Boeing as a Areospace engineer. Are they going to build an Open Source airplane and all you have to pay for is the raw manufacturing costs? Personally, I like to contribute to the community in multiple ways. However, what other profession strives to make the product of their job virtually worthless?
Until there is a major loss of life due to an impact...
/bin/laden.
This is statistically improbable. After a supposed billions of years the earth is still here and flurishing without a <AustinPowersVoice>"fricken laser"</AustinPowersVoice>" to blow up incoming asteroids. Sure, it happend 100 years ago. This doesn't mean it's going to happen in another century. Even IF one makes it to earth, it somehow has to somehow land on the 30% of land mass. Of that land mass a very small percentage is densely populated. It's possible, yes. It's happend, yet. Personally, I'm more concerned about an earthquake or
But really, "Office productivity suites" are not "mundane" nor trivial. The only reason Open Source has been able to create decent office suites is because they've copied MS Office (which in turn copied Lotus but that's a different discussion!). There's a ton of market research and usability analysis that just isn't done with OSS. Sure, Linux as server doesn't need market research because us geeks know what we want! We also don't need perfect usability, so it's been extremely succseful. However, with Mac OS X, the first truely user friendly and solid Unix on the Desktop, the "mundane" stuff is open source, but the rest is all proprietary. This seems to be a great and very successful model. Mac OS X still get's paid, because people aren't just giveing away hours and hours of innovation for nothing. When it comes to the more ubiquitous stuff like file IO and a TCP/IP stack, we keep it open. I'm starting to ramble and I've got to get going, but to me its ounds like Apple figured it out, but it's not quite in line with many OSS (esp. GNU/GPL) philosophies, because the entire OS is not OSS.
Okay, so I've contributed many hours as a developer to OpenOffice (hypothetically)? How do I get paid? Seriously. Sure, it's fun. Sure, I benefit from all the other cool free applications that others are working on. But, how, as a programmer, do I pay my bills and my family? Sure, some things like a companies e-commerce system will remain proprietary, but I'm honestly afraid that the ubiquity of OS's and productivity applications will threaten my ability to make a reasonably comfortable income.
Because we have a lot of people (end-users and internal staff) using our software. We have many channels for product improvement and bug reporting. We also have an extensive loging system that will report back to us if any exception is thrown and not handled properly (everything we do is Web based so we control the software side). We generally get very positive feedback about the functionality of our tools. Ironically, I just got one of the first bug reports in 9-10 months for one tool this morning :-(.
Wrong. In short, by choosing to create an "XBox-only network", customers will have one community, not several with a bunch of different UI's. They won't have 5 bills from 5 different game companies for the 5 games they play, they'll have 1 bill from The Bill (sorry I couldn't resist). XBox is not fundamentally less secure because it is one system. This is a philisophical blunder similar but worse then faith in security through obscurity. By this logic, you are saying because all ~1million XBox Live users (predicted within the first year) are using one system, there's more chance of them getting hacked as opposed to ~5+ million PS2 using one of 5 online systems in which there's... oh, ~1million per system.
Finally, like you mentioned, a fricken game console should NOT be on a public network. I hope that Sony and Microsoft educate their online users about the need for a good firewall.
No. A companies product that you make a very free choice to purchase is not a tax. Next please.
And yet, MAC was ahead of the ball until thet got lazy. And please don't get me started about OS2/Warp. I would have rather had a MAC at the time. MS was a 3rd runner OS once upon a time. It's not MS's fault that the competition sucked for most end users. Now that Apple finally got their act together with OS X, plus the cool hardware designs (iMac and TiBooks), they're definitely gaining marketshare. I know more PC people switching to Mac's then ever before. The same goes for Linux, even though it's still 2-3 years away from being a good desktop OS. Guess what, the market is correcting itself.
MS has done some wrong things (integrating IE NOT being one of them... Netscape sucked get over it), and the should be A) Punished and B) regulated so abuse doesn't happen again. However, the concept that they didn't contribute anything or much of anything to technology and that they should be severely punished as a corporation is purely formed by animosity towards a successful company.
Having been on teams producing 24 X 7, bullet proof code for communication servers and credit card processing...Now most coders use massive OOP libraries from who knows where built by slackers
.NET is also extremely stable (albeit it hasn't been around too long). The Java libraries have also gotten a lot more stable and are used in many mission critical e-commerce or financial systems. Really, there's no point in reinventing the wheel unless we are concerned about the wheels quality. Five years ago I may have agreed with you more, but times have changed and class libraries have matured greatly.
Although there's some truth to your point, I think your first statement is what really matters. You worked for a company that made software for credit card processing. This means that you A) probably didn't have to continually debate the importance of software quality and B) probably had a budget to allowed for decent programmers and reasonable project timelines.
Although MFC was originilly pretty bad (what a surprise), it really has stabalized. Win2K is objectively a stable (read: not secure, stable) OS from a software standpoint and it's full of software with these so-called "unstable OOP libraries using GUI app builders". Also, from my personal experience, the base class library of
Very good post. This is very typical of American culture though. Look at our health care. I just posted a rant a week ago about how we spend several orders of magnatude more on trying to cure preventable diseases (AIDS, many cancers, etc.), then trying to research how we can prevent them in the first place. Obviously we need cures, just like we need software testing, but that should be the absolute LAST line of defence. The company I work for is too small to have a QA or a Software Test Engineer, so we essentially "are not allowed to code bugs" :-). This attitude has contributed to applications that have very few bugs, albeit we generally code Intranet apps so we don't have to worry about multiple platforms, OS versions, etc.
Amen. Although I'm a Windows user through and through (ditched Linux about a year after Win2K came out), I'd say the most compelling "Unix on the Desktop" for me right now is a MAC. As I'm looking at relatively lame PC laptops, the TiBook is looking very attractive!
What if a "blacklisted" site is cached on Google?
everyone has my phone number. Or those with a phonebook at least.
That's not the point - RTFA. Do they know who you called and when, or who called you and when? Do they know your personal PIN that you dial for your voice mail? Do they know the bank number that you just dialed into our phone to check your balance? This isn't about a "special phonebook" that the FBI has access to.