But when the expected is occurring, a well-programmed robot is consistently better than a human. "Well-programmed" is the key. Of course, you still need an expert watching the machine because the machine can't tell whether what's happening is expected or unexpected.
Overall, I'd say this is one more example of better health care at higher prices - you pay for the brain surgeon AND the robot, but your surgery is more likely to be successful.
Obi Wan: Your father was fired for crashing servers. Luke: I thought he got his CCIE and got promoted. Obi-Wan: Your father was seduced by the Higher Paychecks. He ceased to be an MCSE and became a CCIE. When that happened, the incompetent man who was your father was fired. So what I told you was true. From a certain point of view.
Banks have safes and armored cars for pragmatic reasons, not legal ones. It is just as illegal to take $100,000 from a shopping cart as it is from an armored car. On a practical level, it is obviously safer in the armored car.
The responsibility you indicate mention is real, but it is the responsibility to the shareholders. If a bank transports money in a shopping cart and it's stolen, the thieves will go to jail. The directors who authorized the insecure transport will probably be fired, and might be sued by shareholders.
Crackers should go to jail. Incompetent admins should be fired. These are two separate problems.
Yeah, same way you can hold the punks responsible if your windows can't stand up to rocks hurled at them. You KNEW there were rocks out there, you KNEW that any kid over the age of six could throw them through your window, you KNEW that plywood could be nailed up over your windows. So it's your fault the windows got busted.
I should have pointed this out in my first post...the interpreter has to be licensed for the same reasons that teachers do - strong teacher unions. You can't get the job without a teaching certificate. You can't get the certificate without a heavy dose of education courses in college. The certification is a barrier to entry to the profession, making it hard for education administrators to replace teachers.
Teacher certifications are driven by politics (union lobbyists paid by teachers) rather than safety issues.
I like VB; it does well what it does well, like any tool. When misused, of course it's problematice (ever drive a screw with a hammer?) VB is not an application development language. It is a scripting language that was originally conceived as a GUI prototyping tool. You could quickly and easily find out where your users liked where you'd placed OK and Cancel in dialog boxes. You can write usable apps with it if they're not too large, and, quite frankly, most business apps that VB is suitable for are better implemented as standalone Access databases. Where it shines is in Windows administration (which is how I pay the bills).
It's seen wide usage in application development because the PHBs of the world have realized they can hire a kid with two semesters of VB programming under his belt and watch him and churn out commercially acceptable results. Ask yourself this...would you design a commercial airliner that was powered by a lawnmower engine? Would you build a skscraper out of wood? Would you write a 100,000-user database in VB?
Note that in the early days of flight, airplanes were run by small engines, early commercial buildings were built out of wood. Large business apps are currently written in VB. Eventually there will be some sort of licensing or regulation for programmers and the situation will change dramatically. (We can't have large numbers of buggy programs installed on the National Information Infrastructure, after all...*cough* Windows *cough*...somebody could zombie them and DOS the internet out of existence!)
Shrug. Do what works for you. But remember that the makers of VB are the people who, before the release of VB5, hyped at EVERY VB conference that there would be NO VBRUN50.DLL! (instead there was a MSVBVM50.DLL - same problem, different name)
Umm...you do realize you repeated yourself, right? High speed=short shutter time=low light.
Digital cameras aren't very good for action photography. Right...and there's a world-wide market for maybe five computers (true when it was said) and 640K is enough for anyone (true when it was said). Methinks you missed the point of the article (you did read the article, didn't you?) There is a new technology now available that is about an order of magnitude better than CCDs. So I suppose that what you say is true...for now.
Excellent straw man, but you missed some points. On Bill Clinton's watch,
- Al Qaeda bombed the WTC (but failed to collapse it as the wanted to)
- Al Qaeda bombed the USS Cole
- Al Qaeda bombed US embassies
- Al Qaeda sent known terrorists into the US to train for 9/11
This is pretty damning on both the domestic and foreign policy sides.
As for military morale, I was in the Army during Clinton's presidency. He didn't appoint a secretary of the Army for over a year, and he couldn't salute. He apparently didn't care about the big picture or the little details - that didn't help morale.
HOWEVER, this has little to do with Sheila Widnall. Let me know if you have any reason to suspect she's inept.
A side note...have you ever worked for an idiot before? Do you believe it is possible to work for an idiot and still be competent?
...pay attention to who's saying the government is wrong: Sheila Widnall. From 1993-1997, she was secretary of the Air Force, arguably the most technologically advanced of the four branches of the US military. For those not up on US government, the Secretary of the Air Force is the civilian head of the US Air Force. All the generals answered to her; she answered only to the Secretary of Defense, who answers to POTUS. She would have had authority and responsiblity for all the research funded by the Air Force, so she's seen both sides of this (though I don't know to what extent she micromanaged it).
She makes a VERY good point that what the government should do is to determine what's classified research and what's not. It's reasonable to restrict the participation of foreign nationals in classified research, but the concern with this grant was that it was for unclassified research.
For you cynics, note that this grant wasn't for that much money (only half a million) and was probably chosen to send a message because they didn't much want to do it anyway and it wasn't enough money to worry about.
UXO represents sins committed (if you want to be harsh) by leaders of the USA nearly 30 years ago. Most in power then are now dead. Many in power now opposed the war then and did all they could to remove from power the leaders who supported it (does the name "Clinton" ring a bell?)
A living POW represents sins committed RIGHT NOW by the POW's captors.
Hi. I'm an artist. OK. Give me all your art for free. You must also provide step-by-step instructions on how you created the art. You must also provide information on what the art did for you and what the art should do for me. If you ever have a show in an art gallery, I should be able to video tape it and give away the videos, even if you charged for admission. Anything that you I can conceive of that you can produce, you MUST provide for free.
THAT attitude sucks. It's tantamount to slavery - that's kind of a loaded word in the USA, but I don't know what else to call it when you want to mandate what someone produces and you don't want to pay them.
If you can't read source code, I'll bet you can pay someone else to read it for you. Or perhaps they'd take some custom art in exchange. That's the cool thing about a market economy.
any laws that interfere with that free exchange are not only artificial, but immoral as well I agree completely. I believe that anyone stupid enough to enter into an agreement that limits their ability to exchange information has been justly punished for their stupidity.
Have you even READ what the article said? This guy couldn't find an answer. He didn't want to pay for a quick easy answer because he wouldn't be able to repost the information elsewhere. So he found his own solution.
Then, in an incredibly mind-blowing twist of logic, instead of sharing his information on USENET, IRC, and his personal web page, he whines to slashdot that he's being oppressed! And you agree with him!
The authors of the software aren't saying that information about their software can't be shared; they're saying that the information they provide for a fee under contract can't be shared. You are under no obligation to enter into that contract. You can, like the writer of the article, find the answer on your own. The author is not complaining that he was limited in his ability to use the software or find information about it. He is complaining that the answer wasn't easy and convenient.
This seems like Closed Source by another route. Um...no. If the source code is available, and if you can do whatever you want with it, then there is NO RATIONAL BASIS by which you can call this closed source.
Closed source: You don't know how the program works, and even if you find out, you can't tell anybody. Open Source: You know how the program works. No argument there, but I don't see the relevance to the current thread. I mod you -12, Off Topic. If you have the source, you know how the program works. Period. Carriage return. Eject sheet. If you can't read source code and the program's author doesn't provide hand-holding documentation, that's a personal problem (yours, not theirs).
Binding the answeree to some form of NDA seems a bit much, particularly if they are not directly plagiarizing the material. A bit much? A bit stupid, perhaps, but there's nothing illegal, unethical, or immoral about being stupid (if it was, 90% of the posters in this thread would be in trouble). If they are making their money off of support forums (fora?) they are smart to protect that with contractual obligations. Whining that they should give it away for free is self-defeating.
To me this goes against the idea of what "Open Source" means. It means free information.
Really...well, to me "Open Source" means the contribution of the entire contents of your bank account to me. As long as we're redefining commonly-used terms for our own personal benefit, let's just go for the gold, shall we?
Sad? Underhanded? Are you suggesting they didn't provide the source code? Oh, they did provide the source code? Ah, I see. You are whining because you can't read the source code. You want them to provide the source code AND you want them to explain to you what it does. For free.
Hey, the great thing about the free software community is that when someone doesn't like the code or the documentation, they can change it! Or they can whine...
So...your position is that when ignorant people use source code that I provide for free, then I am obligated to explain to them what it is that my source code does? This isn't about best practices or business plans or anything like that...it's a guy who got software for no cost whining because the vendor has copyrighted the documentation and charges for support.
P.S. My answer then will be the same as it is now..."If you don't know how to use your FREE software, pay someone who can teach you. Don't whine."
The SOURCE CODE IS AVAILABLE! If you have a problem, USE THE SOURCE! If you can't read the source code, do you feel the spirit of open source software is that a programmer somewhere must interpret it for you? Because that's what I hear you saying..."I can't read the source so they have to provide documentation for free."
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This is EXACTLY why RMS demands the nomenclature "GNU/LINUX". Linux is a kernel, but GNU is what people actually use.
who wants to code on a machine that can only use one language?
The Feds. They've done it before (Ada) and, I'm sure, wouldn't mind doing it again.
But when the expected is occurring, a well-programmed robot is consistently better than a human. "Well-programmed" is the key. Of course, you still need an expert watching the machine because the machine can't tell whether what's happening is expected or unexpected.
Overall, I'd say this is one more example of better health care at higher prices - you pay for the brain surgeon AND the robot, but your surgery is more likely to be successful.
Q: How many Newtons does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Faux! There to eat lemons, axe gravy soup!
Uhhh...yeah. Isn't that what I said?
Obi Wan: Your father was fired for crashing servers.
Luke: I thought he got his CCIE and got promoted.
Obi-Wan: Your father was seduced by the Higher Paychecks. He ceased to be an MCSE and became a CCIE. When that happened, the incompetent man who was your father was fired. So what I told you was true. From a certain point of view.
=)
Banks have safes and armored cars for pragmatic reasons, not legal ones. It is just as illegal to take $100,000 from a shopping cart as it is from an armored car. On a practical level, it is obviously safer in the armored car.
The responsibility you indicate mention is real, but it is the responsibility to the shareholders. If a bank transports money in a shopping cart and it's stolen, the thieves will go to jail. The directors who authorized the insecure transport will probably be fired, and might be sued by shareholders.
Crackers should go to jail. Incompetent admins should be fired. These are two separate problems.
Yeah, same way you can hold the punks responsible if your windows can't stand up to rocks hurled at them. You KNEW there were rocks out there, you KNEW that any kid over the age of six could throw them through your window, you KNEW that plywood could be nailed up over your windows. So it's your fault the windows got busted.
Moron.
I should have pointed this out in my first post...the interpreter has to be licensed for the same reasons that teachers do - strong teacher unions. You can't get the job without a teaching certificate. You can't get the certificate without a heavy dose of education courses in college. The certification is a barrier to entry to the profession, making it hard for education administrators to replace teachers.
Teacher certifications are driven by politics (union lobbyists paid by teachers) rather than safety issues.
News flash - most teachers have to be certified, even if they don't use sign language.
No. I'd make the same remark, but it would be a bitter sarcastic remark instead of a humorous sarcastic remark.
I like VB; it does well what it does well, like any tool. When misused, of course it's problematice (ever drive a screw with a hammer?) VB is not an application development language. It is a scripting language that was originally conceived as a GUI prototyping tool. You could quickly and easily find out where your users liked where you'd placed OK and Cancel in dialog boxes. You can write usable apps with it if they're not too large, and, quite frankly, most business apps that VB is suitable for are better implemented as standalone Access databases. Where it shines is in Windows administration (which is how I pay the bills).
It's seen wide usage in application development because the PHBs of the world have realized they can hire a kid with two semesters of VB programming under his belt and watch him and churn out commercially acceptable results. Ask yourself this...would you design a commercial airliner that was powered by a lawnmower engine? Would you build a skscraper out of wood? Would you write a 100,000-user database in VB?
Note that in the early days of flight, airplanes were run by small engines, early commercial buildings were built out of wood. Large business apps are currently written in VB. Eventually there will be some sort of licensing or regulation for programmers and the situation will change dramatically. (We can't have large numbers of buggy programs installed on the National Information Infrastructure, after all...*cough* Windows *cough*...somebody could zombie them and DOS the internet out of existence!)
Shrug. Do what works for you. But remember that the makers of VB are the people who, before the release of VB5, hyped at EVERY VB conference that there would be NO VBRUN50.DLL! (instead there was a MSVBVM50.DLL - same problem, different name)
Umm...you do realize you repeated yourself, right? High speed=short shutter time=low light.
Digital cameras aren't very good for action photography.
Right...and there's a world-wide market for maybe five computers (true when it was said) and 640K is enough for anyone (true when it was said). Methinks you missed the point of the article (you did read the article, didn't you?) There is a new technology now available that is about an order of magnitude better than CCDs. So I suppose that what you say is true...for now.
DUH priests play DnD...haven't you ever heard of clerics?
For that kind of text, it might be better to just etch it into stone or something, at least you have some hope of seeing it intact in 2000 years.
Photolithography on aluminum plates for long-term data storage. It's been done.
Excellent straw man, but you missed some points. On Bill Clinton's watch,
- Al Qaeda bombed the WTC (but failed to collapse it as the wanted to)
- Al Qaeda bombed the USS Cole
- Al Qaeda bombed US embassies
- Al Qaeda sent known terrorists into the US to train for 9/11
This is pretty damning on both the domestic and foreign policy sides.
As for military morale, I was in the Army during Clinton's presidency. He didn't appoint a secretary of the Army for over a year, and he couldn't salute. He apparently didn't care about the big picture or the little details - that didn't help morale.
HOWEVER, this has little to do with Sheila Widnall. Let me know if you have any reason to suspect she's inept.
A side note...have you ever worked for an idiot before? Do you believe it is possible to work for an idiot and still be competent?
...pay attention to who's saying the government is wrong: Sheila Widnall. From 1993-1997, she was secretary of the Air Force, arguably the most technologically advanced of the four branches of the US military. For those not up on US government, the Secretary of the Air Force is the civilian head of the US Air Force. All the generals answered to her; she answered only to the Secretary of Defense, who answers to POTUS. She would have had authority and responsiblity for all the research funded by the Air Force, so she's seen both sides of this (though I don't know to what extent she micromanaged it).
She makes a VERY good point that what the government should do is to determine what's classified research and what's not. It's reasonable to restrict the participation of foreign nationals in classified research, but the concern with this grant was that it was for unclassified research.
For you cynics, note that this grant wasn't for that much money (only half a million) and was probably chosen to send a message because they didn't much want to do it anyway and it wasn't enough money to worry about.
UXO represents sins committed (if you want to be harsh) by leaders of the USA nearly 30 years ago. Most in power then are now dead. Many in power now opposed the war then and did all they could to remove from power the leaders who supported it (does the name "Clinton" ring a bell?)
A living POW represents sins committed RIGHT NOW by the POW's captors.
Get the difference?
Hi. I'm an artist.
OK. Give me all your art for free. You must also provide step-by-step instructions on how you created the art. You must also provide information on what the art did for you and what the art should do for me. If you ever have a show in an art gallery, I should be able to video tape it and give away the videos, even if you charged for admission. Anything that you I can conceive of that you can produce, you MUST provide for free.
THAT attitude sucks. It's tantamount to slavery - that's kind of a loaded word in the USA, but I don't know what else to call it when you want to mandate what someone produces and you don't want to pay them.
If you can't read source code, I'll bet you can pay someone else to read it for you. Or perhaps they'd take some custom art in exchange. That's the cool thing about a market economy.
any laws that interfere with that free exchange are not only artificial, but immoral as well
I agree completely. I believe that anyone stupid enough to enter into an agreement that limits their ability to exchange information has been justly punished for their stupidity.
Have you even READ what the article said? This guy couldn't find an answer. He didn't want to pay for a quick easy answer because he wouldn't be able to repost the information elsewhere. So he found his own solution.
Then, in an incredibly mind-blowing twist of logic, instead of sharing his information on USENET, IRC, and his personal web page, he whines to slashdot that he's being oppressed! And you agree with him!
The authors of the software aren't saying that information about their software can't be shared; they're saying that the information they provide for a fee under contract can't be shared. You are under no obligation to enter into that contract. You can, like the writer of the article, find the answer on your own. The author is not complaining that he was limited in his ability to use the software or find information about it. He is complaining that the answer wasn't easy and convenient.
This seems like Closed Source by another route.
Um...no. If the source code is available, and if you can do whatever you want with it, then there is NO RATIONAL BASIS by which you can call this closed source.
Closed source: You don't know how the program works, and even if you find out, you can't tell anybody.
Open Source: You know how the program works.
No argument there, but I don't see the relevance to the current thread. I mod you -12, Off Topic. If you have the source, you know how the program works. Period. Carriage return. Eject sheet. If you can't read source code and the program's author doesn't provide hand-holding documentation, that's a personal problem (yours, not theirs).
Binding the answeree to some form of NDA seems a bit much, particularly if they are not directly plagiarizing the material.
A bit much? A bit stupid, perhaps, but there's nothing illegal, unethical, or immoral about being stupid (if it was, 90% of the posters in this thread would be in trouble). If they are making their money off of support forums (fora?) they are smart to protect that with contractual obligations. Whining that they should give it away for free is self-defeating.
To me this goes against the idea of what "Open Source" means. It means free information.
Really...well, to me "Open Source" means the contribution of the entire contents of your bank account to me. As long as we're redefining commonly-used terms for our own personal benefit, let's just go for the gold, shall we?
Sad? Underhanded? Are you suggesting they didn't provide the source code? Oh, they did provide the source code? Ah, I see. You are whining because you can't read the source code. You want them to provide the source code AND you want them to explain to you what it does. For free.
Hey, the great thing about the free software community is that when someone doesn't like the code or the documentation, they can change it! Or they can whine...
So...your position is that when ignorant people use source code that I provide for free, then I am obligated to explain to them what it is that my source code does?
This isn't about best practices or business plans or anything like that...it's a guy who got software for no cost whining because the vendor has copyrighted the documentation and charges for support.
P.S. My answer then will be the same as it is now..."If you don't know how to use your FREE software, pay someone who can teach you. Don't whine."
The SOURCE CODE IS AVAILABLE! If you have a problem, USE THE SOURCE! If you can't read the source code, do you feel the spirit of open source software is that a programmer somewhere must interpret it for you? Because that's what I hear you saying..."I can't read the source so they have to provide documentation for free."
Silicon dioxide is not flammable.