Hibernate is a great tool in many ways, but it is far too easy to allow the actual details of what is going on under the covers to be hidden. As the parent suggests using Hiberate in a naieve way can be very dangerous. Complex queries are usually best handled by native SQL.
Planet Oracle I believe. It is exactly this condesending attitude which we can do without. It is the same propoganda that the business rules should be in the DB so they are protected from the idiot know nothing developers. It is a claim in essenence that a DBA is superior and developers incompetent. There is such a thing as a business layer. The business rules can be enforced there. I know the orthodox thinking, but have never seen a good reason to believe it. I don't know how much time has been wasted on projects with developers fighting DBAs just to get their job done. Yes - stored procs do potentially have a role. In my experience it is a very limited role.
The first reason to go with Oracle is its reputation. If you are responsibile for making a choice about which database to run, and you choose something that has the perception of being the second rate or the cheap option then if things go wrong and data is lost that decision might cost you, even if the data loss has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality or reliability of the database software. Is this unreasonable? It will depend on how conservative the organisation is. If it is a startup then they will be more comfortable with a open source database. If they are a financial organisation the licensce cost may be far less important than the perception of reliability.
The second reason to go with Oracle is lockin. Oracle DBA's in my experience have been trained to utilize the Oracle specific features of the product in such a way that moving to another database is impractical. Liberal use of stored procs, or even a decision to only use stored procs for data access has been a common theme. So has the idea that the business rules should be implemented in the database. All this does is couple your application to Oracle and lock you in. If you are buying an application the chances are that if they have developed against Oracle that you will have no choice about the database to run.
Oracle also has an ecosystem of professional support companies, and this too can provide an additional level of comfort for those making the decision about which database to run.
However, if you are like me and develop using a abstraction layer such as Hibernate, and refuse to write applications which tightly couple against specific flavours of database, you will retain the option of using Oracle if you or your customers choose, while keeping the door open to other options. My experience is that both MySQL and Postgresql provide a level of robustness at least equal to Oracle. They are far easier to install, do not require complex licensing, have highly experienced communities around them, as well as their own commercial support options.
The big question for me in this article is how a professor at MIT can investigate MIT. They are after all his employer and a manifest conflict of interest. I do not mean to impune the integrity of anyone, but I just do not see how a MIT professor can be objective and free of pressure to find that MIT free of responsibility. This is not to say that MIT acted especially irresponsibly. From my armchair position it seems primarily the result of aggressive and disproportionate prosecution. MIT bears responsibility to the extent that they could have acted to prevent a manifestly disproportionate response. In fact, if I were a MIT student I might want it clarified that infractions of school IT policy won't put them in danger of a 30 year jail sentence.
This subject tends to make men believe they are being accused of being sexist. That somehow the imbalance is a consequence of deliberate or perhaps inadvertent sexism. The thing is this: there doesn't need to be overt sexism for an environment to be uninviting.
Any situation where there is an existing gender imbalance leads to this imbalance being reinforced simply because it is less comfortable for the minority and more comfortable for the majority.
So when it is suggested that we need to make special efforts to attract women to the IT industry it is not necessarily to redress a active sexist attitudes on a matter of principle or to be PC, but rather a simple and pragmatic approach to getting the other half of the population to contribute to the IT industry.
You're cute when you are naive. When the DMCA passed its implications for free speech were clear, and since that time have been used to control what appears on YouTube and many other sites. Corporations now control speech. When the PATRIOT act passed it was almost unanimous. Now you get to be virtually stripped naked every time you fly; a gross invasion of privacy. The NDAA sweeps away the last vestiges of any of your rights to a trial. Corporations now assign their cronies into critical Government roles at will while the Police permit execution of innocents in the streets if they belong to a minority. Meanwhile Corporations have purchased the media to openly indoctrinate and control the population. They don't even try to hide this agenda any longer.
The last time the US were considered the defenders of freedom and justice was a long time ago. The OOXML business was another example of corporate interests corrupting genuine efforts to create a genuine standard to help users. Again the object was to control and restrict people. Now we have the US exporting legislation like the DMCA via ACTA and TPPA to other countries to extend their iron grip of cultural death.
Wake up America - this is not a case of "one day" ending up in 1984 - you are there now. Just look at how the Occupy movement failed through control of the media. There will be no revolution of the people while corporations can control the discussion and the media. Wake up - you have already lost your rights.
The interesting thing for me was that the description in the article was an excellent CV. We have had many discussions here about whether a Computer Science Degree really prepares you for the IT industry, and in my opinion they are at best a primer. I am also "unqualified", but have made a successful career in IT. I have also been making hiring decisions for several years in several organisations.
When you get past the skill set required what I am looking for is independence in terms of being able to take a task or feature and deliver it without overt oversight. Are you able to analyze a requirement, come up with a solution, and deliver it? Do you have professional disiplines? I'm talking about use of version control, working inside a team environment.
One way of getting exactly these kinds of skills is through open source teams. Open source provides a low barrier to entry for those looking to make their mark. It will give you excellent practical experience, that in my book is approximately double the value of commercial experience because it shows commitment and passion for software development.
In short the original description above reads better than most CV's I get across my desk. University qualifications do play a part, but not as much as you might think.
"He'll be our President because we put him there"... I think maybe Democracy is broken. If regardless of who you vote for the result is the same you are living in a Dictatorship. It's not just patents either - Gitmo, Iraq, Patriot Act, Health Care, seems that even when the Republicans aren't in office they are. No wonder the focus has been on security - they are gonna need it when the people find out they have been duped by the DemoRepublican Party for so long.
This is an interesting question because it brings up a serious problem with how poor the common domain has become. Maori have a culture and cultural artifacts which they own collectively. It is their culture. No single Maori can claim it for themselves, but they together own it. Today virtually all the cultural artifacts of our period are owned by someone else. Try and use the artifacts of your own culture in a new work and just see how fast you will find yourself in court for copyright violation.
Sing a popular song, draw a picture of a Coke can, or copy a tattoo from someone who is famous, and suddenly it's a huge problem. But it is clearly a double standard. They can copy cultural artifacts, but we cannot copy them.
I'm not really standing up for pirates - outright duplication of works for profit - but I do think that there should be a liberal ability for individuals to copy segments in order to create new works.
And exactly are they going to control a robotic vessel with it's rudder and propulsion at the bottom of the ship covered in tons and tons of cargo? Hell - they will need gear to cut into the hold just to get access to cargo, and then they need some way to carry it away. The ship won't stop, and if you do manage to disable the control systems you won't have any easy means to actually control the ship. It would be much more difficult to pirate such a ship.
Right now this is a "fun" project - I'm not trying to get too worried about the applications. The real issue with autonomous boats is the ability to visually detect and avoid other craft. While not important with small models like I've got now, once we start to get to a reasonable size it will need to be able to process visual information to identify and avoid collisions.
I think it is a mistake to try and build a boat like this around a specific application - especially cleaning oil. Energy would be better directed into developing systems to carry cargo. Think about cargo ships sailing into dangerous areas - such as those with pirates. If you have a ship that is autonomous there are no lives to risk, and if boarded the control systems could be buried under tons of cargo; impossible to reach, and with ability to control from on board.
Such vessels would be controlled by satellite. They would of course need the software to run autonomously, including interfacing with radar, GPS, visual etc. Another advantage with this approach would be that you could make them smaller, and make them sailing ships; or perhaps wind turbine or kite assisted. Plenty of possibilities to reduce the carbon emissions of international trade.
They want tens of thousands of dollars to make a prototype that will be "low cost"? This isn't a story about something that has been actually made. How much is actually required to make a autonomous boat? Well, I guess I know a little more than most, since I've actually built a prototype - the budget needed for all the parts easily comes in under $3000.
The "Open Boat" project is intended as a research platform; eventually to permit long term sea going boats to perform research such as weather monitoring. It is also the first step towards investigating autonomous cargo vessels. All the software is open source, and currently running on a Linux based ARM.
University gives you critical thinking skills. It gives you a broad knowledge that has applicability beyond your job. However, However, I do understand what this employer means, but University will never be the environment to churn out ready to go developers. What is needed is an apprenticeships where those new to development are taken under the wing of an experienced developer.
It seems that most people here have assumed that it should be digital storage. For example, flash drives or USB hard drives that can be stored in a safe place. These are certainly a good idea, and you should do this. However, there is one thing you should also do: Print photos. Nothing is quite as durable as photographic paper - especially when you treat it right, by which I mean keeping photos in somewhere away from moisture and heat variation.
Keeping images in paper form does require a device to view them. Devices and interfaces change, so keeping things in the digital space means moving when interfaces change. Also formats change, such as on disk formats. However, paper requires no maintenance; you can store it more or less indefinitely and you will never have any trouble "reading" the data. Sure paper does not have the same information density, so you might have to be more choosy about which ones to print, but this will only increase the quality of your collection.
The reality is that without a concerned marketing plan people won't knock down your door. Most businesses will want their applications supported properly, with contracted SLA's. Sales cycles can be long.
I'm not saying this to come down on you; I'm suggesting a few mays you might be able to capitalize on what you have done:
- Find an existing company selling into the industry you have developed the software for; try and make a deal so they will get the lion share of the revenue, but will handle promotion, marketing and support.
- Sell the software outright to a company as above.
- Make it Open Source and encourage users. Then, if it takes off you will be in a position to support it and continue development.
Ideas are a dime a dozen. As a software developer I have many ideas. I can also potentially develop software myself. Even so I cannot simply implement every idea I have. The reality is that time is money; even open source developers know that their time is valuable, and that you need to focus on developing one idea at a time. A simple application might take a month of development time. Complex applications take years of effort, and can require whole teams of developers. If you don't have your own money this means you will need a business case and some funding behind it.
I don't know how many times some Joe has offered to tell me about their brilliant idea, and that they will let me implement it and share in the rewards. Naturally I won't be paid, but get to share in the rewards when the software is sold or licensed. I can count the number of times I have accepted this kind offer on the fingers of one foot. Am I so arrogant that I believe I'm the only one that can have a good idea?
No. Its just that I know that it takes more than a good idea to be a success. You need the resources behind you, the expertise, experience and contacts in the industry you are trying to sell into. Good ideas are common. Good execution is rare.
As soon as you deviate from the original design you are doing something else.
In my experience there are three important factors for sucessfull teams:
Good people. Good communications. Good teamwork.
Development is primarily getting these factors right. Process should focus on being minimal and observed; that is have the least process possible, but ensuring the process is followed.
It seems the Fire Chief was assaulted by the son. Police turned up to arrest the son.For free. Did the Fire Chief have to pay the Police for that service?
Thats nice software you have there. It would be a pity if something were to 'appen to it.
After examining the recent patent litigation it seems that Microsoft is the target of phone patents already, and another patent troll is not attacking Microsoft because they are owned by the co-founder of the company.Basically what they are saying is that you should use Windows ONLY because of patent protection. Innovation be damned, what matters is how many patents you and your allies have to throttle the competition. Gates was right; if software patents had been in common use when Microsoft started he wouldn't have stood a chance.
When you are in an emotional situation you often lose perspective. It isn't that the people here are wiser, just that they can see a man in pain, trying to deal with a situation, and the question he asks is perhaps - intended or not - a call for support. How do you deal with this loss? How do I keep the memory of her alive for my children so they can know her as well?
The advice suggested here provides good guidance for someone dealing with this. He is already taking photos and videos; what more is there? Living now is the most important advice. Being behind a lens isolates you from the experience. The most important memories will be the ones he shares with his children himself. Make use of modern technology to some extent, but do not let it become a focus.
Assange isn't a traitor because he isn't a US Citizen. Manning was a traitor. That said Assange should put more thought into the released information. There is a need for a safe way for people to blow the whistle on corruption. However, nothing to date in the Manning releases seem to show anything but normal operations. And the raw volume of data does expose people and put them in danger. The real WTF here is how a relatively junior ranking officer got such wide access. The Video of the reporter being killed actually had some value; it graphically displayed the rules of engagement on the ground, that is it was open season on anyone moving. The subsequent documents have not created nearly as much effect while potentially harming innocents.
Slashdot Mirror
Hibernate is a great tool in many ways, but it is far too easy to allow the actual details of what is going on under the covers to be hidden. As the parent suggests using Hiberate in a naieve way can be very dangerous. Complex queries are usually best handled by native SQL.
Planet Oracle I believe. It is exactly this condesending attitude which we can do without. It is the same propoganda that the business rules should be in the DB so they are protected from the idiot know nothing developers. It is a claim in essenence that a DBA is superior and developers incompetent. There is such a thing as a business layer. The business rules can be enforced there. I know the orthodox thinking, but have never seen a good reason to believe it. I don't know how much time has been wasted on projects with developers fighting DBAs just to get their job done. Yes - stored procs do potentially have a role. In my experience it is a very limited role.
The first reason to go with Oracle is its reputation. If you are responsibile for making a choice about which database to run, and you choose something that has the perception of being the second rate or the cheap option then if things go wrong and data is lost that decision might cost you, even if the data loss has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality or reliability of the database software. Is this unreasonable? It will depend on how conservative the organisation is. If it is a startup then they will be more comfortable with a open source database. If they are a financial organisation the licensce cost may be far less important than the perception of reliability.
The second reason to go with Oracle is lockin. Oracle DBA's in my experience have been trained to utilize the Oracle specific features of the product in such a way that moving to another database is impractical. Liberal use of stored procs, or even a decision to only use stored procs for data access has been a common theme. So has the idea that the business rules should be implemented in the database. All this does is couple your application to Oracle and lock you in. If you are buying an application the chances are that if they have developed against Oracle that you will have no choice about the database to run.
Oracle also has an ecosystem of professional support companies, and this too can provide an additional level of comfort for those making the decision about which database to run.
However, if you are like me and develop using a abstraction layer such as Hibernate, and refuse to write applications which tightly couple against specific flavours of database, you will retain the option of using Oracle if you or your customers choose, while keeping the door open to other options. My experience is that both MySQL and Postgresql provide a level of robustness at least equal to Oracle. They are far easier to install, do not require complex licensing, have highly experienced communities around them, as well as their own commercial support options.
The big question for me in this article is how a professor at MIT can investigate MIT. They are after all his employer and a manifest conflict of interest. I do not mean to impune the integrity of anyone, but I just do not see how a MIT professor can be objective and free of pressure to find that MIT free of responsibility. This is not to say that MIT acted especially irresponsibly. From my armchair position it seems primarily the result of aggressive and disproportionate prosecution. MIT bears responsibility to the extent that they could have acted to prevent a manifestly disproportionate response. In fact, if I were a MIT student I might want it clarified that infractions of school IT policy won't put them in danger of a 30 year jail sentence.
This subject tends to make men believe they are being accused of being sexist. That somehow the imbalance is a consequence of deliberate or perhaps inadvertent sexism. The thing is this: there doesn't need to be overt sexism for an environment to be uninviting.
Any situation where there is an existing gender imbalance leads to this imbalance being reinforced simply because it is less comfortable for the minority and more comfortable for the majority.
So when it is suggested that we need to make special efforts to attract women to the IT industry it is not necessarily to redress a active sexist attitudes on a matter of principle or to be PC, but rather a simple and pragmatic approach to getting the other half of the population to contribute to the IT industry.
You're cute when you are naive. When the DMCA passed its implications for free speech were clear, and since that time have been used to control what appears on YouTube and many other sites. Corporations now control speech. When the PATRIOT act passed it was almost unanimous. Now you get to be virtually stripped naked every time you fly; a gross invasion of privacy. The NDAA sweeps away the last vestiges of any of your rights to a trial. Corporations now assign their cronies into critical Government roles at will while the Police permit execution of innocents in the streets if they belong to a minority. Meanwhile Corporations have purchased the media to openly indoctrinate and control the population. They don't even try to hide this agenda any longer.
The last time the US were considered the defenders of freedom and justice was a long time ago. The OOXML business was another example of corporate interests corrupting genuine efforts to create a genuine standard to help users. Again the object was to control and restrict people. Now we have the US exporting legislation like the DMCA via ACTA and TPPA to other countries to extend their iron grip of cultural death.
Wake up America - this is not a case of "one day" ending up in 1984 - you are there now. Just look at how the Occupy movement failed through control of the media. There will be no revolution of the people while corporations can control the discussion and the media. Wake up - you have already lost your rights.
Sounds like a opportunity to reverse engineer it and make it available more generally for those in a similar situation.
The interesting thing for me was that the description in the article was an excellent CV. We have had many discussions here about whether a Computer Science Degree really prepares you for the IT industry, and in my opinion they are at best a primer. I am also "unqualified", but have made a successful career in IT. I have also been making hiring decisions for several years in several organisations.
When you get past the skill set required what I am looking for is independence in terms of being able to take a task or feature and deliver it without overt oversight. Are you able to analyze a requirement, come up with a solution, and deliver it? Do you have professional disiplines? I'm talking about use of version control, working inside a team environment.
One way of getting exactly these kinds of skills is through open source teams. Open source provides a low barrier to entry for those looking to make their mark. It will give you excellent practical experience, that in my book is approximately double the value of commercial experience because it shows commitment and passion for software development.
In short the original description above reads better than most CV's I get across my desk. University qualifications do play a part, but not as much as you might think.
"He'll be our President because we put him there"... I think maybe Democracy is broken. If regardless of who you vote for the result is the same you are living in a Dictatorship. It's not just patents either - Gitmo, Iraq, Patriot Act, Health Care, seems that even when the Republicans aren't in office they are. No wonder the focus has been on security - they are gonna need it when the people find out they have been duped by the DemoRepublican Party for so long.
And what about the countries unlucky enough to be situated below the equator?
This is an interesting question because it brings up a serious problem with how poor the common domain has become. Maori have a culture and cultural artifacts which they own collectively. It is their culture. No single Maori can claim it for themselves, but they together own it. Today virtually all the cultural artifacts of our period are owned by someone else. Try and use the artifacts of your own culture in a new work and just see how fast you will find yourself in court for copyright violation.
Sing a popular song, draw a picture of a Coke can, or copy a tattoo from someone who is famous, and suddenly it's a huge problem. But it is clearly a double standard. They can copy cultural artifacts, but we cannot copy them.
I'm not really standing up for pirates - outright duplication of works for profit - but I do think that there should be a liberal ability for individuals to copy segments in order to create new works.
In other news coming to hand, "Free Software" doesn't mean the software is free of cost.
And exactly are they going to control a robotic vessel with it's rudder and propulsion at the bottom of the ship covered in tons and tons of cargo? Hell - they will need gear to cut into the hold just to get access to cargo, and then they need some way to carry it away. The ship won't stop, and if you do manage to disable the control systems you won't have any easy means to actually control the ship. It would be much more difficult to pirate such a ship.
Right now this is a "fun" project - I'm not trying to get too worried about the applications. The real issue with autonomous boats is the ability to visually detect and avoid other craft. While not important with small models like I've got now, once we start to get to a reasonable size it will need to be able to process visual information to identify and avoid collisions.
I think it is a mistake to try and build a boat like this around a specific application - especially cleaning oil. Energy would be better directed into developing systems to carry cargo. Think about cargo ships sailing into dangerous areas - such as those with pirates. If you have a ship that is autonomous there are no lives to risk, and if boarded the control systems could be buried under tons of cargo; impossible to reach, and with ability to control from on board.
Such vessels would be controlled by satellite. They would of course need the software to run autonomously, including interfacing with radar, GPS, visual etc. Another advantage with this approach would be that you could make them smaller, and make them sailing ships; or perhaps wind turbine or kite assisted. Plenty of possibilities to reduce the carbon emissions of international trade.
They want tens of thousands of dollars to make a prototype that will be "low cost"? This isn't a story about something that has been actually made. How much is actually required to make a autonomous boat? Well, I guess I know a little more than most, since I've actually built a prototype - the budget needed for all the parts easily comes in under $3000.
My latest efforts are here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zvC-CpljCc
The "Open Boat" project is intended as a research platform; eventually to permit long term sea going boats to perform research such as weather monitoring. It is also the first step towards investigating autonomous cargo vessels. All the software is open source, and currently running on a Linux based ARM.
University gives you critical thinking skills. It gives you a broad knowledge that has applicability beyond your job. However, However, I do understand what this employer means, but University will never be the environment to churn out ready to go developers. What is needed is an apprenticeships where those new to development are taken under the wing of an experienced developer.
It seems that most people here have assumed that it should be digital storage. For example, flash drives or USB hard drives that can be stored in a safe place. These are certainly a good idea, and you should do this. However, there is one thing you should also do: Print photos. Nothing is quite as durable as photographic paper - especially when you treat it right, by which I mean keeping photos in somewhere away from moisture and heat variation.
Keeping images in paper form does require a device to view them. Devices and interfaces change, so keeping things in the digital space means moving when interfaces change. Also formats change, such as on disk formats. However, paper requires no maintenance; you can store it more or less indefinitely and you will never have any trouble "reading" the data. Sure paper does not have the same information density, so you might have to be more choosy about which ones to print, but this will only increase the quality of your collection.
Build it and they will come?
The reality is that without a concerned marketing plan people won't knock down your door. Most businesses will want their applications supported properly, with contracted SLA's. Sales cycles can be long.
I'm not saying this to come down on you; I'm suggesting a few mays you might be able to capitalize on what you have done:
- Find an existing company selling into the industry you have developed the software for; try and make a deal so they will get the lion share of the revenue, but will handle promotion, marketing and support.
- Sell the software outright to a company as above.
- Make it Open Source and encourage users. Then, if it takes off you will be in a position to support it and continue development.
Ideas are a dime a dozen. As a software developer I have many ideas. I can also potentially develop software myself. Even so I cannot simply implement every idea I have. The reality is that time is money; even open source developers know that their time is valuable, and that you need to focus on developing one idea at a time. A simple application might take a month of development time. Complex applications take years of effort, and can require whole teams of developers. If you don't have your own money this means you will need a business case and some funding behind it.
I don't know how many times some Joe has offered to tell me about their brilliant idea, and that they will let me implement it and share in the rewards. Naturally I won't be paid, but get to share in the rewards when the software is sold or licensed. I can count the number of times I have accepted this kind offer on the fingers of one foot. Am I so arrogant that I believe I'm the only one that can have a good idea?
No. Its just that I know that it takes more than a good idea to be a success. You need the resources behind you, the expertise, experience and contacts in the industry you are trying to sell into. Good ideas are common. Good execution is rare.
There is no waterfall.
As soon as you deviate from the original design you are doing something else.
In my experience there are three important factors for sucessfull teams:
Good people.
Good communications.
Good teamwork.
Development is primarily getting these factors right.
Process should focus on being minimal and observed; that is have the least process possible, but ensuring the process is followed.
It seems the Fire Chief was assaulted by the son. Police turned up to arrest the son.For free. Did the Fire Chief have to pay the Police for that service?
Thats nice software you have there. It would be a pity if something were to 'appen to it.
After examining the recent patent litigation it seems that Microsoft is the target of phone patents already, and another patent troll is not attacking Microsoft because they are owned by the co-founder of the company.Basically what they are saying is that you should use Windows ONLY because of patent protection. Innovation be damned, what matters is how many patents you and your allies have to throttle the competition. Gates was right; if software patents had been in common use when Microsoft started he wouldn't have stood a chance.
Methinks you protestith to strong.
Are you a patent lawyer?
When you are in an emotional situation you often lose perspective. It isn't that the people here are wiser, just that they can see a man in pain, trying to deal with a situation, and the question he asks is perhaps - intended or not - a call for support. How do you deal with this loss? How do I keep the memory of her alive for my children so they can know her as well?
The advice suggested here provides good guidance for someone dealing with this. He is already taking photos and videos; what more is there? Living now is the most important advice. Being behind a lens isolates you from the experience. The most important memories will be the ones he shares with his children himself. Make use of modern technology to some extent, but do not let it become a focus.
Assange isn't a traitor because he isn't a US Citizen. Manning was a traitor. That said Assange should put more thought into the released information. There is a need for a safe way for people to blow the whistle on corruption. However, nothing to date in the Manning releases seem to show anything but normal operations. And the raw volume of data does expose people and put them in danger. The real WTF here is how a relatively junior ranking officer got such wide access. The Video of the reporter being killed actually had some value; it graphically displayed the rules of engagement on the ground, that is it was open season on anyone moving. The subsequent documents have not created nearly as much effect while potentially harming innocents.