And yet in New Zealand we won despite starting with a similar grass roots movement, starting with the NZOSS, and finally encompassing a number of influential companies and computer organisations. We were calm, rational, and presented the a persuasive case that software patents damage the IT sector, and polls that clearly showed that patents were not supported by a large majority of the IT industry. Our strength isn't just in their numbers but in a compelling case that software patents are holding the industry to ransom. The Australian IT industry has every chance of creating change, but it could be a long hard road to success. There are organisations in Australia which will no doubt have this on their radar, and will be moving to provide more support for a software patent exclusion.
The following YouTube video was produced from the NZOSS submission to the New Zealand Government for their review into the Patent Bill.
I agree. The other Pizza chains have raced to the bottom in terms of price, and as a result the quality is... well lets just say that many biologists would have trouble identifying it as biological matter, much less food. Hell Pizza has not played that game, much to their credit. They are not a huge chain, and that's the way we like it.
Once an aircraft like this gets to operating altitude there is little weather it needs to deal with. There is more or less constant sunshine during the day. We are talking about 60,000 feet.
For monitoring a large area it is ideal. The payload that it will need to carry should be minimal. Note that last week there was a 24 hr solar powered flight with a human pilot. That is a fair bit of weight; way more weight than some cameras needed to simply observe.
If it were used in military context it would be far less vulnerable than a Predator, with no significant heat signature, and depending on construction not much of a radar signature either. The main differences will be a lack of payload capability for weapons and the additional capability of running for long periods on station.
Put enough of these up and you have instant mesh network capable of surveillance over vast areas for long periods. It is very cool technology. They are comparatively cheap, and capable of aiding fire control in real time.
As one of the primary authors of the submissions to the NZ Government proposing an exclusion for software patents I had to use multiple arguments. Those arguments included that they are abused by multinational companies, that the stifle competition, and that we should not change our law to suit the interests of these mutltinationals.
You will note that the US is currently trying to push US style intellectual property legislation onto other countries because it is in the interest of the US multinationals. Not just patent law, but copyright law - the DMCA - which has killed fair use in the US. Just look at how emasculated YouTube has become after what might have been a golden age; the wide availability of historical material.
This decision may have been in the interests of NZ, but as an example it will also serve to free people in the US from the same shackles.
Yes, its terrible, its just like those "Free Software" people rampantly pirating Windows all over the place. Oh wait. The Free Software people are a group of individuals least likely to pirate Windows. Something is wrong here.
No no, it's over when your Government tells you it's over. There is no reason to worry because your Government will return your right to free speech just as soon as world peace breaks out. Don't want to wait that long? Thats terrorist talk, whats your address again?
Why is that funny? Because the subject is food? I'm fat, and I don't have a problem with people calling me on it. However, in this context it is utterly irrelevant. Salt content has nothing to do with obesity. Is the suggestion here that being fat automatically disqualifies you from public comment?
Order is wrong. Believe it or not most people would rather eat their own hand than learn algorithms or the standard API by heart. But I do suggest writing real code.... that is not just an exercise, but actually find yourself something someone needs solved and solve it. This way you will quickly pick up what is needed to accomplish the task, which will involve algorithms and API.
I would suggest a more complete treatment of algorithms later in your development when you can begin to appreciate where they fit. I would suggest never learning a API by heart. Life is only so long:)
Software Development is a chaotic system. Essentially that means that small changes to the requirements can have impacts out of all proportion to the change. The traditional thinking was that because it cost so much more to fix issues at the implementation phase than the requirements phase that you should put far more effort into getting the requirements and design right.
The problem is that like a weather system it will be the small requirements change that is often most difficult. Not all small changes will have this impact of course, but there are some on a chaotic boundary. So how should we estimate projects?
I would start with performing a similar analysis as the old way; a function point count if you like. It does not need to be in depth however; counting the number of screens or tables or reports, or whatever else is fine. Its what we do with this data which matters. Rather than simply multiple the function points by some number of hours you should plot this metric against actual historic times to complete other projects.
This way you can see that based on a certain level of complexity you can expect a certain project effort. This system ignores some important variables. It assumes the same people are involved, and thus the same skills and productivity. Also it assumes the same number of developers.
It has already been established that stress can kill. The most stressful periods of my life have been when I have been bored. If you are bored it generally means you are under utilized. Knowing this you will be quite stressed. Besides, having nothing to do is like sensory deprivation, a psychological form of torture. This it is not terribly surprising that people who are "bored" also tend to end up stressed, and ultimately dead.
I agreed right up to the point you suggested the Moon as a good training ground. The Moon is far more harsh than Mars. The gravity is lower, with no atmosphere and no water. Mars has an atmosphere of carbon dioxide which with the help of a little water can be turned into methane or methanol which can be used to drive around or lift off from the surface. None of these possibilities exist on the Moon. The Gravity, while still low is much more than the moons. The Moon is a terrible place to waste money on. Mars Direct all the way:)
There is open source religion, its called a bunch of arrogant atheists, grouped together on electronic machines spewing their hatred for something they don't care about, just wanting to destroy it for their own selfish pleasure.
Hang on a tick while I hang my broom up and take the cauldron off the boil...
By "spewing hatred" you mean what exactly? Seems to me the simple statement that there is no god is a statement of hate; that the mere disagreement with religious opinion is a crime. That's the point of the Irish situation; that simple disagreement with religion is considered a criminal offence.
The "militant" atheists do no more than talk. They don't fly planes into buildings, stone people to death, throw acid into the faces of young ladies, vandalise churches (that is reserved for the religious it appears), flay the skin off living people or any of the other atrocities performed against people who dare disagree with the predominant religion.
If you accuse me of hating a entity capable of such hideous crimes as genocide; killing men women and children without mercy and destroying the life on an entire planet, then yeah I guess I'm guilty as charged.
You may believe as you wish, no matter how repugnant and repulsive the tyrant you worship. I won't stop or harm you. Unlike your religious brethren who are prepared to kill others for their beliefs.
"if enough people believe even relatively mild conspiracy theories about flu vaccines, then they'll refuse to get vaccinated and public health will suffer."
Yes. This is of course according to plan. Only the people who believe in conspiracies will suffer and die. Our plan to breed a more rational human being will come to fruition. AH HAHAHAHA.
And let me guess - and they will only put the bad people in prison. Who exactly decides what the true conspiracies are? The Government? Arn't they the ones conducting the conspiracy? What are we meant to do? Trust them?
I don't claim the US Government attacked its own citizens, but when I saw the small hole made in the pentagon I did wonder where the rest of the plane went. And furthermore I th
The paper is based on the totally false premise that "Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law." What? Who said? Come on! It's a total non sequitur. If holding crazy beliefs unsupported by evidence is going to be held as a basis for believing such people might become violent you better also infiltrate all those crazy religious groups. You know, the Catholics, Protestants, Baptists etc. In fact there is at least some evidence that religious nutjobs are a danger.
Apart from the CPU of encrypting there is the issue of compression. Perhaps some physical network links use compression, and encrypted traffic can't be compressed?
I have a OpenMoko as well. It's all very well putting your money where your mouth is but how about the makers of OpenMoko actually finishing the software so the thing will run. The version that was sold had a hardware bug that requires fixing. There has never been a solid version of the software. The Android phones at least actually delivered on being a phone.
A third possibility is that there is an external crisis, such as a customer with a system down, and it has escalated through support to the development team. There are rare occasions that a few developers might be asked to stay late, however I generally agree that regular overtime to meet unrealistic deadlines is counter productive. It burns out developers, leaves no room for anything unforeseen, will encourage youor better developers to leave while the worse ones will stay. Overtime is a short term last resort at best.
If you are working late because there is a crisis it might be that although a manager cannot do the technical work they can evaluate the situation and determine what to do next.
A few years ago I was in this situation; we had two developers working late to resolve a customer problem that was critical. My team was very committed and were technically excellent. I knew that I was just getting in the way in many respects. I kept away as far as possible, just keeping an eye on progress (or rather the lack of progress). When it got to the point we were considering deleting customer data to resolve the issue we pulled the plug for the day. It was late, we all wanted to leave, and we were on the verge of making decisions that could have had massive knock on effects. In the end I called it a day and we went home. The issue actually took a week to track down and resolve. The actions we considered on that night would not have helped, and would have caused significant secondary issues.
The manager is there as a backstop to make sure that actions are not taken that may make things worse. His job is to stand back and look at the larger picture than simply the technical issue; ask himself - what if it can't be fixed tonight? My primary role was one of communication and buffer. That is I could communicate with the customer and support teams while the development team worked relatively unhindered.
Violence isn't the answer. I sympathise with your point of view, and strongly believe we can do better, but there is no reason we cannot affect change through Democratic processes and pressure in society. Who would one fight? What would we replace the current system with?
I dream of a system that works more like science - where anyone can put forward an idea and that it will be critiqued by peers based on evidence and rational analysis, and that only once an idea has been reviewed and improved in this manner that it be introduced to Parliament.
Currently the executive power is opaque. Policy and legislative changes are generally developed in cloistered halls. The general public and experts have no input to policy unless asked. Even when asked their input is easily ignored.
The "Select Committee" process is one where one comes before authority to plead your case to those in power. There is no discussion. It is far away from a scientific approach where ideas are published, developed and reviewed. It allows people who were elected based on ideological views to press home policies which have not had review except by a elite group called cabinet. Elections are a blunt tool for true involvement of people in Government.
I'm not suggesting direct democracy. In this picture our representatives still have the final say on what becomes law. Introducing meaningful development and review such as what the Police attempted to do a little while ago would be a huge leap forward.
We really do need to evolve beyond electing the people to blame and develop a system that is more inclusive of those with the expertise to provide rational input into policy. Like us;)
Imagine if there were an extradition treaty with China. Suddenly people in the US and UK who spoke out about human rights, which is totally legal in those countries, could be extradited for breaking Chinese law.
My question is quite simple: If this individual is a British person, living in England, never going to the US, how can the US Government ever have the right to prosecute him? Sounds like he broke British law, and should be charged there. It sets a very dangerous president.
Perhaps Iraq could pass a law against torture and extradite former President Bush for his crimes.
Avalanche Development Process
on
Becoming Agile
·
· Score: 1
Waterfall? Agile? All are passing fads. There is only one correct methodology, and you are probably using it already - Avalanche Software Development Process: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR_XIPOkSmQ
Slashdot Mirror
And yet in New Zealand we won despite starting with a similar grass roots movement, starting with the NZOSS, and finally encompassing a number of influential companies and computer organisations. We were calm, rational, and presented the a persuasive case that software patents damage the IT sector, and polls that clearly showed that patents were not supported by a large majority of the IT industry. Our strength isn't just in their numbers but in a compelling case that software patents are holding the industry to ransom. The Australian IT industry has every chance of creating change, but it could be a long hard road to success. There are organisations in Australia which will no doubt have this on their radar, and will be moving to provide more support for a software patent exclusion.
The following YouTube video was produced from the NZOSS submission to the New Zealand Government for their review into the Patent Bill.
NZOSS Patent Submission
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-3H0t-Jgdo
I agree. The other Pizza chains have raced to the bottom in terms of price, and as a result the quality is... well lets just say that many biologists would have trouble identifying it as biological matter, much less food. Hell Pizza has not played that game, much to their credit. They are not a huge chain, and that's the way we like it.
Once an aircraft like this gets to operating altitude there is little weather it needs to deal with. There is more or less constant sunshine during the day. We are talking about 60,000 feet.
For monitoring a large area it is ideal. The payload that it will need to carry should be minimal. Note that last week there was a 24 hr solar powered flight with a human pilot. That is a fair bit of weight; way more weight than some cameras needed to simply observe.
If it were used in military context it would be far less vulnerable than a Predator, with no significant heat signature, and depending on construction not much of a radar signature either. The main differences will be a lack of payload capability for weapons and the additional capability of running for long periods on station.
Put enough of these up and you have instant mesh network capable of surveillance over vast areas for long periods. It is very cool technology. They are comparatively cheap, and capable of aiding fire control in real time.
As one of the primary authors of the submissions to the NZ Government proposing an exclusion for software patents I had to use multiple arguments. Those arguments included that they are abused by multinational companies, that the stifle competition, and that we should not change our law to suit the interests of these mutltinationals.
You will note that the US is currently trying to push US style intellectual property legislation onto other countries because it is in the interest of the US multinationals. Not just patent law, but copyright law - the DMCA - which has killed fair use in the US. Just look at how emasculated YouTube has become after what might have been a golden age; the wide availability of historical material.
This decision may have been in the interests of NZ, but as an example it will also serve to free people in the US from the same shackles.
Yes, its terrible, its just like those "Free Software" people rampantly pirating Windows all over the place. Oh wait. The Free Software people are a group of individuals least likely to pirate Windows. Something is wrong here.
No no, it's over when your Government tells you it's over. There is no reason to worry because your Government will return your right to free speech just as soon as world peace breaks out. Don't want to wait that long? Thats terrorist talk, whats your address again?
Yes Please. Where do I sign up?
Not laser cannons though - can I swap for super sensitive ears?
Why is that funny? Because the subject is food? I'm fat, and I don't have a problem with people calling me on it. However, in this context it is utterly irrelevant. Salt content has nothing to do with obesity. Is the suggestion here that being fat automatically disqualifies you from public comment?
Way to early to be talking mass production. But very promising science. If they are right they will be very rich little scientists.
Order is wrong. Believe it or not most people would rather eat their own hand than learn algorithms or the standard API by heart. But I do suggest writing real code.... that is not just an exercise, but actually find yourself something someone needs solved and solve it. This way you will quickly pick up what is needed to accomplish the task, which will involve algorithms and API.
I would suggest a more complete treatment of algorithms later in your development when you can begin to appreciate where they fit. I would suggest never learning a API by heart. Life is only so long :)
Software Development is a chaotic system. Essentially that means that small changes to the requirements can have impacts out of all proportion to the change. The traditional thinking was that because it cost so much more to fix issues at the implementation phase than the requirements phase that you should put far more effort into getting the requirements and design right.
The problem is that like a weather system it will be the small requirements change that is often most difficult. Not all small changes will have this impact of course, but there are some on a chaotic boundary. So how should we estimate projects?
I would start with performing a similar analysis as the old way; a function point count if you like. It does not need to be in depth however; counting the number of screens or tables or reports, or whatever else is fine. Its what we do with this data which matters. Rather than simply multiple the function points by some number of hours you should plot this metric against actual historic times to complete other projects.
This way you can see that based on a certain level of complexity you can expect a certain project effort. This system ignores some important variables. It assumes the same people are involved, and thus the same skills and productivity. Also it assumes the same number of developers.
It has already been established that stress can kill. The most stressful periods of my life have been when I have been bored. If you are bored it generally means you are under utilized. Knowing this you will be quite stressed. Besides, having nothing to do is like sensory deprivation, a psychological form of torture. This it is not terribly surprising that people who are "bored" also tend to end up stressed, and ultimately dead.
I agreed right up to the point you suggested the Moon as a good training ground. The Moon is far more harsh than Mars. The gravity is lower, with no atmosphere and no water. Mars has an atmosphere of carbon dioxide which with the help of a little water can be turned into methane or methanol which can be used to drive around or lift off from the surface. None of these possibilities exist on the Moon. The Gravity, while still low is much more than the moons. The Moon is a terrible place to waste money on. Mars Direct all the way :)
There is open source religion, its called a bunch of arrogant atheists, grouped together on electronic machines spewing their hatred for something they don't care about, just wanting to destroy it for their own selfish pleasure.
Hang on a tick while I hang my broom up and take the cauldron off the boil...
By "spewing hatred" you mean what exactly? Seems to me the simple statement that there is no god is a statement of hate; that the mere disagreement with religious opinion is a crime. That's the point of the Irish situation; that simple disagreement with religion is considered a criminal offence.
The "militant" atheists do no more than talk. They don't fly planes into buildings, stone people to death, throw acid into the faces of young ladies, vandalise churches (that is reserved for the religious it appears), flay the skin off living people or any of the other atrocities performed against people who dare disagree with the predominant religion.
If you accuse me of hating a entity capable of such hideous crimes as genocide; killing men women and children without mercy and destroying the life on an entire planet, then yeah I guess I'm guilty as charged.
You may believe as you wish, no matter how repugnant and repulsive the tyrant you worship. I won't stop or harm you. Unlike your religious brethren who are prepared to kill others for their beliefs.
It is accepted scientific fact that this is too important to negotiate the details in public.
"if enough people believe even relatively mild conspiracy theories about flu vaccines, then they'll refuse to get vaccinated and public health will suffer."
Yes. This is of course according to plan. Only the people who believe in conspiracies will suffer and die. Our plan to breed a more rational human being will come to fruition. AH HAHAHAHA.
And let me guess - and they will only put the bad people in prison. Who exactly decides what the true conspiracies are? The Government? Arn't they the ones conducting the conspiracy? What are we meant to do? Trust them?
I don't claim the US Government attacked its own citizens, but when I saw the small hole made in the pentagon I did wonder where the rest of the plane went. And furthermore I th
The paper is based on the totally false premise that "Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law." What? Who said? Come on! It's a total non sequitur. If holding crazy beliefs unsupported by evidence is going to be held as a basis for believing such people might become violent you better also infiltrate all those crazy religious groups. You know, the Catholics, Protestants, Baptists etc. In fact there is at least some evidence that religious nutjobs are a danger.
Apart from the CPU of encrypting there is the issue of compression. Perhaps some physical network links use compression, and encrypted traffic can't be compressed?
I have a OpenMoko as well. It's all very well putting your money where your mouth is but how about the makers of OpenMoko actually finishing the software so the thing will run. The version that was sold had a hardware bug that requires fixing. There has never been a solid version of the software. The Android phones at least actually delivered on being a phone.
A third possibility is that there is an external crisis, such as a customer with a system down, and it has escalated through support to the development team. There are rare occasions that a few developers might be asked to stay late, however I generally agree that regular overtime to meet unrealistic deadlines is counter productive. It burns out developers, leaves no room for anything unforeseen, will encourage youor better developers to leave while the worse ones will stay. Overtime is a short term last resort at best.
If you are working late because there is a crisis it might be that although a manager cannot do the technical work they can evaluate the situation and determine what to do next.
A few years ago I was in this situation; we had two developers working late to resolve a customer problem that was critical. My team was very committed and were technically excellent. I knew that I was just getting in the way in many respects. I kept away as far as possible, just keeping an eye on progress (or rather the lack of progress). When it got to the point we were considering deleting customer data to resolve the issue we pulled the plug for the day. It was late, we all wanted to leave, and we were on the verge of making decisions that could have had massive knock on effects. In the end I called it a day and we went home. The issue actually took a week to track down and resolve. The actions we considered on that night would not have helped, and would have caused significant secondary issues.
The manager is there as a backstop to make sure that actions are not taken that may make things worse. His job is to stand back and look at the larger picture than simply the technical issue; ask himself - what if it can't be fixed tonight? My primary role was one of communication and buffer. That is I could communicate with the customer and support teams while the development team worked relatively unhindered.
Violence isn't the answer. I sympathise with your point of view, and strongly believe we can do better, but there is no reason we cannot affect change through Democratic processes and pressure in society. Who would one fight? What would we replace the current system with?
I dream of a system that works more like science - where anyone can put forward an idea and that it will be critiqued by peers based on evidence and rational analysis, and that only once an idea has been reviewed and improved in this manner that it be introduced to Parliament.
Currently the executive power is opaque. Policy and legislative changes are generally developed in cloistered halls. The general public and experts have no input to policy unless asked. Even when asked their input is easily ignored.
The "Select Committee" process is one where one comes before authority to plead your case to those in power. There is no discussion. It is far away from a scientific approach where ideas are published, developed and reviewed. It allows people who were elected based on ideological views to press home policies which have not had review except by a elite group called cabinet. Elections are a blunt tool for true involvement of people in Government.
I'm not suggesting direct democracy. In this picture our representatives still have the final say on what becomes law. Introducing meaningful development and review such as what the Police attempted to do a little while ago would be a huge leap forward.
We really do need to evolve beyond electing the people to blame and develop a system that is more inclusive of those with the expertise to provide rational input into policy. Like us ;)
Imagine if there were an extradition treaty with China. Suddenly people in the US and UK who spoke out about human rights, which is totally legal in those countries, could be extradited for breaking Chinese law.
My question is quite simple: If this individual is a British person, living in England, never going to the US, how can the US Government ever have the right to prosecute him? Sounds like he broke British law, and should be charged there. It sets a very dangerous president.
Perhaps Iraq could pass a law against torture and extradite former President Bush for his crimes.
Waterfall? Agile? All are passing fads. There is only one correct methodology, and you are probably using it already - Avalanche Software Development Process:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR_XIPOkSmQ
Or perhaps you would like to actually implement Appropriate Design:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNUQIjGe-ec