The assumption that MS hires "idiots" is unfair to be sure. However, those in the know who have seen some of the colossal kludges in MS software, and recently almost all Windows users who have been impacted by the repeated, massive virus/worm attacks base their knowledge on the only thing they know about Microsoft--their products.
It has always appeared to me that MS hires top students from the very best schools.
That is true--unfortunately they have been known to hire them AWAY from the best schools too (ie. before they graduate). It doesn't matter if they are top five percentile students--if they have zero practical experience and are thrown into a situation beyond their capabilities the result can be less than ideal. Nonetheless, I think that by now MS has figured out how to select and place recent grads and students hired before graduation. I think the problem is now deeper than that.
Microsoft triumphed over other tech companies that were prominent in its early days because BillG learned it had to become a marketing company (the same reason Apple still exists today--Jobs knew that from the start and Gates is a very quick study). Other tech companies remained software companies--they toiled away to make their next killer app the best it could be and marketing was an afterthought.
At Microsoft, from 1980 on at least, has been a marketing comapny first, with software development second. The most important technology it markets was invented elsewhere and merely extended by Microsoft. Only in the company's latter life have they been truly serious about research. The long time "thinkers" are brilliant but historically little has come out of Microsoft's research that has been commercially successful given the potential funding power MS has had.
Therein lies the problem. The article is right--software isn't the root cause of the vast majority of failures (even when the failure is the direct result of a software bug). At Microsoft, software design is driven by marketing--time deadlines, customer requests for features, backwards compatibility/legacy support etc. The result is the house of cards we build our systems upon today.
That result is unavoidable without EXTREMELY skilled planning and throttling the pace of change. Unfortunately, The MS Ship sails where the winds take it, and the pace of change has been rapid and relentless until now. I once thought the problems with MS products were because too many drop-outs were running the show. After seeing this blog I can see what the development teams have had to cope with. They have to do the impossible and try to get it done before the deadline slips yet again and MS market cap slips a few million and BillG comes down to yell at them. In some cases you have to be brilliant just to survive at MS.
So anyways, I think software bus are the immediate cause of a lot of disasters, but the ROOT cause definitely is poor planning and project management that leads to unstable system development.
..of people who do not want the calls that is enforced with fines essentially basically mean the intent is to restrict organisations from making calls? In other words, an effort to at least partially ban phone campaigns (those that are commercial in nature only as the US DNC list is set up now)?
I suppose not everyone will agree with me about exceptions for political campaigns--My opinion is that democracy is the cornerstone of the free world, and that if the citizenry disengage from the process (do not vote or make ininformed decisions) then government will become corrupt (corruption is already a growing problem in both American and Canadian govenrments). Given how politically apathetic most people on this continent are I think we need a little legislative nudge from time to time. In some countries they go so far as to require you by law to vote--I'd say that goes even further than I would go but it shows how important the process is to some nations.
Anyways, I'm not sure about US law, but requiring political campaigns during an election to abide by the same rules telemarketers have to in regards to the DNC list would conflict with the Elections Act of Canada, so the Elections Act would have to be amended or an exception for election campaigns would have to be included in the DNC list.
This would be analgous to the rules regarding "junk mail" right now (the paper kind, not the electronic kind). There is already a policy that Canada Post will not deliver unadressed admail to your mailbox if you affix a "no flyers" or similar such label on your mailbox, or contact Canada Post and file a formal request. Because of the elections act, an election brochure is exempt--Canada Post (and couriers? I'm not sure) must deliver them or fines can be livied against the delivery agent (Canada Post and/or the mail carrier personally).
I have worked on campaigns and have run into these rules before. Those who did not support our candidates views would call our offices and complain that they received "junk mail" from us and that he does not condone the delivery of junk mail. We had to explain that campaign material is not junk mail in the eyes of the law and that you must "opt-out" by contacting the source of the material directly (ie. call us). So to minimise aggravation and stay within the regulations we initially delivered to EVERY household in the riding and then only skipped those houses on future drops where residents personally requested for us to stop.
Note that these rules only apply during an official election campaign for registered candidates. Outside of an election everyone has to follow the rules, and during an election parties who are not official agents of registeres candidates must follow the rules ALL the time when endorsing or portesting a candidate (they also must comply with strict spending restrictions in the "gag law" which many say goes too far).
If there are rules about candidates rights during elections in the US that are similar, I can understand why an exception was made in the DNC list when it was set up.
...it's the rest of the world that is too modest. To be fair, the Americans are front-and-centre on this project so kudos to them as long as they remember they got there with a little help from others.
The US sometimes isn't the leader in Aerospace but give them credit when it's due. Russians and Canadians bet them in the sattelite race--the Canadians also beat the Americans to Mach 2 flight speed. And the REALLY big, complicated projects are the result of collaberation between all three of those nations among many others. However one thing the US consistently tops the world in is national pride and the associated amitious goals they have set. Only Amercans had the balls to reach for the moon and actually REACH it. When they win they win BIG.
Thank God rocket scientists don't get into pissing matches like the ones here or nothing would get done.
...but if the phone rings when my sweetheart and I are enjoying out private time we ignore it and continue enjoying each other. I'd work on your skills in the sack if I were you and the phone ringing was of more importance to you than nookie.
Anyways, I'm surprised the judge even considered the telemarketer's case--It really isn't a free speech issue at all IMHO. The DNC list doesn't restrict what you may say, it merely restricts how you may deliver your message in order to protect the privacy of individuals.. They can still rent billboards, advertise on TV, run newspaper and radio ads, etc etc. Unless they can make a case that their message is more important than privacy (say, public safety, criminal investigation or election information) then they have no case.
They have no more right to solicit via telephone than they have to walk up and down a residential street at 2 AM with a bullhorn yelling "GET YER CITIFINANCIAL MASTERCARD HERE FOLKS!!! ONLY TWO PERCENT INTRODUCTORY AAAYYEEE PEEEE AHRRRRRR!". They are both equally disruptive to personal lives, and the free speech argument is flimsy at best. You can take you message public and that's your right, but you cannot use such agressive tactics to FORCE you message on others and argue it is your fundamental right without a damn good reason.
In Canada there are regulations pertaining to direct marketing as well (unfortunately, we are a step behind in DNC lists but hopefully that will change). Political campaign literature is expressly allowed in the Elections Act--which means campaigners must be premitted to deliver unaddressed bulk mail, computer email and telephone calls as they see fit. They are also allowed to campaign door-to-door. These rules apply only during the (official, 35-day) election campaign--they cannot bug you all the time.
You are free to refuse their literature, phone calls and email messages, but you cannot, for example, prevent a campaigner from entering an apartment building, putting up signs on a public boulevard in view of your house or impede his ability to offer literature to others (that could include an ISP blacklisting the mail server of a political party, or interfering with the operation of a call centre). Do do so during a campaign is actually a criminal offence in Canada.
This is because the democratic process is paramount--above even privacy--in the eye of the law here. You can't ban phone campaigns because you hate GW Bush. You don't HAVE to listen to the call--as soon as you know it's a campaign call from Bush just HANG TH F*** UP! (One of the responsibilities campaigners have in exchange for protected rights to campaign is that they mist identify their affiliration on demand--and in the case of pre-recorded messages they are supposed to begin with such an identification. If they don't you can complain and have actions taken). If they come to your door, just slam it in their face if you want. If they leave a pamphlet in the mail, shred it. If they leave a sign in the public median on the street in front of your house...JUST LIVE WITH IT.
The problem isn't special rules protecting campaign methods--it's campaign SPENDING. Crooked industry lobbyists in the pockets of congressmen ruin democracy. Compelling the candidate for Sherrif of Tumbleweed County, South Dakota to abide by a do-not-call list when one of his few cheap, effective means of campaigning in a geographically large juristiction is through phone-outs conducted by volunteers--well, that would ruin democracy as well.
...Maybe/. should conduct a poll of MS Word features. I rarely use either of the features you mention and neither would be showstoppers in the daily use of my word processor, so in *my* experience I'd say Abiword is far from a non-starter (I like outline view in MS Word, but I find I use it more because of the often-annoying behaviour of Word when I format my documents).
Really, Free/Open Source software is about choice, and as such it is really a shame that it is overlooked in articles about MS Office alternatives. This isn't really like the window manager wars or back in the mid 80's when the home computer market was so fragmented becasue AbiWord supports the same file formats. I think that so long as the segments of a market can interoperate reasonably smoothly, then a certain amount of fragmentation is important. Maybe Abiword isn't as featureful but it is really snappy and quite serviceable.
The same goes with other MSOffice alternatives. I think Gnumeric is a superior alternative to the offering in OO.o in terms of features and such. And if you like the KDE environment, what about KOffice? I find it discouraging that alternatives are dismissed as "non-starters" for lack of some of "pet-features".
I'm glad you are open to examine alternatives, and I encourage you to keep doing it. But please, if you find reason to discard it, PLEASE at least provide feedback to the developers--and if you fancy yourself a hacker, get involved in the projects yourself.
Just abandoning an option because it doesn't exactly suit your needs or to jump on the bandwagon of the leading alternative. I don't think it's much better to replace one monopoly with another, even if it is open source. It still provides a single point of manipulation of a whole segment of the software industry.
Why is the analogy so horrible? Sounds logical to me. And to the fool who moderated the comment "insightful", could you explain where the insight is in the parent post's two-word assessment? I see no insight at all--only opinion.
In my opinion the automotive analogy is accurate, if not boring and unimaginitive (we must be well in our second decade of comparing software with cars by now--oh well I can be accused of the same thing at times). Anyways, Windows XP SP2 really is a lot like the foot dragging and secret recalls of the automotive industry. It is fortunate that the resulting incompetence in the software industry does not directly result in grave injury or loss of life.
Honestly when thousands of Ford Pintos and GM Trucks were put out on the road that could explode on impact in what would otherwise be non-fatal accident, and Ford and GM KNEW about these flaws for months and years and DELIBERATLY avoided fixing thr problem on the advice of bean counters (more money to fix than to settle lawsuits), how do you think that helped their reputations?
Hell, when you think of it, if Microsoft Windows was a car it WOULD be the Ford Pinto. It would be "good enough" to get the job done, but not all that reliable and if you were a bit reckless it could prove more hazardous to your life than other cars. It took may years--maybe over a decade--for Ford to recover, and people still remember the flammable Ford Pinto. Resale values of Ford cars largely stink to this day mostly because of reputation (Escort, Tempo and Crown Victorias are comparatively worthless when matched up against other makes). Is it any wonder Toyota and Honda largely displaced Ford in that market? Even when Ford tried to learn from their mistakes consumers remained skeptical.
Yeah, a lot of/.ers will never have a good thing to say about Microsoft. However there are good reasons to be critical or pessimistic about everything MS does right now because they have an abysmal track record of late. MS had to be dragged kicking and screaming into addressing security issues that the Linux distro companies were pushed to address FIVE YEARS BEFORE (open ports, services enabled by default, etc). And when they finally address these issues, they did it in a half-assed, slapdash way in releasing SP2. It butts heads with other firewall and anti-virus software. It changes a whole pile of default behaviours all at once. It alters APIs that MS used themselves and published as OK for other developers to use.
The problem is that at this point, it is all MS can do until Longhorn. It was a colossal screw-up on their part--The stuff implemented in XP SP2 should've mostly been in place in the initial release of Windows 2000. Security issues should've been addressed promptly as they were encountered, rather than all at once. MS should've kept ISVs in the loop throughout the process, to make sure they do not write "bad software".
Ignorance is no excuse--the early signs of a looming security crisis were there five years ago and as I said before, Linux distros were addressing security already by then. The first article I heard the term "spyware" in was one I read in the SPRING OF 2000. And Microsoft is only addressing the problem NOW?
Shame on MS for sitting on TENS OF BILLIONS in cash for years, and ignoring such problems until they become crises.
....because in the very next sentence after the one you quote I state:
At work--well--I just have to deal with it (customer is always right you know--besides there is always "classic mode")
So yes, I am quite aware that you can turn off the gummy-bear mode. It still infuriates me, however that although most stuff reverts back to a sane state, there are still just enough differences when you get down into the system menus, etc to drive one insane. The fact that classic isn't the default mode is annoying enough. It was a big mistake on MSes part to focus on the visual and completely ignore real usability (the new start menu for example, was a collosal failure in UI design). It's as if they used WMP and winamp people to do the UI.
The most insidious thing, of course, it that "designed for XP" type software (from both MS and third parties) has taken to imitating the GUI-by-Mattel and in most cases it is difficult or impossible to avoid it. Even on older OSes for example, we are inflicted with Windows Media Player 9's crap by default, and scanner and digital camera software packages are some of the worst offenders (there is no way to avoid the eye candy on that crap so I've taken to installing the minimum possible software to make them work--some cameras are great--they work like jumpdrives and need no software at all and just appear as another drive).
Anyways...with all this and increasingly confusing license agreements and anti-piracy activation schemes, as well as an ever worsening virus problem has led me to never buy another Microsoft product again for my own machines--unless perhaps I purchase an XBox and/or games. Win2k and Office2k are the least broken and I'll stick with them until they are useless, at which time I'll be a full time Linux user.
I suppose most of your opinions could be a matter of personal taste (I personally wouldn't mod you flamebait--maybe troll if I was in a bad mood), but I think it is because some of your criticisms of Linux appear to me and others as somewhat baseless. It gives the impression that you are either ill-informed or just looking to stir up crap:
* MS is "easy to use" vs. Linux. This may be becasue you are most familiar with it. You'd probably think Macs were harder to use if you think Mandrake or Lycoris or Linspire were hard to use.
* MS "looks good" - again a matter of personal taste--I personally think XP looks like garbage and it is the one of the main reason I refuse to upgrade my Win2k system at home to XP. At work--well--I just have to deal with it (customer is always right you know--besides there is always "classic mode"). If you DO like the XP look there are themes to make Linux look more like it, and Lycoris and Linspire were designed with that in mind.
* MS doesn't take too long to load up. That is crap--on todays hardware everything starts up pretty quickly. On slower hardware like my notebook (dual boots Win2k and Mandrake 9.1) I find Mandrake boots significantly faster. Perhaps you did a huge/full install of Mandrake and started all services if you found it slow. In the application space, you should try AbiWord and Gnumeric--they are lightweight and speedy and have enough features to be useful for everyday work (actually Gnumeric kicks all other spreadsheets butts!)
* Games - probably your only truly valid point. However video card drivers and game selection are slowly getting better
* You don't have to build Linux from scratch yo your statement comes across as a thinly veiled insult. In fact in my experience and many others that are documented on the web, most popular distributions of linux are in fact EASIER to install than Windows. Plus, if you are reinstalling windows 2k or XP be prepared to spend extra time finding offline copies of the most important updates and installing them, along with firewall and antivirus software before you get anywhere NEAR a network connection, or you could literally pick up a virus within minutes. The only reason XP seems "easy" is because PC makers do the work for you before you even buy the PC.
* you've acknowledged you use Opera over IE--but aren't you aware that IE is so pervasive and integrated now that it could rear its hideous head even when you are not surfing the 'net? Plus, to use windows update you MUST use it.
It's a free country and you are entitled to your choice (and if your PC is indeed your entertainment then XP is probably the best choice). It's also fortunate that you've had zero problems with XP, because (along with win2k)it has been the cause of countless problems in my life. Personally, computer games are only a very small part of my "entertainment", and should I decide I want the best, latest games I'll pick up an XBox or a PS2. For productivity, web surfing and so on (my needs are not demanding either) I feel safer and more at home with Linux.
I've talked with a few Microsoft partners and developers, including published authors who are authorities in their subjects. These people eat, sleep and breathe Microsoft--the technology, the strategy and philosophy. You might say that they are well indoctrinated in other words. I can tell you that not a single one of them were opposed to the concept of open source. In fact some really like what certain open source projects have to offer and use it themselves. I'm told this is typical throughout Microsoft.
The REAL issue is the TYPE of open license. Microsoft is terrified of the GPL and I'm not convinced that they understand it at all. They have come to truly believe their own FUD. They cannot comprehend how Linux came to be where it is today by forcing all who "embrace and extend" it to disclose their contributions. They believe the GPL is far more onerous than it really is. For example I was discussing it with a developer and she wouildn't go near GPL projects. She was afraid that anything she compiled and ran under Mono would have to be made GPL because the compiler is GPL. She thought that you could be at risk of being compelled to disclose the source to all the firmware in peripherals you created, and maybe even the schematics, if you wrote a driver for or otherwise made it work with Linux.
I explained that only the compiler was GPL and that the runtimes were actually *L*GPL which permits proprietary programs to run on the platform. She still thought using the GPL was legally treading on thin ice and preferred BSD licensing as it offered "true freedom" for developers as it was not as restrictive.
This fits right in with the Microsoft philosophy. The whole company was built on the borrowing of ideas. Microsoft essentially stole DOS from SCP (which created DOS as rip off of CP/M for hobbyists). Microsoft stole the GUI idea from Apple (who had lifted it from Xerox). Microsoft "stole" IE from Spyglass when it needed a browser to play catch-up. It even stole networking code from BSD and the underlying architecture of VMS for Windows NT. To Microsoft, open source is useless if it can't be lifted and incorporated into a proprietary system for profit. How it can be used for direct profit is what defines its value.
Microsoft is also very cautious about what it contributes as open code and what open projects it participates in--it has to not only be non-GPL. MS open source must not interfere with their revenue streams. For example, regardless of the license, Microsoft wouldn't contribute to Apache because it conflicts with IIS. PostgreSQL is under a MS-friendly license but it competes with MS SQL Server--as such they wouldn't contribute to PostgreSQL, although they might be inclined to steal code from it to put into MSSQL should they find it serves their needs (maybe they should, seeing as PostgreSQL is a superior product to MSSQL).
I think Microsoft's strategy in spearheading some open source products is to try to establish a new business model. Their profit centres are dwindling--only the OS and Office divisions make a great deal of money--and they need a less expensive development model. They are testing the waters with products outside those divisions. The model is to create a vibrant, popular project in open souce land out of languishing or overlooked proprietary code--the way Netscape spawned the Mozilla project. With the "right" licensing and ownership of the copyrights MS can easily embrace and extend it to release it as a proprietary product (or component thereof), keeping the extensions secret.
This way, Microsoft only has to maintain "extensions" instead of entire systems. Millions of developers can become familiar with the internals, promoting both internal and third-party development. Most importantly, Microsoft maintains their slight edge because it knows the secret extensions and can create superior products to compete with successful third-party software--in effect letting others create MS Bob
..at least I hope you meant to mock the ridiculousness of taking a relatively tiny flash cartoon, recording it to video and re-compressing it in MPEG2 or some such thing.
I'm astonished at the cluelessness that some other posters exhibited in their comments about artifacting, framerates, etc etc relating to MPEG encoding. I'm talking about PROPER compression people! Using DivX on a cartoon isn't exactly the best way to go--that's like saving a line graph as a highly compressed JPEG--it'll look like total crap and it's only done for convenience sake. There are more effective compression algorithms for "line art". Hell, some cartoons would look fine in 256 colours as well.
There is also no need to fix the frame rate. Simpsons is generally shot on twos (that is--one drawing for every two frames, or 12 frames per second). There are exceptions of course. For example, when panning the artwork is moved and shot on ones (24 frames/sec), and if the animated character overlayed on the background must interact with an independently scrolling background the artwork will be done on ones as well (the intro is almost all shot on ones because of all the action). The video need not maintain 24 frames per second and could drop down to 12 much of the time (or 30 and 15, if a feature was shot direct to NTSC video, or 25/12.5 on PAL...)
truly...I think you could watch nearly all of South Park over dial-up at broadcast quality...
I'm not yet 30 and I remember the flame wars on Usenet. I regularly lurked the homebrew groups there about 8 to 10 years ago--just before and during the time I was putting together a simple wire-wrapped system consisting of an M68K and mostly 74LS series logic chips. There were two noteworthy camps:
1. The Gods of the geek world--those who'd pat you on the head and say "nice beginner project--good luck and keep it up son" at the site of project like mine. These were the types who could've been founding members of the Homebrew club back in the day, and figured REAL men didn't need a stinkin' processor to make a PC--just a bunch of SSI TTL Logic. If you really wanted to test your mettle you built it using discrete transistors.
2. The AOL generation of "home brewers" who fancied themselves experts becasue they could screw a 486 Motherboard and some cards into a PC case...they were the "home builders" and endlessly posted questions about BIOS configuration, jumper settings and IRQ conflicts.
Sadly, despite the fact that it was stated loudly and clearly in the FAQ and repeatedly in flame posts what the group was intended for, AND despite a group being put together for bome built DOS PCs, the second group still drowned out the first--DRAM refresh circuitry and address decoding was beyond their comprehension, but cross-posting was not.
Now homebrew seems to mean adding backlit LCD status panels, neon lights, cut-out windows and a coat of day-glo Tremclad. This is a fun hobby to be sure and I enjoy what comes out of it as much as I enjoy going to car shows. However, it isn't really homebrew to me. Cramming an ITX motherboard into as many odd containers as possible just doesn't have the same mystique...
What a shameful waste of technology. All those flat, vast expanses of yellow skintone and blue hair that are Homer's abdomen and Marge's hair? Anybody who watches the Simpsons ought to recognise how compressible such simple artwork is. Add that to the fact that most TV animation is "shot on twos" so it is largely 12 or 15 frames per second anyways.
Come to think of it, properly compressed one such disk could probably store the complete works of the Simpsons, Futurama AND South Park and have room to spare--without noticeable degredation in picture and sound quality.
Lets use our imaginations--with high-density storage like this, consumer-grade equiment of the future could store amazing virtual worlds right down to the last twig and blade of grass...
They care about integration around business practices, workflow, rights management and collaboration.
Becasue I agree with you. It IS odd that you believe MS Office is part of the solution for a "real" business. Can you give me a concrete example of how MS Office (and MS Office alone--not the "Office System Solution" that costs five figures for software licenses alone) helps a business "manage theie best practices"?
My extensive personal experience in this area is that MS Office is usually part of the PROBLEM, not the solution. Generally, Office2K and earlier are not NEARLY scalable enough to address these needs beyond a small workgroup level, and with later versions (and MAYBE the 2K version) in order to take any useful advantage of its power you need to buy into MS from top to bottom and run a very tight IT ship. In my experience only very large, multinational corporations do this right (I work for one and they do it mostly right--and even we struggle at times).
...how else could you explain the following statement?
What will lure people away from Office is something that is somehow BETTER than Office. It will be free, it will be marketed, and it will be seven levels above Office in functionality.
WHAT THE HELL? I don't even use HALF the levels of functionality already in Office XP...and half the functionality in Office is exteremely annoying! I don't even care about a lot of what OO.o has to offer. When I work in Linux I use GNOME office products myself--Abiword and Gnumeric ALREADY work better than MSWord and Excel for what I do--and they start and run just as well as MS Office on a machine with half the memory and clock speed (my Celeron 750 notebook PC with 128MB RAM is dual boot and demonstrates this performance difference quite effectively).
Just because there are less features doesn't mean they "don't work as well"--what's there works very well thank you very much. I am not as familiare with the KOffice counterparts however I know a lot of those users would say the same thing about their favourite product.
Your example of Firefox illustrates this perfectly. Firefox is smaller, better engineered, less clogged with "features" and as a consequence more secure and faster. If size and features were of paramount importance it wouldn't stand a chance against IE. Same goes for maturity--Firefox is only a preview release and it is still catching on rapidly. I'm sure there are enough people who think like me--who just want a spreadsheet to manage my stock portfolio or do statistical calulations in the lab. I don't need a spreadsheet that can play old arcade games and can be made to take total command of my PC!
I want to waste my time reading Slashdot, not making sure my macro and bazillion other security settings are properly configured. This could be the year that brings the straw that breaks the camel's back...I'm fed up and although the situation at work is out of my control, I'm ready to eliminate all Microsoft products from my home entirely. I don't even play Windows games anymore--I find I really have to think hard why I even bother with Windows anymore.
The solution is effective marketing. People need to no the truth--MS OFFICE IS A BIG PILE OF CRAP. Outlook is every bit as bad as (or even more than) IE in regards to security. Word and Excel macros still exist and can still be destructive. MS Access is a frighteningly unreliable database that shouldn't be trusted for much more than Grandma's recipes. The fundamentally flawed security architecture of Office products in general is enough for me to operate under a state of mild paranoia when using them. If more people were aware of these shortcomings, I'm convinced quite a few would switch to something else and wouldn't even miss the bulk of the features missing in the alternative.
... cause when I think how many people are gonna read about this, and how many of those will just be flat out believers of whatever bull-crap story blah blah...
This is exactly what happened when americans elected Bush to be president... blah blah...
That's some baaaaad-ass acid you've been hittin' dude. I'm curious though...what are your thoughts on the Apollo missions?
...for the parent post's suggestions, point-for-point:
- avoid drugs and alcohol - avoid saturated fats - wear a condom if you screw around - practise good hygeine (hint for some of the/.ers out there---that means bathing/showering, shaving/haircut and brushing teeth) and exercise regularly (ie. stand up and move around--outside of the basement when you can) - get that funny mole checked out if it gets bigger or suddenly loses or grows hair - get your flu shot
BTW...if you don't rely ona virus scanner, how do you know you've never had a virus on your PC? Without scanning your PC these days, you could have one and never know because the paylod didn't damage anything important, or bugs in the virus code or your particualr configuration prevented it from invlicting damage...
Anyways, I don't have to do a bunch of research to tell you what comuting is like in human terms:
- We are currently in mediaeval times. The unwashed masses are ruled by the tyrant King William (Gates) III and are subject to his whims. The fear of MSGod drives them to give tithes to the church of Pope Steve Ballmer.
- The unwashed masses are relatively ignorant and are truly unwashed...poor hygeine is rampant, as is malnutrition, making conditions ripe for major plagues
- the privleged MSCE Nobles who know better build fortresses...with moats and "firewalls"...to protect their domains from the savage outside world
So look to the middle ages to see what computing has in store for us in the near future. There is hope though:
- Linus Torvalds and his merry band of rebel bandits are out trying to steal market share from the rich to share with the poor. (yeah I know...Robin Hood is legend not history...whatever)
- A holy man--one Eric Raymond--has written a protest against the indulgences of the powers that be and nailed it to the door of the cathedral...for all in the bazzar to read.
There is a little optimisim trying to crawl out from the rock that is the cynic in me...I'm waiting eagerly for the renaissance of Free Software (the rise of Democracy as it were)
As I installed Firefox, he kept asking "And it's free? Why? What's their business model?" As a salesman, he just couldn't swallow that it could be a full-featured application AND available for free.
Almost *all* PC users who have never known anything but Microsoft Windows are suspicious of free software (and always confuse free/libre with free/gratis). People in sales/marketing are just extra slow learners in this respect;-). Additionally, past experience with these folks is that you must either spend money on or pirate/"steal" software, because free==adware and spyware. They have been taught this by experiences with Kazza and other "free" P2P sharing software, comet cursors, custom smiley addons, Weatherbug, etc etc.
I have converted my parents, my girlfriend, some of her family and a few of our friends (all running some MS Windows variant) to Firefox (and Thunderbird in a couple cases) and all have been happy with the change. However, there is one person (whom I know only through chatting on Yahoo Messenger) that is totally convinced that Mozilla is a company with a business model built around distribution of adware. This stems from the fact that he claims to have tried Thunderbird late last winter/early spring and it coincided with an increase of pop-ups and system crashes while he used it to browse. He cleaned his system up (removing Firefox and a few other things) and it worked better again.
I told him that the crashes MAY have been due to the fact that he was using an earlier beta version (but not even guaranteed). I also told him it was ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE for an install of genuine Firefox to be the source of the pop-up ads and that it has always been my experience that Firefox gets RID of them. There was no convincing him that it was another one of his "free" programs (he has all manner of Yahoo Messenger toys like YTunnel, replacement smileys, booters to get rid of the dirty old men hitting on his 15 year old daughters, boot stoppers, etc). I even edvanced the theory that he may have gotten a tainted/hacked version of Firefox and that you should get it right from Mozilla. He contends that that is where it came from.
He had the same kind of questions as your sales friend, and kept responding to my answers with more questions:
Him: "If they give all their programs away and there was no ad-ware, how does Mozilla make any money?"
Me: "They don't. Mozilla is a non-profit foundation. The programmers are volunteers or paid through donations"
Him: "Well that just means they don't make a profit. The companies that donate money to Mozilla are getting ads in return for their sponsorship"
Me: "Not all of the project sponsors are corporations and none of them want advertising. Some are individuals who give their time and/or money as well. Also, the idea is that the project is Open Source, so even though a company or person might only have/be one developer on the project they can reap the rewards of an entire team of people and see the code like everyone else"...etc etc
Him: "I dunno...sounds fishy to me. I'd really check out that Mozilla outfit to make sure they are legitimate. Right now, I don't trust their programs on my computer. It's not like they are just little toys...the web browser and email are important parts of the OS"
The lesson here: don't just tell doubters to download it and try it out. Actually be there to oversee the installation, and explain what is going on in ther PCs. If Firefox or any other software that is free is anywhere near their PC when bad things happen, it'll be the first think a sceptical convert that runs Windows will blame.
As a matter of fact, I DO work as an engineer for a large, multinational company--and our projects do in fact involve mission critical systems. You are right--engineers do not always get what they want and it does often mean dealing with politically/non-technically made design choices like using Windows when we'd prefer not to. However, there is a limit--a time and place where commodity/consumer grade hardware and software is appropriate--and it's NOT at a level at which a crash will bring down an entire system. I do not have to know how the software works to make that observation--it has been shown that a windows box failed and the result was a major system disruption and hours of chaos. It's not the fact that they used Windows that is disturbing--it's the fact that they used it in a mission critical situation...without adequate testing to boot. And yes, I do have a clue as to how complex the system is and the intricacies of how it works--our companies products run systems in oil refineries, factories and power generating stations. In a similar situation and project we would handle things differently:
1 If program managers were indeed making critical decisions, the would HAVE to be registerd Professional Engineers by law, just like the lead developers.
2 Lead developers are explicitly instructed NOT to simply do as they're told. If they see a serious flaw in a design decision they are obligated to make their views known. Of course, you can't conter one political decision with another--you must have a solid case. If your boss refuses you go to his boss. If you are stonewalled right to the top and you think the issue is really important you can bring the issue to the professional association. The final course is to perform the work and refuse to sign off on it (make the boss do it). That way, if the result is failure, you are in the clear and your higher-ups take all the heat and not just some--it's "due diligence" (ass covering, really).
3 During development and testing, we identify any potential single points of failure, bottlenecks and known issues. In my situation, Windows-based systems are ALWAYS considered "unreliable" (that is, not to be relied upon for critical or safety related systems), therefore we prescribe redundancy. Our test plans always call for us to do controlled AND uncontrolled (pull the plug)shutdowns of each machine in sequence (to test failover) and simultaneously (to determine how the PLCs and other embedded systems, plus electromechanical systems, handle catastrophic failure).
4 If hardware cannot be supported for at least ten years (and in some cases up to 25 years) we MUST design such that there will be a drop-in replacement that will cause minimal disruption(for example an old VAX VMS server could be upgraded to a current Alpha VMS, or an old PLC can be replaced with a next generation one that will execute the same routines rung-for-rung)
5 It is typical to keep the previous, pre-upgrade equipment around as a standby system, ready to put back in service, until the new system has worked as-advertised WITHOUT INTERVENTION for at least a year. A crash or other fault would reset the 1-year clock and we'd be doing a thorough root-cause analysis.
It sounds like there is a lack of professionalism within your group of engineers. I'm not sure about how things are done where you live, but "just following orders" is not an excuse for poor engineering--a failure of that nature where I am would result in being temporarily barred from practicing engineering. Sometimes it can be tough to go against the PHB--I've heard of engineers being fired for refusing to sign off on designs, but I'd rather be fired and be able to work as an engineer elsewhere than have my ability to work as an engineer revoked entirely.
I guess I would have to ask the FAA as to why they made the decision to migrate a working critical system to Windows--a radically different architecture from UNIX. My employer builds
It's kind of sad that moderators tend to be so biased at times on/. that it can be so easy to be a karma whore. Anyways, on to what I have to say...
Her explanation, of course, is not that she has a greatly inflated opinion of her abilities but that he teacher is anti-Christian.
Yes, this young lady may be on the ditzy side, as are most teens these days, regardless of their beliefs. I've seen the same type of drivel from a Marilyn Manson worshipping, black makeup-wearing gay boy as I have from the bubble-headed, bible-thumping cheerleader, except that the teacher was "a homophobic Christian bigot" instead of ANTI Christian.
At any rate, the little Christian cheerleader is right about one thing: a lot of teachers ARE biased against students--particularly in the humanities (English, and in Canada high school Social Studies in particular). I experienced this first hand in my senior year of high school. My beliefs tend towards libertarian ideology and conservative/free market economics. Social Studies teachers tend to be more socialist. I wrote a position paper in support of reducing government welfare programs to a minimum (whether it be corporate or personal). The resulting mark was 78 percent if I remember right. The highest mark I ever received from that teacher was 83 percent.
At the end of high school where I live, final exams are standardised, government-issued tests marked by a panel of teachers independent of the local high school--your teacher cannot influence your grade on the exam (I believe they aren't even permitted to see your completed test before it is marked). By chance, I could write about the same subject as the above-mentioned paper (you had a choice of three topics). Of course I couldn't remember the papaer word for word, however I used the same arguments, in close to the same order, as I did on the paper that originally scored 78 percent. Later I learned that I scored NINETY PERCENT on the essay (and 95 n the multiple choice/short answer...woo hoo!).
I think it's fairly save to say that a twelve percent difference indicates that there is quite a lot of bias and subjectivity in grading there...
You continue on stating opinion without making any strong argument by saying:
these zealots will continue to try to take control of this country
I've heard almost the same exact statement made a couple times before. One time it was coming out of the mouth of a hooded, cross-burning man to a news reporter in reference to Jewish people. The other time was quite recently, except the insult wasn't "zealot"--it was "pervert". That was from a demonstrator holding a cross and marching in a demonstration against gay rights. Fact is, most evangelical Christians are not zealots that want to toake control of their country--they just want to live their lives free of persecution and with the respect of others around them. This is no different from Muslims, or Jews or even athiests or gay couples who wish to have their relationships acknowledged by the state. Certainly, within ALL of those groups, there are funamentalist/extreme minority factions that would indeed love to take control.
You are free to state whatever beliefs you may have and I'll go to my grave to defend your right to do so, however I'd like to give you some advice: think a bit before making a blanket statement about a large group of people, whether it be positive or negative. You are likely to come across as closed-minded and even offensive to more than a few people.
...but I blame a lot of people for carelessness and incompetence (except for the actual techie that forgot to reboot last month--that is an honest mistake).
* Bill Gates and developers of Win2000 for the convoluted, kludgy API they designed for their OS
* Product managers at Harris--the crap-for-brains who actually thought changing out robust UNIX servers that weren't really THAT old with consumer-grade PCs running an unproven OS was an UPGRADE to a critical, safety related system. WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING? In one of the article links (the Harris press release), Harris touted SEVEN NINES reliability! If that was a criteria they should've NEVER considered Windows...Not even BillG himself would say Win2k could provide that sort of uptime!
* Retarded developers at Harris who used an API call that tracks milliseconds in a 32 bit integer despite the fact that bugs related to the use of said function call were WELL KNOWN by that time.
* Dough-heads at LAX and the FAA who, upon finding the error early in development, decided it was OK to rely on MANUAL MONTHLY REBOOTS as a workaround to a potentially fatal problem. They should've run the "upgraded" windows machines in parallel with the UNIX servers for much longer, and failing that they should've IMMEDIATELY restored the old UNIX servers to service as soon as the problem was discovered, and to refuse the upgrade (and revoke payment to Harris) until the problem was properly resolved (and NOT just worked around with a kludge like an email reminder to reboot, or a reboot script or a shutdown warning either).
I'm surprised that this sort of error got into such a critical system, and at the way it was handled. I would've certainly tested the new system in parallel for long enough to catch this sort of error and kept the old system around for longer as a standby (in my experience, replacements of critical systems were often tested in parallel for 3 months to a year). I also would've acted much more decisively in resolving the problem if it did slip through the cracks, given a system crash could put lives in danger.
Maybe my girlfriends fear of flying is more justified than I thought if these are the kind of clowns we trust our safety to...
I think a good dev kit would prolong a console's success but not because it would take advantage of the hardware's full potential. In fact, I'd say reliance on a one-size-fits-all libraray of code and tools would acutally LOWER the potential performance of the resulting software to some degree--particularly in a system with a somewhat convoluted architecture such as the PS2 design.
The ONLY way to get the maximum software performance out of any hardware is to program as close to "bare metal" as possible--and with today's hardware it's damn hard to get through the teflon coating. A lot of very fun Atari 2600 games were crammed into 4K--and there was no OS, no BIOS, no kits...NOTHING except 6502 assembly language (and it was a crippled 6502 at that). I LOVED games like Yars Revenge and Circus Atari, but you could never put them in a 4K cartrige to run on a machine that didn't even have enough RAM to use as a frame buffer (something like 256 BYTES) using anything higher-level. The same goes with some of the amazing demoes on old Ataris, Commodores and pre-486 PCs.
A dev kit, or code library, or BIOS/OS with published APIs isolate developers further from the bare metal rather than bring them closer to it--thus the result will always be less spectacular. Sony's competitors basically have a more straight-forward architecture and more raw CPU power so they are simpler to program from the start, thus their development tools require less stuff between the hardware and the programming interface (XBox is just a messed up PC so MS and XBOX developers have had years to practice on PCs as well).
It may be a matter of personal taste, but I think there is already too much emphasis on sound and graphics in todays games (especially on consoles), and it's time for developers to spend less time on anti-aliasing and texture maps and shading. It would benefit a lot of developers to re-focus on imagination and game play and stop releasing second, third and fourth sequels to original successes. But...I guess that is not where the money is.
As far as forgetting you are playing a game, I think that unless you use you imagination then you can't do that until someone makes the Holodeck aboard the Enterprise-D a reality. I suppose some people are lacking enough in imagination to be distracted by a jagged edge appearing for a half second, however I managed to get lost in a game and "just have fun" playing text adventures and Super Mario and Commander Keen, and I'd STILL rather play those games than almost all the games sold on the XBox because they are fun and easy to play, yet have enough levels, hidden rooms, etc. to keep my attention for awhile.
Perhaps I'm very easily amused. However, I prefer to think I just have a good imagination.
* Explosions from fume ignition have happened from time to time since filling stations first appeared. Cellphones are blamed because everybody carries one nowadays and the chance is pretty good that someone will be carrying one or even talking on one while they are filling the car. Just because the cellphone was there doesn't mean it was the cause!
* No, the vibrator unit is NOT a danger--it is generally a teeny tiny, low voltage DC motor that spins a little off-balance wheel... IT CANNOT PRODUCE A SPARK SUFFICIENT TO IGNITE FUEL VAPOURS AT A FILLING STATION. Hell there is a MUCH BIGGER electric motor RIGHT INSIDE THE GAS TANK of most of todays cars (the fuel pump) and they manage to keep that from exploding.
* ALSO, NO the backlight CANNOT ignite the fumes. Yes, the "indiglo" style LCD displays and laptop backlights have a high voltage tube in them, but the curent is EXTREMELY LOW and the tube is COMPLETELY SEALED. FURTHERMORE, todays cellphones use LEDs for lighting displays anyways--they operate at LESS THAN 2 VOLTS and use MILLIAMP-RANGE CURRENT and it is IMPOSSIBLE for them to ignite any sort of fumes.
There are several EXTREMELY MORE LIKELY causes of filling station explosions:
1. Cigarettes - yes it is forbidden to smoke at the pump but people are stupid and don't listen--I've seen people get out of cars with lit cigarettes hanging from their mouths as they open their fuel tanks BEFORE they drop it on the ground and stomp it out.
2. Static discharge - people put the nozzle in, lock it to the open position then proceed to talk on the phone, or check the oil, or go buy coffee, or check the baby's car seat, etc, picking up static charges, then when the car is full they grab the METAL nozzle--where the highest concentration of fumes is and BOOM
3. Backfiring from nearby vehicles, yes it's rare but probably more likely than a cellphone to cause sparks or open flame.
4. Pretty much anything else involving electricity and/or metal-to-metal contact. Engaging the starter causes a spark. A damaged/worn spark plug lead next to the engine block will spark strongly and repeatedly as soon as you start the car. Breaking an incandescent or flourescent bulb that is lit..a dragging mufflert on the pavement...etc etc etc...
WHat the hell is WRONG with you people..can you NOT see the lack of common sense in this? All of these much more likely events, capable of creating much mure intense sparks or open flames and you STILL blame cellphones for explosions? I guess that is what makes a good urban legend--if it is debunked then someone comes up with yet ANOTHER crazy theory of what might cause the phenomenon.
...as an alternative to democracy? Sure, Cuba and China have very stable governments that remain focused on their agenda and the general direction of the nation because they have no democracy at all, but to what end? As a citizen of these nations you are not considered human beings by govenrment. A "good communist citizen" is a resource--a cog in a wheel of some big machine chugging away to produce a product as close to specifications drawn up by the Glorious Leader as possible (that product ideally is supposed to be an egalitarian society I suppose). As such, from birth to death citizens are told what they can learn, what they can do for a living, that they are allowed to believe, how big or small their families can be and so on.
I am not cattle. I will not be told what websites I can visit, where I am allowed to go to school, where I am to work and how many children I'm allowed to have. I will forego some stability and efficiency of government to have the freedom to live as I see fit and have a say in the nation's governance--even if on occasion we end up electing a "boob" to represent our nation. Up here in the Great White North we've managed to survive despite electing and re-electing complete and total boobs for the past decade. Democracy at least gives us the chance to wake up and throw the boobs out.
No, the problam isn't with the how government is selected on this continent--democracy of some form has proven to be the best of all methods. The problem is with the structure and size of government in both Canada and the US. When a government gets too big, too far reaching and too distant (physically and figuratively speaking) it is prone to become ineffective, unresponsive to citizen's needs and even potentially dangerous. That is why big democratic countries like Canada and the US are set up as federations in the first place--it's just that the federal system needs rebalancing, so that federal government is smaller and more focused on "big picture" things (international affairs/security, monetary policy, etc) and local and regional (state/provincial) governments should be given more powers to steer the agenda of higher levels of government, as they are "closer" to the people.
It's not voting that is the problem, it is the lack of listening on the part of those elected...
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The assumption that MS hires "idiots" is unfair to be sure. However, those in the know who have seen some of the colossal kludges in MS software, and recently almost all Windows users who have been impacted by the repeated, massive virus/worm attacks base their knowledge on the only thing they know about Microsoft--their products.
It has always appeared to me that MS hires top students from the very best schools.
That is true--unfortunately they have been known to hire them AWAY from the best schools too (ie. before they graduate). It doesn't matter if they are top five percentile students--if they have zero practical experience and are thrown into a situation beyond their capabilities the result can be less than ideal. Nonetheless, I think that by now MS has figured out how to select and place recent grads and students hired before graduation. I think the problem is now deeper than that.
Microsoft triumphed over other tech companies that were prominent in its early days because BillG learned it had to become a marketing company (the same reason Apple still exists today--Jobs knew that from the start and Gates is a very quick study). Other tech companies remained software companies--they toiled away to make their next killer app the best it could be and marketing was an afterthought.
At Microsoft, from 1980 on at least, has been a marketing comapny first, with software development second. The most important technology it markets was invented elsewhere and merely extended by Microsoft. Only in the company's latter life have they been truly serious about research. The long time "thinkers" are brilliant but historically little has come out of Microsoft's research that has been commercially successful given the potential funding power MS has had.
Therein lies the problem. The article is right--software isn't the root cause of the vast majority of failures (even when the failure is the direct result of a software bug). At Microsoft, software design is driven by marketing--time deadlines, customer requests for features, backwards compatibility/legacy support etc. The result is the house of cards we build our systems upon today.
That result is unavoidable without EXTREMELY skilled planning and throttling the pace of change. Unfortunately, The MS Ship sails where the winds take it, and the pace of change has been rapid and relentless until now. I once thought the problems with MS products were because too many drop-outs were running the show. After seeing this blog I can see what the development teams have had to cope with. They have to do the impossible and try to get it done before the deadline slips yet again and MS market cap slips a few million and BillG comes down to yell at them. In some cases you have to be brilliant just to survive at MS.
So anyways, I think software bus are the immediate cause of a lot of disasters, but the ROOT cause definitely is poor planning and project management that leads to unstable system development.
..of people who do not want the calls that is enforced with fines essentially basically mean the intent is to restrict organisations from making calls? In other words, an effort to at least partially ban phone campaigns (those that are commercial in nature only as the US DNC list is set up now)?
I suppose not everyone will agree with me about exceptions for political campaigns--My opinion is that democracy is the cornerstone of the free world, and that if the citizenry disengage from the process (do not vote or make ininformed decisions) then government will become corrupt (corruption is already a growing problem in both American and Canadian govenrments). Given how politically apathetic most people on this continent are I think we need a little legislative nudge from time to time. In some countries they go so far as to require you by law to vote--I'd say that goes even further than I would go but it shows how important the process is to some nations.
Anyways, I'm not sure about US law, but requiring political campaigns during an election to abide by the same rules telemarketers have to in regards to the DNC list would conflict with the Elections Act of Canada, so the Elections Act would have to be amended or an exception for election campaigns would have to be included in the DNC list.
This would be analgous to the rules regarding "junk mail" right now (the paper kind, not the electronic kind). There is already a policy that Canada Post will not deliver unadressed admail to your mailbox if you affix a "no flyers" or similar such label on your mailbox, or contact Canada Post and file a formal request. Because of the elections act, an election brochure is exempt--Canada Post (and couriers? I'm not sure) must deliver them or fines can be livied against the delivery agent (Canada Post and/or the mail carrier personally).
I have worked on campaigns and have run into these rules before. Those who did not support our candidates views would call our offices and complain that they received "junk mail" from us and that he does not condone the delivery of junk mail. We had to explain that campaign material is not junk mail in the eyes of the law and that you must "opt-out" by contacting the source of the material directly (ie. call us). So to minimise aggravation and stay within the regulations we initially delivered to EVERY household in the riding and then only skipped those houses on future drops where residents personally requested for us to stop.
Note that these rules only apply during an official election campaign for registered candidates. Outside of an election everyone has to follow the rules, and during an election parties who are not official agents of registeres candidates must follow the rules ALL the time when endorsing or portesting a candidate (they also must comply with strict spending restrictions in the "gag law" which many say goes too far).
If there are rules about candidates rights during elections in the US that are similar, I can understand why an exception was made in the DNC list when it was set up.
...it's the rest of the world that is too modest. To be fair, the Americans are front-and-centre on this project so kudos to them as long as they remember they got there with a little help from others.
The US sometimes isn't the leader in Aerospace but give them credit when it's due. Russians and Canadians bet them in the sattelite race--the Canadians also beat the Americans to Mach 2 flight speed. And the REALLY big, complicated projects are the result of collaberation between all three of those nations among many others. However one thing the US consistently tops the world in is national pride and the associated amitious goals they have set. Only Amercans had the balls to reach for the moon and actually REACH it. When they win they win BIG.
Thank God rocket scientists don't get into pissing matches like the ones here or nothing would get done.
...but if the phone rings when my sweetheart and I are enjoying out private time we ignore it and continue enjoying each other. I'd work on your skills in the sack if I were you and the phone ringing was of more importance to you than nookie.
Anyways, I'm surprised the judge even considered the telemarketer's case--It really isn't a free speech issue at all IMHO. The DNC list doesn't restrict what you may say, it merely restricts how you may deliver your message in order to protect the privacy of individuals.. They can still rent billboards, advertise on TV, run newspaper and radio ads, etc etc. Unless they can make a case that their message is more important than privacy (say, public safety, criminal investigation or election information) then they have no case.
They have no more right to solicit via telephone than they have to walk up and down a residential street at 2 AM with a bullhorn yelling "GET YER CITIFINANCIAL MASTERCARD HERE FOLKS!!! ONLY TWO PERCENT INTRODUCTORY AAAYYEEE PEEEE AHRRRRRR!". They are both equally disruptive to personal lives, and the free speech argument is flimsy at best. You can take you message public and that's your right, but you cannot use such agressive tactics to FORCE you message on others and argue it is your fundamental right without a damn good reason.
In Canada there are regulations pertaining to direct marketing as well (unfortunately, we are a step behind in DNC lists but hopefully that will change). Political campaign literature is expressly allowed in the Elections Act--which means campaigners must be premitted to deliver unaddressed bulk mail, computer email and telephone calls as they see fit. They are also allowed to campaign door-to-door. These rules apply only during the (official, 35-day) election campaign--they cannot bug you all the time.
You are free to refuse their literature, phone calls and email messages, but you cannot, for example, prevent a campaigner from entering an apartment building, putting up signs on a public boulevard in view of your house or impede his ability to offer literature to others (that could include an ISP blacklisting the mail server of a political party, or interfering with the operation of a call centre). Do do so during a campaign is actually a criminal offence in Canada.
This is because the democratic process is paramount--above even privacy--in the eye of the law here. You can't ban phone campaigns because you hate GW Bush. You don't HAVE to listen to the call--as soon as you know it's a campaign call from Bush just HANG TH F*** UP! (One of the responsibilities campaigners have in exchange for protected rights to campaign is that they mist identify their affiliration on demand--and in the case of pre-recorded messages they are supposed to begin with such an identification. If they don't you can complain and have actions taken). If they come to your door, just slam it in their face if you want. If they leave a pamphlet in the mail, shred it. If they leave a sign in the public median on the street in front of your house...JUST LIVE WITH IT.
The problem isn't special rules protecting campaign methods--it's campaign SPENDING. Crooked industry lobbyists in the pockets of congressmen ruin democracy. Compelling the candidate for Sherrif of Tumbleweed County, South Dakota to abide by a do-not-call list when one of his few cheap, effective means of campaigning in a geographically large juristiction is through phone-outs conducted by volunteers--well, that would ruin democracy as well.
...Maybe /. should conduct a poll of MS Word features. I rarely use either of the features you mention and neither would be showstoppers in the daily use of my word processor, so in *my* experience I'd say Abiword is far from a non-starter (I like outline view in MS Word, but I find I use it more because of the often-annoying behaviour of Word when I format my documents).
Really, Free/Open Source software is about choice, and as such it is really a shame that it is overlooked in articles about MS Office alternatives. This isn't really like the window manager wars or back in the mid 80's when the home computer market was so fragmented becasue AbiWord supports the same file formats. I think that so long as the segments of a market can interoperate reasonably smoothly, then a certain amount of fragmentation is important. Maybe Abiword isn't as featureful but it is really snappy and quite serviceable.
The same goes with other MSOffice alternatives. I think Gnumeric is a superior alternative to the offering in OO.o in terms of features and such. And if you like the KDE environment, what about KOffice? I find it discouraging that alternatives are dismissed as "non-starters" for lack of some of "pet-features".
I'm glad you are open to examine alternatives, and I encourage you to keep doing it. But please, if you find reason to discard it, PLEASE at least provide feedback to the developers--and if you fancy yourself a hacker, get involved in the projects yourself.
Just abandoning an option because it doesn't exactly suit your needs or to jump on the bandwagon of the leading alternative. I don't think it's much better to replace one monopoly with another, even if it is open source. It still provides a single point of manipulation of a whole segment of the software industry.
Why is the analogy so horrible? Sounds logical to me. And to the fool who moderated the comment "insightful", could you explain where the insight is in the parent post's two-word assessment? I see no insight at all--only opinion.
/.ers will never have a good thing to say about Microsoft. However there are good reasons to be critical or pessimistic about everything MS does right now because they have an abysmal track record of late. MS had to be dragged kicking and screaming into addressing security issues that the Linux distro companies were pushed to address FIVE YEARS BEFORE (open ports, services enabled by default, etc). And when they finally address these issues, they did it in a half-assed, slapdash way in releasing SP2. It butts heads with other firewall and anti-virus software. It changes a whole pile of default behaviours all at once. It alters APIs that MS used themselves and published as OK for other developers to use.
In my opinion the automotive analogy is accurate, if not boring and unimaginitive (we must be well in our second decade of comparing software with cars by now--oh well I can be accused of the same thing at times). Anyways, Windows XP SP2 really is a lot like the foot dragging and secret recalls of the automotive industry. It is fortunate that the resulting incompetence in the software industry does not directly result in grave injury or loss of life.
Honestly when thousands of Ford Pintos and GM Trucks were put out on the road that could explode on impact in what would otherwise be non-fatal accident, and Ford and GM KNEW about these flaws for months and years and DELIBERATLY avoided fixing thr problem on the advice of bean counters (more money to fix than to settle lawsuits), how do you think that helped their reputations?
Hell, when you think of it, if Microsoft Windows was a car it WOULD be the Ford Pinto. It would be "good enough" to get the job done, but not all that reliable and if you were a bit reckless it could prove more hazardous to your life than other cars. It took may years--maybe over a decade--for Ford to recover, and people still remember the flammable Ford Pinto. Resale values of Ford cars largely stink to this day mostly because of reputation (Escort, Tempo and Crown Victorias are comparatively worthless when matched up against other makes). Is it any wonder Toyota and Honda largely displaced Ford in that market? Even when Ford tried to learn from their mistakes consumers remained skeptical.
Yeah, a lot of
The problem is that at this point, it is all MS can do until Longhorn. It was a colossal screw-up on their part--The stuff implemented in XP SP2 should've mostly been in place in the initial release of Windows 2000. Security issues should've been addressed promptly as they were encountered, rather than all at once. MS should've kept ISVs in the loop throughout the process, to make sure they do not write "bad software".
Ignorance is no excuse--the early signs of a looming security crisis were there five years ago and as I said before, Linux distros were addressing security already by then. The first article I heard the term "spyware" in was one I read in the SPRING OF 2000. And Microsoft is only addressing the problem NOW?
Shame on MS for sitting on TENS OF BILLIONS in cash for years, and ignoring such problems until they become crises.
....because in the very next sentence after the one you quote I state:
At work--well--I just have to deal with it (customer is always right you know--besides there is always "classic mode")
So yes, I am quite aware that you can turn off the gummy-bear mode. It still infuriates me, however that although most stuff reverts back to a sane state, there are still just enough differences when you get down into the system menus, etc to drive one insane. The fact that classic isn't the default mode is annoying enough. It was a big mistake on MSes part to focus on the visual and completely ignore real usability (the new start menu for example, was a collosal failure in UI design). It's as if they used WMP and winamp people to do the UI.
The most insidious thing, of course, it that "designed for XP" type software (from both MS and third parties) has taken to imitating the GUI-by-Mattel and in most cases it is difficult or impossible to avoid it. Even on older OSes for example, we are inflicted with Windows Media Player 9's crap by default, and scanner and digital camera software packages are some of the worst offenders (there is no way to avoid the eye candy on that crap so I've taken to installing the minimum possible software to make them work--some cameras are great--they work like jumpdrives and need no software at all and just appear as another drive).
Anyways...with all this and increasingly confusing license agreements and anti-piracy activation schemes, as well as an ever worsening virus problem has led me to never buy another Microsoft product again for my own machines--unless perhaps I purchase an XBox and/or games. Win2k and Office2k are the least broken and I'll stick with them until they are useless, at which time I'll be a full time Linux user.
I suppose most of your opinions could be a matter of personal taste (I personally wouldn't mod you flamebait--maybe troll if I was in a bad mood), but I think it is because some of your criticisms of Linux appear to me and others as somewhat baseless. It gives the impression that you are either ill-informed or just looking to stir up crap:
* MS is "easy to use" vs. Linux. This may be becasue you are most familiar with it. You'd probably think Macs were harder to use if you think Mandrake or Lycoris or Linspire were hard to use.
* MS "looks good" - again a matter of personal taste--I personally think XP looks like garbage and it is the one of the main reason I refuse to upgrade my Win2k system at home to XP. At work--well--I just have to deal with it (customer is always right you know--besides there is always "classic mode"). If you DO like the XP look there are themes to make Linux look more like it, and Lycoris and Linspire were designed with that in mind.
* MS doesn't take too long to load up. That is crap--on todays hardware everything starts up pretty quickly. On slower hardware like my notebook (dual boots Win2k and Mandrake 9.1) I find Mandrake boots significantly faster. Perhaps you did a huge/full install of Mandrake and started all services if you found it slow. In the application space, you should try AbiWord and Gnumeric--they are lightweight and speedy and have enough features to be useful for everyday work (actually Gnumeric kicks all other spreadsheets butts!)
* Games - probably your only truly valid point. However video card drivers and game selection are slowly getting better
* You don't have to build Linux from scratch yo your statement comes across as a thinly veiled insult. In fact in my experience and many others that are documented on the web, most popular distributions of linux are in fact EASIER to install than Windows. Plus, if you are reinstalling windows 2k or XP be prepared to spend extra time finding offline copies of the most important updates and installing them, along with firewall and antivirus software before you get anywhere NEAR a network connection, or you could literally pick up a virus within minutes. The only reason XP seems "easy" is because PC makers do the work for you before you even buy the PC.
* you've acknowledged you use Opera over IE--but aren't you aware that IE is so pervasive and integrated now that it could rear its hideous head even when you are not surfing the 'net? Plus, to use windows update you MUST use it.
It's a free country and you are entitled to your choice (and if your PC is indeed your entertainment then XP is probably the best choice). It's also fortunate that you've had zero problems with XP, because (along with win2k)it has been the cause of countless problems in my life. Personally, computer games are only a very small part of my "entertainment", and should I decide I want the best, latest games I'll pick up an XBox or a PS2. For productivity, web surfing and so on (my needs are not demanding either) I feel safer and more at home with Linux.
It's more complicated than that.
I've talked with a few Microsoft partners and developers, including published authors who are authorities in their subjects. These people eat, sleep and breathe Microsoft--the technology, the strategy and philosophy. You might say that they are well indoctrinated in other words. I can tell you that not a single one of them were opposed to the concept of open source. In fact some really like what certain open source projects have to offer and use it themselves. I'm told this is typical throughout Microsoft.
The REAL issue is the TYPE of open license. Microsoft is terrified of the GPL and I'm not convinced that they understand it at all. They have come to truly believe their own FUD. They cannot comprehend how Linux came to be where it is today by forcing all who "embrace and extend" it to disclose their contributions. They believe the GPL is far more onerous than it really is. For example I was discussing it with a developer and she wouildn't go near GPL projects. She was afraid that anything she compiled and ran under Mono would have to be made GPL because the compiler is GPL. She thought that you could be at risk of being compelled to disclose the source to all the firmware in peripherals you created, and maybe even the schematics, if you wrote a driver for or otherwise made it work with Linux.
I explained that only the compiler was GPL and that the runtimes were actually *L*GPL which permits proprietary programs to run on the platform. She still thought using the GPL was legally treading on thin ice and preferred BSD licensing as it offered "true freedom" for developers as it was not as restrictive.
This fits right in with the Microsoft philosophy. The whole company was built on the borrowing of ideas. Microsoft essentially stole DOS from SCP (which created DOS as rip off of CP/M for hobbyists). Microsoft stole the GUI idea from Apple (who had lifted it from Xerox). Microsoft "stole" IE from Spyglass when it needed a browser to play catch-up. It even stole networking code from BSD and the underlying architecture of VMS for Windows NT. To Microsoft, open source is useless if it can't be lifted and incorporated into a proprietary system for profit. How it can be used for direct profit is what defines its value.
Microsoft is also very cautious about what it contributes as open code and what open projects it participates in--it has to not only be non-GPL. MS open source must not interfere with their revenue streams. For example, regardless of the license, Microsoft wouldn't contribute to Apache because it conflicts with IIS. PostgreSQL is under a MS-friendly license but it competes with MS SQL Server--as such they wouldn't contribute to PostgreSQL, although they might be inclined to steal code from it to put into MSSQL should they find it serves their needs (maybe they should, seeing as PostgreSQL is a superior product to MSSQL).
I think Microsoft's strategy in spearheading some open source products is to try to establish a new business model. Their profit centres are dwindling--only the OS and Office divisions make a great deal of money--and they need a less expensive development model. They are testing the waters with products outside those divisions. The model is to create a vibrant, popular project in open souce land out of languishing or overlooked proprietary code--the way Netscape spawned the Mozilla project. With the "right" licensing and ownership of the copyrights MS can easily embrace and extend it to release it as a proprietary product (or component thereof), keeping the extensions secret.
This way, Microsoft only has to maintain "extensions" instead of entire systems. Millions of developers can become familiar with the internals, promoting both internal and third-party development. Most importantly, Microsoft maintains their slight edge because it knows the secret extensions and can create superior products to compete with successful third-party software--in effect letting others create MS Bob
...and you posted this on Monday afternoon.
Are you the same guy who posted this, but posting anonymously?
..at least I hope you meant to mock the ridiculousness of taking a relatively tiny flash cartoon, recording it to video and re-compressing it in MPEG2 or some such thing.
I'm astonished at the cluelessness that some other posters exhibited in their comments about artifacting, framerates, etc etc relating to MPEG encoding. I'm talking about PROPER compression people! Using DivX on a cartoon isn't exactly the best way to go--that's like saving a line graph as a highly compressed JPEG--it'll look like total crap and it's only done for convenience sake. There are more effective compression algorithms for "line art". Hell, some cartoons would look fine in 256 colours as well.
There is also no need to fix the frame rate. Simpsons is generally shot on twos (that is--one drawing for every two frames, or 12 frames per second). There are exceptions of course. For example, when panning the artwork is moved and shot on ones (24 frames/sec), and if the animated character overlayed on the background must interact with an independently scrolling background the artwork will be done on ones as well (the intro is almost all shot on ones because of all the action). The video need not maintain 24 frames per second and could drop down to 12 much of the time (or 30 and 15, if a feature was shot direct to NTSC video, or 25/12.5 on PAL...)
truly...I think you could watch nearly all of South Park over dial-up at broadcast quality...
I'm not yet 30 and I remember the flame wars on Usenet. I regularly lurked the homebrew groups there about 8 to 10 years ago--just before and during the time I was putting together a simple wire-wrapped system consisting of an M68K and mostly 74LS series logic chips. There were two noteworthy camps:
1. The Gods of the geek world--those who'd pat you on the head and say "nice beginner project--good luck and keep it up son" at the site of project like mine. These were the types who could've been founding members of the Homebrew club back in the day, and figured REAL men didn't need a stinkin' processor to make a PC--just a bunch of SSI TTL Logic. If you really wanted to test your mettle you built it using discrete transistors.
2. The AOL generation of "home brewers" who fancied themselves experts becasue they could screw a 486 Motherboard and some cards into a PC case...they were the "home builders" and endlessly posted questions about BIOS configuration, jumper settings and IRQ conflicts.
Sadly, despite the fact that it was stated loudly and clearly in the FAQ and repeatedly in flame posts what the group was intended for, AND despite a group being put together for bome built DOS PCs, the second group still drowned out the first--DRAM refresh circuitry and address decoding was beyond their comprehension, but cross-posting was not.
Now homebrew seems to mean adding backlit LCD status panels, neon lights, cut-out windows and a coat of day-glo Tremclad. This is a fun hobby to be sure and I enjoy what comes out of it as much as I enjoy going to car shows. However, it isn't really homebrew to me. Cramming an ITX motherboard into as many odd containers as possible just doesn't have the same mystique...
What a shameful waste of technology. All those flat, vast expanses of yellow skintone and blue hair that are Homer's abdomen and Marge's hair? Anybody who watches the Simpsons ought to recognise how compressible such simple artwork is. Add that to the fact that most TV animation is "shot on twos" so it is largely 12 or 15 frames per second anyways.
Come to think of it, properly compressed one such disk could probably store the complete works of the Simpsons, Futurama AND South Park and have room to spare--without noticeable degredation in picture and sound quality.
Lets use our imaginations--with high-density storage like this, consumer-grade equiment of the future could store amazing virtual worlds right down to the last twig and blade of grass...
...not because of what you think business want:
They care about integration around business practices, workflow, rights management and collaboration.
Becasue I agree with you. It IS odd that you believe MS Office is part of the solution for a "real" business. Can you give me a concrete example of how MS Office (and MS Office alone--not the "Office System Solution" that costs five figures for software licenses alone) helps a business "manage theie best practices"?
My extensive personal experience in this area is that MS Office is usually part of the PROBLEM, not the solution. Generally, Office2K and earlier are not NEARLY scalable enough to address these needs beyond a small workgroup level, and with later versions (and MAYBE the 2K version) in order to take any useful advantage of its power you need to buy into MS from top to bottom and run a very tight IT ship. In my experience only very large, multinational corporations do this right (I work for one and they do it mostly right--and even we struggle at times).
...how else could you explain the following statement?
What will lure people away from Office is something that is somehow BETTER than Office. It will be free, it will be marketed, and it will be seven levels above Office in functionality.
WHAT THE HELL? I don't even use HALF the levels of functionality already in Office XP...and half the functionality in Office is exteremely annoying! I don't even care about a lot of what OO.o has to offer. When I work in Linux I use GNOME office products myself--Abiword and Gnumeric ALREADY work better than MSWord and Excel for what I do--and they start and run just as well as MS Office on a machine with half the memory and clock speed (my Celeron 750 notebook PC with 128MB RAM is dual boot and demonstrates this performance difference quite effectively).
Just because there are less features doesn't mean they "don't work as well"--what's there works very well thank you very much. I am not as familiare with the KOffice counterparts however I know a lot of those users would say the same thing about their favourite product.
Your example of Firefox illustrates this perfectly. Firefox is smaller, better engineered, less clogged with "features" and as a consequence more secure and faster. If size and features were of paramount importance it wouldn't stand a chance against IE. Same goes for maturity--Firefox is only a preview release and it is still catching on rapidly. I'm sure there are enough people who think like me--who just want a spreadsheet to manage my stock portfolio or do statistical calulations in the lab. I don't need a spreadsheet that can play old arcade games and can be made to take total command of my PC!
I want to waste my time reading Slashdot, not making sure my macro and bazillion other security settings are properly configured. This could be the year that brings the straw that breaks the camel's back...I'm fed up and although the situation at work is out of my control, I'm ready to eliminate all Microsoft products from my home entirely. I don't even play Windows games anymore--I find I really have to think hard why I even bother with Windows anymore.
The solution is effective marketing. People need to no the truth--MS OFFICE IS A BIG PILE OF CRAP. Outlook is every bit as bad as (or even more than) IE in regards to security. Word and Excel macros still exist and can still be destructive. MS Access is a frighteningly unreliable database that shouldn't be trusted for much more than Grandma's recipes. The fundamentally flawed security architecture of Office products in general is enough for me to operate under a state of mild paranoia when using them. If more people were aware of these shortcomings, I'm convinced quite a few would switch to something else and wouldn't even miss the bulk of the features missing in the alternative.
... cause when I think how many people are gonna read about this, and how many of those will just be flat out believers of whatever bull-crap story blah blah...
This is exactly what happened when americans elected Bush to be president... blah blah...
That's some baaaaad-ass acid you've been hittin' dude. I'm curious though...what are your thoughts on the Apollo missions?
...for the parent post's suggestions, point-for-point:
/.ers out there---that means bathing/showering, shaving/haircut and brushing teeth) and exercise regularly (ie. stand up and move around--outside of the basement when you can)
- avoid drugs and alcohol
- avoid saturated fats
- wear a condom if you screw around
- practise good hygeine (hint for some of the
- get that funny mole checked out if it gets bigger or suddenly loses or grows hair
- get your flu shot
BTW...if you don't rely ona virus scanner, how do you know you've never had a virus on your PC? Without scanning your PC these days, you could have one and never know because the paylod didn't damage anything important, or bugs in the virus code or your particualr configuration prevented it from invlicting damage...
Anyways, I don't have to do a bunch of research to tell you what comuting is like in human terms:
- We are currently in mediaeval times. The unwashed masses are ruled by the tyrant King William (Gates) III and are subject to his whims. The fear of MSGod drives them to give tithes to the church of Pope Steve Ballmer.
- The unwashed masses are relatively ignorant and are truly unwashed...poor hygeine is rampant, as is malnutrition, making conditions ripe for major plagues
- the privleged MSCE Nobles who know better build fortresses...with moats and "firewalls"...to protect their domains from the savage outside world
So look to the middle ages to see what computing has in store for us in the near future. There is hope though:
- Linus Torvalds and his merry band of rebel bandits are out trying to steal market share from the rich to share with the poor. (yeah I know...Robin Hood is legend not history...whatever)
- A holy man--one Eric Raymond--has written a protest against the indulgences of the powers that be and nailed it to the door of the cathedral...for all in the bazzar to read.
There is a little optimisim trying to crawl out from the rock that is the cynic in me...I'm waiting eagerly for the renaissance of Free Software (the rise of Democracy as it were)
...that Firefox and Thunderbird must overcome:
;-). Additionally, past experience with these folks is that you must either spend money on or pirate/"steal" software, because free==adware and spyware. They have been taught this by experiences with Kazza and other "free" P2P sharing software, comet cursors, custom smiley addons, Weatherbug, etc etc.
As I installed Firefox, he kept asking "And it's free? Why? What's their business model?" As a salesman, he just couldn't swallow that it could be a full-featured application AND available for free.
Almost *all* PC users who have never known anything but Microsoft Windows are suspicious of free software (and always confuse free/libre with free/gratis). People in sales/marketing are just extra slow learners in this respect
I have converted my parents, my girlfriend, some of her family and a few of our friends (all running some MS Windows variant) to Firefox (and Thunderbird in a couple cases) and all have been happy with the change. However, there is one person (whom I know only through chatting on Yahoo Messenger) that is totally convinced that Mozilla is a company with a business model built around distribution of adware. This stems from the fact that he claims to have tried Thunderbird late last winter/early spring and it coincided with an increase of pop-ups and system crashes while he used it to browse. He cleaned his system up (removing Firefox and a few other things) and it worked better again.
I told him that the crashes MAY have been due to the fact that he was using an earlier beta version (but not even guaranteed). I also told him it was ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE for an install of genuine Firefox to be the source of the pop-up ads and that it has always been my experience that Firefox gets RID of them. There was no convincing him that it was another one of his "free" programs (he has all manner of Yahoo Messenger toys like YTunnel, replacement smileys, booters to get rid of the dirty old men hitting on his 15 year old daughters, boot stoppers, etc). I even edvanced the theory that he may have gotten a tainted/hacked version of Firefox and that you should get it right from Mozilla. He contends that that is where it came from.
He had the same kind of questions as your sales friend, and kept responding to my answers with more questions:
Him: "If they give all their programs away and there was no ad-ware, how does Mozilla make any money?"
Me: "They don't. Mozilla is a non-profit foundation. The programmers are volunteers or paid through donations"
Him: "Well that just means they don't make a profit. The companies that donate money to Mozilla are getting ads in return for their sponsorship"
Me: "Not all of the project sponsors are corporations and none of them want advertising. Some are individuals who give their time and/or money as well. Also, the idea is that the project is Open Source, so even though a company or person might only have/be one developer on the project they can reap the rewards of an entire team of people and see the code like everyone else"...etc etc
Him: "I dunno...sounds fishy to me. I'd really check out that Mozilla outfit to make sure they are legitimate. Right now, I don't trust their programs on my computer. It's not like they are just little toys...the web browser and email are important parts of the OS"
The lesson here: don't just tell doubters to download it and try it out. Actually be there to oversee the installation, and explain what is going on in ther PCs. If Firefox or any other software that is free is anywhere near their PC when bad things happen, it'll be the first think a sceptical convert that runs Windows will blame.
Regarding some of the engineers at Harris.
As a matter of fact, I DO work as an engineer for a large, multinational company--and our projects do in fact involve mission critical systems. You are right--engineers do not always get what they want and it does often mean dealing with politically/non-technically made design choices like using Windows when we'd prefer not to. However, there is a limit--a time and place where commodity/consumer grade hardware and software is appropriate--and it's NOT at a level at which a crash will bring down an entire system. I do not have to know how the software works to make that observation--it has been shown that a windows box failed and the result was a major system disruption and hours of chaos. It's not the fact that they used Windows that is disturbing--it's the fact that they used it in a mission critical situation...without adequate testing to boot. And yes, I do have a clue as to how complex the system is and the intricacies of how it works--our companies products run systems in oil refineries, factories and power generating stations. In a similar situation and project we would handle things differently:
1 If program managers were indeed making critical decisions, the would HAVE to be registerd Professional Engineers by law, just like the lead developers.
2 Lead developers are explicitly instructed NOT to simply do as they're told. If they see a serious flaw in a design decision they are obligated to make their views known. Of course, you can't conter one political decision with another--you must have a solid case. If your boss refuses you go to his boss. If you are stonewalled right to the top and you think the issue is really important you can bring the issue to the professional association. The final course is to perform the work and refuse to sign off on it (make the boss do it). That way, if the result is failure, you are in the clear and your higher-ups take all the heat and not just some--it's "due diligence" (ass covering, really).
3 During development and testing, we identify any potential single points of failure, bottlenecks and known issues. In my situation, Windows-based systems are ALWAYS considered "unreliable" (that is, not to be relied upon for critical or safety related systems), therefore we prescribe redundancy. Our test plans always call for us to do controlled AND uncontrolled (pull the plug)shutdowns of each machine in sequence (to test failover) and simultaneously (to determine how the PLCs and other embedded systems, plus electromechanical systems, handle catastrophic failure).
4 If hardware cannot be supported for at least ten years (and in some cases up to 25 years) we MUST design such that there will be a drop-in replacement that will cause minimal disruption(for example an old VAX VMS server could be upgraded to a current Alpha VMS, or an old PLC can be replaced with a next generation one that will execute the same routines rung-for-rung)
5 It is typical to keep the previous, pre-upgrade equipment around as a standby system, ready to put back in service, until the new system has worked as-advertised WITHOUT INTERVENTION for at least a year. A crash or other fault would reset the 1-year clock and we'd be doing a thorough root-cause analysis.
It sounds like there is a lack of professionalism within your group of engineers. I'm not sure about how things are done where you live, but "just following orders" is not an excuse for poor engineering--a failure of that nature where I am would result in being temporarily barred from practicing engineering. Sometimes it can be tough to go against the PHB--I've heard of engineers being fired for refusing to sign off on designs, but I'd rather be fired and be able to work as an engineer elsewhere than have my ability to work as an engineer revoked entirely.
I guess I would have to ask the FAA as to why they made the decision to migrate a working critical system to Windows--a radically different architecture from UNIX. My employer builds
It's kind of sad that moderators tend to be so biased at times on /. that it can be so easy to be a karma whore. Anyways, on to what I have to say...
Her explanation, of course, is not that she has a greatly inflated opinion of her abilities but that he teacher is anti-Christian.
Yes, this young lady may be on the ditzy side, as are most teens these days, regardless of their beliefs. I've seen the same type of drivel from a Marilyn Manson worshipping, black makeup-wearing gay boy as I have from the bubble-headed, bible-thumping cheerleader, except that the teacher was "a homophobic Christian bigot" instead of ANTI Christian.
At any rate, the little Christian cheerleader is right about one thing: a lot of teachers ARE biased against students--particularly in the humanities (English, and in Canada high school Social Studies in particular). I experienced this first hand in my senior year of high school. My beliefs tend towards libertarian ideology and conservative/free market economics. Social Studies teachers tend to be more socialist. I wrote a position paper in support of reducing government welfare programs to a minimum (whether it be corporate or personal). The resulting mark was 78 percent if I remember right. The highest mark I ever received from that teacher was 83 percent.
At the end of high school where I live, final exams are standardised, government-issued tests marked by a panel of teachers independent of the local high school--your teacher cannot influence your grade on the exam (I believe they aren't even permitted to see your completed test before it is marked). By chance, I could write about the same subject as the above-mentioned paper (you had a choice of three topics). Of course I couldn't remember the papaer word for word, however I used the same arguments, in close to the same order, as I did on the paper that originally scored 78 percent. Later I learned that I scored NINETY PERCENT on the essay (and 95 n the multiple choice/short answer...woo hoo!).
I think it's fairly save to say that a twelve percent difference indicates that there is quite a lot of bias and subjectivity in grading there...
You continue on stating opinion without making any strong argument by saying:
these zealots will continue to try to take control of this country
I've heard almost the same exact statement made a couple times before. One time it was coming out of the mouth of a hooded, cross-burning man to a news reporter in reference to Jewish people. The other time was quite recently, except the insult wasn't "zealot"--it was "pervert". That was from a demonstrator holding a cross and marching in a demonstration against gay rights. Fact is, most evangelical Christians are not zealots that want to toake control of their country--they just want to live their lives free of persecution and with the respect of others around them. This is no different from Muslims, or Jews or even athiests or gay couples who wish to have their relationships acknowledged by the state. Certainly, within ALL of those groups, there are funamentalist/extreme minority factions that would indeed love to take control.
You are free to state whatever beliefs you may have and I'll go to my grave to defend your right to do so, however I'd like to give you some advice: think a bit before making a blanket statement about a large group of people, whether it be positive or negative. You are likely to come across as closed-minded and even offensive to more than a few people.
...but I blame a lot of people for carelessness and incompetence (except for the actual techie that forgot to reboot last month--that is an honest mistake).
* Bill Gates and developers of Win2000 for the convoluted, kludgy API they designed for their OS
* Product managers at Harris--the crap-for-brains who actually thought changing out robust UNIX servers that weren't really THAT old with consumer-grade PCs running an unproven OS was an UPGRADE to a critical, safety related system. WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING? In one of the article links (the Harris press release), Harris touted SEVEN NINES reliability! If that was a criteria they should've NEVER considered Windows...Not even BillG himself would say Win2k could provide that sort of uptime!
* Retarded developers at Harris who used an API call that tracks milliseconds in a 32 bit integer despite the fact that bugs related to the use of said function call were WELL KNOWN by that time.
* Dough-heads at LAX and the FAA who, upon finding the error early in development, decided it was OK to rely on MANUAL MONTHLY REBOOTS as a workaround to a potentially fatal problem. They should've run the "upgraded" windows machines in parallel with the UNIX servers for much longer, and failing that they should've IMMEDIATELY restored the old UNIX servers to service as soon as the problem was discovered, and to refuse the upgrade (and revoke payment to Harris) until the problem was properly resolved (and NOT just worked around with a kludge like an email reminder to reboot, or a reboot script or a shutdown warning either).
I'm surprised that this sort of error got into such a critical system, and at the way it was handled. I would've certainly tested the new system in parallel for long enough to catch this sort of error and kept the old system around for longer as a standby (in my experience, replacements of critical systems were often tested in parallel for 3 months to a year). I also would've acted much more decisively in resolving the problem if it did slip through the cracks, given a system crash could put lives in danger.
Maybe my girlfriends fear of flying is more justified than I thought if these are the kind of clowns we trust our safety to...
I think a good dev kit would prolong a console's success but not because it would take advantage of the hardware's full potential. In fact, I'd say reliance on a one-size-fits-all libraray of code and tools would acutally LOWER the potential performance of the resulting software to some degree--particularly in a system with a somewhat convoluted architecture such as the PS2 design.
The ONLY way to get the maximum software performance out of any hardware is to program as close to "bare metal" as possible--and with today's hardware it's damn hard to get through the teflon coating. A lot of very fun Atari 2600 games were crammed into 4K--and there was no OS, no BIOS, no kits...NOTHING except 6502 assembly language (and it was a crippled 6502 at that). I LOVED games like Yars Revenge and Circus Atari, but you could never put them in a 4K cartrige to run on a machine that didn't even have enough RAM to use as a frame buffer (something like 256 BYTES) using anything higher-level. The same goes with some of the amazing demoes on old Ataris, Commodores and pre-486 PCs.
A dev kit, or code library, or BIOS/OS with published APIs isolate developers further from the bare metal rather than bring them closer to it--thus the result will always be less spectacular. Sony's competitors basically have a more straight-forward architecture and more raw CPU power so they are simpler to program from the start, thus their development tools require less stuff between the hardware and the programming interface (XBox is just a messed up PC so MS and XBOX developers have had years to practice on PCs as well).
It may be a matter of personal taste, but I think there is already too much emphasis on sound and graphics in todays games (especially on consoles), and it's time for developers to spend less time on anti-aliasing and texture maps and shading. It would benefit a lot of developers to re-focus on imagination and game play and stop releasing second, third and fourth sequels to original successes. But...I guess that is not where the money is.
As far as forgetting you are playing a game, I think that unless you use you imagination then you can't do that until someone makes the Holodeck aboard the Enterprise-D a reality. I suppose some people are lacking enough in imagination to be distracted by a jagged edge appearing for a half second, however I managed to get lost in a game and "just have fun" playing text adventures and Super Mario and Commander Keen, and I'd STILL rather play those games than almost all the games sold on the XBox because they are fun and easy to play, yet have enough levels, hidden rooms, etc. to keep my attention for awhile.
Perhaps I'm very easily amused. However, I prefer to think I just have a good imagination.
It *IS* an urban legend DAMMIT!
* Explosions from fume ignition have happened from time to time since filling stations first appeared. Cellphones are blamed because everybody carries one nowadays and the chance is pretty good that someone will be carrying one or even talking on one while they are filling the car. Just because the cellphone was there doesn't mean it was the cause!
* No, the vibrator unit is NOT a danger--it is generally a teeny tiny, low voltage DC motor that spins a little off-balance wheel... IT CANNOT PRODUCE A SPARK SUFFICIENT TO IGNITE FUEL VAPOURS AT A FILLING STATION. Hell there is a MUCH BIGGER electric motor RIGHT INSIDE THE GAS TANK of most of todays cars (the fuel pump) and they manage to keep that from exploding.
* ALSO, NO the backlight CANNOT ignite the fumes. Yes, the "indiglo" style LCD displays and laptop backlights have a high voltage tube in them, but the curent is EXTREMELY LOW and the tube is COMPLETELY SEALED. FURTHERMORE, todays cellphones use LEDs for lighting displays anyways--they operate at LESS THAN 2 VOLTS and use MILLIAMP-RANGE CURRENT and it is IMPOSSIBLE for them to ignite any sort of fumes.
There are several EXTREMELY MORE LIKELY causes of filling station explosions:
1. Cigarettes - yes it is forbidden to smoke at the pump but people are stupid and don't listen--I've seen people get out of cars with lit cigarettes hanging from their mouths as they open their fuel tanks BEFORE they drop it on the ground and stomp it out.
2. Static discharge - people put the nozzle in, lock it to the open position then proceed to talk on the phone, or check the oil, or go buy coffee, or check the baby's car seat, etc, picking up static charges, then when the car is full they grab the METAL nozzle--where the highest concentration of fumes is and BOOM
3. Backfiring from nearby vehicles, yes it's rare but probably more likely than a cellphone to cause sparks or open flame.
4. Pretty much anything else involving electricity and/or metal-to-metal contact. Engaging the starter causes a spark. A damaged/worn spark plug lead next to the engine block will spark strongly and repeatedly as soon as you start the car. Breaking an incandescent or flourescent bulb that is lit..a dragging mufflert on the pavement...etc etc etc...
WHat the hell is WRONG with you people..can you NOT see the lack of common sense in this? All of these much more likely events, capable of creating much mure intense sparks or open flames and you STILL blame cellphones for explosions? I guess that is what makes a good urban legend--if it is debunked then someone comes up with yet ANOTHER crazy theory of what might cause the phenomenon.
...as an alternative to democracy? Sure, Cuba and China have very stable governments that remain focused on their agenda and the general direction of the nation because they have no democracy at all, but to what end? As a citizen of these nations you are not considered human beings by govenrment. A "good communist citizen" is a resource--a cog in a wheel of some big machine chugging away to produce a product as close to specifications drawn up by the Glorious Leader as possible (that product ideally is supposed to be an egalitarian society I suppose). As such, from birth to death citizens are told what they can learn, what they can do for a living, that they are allowed to believe, how big or small their families can be and so on.
I am not cattle. I will not be told what websites I can visit, where I am allowed to go to school, where I am to work and how many children I'm allowed to have. I will forego some stability and efficiency of government to have the freedom to live as I see fit and have a say in the nation's governance--even if on occasion we end up electing a "boob" to represent our nation. Up here in the Great White North we've managed to survive despite electing and re-electing complete and total boobs for the past decade. Democracy at least gives us the chance to wake up and throw the boobs out.
No, the problam isn't with the how government is selected on this continent--democracy of some form has proven to be the best of all methods. The problem is with the structure and size of government in both Canada and the US. When a government gets too big, too far reaching and too distant (physically and figuratively speaking) it is prone to become ineffective, unresponsive to citizen's needs and even potentially dangerous. That is why big democratic countries like Canada and the US are set up as federations in the first place--it's just that the federal system needs rebalancing, so that federal government is smaller and more focused on "big picture" things (international affairs/security, monetary policy, etc) and local and regional (state/provincial) governments should be given more powers to steer the agenda of higher levels of government, as they are "closer" to the people.
It's not voting that is the problem, it is the lack of listening on the part of those elected...