The one thing people seem to miss, imo, is that methodologies like XP require a high degree of discipline/maturity in the team.
A panel I went to on methodologies (OOPSL '00) mentioned this... that light methodologies work well with people who have a good degree of experience and good discipline. In teams like this heavy methodologies (e.g. look at PMI sometime, or RUP) tend to bog the team down. This sort of team tends to have a good degree of knowledge of the domain, and tend to be experts in the tools they use.
On the flip side... a relativly young and/or non-diciplined team can benefit from a heave methodology because it will force them to look at a variety of variables. They might not have good knowledge of the problem domain or a full understanding of the tools avaialable to them. In that case the heavier planning can help them.
I've been in both situations over the years... In the begining I liked the heavier methodologies, more for project managment, because things had to be documented. Now I know more, and do a lot of this automtically. So I've become a convert to things like Scrum which allow me to track empirical evidence, but don't get in the way of my job.
quartz != digital... in fact use of quartz predates the idea of a digital watch... (99% of all crap clocks and watches are quartz, no real silicon controlling it just a vibrating crystal moving the gears about.)
Quartz, powered by a battery so it vibrates, replaces the spring, but it is still analog.
For a variation on the idea, and the first electronic watch, look at the Accutron. It used a very small tuning fork, vibrated by an electromagnet. The vibration (like a quartz watch) is then used to power the gear.
Chronometer can be fully mechanical (like the Hamilton Chronometer from the U.S. Navy, circa 1946, I have in my office) but the designation means it meets some minimum level of qualtiy (normally that the watch does not vary more then +- 1 sec in x number of days or months)
So in summary quartz != digital, chronometre is a designation of accuracy and has nothing to do with the inner workings of the watch.
Digital.. yeah, sure... I'm sure one could count any cad/cam software used to make these analog time pieces as digital...but that big picture at the top, the one with gears and a self-winding mechanism... might indicate the watches, possibly could be, maby sorta, analog.
I don't remember the exact name, but it is actually considered a 'complication' (e.g. show of skill of the maker) to get the minute hand to jump from one minute to the next as opposed to moving with the gears. Movado, Gucci, and a whole host of way to expensive watch brands do this in stanadard analog watches to show off.
Same for a real sweep second hand (e.g. a smooth movement as opposed to a clicking with the gears movement.)
As for looks... yeah never been a big Gucci fan, then again my current favorite is a self-winding Seiko Sportsmatic from 1968...
True... though my wife's memory of the time period (she's the expert) is that some Monastaries did copy with out permission from the owner of the original manuscript. In such cases, if discovered, the monastary had to turn over all copies to the owner...
I went back and watched said scene... I did not get any idea that she was disturbed by her actions. Her facial expression and body language did not really change before and after the incident. In fact the whole scene felt clumsy too me, like the actress wasn't sure of the reason for it.
For the story, personally, I felt the scene was unecessary. There was no logic or reason as to why she did it except to show the audience "Look she's really evil... here's a brick to the back of your heads so you understand this."
In other words, showing the evil of the Cylons, their hatred of humanity, etc. in an up close and personal way could have been done better. In fact the opening scene showed that... They are willing to destroy themselves just to make a dramatic point.
And yes... I am a thirty something parent with two kids under age 3, so I didn't appreciate the scene from that point of view either.
One other thing to add... it has a sort of privacy... Email is stored, phone conversations can be overheard, so if one is interested in sensitive gossip (e.g. who's getting laid off and when) IM is perfect. Nobody talks out loud, easy to hide, and since you're typing away, you look like you're working.
Only danger is somebody looking over your sholder, and that is easy to take care of.
Also it's 'quiet'. In work enviroments where people can be pushed pretty close toghether (e.g. 2 to 3 people sharing a cube) typing becomes background noise and is less distracting then phone and hallway conversations.
Just like the last disaster this one was caused by ignoring a problem and then assuming the problem was normal operating procedure.
To explain... The o-ring issue (of burn through due to cold temps) had been observed serval times before (including when the boosters were tested.) But a full burn through never happend so it was assumed the o-rings were safe, then tragedy number one happened.
It has been observed numerous times that foam insulation would come off and hit the shuttle (this was admitted to early on.) But since the damgage caused was always minor, it was assumed that the situation was never really criticle. Yes, well determine damage after launch, but nobody ever said gosh should this be happening to begin with.
Both situations speak of engineers that are not, imo, taking enough responsibility. Hence a culture issue that has not changed since the last disaster.
To put a twist on it... a pressure seal on a 747 (I believe I'll have to double check) faild and people died. When the Boeing engineer who had designed it found it it was a design fault caused by him, he comitted suicide. Not that I believe engineers should commit seppuku when things go wrong, but... in NASA's case it may be the only thing that will get them to wake up and fix things.
The Xserve only has one power supply... in a similar price range Compaqs and Dells come with redundent power supplies.
I realize this is a minor thing, but from the initial research we did at my company (a less then 100 person firm), we just didn't get the feeling that Apple really knew how to deal with the corporate market (e.g. redundency, dependability, interoperability, snapshots of drives, etc). More like they were counting on the 'cool' factor that makes them a good desktop machine, but not server.
Now on the flip side the group who designed thier RAID box does seem to understand...
Under Creationism... none of these are false... As soon as one allows a supernatural explanaton, one can change the rules...
for #1: Earth is as old as the designer/god wants it to be to carry out either creation or I.D. with old Earth timing.
2. Time can or can not create new gentic information at the decision of the designer/god.
3. Examples of evolution are up to the designer/god.
In other words you missed the point of the post... science allows itself to be wrong for the sake of finding a better model. In short it allows that it can be negated (and please do not throw out the consipriacy theories at this point, as is true of any human endevor there will be politics, personality clashes, etc. but over the long haul, the truth has come through.)
I.D. and creationism do not allow for or have any mechanism to update thier models... they are either right or well... they don't accept an alternative. They don't accept any evidence outside of that which may disprove them... Evolution is as least still developing trying to figure out which mechanism best fits the data and how to refine hypothesis (plural?) to create a better model.
"dark matter" (haven't heard about the "dark energy") is being tested... current theories (I believer) include the idea of various particles (from simple neutrinos to other more exotic ideas) and developing a way to detect and mesure amounts to determine if this is a viable explanation... in other words, observe, develop a hypothesis, and then test. Also for scientists that specialize in cosmology, this isn't a new thing... missing matter has been a question for over 20 years now...
On the software analogy... existance of complex software does not equal intellignece (... considering some of the code I've seen over the years, quite the opposite!)
As for complex structures in nature... evolution technically does not rely on pure chance... it accepts that other forces in nature will affect the direction of evolution (emphasis, natural, not supernatural influence, e.g. food source, predation, weather, etc.)
As for evolution being the only field of study that relies on random chance... well see above, it really relies on probablity, similar to another field of accepted science, quantem physics..
As for *one* example of time creating increasing genetic complexity... well dependin on micro or macro... Micro evolution has been tested in lab with fruit flies and produced different critters. But I get the sense that by complexity you mean something like Cambrian explosian to modern times.... macro evolution has, through a decent fossil record showed development and incresing complexity. The current debate, I believe, is mechanism. In short is it as simple as Dawin's ideas of differentiation or do other factors (radiation leading to randome mutation, etc.) play a bigger role.
Evolution and time are more observable then I.D. because even most I.D. people accept the fossil record, just no way to show that there was a supernatural intlligence behind it...
My point is that creationis and I.D. both rely on a supernatural explanation. Science purposefully limits itself to something that can be observed and tested, along with the possiblity that the hypothesis could be wrong. Even Feynman said that science is just an attempt to create a model of the world we see... Creationism and I.D. do not create a model... They do not allow for the model to be negated or tested...
In short to alow a supernatural explanation then opens up a huge can of worms... (e.g. Graivity... much too complex an idea for there to be some radom force that some how pulls every thing in the correct direction... there must be some intelligence guiding it so it knows where to go and how to make things fall....) In other words... I don't see a contridiction between religious beliefs (and I.D. is religious at its core) and science the only people that do are those who feel that science some how threatens religion and a percieved natural order of things based on some need to know that a higer order is behind it all...
quote:
"Creationism is a valid scientific view point"
No... it is not... as I mention in another post. Creationist do not follow scientific method. They do not play by the same rules, and rely on a supernatural explanation, which is not science.
Methodological Naturalism, ya can only talk about what you observe, create a hypthesis for, and then test, is the way of science. This has been done for micro-evolution and can be applied to macro evolution. It is not possible to apply to Creationism as creationism (and Intiligent Design) rely on a supernatural, unobservable, untestable explanation.
Hmmm... to quote:
"Creationist place much more evidence in scientific fact then evolutionists do. "
By definition, Creationist science does not use (in fact deny's) methodological naturalism. To explain... Accepted science requires that one only rely on what one can test with no recourse to a supernatural explanation... One can still believe in the supernatural, but for the sake of science everybody has agreed to play by the same set of rules, methodological naturalism.
Creationsist (and inteligent design believers) do not play by these rules, hence they are not in the business of science.
This is not bigotry, it is simply fact and how science is carried out... observe, hypothesis, test...
Actually... The Star Wars radio drama, which Lucas o.k.'ed does include statemts about Vader running death camps, in a adition to fleshing out other parts of the movie.
One more reason as to why this might not work (sure it's been mentioned before)...
I don't see an insurance company, Bank, or financial services company that would agree to the idea that secruity to both the hardware and software will be partially managed by an outside force.
These institutions are very conservative, rarely upgrade to the next big thing with any alacrity and are really paranoid about their data. So going up to a bank and saying 'hi, all of your interanlly developed apps will now have to be certified, so you either get to tell us about it, or buy the right to certify your internally developed software' Oh in addtion any off the shelf products used would still have to access the internet to be certified...
Nope just don't see that happening in the financial services...
"Go has a high branching factor due to the enormous board size but branches also get pruned a lot faster because there are extensive libraries of patterns known to be bad."
Umm... Joseki, the patterns you mention, though extensive, do not lead to pruning per se. In Go one is going for a one or two point gain so the Joseki tend to be subtle. Also they are 'localized' patterns and do no guarantee a win. (Tactics vs. strategy.)
"Scoring a chess position is not as exact."
I disagree... Chess IMHO (compared to Go) is only tactical. Chess positions have been just as well studied as Go and each position is well known. Merely choosing a Queen side castle vs. a King side castle decides the direction of the whole game of which the repercussions are obvious (e.g. both players choose Queen side tends to lead to attrition, one or the other choose Queen side tends to lead to and 'interesting game', and both King side is rather normal...)
In Go a certain Joseki pattern in no way guarantees what happens on the other end of the board...
Just my $.02, from someone who once played on chess and got 'converted' to go...
I have to agree what is the purpose of a Sys. Admin.???? (Win 2K or otherwise) Is Mr. Miller saying that MS will be our Admin/infratstucture people?? Gosh that's real nice of them, I'm sure its a free service.
Just to underscore the complexties, this weeks Econmist points out one other problem.
The Communist part in China is about to pick its next group of leaders (internal, there are no elections for this.) This is being viewed as a shift from old to young, so tensions are high in the party right now as various individuals vie for succession.
In addtion, as noted above, the PLA has a say in the goverment, and is still respected by the people. They tend to be very conservative and seem to be the hardliners in this situation. The civilian rulers are in a hard place right now as they have to placate the PLA, prepare for a power shift, and deal with the Americans.
As noted before a direct apology from America would be viewed as weakness by the PLA. Yet the civillian leaders are trying to find a way out. Unfortunately the rhetoric has been turned up so high, its going to take time to work through any type of agreement.
http://www.economist.com for their article
Off topic, coment on sig
on
CPRM Lecture
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
The one thing people seem to miss, imo, is that methodologies like XP require a high degree of discipline/maturity in the team.
A panel I went to on methodologies (OOPSL '00) mentioned this... that light methodologies work well with people who have a good degree of experience and good discipline. In teams like this heavy methodologies (e.g. look at PMI sometime, or RUP) tend to bog the team down. This sort of team tends to have a good degree of knowledge of the domain, and tend to be experts in the tools they use.
On the flip side... a relativly young and/or non-diciplined team can benefit from a heave methodology because it will force them to look at a variety of variables. They might not have good knowledge of the problem domain or a full understanding of the tools avaialable to them. In that case the heavier planning can help them.
I've been in both situations over the years... In the begining I liked the heavier methodologies, more for project managment, because things had to be documented. Now I know more, and do a lot of this automtically. So I've become a convert to things like Scrum which allow me to track empirical evidence, but don't get in the way of my job.
just another $.02
Ummm... err...
We've already had Dylan Hunt in three past attempts by Rodenbarry... can't we just leave him alone?
1973 - Genesis II played by Alex Cord
1974 - Planet Earth played by John Saxon
2000 - Andromeda played by Kevin Sorbo
Or we could just resurect Gary Seven!
I guess, she keeps mumbling about how there can only be one...
:-P
I'm just tired of having to hide these headless bodies.
quartz != digital... in fact use of quartz predates the idea of a digital watch... (99% of all crap clocks and watches are quartz, no real silicon controlling it just a vibrating crystal moving the gears about.)
Quartz, powered by a battery so it vibrates, replaces the spring, but it is still analog.
For a variation on the idea, and the first electronic watch, look at the Accutron. It used a very small tuning fork, vibrated by an electromagnet. The vibration (like a quartz watch) is then used to power the gear.
Chronometer can be fully mechanical (like the Hamilton Chronometer from the U.S. Navy, circa 1946, I have in my office) but the designation means it meets some minimum level of qualtiy (normally that the watch does not vary more then +- 1 sec in x number of days or months)
So in summary quartz != digital, chronometre is a designation of accuracy and has nothing to do with the inner workings of the watch.
Ummm... err...
Digital.. yeah, sure... I'm sure one could count any cad/cam software used to make these analog time pieces as digital...but that big picture at the top, the one with gears and a self-winding mechanism... might indicate the watches, possibly could be, maby sorta, analog.
Just to be anal...
I don't remember the exact name, but it is actually considered a 'complication' (e.g. show of skill of the maker) to get the minute hand to jump from one minute to the next as opposed to moving with the gears. Movado, Gucci, and a whole host of way to expensive watch brands do this in stanadard analog watches to show off.
Same for a real sweep second hand (e.g. a smooth movement as opposed to a clicking with the gears movement.)
As for looks... yeah never been a big Gucci fan, then again my current favorite is a self-winding Seiko Sportsmatic from 1968...
True... though my wife's memory of the time period (she's the expert) is that some Monastaries did copy with out permission from the owner of the original manuscript. In such cases, if discovered, the monastary had to turn over all copies to the owner...
-pc
I went back and watched said scene... I did not get any idea that she was disturbed by her actions. Her facial expression and body language did not really change before and after the incident. In fact the whole scene felt clumsy too me, like the actress wasn't sure of the reason for it.
For the story, personally, I felt the scene was unecessary. There was no logic or reason as to why she did it except to show the audience "Look she's really evil... here's a brick to the back of your heads so you understand this."
In other words, showing the evil of the Cylons, their hatred of humanity, etc. in an up close and personal way could have been done better. In fact the opening scene showed that... They are willing to destroy themselves just to make a dramatic point.
And yes... I am a thirty something parent with two kids under age 3, so I didn't appreciate the scene from that point of view either.
One other thing to add... it has a sort of privacy... Email is stored, phone conversations can be overheard, so if one is interested in sensitive gossip (e.g. who's getting laid off and when) IM is perfect. Nobody talks out loud, easy to hide, and since you're typing away, you look like you're working.
Only danger is somebody looking over your sholder, and that is easy to take care of.
Also it's 'quiet'. In work enviroments where people can be pushed pretty close toghether (e.g. 2 to 3 people sharing a cube) typing becomes background noise and is less distracting then phone and hallway conversations.
I'll have to double check who comitted suicide then... (e.g. person who desinged it, or person who oversaw the repair.)
Just like the last disaster this one was caused by ignoring a problem and then assuming the problem was normal operating procedure.
To explain... The o-ring issue (of burn through due to cold temps) had been observed serval times before (including when the boosters were tested.) But a full burn through never happend so it was assumed the o-rings were safe, then tragedy number one happened.
It has been observed numerous times that foam insulation would come off and hit the shuttle (this was admitted to early on.) But since the damgage caused was always minor, it was assumed that the situation was never really criticle. Yes, well determine damage after launch, but nobody ever said gosh should this be happening to begin with.
Both situations speak of engineers that are not, imo, taking enough responsibility. Hence a culture issue that has not changed since the last disaster.
To put a twist on it... a pressure seal on a 747 (I believe I'll have to double check) faild and people died. When the Boeing engineer who had designed it found it it was a design fault caused by him, he comitted suicide. Not that I believe engineers should commit seppuku when things go wrong, but... in NASA's case it may be the only thing that will get them to wake up and fix things.
The Xserve only has one power supply... in a similar price range Compaqs and Dells come with redundent power supplies.
I realize this is a minor thing, but from the initial research we did at my company (a less then 100 person firm), we just didn't get the feeling that Apple really knew how to deal with the corporate market (e.g. redundency, dependability, interoperability, snapshots of drives, etc). More like they were counting on the 'cool' factor that makes them a good desktop machine, but not server.
Now on the flip side the group who designed thier RAID box does seem to understand...
for #1: Earth is as old as the designer/god wants it to be to carry out either creation or I.D. with old Earth timing.
2. Time can or can not create new gentic information at the decision of the designer/god.
3. Examples of evolution are up to the designer/god.
In other words you missed the point of the post... science allows itself to be wrong for the sake of finding a better model. In short it allows that it can be negated (and please do not throw out the consipriacy theories at this point, as is true of any human endevor there will be politics, personality clashes, etc. but over the long haul, the truth has come through.)
I.D. and creationism do not allow for or have any mechanism to update thier models... they are either right or well... they don't accept an alternative. They don't accept any evidence outside of that which may disprove them... Evolution is as least still developing trying to figure out which mechanism best fits the data and how to refine hypothesis (plural?) to create a better model.
"dark matter" (haven't heard about the "dark energy") is being tested... current theories (I believer) include the idea of various particles (from simple neutrinos to other more exotic ideas) and developing a way to detect and mesure amounts to determine if this is a viable explanation...
in other words, observe, develop a hypothesis, and then test. Also for scientists that specialize in cosmology, this isn't a new thing... missing matter has been a question for over 20 years now...
On the software analogy... existance of complex software does not equal intellignece (... considering some of the code I've seen over the years, quite the opposite!)
As for complex structures in nature... evolution technically does not rely on pure chance... it accepts that other forces in nature will affect the direction of evolution (emphasis, natural, not supernatural influence, e.g. food source, predation, weather, etc.)
As for evolution being the only field of study that relies on random chance... well see above, it really relies on probablity, similar to another field of accepted science, quantem physics..
As for *one* example of time creating increasing genetic complexity... well dependin on micro or macro... Micro evolution has been tested in lab with fruit flies and produced different critters.
But I get the sense that by complexity you mean something like Cambrian explosian to modern times.... macro evolution has, through a decent fossil record showed development and incresing complexity. The current debate, I believe, is mechanism. In short is it as simple as Dawin's ideas of differentiation or do other factors (radiation leading to randome mutation, etc.) play a bigger role.
Evolution and time are more observable then I.D. because even most I.D. people accept the fossil record, just no way to show that there was a supernatural intlligence behind it...
My point is that creationis and I.D. both rely on a supernatural explanation. Science purposefully limits itself to something that can be observed and tested, along with the possiblity that the hypothesis could be wrong. Even Feynman said that science is just an attempt to create a model of the world we see... Creationism and I.D. do not create a model... They do not allow for the model to be negated or tested...
In short to alow a supernatural explanation then opens up a huge can of worms... (e.g. Graivity... much too complex an idea for there to be some radom force that some how pulls every thing in the correct direction... there must be some intelligence guiding it so it knows where to go and how to make things fall....)
In other words... I don't see a contridiction between religious beliefs (and I.D. is religious at its core) and science the only people that do are those who feel that science some how threatens religion and a percieved natural order of things based on some need to know that a higer order is behind it all...
No... it is not... as I mention in another post. Creationist do not follow scientific method. They do not play by the same rules, and rely on a supernatural explanation, which is not science.
Methodological Naturalism, ya can only talk about what you observe, create a hypthesis for, and then test, is the way of science. This has been done for micro-evolution and can be applied to macro evolution. It is not possible to apply to Creationism as creationism (and Intiligent Design) rely on a supernatural, unobservable, untestable explanation.
In short not science...
"Creationist place much more evidence in scientific fact then evolutionists do. "
By definition, Creationist science does not use (in fact deny's) methodological naturalism. To explain... Accepted science requires that one only rely on what one can test with no recourse to a supernatural explanation... One can still believe in the supernatural, but for the sake of science everybody has agreed to play by the same set of rules, methodological naturalism.
Creationsist (and inteligent design believers) do not play by these rules, hence they are not in the business of science.
This is not bigotry, it is simply fact and how science is carried out... observe, hypothesis, test...
Actually... The Star Wars radio drama, which Lucas o.k.'ed does include statemts about Vader running death camps, in a adition to fleshing out other parts of the movie.
I don't see an insurance company, Bank, or financial services company that would agree to the idea that secruity to both the hardware and software will be partially managed by an outside force.
These institutions are very conservative, rarely upgrade to the next big thing with any alacrity and are really paranoid about their data. So going up to a bank and saying 'hi, all of your interanlly developed apps will now have to be certified, so you either get to tell us about it, or buy the right to certify your internally developed software' Oh in addtion any off the shelf products used would still have to access the internet to be certified...
Nope just don't see that happening in the financial services...
Read the article... or watch Discovery. It was a poorly designed set of walk ways unable to take the load, not harmonics.
Umm... Joseki, the patterns you mention, though extensive, do not lead to pruning per se. In Go one is going for a one or two point gain so the Joseki tend to be subtle. Also they are 'localized' patterns and do no guarantee a win. (Tactics vs. strategy.)
"Scoring a chess position is not as exact."
I disagree... Chess IMHO (compared to Go) is only tactical. Chess positions have been just as well studied as Go and each position is well known. Merely choosing a Queen side castle vs. a King side castle decides the direction of the whole game of which the repercussions are obvious (e.g. both players choose Queen side tends to lead to attrition, one or the other choose Queen side tends to lead to and 'interesting game', and both King side is rather normal...)
In Go a certain Joseki pattern in no way guarantees what happens on the other end of the board...
Just my $.02, from someone who once played on chess and got 'converted' to go...
Don't forget the 'Clark Belt' (where geosynch. satellites reside, named after Mr. C.)
I have to agree what is the purpose of a Sys. Admin.???? (Win 2K or otherwise) Is Mr. Miller saying that MS will be our Admin/infratstucture people?? Gosh that's real nice of them, I'm sure its a free service.
Sigh... more FUD from MS
Tower of Babel
The Evidence against the New Creationism
Robert T. Pennock
ISBN 0-262-16180-X
Worth a read for those wishing to support the side of science.
The Communist part in China is about to pick its next group of leaders (internal, there are no elections for this.) This is being viewed as a shift from old to young, so tensions are high in the party right now as various individuals vie for succession.
In addtion, as noted above, the PLA has a say in the goverment, and is still respected by the people. They tend to be very conservative and seem to be the hardliners in this situation. The civilian rulers are in a hard place right now as they have to placate the PLA, prepare for a power shift, and deal with the Americans.
As noted before a direct apology from America would be viewed as weakness by the PLA. Yet the civillian leaders are trying to find a way out. Unfortunately the rhetoric has been turned up so high, its going to take time to work through any type of agreement.
http://www.economist.com for their article
Thank You! I so rarely see Blake's Seven fans!