Couldn't you just do a DNS request to see if a domain is taken?
Some ISPs compile a database of DNS requests for non-existant domains and sell these to the people who put up those obnoxious advertising sites. Your lookup may trigger one of these companies to buy the domain.
Try registering a domain name that isn't opaque. It's nearly impossible these days - people bought all the obvious ones, and most of the non-obvious ones.
Not true. Flickr, for instance, could have been called SiteForUploadingYourPictures.com. YouTube? VideoSharingPortal.com. OK, so they aren't catchy, but you can't have everything, right?
I'm going to be interviewing Phil & Kaja Foglio live this weekend about this very issue: why they decided to stop selling individual print issues of their Girl Genius comic book and turn it into a free webcomic to sell more trade paperbacks and hardcover collections. Call in with questions of your own.
Sounds cool.
For anyone interested in Phil & Kaja's business model, they talked about it at the UIUC Reflections/Projections conference last year. Video here. (It's also worth watching the Randall Munroe video while you're there.)
Check. No discussion necessary, but did it even need to be pointed out? Really, if you're even thinking about doing real-time apps in any interpreted language, you need to have your head examined.
Yes. It needed to be pointed out. Look at where the article is published: a magazine targeted at _IT managers_. Many of these people don't really understand the basics of what the languages the programmers they employ are. Articles like this that introduce the strengths and weaknesses of a language might help prevent them from making braindead decisions on the basis of recommendations from fanboy programmers.
But after reading that I should be using PHP, this quote made me spit coffe on my keyboard: "You should especially avoid using perl for traditional CGI-style form processing; this code tends to be hard to read and maintain because the HTML ends up inlined inside the perl code." Clean, elegant and properly designed code can be written in any language. Some languages encourage this, some make it difficult. Ruby encourages, but I'd stake my reputation on the claim that PHP makes it very hard.
Not really. I've written MVC applications using a homebrew template engine as the view component in PHP, and it wasn't hard. The only real issue with PHP is that it makes it too easy to program badly... programming well in it is no harder than other languages.
Get a real job, or loosen up the old purse strings and pony up a couple of dollars to buy a NEW computer? C'mon, minimal systems that will blow away the hardware you must have can be had for the $200 range...heck, I hear some of them at Wallyworld Mart come WITH linux pre-installed. For a few more dollars, I saw one at Dell for $349.
Last year I bought a machine with ubuntu preinstalled (it came from PC World, one of the biggest PC retailers in the UK). It didn't have an appropriate video driver for the integrated S3 Unichrome graphics, with the result that it couldn't run the display at > 800x600.
If this is the general standard of Linux preinstalls, I don't think this is an appropriate solution for the problem you're responding to.
This is as useful for historical insight a klingon version of the new testament.
I don't understand. Wouldn't you want to read it in the original?
It's the old testament that was written in klingon. The new testament was written in romulan. Any fool knows that.
"[Open-source project] owes you nothing" arguments
on
Rails May Not Suck
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Why does this argument, or something like it, always get repeated when somebody criticises an open-source project?
The Rails core team also doesn't owe you anything. They are all volunteers who work on it for free. You owe them.
So stop thinking that Rails owes you something. Rails owes you nothing. You owe Rails.
In what way does criticising something suggest I think its authors owe me something? I mean, I'm highly critical of the GIMP at times, particular its Windows "port" which fails to adhere to anything remotely resembling platform standards, but does that mean I think the GIMP's authors _owe_ me something? No. If anything, it means I _hope_ to be able to _give something back to them_ by making criticisms that they could take and use to _improve their software_, which presumably they do care about. It means I don't recommend people try it unless they're willing to accept software that behaves in odd ways.
Sure, having a 3' flat monitor would be hard to see, having it curved is going to make drawing a straight line, or anything other than gaming, really difficult I would think.
Microsoft Research have done some work with a similar, but more extreme monitor in the past. IIRC, MS's was effectively 6 1024x768 displays stitched into a 90 degree arc, which provides for almost total immersion; you have to turn your head to be able to see both sides of the display. They tested subjects' performance on a variety of standard office tasks (word processing, working with spreadsheets and databases, file management), and showed a startling productivity gain.
PAL (the GP's TV standard of choice) shows 576 out of 625 lines.
That depends very much on your TV. There are 518 lines in the standard "safe area" that's supposedly displayed by all TVs, although I've seen some that lose some of those as well. Few CRTs show more than 520. LCDs tend to do a little better, although even those tend to lose a few lines off the top and bottom of the display, and some can be much worse (my local gym has an LCD TV tuned to Sky News, and it loses the bottom half of their ticker line across the bottom of the screen... very annoying).
How often do you see a Factory or Observer in Java? How often do you see them in Python? Or even C# for that matter?
Quite frankly, I think the problem stems from the lack of closures.
Closures are a tool that can be used to implement patterns like Factory or Observer. The patterns are not a replacement for closures. When, in C#, I do something like "SomeButton.OnClick += SomeButton_OnClick;", I'm making the current object an Observer of things that happen in SomeButton. Sure, it's a better syntax, but the basic idea's still the same.
Instead of being able to sort a list of strings case-insentively by just calling list.sort(x,y -> string.compare(x.toLower(), y.toLower())), you have to create a class that implements Comparator, put your sort function in there, and then call list.sort() with an instance of that function. All those contortions result in bloat and complexity which makes the language suck.
I don't think it's that bad. Sure, I'd prefer being able to do it the way you wrote it, and I know there are languages out there that allow that kind of syntax. But my experience is that they all run a lot slower than Java / C# do. In many applications, that performance is necessary. And I don't think this:
Arrays.sort (list, new Comparator(){ public int compare(Object x, Object y) { return ((String)x).compareToIgnoreCase((String)y); });
is enough worse to warrant the difference.
(BTW, you can't correctly implement case insensitive sorting by uppercasing all strings like that, because there are some cases where this approach will not work, e.g. the German gothic-s character uppercases to 'SS', but should sort as a different letter. See here for a discussion.)
I went to uni already knowing C but then being taught Java it seemed a nice starting language and I somewhat wish I'd learn it earlier. I'd question why his students are unable to transfer from the idea of reference variables to pointers as the concepts really aren't massively different, when you get your head round the whole references thing the pointer concept isn't that far a leap. I'd argue that if his students understood Java and are unable to make the jump to C that it may be the teacher that's at fault.
I think part of the problem is that you're simply assuming they understand what's going on in Java. I've talked to a few CS graduates who learned to program with Java and many of them don't understand what a java reference variable does, exactly. It's easy to see what's going on if you start in C, but coming at it from Java it just looks like something vague and difficult to understand, and which you don't really *need* to understand to get the job done in most circumstances. So while C programmers learn how pointers work, in depth, because it's very hard to work with C without understanding them, Java programmers don't usually need to understand references and so don't bother learning about them.
Java is all about pointers actually. Everything that is not an atomic type (int/long) is actually a pointer. They even call that a reference! Hah, people go use C++ for a while.
And because it's like that, you have heap allocations for every non-atomic data type, which is really the opposite of performance.
Not really, no. The just-in-time compiler performs pointer escape analysis for the allocated objects and only uses the heap for the ones where heap allocation is actually necessary; the rest use the stack regardless of how the programmer wrote the declaration.
Admittedly, it's taken a while for this optimisation to be included, but it is there in the latest versions of Java.
Do you think the prop/costume department only acquired a single visor? Did the actor take that first visor worn home and bring it back for every future episode?
The auction catalogue apparently described the visor as being the one worn in All Good Things, i.e. the last episode filmed. Given human nature, I'd say it is *very* likely that that is the one... err... "acquired" by Spiner, probably simply by not returning it after filming completed. Obviously with this being the last episode, he would not have to have brought it back for future ones.
While it's probably impossible to tell whether or not it was used in filming of other episodes, it seems quite likely to me that Spiner knows what he's talking about and the item is not the one described in the catalogue.
frequency response is sometimes questionable, although at higher bit-rates is acceptable (320 kbps, and not that sliding crap either, I don't want software telling me what part of the song is important enough to hear properly.)
You don't actually know how VBR works, do you? It actually reduces the amount of judgment the software is making over what's important, by assuming everything is equally important, rather than individual sounds in more complex parts being considered less important, as is the case in CBR encoding.
Ego might be more like it. See, for example, his Wikipedia article. It takes a lot of ego to claim that no computer chess program will be able to beat you for ten years, even when you know (as Levy did at the time - he was already well known for his reasearch on computer chess) how fast they were improving. The fact that he was right doesn't really make it any better.
Aren't there procedures that must be followed before drastic action is taken against an individual who offends against Wikipedia policies--let alone collective punishment of a range of IP addresses?
Yep. Although they don't have to be strictly followed in all cases.
I'm thinking something like this:
1. Offender is notified by Wiki staff that he has violated published policies, and that he should cease and desist from these proscribed activities, or explain why he is not in violation.
Yep, that's the first step for anything other than serious offences, although the notice can be given by any editor, not just "staff".
2. If offender repeats his offenses and fails to provide a convincing defense, his case should be reviewed by at least 3 Wiki staff members, or adjudicators appointed by the Wiki organization for this purpose.
Only 1 administrator is required, although any administrator can veto the decision made by the first administrator if it is considered incorrect.
3. The adjudicators publish their findings in a venue dedicated to this purpose, and sanction the offender. Such sanction might consist of revoking the offender's editing or contribution privileges for a limited time, or forever. Most importantly, the published findings must describe the offenses committed by the accused, and the evidence that supports the allegations.
Yes, that's the next step. Usually the sanctions are reported in the same place (Administrator's Noticeboard) that is used by regular editors to request attention from administrators with an issue. Permanent bans are unusual, and are typically only given to repeat offenders.
4. The offender may appeal a ban once. A set of different adjudicators would "hear" the case, and perhaps the Wiki community at large would be consulted. The following decision would be final.
Offenders may appeal any number of times, although if this right is abused it may be removed. There are no rules, however, on who may make a decision over an appeal. Unusual cases may be taken to the "arbitration committee", which is appointed by election. Arbitration committee decisions are final; no others are.
The problem is, it is possible to shortcut this process. Particularly if the infringing behaviour is noticed by an administrator rather than a regular user they can take action directly without reporting it on the relevant Noticeboard. Also, there have been cases where an appeal has been denied by the same administrator who put an initial block in place, and further appeals denied (a blocked user may request an appeal by placing a notice on their own discussion page; sometimes the administrator will 'protect' this page to prevent this happening).
These cases are rare, though, and I think that in this particular case the procedures were followed (I certainly remember reading about this case several months ago, I think it was discussed in depth on the noticeboard, and I came to the conclusion at the time that the involved admins' decisions were correct; I didn't know about the IP range block, though).
The Register has had a hate on for Wikipedia for quite some time. Don't ask me why, I have no idea.
Wikipedia generally considers The Register an unreliable source, even in its core area of competency (i.e. IT news), despite the fact that the site objectively meets all the criteria for being reliable that are described in various policies.
* http://www.wikipediareview.com/ WR is a forum that is populated by a mix of Wikipedia administrators posting openly, regular users, and a few "banned" users. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia 'elite' routinely badmouth the holy hell out of the WR forums because of the fact that "banned" users are allowed. Also, the Wikipedia "BADSITES" final solution (which is still active--disregard that rejected notice, its just been implemented anyway), was a direct revenge response against Wikipedia Review and similar sites that the Wikipedia leaders have no ability to silence or control in any way.
1. "BADSITES" was not, and never was aimed at WR. BADSITES was primarily intended as a tool against Encyclopedia Dramatica, which included quite a lot of openly hostile and very personal criticism against a number of regular wikipedia editors, including real names of editors who wished to remain anonymous. Nevertheless, the proposed policy is not in place, and attempts to enforce it WRT sites other than ED have failed (e.g. ).
2. I'd dispute any suggestion that WR presents an unbiased view of wikipedia. Note that WR was started and is run by an editor who had been banned from editing Wikipedia. There is a lot of comment on the site from people who don't know the whole story involved (e.g. they covered the lawsuit by Barbara Bauer and subsequent out-of-process deletion of the article about her as a good thing, which anybody who knows anything about the subject would say is not the case: that wikipedia article should have existed, and didn't say anything that shouldn't have been said).
These war-room ideas do not take into account human factors. People need to fart, scratch their ass and such once in a while. FrAgile/XP ideas are shaped by putting peer pressure on workers to "shape" them up.
Do you actually know what you're talking about? Have you ever worked on a project with a real agile environment? You do understand that close collaboration with other workers is seen as the norm in most work environments? Why do you think that these "human factors" affect programmers more than they affect, say, factory workers (who typically work in an environment where they are constantly surrounded by other people)?
Yeah, and they weren't the only ones doing it back then. I remember visiting an IBM campus that had a very similar arrangement back in '97. They also had the "brilliant" idea of not having enough desk space for all of their employees, in order to encourage people to arrive early.
Slashdot Mirror
Couldn't you just do a DNS request to see if a domain is taken?
Some ISPs compile a database of DNS requests for non-existant domains and sell these to the people who put up those obnoxious advertising sites. Your lookup may trigger one of these companies to buy the domain.
I'm using it now. I dual boot WinXP and Debian.
Badge of honor to have an opaque domain name?
Not so.
Try registering a domain name that isn't opaque. It's nearly impossible these days - people bought all the obvious ones, and most of the non-obvious ones.
Not true. Flickr, for instance, could have been called SiteForUploadingYourPictures.com. YouTube? VideoSharingPortal.com. OK, so they aren't catchy, but you can't have everything, right?
I'm going to be interviewing Phil & Kaja Foglio live this weekend about this very issue: why they decided to stop selling individual print issues of their Girl Genius comic book and turn it into a free webcomic to sell more trade paperbacks and hardcover collections. Call in with questions of your own.
Sounds cool.
For anyone interested in Phil & Kaja's business model, they talked about it at the UIUC Reflections/Projections conference last year. Video here. (It's also worth watching the Randall Munroe video while you're there.)
I'm firmly convinced Girl Genius is the best webcomic around at the moment.
1) Real-time or high-performance applications.
Check. No discussion necessary, but did it even need to be pointed out? Really, if you're even thinking about doing real-time apps in any interpreted language, you need to have your head examined.
Yes. It needed to be pointed out. Look at where the article is published: a magazine targeted at _IT managers_. Many of these people don't really understand the basics of what the languages the programmers they employ are. Articles like this that introduce the strengths and weaknesses of a language might help prevent them from making braindead decisions on the basis of recommendations from fanboy programmers.
But after reading that I should be using PHP, this quote made me spit coffe on my keyboard: "You should especially avoid using perl for traditional CGI-style form processing; this code tends to be hard to read and maintain because the HTML ends up inlined inside the perl code." Clean, elegant and properly designed code can be written in any language. Some languages encourage this, some make it difficult. Ruby encourages, but I'd stake my reputation on the claim that PHP makes it very hard.
Not really. I've written MVC applications using a homebrew template engine as the view component in PHP, and it wasn't hard. The only real issue with PHP is that it makes it too easy to program badly... programming well in it is no harder than other languages.
Get a real job, or loosen up the old purse strings and pony up a couple of dollars to buy a NEW computer? C'mon, minimal systems that will blow away the hardware you must have can be had for the $200 range...heck, I hear some of them at Wallyworld Mart come WITH linux pre-installed. For a few more dollars, I saw one at Dell for $349.
Last year I bought a machine with ubuntu preinstalled (it came from PC World, one of the biggest PC retailers in the UK). It didn't have an appropriate video driver for the integrated S3 Unichrome graphics, with the result that it couldn't run the display at > 800x600.
If this is the general standard of Linux preinstalls, I don't think this is an appropriate solution for the problem you're responding to.
It's the old testament that was written in klingon. The new testament was written in romulan. Any fool knows that.
In what way does criticising something suggest I think its authors owe me something? I mean, I'm highly critical of the GIMP at times, particular its Windows "port" which fails to adhere to anything remotely resembling platform standards, but does that mean I think the GIMP's authors _owe_ me something? No. If anything, it means I _hope_ to be able to _give something back to them_ by making criticisms that they could take and use to _improve their software_, which presumably they do care about. It means I don't recommend people try it unless they're willing to accept software that behaves in odd ways.
Sure, having a 3' flat monitor would be hard to see, having it curved is going to make drawing a straight line, or anything other than gaming, really difficult I would think.
Microsoft Research have done some work with a similar, but more extreme monitor in the past. IIRC, MS's was effectively 6 1024x768 displays stitched into a 90 degree arc, which provides for almost total immersion; you have to turn your head to be able to see both sides of the display. They tested subjects' performance on a variety of standard office tasks (word processing, working with spreadsheets and databases, file management), and showed a startling productivity gain.
PAL (the GP's TV standard of choice) shows 576 out of 625 lines.
That depends very much on your TV. There are 518 lines in the standard "safe area" that's supposedly displayed by all TVs, although I've seen some that lose some of those as well. Few CRTs show more than 520. LCDs tend to do a little better, although even those tend to lose a few lines off the top and bottom of the display, and some can be much worse (my local gym has an LCD TV tuned to Sky News, and it loses the bottom half of their ticker line across the bottom of the screen... very annoying).
How often do you see a Factory or Observer in Java? How often do you see them in Python? Or even C# for that matter?
Quite frankly, I think the problem stems from the lack of closures.
Closures are a tool that can be used to implement patterns like Factory or Observer. The patterns are not a replacement for closures. When, in C#, I do something like "SomeButton.OnClick += SomeButton_OnClick;", I'm making the current object an Observer of things that happen in SomeButton. Sure, it's a better syntax, but the basic idea's still the same.
Instead of being able to sort a list of strings case-insentively by just calling list.sort(x,y -> string.compare(x.toLower(), y.toLower())), you have to create a class that implements Comparator, put your sort function in there, and then call list.sort() with an instance of that function. All those contortions result in bloat and complexity which makes the language suck.
I don't think it's that bad. Sure, I'd prefer being able to do it the way you wrote it, and I know there are languages out there that allow that kind of syntax. But my experience is that they all run a lot slower than Java / C# do. In many applications, that performance is necessary. And I don't think this:
Arrays.sort (list, new Comparator(){ public int compare(Object x, Object y) { return ((String)x).compareToIgnoreCase((String)y); });
is enough worse to warrant the difference.
(BTW, you can't correctly implement case insensitive sorting by uppercasing all strings like that, because there are some cases where this approach will not work, e.g. the German gothic-s character uppercases to 'SS', but should sort as a different letter. See here for a discussion.)
I went to uni already knowing C but then being taught Java it seemed a nice starting language and I somewhat wish I'd learn it earlier. I'd question why his students are unable to transfer from the idea of reference variables to pointers as the concepts really aren't massively different, when you get your head round the whole references thing the pointer concept isn't that far a leap. I'd argue that if his students understood Java and are unable to make the jump to C that it may be the teacher that's at fault.
I think part of the problem is that you're simply assuming they understand what's going on in Java. I've talked to a few CS graduates who learned to program with Java and many of them don't understand what a java reference variable does, exactly. It's easy to see what's going on if you start in C, but coming at it from Java it just looks like something vague and difficult to understand, and which you don't really *need* to understand to get the job done in most circumstances. So while C programmers learn how pointers work, in depth, because it's very hard to work with C without understanding them, Java programmers don't usually need to understand references and so don't bother learning about them.
Java is all about pointers actually. Everything that is not an atomic type (int/long) is actually a pointer. They even call that a reference! Hah, people go use C++ for a while.
And because it's like that, you have heap allocations for every non-atomic data type, which is really the opposite of performance.
Not really, no. The just-in-time compiler performs pointer escape analysis for the allocated objects and only uses the heap for the ones where heap allocation is actually necessary; the rest use the stack regardless of how the programmer wrote the declaration.
Admittedly, it's taken a while for this optimisation to be included, but it is there in the latest versions of Java.
Do you think the prop/costume department only acquired a single visor? Did the actor take that first visor worn home and bring it back for every future episode?
... err ... "acquired" by Spiner, probably simply by not returning it after filming completed. Obviously with this being the last episode, he would not have to have brought it back for future ones.
The auction catalogue apparently described the visor as being the one worn in All Good Things, i.e. the last episode filmed. Given human nature, I'd say it is *very* likely that that is the one
While it's probably impossible to tell whether or not it was used in filming of other episodes, it seems quite likely to me that Spiner knows what he's talking about and the item is not the one described in the catalogue.
frequency response is sometimes questionable, although at higher bit-rates is acceptable (320 kbps, and not that sliding crap either, I don't want software telling me what part of the song is important enough to hear properly.)
You don't actually know how VBR works, do you? It actually reduces the amount of judgment the software is making over what's important, by assuming everything is equally important, rather than individual sounds in more complex parts being considered less important, as is the case in CBR encoding.
We'll find our own mummified head-on-a-stick soon enough.
I already have several gigabytes of mummified head-on-a-stick (metaphorically speaking) on my hard disk.
Ego might be more like it. See, for example, his Wikipedia article. It takes a lot of ego to claim that no computer chess program will be able to beat you for ten years, even when you know (as Levy did at the time - he was already well known for his reasearch on computer chess) how fast they were improving. The fact that he was right doesn't really make it any better.
Aren't there procedures that must be followed before drastic action is taken against an individual who offends against Wikipedia policies--let alone collective punishment of a range of IP addresses?
Yep. Although they don't have to be strictly followed in all cases.
I'm thinking something like this:
1. Offender is notified by Wiki staff that he has violated published policies, and that he should cease and desist from these proscribed activities, or explain why he is not in violation.
Yep, that's the first step for anything other than serious offences, although the notice can be given by any editor, not just "staff".
2. If offender repeats his offenses and fails to provide a convincing defense, his case should be reviewed by at least 3 Wiki staff members, or adjudicators appointed by the Wiki organization for this purpose.
Only 1 administrator is required, although any administrator can veto the decision made by the first administrator if it is considered incorrect.
3. The adjudicators publish their findings in a venue dedicated to this purpose, and sanction the offender. Such sanction might consist of revoking the offender's editing or contribution privileges for a limited time, or forever. Most importantly, the published findings must describe the offenses committed by the accused, and the evidence that supports the allegations.
Yes, that's the next step. Usually the sanctions are reported in the same place (Administrator's Noticeboard) that is used by regular editors to request attention from administrators with an issue. Permanent bans are unusual, and are typically only given to repeat offenders.
4. The offender may appeal a ban once. A set of different adjudicators would "hear" the case, and perhaps the Wiki community at large would be consulted. The following decision would be final.
Offenders may appeal any number of times, although if this right is abused it may be removed. There are no rules, however, on who may make a decision over an appeal. Unusual cases may be taken to the "arbitration committee", which is appointed by election. Arbitration committee decisions are final; no others are.
The problem is, it is possible to shortcut this process. Particularly if the infringing behaviour is noticed by an administrator rather than a regular user they can take action directly without reporting it on the relevant Noticeboard. Also, there have been cases where an appeal has been denied by the same administrator who put an initial block in place, and further appeals denied (a blocked user may request an appeal by placing a notice on their own discussion page; sometimes the administrator will 'protect' this page to prevent this happening).
These cases are rare, though, and I think that in this particular case the procedures were followed (I certainly remember reading about this case several months ago, I think it was discussed in depth on the noticeboard, and I came to the conclusion at the time that the involved admins' decisions were correct; I didn't know about the IP range block, though).
The Register has had a hate on for Wikipedia for quite some time. Don't ask me why, I have no idea.
Wikipedia generally considers The Register an unreliable source, even in its core area of competency (i.e. IT news), despite the fact that the site objectively meets all the criteria for being reliable that are described in various policies.
This might have something to do with it.
Erm... forgot to include the link that should have been in parent post.
* http://www.wikipediareview.com/ WR is a forum that is populated by a mix of Wikipedia administrators posting openly, regular users, and a few "banned" users. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia 'elite' routinely badmouth the holy hell out of the WR forums because of the fact that "banned" users are allowed. Also, the Wikipedia "BADSITES" final solution (which is still active--disregard that rejected notice, its just been implemented anyway), was a direct revenge response against Wikipedia Review and similar sites that the Wikipedia leaders have no ability to silence or control in any way.
1. "BADSITES" was not, and never was aimed at WR. BADSITES was primarily intended as a tool against Encyclopedia Dramatica, which included quite a lot of openly hostile and very personal criticism against a number of regular wikipedia editors, including real names of editors who wished to remain anonymous. Nevertheless, the proposed policy is not in place, and attempts to enforce it WRT sites other than ED have failed (e.g. ).
2. I'd dispute any suggestion that WR presents an unbiased view of wikipedia. Note that WR was started and is run by an editor who had been banned from editing Wikipedia. There is a lot of comment on the site from people who don't know the whole story involved (e.g. they covered the lawsuit by Barbara Bauer and subsequent out-of-process deletion of the article about her as a good thing, which anybody who knows anything about the subject would say is not the case: that wikipedia article should have existed, and didn't say anything that shouldn't have been said).
These war-room ideas do not take into account human factors. People need to fart, scratch their ass and such once in a while. FrAgile/XP ideas are shaped by putting peer pressure on workers to "shape" them up.
Do you actually know what you're talking about? Have you ever worked on a project with a real agile environment? You do understand that close collaboration with other workers is seen as the norm in most work environments? Why do you think that these "human factors" affect programmers more than they affect, say, factory workers (who typically work in an environment where they are constantly surrounded by other people)?
will be forced to repeat it.
Behold exhibit A, TBWA Chiat/Day.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.02/chiat.html
Yeah, and they weren't the only ones doing it back then. I remember visiting an IBM campus that had a very similar arrangement back in '97. They also had the "brilliant" idea of not having enough desk space for all of their employees, in order to encourage people to arrive early.