My wife taught in a private school for 3 years, and just quit at the end of last year. While this may be about the public school system where parents aren't normally involved with their students, the opposite can be equally as damaging.
She taught 6-8th grade French. She has a masters in French, and yet some parents (who didn't speak French at all!) were suggesting ways she could improve her class. She had one parent who refused to let her son read "The Little Prince" because of what she deemed "questionable" references in it. Parents called her at home to complain about EVERYTHING. A lot of them asked for and expected special treatment for their kid. The administration wouldn't stand up to the parents because it was private and parents were on the board. It was a nightmare of stress and demands, and she didn't get any time away from that place. Weekends, nights, and even parts of the summer were taken up by this job.
While parents need to be involved, they also need to back the F off and allow teachers to do their jobs. For some reason, everyone expects them to go the extra mile just because they are teachers. They are also human beings.
It didn't take long at all for DVD to KO videotape.
That would mean that VCRs don't exist? Hmm, I still have one, and use it often. Until they come up with a portable, reusable, recordable format VCRs will be here. Hell, sounds like they might outlive the DVD player.
He is essentially right about patents. There is noboby to sue over patent infringements if they would somehow appear in Linux code. Whereas Microsoft has the money to settle any patent lawsuits against them, and still have money for fat, sweaty Ballmer to roll around in. What this has to to do with "standing behind" patent claims, I have no idea. All he is saying is that MS can buy its way out of legal trouble. Duh.
That's scarily true. I recently took a trip THROUGH Chicago, via the SkyWay, which was of course closed, so I had to exit the skyway about 50 feet before it started, follow the detour signs around the city for 30 minutes, enter the skyway for the last 50 feet, and pay $2.70 for the privilege of getting to use the skyway that was under construction. I was pretty confused and perturbed by that.
Road construction in Chicagoland? You must have been here during the Summer. Or Spring. Or Fall.
If the US highway system had been built using the same logic of those building the internet, we'd be paying thousands of dollars in tolls a year to move at 20 miles per hour around private roads surrounding the suburbs.
What's to keep IBM or somebody else from coming in and taking (SCO) out at a much lower price than the claims you have on the table?
Uhh, common sense for one. The fact that you have no viable business model or product? The fact that you aren't, and never really were, a significant technology company?
Nobody wants you, nobody likes you. Reap what you sow, M'Fers.
This is especially true in OSS where quite often the programmer *can* (and does) completely ignore volunteer Q/A people if those people aren't themselves programmers.
Just to clear it up for the masses who might read this: QA stands for Quality Assurance. In a strict sense, it is not testing. I know, I know - a lot of people call testing QA. But in an engineering sense, QA is not testing at all! QA is doing statistical analysis, it is ensuring adherence to and improvement of processes. It is getting involved and looking at the product from a quality perspective.
And Q/A means question and answer, which a lot of QA people do, but they aren't the same thing.:-)
What disturbed me more about what you quoted was: This technology is expected to give a boost to subscription services by allowing the music to be put on portable devices for the first time.
For the first time? Really? Maybe Microsoft should patent this revolutionary concept.
I am curious if he addresses the fallacy of "Software development only consists of programmers".
I have been doing QA/Testing for 10 years, and it is pretty sad how all-important people think programmers are. The best ones may be, but they aren't all the best ones. When you foster an atmosphere where "develpment is always right" you run into major roadblocks in software development. Requirements analysts can't do their job properly or requirements are ignored. Documentation people are glared at for trying to make the system understandable. (yet we all love to bitch about bad online documentation) Test people are seen as people who are just blocking the inevitablility of shipping the code. If anyone tries to even analyze why things are F'd up, they are seen as "not being team players" and "finger pointers", even if you are trying to fix the process and not the people.
I will say that what he says about inspections is right on. Although, I think just focusing only on code reviews is wrong - rigorous reviews of requirements/code/test plans/process docs/user doc/etc will remove 90% of the defects. And defects in requirements are much more costly to fix later. The trick is balancing which of these are most important for your company to review, depending on the project. You can't just do it willy-nilly, you have to do a risk assessment on it and make a decision based on something.
I actually had a director of engineering say in a meeting "Since we implemented my new requirements management process, I *guarantee* that the code will work, first time, out of the box." I laughed out loud, and received a very dirty look from him, but agreement from everyone else. Needless to say, that release is the worst one we have had in 5 years, and it is at least 6 months over schedule. People have had to work a lot of OT to try and shine this turd, and they are getting burnt out. Most places do software development and not software engineering. Which is fine, as long as you are clear about it.
I just thought of a very good analogy that/.ers can understand. There is probably little doubt that Microsoft has a lot of good programmers. However, their culture and business model has lead the direction of their product. That alone should show you that software development is not all about the programmer. On the other hand, OSS is great but it can only get so far on "good code". Once it is managed, it can be pretty powerful.
OK, let's look at this for a second: October 25, 2001 was when Windows XP shipped. That is when it was released, which means that it was essentially done well before that.
Now Longhorn isn't going to be shipped until late 2006. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say they'll hit that date (just in time for Xmas!). OK, so that means that they will have been working on this thing for a MINIMUM of 5 years. If there was any release overlap, and I am sure there would have to be, it is probably more like 6 years. WTF have they been doing in Redmond!? You can't tell me that everyone there has been working on XP service packs.
Now I am not discounting the complexity of software and what it takes to release something of this magnitude. But we are talking about the largest and richest software company on the planet! Surely if anyone could do this, it would be..... Hmm. Perhaps what seems to be an advantage is actually a disadvantage in this case. If you look at their OS timeline (I used this one ), it seems that it was usually around 3 years between major instances of their OS lines. Now, that has doubled for some reason? Maybe they had to start over from scratch and are putting some security into this one. (the good kind, not the DRM kind)
I guess we'll just have to wait and see. It's good for me that they are delaying, at least they won't be changing the "corporate standard" again where I work. I really don't care for XP and wish I had 2000 back...
Uh, are you sure you're using MS-Office? Ever have any Bullet Madness? Sudden appearance of Times New Roman? Word saving files it can't later read back in (but OpenOffice can)? 1k HTML files processed into 100K HTML files by Word? Pasting text from one document into another and having the document's margins get reset?... and that's just today!
Ahh. But the parent poster said:
Actually, I have to be honest and admit that Microsoft Office is a good product. Its stable, has alot of nice features and is intuitive to use.
So technically, it is stable (doesn't crash), has a lot of nice featurs (and a lot of annying ones) and is intuitive to use (for the most part). He was pointing out the positives of Office, of which there are many. There are also a lot of negatives. But that can be said of most software.
How about a little compassion? Yes, some of the things kids in there were simply stupid - but you know what, I'm betting you were pretty much an idiot and far from level-headed at 13 or so too - like most of us were. I know I sure as hell didn't think all that clearly at that age.
Hey, how about showing a little compassion to the boy who received the video? What would YOU have done at 14 if some girl sent you a video of herself masturbating? You probably would have shown it to your friends too. HE made a dumb mistake, just like SHE did. You can't just show compassion for one side.
See, I am all for showing compassion. One of the best books I have ever read is "The Art of Happiness" by the Dalai Lama. Now there is someone who practices what he preaches.
How about showing some compassion to this girl by NOT teaching her to sue when she is wronged. How about teaching HER about compassion. How about teaching the boy about compassion. I am not involved in this stupid fiasco, so my having a compassionate opinion isn't going to do shit.
You have to be held accountable for your own actions. This girl freely distributed a video of herself - hey, that's life. I am not going to blame her parents, because kids will do dumb things. But her parents should step up and refuse to sue other people for something her kid did on her own. Learn from it, move on.
Is there some kind of auto-moderation on Slashdot? The parent post started out with +2 because of my karma. Suddenly (perhaps because it met some pattern?) it gets modded down? My post was actually on topic, considering that it was about the internet going down. Trying to get the last post may not have been the most hilarious attempt, but it wasn't offtopic. I have noticed some other things as well, in other posts. It seems like keywords trigger them to be auto-moderated. Hmm. Could the tinfoil hats be right? Now I wonder if replying to a zero-modded post will cause me to lose even more karma. Slashdot, the supposed bastion of the Freedom, is found out to be just the opposite. Maybe the end of the internet is here...
In a follow-up to Microsoft Leaves U.N. Standards Group, it appears that it may have been in reaction to the UN's sponsorship of the 1st annual software Freedom Day...
OK, somebody PLEASE tell me how these things are connected. Seriously, this is a pretty pathetic attempt to spin a news story. This is a follow-up how? Are these two events connected in any way? If not, then please just report the stories. Or perhaps the tagline should be changed to "Speculation for Nerds".
I've already heard plenty of complaints about a scratch destroying more info on a DVD than a CD due to density. How much would an errant fingernail wipe out on something this dense? I can appreciate the cool factor of cramming so much data on a single disc, but if I have to handle it like a Fabrege (sp?) egg, what's the point?
They should give you the ability to halve the effective storage capacity in order to write redundant data. It wouldn't be a perfect solution, but would help. Unless they put these in large 3.5" floppy disk-like enclosures.
Yes, patriotic. Patriotism is loving your country, not your government (per se), and being willing to defend your country from threat of harm. Even... no, especially, if that harm comes from it's government.
Yet somehow, people who oppose President Bush and his war in Iraq are labeled as unpatriotic. (Michael Moore, the Dixie Chicks, etc) We have things like "The Patriot Act" which have nothing to do with patriotism. While the dictionary definition may be correct, the current administration is changing the meaning of the word.
Patriotic songs shouldn't be copyrighten, thats all there is to it.
Patriotic huh?
Chorus
As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there And that sign said - no tress passin' But on the other side.... it didn't say nothin! Now that side was made for you and me!
Chorus
In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple Near the relief office - I see my people And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin' If this land's still made for you and me.
why dont you make a keyboard, with like all the normal keys and none of that stupiod windows key crap, let alone 50 other buttons to open my mail client, browser and 48 other apps i dont even use.
I want an old school 101 or 102 keys keyboard
If only there were some large shopping sort of place where you might find such a thing. Oh, and if it could be on the information superhighway, that would make it even better.
Can't find the population of NIU...But we'll use my school's numbers....Assuming a yearlong (12-month) contract....
$5 * ~40,000 students * 12 mos. = $2.4 million
Well, I am about an hour from NIU, and my wife got her Masters there. So I spent some time there. There are a considerable number of students at NIU who commute. It is about 1.5 hours to Chicago, much shorter to some of the suburbs. The university would probably have to pay for each student, but the only ones who would get the real advantage would be the ones in the dorms. If you live off-campus, what do you do then? Of course, in DeKalb, there isn't much else to do. I remember driving into town on a Friday evening, and there was an exodus of cars leaving the town.
If you want to open your software, do it. It isn't like there are any secrets to it. See, that is the thing - you don't need anyone's help. You publish the source code - that's it.
The problem is, you can't do it. It goes against everything you stand for. You don't get it, you never will. There are no angles to be had, no strategies to follow. Regardless of how well-intentioned this guy at MS may be, he is not the faceless company that has implemented horrendous business practices over the last 20 years. Microsoft, you aren't part of this community, don't pretend like you are. We are a cancer, remember? Piss off.
Slashdot Mirror
My wife taught in a private school for 3 years, and just quit at the end of last year. While this may be about the public school system where parents aren't normally involved with their students, the opposite can be equally as damaging.
She taught 6-8th grade French. She has a masters in French, and yet some parents (who didn't speak French at all!) were suggesting ways she could improve her class. She had one parent who refused to let her son read "The Little Prince" because of what she deemed "questionable" references in it. Parents called her at home to complain about EVERYTHING. A lot of them asked for and expected special treatment for their kid. The administration wouldn't stand up to the parents because it was private and parents were on the board. It was a nightmare of stress and demands, and she didn't get any time away from that place. Weekends, nights, and even parts of the summer were taken up by this job.
While parents need to be involved, they also need to back the F off and allow teachers to do their jobs. For some reason, everyone expects them to go the extra mile just because they are teachers. They are also human beings.
That would mean that VCRs don't exist? Hmm, I still have one, and use it often. Until they come up with a portable, reusable, recordable format VCRs will be here. Hell, sounds like they might outlive the DVD player.
VCRs play AND record - DVD players just play.
He is essentially right about patents. There is noboby to sue over patent infringements if they would somehow appear in Linux code. Whereas Microsoft has the money to settle any patent lawsuits against them, and still have money for fat, sweaty Ballmer to roll around in. What this has to to do with "standing behind" patent claims, I have no idea. All he is saying is that MS can buy its way out of legal trouble. Duh.
Road construction in Chicagoland? You must have been here during the Summer. Or Spring. Or Fall.
You've just described the Chicago suburbs.
Uhh, common sense for one. The fact that you have no viable business model or product? The fact that you aren't, and never really were, a significant technology company?
Nobody wants you, nobody likes you. Reap what you sow, M'Fers.
Just to clear it up for the masses who might read this: QA stands for Quality Assurance. In a strict sense, it is not testing. I know, I know - a lot of people call testing QA. But in an engineering sense, QA is not testing at all! QA is doing statistical analysis, it is ensuring adherence to and improvement of processes. It is getting involved and looking at the product from a quality perspective.
And Q/A means question and answer, which a lot of QA people do, but they aren't the same thing. :-)
This technology is expected to give a boost to subscription services by allowing the music to be put on portable devices for the first time.
For the first time? Really? Maybe Microsoft should patent this revolutionary concept.
Like security?
No.
Apparently, you can.
I have been doing QA/Testing for 10 years, and it is pretty sad how all-important people think programmers are. The best ones may be, but they aren't all the best ones. When you foster an atmosphere where "develpment is always right" you run into major roadblocks in software development. Requirements analysts can't do their job properly or requirements are ignored. Documentation people are glared at for trying to make the system understandable. (yet we all love to bitch about bad online documentation) Test people are seen as people who are just blocking the inevitablility of shipping the code. If anyone tries to even analyze why things are F'd up, they are seen as "not being team players" and "finger pointers", even if you are trying to fix the process and not the people.
I will say that what he says about inspections is right on. Although, I think just focusing only on code reviews is wrong - rigorous reviews of requirements/code/test plans/process docs/user doc/etc will remove 90% of the defects. And defects in requirements are much more costly to fix later. The trick is balancing which of these are most important for your company to review, depending on the project. You can't just do it willy-nilly, you have to do a risk assessment on it and make a decision based on something.
I actually had a director of engineering say in a meeting "Since we implemented my new requirements management process, I *guarantee* that the code will work, first time, out of the box." I laughed out loud, and received a very dirty look from him, but agreement from everyone else. Needless to say, that release is the worst one we have had in 5 years, and it is at least 6 months over schedule. People have had to work a lot of OT to try and shine this turd, and they are getting burnt out. Most places do software development and not software engineering. Which is fine, as long as you are clear about it.
I just thought of a very good analogy that /.ers can understand. There is probably little doubt that Microsoft has a lot of good programmers. However, their culture and business model has lead the direction of their product. That alone should show you that software development is not all about the programmer. On the other hand, OSS is great but it can only get so far on "good code". Once it is managed, it can be pretty powerful.
Now Longhorn isn't going to be shipped until late 2006. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say they'll hit that date (just in time for Xmas!). OK, so that means that they will have been working on this thing for a MINIMUM of 5 years. If there was any release overlap, and I am sure there would have to be, it is probably more like 6 years. WTF have they been doing in Redmond!? You can't tell me that everyone there has been working on XP service packs.
Now I am not discounting the complexity of software and what it takes to release something of this magnitude. But we are talking about the largest and richest software company on the planet! Surely if anyone could do this, it would be..... Hmm. Perhaps what seems to be an advantage is actually a disadvantage in this case. If you look at their OS timeline (I used this one ), it seems that it was usually around 3 years between major instances of their OS lines. Now, that has doubled for some reason? Maybe they had to start over from scratch and are putting some security into this one. (the good kind, not the DRM kind)
I guess we'll just have to wait and see. It's good for me that they are delaying, at least they won't be changing the "corporate standard" again where I work. I really don't care for XP and wish I had 2000 back...
Ahh. But the parent poster said:
So technically, it is stable (doesn't crash), has a lot of nice featurs (and a lot of annying ones) and is intuitive to use (for the most part). He was pointing out the positives of Office, of which there are many. There are also a lot of negatives. But that can be said of most software.
Hey, how about showing a little compassion to the boy who received the video? What would YOU have done at 14 if some girl sent you a video of herself masturbating? You probably would have shown it to your friends too. HE made a dumb mistake, just like SHE did. You can't just show compassion for one side.
See, I am all for showing compassion. One of the best books I have ever read is "The Art of Happiness" by the Dalai Lama. Now there is someone who practices what he preaches.
How about showing some compassion to this girl by NOT teaching her to sue when she is wronged. How about teaching HER about compassion. How about teaching the boy about compassion. I am not involved in this stupid fiasco, so my having a compassionate opinion isn't going to do shit.
You have to be held accountable for your own actions. This girl freely distributed a video of herself - hey, that's life. I am not going to blame her parents, because kids will do dumb things. But her parents should step up and refuse to sue other people for something her kid did on her own. Learn from it, move on.
I try, every day, but they keep turning me away. They say I have to wait until November. :-)
Is there some kind of auto-moderation on Slashdot? The parent post started out with +2 because of my karma. Suddenly (perhaps because it met some pattern?) it gets modded down? My post was actually on topic, considering that it was about the internet going down. Trying to get the last post may not have been the most hilarious attempt, but it wasn't offtopic. I have noticed some other things as well, in other posts. It seems like keywords trigger them to be auto-moderated. Hmm. Could the tinfoil hats be right? Now I wonder if replying to a zero-modded post will cause me to lose even more karma. Slashdot, the supposed bastion of the Freedom, is found out to be just the opposite. Maybe the end of the internet is here...
OK, somebody PLEASE tell me how these things are connected. Seriously, this is a pretty pathetic attempt to spin a news story. This is a follow-up how? Are these two events connected in any way? If not, then please just report the stories. Or perhaps the tagline should be changed to "Speculation for Nerds".
Just getting a jump on the competition....
They should give you the ability to halve the effective storage capacity in order to write redundant data. It wouldn't be a perfect solution, but would help. Unless they put these in large 3.5" floppy disk-like enclosures.
Yet somehow, people who oppose President Bush and his war in Iraq are labeled as unpatriotic. (Michael Moore, the Dixie Chicks, etc) We have things like "The Patriot Act" which have nothing to do with patriotism. While the dictionary definition may be correct, the current administration is changing the meaning of the word.
Patriotic huh?
Chorus
As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side
Now that side was made for you and me!
Chorus
In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.
I spawned your process, and I can kill -9 you!
If only there were some large shopping sort of place where you might find such a thing. Oh, and if it could be on the information superhighway, that would make it even better.
Well, I am about an hour from NIU, and my wife got her Masters there. So I spent some time there. There are a considerable number of students at NIU who commute. It is about 1.5 hours to Chicago, much shorter to some of the suburbs. The university would probably have to pay for each student, but the only ones who would get the real advantage would be the ones in the dorms. If you live off-campus, what do you do then? Of course, in DeKalb, there isn't much else to do. I remember driving into town on a Friday evening, and there was an exodus of cars leaving the town.
The problem is, you can't do it. It goes against everything you stand for. You don't get it, you never will. There are no angles to be had, no strategies to follow. Regardless of how well-intentioned this guy at MS may be, he is not the faceless company that has implemented horrendous business practices over the last 20 years. Microsoft, you aren't part of this community, don't pretend like you are. We are a cancer, remember? Piss off.