not to be flamebait or anything, but atleast I was not impressed with his sample creations.
That was actually the sample page for the reviewer, so we've established that he likely needs this book very badly. The author of the book is Shirley Kaiser and the SKDesigns portfolio is better, though there are a distressing number of client porfolio example that are no longer online with the SKDesigns' design and can only be viewed as screenshots. The SKDesign site, however, shows a well structured approach to design with attention to web standards (and my pet requirement, accessibility) and is not visually disruptive.
IIRC, according to the actual specs, <! is actually the start and > is the end.
You do not recall correctly. According to the HTML 4.0 Specification, the <! is the SGML markup declaration open delimiter and the -- is the comment open delimiter and White space is not permitted between them.
Neither 88Open nor PowerOpen were open opening up the chip. Both were about creating Application Binary Interface (ABI) standards so that multiple vendors could provide compatible operating systems and Independent Software Vendors could count on compiling once and run safely on any compliant implementation.
The consortia produced standards that said what must work and what an application was allowed to assume. They produced test suites that could be used to verify a platform for compliance and test suites to verify an application for compliance. Theoretically, any certified application could run on any certified platform (possibly with certain extra hardware requirements).
SPARC International did much the same thing for the SPARC, but also had some emphasis on actually opening up the hardware. HP did something similar briefly with PA-RISC, creating a wildly incomplete and vague ABI which was next to useless because it didn't include critical parts of HP's proprietary linking and dynamic loading technology.
I worked at 88Open and was primary contractor for portions of the PowerOpen and PA-RISC test suites (working for a consulting firm that had also done some of the SPARC ABI work) in a former life.
The new effort seems to be to open up the CPU architecture as well.
If you don't have enough money in savings to sit around for six months, then you've over-extended yourself (or you're poor, but given that this is Slashdot, I'm assuming not).
This assumes a lot of things that are not necessarily true:
"Six months to live" means six months. It can mean six weeks. It can mean six years. I recently had the pleasure of meeting a woman who had a cancer with "0% survival chance" and life expectancy of six months after diagnosis. She was disagnosed eight years ago. She's very glad she didn't quit her job.
Six months living expenses with terminal cancer are similar to six months living expenses without the cancer. Cancer ain't cheap. Not all expenses are covered by insurance. My son has (non-terminal, quite curable, and in remission, but still requiring two more years of treatment) leukemia. We have excellent insurance. We spent approximately $8,000 out of pocket last year including insurance deductibles, medical co-pays, pharmacy co-pays, extra child care needed for our other child, travel and expenses to visit the oncolcogist, etc.
The cancer patients doesn't care whether his/her estate gets that money. If I die from cancer, I want my estate to have plenty of money for my wife and my children. I don't want to take a huge chunk away. Heck, under my current circumstances (working very part-time) I might well increase my hours so they got more money.
Re:Be cautious about "business" deductions
on
Is a Weblog a Business?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
IRS says it's got to be an activity carried on for the purpose of making a profit, not just a hobby that happens to generate income (even if it's a net profit)
You can generally deduct hobby expenses, but only up to the amount of hobby income. A hobby is not a business because it is not carried on to make a profit. See Not-for-Profit Activities in chapter 1 of Publication 535.
The US alone buys 17 million new cars per year, or an average of 51,000 per 26.4 hours. Those cars, by necessity, come from somewhere.
Do you seriously suggest that the entire planet has 51 thousand automobile assembly lines operational?
Do you seriously suggesst that each assembly line is only working on one car at a time? There is a huge difference between how fast cars come off the line (rate of production) and how long it takes to make a single car (time of production).
If you care mostly about finding a good match, ask about what you care about. What are typical work hours? How good is the company chef? What does the future of the business look like? What software development tools do you use? What software development processes do you use? Why do you (the interviewer) work here? To a lesser extent, ask what you think they'll care about. Read up on the company and ask a couple of questions about business and market direction? Ask careful questions about recent executive changes.
If you care mostly about finding a paycheck, focus on the "interest in the company" questions. Stick with the questions about what the company is doing and what the future looks like for the company and your group. Be sure to stick with neutral wording so you don't commit to a position in asking the question. For example, if you ask about development tools, ask "What do you use for source control?" rather than "You don't use that piggish obsolete bloatware SCM-2000 for source control do you?". Regardless of their answer, express interest. For example, if the answer to the previous question is "subversion" talk about your subversion experience (assuming you have some) and if the answer is "Perforce" express interest in learning it (assuming you don't know it).
A history of suing one's employer does not generally bode well for future employment opportunities.
Yeah, just ask Darl McBride - who sued former employer IKON Office Solutions for breach of contract before moving on to PointServe (where I worked briefly as Chief Architect before leaving over disagreements with the management direction of the company), Franlin Covey (where I used to buy planners before I went electronic), and SCO (where I never bought anything, especially their lawsuit against IBM). Nonetheless, it's probably best to not ask "what's your insurance coverage for employee lawsuits?" early in the interview process.
A child that is forced into daycare (sometimes after six weeks!), is going to incurr many more illnesses than a child that has the benefit of a stay-at-home-parent.
That certainly feels true, but is it? Does anyone have supporting data?
Increasing levels of social activity were associated with consistent reductions in risk of ALL; a dose-response trend was seen. When children whose mothers reported no regular activity outside the family were used as the reference group, odds ratios for increasing levels of activity were 0.73 (95% confidence interval 0.62 to 0.87) for any social activity, 0.62 (0.51 to 0.75) for regular day care outside the home, and 0.48 (0.37 to 0.62) for formal day care (attendance at facility with at least four children at least twice a week) (P value for trend < 0.001). Although not as striking, results for non-ALL malignancies showed a similar pattern (P value for trend < 0.001). When children with non-ALL malignancies were taken as the reference group, a significant protective effect for ALL was seen only for formal day care (odds ratio = 0.69, 0.51 to 0.93; P = 0.02). Similar results were obtained for B cell precursor common ALL and other subgroups, as well as for cases diagnosed above and below age 5 years.
The study authors conclude "These results support the hypothesis that reduced exposure to infection in the first few months of life increases the risk of developing acute lymphoblastic leukaemia." The "dose-response" trend means that higher levels of social activity correlated directly to lower incidence of ALL.
ALL is acute lymphoblastic leukemia (aka acute lymphocytic leukemia and less commonly a couple of other "L" words as the second word), the most common childhood cancer. It's also the type of cancer my five year old son is being treated for. He went to daycare young, didn't get sick often (and still doesn't even though he is immunosuppressed from the chemotherapy), and was diagnosed a year ago after a period that did not include a cold. Of couse, our experience can't be extrapolated to trends of childhood cancer.
As a side note, a standard part of the treatment for childhood ALL includes twice daily doses of an antifungal and thrice weekly doses of an antibiotic.
Patients undergoing chemotherapy are prone to getting bacterial and fungal infections.
Supporters of alternative explanations for "cancer" claim these prophylactic meds may be what "cures" the cancer.
Everything I've heard from oncologists and other doctors indicates that early exposure to other children (e.g. daycare) tends to result initially in more minor illnesses and a stronger immune system with lower incidence of illness later.
No, we are just thinking about different times. I got the first noise-cancelling phones I ever saw, this was in 1999.
I've been using noise cancelling headphones on planes 1996 or 1997 and never had problems with flight attendants demanding I turn them off during normal flight. Of course, they want them (and all other electronics) off during take off and landing. I have only had two kinds of problem with them on planes. Flight attendants used to assume I couldn't hear them because I was wearing headphones, so I would pull one headphone away from my ear so they knew I could hear them. These days most flight attendants grok noise cancelling headphones and I rarely have to even do that. The other problem is that I sometimes speak too softly because I can hear them so much better.
DS9 had one (that I can remember) saving grace - Trials & Tribblations - perhaps the single funniest fen shows ever aired. They had the DS9 crew time travel back to the "Trouble with Tribbles" episode of the TOS. They even had great fun with the "why Klingons look different" problem.
Re:information is shared smoothly and intelligentl
on
Is This the Holodeck?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
If history repeats itself we can expect interesting research and innovation, none of which actually produces a holodeck.
... well intentioned... well funded... Wait another ten years. Move along here.
You said it. Just check out the this Wikipedia entry or google fifth generation project for information on an earlier ambitious Japanese projec with somewhat somilar lofty goals. There were books, committees, conferences, committees, research, comittees, and lots of output. Although some interesting technologies trace at least some of their roots to the fifth generation project, the actual project didn't reach its goals.
But the computer has to be given the algorithm to solve these puzzles, which must be written by a human.
In college, I designed and built a computer using only SSI and MSI TTL chips (much of the effort and board space going into the ALU, which we were later allowed to replace with a pair of 74ls181 4-bit ALUs). To prove it worked, we wrote multi-precision math package and some simple puzzle solvers. Total time to design, assemble, and program: 5 weeks (while taking a course load of 20 credit hours).
My five year old is great at arithmetic and simple puzzles. Conceiving him was significant effort. The pregnancy had its difficulties. Teaching and caring for him is a full-time job and he's not even school age yet. That's all not even counting the extra effort that's gone into dealing with his leukemia.
Trust me, the computer is easier to build and program.
The reason is because a very common activity with a mouse is to drag and drop. Specifically on Macintosh operating systems, you have to click on the menu, hold the click and drag the mouse down through the items till you get to the one you want.
While I agree with the problems with drag and drop, the second statement is simply untrue. I'm sitting right here in my recliner with my PowerBook G4 and an Apple Bluetooth mouse. I tried clicking on a menu and selecting an item just to be sure. There is no drag required. I released the mouse button after clicking to get the menu and successfully scrolled through a long list of choices, repeatedly lifting my mouse since the arm of my recliner is small. No problem. It is possible that I've change my configuration as I have modified the default configuration to enable a number of "accessibility" features that make it easier for even the non-disabled person to use a computer.
Dragging on the other hand is pain when you have limited space available to move the mouse. I find this to be so with any mouse and find Apple's mice to be only moderately more annoying. Not a huge issue for me since I tend to avoid the need for dragging as much as possible anyway. One man's abomination is another man's minor annoyance.
So what did the hackers blackmail him with, pictures of Uranus?
I realize it's unpopular to RTFA, but even the link to TFA says " threatened to reveal it" - the hackers threatened to reveal the data, so the scientists pre-empted them.
Oh, so there are differing definitions of "premiere". Silly me to think that "premiere" would be the first showing of something.
Yes, you've figured it out. There are differing definitions of "premiere" - good work.
The show had a pilot. Fox did not show it until the end of the season.
The pilot set up a lot of context for the later episodes.
The episodes in the sequence produced had implicit and explicit references to earlier episodes.
Fox showed the episodes in an apparently randomly selected order that made the connections
nonsensical because viewers had not seen the "earlier" episodes in the filming sequence.
It really ruined the show.
It makes much more sense in order.
But then, someone could easily get my fingerprint by following me around for a little while and picking up my trash.
Yes, but following you around is labor intensive and targets you specifically. For less effort (at most small business networks I've seen), a hacker could recovers hundreds or thousands of fingerprints (or other biometric data). This change in scale changes the nature of the problem and removes control from you. Without the biometric data stored in the business computer, the paranoid can wear gloves or dab their fingertips with various substances to disrupt attempts to get fingerprints. That control is gone when the data gets stored on computers owned by various businesses.
The bill history for HB789 is interesting. Notably, it shows how quickly (and without a recorded vote so those of us who live in Texas can't even accuse our representatives of actually supporting this legislation) the bill passed.
Austin Wireless and Austin Wireless City both have coverage of what it means to Austin. The Save Muni Wireless group was put together in response to challenges like this; they include much better commentary on why HB789 is a bad idea than would be worth repeating here. If you really want to understand the issue, check some of these sites.
For those in Texas who want this law changed, it's probably a good time to call or write your state Senator today before this bill sails through committee and a floor non-vote.
Unless this group has such an increased chance of dying by perhaps either driving cheap cars too fast or overdosing on drugs/McDonalds that the evolutionary pull is nullified.
Only if this hypothetical population tends to die before they tend to reproduce. Reproducing young helps evolution to ignore all of those "old people" survival traits.
Or one of the many computers. As it turns out, the computers involved may not log all of the relevant data either. I've been having problems with a 1996 Dodge Caravan stalling (much like this reported problem). Took it in to the Dodge dealer, they ran the diagnostics and it came up clean. Attached a Mopar Co-Pilot and had me log data when the van stalled. Still no errors and for at least one incident the computer claims the engine was turned off. Mechanic said "maybe it's the wiring harness" ($2000+). We took it somewhere else.
Oddly, we took it to a different facility owned by the same folks, but got radically better attention. These guys tried the same things, ran into the same problems, the same non-diagnostics, and the same "turn off" log on at least one failure. This guy had a list of about 10 things that could go wrong in the van and have it not record a diagnostic and log a stall as the engine being turned off. He's been ticking those off one by one eliminating non-causes. He's not charging for the attempts, only the solution that works. Think I'll be sticking with this mechanic. Wish I could get rid of the lousy computers.
I think the key indicator in the article that this is the latest in buzz
phrase compliance was the recommendation that
"Vendors have to get on the pulpit."
It's all about getting the customers over the hump into buying all
of the application servers and services that will give them true SOA.
The biggest hurdle is that
"executives do not understand Web services or loosely coupled architectures"
(per the Yankee Group's Philip Fersht).
There's the rub, and the value, of the thing.
The executives don't understand the value of separation of applications
(what Roger Sessions calls Software Fortresses), but are beginning
to be taught.
If they can loosely couple, they begin to get choice of vendor at a finer
scale. They can choose different vendors for differents parts of their
critical systems.
So the strategy of the large, integrated solution vendors will have to be
to sell the buzzphrase while continuing to delivery monolithic messes.
Slashdot Mirror
not to be flamebait or anything, but atleast I was not impressed with his sample creations.
That was actually the sample page for the reviewer, so we've established that he likely needs this book very badly. The author of the book is Shirley Kaiser and the SKDesigns portfolio is better, though there are a distressing number of client porfolio example that are no longer online with the SKDesigns' design and can only be viewed as screenshots. The SKDesign site, however, shows a well structured approach to design with attention to web standards (and my pet requirement, accessibility) and is not visually disruptive.
You do not recall correctly. According to the HTML 4.0 Specification, the <! is the SGML markup declaration open delimiter and the -- is the comment open delimiter and White space is not permitted between them.
Neither 88Open nor PowerOpen were open opening up the chip. Both were about creating Application Binary Interface (ABI) standards so that multiple vendors could provide compatible operating systems and Independent Software Vendors could count on compiling once and run safely on any compliant implementation.
The consortia produced standards that said what must work and what an application was allowed to assume. They produced test suites that could be used to verify a platform for compliance and test suites to verify an application for compliance. Theoretically, any certified application could run on any certified platform (possibly with certain extra hardware requirements).
SPARC International did much the same thing for the SPARC, but also had some emphasis on actually opening up the hardware. HP did something similar briefly with PA-RISC, creating a wildly incomplete and vague ABI which was next to useless because it didn't include critical parts of HP's proprietary linking and dynamic loading technology.
I worked at 88Open and was primary contractor for portions of the PowerOpen and PA-RISC test suites (working for a consulting firm that had also done some of the SPARC ABI work) in a former life.
The new effort seems to be to open up the CPU architecture as well.
If you don't have enough money in savings to sit around for six months, then you've over-extended yourself (or you're poor, but given that this is Slashdot, I'm assuming not).
This assumes a lot of things that are not necessarily true:
"Six months to live" means six months. It can mean six weeks. It can mean six years. I recently had the pleasure of meeting a woman who had a cancer with "0% survival chance" and life expectancy of six months after diagnosis. She was disagnosed eight years ago. She's very glad she didn't quit her job.
Six months living expenses with terminal cancer are similar to six months living expenses without the cancer. Cancer ain't cheap. Not all expenses are covered by insurance. My son has (non-terminal, quite curable, and in remission, but still requiring two more years of treatment) leukemia. We have excellent insurance. We spent approximately $8,000 out of pocket last year including insurance deductibles, medical co-pays, pharmacy co-pays, extra child care needed for our other child, travel and expenses to visit the oncolcogist, etc.
The cancer patients doesn't care whether his/her estate gets that money. If I die from cancer, I want my estate to have plenty of money for my wife and my children. I don't want to take a huge chunk away. Heck, under my current circumstances (working very part-time) I might well increase my hours so they got more money.
IRS says it's got to be an activity carried on for the purpose of making a profit, not just a hobby that happens to generate income (even if it's a net profit)
Actually, the IRS allows you to deduct hobby expenses to the extent that they offset income. IRS Publication 529 says:
And I call "Common sense" on your "Common sense":
The US alone buys 17 million new cars per year, or an average of 51,000 per 26.4 hours. Those cars, by necessity, come from somewhere.
Do you seriously suggest that the entire planet has 51 thousand automobile assembly lines operational?
Do you seriously suggesst that each assembly line is only working on one car at a time? There is a huge difference between how fast cars come off the line (rate of production) and how long it takes to make a single car (time of production).
If you care mostly about finding a good match, ask about what you care about. What are typical work hours? How good is the company chef? What does the future of the business look like? What software development tools do you use? What software development processes do you use? Why do you (the interviewer) work here? To a lesser extent, ask what you think they'll care about. Read up on the company and ask a couple of questions about business and market direction? Ask careful questions about recent executive changes.
If you care mostly about finding a paycheck, focus on the "interest in the company" questions. Stick with the questions about what the company is doing and what the future looks like for the company and your group. Be sure to stick with neutral wording so you don't commit to a position in asking the question. For example, if you ask about development tools, ask "What do you use for source control?" rather than "You don't use that piggish obsolete bloatware SCM-2000 for source control do you?". Regardless of their answer, express interest. For example, if the answer to the previous question is "subversion" talk about your subversion experience (assuming you have some) and if the answer is "Perforce" express interest in learning it (assuming you don't know it).
A history of suing one's employer does not generally bode well for future employment opportunities.
Yeah, just ask Darl McBride - who sued former employer IKON Office Solutions for breach of contract before moving on to PointServe (where I worked briefly as Chief Architect before leaving over disagreements with the management direction of the company), Franlin Covey (where I used to buy planners before I went electronic), and SCO (where I never bought anything, especially their lawsuit against IBM). Nonetheless, it's probably best to not ask "what's your insurance coverage for employee lawsuits?" early in the interview process.
A child that is forced into daycare (sometimes after six weeks!), is going to incurr many more illnesses than a child that has the benefit of a stay-at-home-parent.
That certainly feels true, but is it? Does anyone have supporting data?
At least one recent study suggests children who go to day younger get cancer less frequently. The study results summary:
The study authors conclude "These results support the hypothesis that reduced exposure to infection in the first few months of life increases the risk of developing acute lymphoblastic leukaemia." The "dose-response" trend means that higher levels of social activity correlated directly to lower incidence of ALL.
ALL is acute lymphoblastic leukemia (aka acute lymphocytic leukemia and less commonly a couple of other "L" words as the second word), the most common childhood cancer. It's also the type of cancer my five year old son is being treated for. He went to daycare young, didn't get sick often (and still doesn't even though he is immunosuppressed from the chemotherapy), and was diagnosed a year ago after a period that did not include a cold. Of couse, our experience can't be extrapolated to trends of childhood cancer.
As a side note, a standard part of the treatment for childhood ALL includes twice daily doses of an antifungal and thrice weekly doses of an antibiotic. Patients undergoing chemotherapy are prone to getting bacterial and fungal infections. Supporters of alternative explanations for "cancer" claim these prophylactic meds may be what "cures" the cancer.
Everything I've heard from oncologists and other doctors indicates that early exposure to other children (e.g. daycare) tends to result initially in more minor illnesses and a stronger immune system with lower incidence of illness later.
CowboyNeal will come massage your shoulders.
That alone would be enough to ensure that I never post intelligently again.
Oops, never mind. Too late
No, we are just thinking about different times. I got the first noise-cancelling phones I ever saw, this was in 1999.
I've been using noise cancelling headphones on planes 1996 or 1997 and never had problems with flight attendants demanding I turn them off during normal flight. Of course, they want them (and all other electronics) off during take off and landing. I have only had two kinds of problem with them on planes. Flight attendants used to assume I couldn't hear them because I was wearing headphones, so I would pull one headphone away from my ear so they knew I could hear them. These days most flight attendants grok noise cancelling headphones and I rarely have to even do that. The other problem is that I sometimes speak too softly because I can hear them so much better.
DS9 had one (that I can remember) saving grace - Trials & Tribblations - perhaps the single funniest fen shows ever aired. They had the DS9 crew time travel back to the "Trouble with Tribbles" episode of the TOS. They even had great fun with the "why Klingons look different" problem.
If history repeats itself we can expect interesting research and innovation, none of which actually produces a holodeck.
You said it. Just check out the this Wikipedia entry or google fifth generation project for information on an earlier ambitious Japanese projec with somewhat somilar lofty goals. There were books, committees, conferences, committees, research, comittees, and lots of output. Although some interesting technologies trace at least some of their roots to the fifth generation project, the actual project didn't reach its goals.
But the computer has to be given the algorithm to solve these puzzles, which must be written by a human.
In college, I designed and built a computer using only SSI and MSI TTL chips (much of the effort and board space going into the ALU, which we were later allowed to replace with a pair of 74ls181 4-bit ALUs). To prove it worked, we wrote multi-precision math package and some simple puzzle solvers. Total time to design, assemble, and program: 5 weeks (while taking a course load of 20 credit hours).
My five year old is great at arithmetic and simple puzzles. Conceiving him was significant effort. The pregnancy had its difficulties. Teaching and caring for him is a full-time job and he's not even school age yet. That's all not even counting the extra effort that's gone into dealing with his leukemia.
Trust me, the computer is easier to build and program.
The reason is because a very common activity with a mouse is to drag and drop. Specifically on Macintosh operating systems, you have to click on the menu, hold the click and drag the mouse down through the items till you get to the one you want.
While I agree with the problems with drag and drop, the second statement is simply untrue. I'm sitting right here in my recliner with my PowerBook G4 and an Apple Bluetooth mouse. I tried clicking on a menu and selecting an item just to be sure. There is no drag required. I released the mouse button after clicking to get the menu and successfully scrolled through a long list of choices, repeatedly lifting my mouse since the arm of my recliner is small. No problem. It is possible that I've change my configuration as I have modified the default configuration to enable a number of "accessibility" features that make it easier for even the non-disabled person to use a computer.
Dragging on the other hand is pain when you have limited space available to move the mouse. I find this to be so with any mouse and find Apple's mice to be only moderately more annoying. Not a huge issue for me since I tend to avoid the need for dragging as much as possible anyway. One man's abomination is another man's minor annoyance.
The Red Lectroids are really going to be pissed now.
Regards,
John Lycrapants
So what did the hackers blackmail him with, pictures of Uranus?
I realize it's unpopular to RTFA, but even the link to TFA says " threatened to reveal it" - the hackers threatened to reveal the data, so the scientists pre-empted them.
Lets see... well, then they should stop being a fucking hardware company!
At which point Apple will have to worry about piracy because they are a software company.
Oh, so there are differing definitions of "premiere". Silly me to think that "premiere" would be the first showing of something.
Yes, you've figured it out. There are differing definitions of "premiere" - good work.
The show had a pilot. Fox did not show it until the end of the season. The pilot set up a lot of context for the later episodes. The episodes in the sequence produced had implicit and explicit references to earlier episodes. Fox showed the episodes in an apparently randomly selected order that made the connections nonsensical because viewers had not seen the "earlier" episodes in the filming sequence. It really ruined the show. It makes much more sense in order.
Without a doubt, the funniest, and shortest comment was:
(Mr. Chapman could not be reached in time for deadline)
I believe Mr. Adams would be laughing could he be reached for comment....
But then, someone could easily get my fingerprint by following me around for a little while and picking up my trash.
Yes, but following you around is labor intensive and targets you specifically. For less effort (at most small business networks I've seen), a hacker could recovers hundreds or thousands of fingerprints (or other biometric data). This change in scale changes the nature of the problem and removes control from you. Without the biometric data stored in the business computer, the paranoid can wear gloves or dab their fingertips with various substances to disrupt attempts to get fingerprints. That control is gone when the data gets stored on computers owned by various businesses.
The bill history for HB789 is interesting. Notably, it shows how quickly (and without a recorded vote so those of us who live in Texas can't even accuse our representatives of actually supporting this legislation) the bill passed.
Austin Wireless and Austin Wireless City both have coverage of what it means to Austin. The Save Muni Wireless group was put together in response to challenges like this; they include much better commentary on why HB789 is a bad idea than would be worth repeating here. If you really want to understand the issue, check some of these sites.
Even the High Tech Broadband Coalition (a group of telecom, hardware, and software companies) was against HB789.
Several local news stories:
For those in Texas who want this law changed, it's probably a good time to call or write your state Senator today before this bill sails through committee and a floor non-vote.
Only if this hypothetical population tends to die before they tend to reproduce. Reproducing young helps evolution to ignore all of those "old people" survival traits.
Or one of the many computers. As it turns out, the computers involved may not log all of the relevant data either. I've been having problems with a 1996 Dodge Caravan stalling (much like this reported problem). Took it in to the Dodge dealer, they ran the diagnostics and it came up clean. Attached a Mopar Co-Pilot and had me log data when the van stalled. Still no errors and for at least one incident the computer claims the engine was turned off. Mechanic said "maybe it's the wiring harness" ($2000+). We took it somewhere else.
Oddly, we took it to a different facility owned by the same folks, but got radically better attention. These guys tried the same things, ran into the same problems, the same non-diagnostics, and the same "turn off" log on at least one failure. This guy had a list of about 10 things that could go wrong in the van and have it not record a diagnostic and log a stall as the engine being turned off. He's been ticking those off one by one eliminating non-causes. He's not charging for the attempts, only the solution that works. Think I'll be sticking with this mechanic. Wish I could get rid of the lousy computers.
I think the key indicator in the article that this is the latest in buzz phrase compliance was the recommendation that "Vendors have to get on the pulpit." It's all about getting the customers over the hump into buying all of the application servers and services that will give them true SOA.
The biggest hurdle is that "executives do not understand Web services or loosely coupled architectures" (per the Yankee Group's Philip Fersht). There's the rub, and the value, of the thing. The executives don't understand the value of separation of applications (what Roger Sessions calls Software Fortresses), but are beginning to be taught. If they can loosely couple, they begin to get choice of vendor at a finer scale. They can choose different vendors for differents parts of their critical systems. So the strategy of the large, integrated solution vendors will have to be to sell the buzzphrase while continuing to delivery monolithic messes.