"Some of America's most sagacious and influential Founders warned repeatedly in so many words that American liberty and prosperity would be doomed once the people learned that they could vote largess out of the public treasury."
Of course, the people you refer to aren't just average citizens; with the exception of state inititives, people don't get to vote on specific issues. As we all know, merely voting for a candidate who states his support for a government program you like is an unreliable way to influence the outcome.
I also see you failed to mention the military where money is essentially flushed down the toilet with programs like missle defense that don't work as designed and couldn't defend against a real missle attack even if they did work since the underlying strategy is flawed.
In California at least, the most you could get away with is workman's compensation. You can't sue your employer for on-the-job injuries. Despite all the industry crying about high premiums, workman's comp shields them from the potentially higher costs of taking the matter to the courts.
I'm not making any predictions, but you could always post an "I was wrong" message on Slashdot in 6 weeks if your prediction is wrong. You could post it as a response to any story in an off-topic manner and you wouldn't need permission from the Slashdot editors.
I'm sure that a year from now if no security breaches are made, Slashdot will post a story with the title "Most Slashdot posters were wrong, XP based ATMs turned out to be secure after all".
I wouldn't expect a Linux-hating individual with most of his experience on Windows to be a better Linux administrator then a Red Hat certified one. Likewise, I wouldn't expect a MS-hating individual to be a better Windows administrator than an MSCE.
I suggest that any MSCE that feels smug should try getting a Linux certification and any Linux zealot who thinks MSCE's are dumb should try to get an MSCE. I suspect that if they tried to take the tests cold, they'd both crash and burn.
Certifications don't prove you're great, but the lack of one is even less convincing.
Bill Gates has been the richest man in the world almost continuously for many years. If he never made it to the top 25, most people wouldn't recognize his name.
On the other hand, if he were the richest man in the world and owned a company that made paper clips, he'd still be famous.
Well, I don't see Apple or IBM being able to lay claim to significantly more technology accomplishments.
One could certainly make the argument that IBM has accomplished little of practical value in the last 25 years and their resources are significanlty greater than MS's.
I don't get this idea that Gates and MS are great at marketing.
Scott McNealy convinced the computer press that Java was a new language that allowed programs to run on any computer. It's still not true. That's marketing!
Steve Jobs convinced the business world that Next was a startup for about 5 years in a row. That's marketing!
Linux zealots have convinced the world the Linux is a new operating system. That's marketing!
Meanwhile the best MS can do is the slogan "Where do you want to go today?" That's not (very good) marketing.
"With scores of billions in resources, these fucktards can't advance the state of computer science even a LITTLE bit?"
MS created the first technology to combine the functionality of Transaction Processing Monitors with component technology (Microsoft Transaction Server). This was years ahead of Sun's EJB technology that had similiar capabilities.
I would say that this would be an example of something that advanced computer science more than a little.
There has been no significant loss of market share from intel-based computers to Apple, so there's very little to "steal back".
Re:QA != Testing (let's try one more time)
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QA != Testing
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· Score: 1
"At a basic level, part of QA is making sure that you follow the processes that you say you are going to follow. Where I worked before, we said we were going to have a project plan for every release, even if it was a service pack release."
But what if your process didn't include a requirement for a project plan? Then you'd be fully compliant with your process, but you wouldn't have the advantages of the project plan.
Quality comes from doing the appropriate things for a particular project to make sure a product meets all the requirements. Following a generic or company-wide set of process rules may or may not increase the quality of a product.
Yes, and the customer is not a subsitute for a spec. Ideas are written down for a very good reason: people are not capable of remembering a large amount of detailed information in their heads.
If you have an infinite amount of money to burn, you can rewrite the application every time the customer's recollection of the requirements changes, otherwise you'd better have a spec.
"The idea is to remove variation so that everything you do is always the same."
If you want to write the same exact lines of code over and over again, this should work great. Obviously writing any new code would add a variation and violate the process.
Re:QA != Testing (let's try one more time)
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QA != Testing
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· Score: 1
"Technicallyk, Quality Assurance has nothing to do directly with the quality of the software."
QA has nothing to do indirectly with the quality of software either IMHO.
Re:Let's say what Linus says about QA
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QA != Testing
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· Score: 1
"I bet Linus leaves that out of the philosophical discussions about OSS."
I don't know, perhaps Linux code "wants to be free" to have bugs.
You just define your process to exclude the documentation.
CMM and ISO software standards have little to say about quality in the conventional sense (i.e. a particular product does what its supposed to and does so for a reasonable time). They're all about an organization's processes consistently applied. No useful output is required.
"I mean, since IBM started to embrace free software, they haven't done a bad move"
Actually they have. Here's an example:
After buying Rational a few years ago, they killed Rational Visual test because it was a low-cost alternative to Rational Robot. Not only won't they support it, they won't sell you a copy, let you make a copy, or release the source code.
Hey, they have every right to do this and it's exactly what you'd expect from a closed source company like IBM. My only complaint is their attempt to portray themselves as pro-open source. Instead of opening the source for junk nobody wants, why don't they do it for products people have already voted for with their wallets? The answer isn't hard to figure out.
Slashdot Mirror
"Some of America's most sagacious and influential Founders warned repeatedly in so many words that American liberty and prosperity would be doomed once the people learned that they could vote largess out of the public treasury."
Of course, the people you refer to aren't just average citizens; with the exception of state inititives, people don't get to vote on specific issues. As we all know, merely voting for a candidate who states his support for a government program you like is an unreliable way to influence the outcome.
I also see you failed to mention the military where money is essentially flushed down the toilet with programs like missle defense that don't work as designed and couldn't defend against a real missle attack even if they did work since the underlying strategy is flawed.
"But the authors state that it is not the intent, and that it will be modified to exclude casual sellers before it goes into affect."
The authors intent would not be admissible evidence in court as a defense. The court would draw its own conclusions based on the text of the law.
Perhaps the Word Perfect corporation should have patented "Reveal Codes" way back when. I think HTML looks very similiar to it.
In California at least, the most you could get away with is workman's compensation. You can't sue your employer for on-the-job injuries. Despite all the industry crying about high premiums, workman's comp shields them from the potentially higher costs of taking the matter to the courts.
"A firewall shouldn't be a solution to poor design/implementation problems and code bugs."
And OS or application security shouldn't be a solution to the poor design/implementation problems associated with the Internet.
I'm not making any predictions, but you could always post an "I was wrong" message on Slashdot in 6 weeks if your prediction is wrong. You could post it as a response to any story in an off-topic manner and you wouldn't need permission from the Slashdot editors.
I'm sure that a year from now if no security breaches are made, Slashdot will post a story with the title "Most Slashdot posters were wrong, XP based ATMs turned out to be secure after all".
"NONE of that stuff can be considered "advancing computer science even a LITTLE bit".
Perhaps you should provide your definition of "advancing computer science". Perhaps by your criteria no advances have taken place in your lifetime.
I should have said: "I HAVEN'T been to Washington state since the 80's".
I don't know. I have been to Washington state since the 80's.
I wouldn't expect a Linux-hating individual with most of his experience on Windows to be a better Linux administrator then a Red Hat certified one. Likewise, I wouldn't expect a MS-hating individual to be a better Windows administrator than an MSCE.
I suggest that any MSCE that feels smug should try getting a Linux certification and any Linux zealot who thinks MSCE's are dumb should try to get an MSCE. I suspect that if they tried to take the tests cold, they'd both crash and burn.
Certifications don't prove you're great, but the lack of one is even less convincing.
Bill Gates has been the richest man in the world almost continuously for many years. If he never made it to the top 25, most people wouldn't recognize his name.
On the other hand, if he were the richest man in the world and owned a company that made paper clips, he'd still be famous.
It's not about MS, it's about the money.
Well, I don't see Apple or IBM being able to lay claim to significantly more technology accomplishments.
One could certainly make the argument that IBM has accomplished little of practical value in the last 25 years and their resources are significanlty greater than MS's.
"Anyone who has only been exposed to GUI-based environments just can't appreciate the simplicity of an efficient command-line OS."
And yet, some of us who had plenty of experince with command-line OS's before GUIs appeared were quite happy to leave them behind.
I don't get this idea that Gates and MS are great at marketing.
Scott McNealy convinced the computer press that Java was a new language that allowed programs to run on any computer. It's still not true. That's marketing!
Steve Jobs convinced the business world that Next was a startup for about 5 years in a row. That's marketing!
Linux zealots have convinced the world the Linux is a new operating system. That's marketing!
Meanwhile the best MS can do is the slogan "Where do you want to go today?" That's not (very good) marketing.
"With scores of billions in resources, these fucktards can't advance the state of computer science even a LITTLE bit?"
MS created the first technology to combine the functionality of Transaction Processing Monitors with component technology (Microsoft Transaction Server). This was years ahead of Sun's EJB technology that had similiar capabilities.
I would say that this would be an example of something that advanced computer science more than a little.
I'm not interested in these "this time I did it with my fingers crossed" records.
There has been no significant loss of market share from intel-based computers to Apple, so there's very little to "steal back".
"At a basic level, part of QA is making sure that you follow the processes that you say you are going to follow. Where I worked before, we said we were going to have a project plan for every release, even if it was a service pack release."
But what if your process didn't include a requirement for a project plan? Then you'd be fully compliant with your process, but you wouldn't have the advantages of the project plan.
Quality comes from doing the appropriate things for a particular project to make sure a product meets all the requirements. Following a generic or company-wide set of process rules may or may not increase the quality of a product.
"Specs are not a substitute for the customer."
Yes, and the customer is not a subsitute for a spec. Ideas are written down for a very good reason: people are not capable of remembering a large amount of detailed information in their heads.
If you have an infinite amount of money to burn, you can rewrite the application every time the customer's recollection of the requirements changes, otherwise you'd better have a spec.
"The idea is to remove variation so that everything you do is always the same."
If you want to write the same exact lines of code over and over again, this should work great. Obviously writing any new code would add a variation and violate the process.
"Technicallyk, Quality Assurance has nothing to do directly with the quality of the software."
QA has nothing to do indirectly with the quality of software either IMHO.
"I bet Linus leaves that out of the philosophical discussions about OSS."
I don't know, perhaps Linux code "wants to be free" to have bugs.
You just define your process to exclude the documentation.
CMM and ISO software standards have little to say about quality in the conventional sense (i.e. a particular product does what its supposed to and does so for a reasonable time). They're all about an organization's processes consistently applied. No useful output is required.
"I mean, since IBM started to embrace free software, they haven't done a bad move"
Actually they have. Here's an example:
After buying Rational a few years ago, they killed Rational Visual test because it was a low-cost alternative to Rational Robot. Not only won't they support it, they won't sell you a copy, let you make a copy, or release the source code.
Hey, they have every right to do this and it's exactly what you'd expect from a closed source company like IBM. My only complaint is their attempt to portray themselves as pro-open source. Instead of opening the source for junk nobody wants, why don't they do it for products people have already voted for with their wallets? The answer isn't hard to figure out.