"This argument implies that users/developers are stupid and do not understand the complications."
Well, you're making the same argument MS did during the antitrust suit: J++ developers knew exactly what they were doing and weren't using it with the expectation that their code was going to be platform-independent.
They were using J++ because it's a simpler and safer language then C++ and because it was the best language for COM development until C# came along. It's existence indirectly helped Java because J++ users still ended up learning Java syntax so they'd be more likely to use it on other platforms in the future.
The day IBM buys Java will be the day that IBM stops talking about opening the code. They already bought Rational's products, where's the source for them?
The problem was that Sun didn't lift a finger to promote Java on Windows. They could have made deals with OEMs to put their own JVM on Windows machines like hundreds of other companies were doing with their products or they could have sent out Java CDs like AOL. Apparently Java just wasn't important enough to them to bother.
Nice spin, but if you have to layout a complicated argument to explain apparent descrepencies, the movie still doesn't work.
Lucas could have easily avoided these problems by not revisting the same locations, minor characters and droids from the other movies. Or he could have used a good screenwriter to include those elements without tangling everything up.
"This is the paradigm shift behind the product called Infowalker, which unfortunately is implemented as an IE toolbar, but would be fabulous as a feature built into Mozilla or Opera."
Yeah, how could they choose the most popular browser when there are non-MS broswers out there. After all, it shouldn't be about business or technology, but political correctness.
MS is opening some of their code using the same business model as IBM. That is, release source code that doesn't contain any core IP or doesn't compete with your other money-making products.
"Give them something easy, refreshing, new, cool, exciting. You don't do that by copying everything from someone else then wonder why they call you up with "IE wont load"."
Yes, but look - Linux was never about originality. Linus could have created something "new", but chose to clone Unix instead. I have my doubts about "easy, refreshing, cool and exciting" too, but that's just my opinion.
Actually, this was an agreement between Sun and MS to settle Sun's lawsuit. If Sun didn't want MS to ship 1.1.8 Java, they could have continued the lawsuit. Instead they took the settlement money and then turned around and tried to force MS to distribute Sun's Java on anti-trust grounds.
Sun didn't really lose the effort to force MS to ship Sun's Java, they just didn't get to do it without the suit running its course. Apparently Sun decided that this newest settlement was a better deal for them then continuing the lawsuit.
I don't see how having an open source version of Java is going to hurt MS more than a closed source version. It's not as if any users are paying money for Java now. Does the Java source code have any revolutionary content that would allow Open Source developers to better compete with MS? I doubt it.
Almost as much as Sun damaged itself. It looks like Scott has put his ego on the backburner and is focusing on saving his business. That new attitude (if it lasts) is probably as significant as the $1.95 billion.
A standard notation is better than a non-standard one certainly. Diagrams can act as a shorthand to those that understand them but spoken or written language is still the most reliable way to communicate IMHO.
This discussion reminds me of a conversation I had about 10 years ago with the regulatory affairs director of the medical device company I was working for.
I gave her a detailed data flow diagram for our software to include with her FDA submission. She gave it back to me and said she was afraid that if she gave it to the FDA they would think that we didn't know what we were doing.
We ended up giving them a diagram with a circle for each major function of the device surrounding a larger circle with the product name in it and a line connecting each small circle to the larger one.
Well, guys like the three Amigos have to make a living. If they just said "draw a few simple diagrams and describe in text how the system is designed" how can they make money?
The fact is that the (human) language a software team speaks is the most powerful and effective way to communicate overall. Diagrams can be helpful, but they'll always be a supplement.
At first I was surprised that with 19 years of experience you had never seen a flowchart in practice, then I read your post again and saw "programming professionally for a few years" . That explains it.
10 or 20 years from now programmers may be saying "UML, nobody but old farts use that anymore". And so it goes.
The original post I responded to implied that MS was unique in it's desire to protect its IP. He speculated what if books were treated the way MS treats software. My point was that books are already treated that way and have been for a long time.
I don't dispute that there is plenty of material out there that is readily available, but it doesn't have anything to do with this thread as far as I can see.
"If the professor at the college you chose to attend insists that you use a particular book that's one thing"
That's one think you can count on. I never took a class where the instructor let you choose what book you wanted to use.
It's great if supplemental information is available (and it always has been in libraries and book stores long before the Internet), but having everyone choose their own books as the core reference material doesn't make much sense. How would the instructor know what was fair to include on a test?
In yet another version of this story, MS was asked by IBM to write Basic for the PC (they were the leading Basic vendor for microprocessor based computers at that time). They also asked MS for a recommendation for OS makers and they referred IBM to Kildall. Kildall either missed the appointment or was unavailable so IBM came back to MS. MS bought another companies OS and it became DOS. I have no way to determine if this story is more acurate than the others.
"Imagine a world where opening a math or physics book required a license...I'm sure the publishers would love it, but the fact is, it's kind of unimaginable now that we have had a taste of freedom."
You mean the hundreds of dollars I paid for books in college wasn't necessary because only MS makes you pay for IP? Get real.
"Yes, unemployment is high, but even if you count all the people that want a job but can not receive benefits and all those people sitting on their butt not looking and not caring, there isn't 90% of the population out of work. It probably isn't even 10% of the working age population."
Of course if a person loses a full-time job and can only get a 20 hour per week job, the unemployment numbers will view that as a non-change. If your assign a value of 1 to full-time employment and appropriate fractions to shorter hours, you might well get an unemployment number over 10%. This isn't even considering salary downgrades.
My point is that in the case of unemployment numbers anecdotal evidence may be no more flawed than the official numbers.
I think you're wrong on both counts. Companies like to hire new graduates and retain them because they're cheap and their ignorance can be very useful.
First of all, they are easier to indoctrinate in your company's why of doing things because they haven't formed preferences at other companies.
In addition, if a manager gets a "great" idea that in reality is doomed to failure, inexperienced people are less likely to see the flaws. This makes it easier to create the illusion that success is just around the corner and get promoted before the shit hits the fan.
"Wired News has a story about how American companies are outsourcing not because of cheap labor but because of the American school system not being up to snuff. In a report by the AeA, they contend that American schools don't teach enough math and science anymore."
The fact is that most students in Engineering or CS will have the opportunity only to use a small fraction of the math and science they took in college during their career.
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"This argument implies that users/developers are stupid and do not understand the complications."
Well, you're making the same argument MS did during the antitrust suit: J++ developers knew exactly what they were doing and weren't using it with the expectation that their code was going to be platform-independent.
They were using J++ because it's a simpler and safer language then C++ and because it was the best language for COM development until C# came along. It's existence indirectly helped Java because J++ users still ended up learning Java syntax so they'd be more likely to use it on other platforms in the future.
The day IBM buys Java will be the day that IBM stops talking about opening the code. They already bought Rational's products, where's the source for them?
The problem was that Sun didn't lift a finger to promote Java on Windows. They could have made deals with OEMs to put their own JVM on Windows machines like hundreds of other companies were doing with their products or they could have sent out Java CDs like AOL. Apparently Java just wasn't important enough to them to bother.
You forgot the part about putting on women's clothing and hanging around in bars.
"Can you do that in Afghanistan?"
Only if you get permission from President Bush.
Nice spin, but if you have to layout a complicated argument to explain apparent descrepencies, the movie still doesn't work.
Lucas could have easily avoided these problems by not revisting the same locations, minor characters and droids from the other movies. Or he could have used a good screenwriter to include those elements without tangling everything up.
"This is the paradigm shift behind the product called Infowalker, which unfortunately is implemented as an IE toolbar, but would be fabulous as a feature built into Mozilla or Opera."
Yeah, how could they choose the most popular browser when there are non-MS broswers out there. After all, it shouldn't be about business or technology, but political correctness.
Asuming that SCO fails, Unix is really a public domain OS, so there's no reason why anyone would buy a MS version or why MS would bother writing one.
MS is opening some of their code using the same business model as IBM. That is, release source code that doesn't contain any core IP or doesn't compete with your other money-making products.
"Give them something easy, refreshing, new, cool, exciting. You don't do that by copying everything from someone else then wonder why they call you up with "IE wont load"."
Yes, but look - Linux was never about originality. Linus could have created something "new", but chose to clone Unix instead. I have my doubts about "easy, refreshing, cool and exciting" too, but that's just my opinion.
Actually, this was an agreement between Sun and MS to settle Sun's lawsuit. If Sun didn't want MS to ship 1.1.8 Java, they could have continued the lawsuit. Instead they took the settlement money and then turned around and tried to force MS to distribute Sun's Java on anti-trust grounds.
Sun didn't really lose the effort to force MS to ship Sun's Java, they just didn't get to do it without the suit running its course. Apparently Sun decided that this newest settlement was a better deal for them then continuing the lawsuit.
I don't see how having an open source version of Java is going to hurt MS more than a closed source version. It's not as if any users are paying money for Java now. Does the Java source code have any revolutionary content that would allow Open Source developers to better compete with MS? I doubt it.
Almost as much as Sun damaged itself. It looks like Scott has put his ego on the backburner and is focusing on saving his business. That new attitude (if it lasts) is probably as significant as the $1.95 billion.
A standard notation is better than a non-standard one certainly. Diagrams can act as a shorthand to those that understand them but spoken or written language is still the most reliable way to communicate IMHO.
This discussion reminds me of a conversation I had about 10 years ago with the regulatory affairs director of the medical device company I was working for.
I gave her a detailed data flow diagram for our software to include with her FDA submission. She gave it back to me and said she was afraid that if she gave it to the FDA they would think that we didn't know what we were doing.
We ended up giving them a diagram with a circle for each major function of the device surrounding a larger circle with the product name in it and a line connecting each small circle to the larger one.
I guess you have to know your audience.
Well, guys like the three Amigos have to make a living. If they just said "draw a few simple diagrams and describe in text how the system is designed" how can they make money?
The fact is that the (human) language a software team speaks is the most powerful and effective way to communicate overall. Diagrams can be helpful, but they'll always be a supplement.
At first I was surprised that with 19 years of experience you had never seen a flowchart in practice, then I read your post again and saw "programming professionally for a few years" . That explains it.
10 or 20 years from now programmers may be saying "UML, nobody but old farts use that anymore". And so it goes.
Six straw arguments in search of a breeze.
You've completely lost me.
The original post I responded to implied that MS was unique in it's desire to protect its IP. He speculated what if books were treated the way MS treats software. My point was that books are already treated that way and have been for a long time.
I don't dispute that there is plenty of material out there that is readily available, but it doesn't have anything to do with this thread as far as I can see.
"If the professor at the college you chose to attend insists that you use a particular book that's one thing"
That's one think you can count on. I never took a class where the instructor let you choose what book you wanted to use.
It's great if supplemental information is available (and it always has been in libraries and book stores long before the Internet), but having everyone choose their own books as the core reference material doesn't make much sense. How would the instructor know what was fair to include on a test?
In yet another version of this story, MS was asked by IBM to write Basic for the PC (they were the leading Basic vendor for microprocessor based computers at that time). They also asked MS for a recommendation for OS makers and they referred IBM to Kildall. Kildall either missed the appointment or was unavailable so IBM came back to MS. MS bought another companies OS and it became DOS. I have no way to determine if this story is more acurate than the others.
"Imagine a world where opening a math or physics book required a license...I'm sure the publishers would love it, but the fact is, it's kind of unimaginable now that we have had a taste of freedom."
You mean the hundreds of dollars I paid for books in college wasn't necessary because only MS makes you pay for IP? Get real.
Gee, maybe that's because OO claims to be compatible with MS Word and MS Word doesn't claim any compatiblity with OO.
"Yes, unemployment is high, but even if you count all the people that want a job but can not receive benefits and all those people sitting on their butt not looking and not caring, there isn't 90% of the population out of work. It probably isn't even 10% of the working age population."
Of course if a person loses a full-time job and can only get a 20 hour per week job, the unemployment numbers will view that as a non-change. If your assign a value of 1 to full-time employment and appropriate fractions to shorter hours, you might well get an unemployment number over 10%. This isn't even considering salary downgrades.
My point is that in the case of unemployment numbers anecdotal evidence may be no more flawed than the official numbers.
I think you're wrong on both counts. Companies like to hire new graduates and retain them because they're cheap and their ignorance can be very useful.
First of all, they are easier to indoctrinate in your company's why of doing things because they haven't formed preferences at other companies.
In addition, if a manager gets a "great" idea that in reality is doomed to failure, inexperienced people are less likely to see the flaws. This makes it easier to create the illusion that success is just around the corner and get promoted before the shit hits the fan.
"Wired News has a story about how American companies are outsourcing not because of cheap labor but because of the American school system not being up to snuff. In a report by the AeA, they contend that American schools don't teach enough math and science anymore."
The fact is that most students in Engineering or CS will have the opportunity only to use a small fraction of the math and science they took in college during their career.