Hmm, just finished Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson that deals with many of these questions. His novel describes a colonization program that is dominated by multinational corporations hungry for the raw minerals of Mars and national governments eager to offload the overpopulating hordes onto a land area that is equal to that of Earth (his statement not mine, but the book is a 'hard' SF book).
These two groups are resisted by original colonists and "Reds" who want an Independent Mars. Struggle to be continued in Green Mars, sorry haven't read that one.
neil
Re:Inefficienct but useable and can do more
on
Perl and .NET
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· Score: 1
I think the big advantage for XML-RPC over CORBA is that ideally all of a company's processes will use XML - for EDI type exchanges, for datastores, for in-house apps - and now for XML-RPC. This means developers only need to learn one system for all these applications.
But then, the form follows function doctrine led to a lot of sheer ugliness as well. Your brand of design creates soulless concrete shells that demoralize the people who use them - viz public housing projects.
Although they have been getting a lot of press in the last couple of decades, for most people (e.g. none-Slashdot readers) computers are a tool and not an end in themselves. Anyone who has ever helped a coworker knows this: "Why won't it show me the summary?" "How do I get it to send my email" etc. Part of any so-called software engineering project should include a user needs analysis e.g. who are you designing for, why will they use it, what do they use it for, and so on. As I see it, most Open Source projects are designed for programmers by programmers. This is fine if that's the target audience, but as previous posts have said, Microsoft got to number one (among other ways!) by understanding their user. For my money, Office is an extremely useful program that allows me to complete my tasks quickly and efficiently without a lot of worry about how it works. This is what people are looking for, and frankly, I don't see it in most Linux apps.
It seems the major problem with the software patent process, and perhaps other areas of intense R&D, is that the people working in the PTO are not only inexperienced in the myriad of areas of research, but also overworked. (From my brief time in a government office, it is apparent that there is a perception by the public that civil servants sit around waiting for phones to ring.)
Perhaps a solution would be to implement some form of peer review, as is used by academic journals. Obviously the privacy of an application is potentially jeopardized, but if the consultants (industry types, academics, etc.) are made to sign a form of NDA, then we might secure up-to-date experience on the topic in question, and a variety of people to use. I see this a sort of Open Source patent process, if you will.
Slashdot Mirror
These two groups are resisted by original colonists and "Reds" who want an Independent Mars. Struggle to be continued in Green Mars, sorry haven't read that one.
neil
I think the big advantage for XML-RPC over CORBA is that ideally all of a company's processes will use XML - for EDI type exchanges, for datastores, for in-house apps - and now for XML-RPC. This means developers only need to learn one system for all these applications.
But then, the form follows function doctrine led to a lot of sheer ugliness as well. Your brand of design creates soulless concrete shells that demoralize the people who use them - viz public housing projects.
Actually, there is a substantial GIS known as GRASS that is open source. fink
Although they have been getting a lot of press in the last couple of decades, for most people (e.g. none-Slashdot readers) computers are a tool and not an end in themselves. Anyone who has ever helped a coworker knows this: "Why won't it show me the summary?" "How do I get it to send my email" etc. Part of any so-called software engineering project should include a user needs analysis e.g. who are you designing for, why will they use it, what do they use it for, and so on. As I see it, most Open Source projects are designed for programmers by programmers. This is fine if that's the target audience, but as previous posts have said, Microsoft got to number one (among other ways!) by understanding their user. For my money, Office is an extremely useful program that allows me to complete my tasks quickly and efficiently without a lot of worry about how it works. This is what people are looking for, and frankly, I don't see it in most Linux apps.
It seems the major problem with the software patent process, and perhaps other areas of intense R&D, is that the people working in the PTO are not only inexperienced in the myriad of areas of research, but also overworked. (From my brief time in a government office, it is apparent that there is a perception by the public that civil servants sit around waiting for phones to ring.)
Perhaps a solution would be to implement some form of peer review, as is used by academic journals. Obviously the privacy of an application is potentially jeopardized, but if the consultants (industry types, academics, etc.) are made to sign a form of NDA, then we might secure up-to-date experience on the topic in question, and a variety of people to use. I see this a sort of Open Source patent process, if you will.
fink