I'm perpetually amused at those seekers after a silver bullet. Their faith in the existence of a magic method is comic.
All of these studies roll up statistics for us to nod at knowingly, yet they are impotent when it comes to taking creativity and serving it up so that the novice can be productive. That bit of Southern engineering wisdom: "y'all just cain't polish a turd" applies to staff as well as designs.
People just don't aggregate, and pursuit of models and methodologies is a diminshing-returns game. Have a model. Have a methodology. Stick to it. But never mistake this means for an end unto itself.
The Honor Concept states that Midshipmen are persons of integrity: they do not lie, cheat, or steal.
Legal eagles take note that it's not the letter of the law, it is the discernable motives that count in that fishbowl of a school. And I like that. For the minute you try to legislate integrity, the situation expands or contracts to mock the legislation. Legislation works well when there is no immediate threat. But in a lot of military situations, what's in your guts counts far more than your ability to spew sophistries. So, these mids stand to be crushed. Military officers (and little ones in training) are held to higher standards than the general population, or even elected officials (who didn't inhale or engage in financial gymnastics). I recommend everyone volunteer a little time on active duty, or some other service-oriented activity. Those who have might agree that you appreciate what you have a little more from a) having stepped out of the civilian mode and b) seen some other locations which aren't far off the Monty Pynthon Four Yorkshiremen skit.
My 6035 works as a wireless modem (though, at 19.2, only in a pinch), keeps my contacts synchronized between work and home, tracks my fueling on my car, has a copy of the Bible for those less hectic moments. The keyboard is really useful. You can go to a meeting and take notes without a wall of laptop screen separating you from the customer. Mailing your raw notes to the attendees can be a little tricky. Additionally, when the meeting devolves into a talking head show, you can write those brief little "howyadoin'?" emails, while appearing to be productively occupied.
I won't be ready to live without my 6035 until I've got a 7035 in my hot sweaty.
As for a third party, is it really that important?
Furthermore, how long until they become the 1.5th party, or really the first party in disguise?
We'll have to see how the market votes.
OTOH, do you really want, say, the Windows source?
I suppose you can define robust and arbitrary in a way that makes Java an answer. Furthermore, I've seen demos of teleconferencing/whiteboard software under Java with a 56K dial-up pipe, given righteous data compression.
Yet, Java applets are not overtaking all browsers in sight. Begs the potentially trollish question: is Java the new Betamax?, or is it just Mr. Softy playing monopoly?, or is it something else?
Your observation holds true in a large number of cases. But beware. The technician/sergeant with the tactical view of things is not the manager/general with the strategic view.
The Big Picture and the Little Picture will remain in tension indefinitely.
I'm interested in seeing any other browser that can provide robust, arbitrary plug-in support without a security compromise.
Security and utility are two contestants in a zero-sum game.
Which is not to say that <insert browser here> isn't a technically superior product...
Today, to work on CityDesk, I need to know Visual Basic, COM, ATL, C++, InnoSetup, Internet Explorer internals, regular expressions, DOM, HTML, CSS, and XML. All high level tools compared to the old K&R stuff, but I still have to know the K&R stuff or I'm toast.
I submit that the reason the abstractions leak is that infomation is a fluid. We have these spiffy binary computers, but the continuous information fluid just finds the leaks. Sure, higher level languages abstract better, and hide the ugly, bottom-level truth more and more, except for when they don't.
I submit that your "foo" + "bar" example, or variations on that theme, will continue to separate the wheat from the chaff in IT for the foreseeable, pre-Terminator, ante-dystopian apocalyptic meltdown future.
Resistance is feudal.
We must quietly respect the gentle extension of market share on the part of the Big Guy. No whining, no complaints, no trolls: manufacturers are flooding the market with products that are only going to work with the Master System.
The reasonable thing to do is refuse to purchase these products until a reasonable selection of drivers is available for them.
Also, try not to by new boxes incorporating inflexible hardware.
Smarter markets are the key to a better future.
But the site has no search feature. I went to the Comedy link, and it completely failed the one-shot test: The Appointments of Dennis Jennings
Does anyone know why this intense, Oscar winning IIRC, little film cannot be found under the sun?
How about a VBA macro to translate MSWord into HTML. Sure, some fidelity loss, and getting the professors to use it would be like pushing Jell-O up a hill with a toothpick, but it would be something...
Furthermore, human noise would tend to be random and self-cancelling.
As the article states, this is driven by molten iron in the earth's core. Somehow, I doubt that petty human meanderings have penetrated that deep, much less affected the process.
The good old magnetic compass (flanked by the Quartermaster's Balls) is a backup to GPS on ships. Not that you'd get where you want to go smoothly doing compass and celestial navigation. In geek terms, that's like coding in assembly.
Here, here: acknowledgement of technical excellence where present, disparagement of ethical vacuum where noticed.
It's far more instructive for those of us a little lower on the learning curve to observe these architectural questions in public, than to have them made for us by Those Who Know Best.
Prediction: both implementations have their appropriate place. In the ideal world, you'd install the proper one based on the application.
The one that becomes the usual suspect in commercial distributions is likely the one that is best suited for business tasks, which aren't that thread-happy in the first place, if my guess isn't too far off...
Linus treats patches in an academic fashion. Use the community as a filter to shunt inferior stuff away from the core code. Pragmatic, smart, efficient. Ideas of quality will survive the vetting. Thumbs up, and in BeelzeBill's eye.
I am all for not rushing to get the latest version of BeelzeBill's Orifice. Still get quite a bit done in O97, in fact.
There just aren't any compelling reasons to upgrade, other than a newer Oxx arriving on the new box.
Seen from that standpoint, MS's desire to throw in new functionality and stimulate sales seems straightforward.
However, the ubiquity of the.pdf format is such that, even if Oxx introduces competing functionality, it will likely be met with a big, 'so, what?' by the market.
Just blow off XDocs like you blew off LoseCE (or PocketPuke or whatever the nom du jour is) on the handheld. See, I knew you could!
And she complained bitterly about partisan use on both sides.
I recall her complaining bitterly about a trip to Thailand for the Secretary of State. She said 'SEC State', but with the distance between the decks of our homes across which we spoke, I thought she said 'Sex Aid'. I recall thinking that very decadent (having been to Phattaya Beach a few times in the Nav', myself). Took a few repeats to straighten that one out...
OTOH, pilots are required to log a certain amount of hours to retain proficiency. So they wind up logging them in support of activities that are easily objectionable. Andrews AFB is functionally an international airport in service of the gubmint.
However, I don't consider any of this a bad thing, in general. You really want your leadership to have freedom of mobility. You also don't want them showing up looking like they flew economy everywhere they go. Do you really want your representatives vicitimized by luggage handlers?
Yes, these travel facilities are subject to abuse like web sites. How about some useful feedback? Why don't we celebrate good leadership, good use of technology to articulate issues and garner feedback? Whores that politicians are (speaking as an IT whore myself), they are going to respond in the desired fashion to votes in the ballot box that reward desired behavior. So, who are some good examples?
Couldn't get there. Dunno if that's the firewall kicking in...or...the Illuminati.
You have to give them credit for subtlety. Insisting that the taxpayer receive some value from the code cleverly ignores the value of the code itself.
Of course, having seen a few lines of taxpayer-funded code, disclosing some of the 'less mature' examples thereof might not help the funding drives of any politicians...
You know, some of those people behaving so hypocritically are descended from Goths who sacked Rome. Should the be equally ashamed over atrocities committed by their great^17th grandfather as by their grandfather?
This is not to say that we should blow off injustice. It really sucks to be on the receiving end, and knowledge of that suction should temper our dealings with those who claim to be feeling the vacuum.
But let's not wear the hair shirt too excessively...
I've always thought a turbine-powered locomotive made a lot more sense from a size/weight/fuel economy point of view than a diesel engine... guess I shoulda patented the idea when I had it back in the mid-90s!
Boss, there is a little more to it than that. Quoting Cengel and Boles Thermodynamics: an Engineering Approach, p476 regarding Naval applications: 'Compared to...diesel propulsion systems, the gas turbine offers greater power for a given size and weight, high reliabiilty, long life, and more convenient operation'.
Now, Navies aren't beholden to a quarterly report, and calling voters 'stockholders' is problematic.
Personally witnessed USS MyLast burn in excess of 110,000 gallons of fuel doing plane guard operations for an aircraft carrier. That is smoking some dinosaurs. I daresay that military operations are optimized for performance, not cost.
It really gets at the business case: do the size/weight/maintenance/staffing characteristics of the gas turbine pay for the system over the long haul despite piss poor fuel economy. USNS Arctic is an example of where the whole idea starts to eat itself, which might partially explain why they moved her from the regular fleet to Military Sealift Command (hence USNS vice USS). Summarizing, gas turbines in a naval application don't scale well (20,000 tons displacement is usually quoted as the break-even point). Admittedly, that might have to do with Bird-Johnson CRP systems more than the turbine itself.
Kind of interesting to consider the idea from an open/closed source software perspective. Probably a perilous comparison...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm perpetually amused at those seekers after a silver bullet.
Their faith in the existence of a magic method is comic.
All of these studies roll up statistics for us to nod at knowingly, yet they are impotent when it comes to taking creativity and serving it up so that the novice can be productive. That bit of Southern engineering wisdom: "y'all just cain't polish a turd" applies to staff as well as designs.
People just don't aggregate, and pursuit of models and methodologies is a diminshing-returns game. Have a model. Have a methodology. Stick to it. But never mistake this means for an end unto itself.
Absolutely. A Paladin to slay Palladium and its ilk!
And brought you that little-known protocol TCP/IP.
Shut ass.
The Honor Concept states that Midshipmen are persons of integrity: they do not lie, cheat, or steal.
Legal eagles take note that it's not the letter of the law, it is the discernable motives that count in that fishbowl of a school. And I like that.
For the minute you try to legislate integrity, the situation expands or contracts to mock the legislation.
Legislation works well when there is no immediate threat. But in a lot of military situations, what's in your guts counts far more than your ability to spew sophistries.
So, these mids stand to be crushed. Military officers (and little ones in training) are held to higher standards than the general population, or even elected officials (who didn't inhale or engage in financial gymnastics).
I recommend everyone volunteer a little time on active duty, or some other service-oriented activity. Those who have might agree that you appreciate what you have a little more from
a) having stepped out of the civilian mode and
b) seen some other locations which aren't far off the Monty Pynthon Four Yorkshiremen skit.
My 6035 works as a wireless modem (though, at 19.2, only in a pinch), keeps my contacts synchronized between work and home, tracks my fueling on my car, has a copy of the Bible for those less hectic moments.
The keyboard is really useful. You can go to a meeting and take notes without a wall of laptop screen separating you from the customer. Mailing your raw notes to the attendees can be a little tricky.
Additionally, when the meeting devolves into a talking head show, you can write those brief little "howyadoin'?" emails, while appearing to be productively occupied.
I won't be ready to live without my 6035 until I've got a 7035 in my hot sweaty.
We'll have to see how the market votes.
OTOH, do you really want, say, the Windows source?
I suppose you can define robust and arbitrary in a way that makes Java an answer. Furthermore, I've seen demos of teleconferencing/whiteboard software under Java with a 56K dial-up pipe, given righteous data compression.
Yet, Java applets are not overtaking all browsers in sight. Begs the potentially trollish question: is Java the new Betamax?, or is it just Mr. Softy playing monopoly?, or is it something else?
Your observation holds true in a large number of cases.
But beware.
The technician/sergeant with the tactical view of things is not the manager/general with the strategic view.
The Big Picture and the Little Picture will remain in tension indefinitely.
I'm interested in seeing any other browser that can provide robust, arbitrary plug-in support without a security compromise.
Security and utility are two contestants in a zero-sum game.
Which is not to say that <insert browser here> isn't a technically superior product...
I submit that your "foo" + "bar" example, or variations on that theme, will continue to separate the wheat from the chaff in IT for the foreseeable, pre-Terminator, ante-dystopian apocalyptic meltdown future.
Resistance is feudal.
We must quietly respect the gentle extension of market share on the part of the Big Guy. No whining, no complaints, no trolls: manufacturers are flooding the market with products that are only going to work with the Master System.
The reasonable thing to do is refuse to purchase these products until a reasonable selection of drivers is available for them.
Also, try not to by new boxes incorporating inflexible hardware.
Smarter markets are the key to a better future.
Appreciate your right to an opinion, dinna agree, laddy.
But the site has no search feature. I went to the Comedy link, and it completely failed the one-shot test:
The Appointments of Dennis Jennings
Does anyone know why this intense, Oscar winning IIRC, little film cannot be found under the sun?
How about a VBA macro to translate MSWord into HTML. Sure, some fidelity loss, and getting the professors to use it would be like pushing Jell-O up a hill with a toothpick, but it would be something...
Furthermore, human noise would tend to be random and self-cancelling.
As the article states, this is driven by molten iron in the earth's core. Somehow, I doubt that petty human meanderings have penetrated that deep, much less affected the process.
The good old magnetic compass (flanked by the Quartermaster's Balls) is a backup to GPS on ships. Not that you'd get where you want to go smoothly doing compass and celestial navigation. In geek terms, that's like coding in assembly.
Here, here: acknowledgement of technical excellence where present, disparagement of ethical vacuum where noticed.
It's far more instructive for those of us a little lower on the learning curve to observe these architectural questions in public, than to have them made for us by Those Who Know Best.
Prediction: both implementations have their appropriate place. In the ideal world, you'd install the proper one based on the application.
The one that becomes the usual suspect in commercial distributions is likely the one that is best suited for business tasks, which aren't that thread-happy in the first place, if my guess isn't too far off...
_|_ _|_ _|_ _|_ _|_ _|_ _|_ _|_
-ASCII artist's impression of said cluster
The normally useful lameness filter seems to require a bunch of random input to circumvent.
Linus treats patches in an academic fashion. Use the community as a filter to shunt inferior stuff away from the core code. Pragmatic, smart, efficient. Ideas of quality will survive the vetting. Thumbs up, and in BeelzeBill's eye.
...the Market.
.pdf format is such that, even if Oxx introduces competing functionality, it will likely be met with a big, 'so, what?' by the market.
I am all for not rushing to get the latest version of BeelzeBill's Orifice. Still get quite a bit done in O97, in fact.
There just aren't any compelling reasons to upgrade, other than a newer Oxx arriving on the new box.
Seen from that standpoint, MS's desire to throw in new functionality and stimulate sales seems straightforward.
However, the ubiquity of the
Just blow off XDocs like you blew off LoseCE (or PocketPuke or whatever the nom du jour is) on the handheld. See, I knew you could!
Begs an off-topic philosophical question:
How would Karl Marx have felt about the fetishing of costless commodities?
Coders of the world, patch!
And she complained bitterly about partisan use on both sides.
I recall her complaining bitterly about a trip to Thailand for the Secretary of State. She said 'SEC State', but with the distance between the decks of our homes across which we spoke, I thought she said 'Sex Aid'. I recall thinking that very decadent (having been to Phattaya Beach a few times in the Nav', myself). Took a few repeats to straighten that one out...
OTOH, pilots are required to log a certain amount of hours to retain proficiency. So they wind up logging them in support of activities that are easily objectionable. Andrews AFB is functionally an international airport in service of the gubmint.
However, I don't consider any of this a bad thing, in general. You really want your leadership to have freedom of mobility. You also don't want them showing up looking like they flew economy everywhere they go. Do you really want your representatives vicitimized by luggage handlers?
Yes, these travel facilities are subject to abuse like web sites. How about some useful feedback? Why don't we celebrate good leadership, good use of technology to articulate issues and garner feedback? Whores that politicians are (speaking as an IT whore myself), they are going to respond in the desired fashion to votes in the ballot box that reward desired behavior. So, who are some good examples?
Couldn't get there. Dunno if that's the firewall kicking in...or...the Illuminati.
You have to give them credit for subtlety. Insisting that the taxpayer receive some value from the code cleverly ignores the value of the code itself.
Of course, having seen a few lines of taxpayer-funded code, disclosing some of the 'less mature' examples thereof might not help the funding drives of any politicians...
You know, some of those people behaving so hypocritically are descended from Goths who sacked Rome. Should the be equally ashamed over atrocities committed by their great^17th grandfather as by their grandfather?
This is not to say that we should blow off injustice. It really sucks to be on the receiving end, and knowledge of that suction should temper our dealings with those who claim to be feeling the vacuum.
But let's not wear the hair shirt too excessively...
'Compared to...diesel propulsion systems, the gas turbine offers greater power for a given size and weight, high reliabiilty, long life, and more convenient operation'.
Now, Navies aren't beholden to a quarterly report, and calling voters 'stockholders' is problematic.
Personally witnessed USS MyLast burn in excess of 110,000 gallons of fuel doing plane guard operations for an aircraft carrier. That is smoking some dinosaurs. I daresay that military operations are optimized for performance, not cost.
It really gets at the business case: do the size/weight/maintenance/staffing characteristics of the gas turbine pay for the system over the long haul despite piss poor fuel economy. USNS Arctic is an example of where the whole idea starts to eat itself, which might partially explain why they moved her from the regular fleet to Military Sealift Command (hence USNS vice USS). Summarizing, gas turbines in a naval application don't scale well (20,000 tons displacement is usually quoted as the break-even point). Admittedly, that might have to do with Bird-Johnson CRP systems more than the turbine itself.
Kind of interesting to consider the idea from an open/closed source software perspective. Probably a perilous comparison...