I haven't seen the season finale, I'm in the U.S., we're only a couple of episodes in (4 or 5, give or take). I've seen every episode televised over here thus far, and I am absolutely loving it.
Stargate is a different animal though... It's got a high comedy component that works nearly all the time. BG obviously doesn't, and shouldn't I would say, so it's working in it's own way too brilliantly.
It's of course a matter of personal preference, and you'll get no argument from me that BG is fantastic thus far, and everything I've heard about what's coming sounds like that will continue. If you put a gun to my head and make me choose between it or SG1 though, I'm going with SG1 every time, and I'd even choose Atlantis over it. But, I would absolutely HATE having to make the choice in the first place!
I was immensely against this series before it aired, and most especially because of the changes to Starbuck, which I felt like was akin to rewriting the bible and making Jesus a woman.
I will however be the first to admit I was completely wrong about BS:G.
So far it has been nothing short of brilliant. What has especially impressed me is the overall tone of it. I think it was Ron Moore who said (paraphrasing) that the original series wasn't true to it's own premise... in the original, within a week or so of Caprica being devastated, they were in bars on other planets with other humans, having a blast, generally not acting like the future of the human species hung in the balance. I never thought of it before, but damn it if he wasn't right! I still love the original series, but I do view it in a different light now. The remake has really gotten this right, in the extreme. There is a truly palpabale sense of dread throughout it, and that is fantastic as far as I'm concerned.
But...
This is NOT the best sci-fi show on the air today. It's third, near as I can tell, behind Stargate SG1 and SG:Atlantis. SG1 has been the best for some years now, ever since Babylon 5 went off the air actually. Atlantis has come on unbelievably strong this first season, and I predict here and now we're going to be hailing it's greatness 10 years down the road when it's still chugging along. And it wouldn't surprise me it SG1 was still producing new episodes then too!
And if B5 is still airing in your market, than IT is the best show on TV today.
None of this takes away from how good BS:G has been though. It has completely proved me wrong. Hell, I'm even getting used to the new Starbuck, I think the actress playing her is doing an excellent job in the role. If they can keep this up, it's going to be a fantastic and long ride!
"Let's see if the Linux community can match his generosity" is not only irrelevant, it verges on being not very nice."
Oh, gee, sorry your delicate sensibilities were offended. Why is it we can see 10 stories a day bashing MS (even if just in the form of some stupid comment by the news poster) and no one is botherd, but one semi-mean comment about Linux and the OSS community and your ticked about it?
If the OSS community has such a think skin that "Let's see if the Linux community can match his generosity" bothers you, you have much bigger problems than actually being offended.
While I generally refrain from replying to anyone that doesn't see fit to put their name to their comments, I'll make an exception here...
I didn't say I've been doing web development for 15 years. I've been doing that for probably 8-9 years or so. The rest of the time has been typical client-server development, and other things.
That being said, 99% of that web development time has been developing Intranet-based applications. I'm known for creating applications that look, feel and function like fat-clients. They tend to be much richer than the average web site. I admit this work has been IE-only, which frankly puts me in a unique position to know IE's stengths and weaknesses. But I digress...
While I'm not going to claim they are anything special, I'm not one of those incredibly gifted site designers that create true works of art, I am not ashamed of the public sites that are still online that I've done... Here are links:
I did everything on these site, all coding (front and back-end), design, graphics work, etc. Like I said, they aren't going to win any design awards, but I'm comfortable with people seeing them and knowing they are my work.
I will say that if I have to code for only one browser for whatever reason, IE is going to be it. Hopefully I have a choice though, in which case I do what everyone should and make a site that works with as many browsers as humanly possible... or maybe I should say contractually possible, because if they aren't going to pay for the time to make it cross-browser, then a choice has to be made, and at THIS POINT in time, IE is still the best choice because of it's market share.
"What it shows, is that people who know anything about computers do switch. In hordes."
That's a rather biased statement, and verging on FUD.
I've been using computers for nearly 25 years now, over 15 years as a professional enterprise developer. I've got certifications up the wazoo, have won a number of awards for my abilities, and generally am known as an overall guru by those that know me. This is in NO WAY meant to be a boast, but simply to illustrate that I know something about computers.
I have not switched. I am not particularly thrilled with FF, and I have tried it out at great length. The only time I use it is at work when I have two different webmail accounts I want to view at the same time, and Maxthon won't treat two different tabs as two different sessions (neither will FF by the way).
My system has never been compromised in any way. I keep it patched and up-to-date, run a virus scanner, NO real-time spyware scanner, and live behind a firewall. I have had zero problems to speak of security-wise. And I do leave quite a bit active (scripting, ActiveX to a point, etc.) I don't use plain IE any longer, I use Maxthon, which is still IE but with all the nice extra features.
I would grant you that people would probably be doing themselves a favor to not be using plain old IE any more, for lack of features if nothing else, but your implication that people that know about computers should be switching to FF as a matter of course is bogus at best. There are a number of "IE wrappers", like Maxthon, that give you all the nice features of FF, but still leave you with the predominant render engine on the planet, and also address some of the security concerns. The rest are addressed by regular updates.
FF isn't the only game in town, and I would argue not even the best. Matter of opinion of course, but your not a moron if you don't use FF either.
Careful... Looking at a site like Ace's Hardware could be misleading...
Most of the users that go to that site I'd dare say are a little more technically savy than average. Lots of the Slashdot crowd for instance. People like this one would expect to see taking up FF first and more,
Looking at sites like Best Buy and Disney is probably a better measurement of where general browser usage is. For example, if I run a Linux lovefest site, I would expect that the majority it viewers would NOT be using IE. The target audience wouldn't support it. But, the target audience for more "general interest" sites like maybe CNN, Google, etc., is a better indicator of where the average users are, and that group still makes up the majority of Internet users.
Statistics are a wonderful thing... they can prove or disprove anything you want.
Of course, the opimists' view of all this is that society would go through an upheavel period, but would then settle down to something like the Star Trek utopian society we know and love... people would be free of the relatively "mundane" chores of having to go do jobs every day that they hated. They could instead focus on expanding human knowledge and persuing the arts.
Without the struggle for survival, people would theoretically be free to persue more "important" matters. One would think that things like maintaing the food supply could be handled by automotons, maintained by a relatively small group of people who would probably enjoy doing it anyway.
In fact, you could argue that things would HAVE to go this way, because if they didn't then immortality could be the END of civilization (much like Kosh warned us about on B5!). "Being ready for immortality" would mean we could adapt or existence to not have it wind up being the end of us. I suspect we could. Mankind is pretty damned adaptable (within our limited experiecne thus far anyway).
Like I said, there would certainly be an initial period of trouble, and it could be an extended period of time, but I think we'd come through it and actually reach a new level of evolution as immortal beings.
Ah, screw it. Those that became immortal would just enslave those that weren't, and the species would die out as the drive for survival erroded and people atrophied in every concievable way.
Yes, THAT seems much more likely. Dunno what I was thinking, being optimistic for a moment. Sorry, my bad. I'm OK now.
Over the past five years I have successfully completed six projects for my employer that most people would consider major projects. Three of them had multi-million-dollar budgets and all of them had multi-million-dollar goals (i.e., saving the company ten million, opening up a new market that should account for 20 million, etc.)
I've been a "professional" developer for over 10 years, and a developer in general for over 20. From a technical standpoint I am generally acknowledged by my peers as one of the best around.
Want to know how those projects got done, on time, on budget, and fulfilled their requirements (and even exceeded them in some places)?
I can tell you this... there was never any formal methodology involved (although subconsciously we did follow many best-practices without even realizing it). None of these projects required any death-marches (one got a little tight at the end, but nothing crazy), and all were stunning successes in the end.
Simply put, they handed me the reigns and got out of my way, mostly anyway. I wasn't bugged daily by PM's looking for statuses. I wasn't constantly bothered by users looking for access to development work. I wasn't always called by management to discuss were the project was.
I was involved in the business analysis for all of them, although I was not primarily a business analyst, we had a "real" one of those, I just participated to keep the requirements gathering phase somewhat realistic in terms of the technology that might implement the solutions (of course at that phase you aren't focused on technology, your barely thinking about it actually, but it helps to have someone involved that knows what may or may not be possible and let the business analyst focus more on the business side of things).
Then, I did 90%-95% of the architecting of the systems. There were others involve, but the vast majority of the final decisions were mine.
Then, I did 90%-95% of the actual coding. In fact, three of the six projects I did ALL the coding on, the others I distributed some portions of work to other developers.
I then did my unit testing and handed off small pieces of the system TO ACTUAL USERS, at whatever increments I could (i.e., put something real in front of the user ASAP, even if they aren't going to actually use it in a real way immediately, you just want to keep them engaged and invested in the work). All of these projects were iterative, although I found that there wasn't a large amount of scope/feature-creep, nor was there a lot of reworking of things I got wrong. Sure, there was some of that, but it was perfectly manageable because the design phase (what I call requirements gathering plus architecting) was done pretty well.
And it is very important to point out that at virtually NO POINT IN TIME did I work more than my usual 40 hour week. Maybe a couple of 40-45 hour weeks here or there, but generally 40 hours on the button (some weeks even less frankly).
Some of the coding I farmed out to others, I even let them do some of the design work on small units of work, but it is fair to say that I am single-handedly responsible for 90% or so of all of these systems, from start to finish.
Now, I'm not saying any of this to toot my own horn. I'm just trying to make a point, which is this...
If you have talented, capable people working for you, and you let them "do their thing" and trust in them, success tends to happen. People tend not to work to their full potential when they feel people are constantly looking over their shoulder (even when they are, it should be in a non-invasive way).
Naturally, you have to find the right people, and you have to get that level of trust, which isn't usually automatic upon hiring someone, but it's a worth-wild exercise to partake. This isn't easy, but my experience is that it is worth the time, and will lead to better results than going nuts implementing some majestic methodology, forcing particular tools on people, or otherwise bein
Actually, the human race has proven unequivocally that the philosophy of the Shadows, not the Vorlons, works best for us. War has advanced our scientific knowledge far more than peacetime ever has.
I'm not saying we should constantly be fighting wars, nor that we should seek to kill off lesser parts of ourselves, just that war has propelled us forward tremendously, more than periods of relative peace have.
My bad, I thought they were ahead of the Gamecube (we are only counting current consoles I assume? I am). I'll still give the parent a miss though...
As I understand it, they intended to lose money initially on the XBox and make it up later on game sales. I don't know for sure, but I suspect they probably didn't even expect that to happen until XBox 2 comes out.
In any case, as you say, they weren't a player in the industry before and now they are, I think that's a perfectly fair statement to make.
The fact that other divisions are covering the losses isn't I think evidence of it being a failure, just evidence that they can maintain business models that others never could. My guess, based on everything I've read, is that the XBox has done at least close to what they expected, at least not far enough below the targets to warrant calling it a failure, so it's still a miss for the parent I think, albeit maybe an arguable one:)
It would seem to be that a company that has historically taken a bearing over security would want to close any "DRM loophole" as quickly as possible. But, with them wanting to get the MPAA and RIAA onboard with their DRM schemes, those things would seem to conflict.
I'll be interested to see their reaction. Looks like the proverbial rock and hard place to me.
* Passport - Yep, you got that one right. It tanked not because it was a bad idea, but because it was executed horribly bad. Be that as it may, your right, it failed. You are 1 for 1.
* Active Directory - Not even close to a failure. No, it's not the basis for every network as I'm sure they wanted, but it is used, and used with great success generally, in MS shops around the world. You can hate it, you can say some people have trouble with it, you can point out all sorts of problems if you want, but to say it tanked is flat-out not consistent with reality. You are 1 for 2.
* XBox. Failure?!? It's #2 behind only PS/2, which had a MASSIVE head-start as well as building on a previous winner, PS/1. Again, you can point out all the negatives you want, and I'd even agree with many, but saying it tanked is not even remotely close. Just because it doesn't rule the world doesn't make it a failure by any stretch. You are 1 for 3.
* MSN 'google search engine - Well, seeing as how it's only come into existence in the last month or so (and isn't it still in beta anyway??), saying it tanked is very premature. I suspect it WILL tank, but you cannot in fairness call it a failure yet. You are 1 for 4, with the possibility of being 2 for 4 down the road.
* IE tanked? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SMOKING?!? Yes, Firefox is coming on strong, and we can post all the problems with IE ad nauseum, but calling something that STILL holds a 90% share of the market is not tanking my friend. As a matter of fact, it's an unqualified success, putting aside how it got there anyway. You are 1 for 5.
* Recently acquired AV software - Now your post is bordering on the absurd. No, I take that back... You aren't bordering anything, you are firmly on the absurd side of the fence. How can something they acquired in the last two months be a failure already? They haven't even put out an MS-branded version yet! Give me a break guy. 1 for 6.
I won't argue with your comment about them purchasing most of their products. That's pretty much fact, very little of what they do is actually original or home-grown. But innovative doesn't mearly mean what you create yourself. You can hate MS and Windows all you want, and I'd join you in most of it, but you cannot deny the impact their products have had on the world. We can argue how things might have turned out had Apple and/or others been leading the way, but all we know for sure is how things DID turn out. Microsoft has pretty much single-handedly brought computers to the masses, and if you can't see that and give them credit at least for that you are insanely diluted.
Believe me, I'm not defending them. There's PLENTY to hammer them for. But without Windows, 75% of the "computing public" as we know it today wouldn't be able to use a computer. You may argue whether that's a good thing or not, but to say it's not is frankly wrong, end of story. And if you want to say someone else would have done what they did and probably better, again, you may be completely right, but we'll never know, we only know for sure what actually is, and that's Microsoft and Windows. It was their innovation, whatever meaning someone chooses to ascribe that word in this case, that got us here. Maybe it is time to go another direction, but let's not credit them for where we are at the same time we chastise them for the very same thing!
Quicktime may not package adware, but it does leave a background process installed that I can't seem to get rid of permanently because it reactivates any time the player runs. It's qtask.exe if I remember correctly. Not a major thing I guess, but I consider this a form of spyware frankly... Maybe there should be another category for things like this since it's probably not nefarious like spyware and isn't showing ads like adware... Maybe AnnoyingAsHellWare or something.
If I'm hitting some dude over the head with a baseball bat, and I hear the sirens outside and decide to stop before they bust the door down, am I now "safe from prosecution" because I ceased the illegal behavior before the authorities arrived?
What a ridiculous statement that was.
They maybe shouldn't have feared prosecution in the first place. Perhaps they should have fought the fight because they were really in the right, but neither of those things are the same as saying they are now safe from prosecution.
Oh, and lest anyone think I didn't RTFA, I quote:
"Considering that administrators of smaller, although no less significant, communities such as ShareConnector were actually arrested, Sloncek decided to take SuprNova.org off line voluntarily. This will allow him and his fellow administrative staff to concentrate on other projects without worry of prosecution."
Sure sounds like they are saying they are no longer worried about prosecution to me.
I have posted on numerous ocassions my less than glowing feelings about Firefox. I run IE (well, to be fair, Maxthon) and am very happy doing so, haven't had problems in I don't know how long, and just in general I'm not especially thrilled with Firefox.
But this blog entry is beyond ridiculous.
First, I have installed Firefox on a number of ocassions, recently and beta builds in the past. I have done so on a couple of different versions of Windows, a few Linux versions some of which were running under VMWare. I have NEVER had ANY problem installing it. Certainly I've never seen a blank dialog like this guy claims to have.
He raises some interesting concerns about the download locations I think, legitimate concerns, but beyond that it's a bunch of obvious FUD drivel. The security warning dialogs he mentions, while legitimate issues for novice users, are a result of the way IE handles potentially unsafe content, NOT the fault of Firefox. I would bet most people downloading a new browser can probably handle these dialogs without too much trouble, and again, they are from IE, not Firerox. He's right, signing the Firefox download wouldn't be a bad idea, but it's hardly the big deal he seems to think it is.
Look, I think there are legitimate gripes about Firefox (just like there are about IE by the way)... I don't think either side needs to be making stuff up. I find myself sometimes defending MS against what I see as unfair assessments by the OSS community, but seeing posts like this blog entry makes me feel like an ass for doing so. BOTH sides need to be mature and compete fairly, may the best product win. It's annoying when crap like this sneaks through.
It seems to me there are two ways to look at this...
(1) OSS is better, specifically, Linux is better (than Windows), and in the end people will realize this and leave Windows for the better choice, regardless of whether OSS products are available on Windows or not
or
(2) Linux is NOT actually better than Windows, so there is something to fear from OSS on Windows.
One belief cannot coexist with the other... If you believe Linux is better than Windows, than OSS on Windows should be nothing to fear because people will eventually come around anyway and go with Linux. Linux only has something to fear if it isn't as actually better than Windows, in which case running OSS alternatives on Windows might be really better than OSS products on Linux, and hence Linux never breaks through the popular mindset.
Since I always hear people say how much better Linux is, they either do not really believe this, or they believe they have no chance against Windows anyway, regardless of quality of offerings.
Which is it, zealots? Not as good as you say, or are people too stupid to ever realize it's better, in which case your cause is already lost?
Seriously, it is. Even the worst PocketPC is far more functional, and they are quite stable and reliable.
And that doesn't even mention Linux-based devices, which really haven't taken hold yet. I think it's just a matter of time before they do, although there needs to be a good shell around it. I thought the Zaurus was a good start, but (a) they just aren't big in the states, and (b) they aren't up to snuff yet.
Simply put, a PocketPC is what you want, well, in your pocket, these days. Palm used to be king, but it's stagnated, and even in it's heydey it was difficult to write applications for, so even though you saw a lot available, 98% of it was crap (and still is). Sure, there's plenty of crap for PocketPC's as well, but there's a higher percentage of actually useful software.
Forget Palm. History will do the same, soon enough.
"there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon"
Oh no? I deny it. I think his nickname was Dimebag because he's a dime-a-dozen musician. Go to any night club in America and you'll find five guys just like him on any given night.
But more importantly, can you really "find" someone dead when he is killed in front os 250 witnesses? Don't you have to know he's not there initially to "find" him?!?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, then 9 out of 10 malware authors don't know what the hell they are doing since .NET *IS NOT* a language.
If they can't even understand THAT, I'm not at all worried about their craplets.
I haven't seen the season finale, I'm in the U.S., we're only a couple of episodes in (4 or 5, give or take). I've seen every episode televised over here thus far, and I am absolutely loving it.
Stargate is a different animal though... It's got a high comedy component that works nearly all the time. BG obviously doesn't, and shouldn't I would say, so it's working in it's own way too brilliantly.
It's of course a matter of personal preference, and you'll get no argument from me that BG is fantastic thus far, and everything I've heard about what's coming sounds like that will continue. If you put a gun to my head and make me choose between it or SG1 though, I'm going with SG1 every time, and I'd even choose Atlantis over it. But, I would absolutely HATE having to make the choice in the first place!
I was immensely against this series before it aired, and most especially because of the changes to Starbuck, which I felt like was akin to rewriting the bible and making Jesus a woman.
I will however be the first to admit I was completely wrong about BS:G.
So far it has been nothing short of brilliant. What has especially impressed me is the overall tone of it. I think it was Ron Moore who said (paraphrasing) that the original series wasn't true to it's own premise... in the original, within a week or so of Caprica being devastated, they were in bars on other planets with other humans, having a blast, generally not acting like the future of the human species hung in the balance. I never thought of it before, but damn it if he wasn't right! I still love the original series, but I do view it in a different light now. The remake has really gotten this right, in the extreme. There is a truly palpabale sense of dread throughout it, and that is fantastic as far as I'm concerned.
But...
This is NOT the best sci-fi show on the air today. It's third, near as I can tell, behind Stargate SG1 and SG:Atlantis. SG1 has been the best for some years now, ever since Babylon 5 went off the air actually. Atlantis has come on unbelievably strong this first season, and I predict here and now we're going to be hailing it's greatness 10 years down the road when it's still chugging along. And it wouldn't surprise me it SG1 was still producing new episodes then too!
And if B5 is still airing in your market, than IT is the best show on TV today.
None of this takes away from how good BS:G has been though. It has completely proved me wrong. Hell, I'm even getting used to the new Starbuck, I think the actress playing her is doing an excellent job in the role. If they can keep this up, it's going to be a fantastic and long ride!
*IF* the bandwidth gets out of hand?!?
Was this REALLY posted on Slashdot?!?
That's like saying "If President Bush mispronounces a word over the next 20 years..."!
What's good for the goose, you know the rest.
"Let's see if the Linux community can match his generosity" is not only irrelevant, it verges on being not very nice."
Oh, gee, sorry your delicate sensibilities were offended. Why is it we can see 10 stories a day bashing MS (even if just in the form of some stupid comment by the news poster) and no one is botherd, but one semi-mean comment about Linux and the OSS community and your ticked about it?
If the OSS community has such a think skin that "Let's see if the Linux community can match his generosity" bothers you, you have much bigger problems than actually being offended.
While I generally refrain from replying to anyone that doesn't see fit to put their name to their comments, I'll make an exception here...
I didn't say I've been doing web development for 15 years. I've been doing that for probably 8-9 years or so. The rest of the time has been typical client-server development, and other things.
That being said, 99% of that web development time has been developing Intranet-based applications. I'm known for creating applications that look, feel and function like fat-clients. They tend to be much richer than the average web site. I admit this work has been IE-only, which frankly puts me in a unique position to know IE's stengths and weaknesses. But I digress...
While I'm not going to claim they are anything special, I'm not one of those incredibly gifted site designers that create true works of art, I am not ashamed of the public sites that are still online that I've done... Here are links:
http://www.omnytex.com/
http://www.zammetti.com/
I did everything on these site, all coding (front and back-end), design, graphics work, etc. Like I said, they aren't going to win any design awards, but I'm comfortable with people seeing them and knowing they are my work.
I don't even know what that means frankly.
I will say that if I have to code for only one browser for whatever reason, IE is going to be it. Hopefully I have a choice though, in which case I do what everyone should and make a site that works with as many browsers as humanly possible... or maybe I should say contractually possible, because if they aren't going to pay for the time to make it cross-browser, then a choice has to be made, and at THIS POINT in time, IE is still the best choice because of it's market share.
"What it shows, is that people who know anything about computers do switch. In hordes."
That's a rather biased statement, and verging on FUD.
I've been using computers for nearly 25 years now, over 15 years as a professional enterprise developer. I've got certifications up the wazoo, have won a number of awards for my abilities, and generally am known as an overall guru by those that know me. This is in NO WAY meant to be a boast, but simply to illustrate that I know something about computers.
I have not switched. I am not particularly thrilled with FF, and I have tried it out at great length. The only time I use it is at work when I have two different webmail accounts I want to view at the same time, and Maxthon won't treat two different tabs as two different sessions (neither will FF by the way).
My system has never been compromised in any way. I keep it patched and up-to-date, run a virus scanner, NO real-time spyware scanner, and live behind a firewall. I have had zero problems to speak of security-wise.
And I do leave quite a bit active (scripting, ActiveX to a point, etc.) I don't use plain IE any longer, I use Maxthon, which is still IE but with all the nice extra features.
I would grant you that people would probably be doing themselves a favor to not be using plain old IE any more, for lack of features if nothing else, but your implication that people that know about computers should be switching to FF as a matter of course is bogus at best. There are a number of "IE wrappers", like Maxthon, that give you all the nice features of FF, but still leave you with the predominant render engine on the planet, and also address some of the security concerns. The rest are addressed by regular updates.
FF isn't the only game in town, and I would argue not even the best. Matter of opinion of course, but your not a moron if you don't use FF either.
Careful... Looking at a site like Ace's Hardware could be misleading...
Most of the users that go to that site I'd dare say are a little more technically savy than average. Lots of the Slashdot crowd for instance. People like this one would expect to see taking up FF first and more,
Looking at sites like Best Buy and Disney is probably a better measurement of where general browser usage is. For example, if I run a Linux lovefest site, I would expect that the majority it viewers would NOT be using IE. The target audience wouldn't support it. But, the target audience for more "general interest" sites like maybe CNN, Google, etc., is a better indicator of where the average users are, and that group still makes up the majority of Internet users.
Statistics are a wonderful thing... they can prove or disprove anything you want.
Of course, the opimists' view of all this is that society would go through an upheavel period, but would then settle down to something like the Star Trek utopian society we know and love... people would be free of the relatively "mundane" chores of having to go do jobs every day that they hated. They could instead focus on expanding human knowledge and persuing the arts.
Without the struggle for survival, people would theoretically be free to persue more "important" matters. One would think that things like maintaing the food supply could be handled by automotons, maintained by a relatively small group of people who would probably enjoy doing it anyway.
In fact, you could argue that things would HAVE to go this way, because if they didn't then immortality could be the END of civilization (much like Kosh warned us about on B5!). "Being ready for immortality" would mean we could adapt or existence to not have it wind up being the end of us. I suspect we could. Mankind is pretty damned adaptable (within our limited experiecne thus far anyway).
Like I said, there would certainly be an initial period of trouble, and it could be an extended period of time, but I think we'd come through it and actually reach a new level of evolution as immortal beings.
Ah, screw it. Those that became immortal would just enslave those that weren't, and the species would die out as the drive for survival erroded and people atrophied in every concievable way.
Yes, THAT seems much more likely. Dunno what I was thinking, being optimistic for a moment. Sorry, my bad. I'm OK now.
Best...Post...EVER.
Over the past five years I have successfully completed six projects for my employer that most people would consider major projects. Three of them had multi-million-dollar budgets and all of them had multi-million-dollar goals (i.e., saving the company ten million, opening up a new market that should account for 20 million, etc.)
I've been a "professional" developer for over 10 years, and a developer in general for over 20. From a technical standpoint I am generally acknowledged by my peers as one of the best around.
Want to know how those projects got done, on time, on budget, and fulfilled their requirements (and even exceeded them in some places)?
I can tell you this... there was never any formal methodology involved (although subconsciously we did follow many best-practices without even realizing it). None of these projects required any death-marches (one got a little tight at the end, but nothing crazy), and all were stunning successes in the end.
Simply put, they handed me the reigns and got out of my way, mostly anyway. I wasn't bugged daily by PM's looking for statuses. I wasn't constantly bothered by users looking for access to development work. I wasn't always called by management to discuss were the project was.
I was involved in the business analysis for all of them, although I was not primarily a business analyst, we had a "real" one of those, I just participated to keep the requirements gathering phase somewhat realistic in terms of the technology that might implement the solutions (of course at that phase you aren't focused on technology, your barely thinking about it actually, but it helps to have someone involved that knows what may or may not be possible and let the business analyst focus more on the business side of things).
Then, I did 90%-95% of the architecting of the systems. There were others involve, but the vast majority of the final decisions were mine.
Then, I did 90%-95% of the actual coding. In fact, three of the six projects I did ALL the coding on, the others I distributed some portions of work to other developers.
I then did my unit testing and handed off small pieces of the system TO ACTUAL USERS, at whatever increments I could (i.e., put something real in front of the user ASAP, even if they aren't going to actually use it in a real way immediately, you just want to keep them engaged and invested in the work). All of these projects were iterative, although I found that there wasn't a large amount of scope/feature-creep, nor was there a lot of reworking of things I got wrong. Sure, there was some of that, but it was perfectly manageable because the design phase (what I call requirements gathering plus architecting) was done pretty well.
And it is very important to point out that at virtually NO POINT IN TIME did I work more than my usual 40 hour week. Maybe a couple of 40-45 hour weeks here or there, but generally 40 hours on the button (some weeks even less frankly).
Some of the coding I farmed out to others, I even let them do some of the design work on small units of work, but it is fair to say that I am single-handedly responsible for 90% or so of all of these systems, from start to finish.
Now, I'm not saying any of this to toot my own horn. I'm just trying to make a point, which is this...
If you have talented, capable people working for you, and you let them "do their thing" and trust in them, success tends to happen. People tend not to work to their full potential when they feel people are constantly looking over their shoulder (even when they are, it should be in a non-invasive way).
Naturally, you have to find the right people, and you have to get that level of trust, which isn't usually automatic upon hiring someone, but it's a worth-wild exercise to partake. This isn't easy, but my experience is that it is worth the time, and will lead to better results than going nuts implementing some majestic methodology, forcing particular tools on people, or otherwise bein
That answer is fine for YOUR grandmother, who has someone with the necassery expertise to build such a disc for her.
Now how does that help all the others grandmas out there that don't have such a grandchild?
Actually, the human race has proven unequivocally that the philosophy of the Shadows, not the Vorlons, works best for us. War has advanced our scientific knowledge far more than peacetime ever has.
I'm not saying we should constantly be fighting wars, nor that we should seek to kill off lesser parts of ourselves, just that war has propelled us forward tremendously, more than periods of relative peace have.
My bad, I thought they were ahead of the Gamecube (we are only counting current consoles I assume? I am). I'll still give the parent a miss though...
:)
As I understand it, they intended to lose money initially on the XBox and make it up later on game sales. I don't know for sure, but I suspect they probably didn't even expect that to happen until XBox 2 comes out.
In any case, as you say, they weren't a player in the industry before and now they are, I think that's a perfectly fair statement to make.
The fact that other divisions are covering the losses isn't I think evidence of it being a failure, just evidence that they can maintain business models that others never could. My guess, based on everything I've read, is that the XBox has done at least close to what they expected, at least not far enough below the targets to warrant calling it a failure, so it's still a miss for the parent I think, albeit maybe an arguable one
It would seem to be that a company that has historically taken a bearing over security would want to close any "DRM loophole" as quickly as possible. But, with them wanting to get the MPAA and RIAA onboard with their DRM schemes, those things would seem to conflict.
I'll be interested to see their reaction. Looks like the proverbial rock and hard place to me.
What a stupid post, even for Slashdot...
* Passport - Yep, you got that one right. It tanked not because it was a bad idea, but because it was executed horribly bad. Be that as it may, your right, it failed. You are 1 for 1.
* Active Directory - Not even close to a failure. No, it's not the basis for every network as I'm sure they wanted, but it is used, and used with great success generally, in MS shops around the world. You can hate it, you can say some people have trouble with it, you can point out all sorts of problems if you want, but to say it tanked is flat-out not consistent with reality. You are 1 for 2.
* XBox. Failure?!? It's #2 behind only PS/2, which had a MASSIVE head-start as well as building on a previous winner, PS/1. Again, you can point out all the negatives you want, and I'd even agree with many, but saying it tanked is not even remotely close. Just because it doesn't rule the world doesn't make it a failure by any stretch. You are 1 for 3.
* MSN 'google search engine - Well, seeing as how it's only come into existence in the last month or so (and isn't it still in beta anyway??), saying it tanked is very premature. I suspect it WILL tank, but you cannot in fairness call it a failure yet. You are 1 for 4, with the possibility of being 2 for 4 down the road.
* IE tanked? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SMOKING?!? Yes, Firefox is coming on strong, and we can post all the problems with IE ad nauseum, but calling something that STILL holds a 90% share of the market is not tanking my friend. As a matter of fact, it's an unqualified success, putting aside how it got there anyway. You are 1 for 5.
* Recently acquired AV software - Now your post is bordering on the absurd. No, I take that back... You aren't bordering anything, you are firmly on the absurd side of the fence. How can something they acquired in the last two months be a failure already? They haven't even put out an MS-branded version yet! Give me a break guy. 1 for 6.
I won't argue with your comment about them purchasing most of their products. That's pretty much fact, very little of what they do is actually original or home-grown. But innovative doesn't mearly mean what you create yourself. You can hate MS and Windows all you want, and I'd join you in most of it, but you cannot deny the impact their products have had on the world. We can argue how things might have turned out had Apple and/or others been leading the way, but all we know for sure is how things DID turn out. Microsoft has pretty much single-handedly brought computers to the masses, and if you can't see that and give them credit at least for that you are insanely diluted.
Believe me, I'm not defending them. There's PLENTY to hammer them for. But without Windows, 75% of the "computing public" as we know it today wouldn't be able to use a computer. You may argue whether that's a good thing or not, but to say it's not is frankly wrong, end of story. And if you want to say someone else would have done what they did and probably better, again, you may be completely right, but we'll never know, we only know for sure what actually is, and that's Microsoft and Windows. It was their innovation, whatever meaning someone chooses to ascribe that word in this case, that got us here. Maybe it is time to go another direction, but let's not credit them for where we are at the same time we chastise them for the very same thing!
Quicktime may not package adware, but it does leave a background process installed that I can't seem to get rid of permanently because it reactivates any time the player runs. It's qtask.exe if I remember correctly. Not a major thing I guess, but I consider this a form of spyware frankly... Maybe there should be another category for things like this since it's probably not nefarious like spyware and isn't showing ads like adware... Maybe AnnoyingAsHellWare or something.
If I'm hitting some dude over the head with a baseball bat, and I hear the sirens outside and decide to stop before they bust the door down, am I now "safe from prosecution" because I ceased the illegal behavior before the authorities arrived?
What a ridiculous statement that was.
They maybe shouldn't have feared prosecution in the first place. Perhaps they should have fought the fight because they were really in the right, but neither of those things are the same as saying they are now safe from prosecution.
Oh, and lest anyone think I didn't RTFA, I quote:
"Considering that administrators of smaller, although no less significant, communities such as ShareConnector were actually arrested, Sloncek decided to take SuprNova.org off line voluntarily. This will allow him and his fellow administrative staff to concentrate on other projects without worry of prosecution."
Sure sounds like they are saying they are no longer worried about prosecution to me.
I have posted on numerous ocassions my less than glowing feelings about Firefox. I run IE (well, to be fair, Maxthon) and am very happy doing so, haven't had problems in I don't know how long, and just in general I'm not especially thrilled with Firefox.
But this blog entry is beyond ridiculous.
First, I have installed Firefox on a number of ocassions, recently and beta builds in the past. I have done so on a couple of different versions of Windows, a few Linux versions some of which were running under VMWare. I have NEVER had ANY problem installing it. Certainly I've never seen a blank dialog like this guy claims to have.
He raises some interesting concerns about the download locations I think, legitimate concerns, but beyond that it's a bunch of obvious FUD drivel. The security warning dialogs he mentions, while legitimate issues for novice users, are a result of the way IE handles potentially unsafe content, NOT the fault of Firefox. I would bet most people downloading a new browser can probably handle these dialogs without too much trouble, and again, they are from IE, not Firerox. He's right, signing the Firefox download wouldn't be a bad idea, but it's hardly the big deal he seems to think it is.
Look, I think there are legitimate gripes about Firefox (just like there are about IE by the way)... I don't think either side needs to be making stuff up. I find myself sometimes defending MS against what I see as unfair assessments by the OSS community, but seeing posts like this blog entry makes me feel like an ass for doing so. BOTH sides need to be mature and compete fairly, may the best product win. It's annoying when crap like this sneaks through.
I've hard of one such event. Watch the news tonight.
It seems to me there are two ways to look at this...
(1) OSS is better, specifically, Linux is better (than Windows), and in the end people will realize this and leave Windows for the better choice, regardless of whether OSS products are available on Windows or not
or
(2) Linux is NOT actually better than Windows, so there is something to fear from OSS on Windows.
One belief cannot coexist with the other... If you believe Linux is better than Windows, than OSS on Windows should be nothing to fear because people will eventually come around anyway and go with Linux. Linux only has something to fear if it isn't as actually better than Windows, in which case running OSS alternatives on Windows might be really better than OSS products on Linux, and hence Linux never breaks through the popular mindset.
Since I always hear people say how much better Linux is, they either do not really believe this, or they believe they have no chance against Windows anyway, regardless of quality of offerings.
Which is it, zealots? Not as good as you say, or are people too stupid to ever realize it's better, in which case your cause is already lost?
Check out this blog entry:
D at e=08/23/2004
:)
http://www.zammetti.com/blog/viewEntry.blog?the
Kind of beat you to the thought
(Of course, someone can likely site 20 other guys that beat ME to the punch!)
Seriously, it is. Even the worst PocketPC is far more functional, and they are quite stable and reliable.
And that doesn't even mention Linux-based devices, which really haven't taken hold yet. I think it's just a matter of time before they do, although there needs to be a good shell around it. I thought the Zaurus was a good start, but (a) they just aren't big in the states, and (b) they aren't up to snuff yet.
Simply put, a PocketPC is what you want, well, in your pocket, these days. Palm used to be king, but it's stagnated, and even in it's heydey it was difficult to write applications for, so even though you saw a lot available, 98% of it was crap (and still is). Sure, there's plenty of crap for PocketPC's as well, but there's a higher percentage of actually useful software.
Forget Palm. History will do the same, soon enough.
"there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon"
Oh no? I deny it. I think his nickname was Dimebag because he's a dime-a-dozen musician. Go to any night club in America and you'll find five guys just like him on any given night.
But more importantly, can you really "find" someone dead when he is killed in front os 250 witnesses? Don't you have to know he's not there initially to "find" him?!?