Also, many scientists don't want to offend the media by naming someone in the media as a liar. In some cases, they see the media as important in getting out word of their cause. In other cases, they simply don't want to get in a fight with an entity which buys ink by the barrel. As a result, when they speak up at all, scientists are usually way too gentle in calling out dishonest writers.
Using the "parts and labor" analogy is useful in describing what often happens with software packages that are customized for a customer. Instead of charging, say, $5 for parts (the basic package) and $5 for labor, the software vendor charges $1 for parts and $9 for labor, thus avoiding most of the sales tax. In the case of the government customers that are common in the D.C. area, it is even worse. Many of the software packages typically sold to government agencies were originally developed in part with grant funds. Rather than risk potential fights over selling software that was developed with taxpayer money, a company can avoid that trouble and avoid all of the sales tax by saying that the software is free and the customization is $10.
This thread, before the name change, started with an out nowhere slam at TiVo. Your objection to off-topic trolls would have been more appropriate several hours ago.
People who think that the Microsoft Foundation software is far worse than the IGUIDE software must be doing a pretty careful job of picking which features to assess. I've used both, and although each has many negatives I'd say that overall the Microsoft system is slightly better. (And neither comes anywhere close to TIVO.) Also, keep in mind that some of the problems customarily attributed to the software by civilians are actually Motorola 6412 firmware problems. (Although I have heard it claimed that Microsoft contributes to its problems by having its software be somewhat incompatible with the latest version of the firmware.) One caveat: I haven't used the latest version of the IGUIDE software, which reportedly fixes several annoying bugs, but which some Comcast systems inexplicable refuse to roll out.
>That's great. Now if you could address the mounting anecdotal evidence...
Why should I? My comment offered no opinion as to whether raw milk truly contains useful amounts of lactase. My comment merely pointed out that the referenced article also offered no such opinion (contrary to what was implied by your parent comment.) I thought I was correcting a person who believed that a newspaper writer's third hand mention of a claim on the web constituted an editorial endorsement of the claim. I realize now that you were attempting to appeal to such people yourself by disingenuously using fragments of an irrelevant article out of context. If the ball is in anyone's court to do some explaining here, it is in yours to explain the apparent contradiction of man possibly evolving a capability that wasn't needed at the time, along with why you took the phony detour through that article instead of simply addressing the issue.
Gilmore talks a good game in his book and in the interview, but I'll believe in the purity of this endeavor when I see it. In this context phrases like "citizen-journalism" and "grassroots journalism" usually mean that existing media outlets aren't enough of a left wing pep rally for the writer's taste. The result won't be to reveal information that wasn't widely available. It will be to keep flogging a pet story far beyond the point where there is anything new to report. The citizen contributions will basically consist of, "Don't forget me -- I'm outraged, too. Oh, and Bush is an idiot and oil companies are evil."
Politicians from every party are constantly making misleading statements which are carefully crafted to be true in some sense. In reality, they hope and expect that the statement will be taken in an extreme, and untrue, way by many gullible voters, but in case the statement is parsed carefully it can be defended to some degree. When Republicans do this, the late night comedians frequently exaggerate the statement way beyond what the politician ever imagined in order to subject him to ridicule. All that happened here is that a Democrat finally got the same treatment that the Republicans have often gotten.
Your point seems to be that if any one defense isn't good against all possible threats it is useless. By your logic, body armor is pointless because it doesn't protect against poison gas.
-There is more to this than just, "give them the first hit for free." Most public safety systems are based on other systems developed partially with government grant funds. The vendors avoid ownership questions by structuring the contracts such that the software is ostensibly free, and the only software charge is for customizing it. This has the added advantage of avoiding sales tax in many areas. -A great many of these public safety systems are already sold at a loss. The vendor only gets well from changes and add ons such as software maintenance contracts on the systems. This is not completely a scam, since the only limit on how often agencies will change their minds about what they want is money. -One hundred million sounds very inflated. Cities much bigger than New Orleans have built such systems for far less. It is only if you are throwing in things like a new police radio system and microwave network to connect all of the city offices that you can get the price that high. -Any fairly new municipal government computer system, particularly in a destination city like New Orleans, draws a steady stream of tours by politicians and bureaucrats on junkets from other cities. This seems to be good for the ego of the local politicians and bureaucrats. As a result, vendors routinely make a big production of assuring the locals that their system is going to be a showcase. This has the added advantage of allowing the locals to convince themselves that even if the vendor has a lousy reputation elsewhere, this time will be different.
As yet, no one seems to have commented on another Slashdot hotbutton issue here: patenting the obvious. Northpoint claims to have a bunch of relevant patents. The main patent seems to be basically for the "business method" of using directional antennas while hopefully keeping the transmitter power low enough that interference is negligible. If so, that is worse than the "one-click shopping" patents.
we've been left in the unfortunate position of listening to people who have little or nothing to do with the so-called "revolution". These are commentators who are paid by eyeballs grabbed or ears tugged, and they're looking for the most bombastic doggerel they can dig up
Exactly. Few of these predictions were made by computer scientists. They were made by marketers, politicians, ex-IBM salesmen trying to drum up consulting business, and lots of gullible and/or dishonest writers -- all quoting each other for evidence. If Katz wants to complain about this stuff not coming true, let him complain to the people who actually made the predictions.
There is plenty of empirical evidence to suggest answers here, since what Microsoft is doing is the same thing that virtually all mainframe and minicomputer manufacturers did in the days of proprietary operating systems. The posters who point out how useful this is to users are correct. Suggestions that this is to get Windows debugged are nonsensical. Anyway, to take your specific questions:
Will developers that see bugs in the syntax report them to Microsoft?
Will Microsoft take an active roll in using any "suggestions" from programers regarding bugs in future SPs or versions?
Will the Windows OS improve as a result of this move, or just applications that run on the OS
The answers to these questions are the same: just because you have the source code doesn't mean you have access to the responsible programmer. When you find a bug, it will probably wind up going into the same support black hole that it did before. The value to the user is in making the best possible workaround as soon as possible.
How can those developers be sure that what they see as programming bugs really are, since they aren't allowed to modify the code (and hence, check)?
As noted above, your confirmation will be that the workaround is effective.
If an application writer uses undocumented side effects of Windows (that she finds in the source code) and the code changes (SP, new version, etc.), will we see new bugs?
Any programmer who does this is an accident waiting to happen, anyway. This possibility needs to be kept in mind in devising your workarounds, too.
Is this move by Microsoft good for computer users in the aggregate...
Absolutely. In the very worst case, it can't hurt, although as some people have noted individual programmers might want to think hard about whether they want to put themselves in the situation of having signed the NDA. It worked out great for me, though. Years ago I worked for a large user of what was then a very popular computer system. Since I needed to write device drivers for some oddball hardware unique to our industry, I got access to relevant parts of the kernel source. When word got around to other companies using the same computer system, I started getting a lot of moonlight consulting work finding driver and datacomm problems. The source of the leads? The computer manufacturer's own account reps, who were sick of their unhappy customers getting no satisfaction from customer support (and who didn't have access to the source code, themselves.)
It'd be a hundred years before we were even close to the level we're at now
Was it in Dr. Strangelove where they qualified that sort of statement with something that amounted to, "...two hundred, if the survivors included a disproportionately large number of lawyers."?
I think that guy's real philosophy, such as it is, is a kind of half-baked populism where your worth is in proportion to how much dirt you get under your fingernails. What he likes about the barter scenario is that no other parties were involved. Add a broker who matches the two parties up for 10%, or an equipment rental agency which supplies tractors or test equipment that the parties can't afford, and suddenly you have candidates to be stood up against a wall, because they made money without straining their backs. I'll bet that when it comes to deciding the relative worth of the gardener's time versus the computer geek's time he's not about to let the free market decide that, either.
Correct -- these things have been around for ages. I first saw chain printer music demos on an IBM 360 in 1966, and they were already old and famous at that time. In roughly that same time frame I saw an IBM 1401 program which played music through a radio sitting on the CPU cabinet. I saw the CDC device referenced in the article some years later, but I believe it worked via a third mechanism. I think a speaker was hard wired to a D/A converter fed from one of the CPU registers.
Right. And the way this is worded, the manner in which the typical forms-oriented mainframe application from the 1960s interacted with the typical block mode CRT would constitute prior art.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, many scientists don't want to offend the media by naming someone in the media as a liar. In some cases, they see the media as important in getting out word of their cause. In other cases, they simply don't want to get in a fight with an entity which buys ink by the barrel. As a result, when they speak up at all, scientists are usually way too gentle in calling out dishonest writers.
Using the "parts and labor" analogy is useful in describing what often happens with software packages that are customized for a customer. Instead of charging, say, $5 for parts (the basic package) and $5 for labor, the software vendor charges $1 for parts and $9 for labor, thus avoiding most of the sales tax. In the case of the government customers that are common in the D.C. area, it is even worse. Many of the software packages typically sold to government agencies were originally developed in part with grant funds. Rather than risk potential fights over selling software that was developed with taxpayer money, a company can avoid that trouble and avoid all of the sales tax by saying that the software is free and the customization is $10.
This thread, before the name change, started with an out nowhere slam at TiVo. Your objection to off-topic trolls would have been more appropriate several hours ago.
People who think that the Microsoft Foundation software is far worse than the IGUIDE software must be doing a pretty careful job of picking which features to assess. I've used both, and although each has many negatives I'd say that overall the Microsoft system is slightly better. (And neither comes anywhere close to TIVO.) Also, keep in mind that some of the problems customarily attributed to the software by civilians are actually Motorola 6412 firmware problems. (Although I have heard it claimed that Microsoft contributes to its problems by having its software be somewhat incompatible with the latest version of the firmware.) One caveat: I haven't used the latest version of the IGUIDE software, which reportedly fixes several annoying bugs, but which some Comcast systems inexplicable refuse to roll out.
Hey, the customer's always right.
>That's great. Now if you could address the mounting anecdotal evidence...
Why should I? My comment offered no opinion as to whether raw milk truly contains useful amounts of lactase. My comment merely pointed out that the referenced article also offered no such opinion (contrary to what was implied by your parent comment.) I thought I was correcting a person who believed that a newspaper writer's third hand mention of a claim on the web constituted an editorial endorsement of the claim. I realize now that you were attempting to appeal to such people yourself by disingenuously using fragments of an irrelevant article out of context. If the ball is in anyone's court to do some explaining here, it is in yours to explain the apparent contradiction of man possibly evolving a capability that wasn't needed at the time, along with why you took the phony detour through that article instead of simply addressing the issue.
>It mentions that there are enzymes naturally occurring in milk that allow people to digest milk.
The article doesn't state that as fact. It quotes one woman saying that she read it on a naturopathic web site.
5) a. They run a name like John Smith against a state of California database and get only one hit.
Gilmore talks a good game in his book and in the interview, but I'll believe in the purity of this endeavor when I see it. In this context phrases like "citizen-journalism" and
"grassroots journalism" usually mean that existing media outlets aren't enough of a left
wing pep rally for the writer's taste. The result won't be to reveal information that
wasn't widely available. It will be to keep flogging a pet story far beyond the point where
there is anything new to report. The citizen contributions will basically consist of,
"Don't forget me -- I'm outraged, too. Oh, and Bush is an idiot and oil companies are evil."
Politicians from every party are constantly making misleading statements which are carefully crafted to be true in some sense. In reality, they hope and expect that the statement will be taken in an extreme, and untrue, way by many gullible voters, but in case the statement is parsed carefully it can be defended to some degree. When Republicans do this, the late night comedians frequently exaggerate the statement way beyond what the politician ever imagined in order to subject him to ridicule. All that happened here is that a Democrat finally got the same treatment that the Republicans have often gotten.
And listen to the howls of indignation.
Your point seems to be that if any one defense isn't good against all possible threats it is useless. By your logic, body armor is pointless because it doesn't protect against poison gas.
There was one of these in Tacoma, Washington in 1963.
-There is more to this than just, "give them the first hit for free." Most public safety systems are based on other systems developed partially with government grant funds. The vendors avoid ownership questions by structuring the contracts such that the software is ostensibly free, and the only software charge is for customizing it. This has the added advantage of avoiding sales tax in many areas.
-A great many of these public safety systems are already sold at a loss. The vendor only gets well from changes and add ons such as software maintenance contracts on the systems. This is not completely a scam, since the only limit on how often agencies will change their minds about what they want is money.
-One hundred million sounds very inflated. Cities much bigger than New Orleans have built such systems for far less. It is only if you are throwing in things like a new police radio system and microwave network to connect all of the city offices that you can get the price that high.
-Any fairly new municipal government computer system, particularly in a destination city like New Orleans, draws a steady stream of tours by politicians and bureaucrats on junkets from other cities. This seems to be good for the ego of the local politicians and bureaucrats. As a result, vendors routinely make a big production of assuring the locals that their system is going to be a showcase. This has the added advantage of allowing the locals to convince themselves that even if the vendor has a lousy reputation elsewhere, this time will be different.
That's because, to most of the clowns in the news media, a scientific event doesn't happen until the resulting paper is published in "Nature."
As yet, no one seems to have commented on another Slashdot hotbutton issue here: patenting the obvious. Northpoint claims to have a bunch of relevant patents. The main patent seems to be basically for the "business method" of using directional antennas while hopefully keeping the transmitter power low enough that interference is negligible. If so, that is worse than the "one-click shopping" patents.
Exactly. Few of these predictions were made by computer scientists. They were made by marketers, politicians, ex-IBM salesmen trying to drum up consulting business, and lots of gullible and/or dishonest writers -- all quoting each other for evidence. If Katz wants to complain about this stuff not coming true, let him complain to the people who actually made the predictions.
Will developers that see bugs in the syntax report them to Microsoft?
Will Microsoft take an active roll in using any "suggestions" from programers regarding bugs in future SPs or versions?
Will the Windows OS improve as a result of this move, or just applications that run on the OS
The answers to these questions are the same: just because you have the source code doesn't mean you have access to the responsible programmer. When you find a bug, it will probably wind up going into the same support black hole that it did before. The value to the user is in making the best possible workaround as soon as possible.
How can those developers be sure that what they see as programming bugs really are, since they aren't allowed to modify the code (and hence, check)?
As noted above, your confirmation will be that the workaround is effective.
If an application writer uses undocumented side effects of Windows (that she finds in the source code) and the code changes (SP, new version, etc.), will we see new bugs?
Any programmer who does this is an accident waiting to happen, anyway. This possibility needs to be kept in mind in devising your workarounds, too.
Is this move by Microsoft good for computer users in the aggregate ...
Absolutely. In the very worst case, it can't hurt, although as some people have noted individual programmers might want to think hard about whether they want to put themselves in the situation of having signed the NDA. It worked out great for me, though. Years ago I worked for a large user of what was then a very popular computer system. Since I needed to write device drivers for some oddball hardware unique to our industry, I got access to relevant parts of the kernel source. When word got around to other companies using the same computer system, I started getting a lot of moonlight consulting work finding driver and datacomm problems. The source of the leads? The computer manufacturer's own account reps, who were sick of their unhappy customers getting no satisfaction from customer support (and who didn't have access to the source code, themselves.)
Was it in Dr. Strangelove where they qualified that sort of statement with something that amounted to, "...two hundred, if the survivors included a disproportionately large number of lawyers."?
Not true. Pool is famous for people who claim inadequacy ... right before they offer to double the bet.
I think that guy's real philosophy, such as it is, is a kind of half-baked populism where your worth is in proportion to how much dirt you get under your fingernails. What he likes about the barter scenario is that no other parties were involved. Add a broker who matches the two parties up for 10%, or an equipment rental agency which supplies tractors or test equipment that the parties can't afford, and suddenly you have candidates to be stood up against a wall, because they made money without straining their backs. I'll bet that when it comes to deciding the relative worth of the gardener's time versus the computer geek's time he's not about to let the free market decide that, either.
Correct -- these things have been around for ages. I first saw chain printer music demos on an IBM 360 in 1966, and they were already old and famous at that time. In roughly that same time frame I saw an IBM 1401 program which played music through a radio sitting on the CPU cabinet. I saw the CDC device referenced in the article some years later, but I believe it worked via a third mechanism. I think a speaker was hard wired to a D/A converter fed from one of the CPU registers.
Right. And the way this is worded, the manner in which the typical forms-oriented mainframe application from the 1960s interacted with the typical block mode CRT would constitute prior art.