I remember from my studies a slightly different interpretation.
Each time the lighting levels were changed, productivity increased. As time wore on, that increased productivity eventually sunk back to normal levels, until the lighting was changed again at which point the productivity increased, again. The final analysis was that the productivity increases were a result of change, as oppossed to any specific level of lighting.
You can see the result of this in lots of corporations these days, not the least of which is Microsoft, whose development teams change buildings and offices about every 18 months.
Article II, Section I, US Constitution No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
She's a citizen, and has been a gov't employee for fourteen years.
the new black beret standard will last just about as long as the air force's uniform changes did five years ago. i.e., until the next change in the chief of staff.
but to keep on topic, I am amused by the Army's attempt to get their ground troops to a new technological level. Military acquisition projects are amusing, sometimes.
There was a researcher from Columbia that used this archive as one of the major sources for her paper Early Usenet. It's not the most well-researched article, and if it was written by a techie I'd be surprised, but it's a good job of collecting together a lot of the gems from the archive.
For instance:
Often queries would be posted on Usenet asking others for
information or advice. This would make it possible to build on
other's experience. For example, one poster wrote, "does anybody
know of an Arpanet (BBN-1822) interface for the Intel Multibus
IEEE standard 796. We could always back up Ron Crane's old
parallel port interface, but would prefer something already done
on the slim chance that it happens to exist." (9) Hoping to work
collaboratively with others who were interested, the poster
continued, "It just occurred to me that a SUN workstation would
make a dandy Arpanet Ethernet gateway. Is there anybody else out
there in internet land who might want to share efforts." (10)
...so I've got some suggestions. (for the freshman, not for the pseudo-intellectual questions that Cliff added)
I don't know how your school runs the intro C++ classes, but I imagine that because of the large number of students and necessity for individual attention, the TA does quite a bit of the teaching and grading.
The class dictates the use of the single development enviroment and platform because of the necessity of standardization when dealing with such a large group. It's like the regulations in the military - some things just have to be done a certain way in order to effectively manage a group of that size. Imagine how difficult it would be for *you*, if you had to grade 30 different projects, coming from 3 different plaftorms and 6 different development enviroments? Each platform has it's own quirks, and you've generally got to fundamentally think a little differently to put the code into the context of the OS. If the grader has to shift gears with every student's work, he can never get into the groove of grading. Not to mention, most of the time, the majority of TAs/Graders for these intro CS classes leave a little to be desired in the 'clue' department.
It's CodeWarrior on Windows because a) it has to be Windows and b) CodeWarrior is cheaper than Visual Studio. CodeWarrior really sucks on Win32, and it creates a lot of headaches for even the computer-savvy. (we used CodeWarrior, too) Microsoft has started courting colleges in the past few years, offering deals to departments and students if they adopt Visual Studio as their default development enviroment - but that's really irrelevant to the point.
So now, hopefully, you understand why they insist you use the same platform, and why they insist you use CodeWarrior. Now let's talk about exceptions.
It all depends on who grades your work. If your TA does all the work for your section, go to him/her and ask. Most likely, since you've got a clue, he'll be pumped, know he really won't have to baby you through the semester, and will be perfectly happy to let you use g++. But remember, he might be one of those without a clue and deny you the opportunity. If that happens, well, heh, it's still early in the semester, switch sections.:-)
You're absolutely correct. This happened a few years ago with Blockbuster.
The movie studios were giving Blockbuster huge price breaks, since they bought so many copies of each movie. Slowly and surely, the smaller, independent movie stores went out of business, unable to compete with the goliath that is Blockbuster.
Then one day Blockbuster mgmt told the movie studio that they thought that the price on a given film was too high. (it was some 2 star B flick, which the studios were asking $60/copy. standard price at that time for a popular title was ~$90/copy.) The studio disagreed, and kept the price the same. Blockbuster decided to just not carry the film. WHAM! Instant major dent in the studio's revenues, since they were then stuck with 60,000 extra copies of a movie nobody was really dying to watch anyhow.
Now Blockbuster is on the rack themselves and fighting bankruptcy. It's funny how quickly the tide can turn sometimes.
Accountability is good - and inevitable
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Hacker Crackdown?
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· Score: 5
I'm disappointed in the Salon article. They typically do a decent job of getting things in perepective - but, as you've probably guessed from my expression of disappointment, I think they missed the boat this time.
I think this issue makes more sense when you divide it into two:
The growing trend of companies being held accountable for the use of their products.
The accountability of software authors
The salon article uses the industry that gave us guns, bombs, car and pantyhose as examples of product's creators being separated from the usage of their products. Their argument was valid five years ago, but today it's shot to hell:
Cars: There's an entire industry based on car manufacturers determining whether a defect in one of their cars is worth the cost of a recall. Remember Fight Club? Edward Norton character's lawsuit price v. recall cost equation?
Guns: In the past two years, lawsuits have sprung up in a number of major cities in America aganist the gun manufacturers themselves. They were insisting that the manufacturers didn't include the best safety controls, or that they provided a prolific number of guns down south, where gun laws are less strict, knowing full well that they'd trickle back north to the large cities. Read this and this. They're appaling!
Tobacco: Do I even need to make an argument here? Big tobacco has been held accountable (to the tune of hundred of billions) for the actions of their customers, who knowingly smoked the cigarettes, even while being warned continously from a number of angles.
When you take a step back from our little microcosm and look at the rest of the world, you can see the growing trend of companies being held accountable for the usage of their products - either intended, in the case of tobacco, or unintended, as with the gun industry. The system is primed and ready to take poor Shawn Fanning and his little Napster upon the gallows for a good ol' public execution. Hanging might have gone the way of the Dodo, but the effect is going to be the same.
The second issue is accountability of software authors, specifically. Hey folks - if you've just been skimming, pay attention now and let me tell you something: Holding software authors accountable for their software is a good thing! (It's also inevitable, but you'll see that) I know I'll get flamed for saying that, but give me a second.
This discussion comes up on Slashdot about once a month. Folks gripe about companies paying the kid down the street to make them a web site, because the kid will do it for far cheaper than a real professional, and have similar results. But once the kid delivers, the company still doesn't have the product it was looking for. So then, they come to the professional.
There needs to be a way to differentiate between you, the professional software engineer, and the kid next door. Sure, you can get MCSE, CNA and a whole slew of other acronyms after your name, but that's not working. Every other engineering discipline has a certification exam that allows you to personally ceritfy yourself as a Professional. Once you're a Professional Engineer, you're held responsible for your work. Civil Engineers are held liable for their bridges, Mechanical Engineers for their machines, and it's a Good Thing. It forces the engineers to hold to their design process and keep the level of quality high.
Every software engineering text that I've read supports this trend towards accountability. The process of creating large software products is slowly becoming more and more of a formalized process. Formal procedures are good, because software design is inherently a very difficult process to make step-by-step. Changing requirements, ignorant customers, bad technology, they all work aganist you. This formal specification of the software design process creates accountability, in the form of Software Requirement Specifications (SRS). A contract, between the company and the customer, outlining the expectations of the new piece of software. The beginning is there.
Companies are going to be held liable for their products. That's inevitable, given the larger trend in our system. But is it fair to hold a kid, be it the DeCSS kid or the Napster kid liable for making public the result of their late-night tinkering? I don't agree, but then, I've got the perspective of the tech-savvy.
Napster probably will be shut down. Shawn Fanning probably will held accountable. We're liable to see a veritable witch-hunt begin over the course of the next couple years as a result. But, in the end, the legal system as well as the software authoring world will be a more mature place. Will a formal system of accountability get set in place? (shrug) The ball is rolling. Which direction it takes down the hill, and what bumps it'll hit are unknowns. But it is rolling.
It's actually not that difficult. The algorithim (that I know) is a fairly straightforward neural network. I took an Intro to AI class while I was in college - had a friend who's final project was a system that could determine the type of music on a CD that was currently in his CDROM drive.
He trained it first, with 2 CDs from each genre from his collection. He then went through and had the system analyze and 'guess' the type of music. From his collection of ~100 CDs, it correctly identified the different types about 95% of the time.
Now, I don't know the constraints that these folks are putting on their software. But if Erik could code up a working model for a 200 level AI class, I'd hope that this company can handle details.
What makes this lawsuit different is the fact that the judgement aganist their website is a subjective one, instead of a solid, defined metric. When your car breaks, you know to blame the mechanic. When your family member gets awful sick, you can blame the doctor. When your wall cracks, you blame the contractor. When your new website or piece of software isn't what you had in mind, who is there to blame? No one but yourself. The programmer might have been completely happy with his work - overjoyed, in fact. How many artists do you see estatic about their work, except when you look at it you see smeared colors that aren't even complementary? If the software/website works, and you didn't take pains to define things beyond, then the programmer is not to blame.
Read the article with this in mind - the only solid, grounded complaint I could discern was that it "couldn't be accessed" with AOL 4.0. Of course, by the time that "couldn't be accessed" makes it through a few levels of lawyers and executives it probably means that there was something as simple as a misdirected refresh, or perhaps one that's automatic on other platforms. The "buy-side tool" being "unusable"? Unusable is a completely subjective term. It might be something as simple as a UI paradigm difference between programmer and user. That happens all the time.
This is not a new issue for programmers. Companies have long since had a problem digesting the usually vague and uncertain requirements of their customers. The solution these days seems to be formal requirements specifications - a huge, unwiedly document that details the layout of every page, and the behavior of every icon, button and widget that exists. If you're creating software, any other type of contract is too vague to be of use.
Don't get me wrong, I think there should be more accountability in the software world. I'm a huge fan of a standard software engineer registry board - something similar to the other engineering disciplines. But the industry isn't quite ready for that just yet. Soon, though.
I'm not a gamer. Games tend to suck too much of my time away into the black void of oblivion, so I stay away from them.
Having said that, I really don't care one way or the other about the PSX2, Dreamcast or the X-Box. They're interesting in an academic sense, but not much else.
The X-Box scares me. MS is using COTS hardware to speed R&D time and ultimately, time to market. For a company brand new to the gaming world, I'm worried. They're going to integrate existing hardware and software together into a package that will be a gaming console. This means there will be problems. It will crash. I really believe that it in order to have a successful, long-term gaming platform, it is worth the R&D time to build it, fro the ground up. Then your engineers know the hardware, in and out. Your programmers know the code, in and out. You're not selling a piece of hardware that's been cobbled together into some semblance of a working gaming console, you're selling a machine, designed and built to play games. When Sony introduced the PSX, industry was skeptical. At that time, it was Nintendo and Sega, the game console giants. But Sony introduced a quality machine, with the capability to run games from CDs. They had good APIs, and other solid developer support. And now the Playstation is a force, and Sega is struggling to catch up.
But no! I hear the proponents scream. The X-Box will be on known hardware - Windows only crashes because of the infinite combinations of hardware and software that it must work with! This is a good point. But MS tried this with the Palm/Pocket PC - and failed to create a solid, stable platform.
The only saving grace that I see is MS's Hardware division. Pocket PC aside, I really like MS pepherials. Their mice are unsurpassed, IMHO. Someone in this story has mentioned their "daisy-chain" joysticks. Etc, Etc, Etc. MS Hardware has had a solid history of producing good hardware. I'd like to see them involved in the X-Box development.
Unfortunately, I think that the XBox will go the way of the Palm PC, the Pocket PC, the Active Desktop, '96 "Push" technology, and a number of other Microsoft innovations.
They're doing their best to make a crew of rabid slashdotters happy - you know, the ones that always seems to find something to complain about?
If hemos had left the term as hacker, in the interest of journalistic integrity as you suggest, he'd be getting persecuted for propogating the misusage of the terms in the media.
I imagine that someone has already made this point, but I'm on the run, so I'll toss in my $0.02. This will probably get lost in all the noise that this story is sure to generate.
I'm a Windows coder. Don't flame me, I've got my reasons, and it's irrelevant to my point. Just get in your head that I'm experienced with the Windows enviroment.
I have written code in Linux. The networking class I took in college made us use Linux. While I'm not experienced in Linux, I know the basics.
The single thing that really attracts me to Linux (*nix in general, really) is the elegance of the APIs. The beginnings of the API set was written with some very careful thought, to make the interaction between the APIs nearly seamless. I'm a big fan of tight, elegant code - and I continually get frustrated in Windows because the APIs almost force you to create bloated code. I recently rewrote a simple port listening project that I had done in that class - the 50 lines of code for Linux became 300 under Win32. Why so much? Multitude of reasons, but the inelegance of the API set is the basis.
If your friend is a good developer, he'll appreciate the beauty and attraction of good, tight code.
Heh. Not sure, really. But I doubt it. This John Muir is most remembered for founding the Sierra Club - he was born in 1838. Since the "Idiot Book" was published in '69, he would've had to have been 89 years old at the date of publication.
outdoors, life and a few quotes to boot
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The Leased Life?
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· Score: 1
As well as a computer nerd, I'm an avid outdoorsman. I try to get several weekend backpacking trips in each year, and at least one week-long trip. Over the years, I've found that it helps me keep myself sane. The "Big Blue Room" helps me keep my perspective of the world in check - specifically my place in it. (and how small that really is)
In college, I spent several summers as a backpacking guide in the Rockies... over recent years, I've been toying with the idea of quitting my job, and doing my best to find some type of "seasonal" programming positions - using the off-season to work in the outdoors. At this point, I don't really care what it is, as long as I get the extended time off to work as a guide of some type.
On another note, I've always been a fan of quotations. There are people in the world that are far more intelligent and eloquent than I. Why use my words, when they've said it before?
I went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out until sundown; for by going out, I found I was really going in.
- John Muir
And this, our life exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
- William Shakespere
There is more to life than increasing it's speed.
-Ghandi
MCI Worldcom (which is now beginning to drop the MCI part of their name and refer to themselves increasingly as just Worldcom) bought UUNet recently. They're currently in the process of completing the details of the merger within the companies. (employee pay, pension plans, chain of command, etc) For the most part, each is acting independently as of now.
While the bulk of MCI's revenue still comes from long distance, someone at the top there has some vision, and is positioning the company to do well as the Internet shifts the way they do business. They've been on a business purchasing spree over the last two years. A merger with Sprint PCS is currently getting gov't approval. The Worldcom acquisition, the UUNet acquisition, as well as many smaller companies.
One of the most interesting (read: risky and different) things I've seen them do is purchase many small MMDS companies in hopes of offering wireless Internet access at 310kbps for US$40/month. They're the first large company to attempt it on a broad scale. I believe their timeline is to begin to roll out the access on a large scale sometime early next year. They're currently in test trials in three cities in the South. (Memphis was the largest)
So yes - the phone companies do own a large percentage of the backbones in one form or another. But I don't think the phone companies can get by by simply raising access prices. AT&T will probably try, because they're a behemoth of a company that doesn't do anything well, but companies like MCI that can see the trends will, hopefully, mow them over.
You're right. But, re-reading my post, I don't think I made my point clear enough. (Sorry - it's late, and I'm tired.) Let me re-phrase:
The Ctrl/Alt/Shift interface is good (when combined with single key-press menus beneath) because power users can quickly navigate the menus with time.
The problem with those interfaces, like you point out, is that they are difficult to learn.
An ideal interface allows the ease (? - at least that's a selling point) of MS Word, menus, pretty icons and widgets while a user is learning the interface, but has those same menus accessed by Ctrl/Alt/Shift (combined with single key press sub-menu options beneath) so the power user can quickly fly through the same interface.
(And all while being consistent, intuitive and powerful.)
What I mean is that as you, the user, learns how to use a given interface, navigating the interface should become quicker and easier at the same pace that you learn.
When I initially pick up a piece of software, the menus are quite helpful, as I learn what the software does. But after several times of using a command, option or feature, I generally remember the keyboard shortcut. As I learn the interface, it "grows" with me, and I become quicker.
The real difficulty is that almost none of the window driven programs today incoporate these design features and elements at the necessary scale. Sure, ctrl-B is bold and ctrl-I is italics, but full functionality through keyboard shortcuts? Yeah, right. I still love Wordperfect 5.0 - the last of the great purely DOS-based word processors. I used it enough that I knew that the bullets of the arrow style was Shift-F5, 1, 3, 1, Enter. How long does that take with MS Word? 1) move had from keyboard to mouse 2) click bullet in toolbar 3) right-click over bullet in text 4) select arrow 5) click OK 6) move hand back to keyboard and resume typing or Shift-F5, 1, 3, 1, Enter? You decide.
I'm not claiming to be a guru, but I'll go out on a limb and say that a majority of software that is used by someone all-day, daily, (data entry types, I'd guess) is not window driven. I know the ones I've seen surely aren't. They're obscure, CLI-type interfaces that appear just awful to use. But it you sit there and watch someone, they're tap-tapping away at those keys pulling up the information quicker than you can believe. But even those UIs aren't the best, because the learning curve is so steep. In order to become that proficient with the interface, someone must spend a lot of time guessing and worrying.
Unfortunately, the majority of the world has moved away from good UI design principles with Windows. Too many people aren't power users - the software winners have been winners because of time to market, not quality. A fact seen clearly in the success of Microsoft.
Is there a perfect solution? (shrug) It's a hard middleground to master. I think the *nix world comes a whole lot closer than the Windows world. I've got my fingers crossed though - I think the rush to get software out the door is about to slow down - perhaps then companies can afford to spend time on good UI design.
My ears perked up today when I heard this on CNBC today. I was concerned at first, but the blurb was immideatly followed by a rebuttal from a Merrill Lynch VP/senior analyst.
According to this article, the methodology applied in calculating these companies that are going to go broke is flawed for "wholesale application". In summary,
Barron's calculates the "months until cash burn-out" by extrapolating Q499 losses aganist Q499 cash position. This is flawed because of three main reasons:
they use operating losses as a proxy for cash flow, which, depending upon the expenses that quarter, can give a very inaccurate picture of actual cash flow.
Simply extrapolating Q499 losses forward doesn't take into account the "road to profitability". i.e., losses will be lower and lower in the coming quarters.
Many of these companies have gone back to capital markets to increase their cash positions.
I haven't read the article, so I can't really effectively offer my own opinions. But suffice it to say that I'm not worried about my stocks. Ever since I heard an analyst on CNBC say that IP is "the technology that allows you to click on a link and retrieve a web page" and then attribute that to a company's profitability and business model, I haven't put much faith in "professionals" and their prediction of technological companies.
...in July of 1971 KHUDOZHHNIK ("Artist") began sending anonymous letters attacking Marxism-Leninism and various Party functionaries to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Komosomol committies. The letters were written in ballpoint pen and signed "Central Committee of the Freedom Party." Forensic examination revealed barely detectable traces on the back of some of the letters of pencil drawings -- hence the codename "Artist" and the hypothesis that he studied at art school. The fact that some of the letters were sent to military Komosomols led to an immense trawl through the records of people dismissed from military training establishments and the files of reserve officers. The search for KHUDOZHINK was concentrated in Moscow, Yaroslavl, Rostov and Gavrilov-Yam, where his letters were posted. In all four places the postal censorship service searched for many months for handwriting similar to KHUDOZHINK's; numerous KGB agents and co-optees were also shown samples of the writing and given KHUDOZHINK's suppossed phychological profile. An enormous research exercise was undertaken to identify and scrutinize official forms which KHUSOZHINK might have filled in. Eventually, after a search lasting
three years, his writing was found on an application to the Rostov City Housing Commission. In 1974 KHUDOZHINK was unmasked as the chairman of a Rostov street commission named Korobov. After a brief period under surveillance, he was arrested, tried, and imprisioned.
I've been thinking a lot recently about this whole Microsoft monopoly thing, and the effects that the various courses of action could have upon the industry. Most of them, I don't like.
I have been tossing an idea around for a couple of weeks now that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere. I don't know if that means there something obvious that I'm just completely missing or what, but this seems workable to me.
What I would like to see come out of the DOJ case is a ruling forcing Microsoft to adhere to an Open Document Standard for all of their documents. Whoops, that's right - there isn't such a thing. Yet. A part of this ruling would be to create a document standard, much like PDF, PS or possibly ODBC, for word processing documents and spreadsheets, etc. This would abstract documents from their creators, and enable people to truly choose whatever OS and application they choose based upon not what type of file their organization uses, but on the merits of the OS/application.
Over a period of time, this will effectivly end the Microsoft monopoly. Individuals will not be tied to a specific platform because they have to use Microsoft Word or MS Excel. It will encourage innovation and competition, because the market is once again, wide open. With an open document standard, people can trade documents at their leisure, without the worry of what platform the recipients are using. As more people begin to adopt alternative OSes, corporations will begin to write more applications for these OSes. We're already seeing strong movement in this direction with Linux. Imagine how that trend would accelerate with a move like this. The only reasons I use Windows now is for the suite of Office applications and Developer Studio. Problem is, I spend a majority of my time in one of those applications. All Linux needs is a good development enviroment, the ability to easily trade documents with Windows machines and I'm golden. There are other solutions to the document sharing problem, but let's just face the music folks - they're hacks. There's PDFs and PS for sharing documents, but they're not editable. In order to be workable and accepted by the uneducated masses, things must be *seamless*.
Take a second and imagine a WWW without HTML specifications. Or an Internet without RFCs. Compare that imaginary world to our current document situation, then imagine how tightly integrated things would be with a common document interface.
As technology grows, the world grows smaller and smaller. Traffic increases, communication increases, but it is all stifled through document translation problems. The DOJ and Judge Jackson have an opportunity here to really make a difference with their ruling, but I know we all wonder if they have the insight to understand the effects of what is decided. A common document interface system has the ability to tie together the computing world at a level above operating system and application.
With the rise of e-commerce and the Internet, we've seen a increase in tech-related cases hit the courts. This is a problem. In the best of cases, the justice system doesn't move at the speed of the Internet. Nor do our judges fully understand the industry and the effects their rulings have.
This Amazon case is a perfect example. Every one of us understands that the Amazon patent is shady, at best. If I was the judge, I'd declare the patent null and void, and rip into the Patent Office. But I know. A real judge? He sees a patent, sees evidence of B&N violating said patent, and obviously issues a preliminary injunction.
Now, I've got faith in our judges and justice system. It's populated by remarkably clever people. Judges will study, research, and learn - mcuh as Judge Jackson did in the Microsoft case. The problem lies in the fact that this makes the wheels of justice move even slower than before.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm confused... isn't this why we have Java?
J.J.
I remember from my studies a slightly different interpretation.
Each time the lighting levels were changed, productivity increased. As time wore on, that increased productivity eventually sunk back to normal levels, until the lighting was changed again at which point the productivity increased, again. The final analysis was that the productivity increases were a result of change, as oppossed to any specific level of lighting.
You can see the result of this in lots of corporations these days, not the least of which is Microsoft, whose development teams change buildings and offices about every 18 months.
J.J.
Article II, Section I, US Constitution
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
She's a citizen, and has been a gov't employee for fourteen years.
J.J.
Correct. The video linked in the article is the Honda robot that was linked to yesterday. He's about 4 feet, IIRC.
J.J.
the new black beret standard will last just about as long as the air force's uniform changes did five years ago. i.e., until the next change in the chief of staff.
but to keep on topic, I am amused by the Army's attempt to get their ground troops to a new technological level. Military acquisition projects are amusing, sometimes.
For instance:
Enjoy.
J.J.
...so I've got some suggestions. (for the freshman, not for the pseudo-intellectual questions that Cliff added)
:-)
I don't know how your school runs the intro C++ classes, but I imagine that because of the large number of students and necessity for individual attention, the TA does quite a bit of the teaching and grading.
The class dictates the use of the single development enviroment and platform because of the necessity of standardization when dealing with such a large group. It's like the regulations in the military - some things just have to be done a certain way in order to effectively manage a group of that size. Imagine how difficult it would be for *you*, if you had to grade 30 different projects, coming from 3 different plaftorms and 6 different development enviroments? Each platform has it's own quirks, and you've generally got to fundamentally think a little differently to put the code into the context of the OS. If the grader has to shift gears with every student's work, he can never get into the groove of grading. Not to mention, most of the time, the majority of TAs/Graders for these intro CS classes leave a little to be desired in the 'clue' department.
It's CodeWarrior on Windows because a) it has to be Windows and b) CodeWarrior is cheaper than Visual Studio. CodeWarrior really sucks on Win32, and it creates a lot of headaches for even the computer-savvy. (we used CodeWarrior, too) Microsoft has started courting colleges in the past few years, offering deals to departments and students if they adopt Visual Studio as their default development enviroment - but that's really irrelevant to the point.
So now, hopefully, you understand why they insist you use the same platform, and why they insist you use CodeWarrior. Now let's talk about exceptions.
It all depends on who grades your work. If your TA does all the work for your section, go to him/her and ask. Most likely, since you've got a clue, he'll be pumped, know he really won't have to baby you through the semester, and will be perfectly happy to let you use g++. But remember, he might be one of those without a clue and deny you the opportunity. If that happens, well, heh, it's still early in the semester, switch sections.
J.J.
"I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
--Voltaire
You're absolutely correct. This happened a few years ago with Blockbuster.
The movie studios were giving Blockbuster huge price breaks, since they bought so many copies of each movie. Slowly and surely, the smaller, independent movie stores went out of business, unable to compete with the goliath that is Blockbuster.
Then one day Blockbuster mgmt told the movie studio that they thought that the price on a given film was too high. (it was some 2 star B flick, which the studios were asking $60/copy. standard price at that time for a popular title was ~$90/copy.) The studio disagreed, and kept the price the same. Blockbuster decided to just not carry the film. WHAM! Instant major dent in the studio's revenues, since they were then stuck with 60,000 extra copies of a movie nobody was really dying to watch anyhow.
Now Blockbuster is on the rack themselves and fighting bankruptcy. It's funny how quickly the tide can turn sometimes.
I think this issue makes more sense when you divide it into two:
The salon article uses the industry that gave us guns, bombs, car and pantyhose as examples of product's creators being separated from the usage of their products. Their argument was valid five years ago, but today it's shot to hell:
When you take a step back from our little microcosm and look at the rest of the world, you can see the growing trend of companies being held accountable for the usage of their products - either intended, in the case of tobacco, or unintended, as with the gun industry. The system is primed and ready to take poor Shawn Fanning and his little Napster upon the gallows for a good ol' public execution. Hanging might have gone the way of the Dodo, but the effect is going to be the same.
The second issue is accountability of software authors, specifically. Hey folks - if you've just been skimming, pay attention now and let me tell you something: Holding software authors accountable for their software is a good thing! (It's also inevitable, but you'll see that) I know I'll get flamed for saying that, but give me a second.
This discussion comes up on Slashdot about once a month. Folks gripe about companies paying the kid down the street to make them a web site, because the kid will do it for far cheaper than a real professional, and have similar results. But once the kid delivers, the company still doesn't have the product it was looking for. So then, they come to the professional.
There needs to be a way to differentiate between you, the professional software engineer, and the kid next door. Sure, you can get MCSE, CNA and a whole slew of other acronyms after your name, but that's not working. Every other engineering discipline has a certification exam that allows you to personally ceritfy yourself as a Professional. Once you're a Professional Engineer, you're held responsible for your work. Civil Engineers are held liable for their bridges, Mechanical Engineers for their machines, and it's a Good Thing. It forces the engineers to hold to their design process and keep the level of quality high.
Every software engineering text that I've read supports this trend towards accountability. The process of creating large software products is slowly becoming more and more of a formalized process. Formal procedures are good, because software design is inherently a very difficult process to make step-by-step. Changing requirements, ignorant customers, bad technology, they all work aganist you. This formal specification of the software design process creates accountability, in the form of Software Requirement Specifications (SRS). A contract, between the company and the customer, outlining the expectations of the new piece of software. The beginning is there.
Companies are going to be held liable for their products. That's inevitable, given the larger trend in our system. But is it fair to hold a kid, be it the DeCSS kid or the Napster kid liable for making public the result of their late-night tinkering? I don't agree, but then, I've got the perspective of the tech-savvy.
Napster probably will be shut down. Shawn Fanning probably will held accountable. We're liable to see a veritable witch-hunt begin over the course of the next couple years as a result. But, in the end, the legal system as well as the software authoring world will be a more mature place. Will a formal system of accountability get set in place? (shrug) The ball is rolling. Which direction it takes down the hill, and what bumps it'll hit are unknowns. But it is rolling.
It's actually not that difficult. The algorithim (that I know) is a fairly straightforward neural network. I took an Intro to AI class while I was in college - had a friend who's final project was a system that could determine the type of music on a CD that was currently in his CDROM drive.
He trained it first, with 2 CDs from each genre from his collection. He then went through and had the system analyze and 'guess' the type of music. From his collection of ~100 CDs, it correctly identified the different types about 95% of the time.
Now, I don't know the constraints that these folks are putting on their software. But if Erik could code up a working model for a 200 level AI class, I'd hope that this company can handle details.
JJ
What makes this lawsuit different is the fact that the judgement aganist their website is a subjective one, instead of a solid, defined metric. When your car breaks, you know to blame the mechanic. When your family member gets awful sick, you can blame the doctor. When your wall cracks, you blame the contractor. When your new website or piece of software isn't what you had in mind, who is there to blame? No one but yourself. The programmer might have been completely happy with his work - overjoyed, in fact. How many artists do you see estatic about their work, except when you look at it you see smeared colors that aren't even complementary? If the software/website works, and you didn't take pains to define things beyond, then the programmer is not to blame.
Read the article with this in mind - the only solid, grounded complaint I could discern was that it "couldn't be accessed" with AOL 4.0. Of course, by the time that "couldn't be accessed" makes it through a few levels of lawyers and executives it probably means that there was something as simple as a misdirected refresh, or perhaps one that's automatic on other platforms. The "buy-side tool" being "unusable"? Unusable is a completely subjective term. It might be something as simple as a UI paradigm difference between programmer and user. That happens all the time.
This is not a new issue for programmers. Companies have long since had a problem digesting the usually vague and uncertain requirements of their customers. The solution these days seems to be formal requirements specifications - a huge, unwiedly document that details the layout of every page, and the behavior of every icon, button and widget that exists. If you're creating software, any other type of contract is too vague to be of use.
Don't get me wrong, I think there should be more accountability in the software world. I'm a huge fan of a standard software engineer registry board - something similar to the other engineering disciplines. But the industry isn't quite ready for that just yet. Soon, though.
I'm not a gamer. Games tend to suck too much of my time away into the black void of oblivion, so I stay away from them.
Having said that, I really don't care one way or the other about the PSX2, Dreamcast or the X-Box. They're interesting in an academic sense, but not much else.
The X-Box scares me. MS is using COTS hardware to speed R&D time and ultimately, time to market. For a company brand new to the gaming world, I'm worried. They're going to integrate existing hardware and software together into a package that will be a gaming console. This means there will be problems. It will crash. I really believe that it in order to have a successful, long-term gaming platform, it is worth the R&D time to build it, fro the ground up. Then your engineers know the hardware, in and out. Your programmers know the code, in and out. You're not selling a piece of hardware that's been cobbled together into some semblance of a working gaming console, you're selling a machine, designed and built to play games. When Sony introduced the PSX, industry was skeptical. At that time, it was Nintendo and Sega, the game console giants. But Sony introduced a quality machine, with the capability to run games from CDs. They had good APIs, and other solid developer support. And now the Playstation is a force, and Sega is struggling to catch up.
But no! I hear the proponents scream. The X-Box will be on known hardware - Windows only crashes because of the infinite combinations of hardware and software that it must work with! This is a good point. But MS tried this with the Palm/Pocket PC - and failed to create a solid, stable platform.
The only saving grace that I see is MS's Hardware division. Pocket PC aside, I really like MS pepherials. Their mice are unsurpassed, IMHO. Someone in this story has mentioned their "daisy-chain" joysticks. Etc, Etc, Etc. MS Hardware has had a solid history of producing good hardware. I'd like to see them involved in the X-Box development.
Unfortunately, I think that the XBox will go the way of the Palm PC, the Pocket PC, the Active Desktop, '96 "Push" technology, and a number of other Microsoft innovations.
But it will be fun to watch.
J.J.
They're doing their best to make a crew of rabid slashdotters happy - you know, the ones that always seems to find something to complain about?
If hemos had left the term as hacker, in the interest of journalistic integrity as you suggest, he'd be getting persecuted for propogating the misusage of the terms in the media.
Lighten up folks, and give these guys a break.
I imagine that someone has already made this point, but I'm on the run, so I'll toss in my $0.02. This will probably get lost in all the noise that this story is sure to generate.
I'm a Windows coder. Don't flame me, I've got my reasons, and it's irrelevant to my point. Just get in your head that I'm experienced with the Windows enviroment.
I have written code in Linux. The networking class I took in college made us use Linux. While I'm not experienced in Linux, I know the basics.
The single thing that really attracts me to Linux (*nix in general, really) is the elegance of the APIs. The beginnings of the API set was written with some very careful thought, to make the interaction between the APIs nearly seamless. I'm a big fan of tight, elegant code - and I continually get frustrated in Windows because the APIs almost force you to create bloated code. I recently rewrote a simple port listening project that I had done in that class - the 50 lines of code for Linux became 300 under Win32. Why so much? Multitude of reasons, but the inelegance of the API set is the basis.
If your friend is a good developer, he'll appreciate the beauty and attraction of good, tight code.
J.J.
The necessary post full of other links....
...but StarTribune say keep it
Salon article
"End of the tech world" piece from AnchorDesk
a "So What?" peice from E-Commerce Times
Forbes says sell the stock...
MS and hardware
And last, but certainly not least, Ballmer says if they're broken up, prices will rise.
Sometimes, it really baffles me that people get paid to write some of this stuff.
Heh. Not sure, really. But I doubt it. This John Muir is most remembered for founding the Sierra Club - he was born in 1838. Since the "Idiot Book" was published in '69, he would've had to have been 89 years old at the date of publication.
Here's a bio, FYI.
In college, I spent several summers as a backpacking guide in the Rockies... over recent years, I've been toying with the idea of quitting my job, and doing my best to find some type of "seasonal" programming positions - using the off-season to work in the outdoors. At this point, I don't really care what it is, as long as I get the extended time off to work as a guide of some type.
On another note, I've always been a fan of quotations. There are people in the world that are far more intelligent and eloquent than I. Why use my words, when they've said it before?
J.J.
MCI Worldcom (which is now beginning to drop the MCI part of their name and refer to themselves increasingly as just Worldcom) bought UUNet recently. They're currently in the process of completing the details of the merger within the companies. (employee pay, pension plans, chain of command, etc) For the most part, each is acting independently as of now.
While the bulk of MCI's revenue still comes from long distance, someone at the top there has some vision, and is positioning the company to do well as the Internet shifts the way they do business. They've been on a business purchasing spree over the last two years. A merger with Sprint PCS is currently getting gov't approval. The Worldcom acquisition, the UUNet acquisition, as well as many smaller companies.
One of the most interesting (read: risky and different) things I've seen them do is purchase many small MMDS companies in hopes of offering wireless Internet access at 310kbps for US$40/month. They're the first large company to attempt it on a broad scale. I believe their timeline is to begin to roll out the access on a large scale sometime early next year. They're currently in test trials in three cities in the South. (Memphis was the largest)
So yes - the phone companies do own a large percentage of the backbones in one form or another. But I don't think the phone companies can get by by simply raising access prices. AT&T will probably try, because they're a behemoth of a company that doesn't do anything well, but companies like MCI that can see the trends will, hopefully, mow them over.
J.J.
You're right. But, re-reading my post, I don't think I made my point clear enough. (Sorry - it's late, and I'm tired.) Let me re-phrase:
The Ctrl/Alt/Shift interface is good (when combined with single key-press menus beneath) because power users can quickly navigate the menus with time.
The problem with those interfaces, like you point out, is that they are difficult to learn.
An ideal interface allows the ease (? - at least that's a selling point) of MS Word, menus, pretty icons and widgets while a user is learning the interface, but has those same menus accessed by Ctrl/Alt/Shift (combined with single key press sub-menu options beneath) so the power user can quickly fly through the same interface.
(And all while being consistent, intuitive and powerful.)
- JJ
What I mean is that as you, the user, learns how to use a given interface, navigating the interface should become quicker and easier at the same pace that you learn.
When I initially pick up a piece of software, the menus are quite helpful, as I learn what the software does. But after several times of using a command, option or feature, I generally remember the keyboard shortcut. As I learn the interface, it "grows" with me, and I become quicker.
The real difficulty is that almost none of the window driven programs today incoporate these design features and elements at the necessary scale. Sure, ctrl-B is bold and ctrl-I is italics, but full functionality through keyboard shortcuts? Yeah, right. I still love Wordperfect 5.0 - the last of the great purely DOS-based word processors. I used it enough that I knew that the bullets of the arrow style was Shift-F5, 1, 3, 1, Enter. How long does that take with MS Word?
1) move had from keyboard to mouse
2) click bullet in toolbar
3) right-click over bullet in text
4) select arrow
5) click OK
6) move hand back to keyboard and resume typing
or
Shift-F5, 1, 3, 1, Enter? You decide.
I'm not claiming to be a guru, but I'll go out on a limb and say that a majority of software that is used by someone all-day, daily, (data entry types, I'd guess) is not window driven. I know the ones I've seen surely aren't. They're obscure, CLI-type interfaces that appear just awful to use. But it you sit there and watch someone, they're tap-tapping away at those keys pulling up the information quicker than you can believe. But even those UIs aren't the best, because the learning curve is so steep. In order to become that proficient with the interface, someone must spend a lot of time guessing and worrying.
Unfortunately, the majority of the world has moved away from good UI design principles with Windows. Too many people aren't power users - the software winners have been winners because of time to market, not quality. A fact seen clearly in the success of Microsoft.
Is there a perfect solution? (shrug) It's a hard middleground to master. I think the *nix world comes a whole lot closer than the Windows world. I've got my fingers crossed though - I think the rush to get software out the door is about to slow down - perhaps then companies can afford to spend time on good UI design.
According to this article, the methodology applied in calculating these companies that are going to go broke is flawed for "wholesale application". In summary,
Barron's calculates the "months until cash burn-out" by extrapolating Q499 losses aganist Q499 cash position. This is flawed because of three main reasons:
I haven't read the article, so I can't really effectively offer my own opinions. But suffice it to say that I'm not worried about my stocks. Ever since I heard an analyst on CNBC say that IP is "the technology that allows you to click on a link and retrieve a web page" and then attribute that to a company's profitability and business model, I haven't put much faith in "professionals" and their prediction of technological companies.
J.J.
--Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield
I've been thinking a lot recently about this whole Microsoft monopoly thing, and the effects that the various courses of action could have upon the industry. Most of them, I don't like.
I have been tossing an idea around for a couple of weeks now that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere. I don't know if that means there something obvious that I'm just completely missing or what, but this seems workable to me.
What I would like to see come out of the DOJ case is a ruling forcing Microsoft to adhere to an Open Document Standard for all of their documents. Whoops, that's right - there isn't such a thing. Yet. A part of this ruling would be to create a document standard, much like PDF, PS or possibly ODBC, for word processing documents and spreadsheets, etc. This would abstract documents from their creators, and enable people to truly choose whatever OS and application they choose based upon not what type of file their organization uses, but on the merits of the OS/application.
Over a period of time, this will effectivly end the Microsoft monopoly. Individuals will not be tied to a specific platform because they have to use Microsoft Word or MS Excel. It will encourage innovation and competition, because the market is once again, wide open. With an open document standard, people can trade documents at their leisure, without the worry of what platform the recipients are using. As more people begin to adopt alternative OSes, corporations will begin to write more applications for these OSes. We're already seeing strong movement in this direction with Linux. Imagine how that trend would accelerate with a move like this. The only reasons I use Windows now is for the suite of Office applications and Developer Studio. Problem is, I spend a majority of my time in one of those applications. All Linux needs is a good development enviroment, the ability to easily trade documents with Windows machines and I'm golden. There are other solutions to the document sharing problem, but let's just face the music folks - they're hacks. There's PDFs and PS for sharing documents, but they're not editable. In order to be workable and accepted by the uneducated masses, things must be *seamless*.
Take a second and imagine a WWW without HTML specifications. Or an Internet without RFCs. Compare that imaginary world to our current document situation, then imagine how tightly integrated things would be with a common document interface.
As technology grows, the world grows smaller and smaller. Traffic increases, communication increases, but it is all stifled through document translation problems. The DOJ and Judge Jackson have an opportunity here to really make a difference with their ruling, but I know we all wonder if they have the insight to understand the effects of what is decided. A common document interface system has the ability to tie together the computing world at a level above operating system and application.
With the rise of e-commerce and the Internet, we've seen a increase in tech-related cases hit the courts. This is a problem. In the best of cases, the justice system doesn't move at the speed of the Internet. Nor do our judges fully understand the industry and the effects their rulings have.
This Amazon case is a perfect example. Every one of us understands that the Amazon patent is shady, at best. If I was the judge, I'd declare the patent null and void, and rip into the Patent Office. But I know. A real judge? He sees a patent, sees evidence of B&N violating said patent, and obviously issues a preliminary injunction.
Now, I've got faith in our judges and justice system. It's populated by remarkably clever people. Judges will study, research, and learn - mcuh as Judge Jackson did in the Microsoft case. The problem lies in the fact that this makes the wheels of justice move even slower than before.
The gov't needs some type of tech-smart judge.
and the patent office needs to get a clue.
Neither will happen, but it's nice to wish.