"What I find is an excellent example of why academia, and academic criticism, has so little respect outside its own little pond."
Without entirely repeating myself from an earlier thread, or seeming to defend academia, I feel compelled to point out that this isn't a paper in the academic tradition.
=> Doesn't ground itself in an existing body of theory.
=> Doesn't refer to other, refereed academic or scientific works.
=> Doesn't attempt to support, refute, or extend an existing body of theory through additional evidence and logical argument.
=> Doesn't attempt to create a new body of theory from first principles and support it with experimental evidence.
=> No footnotes, citations, or other references.
=> No layout of arguments or evidence from cited references.
So - an interesting polemic, yes. An academic work, no.
This is an interesting polemic, well-written and thought provoking for the OS community. However, I would have to respectfully disagree with the statement that it is an "academic" (that is, of or from the academy) criticism.
Reason: no footnoted arguments from, or references to, any academic literature from the last 200 years or so in the areas of economics, political economy, business (evil MBA stuff), or software engineering. No reference (that is, detailed references with footnotes) to current or past theory in these areas. No cited quotations from academic journals. And finally, no obtuse, buzzword-driven jargon;-).
Now, opinions may differ on the value of academic research and publishing, particularly in areas such as economics and business. However, there is a fairly well-established framework for presenting an idea to one's peers for scrutiny in an academic sense, and this essay doesn't follow that framework.
Personally, I think it would be helpful if both ESR's CatB argument and some counter-arguments _were_ written up in this format and hashed out in , say, the Journal of Political Economy. YMMV may vary on that thought, of course. But this essay isn't that.
"Is this a joke?! Look at where we are in the OS business today: the mainstream is hardly a step beyond the 70s in some ways, and mid-80s in others. I just can't believe this. The 90s are almost over and it's still an uphill battle to introduce 80s technology into the mainstream."
How many times have I wished for a PC OS with 10% of the features of TOPS-20? Or Multics - that should be perfectly possible on today's hardware. But MS-DOS froze the state of the art at 1981 8-bit computing.
Again, I don't blame bg for doing what he did - how many of us would have passed up the chance? RMS maybe, but probably very few others. But still, the wasted potential is awesome.
"Microsoft has done some really innovative things in the past. Without Microsoft, where would we be in the OS business today? They kinda were in it from the beginning....waaaay back with MS-Dos. I remember running MS-Dos on the PCJr. and it was cool back then to have a command prompt. No, for all of their faults, Microsoft has contributed in a major way to the advancement of computing."
I sure hope you are being sarcastic, although I didn't detect that in your post. Because otherwise you are making me feel really, really old, and usually only my wife... well, skip that. But the general point is that personal computer hardware, OS, and software development were going on when Bill Gates was still in grammer school. If Digital, to name just one possibility, had taken their blinders off for just a few minutes and released a reasonbly-priced desktop PDP-11, which they considered and rejected twice, for example...
Now this doesn't negate what bg accomplished, because he _did_ recognize the potential of what was going on and he _did_ negotiate a contract (for MS-DOS) that took IBM to the cleaners. Those aren't insignificant accomplishements and shouldn't be treated lightly. But bg and M$ didn't by any means invent the personal computer.
"It was all basic engineering (thermodynamics, statics, basic circuit analysis, etc.).
I was weak in the cross-discipline engineering stuff anyway (because I knew that I would never use it). The test had absolutely no relevance for my career, so I didn't waste the money."
Interesting. Both in my own work, and in the people I have interviewed/rejected/hired, it is exactly the the cross-discipline lessons (both classroom and work experience) that have helped me the most. I haven't done any PL/I programming or solved any problems in discrete mathematics for a long time (since school, actually). But learning how to break down, analyze, and solve complex problems in mechanical dynamics helps me every day in network troubleshooting. Similarly, climbing to the top of a 300' (~100m) chimney to test a sensor didn't seem particularly relevant to anything - except now I find myself having to explain to young'ens without that experience why reliability in a network is important. So I would be careful about focusing too closely on the surface of your chosen field of work. The surface, the field, even the type of work you do changes over time. Deep lessons about how the world works remain valid.
Without getting into the discussion about whether or not a PE certification is intrinsically valuable, my advice would be to go ahead and take the EIT (that is, the first exam in the sequence - sounds as if the name may have changed) your senior year. The reason is that in order to pass the EIT you will need to use skills from your distribution requirements in other engineering areas (statics, thermo) plus physics, that you will almost certainly forget after 2-3 years in the "real world". So if you take the EIT now, you are prepared to go PE later if it looks like a good option. But if you don't take the EIT now, you are faced with months of evenings doing problems from textbooks you will have to dig out of the storage locker.
"The phrase "Core Competency" is a [tm] trademark of Gary Hamel, a management science professor at the London Business School. He's a cool enough guy (I know him), and doesn't usually get heavy over the fact"
Good luck. I have seen that phrase used at least 10,000 times over the last six years [yes, I was on the dark side in an MBA program], in widely distributed business journals and mass market publications, without attribution or a trademark reference. IANAL, but I think he would have a hard time bringing a case against anyone based on the widespread public use of the phrase.
"Arguments about the value of mergers aside, you'll notice my original message stressed the unnecessarily high cost of local delivery, which could otherwise be handled by small businesses.
Question: how much of the mail you send goes farther than 100 miles? People tend to send bills, letters to friends and relatives, and "paid by sender" mail. Bills go to their local phone company, local cable company, etc. Letters and greeting cards to local friends are also common."
To merge with another thread farther up the discussion, this is exactly why the power to create a post office was written into the US Constitution. It was believed that the social benefits of having an accessible, universal communication device that by definition served the entire nation outweighed any savings from local delivery efficiencies.
That was true in 1790, and IMHO there is a strong argument that it is still true today. The breakup of AT&T can't be lightly dismissed in this context; there is very little evidence that it has turned out to be a good thing for the average consumer (keeping in mind that "breakup" != "entry of MCI into the LD market).
"I sure hope not. Why should it cost to mail a letter across town as it does to mail to Alaska or Hawaii or even just to the other coast? What airline would sell flat-rate tickets to anywhere?"
It used to be that way. Ben Franklin did a detailed analysis sometime around 1780 (IIRC) and showed that it was more efficient to use a single stamp price. I don't have a reference handy but it should be in your 6th grade history book;-).
"Eliminate zoning laws, and the price of corrugated steel will skyrocket. A severe shortage of refrigerator boxes would ensue"
I can't agree. You might want to scan through _Crabgrass Frontier_ or _A Pattern Language_ (don't have the authors at hand but both are in print) for a better written discussion than I can provide. But here goes:
Although zoning has many purposes, chief among them is to enforce social conformity and keep "undesirables" out of certain areas. Zoning provisions such as miminum garage/driveway sizes, maximum FAR (floor-area ratio), mimimum lot sizes, mimimum setback provisions are very often designed specifically to keep out "bad" development: row houses, low price houses, apartments, etc. Which just happens to be the type of housing that lower income people can afford.
Even something as subtle as the stair standards in the Uniform Building Code have their affect. The stairway code is dictated largely by the NFPA (fire protection codes and standards). Now, I can understand why firefighters want pitch and headroom restrictions on stairs. But the fact is the UBC stairway code makes it impossible to build an _affordable_ two story house on a reasonably sized lot. If my turn-of-the-century craftsman four square is blown away by a tornado tomorrow, I would not be allowed to rebuild it: there just isn't enough room for the stairs and the setback requirements. Despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of these have existed in the Midwest since 1900.
I have a hard time believing that fire fighting requirements are the _only_ reason that is so.
"Are you on crack? Have you ever been to Boston? A grid?"
Boston is clearly not a grid. But Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York (somewhat, also clouded by ease of water transport) _are_ all railroad cities. By that I mean that the outer edges of the cities, and the inner ring of suburbs, were developed around commuter railroads in the 1860-1920 period (although oddly enough this pattern continues today in Chicago). As the cities were filled in around the railroads, they naturally developed in patterns that made it possible to live using only public transportation.
Today, although automobiles have been overlaid onto this structure, the underlying pattern still exists. Therefore it is possible to find ways of life that don't involve dependence on the auto. {Disclosure: when I lived in Chicago I owned two cars, but I did 60% of my _commuting_ on public transit. So I am neither a transit fanatic nor a car hater)
If, however, this pattern doesn't exist, it is almost impossible to overlay it on an automobile-based design (modern St. Louis, Atlanta, LA, etc). The infrastructure and patterns of life just aren't there. Plus the zoning laws make it impossible to build "the old way".
Although... I was reading in "Trains" just the other day how development of commuter rail was pushed forward 3-4 years after the last big California earthquake (Loma Preita? I can't remember). New track was laid on abandoned ROW, trainsets borrowed from Toronto, and rail service started in 2 weeks while the rubble was still being cleared from the highway overpasses. So maybe there is some movement for change.
"Maybe because my involvement with the true technical part of computer businesses are rather weak, but *why* does everyone have to locate in SV?"
Read Jane Jacobs, _Cities and the Wealth of Nations_, _The Econonmy of Cities_, _Death and Life of Great American Cities_. In particular, C&tWoN goes into this question in some detail.
Essentially, people have always gathered, physically, whereever economic activity was/is hottest. It allows greater commonality of understanding, easier exchange of ideas, faster formation of new businesses. When trade was the key to wealth, Philadelphia, New York, and Boson flourished. When heavy industry was king, Chicago and Detroit. Now technology is the key, so wherever there is a successful center of technology people and businesses will flock. Success breeds success.
I have heard that the average techie stays in a SV job for 14 months. Bad for the HR dept. perhaps, but those people changing jobs are tremendous carriers of information, knowledge, and business capability. Exactly the same thing happened in Cleveland and Chicago during the early machine age: young man apprentices himself to the owner of a machine shop, learns the trade, rents a garage down the street and strikes out on his own. That kind of process can only occur when the cost of changing jobs is low. Telecommuting notwithstanding, that means geographic co-location.
So don't expect a sudden exodus of high tech jobs from SV any time soon. The former headquarters of Spyglass is right across from my building in Champaign, IL, empty and waiting to be rented! While Netscape may be part of the AOL borg, they still exist in SV.
"Don't be an idiot. If it hurts, go to a doctor and get it fixed."
In theory, good advice. In practice, not as useful, for 2.5 reasons:
1) Most doctors know nothing about RSI. In fact, the medical profession as a whole knows very little about RSI. So unless you are lucky enough to find a doctor who had a dual practice among athletes and concert musicians (and there are probably only a few such doctors in the US), you aren't likely to get much real help.
1.5) Some doctors, and some of the medical profession, still hold to the view that RSI doesn't exist. Now, I don't discount the theories that RSI might be primarily _caused_ by the mind. But the fact that some seriously advocate that RSI doesn't even _exist_ tells me there are serious problem with the analysis model being used by the medical world.
2) Insurance. Particularly with the upcoming federal regulations that will open you medical records to just about anyone, you have to think twice (or 50 times) about going to a doctor and getting a diagnosis of RSI written down in your folder. You could very well start looking for a new job and suddenly find that doors previously open to you are slammed in your face. Or that even if hired you are denied the top tier of medical benefits. And so on. Something to think about.
"This is where the code-for-profit model works so well. People know that MS is motivated by the customer's idea of what is best - the profit-model works well for assuring this. Users can "vote" for new features and improvements with their dollars."
Maybe. Unless the market is moving too fast for the customers to control through their dollar votes. Or the customer's need conflicts with the vendor's strategic view. Or any reasonable size group of customers is too small to influence the vendor's actions.
Case in point: customers have been asking, demanding, and begging Microsoft for five years to improve interoperability with Novell products. Customers have been "voting", too, by continuing to buy Novell products. Has Microsoft responded to it's customers' requests? No. In fact, some of us suspect that new dis-interoperability with Netware is included with each version/service pack for Windows. Is Microsoft likely to respond to their _customers'_ requests? Help me understand why not.
"Anyway, Watson was telling Sherlock about how the Earth had been proven to orbit around the sun, and Sherlock scolded him for telling him "useless information", and taking up space in the attic of his brain that would otherwise be used for storing information about topics relative to crime-solving."
As much as I love Sherlock Holmes, that passage has always disturbed me for two reasons:
1) It seems to me that the brain is more like a muscle than a storage device: the more you use it, the higher its capacity becomes. Although there may be an upper capacity limit, I doubt more than 10 people alive at any given time ever get anywhere near it. Whereas I have observed many, many people who stopped using their brain capacity and, essentially, lost it.
2) It also seems to me that super-capable people (and I am purposely avoiding the words 'smart' and 'intelligent') are often those who have the ability to draw together seemingly unrelated fragments of information into a new and critical insight. If they have never been exposed to the disparate information, they would not be able to make the leap (again I am avoiding the word 'intuitive' although it probably applies).
"Sorry to pick your post to comment on, but it illustrated the point I want to make better than some others."
No problem - isn't that why the Internet was invented?
"So quick are we to judge a plot hole as an error. We see an inconsistency like you've pointed out above, and automatically assume that it's wrong. What if it is just a significant fact?"
Well, that's certainly possible. However, I would find it easier to accept if there were more structure or coherency to either the economics or politics of the SW universe. One never gets (or at least _I_ never get) from TPM a sense that there is a workable social structure working behind the scenes.
"Slate" had a similar discussion about the econmics of SW. Contrast that with the world Tolkien created: I have run across 300 page, thesis-quality discussions of the economics of Middle Earth.
Oh well, it really is just entertainment and in the long run no big deal. But I guess what bothers me is how much better it could have been.
"theme that Brin gets out of the movies. Another flaw is Queen Amidalah. She doesn't rule out of divine right, she wasn't born to it, she was elected, and turns out to be a fine ruler."
For all the time GL has spent studying mythology, he seems to have missed the point of a constitutional monarchy. In that system, the queen (or other type of monarch or non-elected political privilage) is retained exactly so that it can act for the good of the whole in situations that are too complex, fast-moving, gridlocked, etc. for the elected representatives to handle. The whole point is that the people trust the queen to do the "right thing" for everyone if absolutely necessary. Now the Queen of England, for example, hasn't actually done this for a long period of time (100 years?), but in theory the possibility is there.
I could believe people fighting and dying "for" a 14 y.o. heriditary queen in a constitutional monarchy - they are actually fighting for their homeland, which is _represented_ by the queen. I could believe a 14 y.o. queen leading her forces in a battle to the death - it has certainly happened in the past. And I could believe a 14 y.o. heriditary queen presenting her planet's petition to the Senate.
But I can't imagine a 14 y.o. _elected_ queen for any reason. 14 year olds can be smart. They can be perceptive. They can even be wise. But they just don't have the depth of experience and understanding necessary to form a just and effective government over a period of time.
IMHO George missed the political boat on this one. Put it up there with the tax dispute on the crawl.
The "New York Review of Books" has another thoughtful TPM review titled The Zillion Dollar Menace. In particular it covers the difficulty that Lucas has with female (or more precisely, {adult} women) characters.
Personally, I have seen TPM three times so far, and I plan to see it again before it closes, so I clearly didn't _dislike_ it. But the plot holes and character problems are there, and bothersome. I think Menand (link above) is pretty close to the mark when he says the problems were probably evident early on, but no one had the nerve to tell the "big guy".
"Here's a better rule - simply strip binary attachments from email automatically on the mail server" Communication systems exist so that people ("users", or in other words the people who pay the bills) can communicate. Solutions which destroy the capability of the system to communicate, for the convenience of the system administrator, will be rejected by the user (that is, customer) base. Yes, I know the pain-in-the-ass consequences of the above statement: I have been doing this kind of work for 12 years. But (IMHO) that's reality and we have to deal with it.
"This will stop when people quit using a worthless excuse for an OS like Windows, and probably not before...:\"
Keep in mind that the original research of virii was done on IBM and Honeywell mainframes. Despite the generally high level of security on those systems, the researchers doing the work did manage to write virii (probably would be called worms today) that successfully infected their targets.
It happens today that the vast majority of computers in use are Wintel, and for a number of reasons which I am sure you can fill in the bad guys therefore focus most of their efforts on Wintel. And indeed, Win(x) does have serious vulnerabilities. But if the bad guys ever turn their focus to Linux/*nix, then you will see more Linux/*nix attacks of this type. Perhaps fewer will make it into distribution, perhaps fewer will succeed. But if so the ones that do make it will be that much more destructive.
Disagree if you wish, but before turning on the flamethrower remember that arrogance it the surest path to a security breach.
"If there is one place that should have a monopoly standing is the cable/telephone/electrical wire infrastructures. Otherwise we would have wires all over the place."
Much of the regulatory structure we have in place today (in the US of A) stems from exactly that fact. Go back and look at some pictures of the electrified areas of New York City in the 1890's - poles, wires, insulators, and ditches everywhere. In some places the wires were so thick you couldn't see the sky. Or read some accounts of the growth of the underground cable networks in NY, Boston, and Chicago - utility crews digging up streets in the middle of the night, and battling it out with pickhandles when they met crews from competing utilities.
Finally the residents and business owners got fed up with these goings on, and this is one of the reasons monopoly right-of-ways were granted (yes, I know there were other reasons {not least the desire of the big bosses to grab, I mean tax} and that this is oversimplified). I would absolutely like to see competition in cable and telephone service, right down to the infrastructure. But I _don't_ want 20 cables on the pole behind my house, and I suspect most people don't want that either.
"5) When a technical person gives a solution don't allow management types to circumvent it with a political solution. It will not fix technical problems. 6) Keep the politics out of our hair, it is a distraction we don't need."
You bring up good points, but let me offer a slightly perspective from a manager's point of view:
Any organization of significant size has resource contstraints, multiple agendas, and conflicting goals. And typically there is no clear cut technical resolution to these situations. Deciding what to do in this environment generates conflict. At least since Cro-Magnan man learned to talk, politics is the method used to resolve these conflicts.
When technical professionals refuse to learn the basics of their organization's political culture, and don't participate in that culture at even a minimal level, they cut themselves off from a (not _the_, but _a_) critical forum for organizational decision making. And the manager thinks, "If the geeks refuse to learn the basics of this arena, what is their complaint when they don't get the decisons they want?"
Note that I don't necessarily agree with this POV, but complaints about "politics" should at least take it into account. And if you reject it, how do you recommend that resource constraints be resolved?
"Although I have nothing against making more money I'd rather be doing interesting things. Personally I'd be willing to take pay cuts if it meant working on things I really liked. I'd rather"
I am not sure I fully buy this argument. Many of the people making it are in their early 20's, which means that came into the workforce since 1990. Since the early 1990's (1993 or therabouts), the market for technical professionals in the USA has been incredible, with plenty of job opportunities and ever-growing salaries. In that environment, it is easy to say you would would for less money - you don't have to .
But if we ever return to a situation like the 1970's, when there was a surplus of technical professionals, employers held the whip hand, and (real) salaries were falling, I think you might hear a different tune. And believe me, large employers are doing whatever it takes right now to try to get back to what they see as a "normal" labor market.
Also, there is also the issue of age/perspective. It is again easier to say you would work for less when you aren't facing mortgage payments now and college tuitions in the next few years. It _will_ happen to you some day, even if you don't believe it at 22!
[it's probably a bad sign when you start out thinking that your comment will be poorly organized, but I'll give it a try anyway. sPh]
I am not sure I buy the oft-heard statement that geeks/nerds/engineers "lack social skills". First, we have all heard the stories about how geeks can't meet members of the opposite (or desired sex), can't get dates, spend their Friday nights wiping the zit cream off their 19" monitors, and so on. (And to avoid being too elliptical, we are primarily speaking of males when we say these things). But by age 25 or so most geeks who desire to find long-term relationships with the opposite sex, have done so or are in a position to do so. The qualities which are less appealing at age 17 start to look better around 25 (intelligence, persistance, loyalty, oddball humour, and not least a job that pays big $$$). So things start to even out there, and continue evening out through the 30's.
Next, let's take a detour though (syndicated columnist) Bob Greene's Student Council theory of government. Briefly (and there is no way I can do the deep power of Mr. Greene's insightful writing justice here), Greene states that the people running our government (and large institutions) are basically the people who ran for student council president in 8th grade. Much as I normally dislike Bob, I think he is on the money here. And those people have a certain _set_ of social skills, which are commonly thought of in modern western society as "correct" or "good" social skills. These include schmoozing, being at ease in groups of strangers, effortless dissembling (or outright lying) to gain desired goals, disdain for those who can't or won't dissemble, and others I am sure you can add.
Now it's true that the average geek doesn't have these "correct" social skills. And therefore, those in power view (or would prefer that the world view) geeks as "being without social skills". But I would argue that this isn't necessarily the case. It is just possible that geeks have, and are developing, a _different_ set of social skills that include honesty, trustworthiness, loyalty, and plain speaking.
Further, I would argue that the currently dominant group (the "student council") feel threatened by people (geeks or others) who act this way consistently. Thus the need to attack and marginalize "geeks with no social skills". But it ain't necessarily so.
Finally, and along the same lines, I would think a little deeper about Schmidt's statements concerning geeks always trying to tell the truth. I think what makes politicians, standard model senior managers, and the like nervous about geeks is the style of discussion when alternatives/choices involving hard technical choices are present. A typical engineer, when asked to give an opinion on a topic, will respond in the fashion taught by the military: (1) facts (2) observations (3) opinion (4) recommendation. In that order.
So when asked by PHB, "What Internet technology should we use?", the geek replies: "foobar is fast but expensive. jarjar is cheap but unreliable [facts]. Most companies our size who use jarjar are happy with the sevice, although their super geeks complain [observation]. Based on my experience I don't like jarjar's business practices [opinion]. I recommend we purchase a 12-month, terminable contract from jarjar [recommendation]."
However, manager-types think that this is an evasive answer, while geeks types think it is a complete, honest answer which gives the decision maker everything he needs. Everyone walks away unhappy: the manager thinks he can't get good advice, the geek either thinks his advice is ignored or that decisions "never get made". Both sides think the other is unable to communicate.
Well, I ment to say more but that is probably enough for now. I will write more if there is any demand.
Slashdot Mirror
"What I find is an excellent example of why academia, and academic criticism, has so little respect outside its own little pond."
Without entirely repeating myself from an earlier thread, or seeming to defend academia, I feel compelled to point out that this isn't a paper in the academic tradition.
=> Doesn't ground itself in an existing body of theory.
=> Doesn't refer to other, refereed academic or scientific works.
=> Doesn't attempt to support, refute, or extend an existing body of theory through additional evidence and logical argument.
=> Doesn't attempt to create a new body of theory from first principles and support it with experimental evidence.
=> No footnotes, citations, or other references.
=> No layout of arguments or evidence from cited references.
So - an interesting polemic, yes. An academic work, no.
sPh
This is an interesting polemic, well-written and thought provoking for the OS community. However, I would have to respectfully disagree with the statement that it is an "academic" (that is, of or from the academy) criticism.
;-).
Reason: no footnoted arguments from, or references to, any academic literature from the last 200 years or so in the areas of economics, political economy, business (evil MBA stuff), or software engineering. No reference (that is, detailed references with footnotes) to current or past theory in these areas. No cited quotations from academic journals. And finally, no obtuse, buzzword-driven jargon
Now, opinions may differ on the value of academic research and publishing, particularly in areas such as economics and business. However, there is a fairly well-established framework for presenting an idea to one's peers for scrutiny in an academic sense, and this essay doesn't follow that framework.
Personally, I think it would be helpful if both ESR's CatB argument and some counter-arguments _were_ written up in this format and hashed out in , say, the Journal of Political Economy. YMMV may vary on that thought, of course. But this essay isn't that.
sPh
"Is this a joke?! Look at where we are in the OS business today: the mainstream is hardly a step beyond the 70s in some ways, and mid-80s in others. I just can't believe this. The 90s are almost over and it's still an uphill battle to introduce 80s technology into the mainstream."
How many times have I wished for a PC OS with 10% of the features of TOPS-20? Or Multics - that should be perfectly possible on today's hardware. But MS-DOS froze the state of the art at 1981 8-bit computing.
Again, I don't blame bg for doing what he did - how many of us would have passed up the chance? RMS maybe, but probably very few others. But still, the wasted potential is awesome.
sPh
"Microsoft has done some really innovative things in the past. Without Microsoft, where would we be in the OS business today? They kinda were in it from the beginning....waaaay back with MS-Dos. I remember running MS-Dos on the PCJr. and it was cool back then to have a command prompt. No, for all of their faults, Microsoft has contributed in a major way to the advancement of computing."
I sure hope you are being sarcastic, although I didn't detect that in your post. Because otherwise you are making me feel really, really old, and usually only my wife... well, skip that.
But the general point is that personal computer hardware, OS, and software development were going on when Bill Gates was still in grammer school. If Digital, to name just one possibility, had taken their blinders off for just a few minutes and released a reasonbly-priced desktop PDP-11, which they considered and rejected twice, for example...
Now this doesn't negate what bg accomplished, because he _did_ recognize the potential of what was going on and he _did_ negotiate a contract (for MS-DOS) that took IBM to the cleaners. Those aren't insignificant accomplishements and shouldn't be treated lightly. But bg and M$ didn't by any means invent the personal computer.
sPh
"It was all basic engineering (thermodynamics, statics, basic circuit analysis, etc.).
I was weak in the cross-discipline engineering stuff anyway (because I knew that I would never use it). The test had absolutely no relevance for my career, so I didn't waste the money."
Interesting. Both in my own work, and in the people I have interviewed/rejected/hired, it is exactly the the cross-discipline lessons (both classroom and work experience) that have helped me the most. I haven't done any PL/I programming or solved any problems in discrete mathematics for a long time (since school, actually). But learning how to break down, analyze, and solve complex problems in mechanical dynamics helps me every day in network troubleshooting. Similarly, climbing to the top of a 300' (~100m) chimney to test a sensor didn't seem particularly relevant to anything - except now I find myself having to explain to young'ens without that experience why reliability in a network is important. So I would be careful about focusing too closely on the surface of your chosen field of work. The surface, the field, even the type of work you do changes over time. Deep lessons about how the world works remain valid.
sPh
Without getting into the discussion about whether or not a PE certification is intrinsically valuable, my advice would be to go ahead and take the EIT (that is, the first exam in the sequence - sounds as if the name may have changed) your senior year. The reason is that in order to pass the EIT you will need to use skills from your distribution requirements in other engineering areas (statics, thermo) plus physics, that you will almost certainly forget after 2-3 years in the "real world". So if you take the EIT now, you are prepared to go PE later if it looks like a good option. But if you don't take the EIT now, you are faced with months of evenings doing problems from textbooks you will have to dig out of the storage locker.
sPh
"The phrase "Core Competency" is a [tm] trademark of Gary Hamel, a management science professor at the London Business School. He's a cool enough guy (I know him), and doesn't usually get heavy over the fact"
Good luck. I have seen that phrase used at least 10,000 times over the last six years [yes, I was on the dark side in an MBA program], in widely distributed business journals and mass market publications, without attribution or a trademark reference. IANAL, but I think he would have a hard time bringing a case against anyone based on the widespread public use of the phrase.
sPh
Sorry if my post seemed flame-like - that wasn't my intention. And your point is quite valid. But from my perspective, I think this person
3 9252&cid=259
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/07/22/01
covered what I was thinking better than I could at this point.
sPh
"Arguments about the value of mergers aside, you'll notice my original message stressed the unnecessarily high cost of local delivery, which could otherwise be handled by small businesses.
Question: how much of the mail you send goes farther than 100 miles? People tend to send bills, letters to friends and relatives, and "paid by sender" mail. Bills go to their local phone company, local cable company, etc. Letters and greeting cards to local friends are also common."
To merge with another thread farther up the discussion, this is exactly why the power to create a post office was written into the US Constitution. It was believed that the social benefits of having an accessible, universal communication device that by definition served the entire nation outweighed any savings from local delivery efficiencies.
That was true in 1790, and IMHO there is a strong argument that it is still true today. The breakup of AT&T can't be lightly dismissed in this context; there is very little evidence that it has turned out to be a good thing for the average consumer (keeping in mind that "breakup" != "entry of MCI into the LD market).
sPh
"I sure hope not. Why should it cost to mail a letter across town as it does to mail to Alaska or Hawaii or even just to the other coast? What airline would sell flat-rate tickets to anywhere?"
;-).
It used to be that way. Ben Franklin did a detailed analysis sometime around 1780 (IIRC) and showed that it was more efficient to use a single stamp price. I don't have a reference handy but it should be in your 6th grade history book
sPh
"Eliminate zoning laws, and the price of corrugated steel will skyrocket. A severe shortage of refrigerator boxes would ensue"
I can't agree. You might want to scan through _Crabgrass Frontier_ or _A Pattern Language_ (don't have the authors at hand but both are in print) for a better written discussion than I can provide. But here goes:
Although zoning has many purposes, chief among them is to enforce social conformity and keep "undesirables" out of certain areas. Zoning provisions such as miminum garage/driveway sizes, maximum FAR (floor-area ratio), mimimum lot sizes, mimimum setback provisions are very often designed specifically to keep out "bad" development: row houses, low price houses, apartments, etc. Which just happens to be the type of housing that lower income people can afford.
Even something as subtle as the stair standards in the Uniform Building Code have their affect. The stairway code is dictated largely by the NFPA (fire protection codes and standards). Now, I can understand why firefighters want pitch and headroom restrictions on stairs. But the fact is the UBC stairway code makes it impossible to build an _affordable_ two story house on a reasonably sized lot. If my turn-of-the-century craftsman four square is blown away by a tornado tomorrow, I would not be allowed to rebuild it: there just isn't enough room for the stairs and the setback requirements. Despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of these have existed in the Midwest since 1900.
I have a hard time believing that fire fighting requirements are the _only_ reason that is so.
Anyway, that's my rant for today!
sPh
"Are you on crack? Have you ever been to Boston? A grid?"
Boston is clearly not a grid. But Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York (somewhat, also clouded by ease of water transport) _are_ all railroad cities. By that I mean that the outer edges of the cities, and the inner ring of suburbs, were developed around commuter railroads in the 1860-1920 period (although oddly enough this pattern continues today in Chicago). As the cities were filled in around the railroads, they naturally developed in patterns that made it possible to live using only public transportation.
Today, although automobiles have been overlaid onto this structure, the underlying pattern still exists. Therefore it is possible to find ways of life that don't involve dependence on the auto. {Disclosure: when I lived in Chicago I owned two cars, but I did 60% of my _commuting_ on public transit. So I am neither a transit fanatic nor a car hater)
If, however, this pattern doesn't exist, it is almost impossible to overlay it on an automobile-based design (modern St. Louis, Atlanta, LA, etc). The infrastructure and patterns of life just aren't there. Plus the zoning laws make it impossible to build "the old way".
Although... I was reading in "Trains" just the other day how development of commuter rail was pushed forward 3-4 years after the last big California earthquake (Loma Preita? I can't remember). New track was laid on abandoned ROW, trainsets borrowed from Toronto, and rail service started in 2 weeks while the rubble was still being cleared from the highway overpasses. So maybe there is some movement for change.
sPh
"Maybe because my involvement with the true technical part of computer businesses are rather weak, but *why* does everyone have to locate in SV?"
Read Jane Jacobs, _Cities and the Wealth of Nations_, _The Econonmy of Cities_, _Death and Life of Great American Cities_. In particular, C&tWoN goes into this question in some detail.
Essentially, people have always gathered, physically, whereever economic activity was/is hottest. It allows greater commonality of understanding, easier exchange of ideas, faster formation of new businesses. When trade was the key to wealth, Philadelphia, New York, and Boson flourished. When heavy industry was king, Chicago and Detroit. Now technology is the key, so wherever there is a successful center of technology people and businesses will flock. Success breeds success.
I have heard that the average techie stays in a SV job for 14 months. Bad for the HR dept. perhaps, but those people changing jobs are tremendous carriers of information, knowledge, and business capability. Exactly the same thing happened in Cleveland and Chicago during the early machine age: young man apprentices himself to the owner of a machine shop, learns the trade, rents a garage down the street and strikes out on his own. That kind of process can only occur when the cost of changing jobs is low. Telecommuting notwithstanding, that means geographic co-location.
So don't expect a sudden exodus of high tech jobs from SV any time soon. The former headquarters of Spyglass is right across from my building in Champaign, IL, empty and waiting to be rented! While Netscape may be part of the AOL borg, they still exist in SV.
sPh
"Don't be an idiot. If it hurts, go to a doctor and get it fixed."
In theory, good advice. In practice, not as useful, for 2.5 reasons:
1) Most doctors know nothing about RSI. In fact, the medical profession as a whole knows very little about RSI. So unless you are lucky enough to find a doctor who had a dual practice among athletes and concert musicians (and there are probably only a few such doctors in the US), you aren't likely to get much real help.
1.5) Some doctors, and some of the medical profession, still hold to the view that RSI doesn't exist. Now, I don't discount the theories that RSI might be primarily _caused_ by the mind. But the fact that some seriously advocate that RSI doesn't even _exist_ tells me there are serious problem with the analysis model being used by the medical world.
2) Insurance. Particularly with the upcoming federal regulations that will open you medical records to just about anyone, you have to think twice (or 50 times) about going to a doctor and getting a diagnosis of RSI written down in your folder. You could very well start looking for a new job and suddenly find that doors previously open to you are slammed in your face. Or that even if hired you are denied the top tier of medical benefits. And so on. Something to think about.
sPh
"This is where the code-for-profit model works so well. People know that MS is motivated by the customer's idea of what is best - the profit-model works well for assuring this. Users can "vote" for new features and improvements with their dollars."
Maybe. Unless the market is moving too fast for the customers to control through their dollar votes. Or the customer's need conflicts with the vendor's strategic view. Or any reasonable size group of customers is too small to influence the vendor's actions.
Case in point: customers have been asking, demanding, and begging Microsoft for five years to improve interoperability with Novell products. Customers have been "voting", too, by continuing to buy Novell products. Has Microsoft responded to it's customers' requests? No. In fact, some of us suspect that new dis-interoperability with Netware is included with each version/service pack for Windows. Is Microsoft likely to respond to their _customers'_ requests? Help me understand why not.
sPh
"Anyway, Watson was telling Sherlock about how the Earth had been proven to orbit around the sun, and Sherlock scolded him for telling him "useless information", and taking up space in the attic of his brain that would otherwise be used for storing information about topics relative to crime-solving."
As much as I love Sherlock Holmes, that passage has always disturbed me for two reasons:
1) It seems to me that the brain is more like a muscle than a storage device: the more you use it, the higher its capacity becomes. Although there may be an upper capacity limit, I doubt more than 10 people alive at any given time ever get anywhere near it. Whereas I have observed many, many people who stopped using their brain capacity and, essentially, lost it.
2) It also seems to me that super-capable people (and I am purposely avoiding the words 'smart' and 'intelligent') are often those who have the ability to draw together seemingly unrelated fragments of information into a new and critical insight. If they have never been exposed to the disparate information, they would not be able to make the leap (again I am avoiding the word 'intuitive' although it probably applies).
My 0.02.
sPh
"Sorry to pick your post to comment on, but it illustrated the point I want to make better than some others."
No problem - isn't that why the Internet was invented?
"So quick are we to judge a plot hole as an error. We see an inconsistency like you've pointed out above, and automatically assume that it's wrong. What if it is just a significant fact?"
Well, that's certainly possible. However, I would find it easier to accept if there were more structure or coherency to either the economics or politics of the SW universe. One never gets (or at least _I_ never get) from TPM a sense that there is a workable social structure working behind the scenes.
"Slate" had a similar discussion about the econmics of SW. Contrast that with the world Tolkien created: I have run across 300 page, thesis-quality discussions of the economics of Middle Earth.
Oh well, it really is just entertainment and in the long run no big deal. But I guess what bothers me is how much better it could have been.
sPh
"theme that Brin gets out of the movies. Another flaw is Queen Amidalah. She doesn't rule out of divine right, she wasn't born to it, she was elected, and turns out to be a fine ruler."
For all the time GL has spent studying mythology, he seems to have missed the point of a constitutional monarchy. In that system, the queen (or other type of monarch or non-elected political privilage) is retained exactly so that it can act for the good of the whole in situations that are too complex, fast-moving, gridlocked, etc. for the elected representatives to handle. The whole point is that the people trust the queen to do the "right thing" for everyone if absolutely necessary. Now the Queen of England, for example, hasn't actually done this for a long period of time (100 years?), but in theory the possibility is there.
I could believe people fighting and dying "for" a 14 y.o. heriditary queen in a constitutional monarchy - they are actually fighting for their homeland, which is _represented_ by the queen. I could believe a 14 y.o. queen leading her forces in a battle to the death - it has certainly happened in the past. And I could believe a 14 y.o. heriditary queen presenting her planet's petition to the Senate.
But I can't imagine a 14 y.o. _elected_ queen for any reason. 14 year olds can be smart. They can be perceptive. They can even be wise. But they just don't have the depth of experience and understanding necessary to form a just and effective government over a period of time.
IMHO George missed the political boat on this one. Put it up there with the tax dispute on the crawl.
sPh
Personally, I have seen TPM three times so far, and I plan to see it again before it closes, so I clearly didn't _dislike_ it. But the plot holes and character problems are there, and bothersome. I think Menand (link above) is pretty close to the mark when he says the problems were probably evident early on, but no one had the nerve to tell the "big guy".
sPh
"Here's a better rule - simply strip binary attachments from email automatically on the mail server"
Communication systems exist so that people ("users", or in other words the people who pay the bills) can communicate. Solutions which destroy the capability of the system to communicate, for the convenience of the system administrator, will be rejected by the user (that is, customer) base.
Yes, I know the pain-in-the-ass consequences of the above statement: I have been doing this kind of work for 12 years. But (IMHO) that's reality and we have to deal with it.
sPh
"This will stop when people quit using a worthless excuse for an OS like Windows, and probably not before... :\"
Keep in mind that the original research of virii was done on IBM and Honeywell mainframes. Despite the generally high level of security on those systems, the researchers doing the work did manage to write virii (probably would be called worms today) that successfully infected their targets.
It happens today that the vast majority of computers in use are Wintel, and for a number of reasons which I am sure you can fill in the bad guys therefore focus most of their efforts on Wintel. And indeed, Win(x) does have serious vulnerabilities. But if the bad guys ever turn their focus to Linux/*nix, then you will see more Linux/*nix attacks of this type. Perhaps fewer will make it into distribution, perhaps fewer will succeed. But if so the ones that do make it will be that much more destructive.
Disagree if you wish, but before turning on the flamethrower remember that arrogance it the surest path to a security breach.
sPh
"If there is one place that should have a monopoly standing is the cable/telephone/electrical wire infrastructures. Otherwise we would have wires all over the place."
Much of the regulatory structure we have in place today (in the US of A) stems from exactly that fact. Go back and look at some pictures of the electrified areas of New York City in the 1890's - poles, wires, insulators, and ditches everywhere. In some places the wires were so thick you couldn't see the sky. Or read some accounts of the growth of the underground cable networks in NY, Boston, and Chicago - utility crews digging up streets in the middle of the night, and battling it out with pickhandles when they met crews from competing utilities.
Finally the residents and business owners got fed up with these goings on, and this is one of the reasons monopoly right-of-ways were granted (yes, I know there were other reasons {not least the desire of the big bosses to grab, I mean tax} and that this is oversimplified). I would absolutely like to see competition in cable and telephone service, right down to the infrastructure. But I _don't_ want 20 cables on the pole behind my house, and I suspect most people don't want that either.
sPh
"5) When a technical person gives a solution don't allow management types to circumvent it with a political solution. It will not fix technical problems.
6) Keep the politics out of our hair, it is a distraction we don't need."
You bring up good points, but let me offer a slightly perspective from a manager's point of view:
Any organization of significant size has resource contstraints, multiple agendas, and conflicting goals. And typically there is no clear cut technical resolution to these situations. Deciding what to do in this environment generates conflict. At least since Cro-Magnan man learned to talk, politics is the method used to resolve these conflicts.
When technical professionals refuse to learn the basics of their organization's political culture, and don't participate in that culture at even a minimal level, they cut themselves off from a (not _the_, but _a_) critical forum for organizational decision making. And the manager thinks, "If the geeks refuse to learn the basics of this arena, what is their complaint when they don't get the decisons they want?"
Note that I don't necessarily agree with this POV, but complaints about "politics" should at least take it into account. And if you reject it, how do you recommend that resource constraints be resolved?
sPh
"Although I have nothing against making more money I'd rather be doing interesting things. Personally I'd be willing to take pay cuts if it meant working on things I really liked. I'd rather"
I am not sure I fully buy this argument. Many of the people making it are in their early 20's, which means that came into the workforce since 1990. Since the early 1990's (1993 or therabouts), the market for technical professionals in the USA has been incredible, with plenty of job opportunities and ever-growing salaries. In that environment, it is easy to say you would would for less money - you don't have to .
But if we ever return to a situation like the 1970's, when there was a surplus of technical professionals, employers held the whip hand, and (real) salaries were falling, I think you might hear a different tune. And believe me, large employers are doing whatever it takes right now to try to get back to what they see as a "normal" labor market.
Also, there is also the issue of age/perspective. It is again easier to say you would work for less when you aren't facing mortgage payments now and college tuitions in the next few years. It _will_ happen to you some day, even if you don't believe it at 22!
sPh
[it's probably a bad sign when you start out thinking that your comment will be poorly organized, but I'll give it a try anyway. sPh]
I am not sure I buy the oft-heard statement that geeks/nerds/engineers "lack social skills". First, we have all heard the stories about how geeks can't meet members of the opposite (or desired sex), can't get dates, spend their Friday nights wiping the zit cream off their 19" monitors, and so on. (And to avoid being too elliptical, we are primarily speaking of males when we say these things). But by age 25 or so most geeks who desire to find long-term relationships with the opposite sex, have done so or are in a position to do so. The qualities which are less appealing at age 17 start to look better around 25 (intelligence, persistance, loyalty, oddball humour, and not least a job that pays big $$$). So things start to even out there, and continue evening out through the 30's.
Next, let's take a detour though (syndicated columnist) Bob Greene's Student Council theory of government. Briefly (and there is no way I can do the deep power of Mr. Greene's insightful writing justice here), Greene states that the people running our government (and large institutions) are basically the people who ran for student council president in 8th grade. Much as I normally dislike Bob, I think he is on the money here. And those people have a certain _set_ of social skills, which are commonly thought of in modern western society as "correct" or "good" social skills. These include schmoozing, being at ease in groups of strangers, effortless dissembling (or outright lying) to gain desired goals, disdain for those who can't or won't dissemble, and others I am sure you can add.
Now it's true that the average geek doesn't have these "correct" social skills. And therefore, those in power view (or would prefer that the world view) geeks as "being without social skills". But I would argue that this isn't necessarily the case. It is just possible that geeks have, and are developing, a _different_ set of social skills that include honesty, trustworthiness, loyalty, and plain speaking.
Further, I would argue that the currently dominant group (the "student council") feel threatened by people (geeks or others) who act this way consistently. Thus the need to attack and marginalize "geeks with no social skills". But it ain't necessarily so.
Finally, and along the same lines, I would think a little deeper about Schmidt's statements concerning geeks always trying to tell the truth. I think what makes politicians, standard model senior managers, and the like nervous about geeks is the style of discussion when alternatives/choices involving hard technical choices are present. A typical engineer, when asked to give an opinion on a topic, will respond in the fashion taught by the military: (1) facts (2) observations (3) opinion (4) recommendation. In that order.
So when asked by PHB, "What Internet technology should we use?", the geek replies: "foobar is fast but expensive. jarjar is cheap but unreliable [facts]. Most companies our size who use jarjar are happy with the sevice, although their super geeks complain [observation]. Based on my experience I don't like jarjar's business practices [opinion]. I recommend we purchase a 12-month, terminable contract from jarjar [recommendation]."
However, manager-types think that this is an evasive answer, while geeks types think it is a complete, honest answer which gives the decision maker everything he needs. Everyone walks away unhappy: the manager thinks he can't get good advice, the geek either thinks his advice is ignored or that decisions "never get made". Both sides think the other is unable to communicate.
Well, I ment to say more but that is probably enough for now. I will write more if there is any demand.
sPh