I need a solution that does not require an expert for daily use
Not to rag on you guran (I very much agree with your point), but to rag on a different angle I see meant by that statement daily:
Get a fucking calculator.
Middle management seems to live under the perpetual delusion that these inconprehensibly complex conglomerations of silicon, plastic, and electrons are somehow going to magically "work" all by themselves some day, and yet still can't seem to figure out how to work Outlook when their system is running fine.
"I need a solution that doesn't require an expert." "I need a solution that doesn't require me to learn or think." "How do I forward this chain letter?" "What do you mean don't open letters that say 'Good Times'." "I think I just deleted The Internet."
Point well taken. But Micros~1's entire revenue model centers around phrases like "upgrade path." I should know this, I'm unfortunate enough to administrate 8 production NT servers.
When something needs to be fixed on one of these servers, or (more appropriately) when one of Microsoft's "hotfixes" of "service packs" breaks something on one of these *production* servers, my employer has to expend huge amounts of time (time==money) and money to figure out what caused the problem, and then (usually) purchase new software from Microsoft to "fix" it again.
Neither I (who administrate) the servers and care, or my employer who owns them (and doesn't), get to see a single line of code in either case. We have no idea what the "fix" will do, and no way of finding out other than installing it.
I prefer Open source because it's free as in speech anyway:) I'll take the beer 'though...
It's a hundred thousand other me's, all of whom have vested personal interest in seeing the software run properly for some reason or another, each of whom is not only willing, but eager to fix those bugs which annoy him/her.
*You* don't have to fix shit. *You* never have to see a single line of code if you don't want to. Herein lies the beauty of the whole thing. You can simply sit on the sidelines and reap the collective good of the effort exerted on the Open Source software you use.
Installing the latest bugfix is simply a different terminology for what Micros~1 callsd "upgrading," and it doesn't (usually) cost a damn thing.
Your ignorance borders on FUD. The notion that you must edit Open Source code personally line by line is so blatantly wrong that you do us harm by spreading it.
Anyone know where I can download the *real* installer? I'm behind a big scary proxy, and the installer never gives you a chance to specify proxy settings, thus it can't download.
What is this bullshit anyway? I can't tell you how many installers I've had to abandon recently for the exact same reason. Why can't I just download the fscking software and install it myself, thanks?
The summary of the article provided as the blurb here on slashdot, right down to the very title of the article itself "Busted for (L0pht)Crack Posession" is extremely misleading, and I have to wonder if it's deliberately so?
I'm not usually one to come out and accuse the/. editors of tactics to deliberately create clicks, but how else can this be explained? If he who posted this article had actually read the article linked to, the blurb shouldn't have read as it did. It appears to be designed solely to incite a flame war over whether or not posession of l0phtcrack should be legal.
The article says they were arrested and charged with 15 felony counts not for posession of L0phtcrack, but for repeatedly hacking into the computers of their former employers to steal lists of usernames and passwords. This is illegal, and no new news.
If we could moderate the articles themselves, I'd moderate this one down as Flamebait or Troll.
What exactly is the issue here? I expect a flame war will shortly erupt here over whether or not l0phtcrack is inherently evil, and eventually conclude that it's a tool that can be used for any purpose.
In this case, the purpose appears to have been the theft of userids/passwords from their former employers, which is already illegal under several existing statutes I'm sure.
So, please pardon my confusion, where does their posession of l0phtcrack become an issue here?
The articles keep referring to "consumer choice" when it comes to selecting an ISP. I thought consumers already had a choice.
I think this is the usual marketing spin. It's certainly true from a certain perspective. Allowing other ISP's to utilize their existing infrastructure will give consumers more choices in terms of Tier-3 ISP's providing high-bandwidth connections.
Everyone seems to be asking: "why would they do this?" Because they get to *lease* the use of that infrastructure to said tier-3 ISP's. The consumer has a choice (or at least thinks he does), but all those choices ultimately put money in their pocket.
This is all very interesting, in lieu of the FCC's recent ruling that cable providers do NOT have to do this. Perhaps AOL/TimeWarner isn't as bad as we thought, perhaps not:)
I was born 12:04 AM March 1, 1980. Tomorrow is my 20th birthday. Had I been born 5 minutes earlier, today would be my 5th birthday, a la Kintanon here:)
Specific-purpose hardware could give them a big edge.
Funny you should say that.
I was interviewing for a job the other day with a Genetic Engineering firm, and about half way through the series of interviews, their sysadmin gave me a tour of the server room.
Amongst scary Enterprise Servers the likes of which I have only read about, they have a box with cool-looking (OSX-Aqua-esque in its sheer sleekness) blue lights which they apparently got from the NSA.
This box basically consists of 7000 simple, massively parallel processors specifically designed to do 1 thing: pattern matching from huge amounts of data. This has obvious benefits for the Genetic Engineering firm (genomic info is all just strings), and perhaps even more obvious benefits to the NSA.
Not largely relevant to the rest of the article, but...
For picture quality, however, many computer screens are put to shame by the cheapest discount store portable TV.
Uuuuh.... what? Someone needs to lay off the crack rock. The average computer monitor is like.27dp these days. Nice ones are.25 or lower. Television screens would be whole numbers on this scale...
When does one declare the existing social structure so inneficient that change is impossible from within? Now.
There is *nothing* *anyone* can do to stop the large money'd interests taking away our freedoms, short of cough up more money. Our system is run by money, the only votes that count are green and have George Washington (or preferably Benjamin Franklin)'s face on them. That's not going to change. It's never been any different.
What has changed is that we can *see* that more clearly now, although the nebulous corporate scumfucks that I'm vaguely railing on are doing their best to prevent it.
Unfortunately, being aware of it isn't enough. As has been pointed out in far too many replies on this site, every time a new communications medium arrives its proponents tout it as the end to oppression and censorship. The medium itself isn't going to do that, I think we've proved that enough times to learn collectively this time around. I hope so at least.
Freedom isn't profitable, let's face it:) The internet (as it stands/stood) isn't profitable, at least by old business models. The aforementioned nebulous corporate scumfucks are all neophobes, they *fear* change. Look how long it's taken them to realize that stock valuation is no longer tied to tangible assets...
So what do we do? I don't know. I'm tempted to advocate "open revolution" (whatever the fuck that means) at this point, but if you cut the head off a new one will just grow back in its place.
Most major change of the kind we want isn't initiated by people statedly trying to make a change. Large change comes by accident, not by design (all hail Eris). On that note, we should keep doing what we do well: write free software. "Fate" will take care of the rest, is already starting to in fact:)
While I'm not sure if the Playstation has the capabilities to run boring application-level (word processor, etc.) software, it certainly has incredible potential as a dumb terminal.
Computers are becoming more network centric every day. Remember the "Personal Computing" revolution? I don't either:) My computer is a paperweight without a network connection these days.
If we could get a Playstation with an Ethernet jack, it might just make the best dumb terminal you've ever seen. Want the font for your terminal window 3d rendered and shimmering? The possibilities are endless. So long as the applications (or at least some of them) are hosted remotely...
Yeah, and verbal abuse is just sound waves. They don't hurt people! Child porn and is just light reflected from a surface! It doesn't hurt people! Racist graffiti is just paint on a wall! etc, etc.
You've taken my arguments out of context. You're absoloutely right, in the way I was talking about "hurting people." *Looking at* (gasp) racist graffiti or (real gasp) child porn never actually *hurt* anyone. It may have scarred them emotionally, but I wasn't talking about that. Completely different use of the word "hurt."
I don't [think] this gives people a God-given right to spout any old guff and expect other people to have to read it.
But you don't *have* to read it! That's the beautiful part! You can browse at a 1, or a 2, or go read CNN, or Suck, or The Onion. God is dead, we are all completely free!:) Nobody *makes* you read I Just Poured Hot Natalie Portman Down My Pants posts, and I frankly have no use for them, but as with the subject of the original post, I will defend to the death the *right* of the poster to say it.
Have you actually read the bill of rights, or just learned the big ones secondhand?
Congress shall make no law respecting the Establishment of Religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the Right of the People peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a Redress of Grievances.
I see nothing about "extremely poor taste" in that anywhere.
What does freedom of speech mean to you? To me, it's an image like most things:
Interviewer: Do you believe in absoloute freedom of speech?
Me: Yes.
Interviewer: But surely you don't believe in the right to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater?
Me: Fire!
Anthony
(I stole that bit from Abbie Hoffman. So shoot me;)
Katz, you're on crack:) The people who post Elian Gonzalez Naked And Petrified posts aren't stifling free speech, they are in fact its most oppressed practicioners.
The first amendment (contrary to apparently popular belief) doesn't say a damn thing about intimidation, or your own willingness to speak. If you say something, and someone else says you're wrong (and maybe even mocks you for it), free speech has not been violated, it has in fact worked perfectly.
I'm sick and fscking tired of these Politically Correct morons wanting to use the first amendment to censor anyone who doesn't agree with them. "But they're *scaring* me!" or "That's *sooo* offensive." doesn't quite work as an argument. There are pre-existing legal guidelines for harassment, online or off.
Free speech means exactly that, it does *not* mean "nice speech." It does not mean speech that's been pre-approved by the standards of a snobby elite few seeking to control our methods of expression. And while I personally agree that well thought out, nicely articulated pieces are leagues more effective than a crude flame, I will defend to the death the right of the 14 year old 5cr1p7 k1dd13 to flame a newbie. They're 1's and 0's people. They don't hurt people.
I still get frustrated everytime my boss comes back and says, "Oh, the customer thought it was going to do this..."
Abso-fscking-loutely:) The customer tells you to add a particular piece of functionality, really has no idea what they're talking about, and then complain about it when you add *exactly* what they asked for.
my company does medium sized, database driven websites
Basically what I'm doing right now. The work is essentially cookie-cutter applications (or at least the type we're doing: intranet apps), so the initial time to develop is extremely small. The client is always amazed at first at how fast you're doing it.
It's later, when they "remember" those "few little things" that they want added, and you have to change the database schema in some drastic way 6 months into the project (and thus all your libs, etc. etc.), that they can't understand why it's taking you so long. "You cranked out the first revision in 3 weeks, why'd it take you so long to make that 'little change'?"
It's *impossible* to make them understand why, or why it would have been better to have a detailed specification from the outset.
I think half the problem is that most companies charge a rather hefty fee to produce a "requirements document" (whatever buzzword they're using now). I know mine charges a rather exorbitant fee in the manys of thousands. The client never wants to pay for those kinds of things...
One of the things I dream about is detailed specifications.
I used to dread the paperwork and meetings and monotonous never-ending corporate BS involved in "requirements gathering" and the like, but the last several jobs I've done have demonstrated their value beyond any shadow of a doubt.
People don't understand how programmers work, much less the computers they use:) Time and time again the people I write applications for turn out to have no real idea what they're asking for, or how it should work. "uuh, I donno, make it work" really doesn't do much for me as a programmer, which is why the following bit caught my eye:
Imagine that your customer has the time and the manpower to send a representative to sit with your programming team. He is actively involved in the design, writing 'stories' about how the system works for the end users
The jobs that have been done correctly, the ones where you don't spend 1/2 the time "adding features" that should have been included in the initial design specification (requiring changes to the fundamental architecture, blah blah blah), have all included this kind of a buffer between the "client" and the programming team. These are the people that hammer out 80 page requirements documents, which may at first appear to take all the fun out of it, but in fact save a whole lot of work in the long run.
"The Client" always seems to know which "little changes" require you to rewrite the whole application. "Oh, what you've done is *great*, but could you just make this *little change*..." So you have to rework the whole thing from the bottom up, break half of it in the process, and "the client" can't understand why it takes you so long...
Those kinds of headaches can be avoided *only* by getting a detailed specification before you even start...
I know that if you receive unrequested merchandice in your mail, you are entitled to keep it for free. This law was enacted to prevent companies from sending products to people who hadn't requested them, along with a bill requesting payment. If someone does this to you, throw the bill away and keep whatever they sent:)
I'm curious as to how this kind of "clerical error" would be dealt with in that kind of context. Do we have any lawyers here on/. who could commend on the legal issues involved in this kind of thing?
Even more interesting, as the author noted, was how Micros~1 managed to get the NYPD to knock on this guy's door to retreive the package even 'though no crime was committed. Do they really have that much clout? God help us all if so:)
For the near future at least, Alphas are still sitting on top of the performance heap.
This is like popping into a debate between Ford and Toyota to mention that Porche makes much better engines:) "Well, duh!"
While you're right, Alphas aren't really consumer-level products (god don't I wish they were), and I believe that's the context they had in mind for this comparison.
If you want to take it a step further, for the price, Alpha's are great, but for serious number crunching, Cray's are the way to go:)
When the Athlon was first released, Toms Hardware did a very detailed write up on the architecture of the Athlon, and how it relates to the PIII.
You can find that article here. To summarize, this advancement from Intel is basically irrelevant, as AMD could (probably) have 1GHz Athlons on the market already, the Athlon is designed to run at those kinds of speeds, and has a (in their opinion) dramatically superior architecture to the PIII.
Tom mentioned somewhere in the article that AMD would probably do to Intel what Intel had been doing to them for years, which was to one-up whatever speed they come out with. Watch for AMD to beat this by 50MHz or so pretty soon...
These are the kinds of things that make me wonder if Slashdot's moderation actually works. There's several comments much lower in the thread that actually provide information, or rational analysis of the situation, and this shit (if you'll pardon my language) gets marked "insightful." ??
While I can understand the reluctance to embrace technologies such as genetic engineering and research based purely on the possible consequences (gattaca, uncontrollable genetically engineered disease, etc.), I find this incessant whining about the "moral" implications increasingly annoying. The *real* implications are frightening enough that we don't need to involve millenia-old superstition into it. They only contribute to paranoia, confusion, and slow the adoption of the *good* that can be harnessed from the technology.
Technology has advanced to the point (or more specifically, is now advancing at a such a rate) that we've lost "control" of it. It now moves out of pace (much faster than) the remainder of our social mindset, which includes our "moral" aspects. What this means is that these ideas are (and will continue to be) increasingly out of touch with technological advancement, and will only grow less relevant with time.
Human beings traditionally have an extremely hard time dropping old or ingrained ideas and adopting new models, even if the new model is more accurate or convenient. This makes perfect sense, neural networks tend to settle into local minima, if it's worked before we're conditioned to think it will work again, why change? The concepts of "space" and "time" still used in the mind of your average joe-blow were abandoned by physicists nearly a century ago, and we still haven't caught up.
My point is, we need to stop this incessant babble about ideas no longer relevant to the matter at hand. Let's stop wondering what some omnipotent invisible gaseous vertebrate in the sky will think of what we do, and discuss the real matters at hand: what good can we get out of it, and what are the real dangers involved? We're not going to *stop* it, and we're foolish to think something like words printed on paper (i think they call this "legislation") will. So, shall we scare ourselves with the boogie man or deal with it rationally?
Slashdot Mirror
I need a solution that does not require an expert for daily use
Not to rag on you guran (I very much agree with your point), but to rag on a different angle I see meant by that statement daily:
Get a fucking calculator.
Middle management seems to live under the perpetual delusion that these inconprehensibly complex conglomerations of silicon, plastic, and electrons are somehow going to magically "work" all by themselves some day, and yet still can't seem to figure out how to work Outlook when their system is running fine.
"I need a solution that doesn't require an expert."
"I need a solution that doesn't require me to learn or think."
"How do I forward this chain letter?"
"What do you mean don't open letters that say 'Good Times'."
"I think I just deleted The Internet."
Anthony
MS's hotfixes and service packs are also free.
Point well taken. But Micros~1's entire revenue model centers around phrases like "upgrade path." I should know this, I'm unfortunate enough to administrate 8 production NT servers.
When something needs to be fixed on one of these servers, or (more appropriately) when one of Microsoft's "hotfixes" of "service packs" breaks something on one of these *production* servers, my employer has to expend huge amounts of time (time==money) and money to figure out what caused the problem, and then (usually) purchase new software from Microsoft to "fix" it again.
Neither I (who administrate) the servers and care, or my employer who owns them (and doesn't), get to see a single line of code in either case. We have no idea what the "fix" will do, and no way of finding out other than installing it.
I prefer Open source because it's free as in speech anyway
Anthony
It's me, "Hi!"
It's a hundred thousand other me's, all of whom have vested personal interest in seeing the software run properly for some reason or another, each of whom is not only willing, but eager to fix those bugs which annoy him/her.
*You* don't have to fix shit. *You* never have to see a single line of code if you don't want to. Herein lies the beauty of the whole thing. You can simply sit on the sidelines and reap the collective good of the effort exerted on the Open Source software you use.
Installing the latest bugfix is simply a different terminology for what Micros~1 callsd "upgrading," and it doesn't (usually) cost a damn thing.
Your ignorance borders on FUD. The notion that you must edit Open Source code personally line by line is so blatantly wrong that you do us harm by spreading it.
Anthony
Anyone know where I can download the *real* installer? I'm behind a big scary proxy, and the installer never gives you a chance to specify proxy settings, thus it can't download.
What is this bullshit anyway? I can't tell you how many installers I've had to abandon recently for the exact same reason. Why can't I just download the fscking software and install it myself, thanks?
Anthony
The summary of the article provided as the blurb here on slashdot, right down to the very title of the article itself "Busted for (L0pht)Crack Posession" is extremely misleading, and I have to wonder if it's deliberately so?
I'm not usually one to come out and accuse the
The article says they were arrested and charged with 15 felony counts not for posession of L0phtcrack, but for repeatedly hacking into the computers of their former employers to steal lists of usernames and passwords. This is illegal, and no new news.
If we could moderate the articles themselves, I'd moderate this one down as Flamebait or Troll.
Anthony
What exactly is the issue here? I expect a flame war will shortly erupt here over whether or not l0phtcrack is inherently evil, and eventually conclude that it's a tool that can be used for any purpose.
In this case, the purpose appears to have been the theft of userids/passwords from their former employers, which is already illegal under several existing statutes I'm sure.
So, please pardon my confusion, where does their posession of l0phtcrack become an issue here?
Anthony
The articles keep referring to "consumer choice" when it comes to selecting an ISP. I thought consumers already had a choice.
I think this is the usual marketing spin. It's certainly true from a certain perspective. Allowing other ISP's to utilize their existing infrastructure will give consumers more choices in terms of Tier-3 ISP's providing high-bandwidth connections.
Everyone seems to be asking: "why would they do this?" Because they get to *lease* the use of that infrastructure to said tier-3 ISP's. The consumer has a choice (or at least thinks he does), but all those choices ultimately put money in their pocket.
Very interesting approach...
Anthony
damn it, i submitted this hours and hours ago (with better links) :)
:)
other links:
CNNFn
yahoo
This is all very interesting, in lieu of the FCC's recent ruling that cable providers do NOT have to do this. Perhaps AOL/TimeWarner isn't as bad as we thought, perhaps not
Anthony
I was born 12:04 AM March 1, 1980. Tomorrow is my 20th birthday. Had I been born 5 minutes earlier, today would be my 5th birthday, a la Kintanon here
Happy birthday, by the way...
Anthony
Specific-purpose hardware could give them a big edge.
Funny you should say that.
I was interviewing for a job the other day with a Genetic Engineering firm, and about half way through the series of interviews, their sysadmin gave me a tour of the server room.
Amongst scary Enterprise Servers the likes of which I have only read about, they have a box with cool-looking (OSX-Aqua-esque in its sheer sleekness) blue lights which they apparently got from the NSA.
This box basically consists of 7000 simple, massively parallel processors specifically designed to do 1 thing: pattern matching from huge amounts of data. This has obvious benefits for the Genetic Engineering firm (genomic info is all just strings), and perhaps even more obvious benefits to the NSA.
Just thought it was interesting...
Anthony
Not largely relevant to the rest of the article, but...
For picture quality, however, many computer screens are put to shame by the cheapest discount store portable TV.
Uuuuh.... what? Someone needs to lay off the crack rock. The average computer monitor is like
Anthony
When does one declare the existing social structure so inneficient that change is impossible from within? Now.
:) The internet (as it stands/stood) isn't profitable, at least by old business models. The aforementioned nebulous corporate scumfucks are all neophobes, they *fear* change. Look how long it's taken them to realize that stock valuation is no longer tied to tangible assets...
:)
There is *nothing* *anyone* can do to stop the large money'd interests taking away our freedoms, short of cough up more money. Our system is run by money, the only votes that count are green and have George Washington (or preferably Benjamin Franklin)'s face on them. That's not going to change. It's never been any different.
What has changed is that we can *see* that more clearly now, although the nebulous corporate scumfucks that I'm vaguely railing on are doing their best to prevent it.
Unfortunately, being aware of it isn't enough. As has been pointed out in far too many replies on this site, every time a new communications medium arrives its proponents tout it as the end to oppression and censorship. The medium itself isn't going to do that, I think we've proved that enough times to learn collectively this time around. I hope so at least.
Freedom isn't profitable, let's face it
So what do we do? I don't know. I'm tempted to advocate "open revolution" (whatever the fuck that means) at this point, but if you cut the head off a new one will just grow back in its place.
Most major change of the kind we want isn't initiated by people statedly trying to make a change. Large change comes by accident, not by design (all hail Eris). On that note, we should keep doing what we do well: write free software. "Fate" will take care of the rest, is already starting to in fact
Anthony
While I'm not sure if the Playstation has the capabilities to run boring application-level (word processor, etc.) software, it certainly has incredible potential as a dumb terminal.
Computers are becoming more network centric every day. Remember the "Personal Computing" revolution? I don't either
If we could get a Playstation with an Ethernet jack, it might just make the best dumb terminal you've ever seen. Want the font for your terminal window 3d rendered and shimmering? The possibilities are endless. So long as the applications (or at least some of them) are hosted remotely...
One step closer to VR. Waiting patiently.
Anthony
The "One Important Question" link is broken (typo).
Fixed link here.
Anthony
Yeah, and verbal abuse is just sound waves. They don't hurt people! Child porn and is just light reflected from a surface! It doesn't hurt people! Racist graffiti is just paint on a wall! etc, etc.
:) Nobody *makes* you read I Just Poured Hot Natalie Portman Down My Pants posts, and I frankly have no use for them, but as with the subject of the original post, I will defend to the death the *right* of the poster to say it.
You've taken my arguments out of context. You're absoloutely right, in the way I was talking about "hurting people." *Looking at* (gasp) racist graffiti or (real gasp) child porn never actually *hurt* anyone. It may have scarred them emotionally, but I wasn't talking about that. Completely different use of the word "hurt."
I don't [think] this gives people a God-given right to spout any old guff and expect other people to have to read it.
But you don't *have* to read it! That's the beautiful part! You can browse at a 1, or a 2, or go read CNN, or Suck, or The Onion. God is dead, we are all completely free!
Anthony
Have you actually read the bill of rights, or just learned the big ones secondhand?
;)
Congress shall make no law respecting the Establishment of Religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the Right of the People peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a Redress of Grievances.
I see nothing about "extremely poor taste" in that anywhere.
What does freedom of speech mean to you? To me, it's an image like most things:
Interviewer: Do you believe in absoloute freedom of speech?
Me: Yes.
Interviewer: But surely you don't believe in the right to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater?
Me: Fire!
Anthony
(I stole that bit from Abbie Hoffman. So shoot me
Katz, you're on crack :) The people who post Elian Gonzalez Naked And Petrified posts aren't stifling free speech, they are in fact its most oppressed practicioners.
The first amendment (contrary to apparently popular belief) doesn't say a damn thing about intimidation, or your own willingness to speak. If you say something, and someone else says you're wrong (and maybe even mocks you for it), free speech has not been violated, it has in fact worked perfectly.
I'm sick and fscking tired of these Politically Correct morons wanting to use the first amendment to censor anyone who doesn't agree with them. "But they're *scaring* me!" or "That's *sooo* offensive." doesn't quite work as an argument. There are pre-existing legal guidelines for harassment, online or off.
Free speech means exactly that, it does *not* mean "nice speech." It does not mean speech that's been pre-approved by the standards of a snobby elite few seeking to control our methods of expression. And while I personally agree that well thought out, nicely articulated pieces are leagues more effective than a crude flame, I will defend to the death the right of the 14 year old 5cr1p7 k1dd13 to flame a newbie. They're 1's and 0's people. They don't hurt people.
Anthony
The petition link is broken, or at least the evil proxy I'm sitting behind doesn't like it.
Fixed link here.
Anthony
I still get frustrated everytime my boss comes back and says, "Oh, the customer thought it was going to do this..."
:) The customer tells you to add a particular piece of functionality, really has no idea what they're talking about, and then complain about it when you add *exactly* what they asked for.
Abso-fscking-loutely
my company does medium sized, database driven websites
Basically what I'm doing right now. The work is essentially cookie-cutter applications (or at least the type we're doing: intranet apps), so the initial time to develop is extremely small. The client is always amazed at first at how fast you're doing it.
It's later, when they "remember" those "few little things" that they want added, and you have to change the database schema in some drastic way 6 months into the project (and thus all your libs, etc. etc.), that they can't understand why it's taking you so long. "You cranked out the first revision in 3 weeks, why'd it take you so long to make that 'little change'?"
It's *impossible* to make them understand why, or why it would have been better to have a detailed specification from the outset.
I think half the problem is that most companies charge a rather hefty fee to produce a "requirements document" (whatever buzzword they're using now). I know mine charges a rather exorbitant fee in the manys of thousands. The client never wants to pay for those kinds of things...
Anthony
One of the things I dream about is detailed specifications.
:) Time and time again the people I write applications for turn out to have no real idea what they're asking for, or how it should work. "uuh, I donno, make it work" really doesn't do much for me as a programmer, which is why the following bit caught my eye:
I used to dread the paperwork and meetings and monotonous never-ending corporate BS involved in "requirements gathering" and the like, but the last several jobs I've done have demonstrated their value beyond any shadow of a doubt.
People don't understand how programmers work, much less the computers they use
Imagine that your customer has the time and the manpower to send a representative to sit with your programming team. He is actively involved in the design, writing 'stories' about how the system works for the end users
The jobs that have been done correctly, the ones where you don't spend 1/2 the time "adding features" that should have been included in the initial design specification (requiring changes to the fundamental architecture, blah blah blah), have all included this kind of a buffer between the "client" and the programming team. These are the people that hammer out 80 page requirements documents, which may at first appear to take all the fun out of it, but in fact save a whole lot of work in the long run.
"The Client" always seems to know which "little changes" require you to rewrite the whole application. "Oh, what you've done is *great*, but could you just make this *little change*..." So you have to rework the whole thing from the bottom up, break half of it in the process, and "the client" can't understand why it takes you so long...
Those kinds of headaches can be avoided *only* by getting a detailed specification before you even start...
Anthony
I know that if you receive unrequested merchandice in your mail, you are entitled to keep it for free. This law was enacted to prevent companies from sending products to people who hadn't requested them, along with a bill requesting payment. If someone does this to you, throw the bill away and keep whatever they sent :)
/. who could commend on the legal issues involved in this kind of thing?
:)
I'm curious as to how this kind of "clerical error" would be dealt with in that kind of context. Do we have any lawyers here on
Even more interesting, as the author noted, was how Micros~1 managed to get the NYPD to knock on this guy's door to retreive the package even 'though no crime was committed. Do they really have that much clout? God help us all if so
Anthony
For the near future at least, Alphas are still sitting on top of the performance heap.
:) "Well, duh!"
:)
This is like popping into a debate between Ford and Toyota to mention that Porche makes much better engines
While you're right, Alphas aren't really consumer-level products (god don't I wish they were), and I believe that's the context they had in mind for this comparison.
If you want to take it a step further, for the price, Alpha's are great, but for serious number crunching, Cray's are the way to go
Anthony
When the Athlon was first released, Toms Hardware did a very detailed write up on the architecture of the Athlon, and how it relates to the PIII.
You can find that article here. To summarize, this advancement from Intel is basically irrelevant, as AMD could (probably) have 1GHz Athlons on the market already, the Athlon is designed to run at those kinds of speeds, and has a (in their opinion) dramatically superior architecture to the PIII.
Tom mentioned somewhere in the article that AMD would probably do to Intel what Intel had been doing to them for years, which was to one-up whatever speed they come out with. Watch for AMD to beat this by 50MHz or so pretty soon...
Anthony
These are the kinds of things that make me wonder if Slashdot's moderation actually works. There's several comments much lower in the thread that actually provide information, or rational analysis of the situation, and this shit (if you'll pardon my language) gets marked "insightful." ??
Huh?
While I can understand the reluctance to embrace technologies such as genetic engineering and research based purely on the possible consequences (gattaca, uncontrollable genetically engineered disease, etc.), I find this incessant whining about the "moral" implications increasingly annoying. The *real* implications are frightening enough that we don't need to involve millenia-old superstition into it. They only contribute to paranoia, confusion, and slow the adoption of the *good* that can be harnessed from the technology.
Technology has advanced to the point (or more specifically, is now advancing at a such a rate) that we've lost "control" of it. It now moves out of pace (much faster than) the remainder of our social mindset, which includes our "moral" aspects. What this means is that these ideas are (and will continue to be) increasingly out of touch with technological advancement, and will only grow less relevant with time.
Human beings traditionally have an extremely hard time dropping old or ingrained ideas and adopting new models, even if the new model is more accurate or convenient. This makes perfect sense, neural networks tend to settle into local minima, if it's worked before we're conditioned to think it will work again, why change? The concepts of "space" and "time" still used in the mind of your average joe-blow were abandoned by physicists nearly a century ago, and we still haven't caught up.
My point is, we need to stop this incessant babble about ideas no longer relevant to the matter at hand. Let's stop wondering what some omnipotent invisible gaseous vertebrate in the sky will think of what we do, and discuss the real matters at hand: what good can we get out of it, and what are the real dangers involved? We're not going to *stop* it, and we're foolish to think something like words printed on paper (i think they call this "legislation") will. So, shall we scare ourselves with the boogie man or deal with it rationally?
Unfortunately I think the former...
Anthony