He'll ask me why I miss a deadline and I'll try to explain to him the complexitys of implementing a relational database on a palm, but it goes over his head and all he wants is a date.
Aaah, well my query to the original poster was: "Have you considered that you might not actually need these new-fangled techniques?".
In your case, the answer to that question would seem to be: "yes - I have considered it and it seems that I actually do need to use those techniques".
(b) Outdated technical experience. ...Category (b) project managers tend to be dangerous because they have a superficial understanding of what you're doing and (1) can't understand why it could be hard, or (2) can't understand why you need to use all these new-fangled techniques like object-oriented programming and refactoring.
Have you considered that you might not actually need to use all these 'new-fangled techniques'? And that your out-dated project manager might know that, since they have experience of doing similar tasks without the need for those techniques?
Beware the CV-driven project (or resume-driven project, to use the American form). It has every wonderful technique under the sun attached to it, with the latest and most exciting tools.
Almost always fails. Almost always ends up being rewritten at the last minute, dropping lots of the high-flying ideas and going back to more tried-and-trusted techniques. Worse, it normally has the older techniques shoved in under a superficial wrapper which is used to say that they're actually implemented with the wonderfully new techniques.
Don't write off experience. Many project managers are rubbish, many have outdated field knowledge, but outdated field knowledge does not necessarily equate with rubbish project management.
Interesting that you were a Netscape 4 user. That's why I finally switched to IE - because of Netscape 4. I dabbled around IE 3, and switched over totally at IE 4.
Now, I'm also a Mozilla 1.0 user and that is my primary browser at work for personal usage. Standard reasons - no popups, controlled GIF animation, tabbed browsing etc. I also use it to test any pages I write (along with the W3D Validator).
Despite this, I would like to point out that not everyone is using IE because they were forced to. I'm using it because I like it, and vastly prefer it to the Netscape alternatives.
What then, in the case where MS gives away software for free? Should there be no contract nor liability implied there?
Interesting.
Well, to be consiistent I suppose the answer must be 'no - there is no implied liability'. That actually works to open source's advantage, as it removes the usual support argument.
I think people would want free software to get an exemption because they don't want the rules to apply to them.
What rules? I've never agreed to them.
Now, if I had sold my software according to a contract or an EULA with terms of service embedded - fine. Apply rules.
If I just write stuff and say "here - it works for me but don't know if it works for you, use it if you want to and don't if you don't" then there cannot be any assumption of liability by the user of whatever I've written.
If it's such a "simple minded view", then why did the US Congress write a bill legalizing an invasion of the Netherlands...
Good god man, have you any idea what would happen if the US tried to invade Western Europe as a hostile force? Are some people really that blind there? I know that most aren't, thank heavens.
I suggest you think long and hard about what a 'simple-minded view' might be. Invading the Netherlands certainly fits into that category - just become someone holds a high office, it doesn't follow that they cannot be terminally dumb.
The reply you got from the other guy clearly shows why I don't get involved in political debates in Slashdot. People here are mostly tech people, on the whole myself included. They simply aren't well informed about other areas, and the level of debate isn't exactly high.
I could go on about Britain's attempt to introduce majority rule (thwarted by Ian Smith, who forcibly took Rhodesia out of the former Empire whilst we were negotiating for full its full independence), but I'd be talking to a brick wall.
My points in the original were to state the motivation of the case. There's no point in discussing a case as if it were a judicial case based on technical grounds, when its actually a straightforward political case with one state against another.
As I said in the post, the rights and wrongs are outside the scope of this thread. I specifically didn't state that Britain was right, nor did I state Zimbabwe was right. I'm just pointing out that this is not an opportunity for the debating fine technical points on the nature of the internet - it's a policy decision by a nation state.
I have an opinion on this (check history: Rhodesia seceeded from Britain because Britain wanted to introduce independence and majority rule), but this is not the place for it.
I specifically stated that the political rights and wrongs are outside the scope the thread. They should stay that way. To be honest, the average Slashdot tech-obsessed poster is not that well informed about either history or politics.
You see, I knew comments like this would start creeping in. That why I explicitly stated in my post that 'the political rights or wrongs of this are outside the scope of this discussion.
Take it to a politics forum, not a tech news site.
For those who might not realise it, I should point out that there is an overtly political agenda to this, rather than a straightforward judicial one.
Specifically, Zimbabwe's President Mugabe is virulantly anti-British. Following the recent 'elections', fixed according to all international observers, Mugabe has expelled any BBC reporters and most other British journalists.
This is because of the UK press' reporting of the 'War Veterans' issue, where Mugabe encourages members of his old revolutionary guard to simply take white farmers' land, usually by violence, quite often by killing the farmer in question.
Mugabe claims that this policy is Britain's fault, and that the farmers should look to Britain for compensation - indeed that they should leave Zimbabwe and go to Britain.
Now, the political rights and wrongs of these are outside the scope of this discussion. However, I think it important that people see this move for what it is - another anti-British move by the Mugabe regime, rather than a carefully thought out and well-constructed legal case.
I believe so. Firstly, the instrument itself has to be identically strung. Pianos are not generic devices - you must adapt your style to the particular piano. Admittedly this is getting a little less now, but it is still true.
Secondly, an artist is performing to his audience. Some choose to play off audience reaction, others stay in their own world and ignore the audience. Either approach is valid, but a person taking the the first route will be disadvantaged if their recording is simply played back in rote to an entirely different audience having entirely different reactions.
Finally, I simply don't believe that the technology is there yet. Haven't read the article (NYT etc.), but I believe this is MIDI based. Having written MIDI applications, used MIDI for recording and also used MIDI to supplement my live playback, I can vouch that MIDI has serious timing problems when dealing with some events (SysExs and fader controls, normally). I forget the baud raute (my memory's getting rubbish - I used to know this kind of thing off by heart), but I believe it's simply a 9600kbps serial connection. You can lose a lot of precision in that.
He will evaluate the performances as relayed by Yamaha's Disklavier system...[this] raises new questions about what a "live" performance is.
Well, a live performance isn't that for sure. Whatever this judge think he's judging, it isn't the performance of the artist.
Now this would not be true for, say, a synthesiser performance. There the whole thing can accurately be digitally reproduced. But for piano? Forget it.
Cheers,
Ian
(Keyboard player, and to some extent pianist too)
In other words, if you're looking for a portable music player, the iPod is your choice. If you're looking for a desk-bound one, then the larger capacity is your choice.
Why is it that if Apple releases a product that only works with their systems without a third party application, everyone says "Oh, well of course. They sell Macs, so why shoot themselves in the foot by making it work with PC's running Windows?"
...I just want to know why it's fine for Apple to only make their hardware work with their OS, but everyone else should port to everything else?
Because the makers of those other products you mentioned don't sell Windows. Apple make money from selling MacOS/OSX/Mac hardware. The Rio Volt doesn't make any money from the Windows copy it requires to run.
...there are at least two degrees of separation, from the Civil Servants that can legally access this data, via the executive, to the party workers.
But in this case they were bypassed. That's my point - people who could legally ask for this information were being instructed to ask for it by someone who could not have got it themselves.
As the son of a Civil Servant, I can assure you they take there independence extremely seriously.
Oh, I know plenty of civil servants and have done for years. Not a smear on the service. It is a direct criticism of the ridiculous 'political advisor' system, whereby someone who's entire job is explicitly political is able to order those who are supposed to be neutral to do their bidding.
To come on to your other point:
Except the attacks where clearly political motivated, I cannot see how a prospective parliamentary candidate can be viewed other than inherently biased.
To be alive is to be political. Everyone has a political viewpoint - you, me, the candidate...everyone. But does this make the questions less valid?
Then add the fact that the Tories are responsible for the poor state of the railways because of their ill conceived meddling.
...and yours is somewhat revealed here. I agree and disagree. The post-war Labour government refused to invest in railways, and the precedent was set for every government since - whatever the party.
Except your music-playing/pr0n-viewing applications and whatever else you find to have handy in that machine
No. That's the entire point.
Because it's a virtual machine, you can have more than one of them running. You dedicate one virtual machine to p2p, another to whatever browsing is going to get you tons of adware installed, and then leave your real machine completely untouched by this stuff and so safe to use.
As another post points out, the minister was only asking what their political affiliations were.
The minister didn't ask anything. An official did. A public servant.
Labour has the right to ask what it wishes. The Department of Transport should adhere to strict neutrality.
Incidently, let's suppose one of the survivers had been the leader of the Green party. Would their comments and questions be any less valid for that fact? Why not deal with the questions rather than the personalities?
Just to emphasise why people should oppose this, a reminder of the UK goverment's latest spin-doctor scandal.
Survivors of the Paddington rail disaster have recently discovered that the Department of Transport was digging into their private life. The intent was to find out their political affilitations and use these to discredit them. The reason? They were critical of a government minister, the legendarily poor Steven Byers.
In other words, being critical of government policy was enough to start an investigation into their private lives. This is causing a small scandal here at present, a scandal which really should be much larger and probably only isn't because we're so used to such poor standards from our politicians.
Slashdot Mirror
Aaah, well my query to the original poster was: "Have you considered that you might not actually need these new-fangled techniques?".
In your case, the answer to that question would seem to be: "yes - I have considered it and it seems that I actually do need to use those techniques".
In other words, we're both covered!
Cheers,
Ian
Have you considered that you might not actually need to use all these 'new-fangled techniques'? And that your out-dated project manager might know that, since they have experience of doing similar tasks without the need for those techniques?
Beware the CV-driven project (or resume-driven project, to use the American form). It has every wonderful technique under the sun attached to it, with the latest and most exciting tools.
Almost always fails. Almost always ends up being rewritten at the last minute, dropping lots of the high-flying ideas and going back to more tried-and-trusted techniques. Worse, it normally has the older techniques shoved in under a superficial wrapper which is used to say that they're actually implemented with the wonderfully new techniques.
Don't write off experience. Many project managers are rubbish, many have outdated field knowledge, but outdated field knowledge does not necessarily equate with rubbish project management.
Cheers,
Ian
Inconceivable!
Cheers,
Ian
Now, I'm also a Mozilla 1.0 user and that is my primary browser at work for personal usage. Standard reasons - no popups, controlled GIF animation, tabbed browsing etc. I also use it to test any pages I write (along with the W3D Validator).
Despite this, I would like to point out that not everyone is using IE because they were forced to. I'm using it because I like it, and vastly prefer it to the Netscape alternatives.
Cheers,
Ian
Interesting.
Well, to be consiistent I suppose the answer must be 'no - there is no implied liability'. That actually works to open source's advantage, as it removes the usual support argument.
Cheers,
Ian
Not at all, because they sold me the software under promises that it would work.
Not everything in life is a market. If I just write something for fun and hand it to someone else for free, then no contract or liability is implied.
Cheers,
Ian
What if you look at it from Bill Gate's point of view...?
Cheers,
Ian
What rules? I've never agreed to them.
Now, if I had sold my software according to a contract or an EULA with terms of service embedded - fine. Apply rules.
If I just write stuff and say "here - it works for me but don't know if it works for you, use it if you want to and don't if you don't" then there cannot be any assumption of liability by the user of whatever I've written.
Cheers,
Ian
Good god man, have you any idea what would happen if the US tried to invade Western Europe as a hostile force? Are some people really that blind there? I know that most aren't, thank heavens.
I suggest you think long and hard about what a 'simple-minded view' might be. Invading the Netherlands certainly fits into that category - just become someone holds a high office, it doesn't follow that they cannot be terminally dumb.
Cheers,
Ian
I could go on about Britain's attempt to introduce majority rule (thwarted by Ian Smith, who forcibly took Rhodesia out of the former Empire whilst we were negotiating for full its full independence), but I'd be talking to a brick wall.
My points in the original were to state the motivation of the case. There's no point in discussing a case as if it were a judicial case based on technical grounds, when its actually a straightforward political case with one state against another.
As I said in the post, the rights and wrongs are outside the scope of this thread. I specifically didn't state that Britain was right, nor did I state Zimbabwe was right. I'm just pointing out that this is not an opportunity for the debating fine technical points on the nature of the internet - it's a policy decision by a nation state.
Cheers,
Ian
I specifically stated that the political rights and wrongs are outside the scope the thread. They should stay that way. To be honest, the average Slashdot tech-obsessed poster is not that well informed about either history or politics.
Cheers,
Ian
Take it to a politics forum, not a tech news site.
Cheers,
Ian
Apologies. I saw The Guardian mentioned in the article and assumed British.
Cheers,
Ian
Specifically, Zimbabwe's President Mugabe is virulantly anti-British. Following the recent 'elections', fixed according to all international observers, Mugabe has expelled any BBC reporters and most other British journalists.
This is because of the UK press' reporting of the 'War Veterans' issue, where Mugabe encourages members of his old revolutionary guard to simply take white farmers' land, usually by violence, quite often by killing the farmer in question.
Mugabe claims that this policy is Britain's fault, and that the farmers should look to Britain for compensation - indeed that they should leave Zimbabwe and go to Britain.
Now, the political rights and wrongs of these are outside the scope of this discussion. However, I think it important that people see this move for what it is - another anti-British move by the Mugabe regime, rather than a carefully thought out and well-constructed legal case.
Cheers,
Ian
For it is said in the Book of Tao that it is better to .org than .com.
Aaah, Grasshopper...
Cheers,
Ian
I believe so. Firstly, the instrument itself has to be identically strung. Pianos are not generic devices - you must adapt your style to the particular piano. Admittedly this is getting a little less now, but it is still true.
Secondly, an artist is performing to his audience. Some choose to play off audience reaction, others stay in their own world and ignore the audience. Either approach is valid, but a person taking the the first route will be disadvantaged if their recording is simply played back in rote to an entirely different audience having entirely different reactions.
Finally, I simply don't believe that the technology is there yet. Haven't read the article (NYT etc.), but I believe this is MIDI based. Having written MIDI applications, used MIDI for recording and also used MIDI to supplement my live playback, I can vouch that MIDI has serious timing problems when dealing with some events (SysExs and fader controls, normally). I forget the baud raute (my memory's getting rubbish - I used to know this kind of thing off by heart), but I believe it's simply a 9600kbps serial connection. You can lose a lot of precision in that.
Cheers,
Ian
Precisely. The medium is different, hence the performance cannot be considered identical.
Cheers,
Ian
Well, a live performance isn't that for sure. Whatever this judge think he's judging, it isn't the performance of the artist.
Now this would not be true for, say, a synthesiser performance. There the whole thing can accurately be digitally reproduced. But for piano? Forget it.
Cheers,
Ian
(Keyboard player, and to some extent pianist too)
iPod = small, fits-in-pocket.
rivals = big, no-chance-of-fitting-in-pocket.
In other words, if you're looking for a portable music player, the iPod is your choice. If you're looking for a desk-bound one, then the larger capacity is your choice.
Cheers,
Ian
Because the makers of those other products you mentioned don't sell Windows. Apple make money from selling MacOS/OSX/Mac hardware. The Rio Volt doesn't make any money from the Windows copy it requires to run.
Cheers,
Ian
But in this case they were bypassed. That's my point - people who could legally ask for this information were being instructed to ask for it by someone who could not have got it themselves.
As the son of a Civil Servant, I can assure you they take there independence extremely seriously. Oh, I know plenty of civil servants and have done for years. Not a smear on the service. It is a direct criticism of the ridiculous 'political advisor' system, whereby someone who's entire job is explicitly political is able to order those who are supposed to be neutral to do their bidding.
To come on to your other point:
Except the attacks where clearly political motivated, I cannot see how a prospective parliamentary candidate can be viewed other than inherently biased.
To be alive is to be political. Everyone has a political viewpoint - you, me, the candidate...everyone. But does this make the questions less valid?
Then add the fact that the Tories are responsible for the poor state of the railways because of their ill conceived meddling.
Cheers,
Ian
No. That's the entire point.
Because it's a virtual machine, you can have more than one of them running. You dedicate one virtual machine to p2p, another to whatever browsing is going to get you tons of adware installed, and then leave your real machine completely untouched by this stuff and so safe to use.
Cheers,
Ian
The minister didn't ask anything. An official did. A public servant.
Labour has the right to ask what it wishes. The Department of Transport should adhere to strict neutrality.
Incidently, let's suppose one of the survivers had been the leader of the Green party. Would their comments and questions be any less valid for that fact? Why not deal with the questions rather than the personalities?
Cheers,
Ian
Survivors of the Paddington rail disaster have recently discovered that the Department of Transport was digging into their private life. The intent was to find out their political affilitations and use these to discredit them. The reason? They were critical of a government minister, the legendarily poor Steven Byers.
In other words, being critical of government policy was enough to start an investigation into their private lives. This is causing a small scandal here at present, a scandal which really should be much larger and probably only isn't because we're so used to such poor standards from our politicians.
Cheers,
Ian
Ooh god yes. I remember this. I hated UUCP configuration...
Scary.
Cheers,
Ian