In my opinion your response ought to have been modded up, as I think it's interesting (sorry - no mod points to do so).
I think you will agree that it depends on the environment.
Yes - I think it should depend on the risk presented by change to that environment. So for example, my one-man contracting company has massive and significant risk when upgrading to a new version of Quicken. It could trash my accounts utterly for all I know - needs to be tested. Otherr changes, for example driver changes which would be murder in a large scale environment, are much easier for me to sort out.
My experience has been that most non-technical managers are extremely gun-shy about change.
Agreed (though you occasionally get a gung-ho "I read it in a magazine, here's alpha 0.01 - it's wonderful" type).
This places an inordinant burden on the sysadmins to delay patching servers or installing new software versions.
I can agree here too, particularly on the nature of security patches. However, risk must once again be borne in mind - if a non-public server has been running fine, then why introduce a patch? Public servers (or client machines with external contact, such as most email-receiving Windows desktops) should be patched much more quickly than many corporates allow, but I wouldn't necessarily put every patch onto every machine.
All that said, aren't criminal charges just a little out of line?
Absolutely, and I disagree with criminal charges utterly. Misconduct perhaps, and I would consider this at minimum a discplinary matter and at maximum a firing, but there's nothing criminal about what was done.
...since when is management regularly in a position to understand these things?
Who mentioned management? Had a couple of responses now saying "does management know better?". My response had nothing to do with management. Think of a developer using a source control system - an environment is managed in small, incremental changes which are commited and baselined when known to be working. An entire computing environment can be handled in much the same manner.
the parent to this shot up 3 points in ahout 2 seconds...
Yeah, have to say I was rather surprised by that too.
You know, back in the real world, sys admins are the ones who test things, install things and keep them running.
And developers are the ones who write the things that sysadmins keep running. And they need to know both their development environment and their target deployment environment. Sysadmins too - it is necessary to know what kind of 'sys' you're 'admin'ing, and unauthorised changes undermine that.
Regarding your 'real world' comment, I have been a commercial developer for about ten years now. I've worked in a four-man company and also for some of the largest financial institutions in the world. This problem is universal - keeping tight control of your environments is essential.
Arthur. My girlfriend and I watch Arthur despite it being aimed at kids, because it's just so 'nice'. It's pleasant, funny - just straightforwardly enjoyable to watch.
I can't see anyone buying just a remote for more than half the price of a PDA with AV remote functionality built in.
Well, if more than one person lived in the house they'd either all need a PDA, or you'd need to leave one of these constantly in the home. Otherwise, as soon as you took your PDA out of the house everyone would be scrabbling around for the original remotes again.
If you're going to leave one constantly in the house just for use as a remote, then you may as well get the Pronto for half the price.
the EU's concern over ICANN's refusal to make guarantees about root server stability.
It sounds as if all that's required is a standard Service Level Agreement. The kind of thing that's standard through most big corporates, and has a clause along the lines of "we guarantee 99.5% uptime, if service drops below this we pay £x.xx per quarter percent below.".
It seems that it's the refusal to provide something like this, rather than technical worries, that are underlying this dispute.
What we need to do is start setting the example. Say "I write good code!"
Maybe I do, but is your compiler equally well written? How about the port of glibc to your hardware platform?
Application software sits on an operating system and depends on OS libraries. Open source software is often compiled from scratch, and you do not have control over which compiler is used or which build of the libraries.
I would never make a guarantee that my software would operate as I expected 100% of the time, unless I had control of the deployment environment.
For example, look at the stability of games console software compared to most PC-based games. It is a genuine shock if your console game hangs on you - I can count the number of times its happend to me on the fingers of one hand, going back to my SNES-using days. The reason is that the developer is able to test in the exact environment the software will be used. This is a luxury not available to most, and I believe stability (unavoidably) suffers as a result.
Yay, it'll be so convenient having one company control my television, internet access and phone service. I can hardly wait.
Move to the UK. I have NTL's cable TV, cable modem service and two phone lines. Price? £72.97 per month, ie. about $102.16 (for around 30/35 channels I think).
The audio quality on the iPod is ok. My biggest gripe is the headphone jack appears underpowered and there appears to be some noise introduced in the signal. Granted, it's nowhere near the noise levels of a laptop, but it's there.
Thank you. This is precisely the kind of information I feel should be in reviews of this kind, yet is usually lacking. It makes doing comparitive shopping for MP3 devices an utter nightmare.
Quick tip: If most of your coding is utter drudgery, you're doing the wrong coding.
I vastly (but politely) disagree. Most of absolutely everything work-related is utter drudgery, not just code.
...instead of wasting your life writing report after report, write report-generating tools.
But the users don't want to write reports - they have other things to do. Report writing is my job.
Now, if you're saying that I should be writing report-generating tools that I can make use of - you're right. I try to do that - most of my reports output to XML and are then formatted into csv/HTML/whatever by a set of XSL rules. But if you're saying that I should be writing software that runs reports, I have to disagree.
Point 2 I entirely agree with, and have no quibble with at all. Well except to note, as a matter of miffed pride, that I dedicate a large chunk of my development to wiping out other people's use of the copy and paste keys...:-).
In the real world, we don't go by some estimation or rigid schedule, and we wouldn't have to if not for the accountants and marketing people that have to prove their usefulness. THEY are the people who want estimates, and incredibly, they are also the people who have the least idea as to what is requred.
Not always the case. You're thinking about, essentially, a 'shrinkwrap' environment. Early/late to market and all that kind of stuff. However, a large amount of code is written in-house for in-house use only. Not software houses, but places like banks, government...basically any large institution with a fair few IT systems.
Your users there aren't developers, and many are more used to work which follows predictable patterns. That's not to say their work isn't hard or even non-technical, it's just that the nature of many tasks tends to be more predictable than that of writing code.
Most code is utter drudgery. It's predictable in an informal manner to a very high degree. These users get used to that. If you then predict three days on something, hit an actual problem and take three weeks - they will hold you to account. Your explanation at that time had better be good.
It is my impression that reviews of MP3 players, the iPod included, have typically talked about it as if it were purely some sort of mini-computer. Features alone get discussed, and that Anandtech review is no exception.
However, this is an audio device. Why so few reviews discussing its audio quality? How does it stack up to, say, a decent quality mini-disc player? Not in terms of tech features, but just quality of sound?
My own opinion? I love the look of it, and most particularly the size of it. I'm one of those who will need to wait for XPlay, but that looks to be coming along nicely. My only quibble is that I'll still need to get an FM radio - it would have been great had an FM radio been included. People still need to find out about new or different music as well as listen purely to their own collection.
However, once XPlay is publicly working with playlists and deletes, an iPod is likely to be in my pocket before the week is out...
It's kind of funny to hear the Apple marketing force extol the virtues of UNIX, when until OS9, they wouldn't have given a UNIX programmer the time of day
Well, no. Far back in the mists of time (err..1992/1995), I earned my living writing code on the Mac. One of the things we regularly used was MPW - the Macintosh Programmer's Workshop.
Now, this wasn't necessarily the most elegant thing in the world. However, it was a fairly good approximation of a Unix development environment on a Macintosh. You know - command-line make, STDIO-driven command line tools with (emulated) pipes...much porting of utils from Sun-derived sources went on too.
Point is that Apple has never, to my knowledge, been anti-Unix. It's just that until recently, Unix simply wasn't what it did.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Does this mean...
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I remember an original Star Trek episode, in which there was a conflict between two planets...
Yeah, I remember that one too. However, my conclusions were slightly different to yours. I drew the conclusion that Star Trek had lost the plot at that stage.
The war was supposed to have been going on for around five hundred years, yet in zooms Captain Kirk and in under half an hour he's sorted the situation out with a firm 'no' and a nice cup of tea.*
Did anyone else find that just a tinsy bit unrealistic...?
This is basic economics, as taught to me in my economics 'A'-Level at college in 1990. The example always given is that of a lighthouse.
A lighthouse is for the common good, but can't exist without being charged for. However, due to its nature (it just emits light), you cannot deny service to those who don't pay - they'll see light regardless of whether they've contributed.
The dilemma is - as a ship owner, you have no incentive to pay for upkeep as the service is delivered to you anyway. This works right up until the moment the lighthouse has to close, at which point it becomes in your best interest to ensure everyone pays. Note that - everyone, not just you. If only you pay, you're still at a disadvantage.
Can't remember the exact terminology they used - I think it's a form of 'free good', but I'm prepared to be corrected on that. Why these researchers felt the need to reprove a very old and established theory is beyond me.
Cheers,
Ian
PS: 'A'-Levels - the exams in the UK taken when you're about 18.
One good way to find your old posts is to search for your (old?) email address.
And/or...one good way to find your old email addresses is to search for your old posts. It came up with email addresses I'd forgotten I had, back to my University stuff.
even lossless compression still relies on...normally repeating patterns of data. surely 100-1 on TRUE random data is impossible?
However, in truly random data such patterns will exist from time to time. For example, I'm going to randomly type on my keyboard now (promise this isn't fixed...):
oqierg qjn.amdn vpaoef oqleafv z
Look at the data. No patterns. Again....
oejgkjnfv,cm v;aslek [p'wk/v,c
Now look - two occurences of 'v,c'. Patterns have occured in truly random data.
Personally, I'd tend to agree with you and consider this not possible. But I can see how patterns might crop in random data, given a sufficiently large amount of source data to work with.
There seems to be all this concern about whether people will write software if the derive no obvious benefits from it...
...Of course, at some point they start expecting you do what they want rather than just what you feel like.
That's the problem. I'll happily write software for free, and used to do exactly that. However, none of what I'll write for free has anything whatsoever to do with the drudge code for dull business tasks that is so essential in the commercial world.
I'm a commerical programmer, and write a large amount of code from which I derive zero pleasure. I also write a tiny fraction of code from which I derive some small satisfaction. Left to my own, open source devices I'd cut out the dull stuff and stick with the interesting. However, the bank I'm contracting at rather prefers me to do more of the former, because it happens to be essential to their business. And I write what they ask, or otherwise I don't get paid...
Slashdot Mirror
I think you will agree that it depends on the environment.
Yes - I think it should depend on the risk presented by change to that environment. So for example, my one-man contracting company has massive and significant risk when upgrading to a new version of Quicken. It could trash my accounts utterly for all I know - needs to be tested. Otherr changes, for example driver changes which would be murder in a large scale environment, are much easier for me to sort out.
My experience has been that most non-technical managers are extremely gun-shy about change.
Agreed (though you occasionally get a gung-ho "I read it in a magazine, here's alpha 0.01 - it's wonderful" type).
This places an inordinant burden on the sysadmins to delay patching servers or installing new software versions.
I can agree here too, particularly on the nature of security patches. However, risk must once again be borne in mind - if a non-public server has been running fine, then why introduce a patch? Public servers (or client machines with external contact, such as most email-receiving Windows desktops) should be patched much more quickly than many corporates allow, but I wouldn't necessarily put every patch onto every machine.
Cheers,
Ian
Absolutely, and I disagree with criminal charges utterly. Misconduct perhaps, and I would consider this at minimum a discplinary matter and at maximum a firing, but there's nothing criminal about what was done.
Cheers,
Ian
Who mentioned management? Had a couple of responses now saying "does management know better?". My response had nothing to do with management. Think of a developer using a source control system - an environment is managed in small, incremental changes which are commited and baselined when known to be working. An entire computing environment can be handled in much the same manner.
the parent to this shot up 3 points in ahout 2 seconds...
Yeah, have to say I was rather surprised by that too.
Cheers,
Ian
Never mentioned a 'suit'. This is a straight technical advantage - see my earlier post about knowing your deployment environment.
You know, back in the real world, sys admins are the ones who test things, install things and keep them running.
And developers are the ones who write the things that sysadmins keep running. And they need to know both their development environment and their target deployment environment. Sysadmins too - it is necessary to know what kind of 'sys' you're 'admin'ing, and unauthorised changes undermine that.
Regarding your 'real world' comment, I have been a commercial developer for about ten years now. I've worked in a four-man company and also for some of the largest financial institutions in the world. This problem is universal - keeping tight control of your environments is essential.
Cheers,
Ian
And thank god for that.
Production systems are controlled environments - last thing you need is some unaudited, unexpected and unauthorised changes messing them up.
Cheers,
Ian
Besides, on a good day you get to play "Confuse the Goose"...
Cheers,
Ian
Feathers McGraw, as far as I recall.
Cheers,
Ian
Well, if more than one person lived in the house they'd either all need a PDA, or you'd need to leave one of these constantly in the home. Otherwise, as soon as you took your PDA out of the house everyone would be scrabbling around for the original remotes again.
If you're going to leave one constantly in the house just for use as a remote, then you may as well get the Pronto for half the price.
Cheers,
Ian
It sounds as if all that's required is a standard Service Level Agreement. The kind of thing that's standard through most big corporates, and has a clause along the lines of "we guarantee 99.5% uptime, if service drops below this we pay £x.xx per quarter percent below.".
It seems that it's the refusal to provide something like this, rather than technical worries, that are underlying this dispute.
Cheers,
Ian
That way, you could call Linus "out of his tree" when advocating Alan's fork...
Cheers,
Ian
PS: No, I'm not being serious...
Maybe I do, but is your compiler equally well written? How about the port of glibc to your hardware platform?
Application software sits on an operating system and depends on OS libraries. Open source software is often compiled from scratch, and you do not have control over which compiler is used or which build of the libraries.
I would never make a guarantee that my software would operate as I expected 100% of the time, unless I had control of the deployment environment.
For example, look at the stability of games console software compared to most PC-based games. It is a genuine shock if your console game hangs on you - I can count the number of times its happend to me on the fingers of one hand, going back to my SNES-using days. The reason is that the developer is able to test in the exact environment the software will be used. This is a luxury not available to most, and I believe stability (unavoidably) suffers as a result.
Cheers,
Ian
Move to the UK. I have NTL's cable TV, cable modem service and two phone lines. Price? £72.97 per month, ie. about $102.16 (for around 30/35 channels I think).
Cheers,
Ian
Thank you. This is precisely the kind of information I feel should be in reviews of this kind, yet is usually lacking. It makes doing comparitive shopping for MP3 devices an utter nightmare.
Cheers,
Ian
I vastly (but politely) disagree. Most of absolutely everything work-related is utter drudgery, not just code.
But the users don't want to write reports - they have other things to do. Report writing is my job.
Now, if you're saying that I should be writing report-generating tools that I can make use of - you're right. I try to do that - most of my reports output to XML and are then formatted into csv/HTML/whatever by a set of XSL rules. But if you're saying that I should be writing software that runs reports, I have to disagree.
Point 2 I entirely agree with, and have no quibble with at all. Well except to note, as a matter of miffed pride, that I dedicate a large chunk of my development to wiping out other people's use of the copy and paste keys... :-).
Cheers,
Ian
Not always the case. You're thinking about, essentially, a 'shrinkwrap' environment. Early/late to market and all that kind of stuff. However, a large amount of code is written in-house for in-house use only. Not software houses, but places like banks, government...basically any large institution with a fair few IT systems.
Your users there aren't developers, and many are more used to work which follows predictable patterns. That's not to say their work isn't hard or even non-technical, it's just that the nature of many tasks tends to be more predictable than that of writing code.
Most code is utter drudgery. It's predictable in an informal manner to a very high degree. These users get used to that. If you then predict three days on something, hit an actual problem and take three weeks - they will hold you to account. Your explanation at that time had better be good.
Cheers,
Ian
However, this is an audio device. Why so few reviews discussing its audio quality? How does it stack up to, say, a decent quality mini-disc player? Not in terms of tech features, but just quality of sound?
My own opinion? I love the look of it, and most particularly the size of it. I'm one of those who will need to wait for XPlay, but that looks to be coming along nicely. My only quibble is that I'll still need to get an FM radio - it would have been great had an FM radio been included. People still need to find out about new or different music as well as listen purely to their own collection.
However, once XPlay is publicly working with playlists and deletes, an iPod is likely to be in my pocket before the week is out...
Cheers,
Ian
Well, no. Far back in the mists of time (err..1992/1995), I earned my living writing code on the Mac. One of the things we regularly used was MPW - the Macintosh Programmer's Workshop.
Now, this wasn't necessarily the most elegant thing in the world. However, it was a fairly good approximation of a Unix development environment on a Macintosh. You know - command-line make, STDIO-driven command line tools with (emulated) pipes...much porting of utils from Sun-derived sources went on too.
Point is that Apple has never, to my knowledge, been anti-Unix. It's just that until recently, Unix simply wasn't what it did.
Cheers,
Ian
Yeah, I remember that one too. However, my conclusions were slightly different to yours. I drew the conclusion that Star Trek had lost the plot at that stage.
The war was supposed to have been going on for around five hundred years, yet in zooms Captain Kirk and in under half an hour he's sorted the situation out with a firm 'no' and a nice cup of tea.*
Did anyone else find that just a tinsy bit unrealistic...?
Cheers,
Ian
* Oh alright, I made up the bit about the tea.
Perhaps they could also have nearly every single second of TV broadcast flagged as 'unwatchable'...
Cheers,
Ian
A lighthouse is for the common good, but can't exist without being charged for. However, due to its nature (it just emits light), you cannot deny service to those who don't pay - they'll see light regardless of whether they've contributed.
The dilemma is - as a ship owner, you have no incentive to pay for upkeep as the service is delivered to you anyway. This works right up until the moment the lighthouse has to close, at which point it becomes in your best interest to ensure everyone pays. Note that - everyone, not just you. If only you pay, you're still at a disadvantage.
Can't remember the exact terminology they used - I think it's a form of 'free good', but I'm prepared to be corrected on that. Why these researchers felt the need to reprove a very old and established theory is beyond me.
Cheers,
Ian
PS: 'A'-Levels - the exams in the UK taken when you're about 18.
And/or...one good way to find your old email addresses is to search for your old posts. It came up with email addresses I'd forgotten I had, back to my University stuff.
Cheers,
Ian
See? Told you it wasn't fixed. I can't even see the patterns that I've typed myself...
Cheers,
Ian
However, in truly random data such patterns will exist from time to time. For example, I'm going to randomly type on my keyboard now (promise this isn't fixed...):
oqierg qjn.amdn vpaoef oqleafv z
Look at the data. No patterns. Again....
oejgkjnfv,cm v;aslek [p'wk/v,c
Now look - two occurences of 'v,c'. Patterns have occured in truly random data.
Personally, I'd tend to agree with you and consider this not possible. But I can see how patterns might crop in random data, given a sufficiently large amount of source data to work with.
Cheers,
Ian
That's the problem. I'll happily write software for free, and used to do exactly that. However, none of what I'll write for free has anything whatsoever to do with the drudge code for dull business tasks that is so essential in the commercial world.
I'm a commerical programmer, and write a large amount of code from which I derive zero pleasure. I also write a tiny fraction of code from which I derive some small satisfaction. Left to my own, open source devices I'd cut out the dull stuff and stick with the interesting. However, the bank I'm contracting at rather prefers me to do more of the former, because it happens to be essential to their business. And I write what they ask, or otherwise I don't get paid...Cheers,
Ian
Ye gods, this is a more impressive feat than we thought. They've ported Solaris to a Lisa 2...?
Cheers,
Ian