Now I'm waiting for one of those Mt. Dew commercials to feature a pair of hackers in a dimly lit cube, their faces underlit by the screen, argueing over whether or not a mutex needs to be locked in the current thread execution.
Personally, I stopped "Do'ing the Dew" once I got a prescription for a caffiene drip.
This is true. Look it up. And we all know about the success histories of both forms of government.
Like some others here, I used to work in government contracting. What a nightmare that was. It was definately "Your Tax Dollars at Play". And with our government, your tax dollars like to play Dodgeball. On one contract, we were required to partner with one of our competitors because they qualified as a "small business" and we did not. They had almost a hundred employees. There were only eight of us. We had to split the budget 50 / 50, but we were expected to do all the manufacturing while they "managed" the project. By the time we worked out all the contract terms and budgeting stupidity (and paid a lot of money to the lawyers), we only had two months left of the original twelve to actually complete the contract and only a third of the original budget.
When a private company performs badly, you can allways take your business elsewhere or start your own company to do things properly. It can be very difficult and messy if you try to do the same thing with government.
Nasty, expensive, un-maintainable kluges ALWAYS win over the technically sweet solution...
I totally beg to differ. It depends on what the victory conditions are. If the goal is to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible with the absolute minimum of initial outlay, then kludges have a distinct advantage. At least in the short term. But that doesn't always mean they 'win'.
If the goal of the project is the project itself instead of profitability, then kludges are a distinct disadvantage. It's the "Software as Art" vs "Software as Business" thing.
Sometimes stuff done for the sake of being done well also 'wins' in the business model as well. This is usually unintentional, but take your victories as they come. The first example that comes to mind (this being Slashdot) is the Free Software movement. Granted, there are still a lot of kludges in most open source projects, but at least they're elegant kludges. Granted also, there's still a lot more Microsoft machines out there than Linux (or freeBSD or openBSD or whatever), but the numbers are growing and the game is far from over.
I don't see what the big problem is. After all, California has managed to legislate free electricity into existence from nothingness. Free network support and uptime with no employees or cash should be just a easy, given a sufficiency of lawyers and and paperwork.
Meanwhile, in the real world.....
----------
"free" in this cases does not mean "Free" as in either speech, software, or beer, but rather means "free" as in "you get what you pay for". In other words: nothing.
Modern microwaves are too well shielded and run on too tight a frequency band to really give interesting data in an experiment like this.
I want to try this with my grandparents' microwave. It's really old, but that carries with it a few "advantages". It's massively overpowered (it browns out the kitchen lights when turned on), inadequately shielded (I think the housing is bakelite), and runs just fine with the door open (I don't think they had product safety regulations when this thing was built). I've offered to buy them a brand new microwave in exchange for this beast, but no luck.
Now that I think about it, when I say "I" want to try this experiment with my grandparents' microwave, I actually mean I want a "research assistant" to try this experiment.
Slashdot Mirror
"X-Treme Programming", huh?
Now I'm waiting for one of those Mt. Dew commercials to feature a pair of hackers in a dimly lit cube, their faces underlit by the screen, argueing over whether or not a mutex needs to be locked in the current thread execution.
Personally, I stopped "Do'ing the Dew" once I got a prescription for a caffiene drip.
State Owned Industry == Communism
State Run Industry == Fascism
This is true. Look it up. And we all know about the success histories of both forms of government.
Like some others here, I used to work in government contracting. What a nightmare that was. It was definately "Your Tax Dollars at Play". And with our government, your tax dollars like to play Dodgeball. On one contract, we were required to partner with one of our competitors because they qualified as a "small business" and we did not. They had almost a hundred employees. There were only eight of us. We had to split the budget 50 / 50, but we were expected to do all the manufacturing while they "managed" the project. By the time we worked out all the contract terms and budgeting stupidity (and paid a lot of money to the lawyers), we only had two months left of the original twelve to actually complete the contract and only a third of the original budget.
When a private company performs badly, you can allways take your business elsewhere or start your own company to do things properly. It can be very difficult and messy if you try to do the same thing with government.
This is probably off topic. Bite me.
Nasty, expensive, un-maintainable kluges ALWAYS win over the technically sweet solution...
I totally beg to differ. It depends on what the victory conditions are. If the goal is to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible with the absolute minimum of initial outlay, then kludges have a distinct advantage. At least in the short term. But that doesn't always mean they 'win'.
If the goal of the project is the project itself instead of profitability, then kludges are a distinct disadvantage. It's the "Software as Art" vs "Software as Business" thing.
Sometimes stuff done for the sake of being done well also 'wins' in the business model as well. This is usually unintentional, but take your victories as they come. The first example that comes to mind (this being Slashdot) is the Free Software movement. Granted, there are still a lot of kludges in most open source projects, but at least they're elegant kludges. Granted also, there's still a lot more Microsoft machines out there than Linux (or freeBSD or openBSD or whatever), but the numbers are growing and the game is far from over.
I don't see what the big problem is. After all, California has managed to legislate free electricity into existence from nothingness. Free network support and uptime with no employees or cash should be just a easy, given a sufficiency of lawyers and and paperwork.
Meanwhile, in the real world.....
----------
"free" in this cases does not mean "Free" as in either speech, software, or beer, but rather means "free" as in "you get what you pay for". In other words: nothing.
Modern microwaves are too well shielded and run on too tight a frequency band to really give interesting data in an experiment like this.
I want to try this with my grandparents' microwave. It's really old, but that carries with it a few "advantages". It's massively overpowered (it browns out the kitchen lights when turned on), inadequately shielded (I think the housing is bakelite), and runs just fine with the door open (I don't think they had product safety regulations when this thing was built). I've offered to buy them a brand new microwave in exchange for this beast, but no luck.
Now that I think about it, when I say "I" want to try this experiment with my grandparents' microwave, I actually mean I want a "research assistant" to try this experiment.