Your argument is a straw man argument. While you can be an autodidact in most other fields, I will assert that CS has one of the highest misconceptions of applicability to career of anything you might study in college/university. There are, of course, a great many things people study in college and don't wind up using in their careers, but mostly it's because a) they don't expect to, or b) they just don't wind up getting a job in that field.
There is this great misconception that CS == Software Development, and it just ain't true. There are very few careers for and little need for computer scientists. There is a virtually unlimited need for talented software developers.
So while you're arguing about being an autodidact, the argument is about CS vs software development. It so happens that there is very little formal education available for software development, but there is a great amount of material available from the bookstore. Essentially any good software developer is an autodidact, but that's correlation, not causation.
So essentially the OP point stands. Men pulled books off the shelf, read them, wrote programs, and tinkered with and improved them to get good at software development, and the classroom or university environment had little to do with it. We found the books through word of mouth, reading articles, or just plain browsing at the bookstore. How many women go to the computer section of the bookstore, start pulling programming books off the shelf to browse, say to themselves, "Hmmm, this looks interesting," drop $200 or $300 to take home a stack of books, and then go home and not only read them but play with the sample code and write their own programs?
Yes, there are male developers who have never done this. They're the ones who suck, mostly, too. They take no interest in the field and never get better. And while I realize it's anecdotal, but I have met only one female developer who ever did this (out of say a dozen), compared with maybe 30% or 40% of the men.
This has pretty much always been the case here (or at least as long as I've been coming here, maybe 8 years or so). I come from a background where "real" programming is considered "development," as in belonging to R&D. Meaning, not part of IT. Slashdot is very skewed towards IT, that's where it started and that's the culture. And while there is occasionally "real" programming done under the auspices of IT, it's not going to be commercial application development. Back in the 90s, MFC, WIN32, COM/OLE/ActiveX was all the rage, with Java and all it's associated libraries being an up-and-comer. Ten-fifteen years ago we were still in the heyday of "application development." This was done with C/C++ and in some cases Java. At that time, over in IT they were using Perl or bash scripting to automate stuff, Perl for some CGI pages, and some guys were using VB to create internal workflow apps or using Access or FoxPro to create small office solutions or whatever.
Fast forward to today, and.NET has replaced a heckuva lot of WIN32 app development, Java has fallen off the face of the earth as a (commercial) end user app development platform, and the web has pervaded everything we do despite the.COM crash, and we're left with a little bit of the money-grubber-don't-know-shit-about-computers legacy of HTML wannabes from the boom. This decade, the new technologies, development platforms, languages, books, and so forth have been highly focused on the web. So combine the IT over R&D focus of the site with the earlier influx of non-serious workers with the dearth of exposure for "real" programming within the industry and we get all the C++ haters, Java-is-slow (based on 10 year old data) wankers, scripting-language-of-the-week acolytes to come and invade every discussion on programming. The C++ discussions are the worst. They're not usually worth the time to read the drivel. Arghh.
As for myself, I've been around the block a few times and now do a mixture of app development, low level stuff, and web stuff too. I've been programming for 25 years, but amazingly enough I didn't get on the C bandwagon until about 1990, then started working with Java and Perl around 1993, then got caught up with C++ around 1995, doing the whole MFC/WIN32 thing through the late 90s, started seeing some Linux uptake by 2000, got started with the web stack, databases and SQL (after using object databases during the late 90s, and the famous B-Tree book and library in the early 90s). Made browser plugins/ActiveX controls, started with browser JavaScript programming, and finally got into Flash around 2003. I now supervise the development of a product line that includes just about all of this. I don't supervise the web-developers. Wish I did, so I could fire them and hire people who know something. They are ignorant, knowing nothing outside of their sandbox, and have no passion for programming. In my experience, this is common--the web developers want/need everything spoon-fed to them because they have no understanding nor interest in the bigger picture, while it's the app developers (especially those of us who've been around for a bit) who read and think and get better. I'm not saying this is true across the board, just that it's common. So there you go.
For anyone who didn't catch it, this is from the Futurama episode where they deliver lug nuts to the robot world, and Bender is "captured" during the delivery, and Fry and Leela go to rescue him. In the episode, the point of the question was reversed; the robot guards used it to make sure that you *were* a robot. Fun episode. Love the "Attack of the 50 Foot Human" movie that the robots watch!
I understand that if you're going to do a time travel plot, that you can make up the rules pretty much however you like. And yes, the code on Fry's ass is supposedly "paradox free!" and that's fine; I don't mind having multiple copies of the same character running around until the time-clones are destroyed by the doom factor. Just for me, subjectively speaking on the effectiveness of the movie and plotline, I would have preferred that they had left Fry's old life alone. Where exactly Fry was situated in the past and who he interacted with weren't particularly important to the rest of the plot (excepting of course Leelu). For the average viewer not interested in the technicalities, it's just inconsistent, and explaining it won't make them like it any better (IMHO).
A number of people have commented about having lukewarm feelings for Bender's Big Score, but haven't given much of an explanation, so I'm going to take a crack at it. WARNING: Potential Spoilers! For starters, yes, there is some fan service, for about the first five minutes or so, and yes, it's only kinda funny, and annoying on repeat viewings. However, there are some really great parts to this movie, and some parts that suck really bad, and the fan service is neither. The number one problem (and IMHO only problem) with this movie is that its setup is completely, utterly moronic and very pretentious. Everything relating to SPAM should have been axed completely, or at least made very VERY minor, and a different framing device used. The visual appearance of the alien villains could have been kept, and they could even continue to be annoying, but the way that SPAM infects this plot is just LAME. And letting your framing device drag down an otherwise good movie is a massive screw-up.
That said, if you can get past your gag-reflex during the setup, the rest of the movie's pretty good. The core plot of time travel, Fry, Leela, Leelu, and Lars is a solid one. I think it would have been better if Lars hadn't lived Fry's old life, as that breaks continuity with the series, and was unnecessary for the Leelu plotline. The bits on Neptune and the Death Star sequences were great, with some amazing animation. The Hermes subplot is ok, but not great, and it displaced the far more important Amy/Kiff developments. I think that not even mentioning Amy and Kiff's relationship is a significant oversight, and I hope that is developed more in the forthcoming movies. Finally, I think having a plotline that revolves around time travel but doesn't even mention chronotons or Fry "doing the nasty in the pasty" is a big mistake. Fry being his own grandfather is one of the most important long-term plotlines from the series, and seeing as how the movie has Niblonians in it anyway, the omission is odd.
I think that Bender's Big Score was a poor choice to be the first movie to put out, given that the end of the series was so powerful, I feel that it needed to be addressed much more directly. But aside from the SPAM bits, none of my other complaints really matter that much, but since the SPAM bits kinda drag the movie down, it makes all the other flaws more noticeable.
But everybody should go out and get a copy (Today!) to ensure that we get more Futurama.
StarChild, are you now speeding amoung the stars finding your great connexion with the majesty that lies buried in mens' hearts watching and waiting to see if those you left behind will understand your message before it's too late
arthur c clarks should have been done in threes a backup seer always ready to disarm warmongering nukes from Mercury or even Imperial Earth leading us across a bridge to the heavens and a rendezvous with destiny counting the nine billion names of god as they are one and none
now we carbon based bipeds must confront childhood's end with a memory in our hearts of one who changed the world with intelligence, nobility and grace rest in peace, arthur c clarke, you will be forgotten all too soon but not for a little while yet
Alas, my friend, too few have had the privilege of the experience. Not just two of the best soundtracks but two of the best shooters. I still have them tucked away in a closet, but while my emulator will play the SuperCDs, it won't play the music. Argh!
What kind of rate of return would a venture capital firm want before funding the creation of your IP? Now, just as companies continue to make profits after their patents expire, some companies make money selling public domain works. The question isn't "How much money should I get to make?" but "When should my exclusive monopoly end?" Ignoring the practical complications of accounting gamesmanship to manipulate how much capital was really invested, the methods that any venture capital firm uses to decide whether to invest would be a good place to start. If it costs $175,000 to write the book (say, two years labor), $500,000 in initial marketing, and $500,000 for an initial print run, and you found an investor who really believed in you and the book, how much return would they want before coughing up the million and change? 10:1? 25:1? 100:1? Note that further marketing costs and further print runs are just the costs of doing business and don't need protection, because you're no longer taking a point-blank risk (you already know if you have a successful product at that point). If your monopoly protection was cut off at $30 Million for a 25:1 return on investment, I doubt that would deter very many would be authors. Of course, very, very few books ever make $30 Million. Let's say the author actually got 10% for a cool $3 Million. And if you were an established author with a record of turning a profit, you might reasonably claim that the cost of your labor has gone up. On the other hand, you're less risk, too. You might negotiate $1,000,000/year in labor, do more marketing, and make a larger initial print run, but only need a 10:1 return to make the risk worthwhile.
Then, you could apply for a copyright just like you apply for a patent, submitting appropriate accounting information, along with the terms under which you would be willing to make your work available to the public. Subject to an IRS audit, the Copyright Office could accept, reject, or make a counter-offer. Term length, amount of renewal, renewal fee escalation, profit termination, and other elements could be negotiated. If you were contemplating investing and wanting copyright protection, you might file a preemptory application with estimates the capital expenditure require. If you can't get terms you find acceptable, you don't pursue the project. If the profit auditing was too onerous, you might elect for shorter terms with more quickly escalating renewal fees. Would you rather have three year terms with exponentially increasing renewal fees, or 25 year terms with mild renewal fees but a profit cutoff? It is feasible to come up with a system that makes sense and actually works, but a one-size-fits-all model won't cut it. And if a copyright can be transfered and sold, it is not at all unreasonable to think you can come up with a dollar amount at which exclusivity cuts off.
I haven't played through the "real" Portal, but somebody linked to the flash version in an earlier story, so I snagged a copy and played through it. From what I've heard of the original, I think the flash version will actually give you more hours of gameplay. However, I must warn anybody who reads this that the flash version has some bugs that are absolutely *INFURIATING*. In particular, these bugs only show up in the really complicated levels towards the end, the last 5 or so. But that's what makes it so obnoxious--the bugs only cause problems in the puzzles that have multi-phase solutions. Basically, you have to move crates around and dump them on switches to open gates to get to the next phase of the level. But then when the levels get complicated, sometimes crates disappear and return to their starting position (about 10-20% of the time) when you send them through a portal. The problem is that you can't go back and get it (since you're now in a later phase of the puzzle), which forces you to start the whole level over again, which obviously really sucks when you're oh-so-close to finishing a really hard level. This prevented me from completing about 3 of the hardest levels, despite knowing what to do. That said, it's still a lot of fun, and definitely the closest thing to a "real" game I've seen done in Flash.
Oh, and there's 40 levels (unless there's some hidden ones I don't know about), but only about a dozen of them are interesting.
1. OR mappers like Hibernate have gotten to the point that they are quite good, so they make the value add prop of object databases less compelling.
Actually, it's that object databases just haven't kept up with technology. 10 years ago, object databases were simpler and easier to use--a significant value add--than any ORM solution that I have seen today. I worked with POET Object Database in the late 90s, and ORM solutions today seem feeble in comparison. If object databases kept up to better take advantage of introspection or meta programming, there would be no contest. BOOST type libraries for a C++ interface, or annotation possibilities in Java, or the fun and games possible in modern scripting languages, would put ORM to shame.
2. Object databases are never going to get the speed of relational databases. This is the real dealbreaker.
This is absolutely and completely false. It depends entirely on what you're doing. In particular, whether you're doing something that's kind of object based or something a little more relational... If your objects explicitly maintain their relationships to each other through pointers/references, and your goal is to occasionally look up and object and then mostly walk its reference chain, an object database will positively kill a relationally mapped version of the same thing. Sure, search times with OQL (the object version of SQL) might be slower to get the first object(s), but then walking the object graph doesn't require further queries. While "SELECT * FROM mydepedency WHERE id = 10" might be a quick query, it just doesn't stand up to *no* query. And yes, you can do joins and what not to get the dependent information up front in the first query, but even 10 years ago object databases were good about lazy lookup.
However, if the relations between the fields are more important, like if you're data mining or pulling reports rather than making an application, then yeah, the relational model will win out.
As many in this discussion have mentioned, you might use a row based DB for writes archive to a column based for reads. Similarly, you might use an object based DB for the interactive application that then dumps through to a relational db for reports and mining. Having worked with both, I can definitely say that I mostly see people using RDBMSs because that's "all there is" when they'd probably be better off using an object database. Unfortunately, while there's lots of great F/OSS RDBMSs, I don't know of any F/OSS Object DBs. But I work in an area with relatively small amounts of data where it's important that the interactive app be responsive and it's ok if the reports take a while. Meaning that I would push for a switch to an object DB in a heartbeat if I knew a good F/OSS one. We're already stuck on a niche proprietary platform, so I'm not about to recommend another one!
But still, anybody who says "my PS3 collects dust because there are no good games" has their head firmly up their ass.
You are neglecting an important point: this is slashdot. I'm not trying to say that dotters are capricious but that our tastes are, on average, not aligned with mainstream. Based on your own reference, it would be very reasonable to expect a significant number of slashdotters to think that the PS3 has no good games. There are several reasons a dotter might feel this way:
In the context of this discussion, people are talking about full retail games. StarDust and Calling All Cars don't count.
Slashdotters, on average, do not overlap with the fratboy crowd and don't share their tastes. In particular, despite significant popular appeal, sports titles are often derided around here. Any sports title therefore doesn't count, and lops off about half the the games from contention.
On average, slashdotters who have PS3s have capable gaming PCs too. For them, anything their PC can do better doesn't count. This includes all FPSs and games that have direct PC ports, in particular from this list Oblivion.
As avid gamers in general, rehashes or re-releases of games from previous generation consoles don't count. Therefore Ninja Gaiden doesn't count.
That's trimmed the list from 19 to 4 games that you might expect the average slashdotter to care about on the PS3:
Need for Speed
MotorStorm
Virtua Fighter
Tekken
See the problem here? Two racing games and two fighters, both close cousins of the sports genre popular amongst the fratboy crowd. While these genres might be considered "worth playing," they will probably struggle to be considered "good games" and almost certainly wouldn't be AAA or system sellers amongst this crowd.
So sure, the mainstream crowd might find some good games, it's not in the least bit surprising to me if slashdotters see nothing but crap.
When the whole no-expiration-date thing came up on Groklaw a couple weeks ago, I posted a similar post there. Thank you for taking the time to spell it out here on Slashdot. They key point that seems neglected again and again is that if MS is distributing GNU/Linux wrt Copyright Law by giving out the vouchers, then they need a license. As of today, that license is GPLv2, and if MS knows of any patents in any software they are distributing under GPLv2 that are not available to the whole world royalty free (perhaps patents MS itself owns?), then they are in violation of GPLv2. Anybody who owns the copyright on anything included in whatever MS is "distributing" that is licensed GPLv2 can sue MS right now for copyright violation. As you rightly pointed out, there's no way in hell MicroSoft's team of lawyers would have allowed this to happen. And if MS doesn't need GPLv2 today, then they won't need GPLv3 tomorrow. Even if somehow it turns out they need a license, at worst MS disavows GPLv3, pays some fines, and moves on. As far as I can tell, this whole expiration date thing was one of the stupidest wank-fests I've seen from the F/OSS community. And I'm a member of said community, so I really hate to see it.
Wow, thanks! Amazing how google fails you sometimes. You'd think these pages would be right at the top of any search for Nintendo's financial information, but no. Anyway, the current numbers I found there show I was a little over-optimistic regarding how much money they were stowing away in the bank and how slowly their SG&A expenses were growing. Looks like they actually have about $8 Billion in the bank (I estimated 9 to 9.5) and SG&A of $1.4 Billion (I estimated 1.1), leaving them with a little bit over 5 1/2 years worth of "keep the doors open" money in the bank. The point still stands, I think, as Nintendo still has the best ratio. I bet that the difference between my estimates and reality relate to the costs of launching the Wii. Now, all the current numbers reflect the launch costs having been absorbed (for all three companies), so next year's numbers will be very interesting.
Nintendo's warchest is peanuts compared to Sony and MS. That's what allows Sony and MS to hemorrhage at the seams; their game division is but one of many. They won't leave this game simply because that one division isn't turning a profit this quarter or year. Nintendo lives or dies by its games division since that's all it has.
Incidentally, this pretty much dictates that Nintendo has to be more conservative economically with their offerings. MS and Sony can, instead, gamble, be a bit more aggressive and hope it pays off in 3-4 years rather than next quarter.
I'm willing to bet that actually you know absolutely nothing about this. Nintendo's stock is traded over-the-counter (OTC) on American exchanges, and they do not file regulatory financial information with the SEC, not being an American company. So finding financial information about Nintendo is very difficult unless you speak Japanese. Try it: go to yahoo finance's page on them. There's like nothing there. This is why I have not invested in them, despite my enthusiasm for their business--too risky for me, trading in a company that I can't get financial info for.
The best English info I can find is here. If accurate, then Nintendo had over 7 billion in the bank at the end of fiscal 2005--two years ago. An English summary of the fiscal 2007 results are here, and they indicate the net income was 174.290 Billion yen, or roughly 1.43 Billion dollars, up from 809 Million dollars the year before. Add it all up, and it indicates that they currently have between 9 and 9.5 Billion dollars in cash. Cash. As in in the bank cash.
Now Sony's information is easier to find, so I won't provide links. Currently, Sony has about 10.5 Billion in the bank. And that's for all of Sony, keep in mind. Admittedly, Sony has a shit ton of other assets that Nintendo probably doesn't (but it's hard to say unless you read Japanese), but cash in bank is what you can spend/risk easily, which is why you brought it up. Now, Nintendo's year on year growth was 150% in operating income, while Sony saw about a 69% *decline* in operating income. In absolute numbers, Nintendo's operating income was almost 3 and a quarter times larger than Sony's (1.86 Billion dollars vs 579 Million dollars). Oops... Which means it is perfectly plausible, maybe even likely, that Nintendo will have a larger war chest than Sony within the next year. Think about that. Nintendo, who *only makes games* could have more cash in the bank than Sony.
However, MicroSoft is a different story. Even after giving out a bunch of dividends a while back, they've still got 30 some odd Billion in the bank. More importantly, though, is that their yearly revenue is *much* higher. Their operating income was a shade less than 16.5 Billion (almost nine times as much as Nintendo's) and is steadily marching upwards, though not quite as dramatically as Nintendo's. So in theory, yes, MicroSoft could give away an XBox 360 to every household in the major markets it targets that could possibly want one, say 100 Million for easy math, and let's say each cost $300 (I don't think they cost that much anymore), for 30 Billion dollars, which it has in the bank with room to spare. Problem is, they *still* wouldn't own the whole market. 100 Million free XBox 360s might kill Sony completely, but still wouldn't kill the Wii or the DS. As Nintendo shows, you can make 1 Billion a year on nothing but games--but a lot of that comes from portables, which MS doesn't offer. It would take a lot of years to make up a $30 Billion giveaway, and what happens for the next gen? Everybody's expecting a freebie, right? Seeing as how MS is already $4 Billion in the hole from the first XBox, you can understand that they're hesitant to keep hemorrhaging money on the division.
I'm not aware of any training or education specifically designed to help technical people communicate more effectively with non-technical people. You are more specifically interested in communicating with decision makers, which is far more specific than say talking to your family or non-technical friends. Being more specific in some ways makes it easier. I'm guessing that your difficulty lies not so much in not communicating technical details or ideas adequately, but not understanding the decision making process being used. One of my primary job functions is being a liaison between the technical and non-technical sides of the company, and I even talk to customers/partners who know nothing about technology. Point being, I am good at it now--I am complimented on this often--but this was not always so. Meaning that yes, it's something you can get better at.
Given that, here's what I can tell you:
1) Detail is enemy #1. Technical work has lots and lots of details to it, and we often get absorbed in them and like to talk about them. This will ruin your efforts again and again, you *must* train yourself to hold back details unless specifically asked. For example, if somebody asks what an acronym means, you probably shouldn't tell them what it stands for. Also, when pressed for details, try and give only the details relevant to your audience. For example, if somebody asks you what "WebSphere" is, do you tell them:
a) "WebSphere is a proprietary J2EE server. I recommend we go with JBoss instead since it is open source and does everything we need. It's cheaper and easier too."
b) "WebSphere is an IBM product designed for an enterprise computing environment leveraging Java technology. You might use it for serving web pages."
c) "WebSphere is one of many enterprise level, server-side Java solutions. It's a complete J2EE server, supporting all server-side Java standards, like servlets, JSPs, and enterprise java beans. It is intended to provide scalability, robustness, clustering, fail-over, up-time guarantees, and other things expected from an enterprise class product. You might choose it for the same reasons you would choose Oracle over other databases. BEA, Oracle, Sun and JBoss all provide competing products providing almost identical functionality at different price points and service levels."
All three are reasonable answers depending on the context. Does your audience want to hear "cheaper and easier" in (a), "IBM product... enterprise... leveraging" in (b), or the particulars about what enterprise-class means and mentioning competitors in (c)?
2) Decision makers often have to make decisions regarding things they do not personally know. As you have observed, this often leads to making sub-optimal decisions. In debate class, relying on an authority rather than having a good argument might get you marked down. In the real world, quoting an authority is often (maybe even usually) more important, as the decision maker might not understand the actual argument. I experienced this repeatedly and to great frustration earlier in my career, where a manager would pretend to listen to me, only to do what a more senior, trusted person recommended. In some cases there will be other hidden agendas, and often times you won't know what the decision makers parameters are. For example, you might recommend Vendor A for price/performance reasons, and the manager chooses Vendor B because B is a "safe" choice and the decision maker is in a difficult position with his or her boss.
3) This leads to: you'll need to understand the chain of command. Often times, the person that you get to talk to does not have the final say. Instead, that person has to sell the decision to other business people and the people who control the purse strings. So in some cases you are educating someone who is really just a champion, not a final decision maker. In this case, you must prep them to d
Actually, the size of the flash file (.SWF or.FLV) doesn't matter. Those are cached to disk, not in memory. But no, as I mentioned I was on Adobe's website, which does part of their site in Flash, not surprisingly. I believe (without anything to back me up at the moment) that the problem comes from the Flash/ActionScript bridge, where no JS objects ever get released or somesuch. Tellingly, on the machine that reached the 1.5 GB barrier, I do not have FlashBlock installed, which exacerbates the problem. I think Acrobat Reader also leaks memory, at least when used as a plugin in a Gecko based browser, very badly, perhaps for the same reason.
Open a bunch of tabs that use plugins. I haven't pinned it down exactly, but one time a couple weeks ago I had Firefox using 1.5 GB of RAM. Yes. GIGABYTES. I was stunned, frankly. I had a dozen tabs open, tops. I was surfing Adobe's website, Verisign's website, googled a few things, so there were a couple of Flash movies playing and a PDF loaded. One and a half freakin gigabytes. The amount of swapping caused by this resulted in much anomalous behavior, and I was forced to use task manager to terminate the process. On another computer, Seamonkey regularly uses 500+ MB, but that's in large part due to the fact that I use the mail component. It is still quite ridiculous.
As of right now, my firefox has 5 tabs open and is using about 73 MB. More revealingly, when I close 4 of them, leaving just this comment page, I'm still using 68 MB! My./ tab does have a chunk of history, but I'm quite certain that 60 or more of those 68 MB have just been leaked away. And I only opened this firefox this afternoon. It hasn't been running for very long. For what it's worth, this is 1.5.0.10. The 1.5 GB problem was on 2.whatever-the-latest-is.
Does a web developer need to know HTTP? Does a network programmer need to know the details of TCP/IP? Does a Window's application programmer need to know the ins and outs of the WIN32 API, event handling, processes, threads, handles, GDI, DirectX and others? Does a Flash programmer need to know anything about the SWF file format?
In general, does any programmer need to know low level details of the technologies they use given that they have high level libraries and abstractions to work with? The answer, IMHO: only if they want to be good at what they do. However, what you consider to be "low-level details" will vary depending on what you're doing. If you're doing J2EE, then low level details might include how different browsers handle cookies, the specifics of HTTP, how it interacts with proxies w.r.t. caching, various details of JavaScript, parameters to the VM that affect garbage collection, the internals of any frameworks you're using (like spring or hibernate), some of the details that the DBA worries about, etc. Assembly language might as well be silicon transistors. Even the details of TCP/IP are likely to be a little far afield for a web developer.
For an application developer, high level and low level are likely a different beast. Different again for a game developer. Game developer probably needs to know assembly. Network programmer or (embedded) systems programmer, yeah. Application developer, I would recommend it, especially if you're working in C/C++ world.
I want to point out a caveat here: I don't mean people should be experts in all this stuff. We have specialization for a reason. I'm talking about having a basic familiarity and comfort level working with them. It's a whole different beast debugging through some assembler vs writing 100,000 lines of it. Knowing how TCP/IP works and the general layout of the headers and packets is a different beast from writing your own TCP/IP stack. Etc.
The reasons that I recommended the oral arguments:
1) It's a nice way to get a summary of the argument, the counter-argument, and the rebuttal without wading through multiple filings.
2) As I mentioned, there's lot's of redundancy in each written filing (there's still some repitition in the oral arguments too), but thanks to the time constraints they don't repeat the arguments ad nauseum.
3) Reading the judge's reactions and comments is valuable, I find. Reading the judge when she says (to SCO's guy), "Why are you standing up? You don't get to say anything more." To which he replies, roughly, that he was hoping she'd ask his opinion, which she does not dignify with a response, IIRC, provides real entertainment!
4) Given that they're before a judge, they try and explain things somewhat more simply, with some analogies that don't make it into the written briefs.
5) Given the back-and-forth nature, and putting names with the words, I find it easier to pay attention and keep it all straight. It's also nice to know who says what as you develop a sense of each lawyers' personality, which helps as you read more transcripts.
That said, for the written versions, it's great to read the footnotes. The footnotes always have some of the most interesting material, IMHO. The oral arguments often allude to things which are explained in the footnotes, like *why* the case SCO refers to doesn't support their claim or is "inapposite." Anyway, YMMV.
Go look at the latest postings on Groklaw. There is a *ton* of redundancy between the various filings, but that's legal wrangling for ya. Anyway, if there was ever a time to actually go and read through this stuff, now's the time. I personally recommend the transcripts of the lawyers arguing the motions before the judge.
These filings show that IBM sees this whole thing was a baseless land-grab effected by a change in management. The estoppal and waiver arguments are so convincing and indisputable that you'd think a stock-holder lawsuit would be forthcoming. I mean, both Caldera and Santa Cruz had significant Linux business for significant periods of time. Presumably the shareholders held stock in part because of this. Apparently not enough to get rid of the board and management upon commencement of these shenanigans, but hopefully enough to make some noise once a verdict comes down.
In a similar vein, did SuSE stock get converted to Novell stock, or were they bought out with cash? If it got converted, then former SuSE stock holders may very well file a suit for the MS deal. Overall, in both cases, in seems curious that the stock holders seem helpless. If these companies were traditional F/OSS enemies, there'd be no surprise, but will people who bought stock in a Linux company really support being a traitor? I mean, really, these aren't people who bought stock in an oil company or GM. It's like investing in a solar power company or something you do at least in part for the principle of it.
Where I work, we set up some test servers with CentOS. We go into production mode, nobody wants to spend money, so we deploy CentOS. Time passes, our main vendor (obscure, proprietary database/appserver platform) is no longer supporting Windows anymore, so those servers must be migrated to Linux. Of course vendor only supports RHEL. Yes, this is a perfect example of the risk of propritary systems--getting hung out to dry by your vendor. Yes, we should switch to a different technology platform, I've been arguing that for years now. Nevermind why not (it's not so we can stay on Windows...), it's besides the point. We're migrating Windows servers to RHEL, and regardless of past experience with CentOS, official support is now required.
Anyway, we haven't actually done the new RHEL servers, but when we do, we want to "convert" all of our CentOS servers to RHEL. Anybody have experience with this? Do we just add the Red Hat Network or whatever to our yum repositories and update, or are there subtle package differences that make this problematic? We're running Java, so we have a number of things from 3rd party repositories, and I don't want to fall into some weird dependency hell due to subtle changes in base packages.
As an aside, I think that releasing RHEL 5 without the full open source Java stack is brain dead. Having OOTB Java support has got to be the biggest reason to buy a Linux distro ever. I guess they'll just release RHEL 5, Java Edition or some such in a few months.
This is totally off the cuff, so I have nothing to back this up, but it seems to me to be about putting the information I care about in the more prominent position. In a great many cases the specific day of the month is too fine grained and the year is too coarse, and the month is the most relevant information. Therefore, it comes first.
In the US, if you want to know what day of the month it is, you ask, "What is today?" If you ask, "What is today's date?" you'll get, "March 12th." as an answer. I know this isn't 100% consistent and probably varies regionally, but it seems like a safe generalization. So to me, it seems like a Japanese vs English kind of distinction. In Japanese, the verb comes at the end of the sentence. So in Japanese, you might say, "I Japan to a few months for am going." To us westerners, the verb seems like important information that sets the context and scope of the information that follows. Is this a result of growing up speaking this way? Probably. So the month probably seems like more important information to me because I've always heard it and said it that way.
Re:GPLv3 is going to be examined?!
on
Sun Exec Backs GPLv3
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· Score: 4, Insightful
If I had mod points, I'd mod you up. This is one of the very few intelligent posts about GPLv3 that I've seen. So many people are parroting the same bullshit negativity that it's refreshing to see someone point out the many positives of the new license. I'm still stunned by the furor created by this whole thing. Why do most people focus on incompatibility with GPLv2 rather than the great improvements in compatibility with most everything else? Another oft-overlooked element is the internationalization--making the license more resilient to different countries' laws. I think you are entirely correct that this will be the most reviewed license, and that alone will be a good reason to go with it: predictability and a reasonable assurance that it does what you think it does. I predict that 3 years from now, GPLv3 will have become the most used FOSS license, and that we will see a decrease in the number of different licenses in common use. I think that's a good thing.
While this seems to be a very America-centric discussion, I did just want to point out that in Japan, the PC-Engine (aka TurboGrafx-16) was wildly successfuly. Released in 1987 and competing against the Famicom (aka NES), the PC-Engine kicked butt. Alas, the US release came almost *2 years* after the Japanese release, giving Sega a chance to prepare the MegaDrive/Genesis. The MegaDrive kind of flopped in Japan, and many analysts at the time expected the TG16 to clean up the American market with the help of the PC-Engine's vast library of games. However, due to Nintendo's later found-to-be-illegal practices and the large number of games requiring extensive localization, not too many games wound up coming state side. There were over 1,000 PC-Engine titles released in Japan, but less than 150 TG16 games in the states. This explains why many TG16 owners played import games--with the CDROM games being region free, there were a sick number of games to try.
So, despite the relative flop of the TG16 in the US, the PC-Engine was the precursur of the Saturn and the PSX. The PCE introduced the world to what CDROMs had to offer video games, and unlike the Sega-CD (which was a poor ripoff several years later), was a smashing success with hundreds of games released. Putting the TG16 in the same category as the Jaguar or NeoGeo is completely off base--even in America, the TG16 was far more successful than either of those two. And the PC-Engine was the Playstation of it's generation and provided a crucial evolutionary link in the development of game consoles.
Not sure if replies are working right, but I'm responding to #16790369. Here's the wildcard, or the advantage that Novell has. You are correct that as soon as Microsoft sues somebody for patent infrigement, everybody, including Novell, must immediately cease distributing any GPL covered works that infringe that patent. However, Microsoft may be able to get an injunction during the patent litigation to stop all non-Novell users from *running* Linux. So while other providers like Red Hat are offering indemnity so as to cover legal costs and possibly damages, depending, non-Novell customers may be stopped cold until a non-infringing version is produced. Sure, Novell's business is dead in the water at that point along with everybody else, but they can try and drum up more business between now and then using the assurance that in the event of a lawsuit, their customers can continue business as usual. Now, what are the odds a judge would grant Microsoft an injunction that brought the economy to a grinding halt? Nill, I'm guessing. But Novell's customers might like the idea that their competitors are running Red Hat and will get shut down with an injunction. It's an odd situation, no doubt.
Slashdot Mirror
Your argument is a straw man argument. While you can be an autodidact in most other fields, I will assert that CS has one of the highest misconceptions of applicability to career of anything you might study in college/university. There are, of course, a great many things people study in college and don't wind up using in their careers, but mostly it's because a) they don't expect to, or b) they just don't wind up getting a job in that field.
There is this great misconception that CS == Software Development, and it just ain't true. There are very few careers for and little need for computer scientists. There is a virtually unlimited need for talented software developers.
So while you're arguing about being an autodidact, the argument is about CS vs software development. It so happens that there is very little formal education available for software development, but there is a great amount of material available from the bookstore. Essentially any good software developer is an autodidact, but that's correlation, not causation.
So essentially the OP point stands. Men pulled books off the shelf, read them, wrote programs, and tinkered with and improved them to get good at software development, and the classroom or university environment had little to do with it. We found the books through word of mouth, reading articles, or just plain browsing at the bookstore. How many women go to the computer section of the bookstore, start pulling programming books off the shelf to browse, say to themselves, "Hmmm, this looks interesting," drop $200 or $300 to take home a stack of books, and then go home and not only read them but play with the sample code and write their own programs?
Yes, there are male developers who have never done this. They're the ones who suck, mostly, too. They take no interest in the field and never get better. And while I realize it's anecdotal, but I have met only one female developer who ever did this (out of say a dozen), compared with maybe 30% or 40% of the men.
This has pretty much always been the case here (or at least as long as I've been coming here, maybe 8 years or so). I come from a background where "real" programming is considered "development," as in belonging to R&D. Meaning, not part of IT. Slashdot is very skewed towards IT, that's where it started and that's the culture. And while there is occasionally "real" programming done under the auspices of IT, it's not going to be commercial application development. Back in the 90s, MFC, WIN32, COM/OLE/ActiveX was all the rage, with Java and all it's associated libraries being an up-and-comer. Ten-fifteen years ago we were still in the heyday of "application development." This was done with C/C++ and in some cases Java. At that time, over in IT they were using Perl or bash scripting to automate stuff, Perl for some CGI pages, and some guys were using VB to create internal workflow apps or using Access or FoxPro to create small office solutions or whatever.
Fast forward to today, and .NET has replaced a heckuva lot of WIN32 app development, Java has fallen off the face of the earth as a (commercial) end user app development platform, and the web has pervaded everything we do despite the .COM crash, and we're left with a little bit of the money-grubber-don't-know-shit-about-computers legacy of HTML wannabes from the boom. This decade, the new technologies, development platforms, languages, books, and so forth have been highly focused on the web. So combine the IT over R&D focus of the site with the earlier influx of non-serious workers with the dearth of exposure for "real" programming within the industry and we get all the C++ haters, Java-is-slow (based on 10 year old data) wankers, scripting-language-of-the-week acolytes to come and invade every discussion on programming. The C++ discussions are the worst. They're not usually worth the time to read the drivel. Arghh.
As for myself, I've been around the block a few times and now do a mixture of app development, low level stuff, and web stuff too. I've been programming for 25 years, but amazingly enough I didn't get on the C bandwagon until about 1990, then started working with Java and Perl around 1993, then got caught up with C++ around 1995, doing the whole MFC/WIN32 thing through the late 90s, started seeing some Linux uptake by 2000, got started with the web stack, databases and SQL (after using object databases during the late 90s, and the famous B-Tree book and library in the early 90s). Made browser plugins/ActiveX controls, started with browser JavaScript programming, and finally got into Flash around 2003. I now supervise the development of a product line that includes just about all of this. I don't supervise the web-developers. Wish I did, so I could fire them and hire people who know something. They are ignorant, knowing nothing outside of their sandbox, and have no passion for programming. In my experience, this is common--the web developers want/need everything spoon-fed to them because they have no understanding nor interest in the bigger picture, while it's the app developers (especially those of us who've been around for a bit) who read and think and get better. I'm not saying this is true across the board, just that it's common. So there you go.
For anyone who didn't catch it, this is from the Futurama episode where they deliver lug nuts to the robot world, and Bender is "captured" during the delivery, and Fry and Leela go to rescue him. In the episode, the point of the question was reversed; the robot guards used it to make sure that you *were* a robot. Fun episode. Love the "Attack of the 50 Foot Human" movie that the robots watch!
I understand that if you're going to do a time travel plot, that you can make up the rules pretty much however you like. And yes, the code on Fry's ass is supposedly "paradox free!" and that's fine; I don't mind having multiple copies of the same character running around until the time-clones are destroyed by the doom factor. Just for me, subjectively speaking on the effectiveness of the movie and plotline, I would have preferred that they had left Fry's old life alone. Where exactly Fry was situated in the past and who he interacted with weren't particularly important to the rest of the plot (excepting of course Leelu). For the average viewer not interested in the technicalities, it's just inconsistent, and explaining it won't make them like it any better (IMHO).
A number of people have commented about having lukewarm feelings for Bender's Big Score, but haven't given much of an explanation, so I'm going to take a crack at it. WARNING: Potential Spoilers! For starters, yes, there is some fan service, for about the first five minutes or so, and yes, it's only kinda funny, and annoying on repeat viewings. However, there are some really great parts to this movie, and some parts that suck really bad, and the fan service is neither. The number one problem (and IMHO only problem) with this movie is that its setup is completely, utterly moronic and very pretentious. Everything relating to SPAM should have been axed completely, or at least made very VERY minor, and a different framing device used. The visual appearance of the alien villains could have been kept, and they could even continue to be annoying, but the way that SPAM infects this plot is just LAME. And letting your framing device drag down an otherwise good movie is a massive screw-up.
That said, if you can get past your gag-reflex during the setup, the rest of the movie's pretty good. The core plot of time travel, Fry, Leela, Leelu, and Lars is a solid one. I think it would have been better if Lars hadn't lived Fry's old life, as that breaks continuity with the series, and was unnecessary for the Leelu plotline. The bits on Neptune and the Death Star sequences were great, with some amazing animation. The Hermes subplot is ok, but not great, and it displaced the far more important Amy/Kiff developments. I think that not even mentioning Amy and Kiff's relationship is a significant oversight, and I hope that is developed more in the forthcoming movies. Finally, I think having a plotline that revolves around time travel but doesn't even mention chronotons or Fry "doing the nasty in the pasty" is a big mistake. Fry being his own grandfather is one of the most important long-term plotlines from the series, and seeing as how the movie has Niblonians in it anyway, the omission is odd.
I think that Bender's Big Score was a poor choice to be the first movie to put out, given that the end of the series was so powerful, I feel that it needed to be addressed much more directly. But aside from the SPAM bits, none of my other complaints really matter that much, but since the SPAM bits kinda drag the movie down, it makes all the other flaws more noticeable.
But everybody should go out and get a copy (Today!) to ensure that we get more Futurama.
StarChild, are you now speeding amoung the stars
finding your great connexion
with the majesty that lies buried in mens' hearts
watching and waiting to see if those you left behind
will understand your message before it's too late
arthur c clarks should have been done in threes
a backup seer always ready
to disarm warmongering nukes from Mercury or even Imperial Earth
leading us across a bridge to the heavens and a rendezvous with destiny
counting the nine billion names of god as they are one and none
now we carbon based bipeds must confront childhood's end
with a memory in our hearts
of one who changed the world with intelligence, nobility and grace
rest in peace, arthur c clarke, you will be forgotten all too soon
but not for a little while yet
Alas, my friend, too few have had the privilege of the experience. Not just two of the best soundtracks but two of the best shooters. I still have them tucked away in a closet, but while my emulator will play the SuperCDs, it won't play the music. Argh!
What kind of rate of return would a venture capital firm want before funding the creation of your IP? Now, just as companies continue to make profits after their patents expire, some companies make money selling public domain works. The question isn't "How much money should I get to make?" but "When should my exclusive monopoly end?" Ignoring the practical complications of accounting gamesmanship to manipulate how much capital was really invested, the methods that any venture capital firm uses to decide whether to invest would be a good place to start. If it costs $175,000 to write the book (say, two years labor), $500,000 in initial marketing, and $500,000 for an initial print run, and you found an investor who really believed in you and the book, how much return would they want before coughing up the million and change? 10:1? 25:1? 100:1? Note that further marketing costs and further print runs are just the costs of doing business and don't need protection, because you're no longer taking a point-blank risk (you already know if you have a successful product at that point). If your monopoly protection was cut off at $30 Million for a 25:1 return on investment, I doubt that would deter very many would be authors. Of course, very, very few books ever make $30 Million. Let's say the author actually got 10% for a cool $3 Million. And if you were an established author with a record of turning a profit, you might reasonably claim that the cost of your labor has gone up. On the other hand, you're less risk, too. You might negotiate $1,000,000/year in labor, do more marketing, and make a larger initial print run, but only need a 10:1 return to make the risk worthwhile.
Then, you could apply for a copyright just like you apply for a patent, submitting appropriate accounting information, along with the terms under which you would be willing to make your work available to the public. Subject to an IRS audit, the Copyright Office could accept, reject, or make a counter-offer. Term length, amount of renewal, renewal fee escalation, profit termination, and other elements could be negotiated. If you were contemplating investing and wanting copyright protection, you might file a preemptory application with estimates the capital expenditure require. If you can't get terms you find acceptable, you don't pursue the project. If the profit auditing was too onerous, you might elect for shorter terms with more quickly escalating renewal fees. Would you rather have three year terms with exponentially increasing renewal fees, or 25 year terms with mild renewal fees but a profit cutoff? It is feasible to come up with a system that makes sense and actually works, but a one-size-fits-all model won't cut it. And if a copyright can be transfered and sold, it is not at all unreasonable to think you can come up with a dollar amount at which exclusivity cuts off.
I haven't played through the "real" Portal, but somebody linked to the flash version in an earlier story, so I snagged a copy and played through it. From what I've heard of the original, I think the flash version will actually give you more hours of gameplay. However, I must warn anybody who reads this that the flash version has some bugs that are absolutely *INFURIATING*. In particular, these bugs only show up in the really complicated levels towards the end, the last 5 or so. But that's what makes it so obnoxious--the bugs only cause problems in the puzzles that have multi-phase solutions. Basically, you have to move crates around and dump them on switches to open gates to get to the next phase of the level. But then when the levels get complicated, sometimes crates disappear and return to their starting position (about 10-20% of the time) when you send them through a portal. The problem is that you can't go back and get it (since you're now in a later phase of the puzzle), which forces you to start the whole level over again, which obviously really sucks when you're oh-so-close to finishing a really hard level. This prevented me from completing about 3 of the hardest levels, despite knowing what to do. That said, it's still a lot of fun, and definitely the closest thing to a "real" game I've seen done in Flash.
Oh, and there's 40 levels (unless there's some hidden ones I don't know about), but only about a dozen of them are interesting.
This is absolutely and completely false. It depends entirely on what you're doing. In particular, whether you're doing something that's kind of object based or something a little more relational... If your objects explicitly maintain their relationships to each other through pointers/references, and your goal is to occasionally look up and object and then mostly walk its reference chain, an object database will positively kill a relationally mapped version of the same thing. Sure, search times with OQL (the object version of SQL) might be slower to get the first object(s), but then walking the object graph doesn't require further queries. While "SELECT * FROM mydepedency WHERE id = 10" might be a quick query, it just doesn't stand up to *no* query. And yes, you can do joins and what not to get the dependent information up front in the first query, but even 10 years ago object databases were good about lazy lookup.
However, if the relations between the fields are more important, like if you're data mining or pulling reports rather than making an application, then yeah, the relational model will win out.
As many in this discussion have mentioned, you might use a row based DB for writes archive to a column based for reads. Similarly, you might use an object based DB for the interactive application that then dumps through to a relational db for reports and mining. Having worked with both, I can definitely say that I mostly see people using RDBMSs because that's "all there is" when they'd probably be better off using an object database. Unfortunately, while there's lots of great F/OSS RDBMSs, I don't know of any F/OSS Object DBs. But I work in an area with relatively small amounts of data where it's important that the interactive app be responsive and it's ok if the reports take a while. Meaning that I would push for a switch to an object DB in a heartbeat if I knew a good F/OSS one. We're already stuck on a niche proprietary platform, so I'm not about to recommend another one!
You are neglecting an important point: this is slashdot. I'm not trying to say that dotters are capricious but that our tastes are, on average, not aligned with mainstream. Based on your own reference, it would be very reasonable to expect a significant number of slashdotters to think that the PS3 has no good games. There are several reasons a dotter might feel this way:
That's trimmed the list from 19 to 4 games that you might expect the average slashdotter to care about on the PS3:
See the problem here? Two racing games and two fighters, both close cousins of the sports genre popular amongst the fratboy crowd. While these genres might be considered "worth playing," they will probably struggle to be considered "good games" and almost certainly wouldn't be AAA or system sellers amongst this crowd.
So sure, the mainstream crowd might find some good games, it's not in the least bit surprising to me if slashdotters see nothing but crap.
When the whole no-expiration-date thing came up on Groklaw a couple weeks ago, I posted a similar post there. Thank you for taking the time to spell it out here on Slashdot. They key point that seems neglected again and again is that if MS is distributing GNU/Linux wrt Copyright Law by giving out the vouchers, then they need a license. As of today, that license is GPLv2, and if MS knows of any patents in any software they are distributing under GPLv2 that are not available to the whole world royalty free (perhaps patents MS itself owns?), then they are in violation of GPLv2. Anybody who owns the copyright on anything included in whatever MS is "distributing" that is licensed GPLv2 can sue MS right now for copyright violation. As you rightly pointed out, there's no way in hell MicroSoft's team of lawyers would have allowed this to happen. And if MS doesn't need GPLv2 today, then they won't need GPLv3 tomorrow. Even if somehow it turns out they need a license, at worst MS disavows GPLv3, pays some fines, and moves on. As far as I can tell, this whole expiration date thing was one of the stupidest wank-fests I've seen from the F/OSS community. And I'm a member of said community, so I really hate to see it.
Wow, thanks! Amazing how google fails you sometimes. You'd think these pages would be right at the top of any search for Nintendo's financial information, but no. Anyway, the current numbers I found there show I was a little over-optimistic regarding how much money they were stowing away in the bank and how slowly their SG&A expenses were growing. Looks like they actually have about $8 Billion in the bank (I estimated 9 to 9.5) and SG&A of $1.4 Billion (I estimated 1.1), leaving them with a little bit over 5 1/2 years worth of "keep the doors open" money in the bank. The point still stands, I think, as Nintendo still has the best ratio. I bet that the difference between my estimates and reality relate to the costs of launching the Wii. Now, all the current numbers reflect the launch costs having been absorbed (for all three companies), so next year's numbers will be very interesting.
Nintendo's warchest is peanuts compared to Sony and MS. That's what allows Sony and MS to hemorrhage at the seams; their game division is but one of many. They won't leave this game simply because that one division isn't turning a profit this quarter or year. Nintendo lives or dies by its games division since that's all it has.
Incidentally, this pretty much dictates that Nintendo has to be more conservative economically with their offerings. MS and Sony can, instead, gamble, be a bit more aggressive and hope it pays off in 3-4 years rather than next quarter.
I'm willing to bet that actually you know absolutely nothing about this. Nintendo's stock is traded over-the-counter (OTC) on American exchanges, and they do not file regulatory financial information with the SEC, not being an American company. So finding financial information about Nintendo is very difficult unless you speak Japanese. Try it: go to yahoo finance's page on them. There's like nothing there. This is why I have not invested in them, despite my enthusiasm for their business--too risky for me, trading in a company that I can't get financial info for.
The best English info I can find is here. If accurate, then Nintendo had over 7 billion in the bank at the end of fiscal 2005--two years ago. An English summary of the fiscal 2007 results are here, and they indicate the net income was 174.290 Billion yen, or roughly 1.43 Billion dollars, up from 809 Million dollars the year before. Add it all up, and it indicates that they currently have between 9 and 9.5 Billion dollars in cash. Cash. As in in the bank cash.
Now Sony's information is easier to find, so I won't provide links. Currently, Sony has about 10.5 Billion in the bank. And that's for all of Sony, keep in mind. Admittedly, Sony has a shit ton of other assets that Nintendo probably doesn't (but it's hard to say unless you read Japanese), but cash in bank is what you can spend/risk easily, which is why you brought it up. Now, Nintendo's year on year growth was 150% in operating income, while Sony saw about a 69% *decline* in operating income. In absolute numbers, Nintendo's operating income was almost 3 and a quarter times larger than Sony's (1.86 Billion dollars vs 579 Million dollars). Oops... Which means it is perfectly plausible, maybe even likely, that Nintendo will have a larger war chest than Sony within the next year. Think about that. Nintendo, who *only makes games* could have more cash in the bank than Sony.
However, MicroSoft is a different story. Even after giving out a bunch of dividends a while back, they've still got 30 some odd Billion in the bank. More importantly, though, is that their yearly revenue is *much* higher. Their operating income was a shade less than 16.5 Billion (almost nine times as much as Nintendo's) and is steadily marching upwards, though not quite as dramatically as Nintendo's. So in theory, yes, MicroSoft could give away an XBox 360 to every household in the major markets it targets that could possibly want one, say 100 Million for easy math, and let's say each cost $300 (I don't think they cost that much anymore), for 30 Billion dollars, which it has in the bank with room to spare. Problem is, they *still* wouldn't own the whole market. 100 Million free XBox 360s might kill Sony completely, but still wouldn't kill the Wii or the DS. As Nintendo shows, you can make 1 Billion a year on nothing but games--but a lot of that comes from portables, which MS doesn't offer. It would take a lot of years to make up a $30 Billion giveaway, and what happens for the next gen? Everybody's expecting a freebie, right? Seeing as how MS is already $4 Billion in the hole from the first XBox, you can understand that they're hesitant to keep hemorrhaging money on the division.
All in all, Sony
I'm not aware of any training or education specifically designed to help technical people communicate more effectively with non-technical people. You are more specifically interested in communicating with decision makers, which is far more specific than say talking to your family or non-technical friends. Being more specific in some ways makes it easier. I'm guessing that your difficulty lies not so much in not communicating technical details or ideas adequately, but not understanding the decision making process being used. One of my primary job functions is being a liaison between the technical and non-technical sides of the company, and I even talk to customers/partners who know nothing about technology. Point being, I am good at it now--I am complimented on this often--but this was not always so. Meaning that yes, it's something you can get better at.
... enterprise ... leveraging" in (b), or the particulars about what enterprise-class means and mentioning competitors in (c)?
Given that, here's what I can tell you:
1) Detail is enemy #1. Technical work has lots and lots of details to it, and we often get absorbed in them and like to talk about them. This will ruin your efforts again and again, you *must* train yourself to hold back details unless specifically asked. For example, if somebody asks what an acronym means, you probably shouldn't tell them what it stands for. Also, when pressed for details, try and give only the details relevant to your audience. For example, if somebody asks you what "WebSphere" is, do you tell them:
a) "WebSphere is a proprietary J2EE server. I recommend we go with JBoss instead since it is open source and does everything we need. It's cheaper and easier too."
b) "WebSphere is an IBM product designed for an enterprise computing environment leveraging Java technology. You might use it for serving web pages."
c) "WebSphere is one of many enterprise level, server-side Java solutions. It's a complete J2EE server, supporting all server-side Java standards, like servlets, JSPs, and enterprise java beans. It is intended to provide scalability, robustness, clustering, fail-over, up-time guarantees, and other things expected from an enterprise class product. You might choose it for the same reasons you would choose Oracle over other databases. BEA, Oracle, Sun and JBoss all provide competing products providing almost identical functionality at different price points and service levels."
All three are reasonable answers depending on the context. Does your audience want to hear "cheaper and easier" in (a), "IBM product
2) Decision makers often have to make decisions regarding things they do not personally know. As you have observed, this often leads to making sub-optimal decisions. In debate class, relying on an authority rather than having a good argument might get you marked down. In the real world, quoting an authority is often (maybe even usually) more important, as the decision maker might not understand the actual argument. I experienced this repeatedly and to great frustration earlier in my career, where a manager would pretend to listen to me, only to do what a more senior, trusted person recommended. In some cases there will be other hidden agendas, and often times you won't know what the decision makers parameters are. For example, you might recommend Vendor A for price/performance reasons, and the manager chooses Vendor B because B is a "safe" choice and the decision maker is in a difficult position with his or her boss.
3) This leads to: you'll need to understand the chain of command. Often times, the person that you get to talk to does not have the final say. Instead, that person has to sell the decision to other business people and the people who control the purse strings. So in some cases you are educating someone who is really just a champion, not a final decision maker. In this case, you must prep them to d
Actually, the size of the flash file (.SWF or .FLV) doesn't matter. Those are cached to disk, not in memory. But no, as I mentioned I was on Adobe's website, which does part of their site in Flash, not surprisingly. I believe (without anything to back me up at the moment) that the problem comes from the Flash/ActionScript bridge, where no JS objects ever get released or somesuch. Tellingly, on the machine that reached the 1.5 GB barrier, I do not have FlashBlock installed, which exacerbates the problem. I think Acrobat Reader also leaks memory, at least when used as a plugin in a Gecko based browser, very badly, perhaps for the same reason.
Open a bunch of tabs that use plugins. I haven't pinned it down exactly, but one time a couple weeks ago I had Firefox using 1.5 GB of RAM. Yes. GIGABYTES. I was stunned, frankly. I had a dozen tabs open, tops. I was surfing Adobe's website, Verisign's website, googled a few things, so there were a couple of Flash movies playing and a PDF loaded. One and a half freakin gigabytes. The amount of swapping caused by this resulted in much anomalous behavior, and I was forced to use task manager to terminate the process. On another computer, Seamonkey regularly uses 500+ MB, but that's in large part due to the fact that I use the mail component. It is still quite ridiculous.
./ tab does have a chunk of history, but I'm quite certain that 60 or more of those 68 MB have just been leaked away. And I only opened this firefox this afternoon. It hasn't been running for very long. For what it's worth, this is 1.5.0.10. The 1.5 GB problem was on 2.whatever-the-latest-is.
As of right now, my firefox has 5 tabs open and is using about 73 MB. More revealingly, when I close 4 of them, leaving just this comment page, I'm still using 68 MB! My
Does a web developer need to know HTTP? Does a network programmer need to know the details of TCP/IP? Does a Window's application programmer need to know the ins and outs of the WIN32 API, event handling, processes, threads, handles, GDI, DirectX and others? Does a Flash programmer need to know anything about the SWF file format?
In general, does any programmer need to know low level details of the technologies they use given that they have high level libraries and abstractions to work with? The answer, IMHO: only if they want to be good at what they do. However, what you consider to be "low-level details" will vary depending on what you're doing. If you're doing J2EE, then low level details might include how different browsers handle cookies, the specifics of HTTP, how it interacts with proxies w.r.t. caching, various details of JavaScript, parameters to the VM that affect garbage collection, the internals of any frameworks you're using (like spring or hibernate), some of the details that the DBA worries about, etc. Assembly language might as well be silicon transistors. Even the details of TCP/IP are likely to be a little far afield for a web developer.
For an application developer, high level and low level are likely a different beast. Different again for a game developer. Game developer probably needs to know assembly. Network programmer or (embedded) systems programmer, yeah. Application developer, I would recommend it, especially if you're working in C/C++ world.
I want to point out a caveat here: I don't mean people should be experts in all this stuff. We have specialization for a reason. I'm talking about having a basic familiarity and comfort level working with them. It's a whole different beast debugging through some assembler vs writing 100,000 lines of it. Knowing how TCP/IP works and the general layout of the headers and packets is a different beast from writing your own TCP/IP stack. Etc.
The reasons that I recommended the oral arguments:
1) It's a nice way to get a summary of the argument, the counter-argument, and the rebuttal without wading through multiple filings.
2) As I mentioned, there's lot's of redundancy in each written filing (there's still some repitition in the oral arguments too), but thanks to the time constraints they don't repeat the arguments ad nauseum.
3) Reading the judge's reactions and comments is valuable, I find. Reading the judge when she says (to SCO's guy), "Why are you standing up? You don't get to say anything more." To which he replies, roughly, that he was hoping she'd ask his opinion, which she does not dignify with a response, IIRC, provides real entertainment!
4) Given that they're before a judge, they try and explain things somewhat more simply, with some analogies that don't make it into the written briefs.
5) Given the back-and-forth nature, and putting names with the words, I find it easier to pay attention and keep it all straight. It's also nice to know who says what as you develop a sense of each lawyers' personality, which helps as you read more transcripts.
That said, for the written versions, it's great to read the footnotes. The footnotes always have some of the most interesting material, IMHO. The oral arguments often allude to things which are explained in the footnotes, like *why* the case SCO refers to doesn't support their claim or is "inapposite." Anyway, YMMV.
Go look at the latest postings on Groklaw. There is a *ton* of redundancy between the various filings, but that's legal wrangling for ya. Anyway, if there was ever a time to actually go and read through this stuff, now's the time. I personally recommend the transcripts of the lawyers arguing the motions before the judge.
These filings show that IBM sees this whole thing was a baseless land-grab effected by a change in management. The estoppal and waiver arguments are so convincing and indisputable that you'd think a stock-holder lawsuit would be forthcoming. I mean, both Caldera and Santa Cruz had significant Linux business for significant periods of time. Presumably the shareholders held stock in part because of this. Apparently not enough to get rid of the board and management upon commencement of these shenanigans, but hopefully enough to make some noise once a verdict comes down.
In a similar vein, did SuSE stock get converted to Novell stock, or were they bought out with cash? If it got converted, then former SuSE stock holders may very well file a suit for the MS deal. Overall, in both cases, in seems curious that the stock holders seem helpless. If these companies were traditional F/OSS enemies, there'd be no surprise, but will people who bought stock in a Linux company really support being a traitor? I mean, really, these aren't people who bought stock in an oil company or GM. It's like investing in a solar power company or something you do at least in part for the principle of it.
Where I work, we set up some test servers with CentOS. We go into production mode, nobody wants to spend money, so we deploy CentOS. Time passes, our main vendor (obscure, proprietary database/appserver platform) is no longer supporting Windows anymore, so those servers must be migrated to Linux. Of course vendor only supports RHEL. Yes, this is a perfect example of the risk of propritary systems--getting hung out to dry by your vendor. Yes, we should switch to a different technology platform, I've been arguing that for years now. Nevermind why not (it's not so we can stay on Windows...), it's besides the point. We're migrating Windows servers to RHEL, and regardless of past experience with CentOS, official support is now required.
Anyway, we haven't actually done the new RHEL servers, but when we do, we want to "convert" all of our CentOS servers to RHEL. Anybody have experience with this? Do we just add the Red Hat Network or whatever to our yum repositories and update, or are there subtle package differences that make this problematic? We're running Java, so we have a number of things from 3rd party repositories, and I don't want to fall into some weird dependency hell due to subtle changes in base packages.
As an aside, I think that releasing RHEL 5 without the full open source Java stack is brain dead. Having OOTB Java support has got to be the biggest reason to buy a Linux distro ever. I guess they'll just release RHEL 5, Java Edition or some such in a few months.
This is totally off the cuff, so I have nothing to back this up, but it seems to me to be about putting the information I care about in the more prominent position. In a great many cases the specific day of the month is too fine grained and the year is too coarse, and the month is the most relevant information. Therefore, it comes first.
In the US, if you want to know what day of the month it is, you ask, "What is today?" If you ask, "What is today's date?" you'll get, "March 12th." as an answer. I know this isn't 100% consistent and probably varies regionally, but it seems like a safe generalization. So to me, it seems like a Japanese vs English kind of distinction. In Japanese, the verb comes at the end of the sentence. So in Japanese, you might say, "I Japan to a few months for am going." To us westerners, the verb seems like important information that sets the context and scope of the information that follows. Is this a result of growing up speaking this way? Probably. So the month probably seems like more important information to me because I've always heard it and said it that way.
If I had mod points, I'd mod you up. This is one of the very few intelligent posts about GPLv3 that I've seen. So many people are parroting the same bullshit negativity that it's refreshing to see someone point out the many positives of the new license. I'm still stunned by the furor created by this whole thing. Why do most people focus on incompatibility with GPLv2 rather than the great improvements in compatibility with most everything else? Another oft-overlooked element is the internationalization--making the license more resilient to different countries' laws. I think you are entirely correct that this will be the most reviewed license, and that alone will be a good reason to go with it: predictability and a reasonable assurance that it does what you think it does. I predict that 3 years from now, GPLv3 will have become the most used FOSS license, and that we will see a decrease in the number of different licenses in common use. I think that's a good thing.
While this seems to be a very America-centric discussion, I did just want to point out that in Japan, the PC-Engine (aka TurboGrafx-16) was wildly successfuly. Released in 1987 and competing against the Famicom (aka NES), the PC-Engine kicked butt. Alas, the US release came almost *2 years* after the Japanese release, giving Sega a chance to prepare the MegaDrive/Genesis. The MegaDrive kind of flopped in Japan, and many analysts at the time expected the TG16 to clean up the American market with the help of the PC-Engine's vast library of games. However, due to Nintendo's later found-to-be-illegal practices and the large number of games requiring extensive localization, not too many games wound up coming state side. There were over 1,000 PC-Engine titles released in Japan, but less than 150 TG16 games in the states. This explains why many TG16 owners played import games--with the CDROM games being region free, there were a sick number of games to try.
So, despite the relative flop of the TG16 in the US, the PC-Engine was the precursur of the Saturn and the PSX. The PCE introduced the world to what CDROMs had to offer video games, and unlike the Sega-CD (which was a poor ripoff several years later), was a smashing success with hundreds of games released. Putting the TG16 in the same category as the Jaguar or NeoGeo is completely off base--even in America, the TG16 was far more successful than either of those two. And the PC-Engine was the Playstation of it's generation and provided a crucial evolutionary link in the development of game consoles.
Not sure if replies are working right, but I'm responding to #16790369. Here's the wildcard, or the advantage that Novell has. You are correct that as soon as Microsoft sues somebody for patent infrigement, everybody, including Novell, must immediately cease distributing any GPL covered works that infringe that patent. However, Microsoft may be able to get an injunction during the patent litigation to stop all non-Novell users from *running* Linux. So while other providers like Red Hat are offering indemnity so as to cover legal costs and possibly damages, depending, non-Novell customers may be stopped cold until a non-infringing version is produced. Sure, Novell's business is dead in the water at that point along with everybody else, but they can try and drum up more business between now and then using the assurance that in the event of a lawsuit, their customers can continue business as usual. Now, what are the odds a judge would grant Microsoft an injunction that brought the economy to a grinding halt? Nill, I'm guessing. But Novell's customers might like the idea that their competitors are running Red Hat and will get shut down with an injunction. It's an odd situation, no doubt.