Determine the decisions that need to be made, how they operate, what information they need to do that and how to best display that information. Nothing is worse than trying to operate a plant with a control room designed by someone who has no clue how it operates or what operator needs and as a result has a lot of cool but useless displays. Case in point - I worked on a control room design where the designers laid out nice sets of digital displays. Uncluttered, clear and totally useless during transients because you had no idea what key parameters where doing; unlike analog gauges where you could estimate max / min / average from the gauges' fluctuations.
Nor can it keep those who cant even understand they are reading a joke from posting either.
Hello?? It's funny!
Funny? Math illiteracy isn't funny; it's cost billions in failed projects and countless lives. When 1 out of 10 (50% for you math challenged/.'rs) can't understand a simple concept you've got a serious problem.
Its only in the last 200 years or so that we have had the idea that musicians should make money for a recording of their performance. Perhaps that was the real mistaken concept, and filesharing/easily created copies of musical recordings are merely bringing things back to normal.
In other words, only musicians who play the kind of music that you like to listen to should make a living at their music. Those of us who like to listen to music that cannot be easily or cheaply played at live performances should be out of luck.
Not really - they could still try to sell their music; and if enough people wanted it they make a living. If not, then they either do it because they want to or find something else. If the market is too small to sustain them then they have to decide whether producing music simply for the joy of it is karmic enough. Quite frankly, if it isn't easily played live but popular you should see a surge in downloads and increase share of the levy for such artists.
Unfortunately the law does not allow judges to keep stupid people off of juries. Some kind of anti discrimination thing...
Plus remember the Average IQ is 100, that means 2 out of 5 people are below 100 IQ and are therefore Morons. we cant discriminate against 2/3rds of the population.
Unfortunately/. Keep math impaired people from posting. The average does not tell you 2 out of 5 are below it; in fact it tells you nothing about the distribution of the population.
A friend of mine came up with a name for the group of people who drive in these kinds of passively inconsiderate ways, impeding everyone's forward progress.
He calls them "The Anti-destination League"
That slogan has at least been in use since the 70's when Car and Driver used it.
'I hope it's the last. Books are one of the last refuges in our world from the constant cry by advertisers to spend money and fill our lives with unnecessary things.'"
True, but most people aren't willing to pay for that. As someone else pointed out; publishers could sell ad-free and give away ad supported versions. Any bets on which ones will be the most popular?
The infected computer was one being used by mechanics to enter maintenance log entries. According to the article, an alert is supposed to be raised if three failures in the same part or subsystem occurred. If I understand the broken English correctly, they would have taken the plane out of service had the maintenance log entry been completed before the plane attempted to take off.
But, the problem that was supposed to be logged was reportedly an overheated pitot tube. That was not the cause of the crash: the report says that the pilots did not set the flaps correctly and a warning alarm did not go off. This was not related to the problem with the computer being used by mechanics.
The article appears to be trying to link two independent events: a separate problem with the plane and an error by the pilots. Or maybe it's just the broken English translation.
Very true - the accident appears to have been the result of a series of crew errors that lead to an improper takeoff condition:
From Wikipedia: On 17 August 2009, CIAIAC released an interim report on the incident [21]. The interim report confirmed the preliminary report's conclusion that the crash was caused by an attempt to take off with the flaps and slats retracted, which constituted an improper configuration, and noted that safeguards that should have prevented the crash failed to do so. The cockpit recordings revealed that the pilots omitted the "set and check the flap/slat lever and lights" item in the After Start checklist. In the Takeoff Imminent verification checklist the copilot just repeats the flaps and slats correct values without actually checking them, as shown by the physical evidence. All three safety barriers provided to avoid the takeoff in an inappropriate configuration were defeated: the configuration checklist, the confirm and verify checklist, and aircraft warning system (TOWS).
Had they not made a series of compounding errors the flight probably would have been uneventful; it appears the deactivated systems was not related to the crash. It may be that some other systems were improperly set - ground vs flight mode - which caused problems and may have contributed to the accident; but none are related to the maintenance computer. Should the plane have been grounded due to an early problem? Maybe; but that may not have prevented the errors that lead to the crash.
We'll never know what the pilots were thinking; but having aborted one takeoff they may have assumed, intentionally or not, that they systems were set for takeoff and did a cursory check as a result; I've seen that happen in other industries where checklists are used. You interrupt the expected course of actions and people simply pick up where they left off, without assuring the systems were properly set for operation.
But even if a farmer deliberately cross-bred the seeds (and clearly, not all farmers involved did this): Shouldn't he be allowed to do whatever he wants with the seeds he bought? If Monsanto doesn't want buyers of their seeds to cross-breed them, why don't they create a product that doesn't offer that feature?
Actually, Monsanto's contract with farmers who buy the seed precludes them from using it as a seed crop. By deliberately cross - breeding crops with Monsanto's genes farmers violate the patent; whether such patents should be allowed is another issue.
That feels kind of like jailbreaking an iPhone to me; Apple doesn't want me to do it and they won't offer support if I do it, but that doesn't mean it should be illegal for me to do it.
Just as you own your iPhone, farmers own the seed they buy - and can do what they want with that batch; grow it, eat it, feed it to cattle, let it rot. But, just as you can't take the iOS in your iPhone and sell iPhone clones; farmers can't raise future generations from Monsanto patented seed.
When I was in grad school, the ability to speak to a professor, who was an acknowledged expert in his field, ask questions and bounce ideas off of him were what I really paid for.
Then your professor can idle on your school's IRC server and do what you paid for over instant/msg.
Right. Let me guess - you don't know many professors, do you?
Seriously, IRC or other electronic communications mediums are no substitute for the interaction you get face - to face. You simply cannot get the same level of social interaction and feedback that you get face to face. Not to mention the ability to walk to the lab and try something, real time, under the guidance of an expert.
Only a small fraction of what people learn at a college is from the lectures. Most of the rest comes from being in actual contact with other people.
Exactly. Gates is confusing information with education. If classroom education could be replaced by non-traditional means; books and VCRs would have done that years ago.
The real value, as you point out, is in the interaction with professors and fellow students. When I was in grad school, the ability to speak to a professor, who was an acknowledged expert in his field, ask questions and bounce ideas off of him were what I really paid for. No amount of web based lectures can replace that as a learning experience.
Monsanto suing farmers and winning, etc) are getting to be unacceptable.
In fairness to Monsanto, the farmer, in the case I am familiar with, deliberately used patented strains that cross pollinated his crop to provide seeds for next years crop. While we can agree that the patent system is broken in many ways; preventing someone else from using your invention without your permission is exactly what it's meant to do. Now, should genetically engineered things be patentable? - that's another issue.
Troll seems to have become the/. way of saying "I don't like what the poster said but I'm too stupid / lazy to think up a decent response so I'll use my mod points to shout down the poster." Sigh...
You're absolutely right, and let me add to your point. A "free" market is one where every supplier (and consumer) can compete equally. Which means that there has to be some mechanism for stopping one player from becoming more equal than the others, which in turn means a large legal structure to protect the market from being overrun by strong-arm tactics and uncompetitive acts by those players who become (much) larger than the rest.
If regulation didn't exist, the market would devolve into a few monopolists running things, which would in no way be "free". Get over it: free market requires regulation
I would disagree with the "equally" - at least beyond creating a level playing field on which to compete; which does not mean everyone has equal success. If one competitor is more successful the role of government is not to knock them back down to everyone else's level. Rather, it's to ensure they do not exercise market power to the detriment of the consumer. What is meant by detriment can be argued as naseum - if they price so low as to keep others out, then consumer benefits from cheaper prices but competitors are driven from the market. As a consumer, I like lower prices as long as once prices goes up new companies are free to enter.
The problem is not that there is a patent system, per se, but that the system we have is patently insane.
Yes, our current system is a prime example of how entrenched competitors use government regulation to their advantage to limit competition; while a patent system is intended to do just that (limit competition for a set period) our current one is more of a set of weapons to wield against new competitors to ensure they don't enter the market so the entrenched competitors can do business as usual.
If you let business be you don't have a patent system. A patent system is a state-granted monopoly, the exact opposite of what the free market stands for.
Not really - even some of the most ardent free market advocates I've known acknowledge government has a role in providing a legal structure under which a free market can flourish. As one put it "we're not anarchists."
You're confusing a free market with looneytarianism.
The answer as in an expert system software is not to entirely rely on it, but use it as a tool in your arsenal to help you do the job. Yes a computer can't figure every conceivable option in most circumstances, but neither can a human, the key is they my both come up with solutions unique to one another.
ACH is not an expert system but rather an analytic approach to conducting analysis of information; in this case intelligence information. Richard Heuer's "Psychology of Intelligence Analysis" is the classic text on ACH.
So rather than pay for your own security, you prefer to let everyone else pay for it after your house has been robbed. How very philanthropic of you.
You betray your lack of understanding of simple economics. The insurance company isn't interested in subsidizing you. They will charge (to the very best of their penny pinching knowledge) exactly what they expect to pay out in claims, to a person with similar income, living in a similar apartment, in a similar neighborhood -- plus a comfortable markup for their trouble.
Actually, they can pay out more in claims and still make money - premiums represent a cash flow stream that can be invested; the profits from the investments can cover excess losses. That make sit advantageous to charge a little less and get more customers since you can make more money than if you exactly match premiums to losses plus desired profits.
If you choose a homeowner's policy with a sensibly high deductible, then you're covered for catastrophic losses (the only really necessary role of insurance, for anyone with a shred of financial sense), but you're not on the hook for the (rather silly) folks who think that an insurance policy should protect them from anything and everything unfortunate that might ever happen to them. Not only that, by choosing such a sensible policy, you're also only sharing your risk with similarly sensible people.
Here's where your understanding of economics is somewhat faulty. You present this as a financial, not economic, decision. Insurance is a classic case of information asymmetry.Insurance companies allow various deductibles to let the homeowner signal their understanding of the risks they face - a person who buys a low deductible policy signals a belief or behavior that makes a loss more likely and thus must pay a higher premium. Higher deductibles, with much lower premiums, encourages behaviors to limit risk. While some people may be very risk adverse or financially stupid; most can assess risks unknown to the insurer and chose an appropriate deductible.
Well you know what they say, the grade C lawyers work for the government while the grade A lawyers work for everyone else. As someone remarked about on another site, you almost had to wonder why the FBI picked this little fights, and if someone mistakenly thought Wikipedia was somehow related to the now infamous Wikileaks. Even just reading the FBI's correspondence you can tell they're seriously out of their depth.
A grade lawyers often start with government work before they move on. The problem is not getting them; it's keeping them once they gain enough experience to command serious money in the private sector. that is not unique to lawyers; others start with the government and then move on to greener pastures.
We were talking about eliminating programmers. Read it again with that in mind.
I realize that - but your comment:
Computerized A/B testing of user interfaces with the designer (whoever is creating the 'program')
appears to simply interchange designer with programmer. If you by 'designer' you mean someone with actual human interface design experience, then your idea makes sense.
I just had another thought... Computerized A/B testing of user interfaces with the designer (whoever is creating the 'program') being the initial tester could be quite useful if automated, especially if the computer can react appropriately to the designer's feedback. Again, a long way off, I think.
I hope it's a long way off. In my experience, the programmer is the last one you want to create, or test the "user-friendliness," of an interface. Programmers tend to think like programmers and not really understand user needs. For example, I worked on a digital control system design project, and for the control displays the programmers created a lot of digital gauge displays; and screens where you could call up historical data. They were quite surprised when we insisted on digital presentations of analog gauges and chart recorders for many parameters because the digital gauges were useless for actually controlling the system during transients (the numbers change too fast to develop a feel for what happening; unlike an analog gauge where you can readily determine max, min and average values). They either disagreed with, or we failed to make clear, the spec that said "reproduce the following instruments. To them, growing up in a digital era and never have operated a plant, digital was simply the way to display data.
Programmers can be eliminated just as soon as business users are capable of grasping the FULL logic of all of their various processes so they can create an automation system with no technical or process-oriented expertise required. In other words, when hell freezes over.
Programming and process-oriented expertise are two very different things.
The process piece determines the how and what; it gets to the fundamentals of what is used to generate output. Programing takes that and creates a tool, based on a prescribed set of parameters, that produces a defined output.
The latter lends itself to automation and a reduction in the number of programmers needed as a result; as tools evolve demand for certain types of programming skills decreases. That doesn't mean programmers will become obsolete; but what they do and where they are employed will change dramatically. Nor does it mean the former can't be automated; but the need to understand what is the desired outcome lends itself more to requiring cognitive skills that are harder to automate.
Working in an industry that uses process expertise and programming expertise, I can say anecdotally process expertise has a higher value because the process types tend to be more senior and higher paid than the programmers; indicating it is more of a commodity which is more easily found.
>>>But my laserdisk holds the proof that Han shot first.
George Lucas re-released that laserdisc on DVD. It's much better quality (480p digital out, not 480i analog NTSC or PAL), so you might want to upgrade?
HAPPY 25th AMIGA - Just 0.007 GHz 0.0005 GB for this amazing video: youtube.com/watch?v=5-JFJ8Hjo_g - PC/MAC can't do it
Apple just released a new MacPro - so you might want to upgrade?
Slashdot Mirror
Determine the decisions that need to be made, how they operate, what information they need to do that and how to best display that information. Nothing is worse than trying to operate a plant with a control room designed by someone who has no clue how it operates or what operator needs and as a result has a lot of cool but useless displays. Case in point - I worked on a control room design where the designers laid out nice sets of digital displays. Uncluttered, clear and totally useless during transients because you had no idea what key parameters where doing; unlike analog gauges where you could estimate max / min / average from the gauges' fluctuations.
Nor can it keep those who cant even understand they are reading a joke from posting either.
Hello?? It's funny!
Funny? Math illiteracy isn't funny; it's cost billions in failed projects and countless lives. When 1 out of 10 (50% for you math challenged /.'rs) can't understand a simple concept you've got a serious problem.
Its only in the last 200 years or so that we have had the idea that musicians should make money for a recording of their performance. Perhaps that was the real mistaken concept, and filesharing/easily created copies of musical recordings are merely bringing things back to normal. In other words, only musicians who play the kind of music that you like to listen to should make a living at their music. Those of us who like to listen to music that cannot be easily or cheaply played at live performances should be out of luck.
Not really - they could still try to sell their music; and if enough people wanted it they make a living. If not, then they either do it because they want to or find something else. If the market is too small to sustain them then they have to decide whether producing music simply for the joy of it is karmic enough. Quite frankly, if it isn't easily played live but popular you should see a surge in downloads and increase share of the levy for such artists.
Unfortunately the law does not allow judges to keep stupid people off of juries. Some kind of anti discrimination thing...
Plus remember the Average IQ is 100, that means 2 out of 5 people are below 100 IQ and are therefore Morons. we cant discriminate against 2/3rds of the population.
Unfortunately /. Keep math impaired people from posting. The average does not tell you 2 out of 5 are below it; in fact it tells you nothing about the distribution of the population.
A friend of mine came up with a name for the group of people who drive in these kinds of passively inconsiderate ways, impeding everyone's forward progress.
He calls them "The Anti-destination League"
That slogan has at least been in use since the 70's when Car and Driver used it.
'I hope it's the last. Books are one of the last refuges in our world from the constant cry by advertisers to spend money and fill our lives with unnecessary things.'"
True, but most people aren't willing to pay for that. As someone else pointed out; publishers could sell ad-free and give away ad supported versions. Any bets on which ones will be the most popular?
Yeah, I know it's a little crazy to suggest looking at what it being patented instead of reading the article summary...
Nah, this /.; where reality need not intrude on forming an opinion without RTFA.
The infected computer was one being used by mechanics to enter maintenance log entries. According to the article, an alert is supposed to be raised if three failures in the same part or subsystem occurred. If I understand the broken English correctly, they would have taken the plane out of service had the maintenance log entry been completed before the plane attempted to take off.
But, the problem that was supposed to be logged was reportedly an overheated pitot tube. That was not the cause of the crash: the report says that the pilots did not set the flaps correctly and a warning alarm did not go off. This was not related to the problem with the computer being used by mechanics.
The article appears to be trying to link two independent events: a separate problem with the plane and an error by the pilots. Or maybe it's just the broken English translation.
Very true - the accident appears to have been the result of a series of crew errors that lead to an improper takeoff condition:
From Wikipedia: On 17 August 2009, CIAIAC released an interim report on the incident [21]. The interim report confirmed the preliminary report's conclusion that the crash was caused by an attempt to take off with the flaps and slats retracted, which constituted an improper configuration, and noted that safeguards that should have prevented the crash failed to do so. The cockpit recordings revealed that the pilots omitted the "set and check the flap/slat lever and lights" item in the After Start checklist. In the Takeoff Imminent verification checklist the copilot just repeats the flaps and slats correct values without actually checking them, as shown by the physical evidence. All three safety barriers provided to avoid the takeoff in an inappropriate configuration were defeated: the configuration checklist, the confirm and verify checklist, and aircraft warning system (TOWS).
Had they not made a series of compounding errors the flight probably would have been uneventful; it appears the deactivated systems was not related to the crash. It may be that some other systems were improperly set - ground vs flight mode - which caused problems and may have contributed to the accident; but none are related to the maintenance computer. Should the plane have been grounded due to an early problem? Maybe; but that may not have prevented the errors that lead to the crash.
We'll never know what the pilots were thinking; but having aborted one takeoff they may have assumed, intentionally or not, that they systems were set for takeoff and did a cursory check as a result; I've seen that happen in other industries where checklists are used. You interrupt the expected course of actions and people simply pick up where they left off, without assuring the systems were properly set for operation.
But even if a farmer deliberately cross-bred the seeds (and clearly, not all farmers involved did this): Shouldn't he be allowed to do whatever he wants with the seeds he bought? If Monsanto doesn't want buyers of their seeds to cross-breed them, why don't they create a product that doesn't offer that feature?
Actually, Monsanto's contract with farmers who buy the seed precludes them from using it as a seed crop. By deliberately cross - breeding crops with Monsanto's genes farmers violate the patent; whether such patents should be allowed is another issue.
That feels kind of like jailbreaking an iPhone to me; Apple doesn't want me to do it and they won't offer support if I do it, but that doesn't mean it should be illegal for me to do it.
Just as you own your iPhone, farmers own the seed they buy - and can do what they want with that batch; grow it, eat it, feed it to cattle, let it rot. But, just as you can't take the iOS in your iPhone and sell iPhone clones; farmers can't raise future generations from Monsanto patented seed.
When I was in grad school, the ability to speak to a professor, who was an acknowledged expert in his field, ask questions and bounce ideas off of him were what I really paid for.
Then your professor can idle on your school's IRC server and do what you paid for over instant /msg.
Right. Let me guess - you don't know many professors, do you?
Seriously, IRC or other electronic communications mediums are no substitute for the interaction you get face - to face. You simply cannot get the same level of social interaction and feedback that you get face to face. Not to mention the ability to walk to the lab and try something, real time, under the guidance of an expert.
Only a small fraction of what people learn at a college is from the lectures. Most of the rest comes from being in actual contact with other people.
Exactly. Gates is confusing information with education. If classroom education could be replaced by non-traditional means; books and VCRs would have done that years ago.
The real value, as you point out, is in the interaction with professors and fellow students. When I was in grad school, the ability to speak to a professor, who was an acknowledged expert in his field, ask questions and bounce ideas off of him were what I really paid for. No amount of web based lectures can replace that as a learning experience.
Monsanto suing farmers and winning, etc) are getting to be unacceptable.
In fairness to Monsanto, the farmer, in the case I am familiar with, deliberately used patented strains that cross pollinated his crop to provide seeds for next years crop. While we can agree that the patent system is broken in many ways; preventing someone else from using your invention without your permission is exactly what it's meant to do. Now, should genetically engineered things be patentable? - that's another issue.
And this was marked "troll"?
Troll seems to have become the /. way of saying "I don't like what the poster said but I'm too stupid / lazy to think up a decent response so I'll use my mod points to shout down the poster." Sigh...
You're absolutely right, and let me add to your point. A "free" market is one where every supplier (and consumer) can compete equally. Which means that there has to be some mechanism for stopping one player from becoming more equal than the others, which in turn means a large legal structure to protect the market from being overrun by strong-arm tactics and uncompetitive acts by those players who become (much) larger than the rest.
If regulation didn't exist, the market would devolve into a few monopolists running things, which would in no way be "free". Get over it: free market requires regulation
I would disagree with the "equally" - at least beyond creating a level playing field on which to compete; which does not mean everyone has equal success. If one competitor is more successful the role of government is not to knock them back down to everyone else's level. Rather, it's to ensure they do not exercise market power to the detriment of the consumer. What is meant by detriment can be argued as naseum - if they price so low as to keep others out, then consumer benefits from cheaper prices but competitors are driven from the market. As a consumer, I like lower prices as long as once prices goes up new companies are free to enter.
Google buys Verizon, spins off what they don't want.
(snip)
The problem is not that there is a patent system, per se, but that the system we have is patently insane.
Yes, our current system is a prime example of how entrenched competitors use government regulation to their advantage to limit competition; while a patent system is intended to do just that (limit competition for a set period) our current one is more of a set of weapons to wield against new competitors to ensure they don't enter the market so the entrenched competitors can do business as usual.
If you let business be you don't have a patent system. A patent system is a state-granted monopoly, the exact opposite of what the free market stands for.
Not really - even some of the most ardent free market advocates I've known acknowledge government has a role in providing a legal structure under which a free market can flourish. As one put it "we're not anarchists."
You're confusing a free market with looneytarianism.
The answer as in an expert system software is not to entirely rely on it, but use it as a tool in your arsenal to help you do the job. Yes a computer can't figure every conceivable option in most circumstances, but neither can a human, the key is they my both come up with solutions unique to one another.
ACH is not an expert system but rather an analytic approach to conducting analysis of information; in this case intelligence information. Richard Heuer's "Psychology of Intelligence Analysis" is the classic text on ACH.
So rather than pay for your own security, you prefer to let everyone else pay for it after your house has been robbed. How very philanthropic of you.
You betray your lack of understanding of simple economics. The insurance company isn't interested in subsidizing you. They will charge (to the very best of their penny pinching knowledge) exactly what they expect to pay out in claims, to a person with similar income, living in a similar apartment, in a similar neighborhood -- plus a comfortable markup for their trouble.
Actually, they can pay out more in claims and still make money - premiums represent a cash flow stream that can be invested; the profits from the investments can cover excess losses. That make sit advantageous to charge a little less and get more customers since you can make more money than if you exactly match premiums to losses plus desired profits.
If you choose a homeowner's policy with a sensibly high deductible, then you're covered for catastrophic losses (the only really necessary role of insurance, for anyone with a shred of financial sense), but you're not on the hook for the (rather silly) folks who think that an insurance policy should protect them from anything and everything unfortunate that might ever happen to them. Not only that, by choosing such a sensible policy, you're also only sharing your risk with similarly sensible people.
Here's where your understanding of economics is somewhat faulty. You present this as a financial, not economic, decision. Insurance is a classic case of information asymmetry.Insurance companies allow various deductibles to let the homeowner signal their understanding of the risks they face - a person who buys a low deductible policy signals a belief or behavior that makes a loss more likely and thus must pay a higher premium. Higher deductibles, with much lower premiums, encourages behaviors to limit risk. While some people may be very risk adverse or financially stupid; most can assess risks unknown to the insurer and chose an appropriate deductible.
Watt? I didn't see anything?
Well you know what they say, the grade C lawyers work for the government while the grade A lawyers work for everyone else. As someone remarked about on another site, you almost had to wonder why the FBI picked this little fights, and if someone mistakenly thought Wikipedia was somehow related to the now infamous Wikileaks. Even just reading the FBI's correspondence you can tell they're seriously out of their depth.
A grade lawyers often start with government work before they move on. The problem is not getting them; it's keeping them once they gain enough experience to command serious money in the private sector. that is not unique to lawyers; others start with the government and then move on to greener pastures.
We were talking about eliminating programmers. Read it again with that in mind.
I realize that - but your comment:
Computerized A/B testing of user interfaces with the designer (whoever is creating the 'program')
appears to simply interchange designer with programmer. If you by 'designer' you mean someone with actual human interface design experience, then your idea makes sense.
I just had another thought... Computerized A/B testing of user interfaces with the designer (whoever is creating the 'program') being the initial tester could be quite useful if automated, especially if the computer can react appropriately to the designer's feedback. Again, a long way off, I think.
I hope it's a long way off. In my experience, the programmer is the last one you want to create, or test the "user-friendliness," of an interface. Programmers tend to think like programmers and not really understand user needs. For example, I worked on a digital control system design project, and for the control displays the programmers created a lot of digital gauge displays; and screens where you could call up historical data. They were quite surprised when we insisted on digital presentations of analog gauges and chart recorders for many parameters because the digital gauges were useless for actually controlling the system during transients (the numbers change too fast to develop a feel for what happening; unlike an analog gauge where you can readily determine max, min and average values). They either disagreed with, or we failed to make clear, the spec that said "reproduce the following instruments. To them, growing up in a digital era and never have operated a plant, digital was simply the way to display data.
Programmers can be eliminated just as soon as business users are capable of grasping the FULL logic of all of their various processes so they can create an automation system with no technical or process-oriented expertise required. In other words, when hell freezes over.
Programming and process-oriented expertise are two very different things.
The process piece determines the how and what; it gets to the fundamentals of what is used to generate output. Programing takes that and creates a tool, based on a prescribed set of parameters, that produces a defined output.
The latter lends itself to automation and a reduction in the number of programmers needed as a result; as tools evolve demand for certain types of programming skills decreases. That doesn't mean programmers will become obsolete; but what they do and where they are employed will change dramatically. Nor does it mean the former can't be automated; but the need to understand what is the desired outcome lends itself more to requiring cognitive skills that are harder to automate.
Working in an industry that uses process expertise and programming expertise, I can say anecdotally process expertise has a higher value because the process types tend to be more senior and higher paid than the programmers; indicating it is more of a commodity which is more easily found.
What dumbasses at the FBI and in the financial industry:
"The list of target organizations will not include any financial, government, educational, or health care organizations;"
Why? Because the division at the FBI responsible for cyber crimes asks what they plan to do? And then is satisfied by the answer?
I hope they also send an agent to learn and take back ideas on what works to help companies avoid issues.
>>>But my laserdisk holds the proof that Han shot first.
George Lucas re-released that laserdisc on DVD. It's much better quality (480p digital out, not 480i analog NTSC or PAL), so you might want to upgrade?
HAPPY 25th AMIGA - Just 0.007 GHz 0.0005 GB for this amazing video: youtube.com/watch?v=5-JFJ8Hjo_g - PC/MAC can't do it
Apple just released a new MacPro - so you might want to upgrade?