I read as much as I can stand to while trying to configure something. I read readme files, install guides, man pages -- anything I can get. Then I Google if it still won't work. I'll spend six or so hours trying to tinker until something works. Only after I've just had enough will I go to a forum. I've done that one time in the last six months.
You're an expert user. When is the last time your parents or grandparents spent 6 or so hours trying to work out how to do something on a computer. If this is the expected standard it's attrocious and it's no wonder at all that end users are turning away from Linux even if it is free.
Here's how to help someone who asks a trivial question: 1) If you think it's a stupid question, hold your tongue and move on. 2) If they sound like they can handle it point them to the manual. If you have time to the right part of the manual. 3) If they don't sound like they can handle it and you have the time give them the answer - not everyone who wants to use a computer wants to be a guru. Add a reference to where you got your information in case they do decide to persue it.
The RTFM attitude has nothing to do with Linux itself by the way. This is a problem of the types of people Linux seems to attract in droves. People with no manners or interpersonal skills but lots of time and brain power to tinker and who like to compensate by showing off their mental prowess. There's just no excuse for being rude and/or unpleasant to a stranger if all they've done to you is ask a question (let alone when that question isn't even specifically addressed to you!)
Why do we have to start with humans in space, isn't it a much better idea to start making colonies with animals?
Human beings are animals. What's more they're the only animal I know of that's capable of using tools to create colonies. Yes you can do a lot with robots but if you want to send out living things they better be able to think and build for themselves.
In the last few centuries they didn't send chickens to colonize countries you know.
Perhaps tech workers are in a different situation, but until I got my current job (six weeks ago), food and rent was consuming more than half of my wages, and I was making better money than most people I know. Think of someone on minimum wage, making $8/hr working 30 hours/wk in Montreal, where rent is likely to cost you $300-400, food is likely to cost $100 if you're lucky, public transit is another $70, heating is $100/mo in winter, and in a bad month, you're suddenly paying $700 in recurring bills on $960/mo before taxes. I'm finally in a situation where food and shelter isn't taking the vast majority of my wages, and I'm breathing a lot easier because of it.
Good for you. But take a look at what you had even then that the Chinese sweat shop worker doesn't have: 1) The ability to invite a friend over. 2) Probably more electronics than you can poke a stick at. (I KNOW you have access to a computer). 3) The ability to choose where you live. (Perhaps even somewhere cheaper, or boarding). 4) The ability to go looking for better work with minimal fear of reprisal (Your employer probably doesn't own your accomodation).
Now also consider you're happier out of the situation you describe. No one should have to live like you did, let alone in worse conditions.
I read an article a week or so ago where someone mentioned that these sweat shops are welcomed by the local populace. Instead of selling their daughters into prostitution, people can get jobs at these factories, earning more money than they'd ever dreamed of, feeding their families well, and being far better off than they ever hoped, because of the huge disparity between our cost of living and theirs.
That's a convenient fantasy for a sweat shop owner to sell you. It's not reality. You can't have a family if you're not even allowed to have guests in your room. You can't even meet someone to marry if you're working 15hrs/day every day.
As for prostitution, yes that's a different form of slavery (virtual or actual). The fact that it's repulsive doesn't make other forms less repulsive.
These jobs are highly prized, and everyone wants their crack at them.
That's hideously badly worded. I don't see you wanting to trade in your lifestyle for your crack at making iPods for a pitance.
By our standards, they're not fantastic, and it would be great if we could pay them all $20k/yr for their work, but think of what would happen if we did.
Yes, think how expensive your music player might be. Think of the poor business that couldn't afford to exist if it couldn't find a way to enslave people.
If we paid these people wages that are 'acceptable' by North American standards, without thinking about what the local income is, then the entire economical balance in the area would be destroyed.
Boo hoo. Economy would take time to reorganise. People might not be able to buy iPods for a while.
Suddenly, you would have people making tens or hundreds of times more than anyone else in their area, bringing in huge amounts of income
I don't think anyone's arguing you take one factory and boost the worker's wages to the exclusion of all other workers.
With the market prices in the areas, the people would have no normal outlet for their expenditures, so they would either end up buying up all the land, farms, and businesses in the area, or just stockpiling money.
Yes, the people might actually even get to own the land they live on. Imagine that!
Great for the banks, bad for inflation. When market prices begin to rise because the income of these nouveau riche is destroying the balance, everyone who doesn't have one of these jobs is going to be SOL, because they won't be able to afford the cost of living in this new economy.
That's a fantastic argument for having a minimum wage. Imagine that too!
So before you make judgements for Apple contracting out to a company that hires a poor populace, take the time to fin
Poor is still poor, and takes away opportunities. (At the very least travel to wealthier countries becomes unaffordable for all but the wealthiest). We shouldn't be aspiring to everyone having low wages just because they live in a country where they can still buy food and modest clothing. This isn't a good thing, and I do wish people would stop making statements that implies it is. people should be able to work hard and actually get ahead, not just have a roof where they aren't allowed visitors, and have just enough for food and some shoddy clothing.
50% of your pay on room and board is pretty reasonable.
You either 1) Don't earn much or 2) You're paying way too much for rent/mortgage or 3) You're living beyond your means or 4) You're living in your own slave labour conditions and figure if you do so should everyone else have to.
I'm guessing it's not 4 because you can afford to blog on/.
What fraction of your wage goes to rent? Anything more than about a third, given that you have other expenses, is ridiculous.
And not having visitors can be a bonus if you're a young single gal worried about her virtue (which I'm told actually happens in China;-))
Your attitude is amazing. I bet you wouldn't like it if you were told you were never allowed to entertain friends at your home. That is if you have any friends given your attitude. Perhaps you think she should spend the remaining $25 this month on a chastitity belt too?
And compare this to old U.S. "mining towns" where between rent and the company store for food you spent 90% of your income on room and board, it's really quite good.
Yeah that's something to aspire to.
Get a clue. Having an ever increasing portion of the world's people living in worse and worse conditions isn't a good thing. Pointing to someone worse off as part of an argument that bad conditions actually aren't so bad just means you're happy for conditions to continue to go down hill.
So bitter... It is among the most vicious personal name-calling I've been lucky enough to experience in a very long time.
Oh honestly what did you expect? Your argument was that my point of view was invalid, and my opinion irrelevant, because I'm not an engineer. I studied computer science for goodness sake. This is much more my field than yours. If you tell someone they have no right to give an opinion on the area they've studied and make a living out of, do expect some retaliation.You most definitely earnt being called arrogant and rude. If you've done this before and haven't had any it's probably because whoever you did it to decided you were not worth the time.
art1 (ärt) pronunciation n.
5. A nonscientific branch of learning; one of the liberal arts.
Oh come on, you had to go to the 5th dictionary definition, which actually uses the word that's being defined as part of the definition to back your argument. Very poor and very weak. I notice the definition of engineering is the very first one.
For the very small number of ground-breaking research areas in information technology, the philosophies of engineering are less important. Once these areas mature, engineering should be more important.
Oh no engineering - being aware of and using the laws of nature to ensure what you're building will work are always important if you're building something. I never said they weren't. I never said ignore the science and engineering. What I said was both art and science are imporant. Science has it's limits and is a tool. What can't be done by adhering to strict rules can often be done using techniques and heuristics best described as art.
You can observe the political and social climate of the stakeholders for the system you're building and make design choices - make the system flexible - based on what you think the future needs of the system will be. There is no science that can predict human interaction this well. It is definitely more an art than a science. Science/Engineering requires you adhere to strict rules. The closest science here is pyschology and I'll tell you it's no where near as effective as having a good software engineer follow their gut.
Once again you've ignored the vast majority of what I've said
My original point was that designing software systems was an engineering discipline, not an art-form.
And my point was that it's so complex and strewn with human factors that you can't rely on engineering alone. The science and engineering are necessary but the design when faced with a multitude of equally technically valid choices comes down to predicting how the system will grow and evolve. There's some science on that but it's incomplete and hard to apply.
You countered, saying it was scary that I believe that.
Yes. It's very scary you think you can apply pure theory that way. You're either inexperienced, or an academic or both.
Then you made some pointless statements about flying and bridge building.
They were only pointless in that they were lost on you.
By pointless, I mean that flying is not at ALL similar to designing a functional system, and that designing a bridge is a very well-established form of engineering. No sane person would hire a "bridge artist" to determine the thickness of the beams needed in a bridge.
That's right. You use the science to determine thickness of the beam or you get a bridge that collapses. You use an ARCHITECT to choose one of the many designs that will fit into the landscape well and be aesthetically appealing.
See now that wasn't so pointless was it.
Since there wasn't much point in arguing with your pointless analogies, I backed up my previous statement with some examples of why the artist mindset is the wrong one for software design.
And you've not countered a single argument I've made. All you've done is state that they're pointless.
You countered again saying I should have attacked your argument.
Yes and you still haven't.
It seems you and I have vastly different ideas of what art and engineering are.
This isn't a problem of definitions. That's just a poor attempt at distraction. In any case if it was an issue of definitions, you could try giving me your definition, but you haven't even bothered to do that. A dictionary would solve that problem for you.
I have studied engineering, and you have not. For this reason, I think my ideas are more credible than yours. I will repeat them, if you like
I work as a software engineer you insulting fool. I've done a computer science degree. I'm much more qualified than you to be speaking about software. Saying something this stupid reflects badly on you. Your attitude in general stinks - people are allowed to have an opinion regardless of their qualifications.
Also I'd get my money back on an education that doesn't teach you how to make a coherent argument without trying to distract from the fact that you don't have one.
The artist strives for things like originality and creativity.
If that were true there wouldn't be such things as schools of art. You do realise there's scientific technique to art as well don't you. You don't just pick up a paint brush and paint a masterpiece. You learn how different techniques with your brush give different results etc. and apply that. Art and science are not nearly as separate as you make out.
The engineer strives for predictable, repeatable, systems-oriented designs.
So does a good artist. A good painter might paint the same scence 10 different ways, experimenting with different techniques.
Those are very different goals. Some creativity is required when engineering, but it is not a goal by itself.
No they're not. You seem to have something hard wired in your brain that says creativity and applying fixed well known techniques are mutually exclusive. That's just nonesense. Leonardo Divinci was both an artist and a scientist and he's not the only one. Have a look at some of his mechanical designs if you think art and science are mutually exclusive. one design prempts the invention of the helicopter.
People don't behave logically when it comes to sex. Most of the people using these services couldn't get a date over the course of a month if their lives depended on it. These are the kinds of fools that will continue to spend money in the hope that maybe the next service will be better.
They will vote themselves out of the gene pool. The free market (on its own) doesn't work because it assumes people have the time, intelligence and information to make good choices.
If you choose to make the "free market" and ideal capitalism your religion that's your choice, but saying something is so when I see clear evidence that it isn't won't convince me.
So did you study engineering? I'm thinking no. I think you missed the word "engineering" in my first post.
Fuck I hate that about/. and newsgroups and the Internet in general. What do you know about my goddamn background besides what I've told you? No i haven't studied engineering. My degrees are in Computer Science and Astronomy. Guess what people without the same background as yourself are entitled to an opinion.
But go ahead and be a code artist. Do things in creative ways instead of using the known-best ways. Ignore engineering principles. The file is your canvas. (rest of rant removed)
Did you even read anything I wrote? I said science was REQUIRED but on it's own it wasn't enough. The art in building programs is not in making them clever or creative. The art is in making design the correct design choices - so that the code can evolve with changes in the needs of the user (which you have to predict to some extent), but without making it so flexible that it's complexity is the epitomy of the phrase over engineered.
Next time try arguing against the actual argument posted for christ sake instead of going on about how superior you are because you use engineering principles which I've supposedly shunned (when I said no such goddamn thing).
Nothing useful, I'm afraid. In theory it's great but don't hold your breath. Any author would have to download an OWL editor, understand the editor, understand the formal language used, and then code up his/her article in OWL using the EXPO distionary, and submit it (in electronic form) along with his article. Good luck to you authors!
Scientific authors have been doing this runaround for years with this product
You're not finding anything because there's not much there. At the moment, from what I can tell, it's just a single XML file with a.OWL extension - a description of a file format. Now the New Scientist article may have more or perhaps they just haven't released more yet, but the reason you're not finding stuff is that there's not much to find on the web just now.
The good old functional vs procedural language debate again.
Let me say straight out that I hate functional languages. I think they're ass backwards. I prefer to actually tell the computer what to do than have it work out which way is best to do it, get it wrong at least 20% of the time, try to work out how to express the same thing slight differently to force different behaviour, and iterate this process till you have something somewhat acceptable.
That said, SQL is very very powerful. The trouble I find though is that once you hit a brick wall you hit it hard. You suddenly end up with a query that's not going to do what you want without wrapping it in procedural code or rewriting it so that its original purpose is not at all clear from the code (thereby adding to a maintenance nightmare).
Procedural languages (and I include object oriented languages since they're procedural languages "wrapped" with objects) are a much more natural way to express a list of steps to execute - which is generally how most people program. Also, we commit the cardinal sin of mixing procedural languages with functional and end up with such nonesense as the object relational mapping problem, then write entire frameworks to glue the two together.
Very very few things beyond a basic theoretical physics or chemistry problem can be solved with pure science. Science is the start. You can't play ball just because you know the laws of physics. I'll use one of my favourite analogies. A good aircraft pilot has more than just a grasp of the physics and mechanics of his aircraft, airspace procedures etc. It's definitely as much art as science and the best pilots don't do everything by numbers or rules. Another example: Bridge building. There might be 10 types of bridge that will solve your technical problems of getting cars across a stretch of water but the engineers and architects have to be mindful of the surroundings, and get a feel for what the place is like and what people will want to see built - at least the good ones will.
It is the same with database design. You have to have a good deal of intuition about what the database will be used (and misused) for. You have to make tradeoffs between efficiency, space and redundancy that each have advantages or disadvantages.
Science is crucial and there's no excuse for not having a good understanding of the science behind your chosen profession, but it's just the beginning. If you choose to think I'm just a smelly art student with a penchant for computers, think again. I have a Masters in Astronomy.
Re:Cheaper isn't everything
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The Art of SQL
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That's all very nice if you have the money to spare. If you don't the choice becomes whether to buy the book at the faceless megastore or support your local bookshop. I love books and don't want to see them disappear but I'm not about to put my local bookstore on my list of charities - unless they can provide something the megastore can't I'll have to support the megastore.
Of course I much prefer my books online, in a format that's no encumbered by DRM. I don't care if the book has no ISBN, so long as it's from a credible source. The entire publishing industry doesn't much support the author. I liken it to RIAA/MPAA.
To resolve this dilema we need to invoke the Twins Paradox.
Suppose a Linux server and a Win2k3 server were first commissioned on the same day. Now suppose we launch the Linux box on a 2 year round trip voyage that reaches speeds a significant fraction of the speed of light in a vacuum. When the Linux server returns its clock, which was slowed by the relitivistic effects of acceleration during the journey will report 20% less uptime on its clock (or is it the Win2k3 box that has 20% more - who cares - point made).
Now all we need to do is solve for what the maximum speed and acceleration our hardware can take, invent the technology, and then the article is perfectly true. Einstein would be so proud.
The free market is full of boneheads with more money than sense. As opposed to government?
So your idea when something doesn't work is to replace it with something else that doesn't work and say "there, better"???
I hate fools who insist governments can't be efficient. Just look at what governments do with sufficient motivation in wartime. We can no more afford to throw up our arms and say "we give up, let market forces decide" than we can afford to let incompetent gibbons run the show.
For example, if Yahoo dating service is able to block 98% of scammers, while Match.com is only able to block 75%, then who should win?
Whoever's got the most pretty shinny flashing pictures on their front page.
Free market my backside. You're assuming the free market, in this case made up of socially inept losers and naive twits, is going to rationally and wisely choose the best service offered. That is just one of the many problems with letting a free market do everything for you. The free market is full of boneheads with more money than sense.
...and that is the heart of it - you have to let the application that created the binary do the diff, and make your repository nothing more than a dumb repository for binary. Otherwise you put everything but the kitchen sink into the repository software. If you really want something that works, you also have to design your client (binary producing) software so it can accept two files and display the sensibly.
Of course people instead decide to use markup for everything (whether that markup is XML or LaTex is a trivial point). Markup languages have their place, but replacing everything binary just isn't it and the sooner the IT community understands that the sooner we'll be out of this self imposed XML hell.
You're arguing that everything should be encoded in text, which is patently absurd.
Problem is whether it's plain text or readable if diff isn't human readable it really doesn't matter that it's text.
Good example would be a large 3D model. Yes you could encode it in plain text (say VRML..those were the days) but then if you did a change between two significantly different versions of a VRML model your diff would be hundreds of pages of gibberish. A quick look in a VRML modeller would tell you roughly what had changed though.
There's also the issue of efficiency. I know the current craze is to encode everything as text with markup (XML etc) but you can lose orders of magnitude of efficiency doing that. That's one reason VRML never took off by the way - encoding in text made the modellers and viewers so big, slow and heavy that no one used them, while game companies continued to use binary formats and continued to progress (in terms of the graphics complexity anyway).
I'm glad LaTex works for you. More power to you. But keep that abomination away from me. I'd love to see a WYSIWYG editor that could also fall back to markup if you wanted to do something clever. However there's a very good reason WYSIWYG is so popular. You can actually see what you're doing whereas with LaTex you have to imagine and/or engineer the result - time and mental effort better expended on the content.
I'd use LaTex with a graphical interface. If it wasn't so expensive I'd have tried Scientific Word and Scientific Workplace when doing my Astro degree a few years back.
The problem isn't keeping revisions. Yes CVS and other tools do that well for many applications. The problem is that the tools to compare say two versions of an Excel spreadsheet that live in CVS are poor. Same with any other specialised application. CVS only knows about CVS - it doesn't have tools for comparing Excel spreadsheets or anything else. Now Excel has the tools for doing so but they're not convenient. At some point it was decided it was easier to put a comparison tool of versions right into the program than to add integration for a set number of source control tools and force users to use those tools.
Put more simply, CVS is very very good for text comparison since it has good diff integration. (Consequently only bother to have a setting to keep a single backup file of your last revision in case you screw up). It's a nightmare for binary comparison of files of various formats. Think about small changes your 300 meg cad files, not just someone's toy spreadsheet. CVS and other non-application aware repository software store the whole file again (not just a couple of meg change log), and to compare the files you need to pull both versions out of CVS, then use an application capable of doing the comparison. What's more there's no possibility of undoing those changes one step at a time (whereas you can build the application to do that).
Now you may argue it makes life less convenient to have literally thousands of applications keeping their own histories, but there's definitely a need for it. I'd argue that we need better standards regarding how binary history is kept within an application.
Microsoft flight simulator 2004 with 4 full screen windows running. I could easily use something like this, and I'd need an incredibly beefy CPU as well.
Slashdot Mirror
I read as much as I can stand to while trying to configure something. I read readme files, install guides, man pages -- anything I can get. Then I Google if it still won't work. I'll spend six or so hours trying to tinker until something works. Only after I've just had enough will I go to a forum. I've done that one time in the last six months.
You're an expert user. When is the last time your parents or grandparents spent 6 or so hours trying to work out how to do something on a computer. If this is the expected standard it's attrocious and it's no wonder at all that end users are turning away from Linux even if it is free.
Here's how to help someone who asks a trivial question:
1) If you think it's a stupid question, hold your tongue and move on.
2) If they sound like they can handle it point them to the manual. If you have time to the right part of the manual.
3) If they don't sound like they can handle it and you have the time give them the answer - not everyone who wants to use a computer wants to be a guru. Add a reference to where you got your information in case they do decide to persue it.
The RTFM attitude has nothing to do with Linux itself by the way. This is a problem of the types of people Linux seems to attract in droves. People with no manners or interpersonal skills but lots of time and brain power to tinker and who like to compensate by showing off their mental prowess. There's just no excuse for being rude and/or unpleasant to a stranger if all they've done to you is ask a question (let alone when that question isn't even specifically addressed to you!)
"Losing my Commission"
...oh no they paid too much,
That's me in the corner,
That's me in the spotlight,
Losing my commission,
I didn't get enough
Why do we have to start with humans in space, isn't it a much better idea to start making colonies with animals?
Human beings are animals. What's more they're the only animal I know of that's capable of using tools to create colonies. Yes you can do a lot with robots but if you want to send out living things they better be able to think and build for themselves.
In the last few centuries they didn't send chickens to colonize countries you know.
Perhaps tech workers are in a different situation, but until I got my current job (six weeks ago), food and rent was consuming more than half of my wages, and I was making better money than most people I know. Think of someone on minimum wage, making $8/hr working 30 hours/wk in Montreal, where rent is likely to cost you $300-400, food is likely to cost $100 if you're lucky, public transit is another $70, heating is $100/mo in winter, and in a bad month, you're suddenly paying $700 in recurring bills on $960/mo before taxes. I'm finally in a situation where food and shelter isn't taking the vast majority of my wages, and I'm breathing a lot easier because of it.
Good for you. But take a look at what you had even then that the Chinese sweat shop worker doesn't have:
1) The ability to invite a friend over.
2) Probably more electronics than you can poke a stick at. (I KNOW you have access to a computer).
3) The ability to choose where you live. (Perhaps even somewhere cheaper, or boarding).
4) The ability to go looking for better work with minimal fear of reprisal (Your employer probably doesn't own your accomodation).
Now also consider you're happier out of the situation you describe. No one should have to live like you did, let alone in worse conditions.
I read an article a week or so ago where someone mentioned that these sweat shops are welcomed by the local populace. Instead of selling their daughters into prostitution, people can get jobs at these factories, earning more money than they'd ever dreamed of, feeding their families well, and being far better off than they ever hoped, because of the huge disparity between our cost of living and theirs.
That's a convenient fantasy for a sweat shop owner to sell you. It's not reality. You can't have a family if you're not even allowed to have guests in your room. You can't even meet someone to marry if you're working 15hrs/day every day.
As for prostitution, yes that's a different form of slavery (virtual or actual). The fact that it's repulsive doesn't make other forms less repulsive.
These jobs are highly prized, and everyone wants their crack at them.
That's hideously badly worded. I don't see you wanting to trade in your lifestyle for your crack at making iPods for a pitance.
By our standards, they're not fantastic, and it would be great if we could pay them all $20k/yr for their work, but think of what would happen if we did.
Yes, think how expensive your music player might be. Think of the poor business that couldn't afford to exist if it couldn't find a way to enslave people.
If we paid these people wages that are 'acceptable' by North American standards, without thinking about what the local income is, then the entire economical balance in the area would be destroyed.
Boo hoo. Economy would take time to reorganise. People might not be able to buy iPods for a while.
Suddenly, you would have people making tens or hundreds of times more than anyone else in their area, bringing in huge amounts of income
I don't think anyone's arguing you take one factory and boost the worker's wages to the exclusion of all other workers.
With the market prices in the areas, the people would have no normal outlet for their expenditures, so they would either end up buying up all the land, farms, and businesses in the area, or just stockpiling money.
Yes, the people might actually even get to own the land they live on. Imagine that!
Great for the banks, bad for inflation. When market prices begin to rise because the income of these nouveau riche is destroying the balance, everyone who doesn't have one of these jobs is going to be SOL, because they won't be able to afford the cost of living in this new economy.
That's a fantastic argument for having a minimum wage. Imagine that too!
So before you make judgements for Apple contracting out to a company that hires a poor populace, take the time to fin
Poor is still poor, and takes away opportunities. (At the very least travel to wealthier countries becomes unaffordable for all but the wealthiest). We shouldn't be aspiring to everyone having low wages just because they live in a country where they can still buy food and modest clothing. This isn't a good thing, and I do wish people would stop making statements that implies it is. people should be able to work hard and actually get ahead, not just have a roof where they aren't allowed visitors, and have just enough for food and some shoddy clothing.
50% of your pay on room and board is pretty reasonable.
/.
;-))
You either
1) Don't earn much or
2) You're paying way too much for rent/mortgage or
3) You're living beyond your means or
4) You're living in your own slave labour conditions and figure if you do so should everyone else have to.
I'm guessing it's not 4 because you can afford to blog on
What fraction of your wage goes to rent? Anything more than about a third, given that you have other expenses, is ridiculous.
And not having visitors can be a bonus if you're a young single gal worried about her virtue (which I'm told actually happens in China
Your attitude is amazing. I bet you wouldn't like it if you were told you were never allowed to entertain friends at your home. That is if you have any friends given your attitude. Perhaps you think she should spend the remaining $25 this month on a chastitity belt too?
And compare this to old U.S. "mining towns" where between rent and the company store for food you spent 90% of your income on room and board, it's really quite good.
Yeah that's something to aspire to.
Get a clue. Having an ever increasing portion of the world's people living in worse and worse conditions isn't a good thing. Pointing to someone worse off as part of an argument that bad conditions actually aren't so bad just means you're happy for conditions to continue to go down hill.
So bitter... It is among the most vicious personal name-calling I've been lucky enough to experience in a very long time.
Oh honestly what did you expect? Your argument was that my point of view was invalid, and my opinion irrelevant, because I'm not an engineer. I studied computer science for goodness sake. This is much more my field than yours. If you tell someone they have no right to give an opinion on the area they've studied and make a living out of, do expect some retaliation.You most definitely earnt being called arrogant and rude. If you've done this before and haven't had any it's probably because whoever you did it to decided you were not worth the time.
art1 (ärt) pronunciation
n.
5. A nonscientific branch of learning; one of the liberal arts.
Oh come on, you had to go to the 5th dictionary definition, which actually uses the word that's being defined as part of the definition to back your argument. Very poor and very weak. I notice the definition of engineering is the very first one.
For the very small number of ground-breaking research areas in information technology, the philosophies of engineering are less important. Once these areas mature, engineering should be more important.
Oh no engineering - being aware of and using the laws of nature to ensure what you're building will work are always important if you're building something. I never said they weren't. I never said ignore the science and engineering. What I said was both art and science are imporant. Science has it's limits and is a tool. What can't be done by adhering to strict rules can often be done using techniques and heuristics best described as art.
You can observe the political and social climate of the stakeholders for the system you're building and make design choices - make the system flexible - based on what you think the future needs of the system will be. There is no science that can predict human interaction this well. It is definitely more an art than a science. Science/Engineering requires you adhere to strict rules. The closest science here is pyschology and I'll tell you it's no where near as effective as having a good software engineer follow their gut.
Once again you've ignored the vast majority of what I've said
I guess I missed your point.
I guess you still do.
My original point was that designing software systems was an engineering discipline, not an art-form.
And my point was that it's so complex and strewn with human factors that you can't rely on engineering alone. The science and engineering are necessary but the design when faced with a multitude of equally technically valid choices comes down to predicting how the system will grow and evolve. There's some science on that but it's incomplete and hard to apply.
You countered, saying it was scary that I believe that.
Yes. It's very scary you think you can apply pure theory that way. You're either inexperienced, or an academic or both.
Then you made some pointless statements about flying and bridge building.
They were only pointless in that they were lost on you.
By pointless, I mean that flying is not at ALL similar to designing a functional system, and that designing a bridge is a very well-established form of engineering. No sane person would hire a "bridge artist" to determine the thickness of the beams needed in a bridge.
That's right. You use the science to determine thickness of the beam or you get a bridge that collapses. You use an ARCHITECT to choose one of the many designs that will fit into the landscape well and be aesthetically appealing.
See now that wasn't so pointless was it.
Since there wasn't much point in arguing with your pointless analogies, I backed up my previous statement with some examples of why the artist mindset is the wrong one for software design.
And you've not countered a single argument I've made. All you've done is state that they're pointless.
You countered again saying I should have attacked your argument.
Yes and you still haven't.
It seems you and I have vastly different ideas of what art and engineering are.
This isn't a problem of definitions. That's just a poor attempt at distraction. In any case if it was an issue of definitions, you could try giving me your definition, but you haven't even bothered to do that. A dictionary would solve that problem for you.
I have studied engineering, and you have not. For this reason, I think my ideas are more credible than yours. I will repeat them, if you like
I work as a software engineer you insulting fool. I've done a computer science degree. I'm much more qualified than you to be speaking about software. Saying something this stupid reflects badly on you. Your attitude in general stinks - people are allowed to have an opinion regardless of their qualifications.
Also I'd get my money back on an education that doesn't teach you how to make a coherent argument without trying to distract from the fact that you don't have one.
The artist strives for things like originality and creativity.
If that were true there wouldn't be such things as schools of art. You do realise there's scientific technique to art as well don't you. You don't just pick up a paint brush and paint a masterpiece. You learn how different techniques with your brush give different results etc. and apply that. Art and science are not nearly as separate as you make out.
The engineer strives for predictable, repeatable, systems-oriented designs.
So does a good artist. A good painter might paint the same scence 10 different ways, experimenting with different techniques.
Those are very different goals. Some creativity is required when engineering, but it is not a goal by itself.
No they're not. You seem to have something hard wired in your brain that says creativity and applying fixed well known techniques are mutually exclusive. That's just nonesense. Leonardo Divinci was both an artist and a scientist and he's not the only one. Have a look at some of his mechanical designs if you think art and science are mutually exclusive. one design prempts the invention of the helicopter.
It's real simple.
People don't behave logically when it comes to sex. Most of the people using these services couldn't get a date over the course of a month if their lives depended on it. These are the kinds of fools that will continue to spend money in the hope that maybe the next service will be better.
They will vote themselves out of the gene pool. The free market (on its own) doesn't work because it assumes people have the time, intelligence and information to make good choices.
If you choose to make the "free market" and ideal capitalism your religion that's your choice, but saying something is so when I see clear evidence that it isn't won't convince me.
So did you study engineering? I'm thinking no. I think you missed the word "engineering" in my first post.
/. and newsgroups and the Internet in general. What do you know about my goddamn background besides what I've told you? No i haven't studied engineering. My degrees are in Computer Science and Astronomy. Guess what people without the same background as yourself are entitled to an opinion.
Fuck I hate that about
But go ahead and be a code artist. Do things in creative ways instead of using the known-best ways. Ignore engineering principles. The file is your canvas. (rest of rant removed)
Did you even read anything I wrote? I said science was REQUIRED but on it's own it wasn't enough. The art in building programs is not in making them clever or creative. The art is in making design the correct design choices - so that the code can evolve with changes in the needs of the user (which you have to predict to some extent), but without making it so flexible that it's complexity is the epitomy of the phrase over engineered.
Next time try arguing against the actual argument posted for christ sake instead of going on about how superior you are because you use engineering principles which I've supposedly shunned (when I said no such goddamn thing).
Nothing useful, I'm afraid. In theory it's great but don't hold your breath. Any author would have to download an OWL editor, understand the editor, understand the formal language used, and then code up his/her article in OWL using the EXPO distionary, and submit it (in electronic form) along with his article. Good luck to you authors!
Scientific authors have been doing this runaround for years with this product
You're not finding anything because there's not much there. At the moment, from what I can tell, it's just a single XML file with a .OWL extension - a description of a file format. Now the New Scientist article may have more or perhaps they just haven't released more yet, but the reason you're not finding stuff is that there's not much to find on the web just now.
The good old functional vs procedural language debate again.
Let me say straight out that I hate functional languages. I think they're ass backwards. I prefer to actually tell the computer what to do than have it work out which way is best to do it, get it wrong at least 20% of the time, try to work out how to express the same thing slight differently to force different behaviour, and iterate this process till you have something somewhat acceptable.
That said, SQL is very very powerful. The trouble I find though is that once you hit a brick wall you hit it hard. You suddenly end up with a query that's not going to do what you want without wrapping it in procedural code or rewriting it so that its original purpose is not at all clear from the code (thereby adding to a maintenance nightmare).
Procedural languages (and I include object oriented languages since they're procedural languages "wrapped" with objects) are a much more natural way to express a list of steps to execute - which is generally how most people program. Also, we commit the cardinal sin of mixing procedural languages with functional and end up with such nonesense as the object relational mapping problem, then write entire frameworks to glue the two together.
The scary thing is that you truely believe this.
Very very few things beyond a basic theoretical physics or chemistry problem can be solved with pure science. Science is the start. You can't play ball just because you know the laws of physics. I'll use one of my favourite analogies. A good aircraft pilot has more than just a grasp of the physics and mechanics of his aircraft, airspace procedures etc. It's definitely as much art as science and the best pilots don't do everything by numbers or rules. Another example: Bridge building. There might be 10 types of bridge that will solve your technical problems of getting cars across a stretch of water but the engineers and architects have to be mindful of the surroundings, and get a feel for what the place is like and what people will want to see built - at least the good ones will.
It is the same with database design. You have to have a good deal of intuition about what the database will be used (and misused) for. You have to make tradeoffs between efficiency, space and redundancy that each have advantages or disadvantages.
Science is crucial and there's no excuse for not having a good understanding of the science behind your chosen profession, but it's just the beginning. If you choose to think I'm just a smelly art student with a penchant for computers, think again. I have a Masters in Astronomy.
That's all very nice if you have the money to spare. If you don't the choice becomes whether to buy the book at the faceless megastore or support your local bookshop. I love books and don't want to see them disappear but I'm not about to put my local bookstore on my list of charities - unless they can provide something the megastore can't I'll have to support the megastore.
Of course I much prefer my books online, in a format that's no encumbered by DRM. I don't care if the book has no ISBN, so long as it's from a credible source. The entire publishing industry doesn't much support the author. I liken it to RIAA/MPAA.
To resolve this dilema we need to invoke the Twins Paradox.
Suppose a Linux server and a Win2k3 server were first commissioned on the same day. Now suppose we launch the Linux box on a 2 year round trip voyage that reaches speeds a significant fraction of the speed of light in a vacuum. When the Linux server returns its clock, which was slowed by the relitivistic effects of acceleration during the journey will report 20% less uptime on its clock (or is it the Win2k3 box that has 20% more - who cares - point made).
Now all we need to do is solve for what the maximum speed and acceleration our hardware can take, invent the technology, and then the article is perfectly true. Einstein would be so proud.
The free market is full of boneheads with more money than sense.
As opposed to government?
So your idea when something doesn't work is to replace it with something else that doesn't work and say "there, better"???
I hate fools who insist governments can't be efficient. Just look at what governments do with sufficient motivation in wartime. We can no more afford to throw up our arms and say "we give up, let market forces decide" than we can afford to let incompetent gibbons run the show.
Here is a noble idea:
Let the free market figure it out!
For example, if Yahoo dating service is able to block 98% of scammers, while Match.com is only able to block 75%, then who should win?
Whoever's got the most pretty shinny flashing pictures on their front page.
Free market my backside. You're assuming the free market, in this case made up of socially inept losers and naive twits, is going to rationally and wisely choose the best service offered. That is just one of the many problems with letting a free market do everything for you. The free market is full of boneheads with more money than sense.
Actually its already the law in my country. More importantly I can do nothing to change your laws.
Que SIRA SIRA. Whatever will be will be. I'm not in the US you see. Que SIRA SIRA.
...and that is the heart of it - you have to let the application that created the binary do the diff, and make your repository nothing more than a dumb repository for binary. Otherwise you put everything but the kitchen sink into the repository software. If you really want something that works, you also have to design your client (binary producing) software so it can accept two files and display the sensibly.
Of course people instead decide to use markup for everything (whether that markup is XML or LaTex is a trivial point). Markup languages have their place, but replacing everything binary just isn't it and the sooner the IT community understands that the sooner we'll be out of this self imposed XML hell.
You're arguing that everything should be encoded in text, which is patently absurd.
Problem is whether it's plain text or readable if diff isn't human readable it really doesn't matter that it's text.
Good example would be a large 3D model. Yes you could encode it in plain text (say VRML..those were the days) but then if you did a change between two significantly different versions of a VRML model your diff would be hundreds of pages of gibberish. A quick look in a VRML modeller would tell you roughly what had changed though.
There's also the issue of efficiency. I know the current craze is to encode everything as text with markup (XML etc) but you can lose orders of magnitude of efficiency doing that. That's one reason VRML never took off by the way - encoding in text made the modellers and viewers so big, slow and heavy that no one used them, while game companies continued to use binary formats and continued to progress (in terms of the graphics complexity anyway).
I'm glad LaTex works for you. More power to you. But keep that abomination away from me. I'd love to see a WYSIWYG editor that could also fall back to markup if you wanted to do something clever. However there's a very good reason WYSIWYG is so popular. You can actually see what you're doing whereas with LaTex you have to imagine and/or engineer the result - time and mental effort better expended on the content.
I'd use LaTex with a graphical interface. If it wasn't so expensive I'd have tried Scientific Word and Scientific Workplace when doing my Astro degree a few years back.
The problem isn't keeping revisions. Yes CVS and other tools do that well for many applications. The problem is that the tools to compare say two versions of an Excel spreadsheet that live in CVS are poor. Same with any other specialised application. CVS only knows about CVS - it doesn't have tools for comparing Excel spreadsheets or anything else. Now Excel has the tools for doing so but they're not convenient. At some point it was decided it was easier to put a comparison tool of versions right into the program than to add integration for a set number of source control tools and force users to use those tools.
Put more simply, CVS is very very good for text comparison since it has good diff integration. (Consequently only bother to have a setting to keep a single backup file of your last revision in case you screw up). It's a nightmare for binary comparison of files of various formats. Think about small changes your 300 meg cad files, not just someone's toy spreadsheet. CVS and other non-application aware repository software store the whole file again (not just a couple of meg change log), and to compare the files you need to pull both versions out of CVS, then use an application capable of doing the comparison. What's more there's no possibility of undoing those changes one step at a time (whereas you can build the application to do that).
Now you may argue it makes life less convenient to have literally thousands of applications keeping their own histories, but there's definitely a need for it. I'd argue that we need better standards regarding how binary history is kept within an application.
Microsoft flight simulator 2004 with 4 full screen windows running. I could easily use something like this, and I'd need an incredibly beefy CPU as well.