It doesn't matter how much money you spend on tools. The tools are used by humans, and it's our knowledge and skills that makes the tools do a good or bad job. Spend the money on people, not on technology.
Some years ago I suddenly had a craving to revisit the mid 90'ies games I had played. WINE was perfect for this, as Windows - even with compatibility modes - didn't exactly like games like Colonization or Warcraft 1.
For something like this, WINE is really good because it runs old stuff quite well.
For all new software, You're Doing It Wrong (TM) if you use WINE. An OS is just a tool, so run the one that the software was designed for. Native or in a VM, doesn't matter. But don't use something inferior when you can have the real thing.
What do we do when we need a new CPU? We go to one of the hardware sites and look at the performance tests. And then we compare the performance with the price, and choose the one that fits us.
Where is the security focus on this? Exactly where we asked for - nowhere.
But but but, we say, this should of course just be there. Well, no. It doesn't work that way. If you choose based on security, then much more effort will be spent on security. If you don't they won't. It will never be forgotten, of course. And obviously all manufacturers try to give us secure products. But when it's not the main selling point, then there is a limit to how much we will get.
And it's exactly the same for software.
It's the old saying: Cheap, fast or effective - choose two.
You are spot on. I have been on both sides - I ran a webshop for some years and I obviously shop online.
They are trying to sell this to consumers as a way to making online purchases easier. When in fact it's all about sexification of the browser to the shops. If a browser gives higher revenue and conversion rates, it will have more focus from the shop developers.
There's not a lot that we consumers can do about it though, other than two things:
* don't store your card data in the browser even if you are asked * Use plugins to avoid being asked, if this is possible
To me, it's one of the most annoying things in chrome.
Nokia killed themselves because they were a bunch of clueless morons. And don't blame MS for giving them the CEO that killed it. He was hired by the Nokia board to execute exactly the strategy that he did (although he did royally f*** that up). MS had nothing to do with that gigantic blowup.
All of those models work for some projects. For example, MariaDB uses the pay for help (well, actually consulting), web based projects either do hosting or premium - both work. And several smaller projects use donations - mostly with one person "teams", although there are some really big that does this too (wikipedia, for example). Some couple those with selling merchandise and hosting from interested users/companies. And of course you have a multitude of hybrid models - Qt is one of those.
So "the best model" is not the right question. You should go and create something that's good enough for someone to pay money for it. And then figure out what way is the best to keep the project alive. Remember, the users do not pay you. They pay for the software because they think it's worth it.
The FSF will have issues with the moral behind the freemium models because those depend on closed source parts. But all the others should be without issues.
I will tell you this, though: If you approach OSS from a business POV, then you will likely fail. OSS is something you do because you love the code and the project, not to make money. Yes, there are obviously exceptions to this. But they are rare.
Of course, the best known example of the opposite model is the Linux kernel: Create the project, keep running it. But let others do the monetization. Weird model, but it works well:)
The definition of economics is "the knowledge of handling scarce resources". To replace right wing politics with left wing politics does not move anything forward.
What they should be teaching is that we need to care about all of it. Economists who disregard climate are just plain wrong. But so are anyone who thinks climate is the only thing that should be considered.
Okay, so they got slammed. And they may see a 10 or 20 % drop in their sales. So what? They still have a *massive* profit on it. They just raised the price to 400% - assuming the profits were only 20% of the old price, that still leaves a 80% profit today.
They make a ton of money while apologizing for all the failures of the product.
That means these guys make profits while people die. And the FDA just slams them? WTF good does this do?
Those guys need a fine in the magnitude of what EU handed Apple and Google. Otherwise the most profitable thing they can do is - what? Pop quiz, think about it. It's to do absolutely nothing.
The only way to make a company like this listen is to take away their profits. Otherwise, you're going to see FDA slamming them all the way to the bank for the next ten years.
But with the current US administration, what are the chances that this will happen? Take this pop quiz too, see the answer yourself. It's probably going to be what you fear:(
Every study that's made so far shows that robots actually complement people in jobs. And there's not a single sign that this is about to change.
People worry about all those robots taking the jobs, but that's just silly. I heard a guy who have a very big and old farm here in Denmark say that in the 1800s they had more than a 150 people working on the land. Today they have 3. Machines have always helped us improve the output of our labour, and it will continue this way.
Now it's robots, and the media are trying to scare you into thinking this somehow changes the picture much more than the tractor did. And as usual with nothing other than "well, this is obvious to everyone" to back it up.
And the "expert" in this story works for an online job posting company that wants you to apply more jobs. Wow, there's a bit of news. What else would you expect her to say. "Your job is in danger and you should think about using our service to solve the problem." I assume no actual expert wanted to say what the reporter wanted to hear.
This is a person complaining about the police, and you just let him post it here?? No attempt to find the other side of the story? No concerns about posting this when it's only this particular photographer that complains like it?
Anyone who reads this should know that it's completely unreliable. That doesn't mean it's not true. We just can't know. Sure, it's hard to find out what really happens, but without at least an effort to do so, we definitely won't know.
With data on an ever increasing number of phones, it seems this is very soon obsolete. I don't get why would waste money doing this. Getting patents is not a cheap process.
"We have just launched the new iPhone, it comes with *exactly* the same features as the last one."
That's obviously never going to happen, so creeping featurism it is. It's so hard to avoid this, no matter what kind of software system you're building. And that's exactly the reason why. Apple - and to at least some extend the users - want to have new features on the phones. But cutting away something that current users still use also sound like a bad idea.
Maybe Jobs could have avoided this. I doubt it. It's a major dilemma that all software and hardware vendors face all the time.
It's actually a tax that goes back all the way to just after the second world war. The government at the time needed to bring in extra cash, no cars were being built in Denmark, only the rich could afford cars. All arguments that led to this insane 180% tax. (Yes, as another guy has written somewhere else, it's now lower, but up until a few years ago, it was 180).
It's really difficult to get rid of. There have been several tax cuts over the last 20 years. But when a government wants a tax reduction, it looks at what the effects of this reduction is. For the car tax, the single good thing about removing it is that we would pay less. Yes, there are also some effects because newer cars are safer and pollute less, but those effects are so low that they do not change the equations enough. Because the alternative is to provide tax cuts on the work we do. We have an income tax of 40-50%. Reducing this has a lot of effects that the government wants to see - higher employment rate, lower prices, more incentives to work etc. And Denmark only has a 4% unemployment rate, so getting more people to work instead of not being available is a huge bonus. (Please don't argue whether those arguments are true or not - these are the reasons this was done, I'm arguing that they are true or false).
An alternative is to reduce taxes on goods. But there are a lot of other goods that stand in the line before cars. Again, remember that we don't have any companies producing cars, so increasing car sales means shipping money out of the country.
It seems that many politicians would actually like to reduce the car tax, and we did see a reduction last year (or maybe two years ago). But there are a lot of alternatives that they choose instead.
I can't comment on the physics, but I can comment on the impact of something like this.
I am searching for my next car and have been looking at various electric or hybrid options. Most of those fail because they only cover 95% of my use cases, and that's due to the charging time. For example, I sometimes drive a distance for meetings that would not let me get there and go back on one charge of the battery. Which means I have to charge the car somewhere. I also drive to other countries in Europe and that's just not something you really can do in those cars.
The Toyota hybrids sort of solve the problem by charging with a petrol engine. But I don't like the way those feel when driving them - and I have had Toyotas as my last four cars, so it's not that I have anything against them.
If I could get a normal, electric family car with an almost instant charging system, I would definitely buy it. Sure, we would need to have the charging stations built first and other issues. But when fully implemented, this is what solves the problem for me.
I really hope they or someone else can pull this off, so I can stop burning stuff when I drive.
Okay, that's all I need to hear. I've been a C++ programmer for the last 15 years and I have only felt an increase in available jobs.
Also, when it comes to desktop applications, java sucks big time and.net is (at least in practice) Windows only. Now, I know that to those zombie forecasters the desktop is dead. But fortunately that's not the case. UI on web is still fairly simplistic or incredibly complex and buggy, and there haven't really been a big shift in this area in many years. Mobile has been on the rise of course, and relatively still grows compared to desktop. But the decline of desktop sales stopped about two years ago. The reason is that there are two many things that are not suited for mobile or web - try to imagine a HTML5 canvas based CAD application:)
To me it feels like yet another case where a java consultant claims the entire world will run java.
I'm not worried for my job, and I still take applications from other good C++ coders.
Look, this really isn't up to the developers to fix. This is something the management of the company has to understand and put a stop to. All of us developers loathe heavy processes, but when it comes to releasing to production, it's absolutely necessary.
So my advice is to start working on the management chain of your company. You should tell them what happens right now, why this is bad, and explain that one day the production server will blow up.
And nothing will happen. For a while. Because if they were clueless enough to let this happen in the first place, they are not going to fix it.
But one day someone is going to push a fix that breaks everything. And then it's up to the developers to let management know that it's actually their fault, not the developer who pushed the fix. They were the ones who allowed this practice. But you have to be diplomatic about it, because just yelling "I told you so" won't help.
The question is if you think this is actually worth it - if you like your job enough to take this fight. Because I would be so scared of working in a company that allows such a sloppy process, that I would seriously consider getting another job.
Now I'm actually running my own company. And I can tell you that if this happens in my company, I wouldn't be mad at you for letting you know we are doing something wrong. But I would be mad at you if you didn't tell me. Sure, I know how to manage software, but in general there will be similar situations in other areas of the company where I'm not doing The Right Thing. A good employee tries to help by fixing things. A great employee helps the company to fix things.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't matter how much money you spend on tools. The tools are used by humans, and it's our knowledge and skills that makes the tools do a good or bad job. Spend the money on people, not on technology.
Am I the only one who read desserts?
but you might not get it
I for one hail our new bacteria overlords
Some years ago I suddenly had a craving to revisit the mid 90'ies games I had played. WINE was perfect for this, as Windows - even with compatibility modes - didn't exactly like games like Colonization or Warcraft 1.
For something like this, WINE is really good because it runs old stuff quite well.
For all new software, You're Doing It Wrong (TM) if you use WINE. An OS is just a tool, so run the one that the software was designed for. Native or in a VM, doesn't matter. But don't use something inferior when you can have the real thing.
What do we do when we need a new CPU? We go to one of the hardware sites and look at the performance tests. And then we compare the performance with the price, and choose the one that fits us.
Where is the security focus on this? Exactly where we asked for - nowhere.
But but but, we say, this should of course just be there. Well, no. It doesn't work that way. If you choose based on security, then much more effort will be spent on security. If you don't they won't. It will never be forgotten, of course. And obviously all manufacturers try to give us secure products. But when it's not the main selling point, then there is a limit to how much we will get.
And it's exactly the same for software.
It's the old saying: Cheap, fast or effective - choose two.
No matter if this is right or not, I love the reference :)
I'm amazed that none of the commenters here have made the link to GNU's fight for open source.
If this had been GPL code, then the source code would be available already.
The problem isn't that Russia sees the code. It's that the rest of us do not. Otherwise it's just security by obscurity.
You are spot on. I have been on both sides - I ran a webshop for some years and I obviously shop online.
They are trying to sell this to consumers as a way to making online purchases easier. When in fact it's all about sexification of the browser to the shops. If a browser gives higher revenue and conversion rates, it will have more focus from the shop developers.
There's not a lot that we consumers can do about it though, other than two things:
* don't store your card data in the browser even if you are asked
* Use plugins to avoid being asked, if this is possible
To me, it's one of the most annoying things in chrome.
We all know they were built by aliens. Don't screw up a good story with facts.
Nokia killed themselves because they were a bunch of clueless morons. And don't blame MS for giving them the CEO that killed it. He was hired by the Nokia board to execute exactly the strategy that he did (although he did royally f*** that up). MS had nothing to do with that gigantic blowup.
All of those models work for some projects. For example, MariaDB uses the pay for help (well, actually consulting), web based projects either do hosting or premium - both work. And several smaller projects use donations - mostly with one person "teams", although there are some really big that does this too (wikipedia, for example). Some couple those with selling merchandise and hosting from interested users/companies. And of course you have a multitude of hybrid models - Qt is one of those.
So "the best model" is not the right question. You should go and create something that's good enough for someone to pay money for it. And then figure out what way is the best to keep the project alive. Remember, the users do not pay you. They pay for the software because they think it's worth it.
The FSF will have issues with the moral behind the freemium models because those depend on closed source parts. But all the others should be without issues.
I will tell you this, though: If you approach OSS from a business POV, then you will likely fail. OSS is something you do because you love the code and the project, not to make money. Yes, there are obviously exceptions to this. But they are rare.
Of course, the best known example of the opposite model is the Linux kernel: Create the project, keep running it. But let others do the monetization. Weird model, but it works well :)
No no no.
The definition of economics is "the knowledge of handling scarce resources". To replace right wing politics with left wing politics does not move anything forward.
What they should be teaching is that we need to care about all of it. Economists who disregard climate are just plain wrong. But so are anyone who thinks climate is the only thing that should be considered.
Okay, so they got slammed. And they may see a 10 or 20 % drop in their sales. So what? They still have a *massive* profit on it. They just raised the price to 400% - assuming the profits were only 20% of the old price, that still leaves a 80% profit today.
They make a ton of money while apologizing for all the failures of the product.
That means these guys make profits while people die. And the FDA just slams them? WTF good does this do?
Those guys need a fine in the magnitude of what EU handed Apple and Google. Otherwise the most profitable thing they can do is - what? Pop quiz, think about it. It's to do absolutely nothing.
The only way to make a company like this listen is to take away their profits. Otherwise, you're going to see FDA slamming them all the way to the bank for the next ten years.
But with the current US administration, what are the chances that this will happen? Take this pop quiz too, see the answer yourself. It's probably going to be what you fear :(
Every study that's made so far shows that robots actually complement people in jobs. And there's not a single sign that this is about to change.
People worry about all those robots taking the jobs, but that's just silly. I heard a guy who have a very big and old farm here in Denmark say that in the 1800s they had more than a 150 people working on the land. Today they have 3. Machines have always helped us improve the output of our labour, and it will continue this way.
Now it's robots, and the media are trying to scare you into thinking this somehow changes the picture much more than the tractor did. And as usual with nothing other than "well, this is obvious to everyone" to back it up.
And the "expert" in this story works for an online job posting company that wants you to apply more jobs. Wow, there's a bit of news. What else would you expect her to say. "Your job is in danger and you should think about using our service to solve the problem." I assume no actual expert wanted to say what the reporter wanted to hear.
This is a person complaining about the police, and you just let him post it here?? No attempt to find the other side of the story? No concerns about posting this when it's only this particular photographer that complains like it?
Anyone who reads this should know that it's completely unreliable. That doesn't mean it's not true. We just can't know. Sure, it's hard to find out what really happens, but without at least an effort to do so, we definitely won't know.
Ooooh, entanglement. /me goes and gets the crowbar.
I don't know which is more ridiculous:
That they think it's a good idea?
Or that they think it will work?
With data on an ever increasing number of phones, it seems this is very soon obsolete. I don't get why would waste money doing this. Getting patents is not a cheap process.
"We have just launched the new iPhone, it comes with *exactly* the same features as the last one."
That's obviously never going to happen, so creeping featurism it is. It's so hard to avoid this, no matter what kind of software system you're building. And that's exactly the reason why. Apple - and to at least some extend the users - want to have new features on the phones. But cutting away something that current users still use also sound like a bad idea.
Maybe Jobs could have avoided this. I doubt it. It's a major dilemma that all software and hardware vendors face all the time.
It's actually a tax that goes back all the way to just after the second world war. The government at the time needed to bring in extra cash, no cars were being built in Denmark, only the rich could afford cars. All arguments that led to this insane 180% tax. (Yes, as another guy has written somewhere else, it's now lower, but up until a few years ago, it was 180).
It's really difficult to get rid of. There have been several tax cuts over the last 20 years. But when a government wants a tax reduction, it looks at what the effects of this reduction is. For the car tax, the single good thing about removing it is that we would pay less. Yes, there are also some effects because newer cars are safer and pollute less, but those effects are so low that they do not change the equations enough. Because the alternative is to provide tax cuts on the work we do. We have an income tax of 40-50%. Reducing this has a lot of effects that the government wants to see - higher employment rate, lower prices, more incentives to work etc. And Denmark only has a 4% unemployment rate, so getting more people to work instead of not being available is a huge bonus. (Please don't argue whether those arguments are true or not - these are the reasons this was done, I'm arguing that they are true or false).
An alternative is to reduce taxes on goods. But there are a lot of other goods that stand in the line before cars. Again, remember that we don't have any companies producing cars, so increasing car sales means shipping money out of the country.
It seems that many politicians would actually like to reduce the car tax, and we did see a reduction last year (or maybe two years ago). But there are a lot of alternatives that they choose instead.
I can't comment on the physics, but I can comment on the impact of something like this.
I am searching for my next car and have been looking at various electric or hybrid options. Most of those fail because they only cover 95% of my use cases, and that's due to the charging time. For example, I sometimes drive a distance for meetings that would not let me get there and go back on one charge of the battery. Which means I have to charge the car somewhere. I also drive to other countries in Europe and that's just not something you really can do in those cars.
The Toyota hybrids sort of solve the problem by charging with a petrol engine. But I don't like the way those feel when driving them - and I have had Toyotas as my last four cars, so it's not that I have anything against them.
If I could get a normal, electric family car with an almost instant charging system, I would definitely buy it. Sure, we would need to have the charging stations built first and other issues. But when fully implemented, this is what solves the problem for me.
I really hope they or someone else can pull this off, so I can stop burning stuff when I drive.
"The entire world has gone to Java or .Net"
Okay, that's all I need to hear. I've been a C++ programmer for the last 15 years and I have only felt an increase in available jobs.
Also, when it comes to desktop applications, java sucks big time and .net is (at least in practice) Windows only. Now, I know that to those zombie forecasters the desktop is dead. But fortunately that's not the case. UI on web is still fairly simplistic or incredibly complex and buggy, and there haven't really been a big shift in this area in many years. Mobile has been on the rise of course, and relatively still grows compared to desktop. But the decline of desktop sales stopped about two years ago. The reason is that there are two many things that are not suited for mobile or web - try to imagine a HTML5 canvas based CAD application :)
To me it feels like yet another case where a java consultant claims the entire world will run java.
I'm not worried for my job, and I still take applications from other good C++ coders.
Of all the things they could choose to crack, the chose Smurfs 2. That's hilarious.
"We don't know who struck first, but we know it was us who scorched the sky"
Look, this really isn't up to the developers to fix. This is something the management of the company has to understand and put a stop to. All of us developers loathe heavy processes, but when it comes to releasing to production, it's absolutely necessary.
So my advice is to start working on the management chain of your company. You should tell them what happens right now, why this is bad, and explain that one day the production server will blow up.
And nothing will happen. For a while. Because if they were clueless enough to let this happen in the first place, they are not going to fix it.
But one day someone is going to push a fix that breaks everything. And then it's up to the developers to let management know that it's actually their fault, not the developer who pushed the fix. They were the ones who allowed this practice. But you have to be diplomatic about it, because just yelling "I told you so" won't help.
The question is if you think this is actually worth it - if you like your job enough to take this fight. Because I would be so scared of working in a company that allows such a sloppy process, that I would seriously consider getting another job.
Now I'm actually running my own company. And I can tell you that if this happens in my company, I wouldn't be mad at you for letting you know we are doing something wrong. But I would be mad at you if you didn't tell me. Sure, I know how to manage software, but in general there will be similar situations in other areas of the company where I'm not doing The Right Thing. A good employee tries to help by fixing things. A great employee helps the company to fix things.