Different professors ran their team projects in different ways, which can be grouped into two categories:
The students were broken up into assigned groups, usually by something arbitrary like the spelling of their last names. This produced a mixture of competency levels in each team. The outcome was as described in other posts, where the people who cared the most about doing well in the class carried the others. (I especially liked the one post that called a person who did all the work a "doormat" -- it's easy to make someone else into a doormat when you have nothing to lose.) These projects were effectively no different than working alone or with one other person.
The students were given the option of doing the project alone or in teams. Based on my past experiences, I initially wanted to work alone, but something really interesting happened: other students in the class approached me and asked me to join their team. I knew them to be some of the better students around, so I agreed, and we spent some very productive time working together on the projects. I got a lot more out of that course than I would have if I had chosen to work alone.
The moral of this story: the battle for successful teams can be won and lost in the initial selection of the team members. If you can't find good colleagues, you are better off working alone. If you can find good colleagues, you're a fool if you don't collaborate with them.
Applications that are easier to use on a desktop (due to ergonomic form factors) will remain on the desktop. If handhelds can compete with desktop machines (not necessarily by being better, but simply by being adequate) in the areas of processing power, storage, and I/O, then our beige monoliths may all one day be replaced by docking stations for handhelds. A widespread industry standard for these docking stations would be necessary.
Note that this point of view tends to favor the "balanced compute" model over the "thin client" model. In the latter case, no one will need to own any hardware at all; they will just rent units on servers. I don't think that this will happen if people are unwilling to be "tied down" to a supported infrastructure.
Applications that are easier to use on a desktop (due to ergonomic form factors) will remain on the desktop. If handhelds can compete with desktop machines (not necessarily by being better, but simply by being adequate) in the areas of processing power, storage, and I/O, then our beige monoliths may all one day be replaced by docking stations for handhelds. A widespread industry standard for these docking stations would be necessary.
Note that this point of view tends to favor the "balanced compute" model over the "thin client" model. In the latter case, no one will need to own any hardware at all; they will just rent units on servers. I don't think that this will happen if people are unwilling to be "tied down" to a supported infrastructure.
Any idea like this requires software developers to spend more and more of their time and resources working as lawyers, instead of building software. At some point, we need fundamental reform in order to make it possible and practical for professions other than the legal profession to flourish. Otherwise, everyone might as well give up everything that they were trying to do and become lawyers. We will all be out of a job.
If your patent is rejected, great! That means no one else can patent something so obvious.
Unfortuantely, no, if your patent is rejected, it only means that someone else can go patent it by using more convoluted language (legalistic BS). In fact, even if your patent is accepted, someone else could patent it again next year, or after ten years, just by using different language, thanks to the PTO. The real problem is that the system is designed to serve the interests of lawyers (perhaps because the President is one such person?) rather than technology and the economy (which it seems designed to undermine in any way that it can).
Still, I agree with your fundamental suggestion. Launching a patent crusade to save the software profession is a laudable idea. What I see as unfortunate is that no volume of patents will protect us when it is so easy for BS artists to file frivolous lawsuits against people of limited means.
The greatest danger is that some "rogue state" will not abide by U.S./western patents and thus accelerate the development of their technology by 17 years. If patent law has its way, even China could have better software than the U.S. 20 years from now. Patents might be a great way for the vested interests to control technology within their geographic domain, but as long as there are competing nations (i.e. more than one), you are going to need to let your tech people do their jobs at some point, lest your competitor do the same.
I don't know if we can fix these institutions without destroying them. They are moving fast in the direction of making it impossible for us to do our jobs at all. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to shut down all but 2 or 3 of the law schools in the U.S. Either that, or eventually all software will be written by less than half a dozen firms, and academic software will be a dim memory. It's sounds downright... Bolshevik: the Company is the State, via PAC money, and as such that State owns all property.
a challenge to Capitalism, but it is not Communism
on
RMS Responds
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· Score: 1
(Disclaimer: this has probably been said before by individuals more credible than myself. But then again, so has most of everything that everyone says, so here goes.) To me it looks pretty simple.
This industry is very impressed with itself, but has allowed itself to be dominated by its most successful company.
There are technologists all over the world collaborating in their spare time on a product that competes against the flagship product of the most successful company in the industry.
The hobbyists' product proves superior in some respects to the company product, and it is free.
It appears that what is now a multibillion dollar market is threatened. This could cost a lot of capitalists a lot of money.
Some activists advocate ideals that appear to promote this outcome, so they are labeled the enemies of capitalism by those seeking to defend individual fortunes. In truth, most activists care more about making technology work correctly than they do about economic models. If being pro-technology is equated with being anti-capitalist, then what has really happened is that capitalism itself has become anti-technology. This cannot be, because all the wealth of all our nations is based primarily on technology.
The simple fact of the matter is that the industry is technically incompetent, and is now facing some of the consequences. It is not the first time in history that this has happened (railroad and other civil engineering disasters in the U.S. around the turn of the century were the result of similar industrywide incompetence). Operating Systems are not the only area where this incompetence is showing, but OS are where it is most obvious today.
Why is the software industry incompetent? Greed is an easy answer, but other industries have been able to work around the problem of greed in order to gain technical competence. Why has the software industry not done this? To find the answer, all we have to remember is that there is no separation of power and responsibility. Find the people with the power, and you find the ones who are responsible. Who holds the power in the software industry? Certainly not the technologists! No, it is the business community and all its associated nontechnical professions, including law, accounting, management, marketing, etc., that has so far failed to meet the myriad challenges posed by software technology.
Why have they failed? Actually, they are working very, very hard on ways to meet the challenge, but they have not found all of their answers yet. In the meantime, those who have power refuse to share it with their technologists (an approach which makes good sense from their current point of view). Since power is a necessary ingredient in the solution of any problem, many technical problems do not get solved. Problems do not get solved because software is subjected to many inappropriate social concepts, including obsolete laws, obsolete management processes, obsolete accounting techniques, and last but certainly not least, obsolete (or predatory) market communication techniques.
Many of the various movements that come, go, and stay in the technology community are really about reforming these obsolete practices. A sucessful reform will give technologists the power they need to solve problems, while allowing all of the nontechnical professionals to succeed in their pursuits as well. Such power sharing can only be achieved when nontechnical professions understand enough about technology to develop a communication structure, similar in effect to what is used in other engineering fields today.
It will take at least a generation. In the meantime, itch-scratchers will help to keep the industry honest. Even this is too much power for some lawyers and businessmen, who throw around ideas for ways to squash underground software movements via litigation and agency controls. It is not in the best interest of the economy for them to succeed, however, when the outcome is less overall technological progress, because the latter is directly tied to the overall wealth of the economy.
That way, she could be even more morally superior to the people that she hates than she is right now. Start packing, Jane! No? Well then, I guess that there was enough moral superiority right here in the United States to go around after all.
How do we save all the starving children, anyway? Send them food and medicine? Then they will grow up an have an exponentially larger number of their own children who will then starve. Can we save them too? If not, then they die and we're all morally inferior because we didn't save them, if so, then the exponential growth multiplier is applied again, recursively, ad infinitum. Sooner or later, the capacity of our resources will be exceeded by the growth of the problem, and we will end up being morally inferior (implying that those who are morally superior should gain authority over us, but that's another argument). Alternatively, we could try to change their culture, but we don't have the moral authority to do that either, in our new enlightened p.c. age.
Is this off-topic? Of course it is! That's my point! You can answer every emotional crisis that anyone ever had by pointing at Ethiopia or Rawanda or Cambodia or Nazi Germany or Yugoslavia or [your tragedy here], but that response doesn't address the issue at hand. It's a patronizing diversion, and we're still left with the problem.
What is the problem again? Kids in emotional crisis bring guns to school and shoot other kids. How is pointing at Ethiopia going to put a stop to that? It won't: these kids are inured to guilt, because guilt is the modern subsitute for corporal punishment.
And yes, for the record, add my vote to the camp that says high school should just be abolished anyway. There's no fixing it. (It takes less power to destroy a thing than to control a thing, no matter what Mua'dib [sp?] said.) Let the lovers breed, let the jocks play, let the geeks go work in better labs, and everyone will be a lot happier.
Slashdot Mirror
The moral of this story: the battle for successful teams can be won and lost in the initial selection of the team members. If you can't find good colleagues, you are better off working alone. If you can find good colleagues, you're a fool if you don't collaborate with them.
Note that this point of view tends to favor the "balanced compute" model over the "thin client" model. In the latter case, no one will need to own any hardware at all; they will just rent units on servers. I don't think that this will happen if people are unwilling to be "tied down" to a supported infrastructure.
Note that this point of view tends to favor the "balanced compute" model over the "thin client" model. In the latter case, no one will need to own any hardware at all; they will just rent units on servers. I don't think that this will happen if people are unwilling to be "tied down" to a supported infrastructure.
Any idea like this requires software developers to spend more and more of their time and resources working as lawyers, instead of building software. At some point, we need fundamental reform in order to make it possible and practical for professions other than the legal profession to flourish. Otherwise, everyone might as well give up everything that they were trying to do and become lawyers. We will all be out of a job.
A suit swinging from a tree with his clothes on fire.
Unfortuantely, no, if your patent is rejected, it only means that someone else can go patent it by using more convoluted language (legalistic BS). In fact, even if your patent is accepted, someone else could patent it again next year, or after ten years, just by using different language, thanks to the PTO. The real problem is that the system is designed to serve the interests of lawyers (perhaps because the President is one such person?) rather than technology and the economy (which it seems designed to undermine in any way that it can).
Still, I agree with your fundamental suggestion. Launching a patent crusade to save the software profession is a laudable idea. What I see as unfortunate is that no volume of patents will protect us when it is so easy for BS artists to file frivolous lawsuits against people of limited means.
The greatest danger is that some "rogue state" will not abide by U.S./western patents and thus accelerate the development of their technology by 17 years. If patent law has its way, even China could have better software than the U.S. 20 years from now. Patents might be a great way for the vested interests to control technology within their geographic domain, but as long as there are competing nations (i.e. more than one), you are going to need to let your tech people do their jobs at some point, lest your competitor do the same.
I don't know if we can fix these institutions without destroying them. They are moving fast in the direction of making it impossible for us to do our jobs at all. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to shut down all but 2 or 3 of the law schools in the U.S. Either that, or eventually all software will be written by less than half a dozen firms, and academic software will be a dim memory. It's sounds downright... Bolshevik: the Company is the State, via PAC money, and as such that State owns all property.
Some activists advocate ideals that appear to promote this outcome, so they are labeled the enemies of capitalism by those seeking to defend individual fortunes. In truth, most activists care more about making technology work correctly than they do about economic models. If being pro-technology is equated with being anti-capitalist, then what has really happened is that capitalism itself has become anti-technology. This cannot be, because all the wealth of all our nations is based primarily on technology.
The simple fact of the matter is that the industry is technically incompetent, and is now facing some of the consequences. It is not the first time in history that this has happened (railroad and other civil engineering disasters in the U.S. around the turn of the century were the result of similar industrywide incompetence). Operating Systems are not the only area where this incompetence is showing, but OS are where it is most obvious today.
Why is the software industry incompetent? Greed is an easy answer, but other industries have been able to work around the problem of greed in order to gain technical competence. Why has the software industry not done this? To find the answer, all we have to remember is that there is no separation of power and responsibility. Find the people with the power, and you find the ones who are responsible. Who holds the power in the software industry? Certainly not the technologists! No, it is the business community and all its associated nontechnical professions, including law, accounting, management, marketing, etc., that has so far failed to meet the myriad challenges posed by software technology.
Why have they failed? Actually, they are working very, very hard on ways to meet the challenge, but they have not found all of their answers yet. In the meantime, those who have power refuse to share it with their technologists (an approach which makes good sense from their current point of view). Since power is a necessary ingredient in the solution of any problem, many technical problems do not get solved. Problems do not get solved because software is subjected to many inappropriate social concepts, including obsolete laws, obsolete management processes, obsolete accounting techniques, and last but certainly not least, obsolete (or predatory) market communication techniques.
Many of the various movements that come, go, and stay in the technology community are really about reforming these obsolete practices. A sucessful reform will give technologists the power they need to solve problems, while allowing all of the nontechnical professionals to succeed in their pursuits as well. Such power sharing can only be achieved when nontechnical professions understand enough about technology to develop a communication structure, similar in effect to what is used in other engineering fields today.
It will take at least a generation. In the meantime, itch-scratchers will help to keep the industry honest. Even this is too much power for some lawyers and businessmen, who throw around ideas for ways to squash underground software movements via litigation and agency controls. It is not in the best interest of the economy for them to succeed, however, when the outcome is less overall technological progress, because the latter is directly tied to the overall wealth of the economy.
How do we save all the starving children, anyway? Send them food and medicine? Then they will grow up an have an exponentially larger number of their own children who will then starve. Can we save them too? If not, then they die and we're all morally inferior because we didn't save them, if so, then the exponential growth multiplier is applied again, recursively, ad infinitum. Sooner or later, the capacity of our resources will be exceeded by the growth of the problem, and we will end up being morally inferior (implying that those who are morally superior should gain authority over us, but that's another argument). Alternatively, we could try to change their culture, but we don't have the moral authority to do that either, in our new enlightened p.c. age.
Is this off-topic? Of course it is! That's my point! You can answer every emotional crisis that anyone ever had by pointing at Ethiopia or Rawanda or Cambodia or Nazi Germany or Yugoslavia or [your tragedy here], but that response doesn't address the issue at hand. It's a patronizing diversion, and we're still left with the problem.
What is the problem again? Kids in emotional crisis bring guns to school and shoot other kids. How is pointing at Ethiopia going to put a stop to that? It won't: these kids are inured to guilt, because guilt is the modern subsitute for corporal punishment.
And yes, for the record, add my vote to the camp that says high school should just be abolished anyway. There's no fixing it. (It takes less power to destroy a thing than to control a thing, no matter what Mua'dib [sp?] said.) Let the lovers breed, let the jocks play, let the geeks go work in better labs, and everyone will be a lot happier.
And Jane Dark should still move to Ethiopia.
Bye.