"In truth building software to specs is almost worse than useless."
If you don't have a spec, then how are you supposed to know that you've met your customer's requirements?
Face it, those of you arguing that "specs are useless" clearly don't live and work in the real world. Sure, you can do your toy/hobby projects and amuse yourself without any idea what the end results must be, but when it's your job to write/design working and reliable products for actual customers who pay actual real money for specific functionality, then let's see how long you last before you're back working at the Quickie Mart.
"Because, frankly, polishing stuff so it's easy to install and configure is boring work that no one really wants to do. In the open source world that means it doesn't get done unless there's some organization with the power and motivation to assign someone to do it."
And this is why many otherwise excellent open-source projects will remain marginalized.
If the user can't figure out how to make it work, it's broken.
"I think that Georgia is attempting to require an ID for voting and it is being fought tooth and nail by various public interest groups (or perhaps `public interest' groups)."
It's being fought because this special ID is not free -- therefore, it's the equivalent of a poll tax -- and the Georgia gov't doesn't have plans to put registration locations in convenient areas. Do some research on the subject before you dismiss the reason for fighting this out of hand.
"In light of what has been done for me, anything I might do is laughably irrelevant. "
So, basically you're saying that you can go out and kill a bunch of people (or call for a fatwa on the democratically-elected leader of a sovereign nation -- Yes, YOU, Pat Robertson!) and you're still saved?
" if you ignore the "Service Engine Soon" light they will send you letters, up to the point where you might be turned in to the police for operating an unsafe vehicle, or similar charge."
Like the cops will care. I routinely see shitboxes, literally held together with duct tape and bailing wire, speed past cop cars, and the cops just sit, munching on their donuts.
" How about a reverse/. effect, in which not one of its subscribers ever uses Amazon? "
I haven't ordered from Amazon in years, and I actively discourage my friends and family from using them.
Between Bezos' vehement anti-union stance and the patent nonsense, combined with the fact that a very cool local bookstore is closing at the end of the month, I say: fsck 'em.
re: the anti-union stance. Let's see: Bezos' claim is that "Amazon.com is the 'new' economy and the old rules don't apply." To which I say: BULLSHIT. What's "new economy" about selling boxes of books? They're doing the exact same thing as Sears-Roebuck did at the turn of the last century. The only difference is in the catalog presentation and the ordering. There are still people in huge warehouses handling orders and ensuring shipments go out.
Oh, yeah, the diff between the old Sears and Amazon: good luck getting a human being at Amazon to deal with the inevitable order fuckups.
Nothing's wrong with Apple. What with Clear Channel's takeover of most radio stations complete, and the non-CC stations using the same formats, there's no radio worth listening to in most cities.
"The company distributing this requires you provide personal information just to pick up a small scanner which is entirely unnecessary. The purpose it seems behind distributing these little tools is to collect this information for sale and for use in sales."
When asked for personal information, I usually enter:
Name: George W. Bush
Address: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washingon, DC 20500, (202) 456-1414
E-Mail: president@whitehouse.gov
I find this useful when applying for the discount cards at the local supermarkets.
"It's no secret that Bush pretends to be a simple, God-fearing country boy. He simply made a comment, in a relatively informal environment, in-keeping with this persona. He can't dismiss creationism or he risks pissing off his base. Ultimately the best political maneuver he can make is an empty comment, that will appease his bible-beating followers, backed up with no actual action that would have invariably raised massive scrutiny over a issue he really does not care about."
"Why don't the manufacturers label the mouse buttons? Problem solved!"
How would you label the buttons on a two-button mouse? I can't think of anything more obvious than "left" and "right." The problem is that non-geek users (the vast majority of computer users) find the difference between "clicking" and "right-clicking" to be non-obvious.
Also regarding labelling: I have a couple of the new (gray/black w/LED tracking) Kensington Expert Mouse trackballs. (BTW, the scroll ring thing is amazing. Try it, you'll love it!) It's got four buttons and you can re-assign them however you wish. I find that it's more comfortable if I make the upper-right button the "right mouse button," lower left remains as "left mouse button," and upper left becomes the "middle mouse button." I've assigned lower right to be "browser back" or another application-dependent function.
Point is "how to label the buttons if the user can -- and will -- reassign them?"
PS: while the Mighty Mouse is a Great Leap Forward for Apple, I'm stickin' with the Kensington Experts.
" This is unbelievably crappy news. Let me restate, XP will be the last time I ever pay for an OS."
huh? Seems to me that if you actually pay for the software, then you would support policies that prevent others from getting for free the same thing you paid for.
"I'm curious as to why Dell is involved - what have they got to do with it? Don't they just buy other companies' (e.g. Intel's) motherboards, BIOS chips, and the like? Do they actually have something to offer to this consortium?"
They buy a zillion motherboards a year, and one would assume that they specify what they want on those mothersboards. That would include what's in the firmware. Not a suprise at all that Dell is involved.
"The place I work at has 4 main offices, each with ±40 people. Of the ±40 at each office we have ±4 people in the marketing departments at each who use Apple systems exclusively."
How the hell can you have "±40" people? That implies that you may have, for example, -25 people. Neat trick.
"In other news, Apple (and its fans) continue to insist there is no money in computer software, and the big $$$ are made in the computer hardware market."
Consider that MS gets a chunk of change for each PC that ships with pre-installed Windows (even if Windows will be wiped and replaced with Linux or *BSD or whatever).
"Yes, this one's definitely not from Ebay but from someone on the iomart.com domain. Email is fake, phishing scam failed. Just do the same test with any suspect email and see if the domain name is what you expect it should be. It's that simple!
It's nothing flash and helluva lot of people on Slashdot already know how to do this, be they Linux, Windows, Other OS users."
Come on. The average end user doesn't know how to plug in a goddamn USB cable, so do you really expect them to know how to run nslookup on the return addresses in suspect e-mail?
"In fact, an automated script on my mail server already did this for me and SpamAssassin had already captured this as a Spam email."
Now you've moved on to the world of uber-geek. Again, even if your idea is good, the typical user doesn't know what the hell you're going on about.
Jesus fuck, is this scary. Some quotes from the paper:
"As with the MIG environment, all software components--whether from Microsoft or a third party--need to meet robustness and compliance rules to be allowed to operate within the Protected Environment.
"The PUMA process will refuse to load any software modules found to be on the Microsoft Global Revocation List. This applies to both Microsoft and third-party-supplied modules. Replacement versions of revoked modules are typically supplied at revocation time using a Windows Update mechanism."
In other words, say you're a software developer and you're working on some new audio hardware with a software rendering/filtering/whatever component (think Digi M-Box/ProTools). Assume that before you can actually get it "certified" by Microsoft, it has to work, so it has to be debugged. So, how do you prevent MS from essentially deleting your driver while you're working on it?
Oh yeah -- special (high $$$$) developer versions of Longhorn.
Of course, one way around all of this is to use ASIO or other custom audio drivers. So what if your device doesn't enumerate as a Windows Audio Device, as long as your software (again, think M-Box/ProTools) knows what to look for and how to use it. So the point here is that someone could come up with an open-source alternative audio driver interface, and all of the cool apps (Audacity, open-source MP3 players, etc) could use it. Maybe someone can port the Linux audio stuff to Windows?
Also FTFWP: "While there might not be many discrete audio cards in 2006, there more than likely will be HDMI discrete graphics cards that have HD Audio controllers."
I'm sure that Digi, Roland, Creative and a bunch of other cmopanies that specialize in external (USB or FireWire) audio I/O boxes would hope there would be "many" discrete audio cards in 2006!
At least they (sorta) admit that adding hardware authentication to audio devices is a non-starter: "The proposed plan is that the hardware AES engine that does the decryption would be in the codec chip. This is a harder than in the case of a graphics chip, because codecs have far fewer gates and are also more price sensitive. The desire to not over burden codec chips is a contributing factor in not pushing to introduce audio encryption quickly. Adding AES engines to codec chips would at best take many years, and might turn out not to be feasible."
I developed a specialized USB audio device, used for measurement applications. It was a challenge to get the cost down to what the client thought it should be, while at the same time implementing some necessary features. Imagine adding some kind of DRM chip that costs five bucks -- does the end user really want to pay another $50 for this "feature" that's not necessary for the application but is required by the OS?
And I wonder how much it will cost to get the Special MS Certification? What if it costs more than getting a CE or TUV mark? Sheesh. The mind boggles.
"Oh and while we're on the subject, since when did the Department of Defense also do attacks?"
That department used to be called the Department of War, but it was changed (after WWII, I believe) because "War" implies aggression, whereas "defense" seems more palatable.
Although with Rummy in charge, it's back to the War Department.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't have a spec, then how are you supposed to know that you've met your customer's requirements?
Face it, those of you arguing that "specs are useless" clearly don't live and work in the real world. Sure, you can do your toy/hobby projects and amuse yourself without any idea what the end results must be, but when it's your job to write/design working and reliable products for actual customers who pay actual real money for specific functionality, then let's see how long you last before you're back working at the Quickie Mart.
And this is why many otherwise excellent open-source projects will remain marginalized.
If the user can't figure out how to make it work, it's broken.
I love it. I wish I could find a decent keyboard with it.
But no other editor even comes close. If you are an electrical engineering using VHDL, you need EMACS.
It's being fought because this special ID is not free -- therefore, it's the equivalent of a poll tax -- and the Georgia gov't doesn't have plans to put registration locations in convenient areas. Do some research on the subject before you dismiss the reason for fighting this out of hand.
So, basically you're saying that you can go out and kill a bunch of people (or call for a fatwa on the democratically-elected leader of a sovereign nation -- Yes, YOU, Pat Robertson!) and you're still saved?
That doesn't make any fucking sense.
Like the cops will care. I routinely see shitboxes, literally held together with duct tape and bailing wire, speed past cop cars, and the cops just sit, munching on their donuts.
I haven't ordered from Amazon in years, and I actively discourage my friends and family from using them.
Between Bezos' vehement anti-union stance and the patent nonsense, combined with the fact that a very cool local bookstore is closing at the end of the month, I say: fsck 'em.
re: the anti-union stance. Let's see: Bezos' claim is that "Amazon.com is the 'new' economy and the old rules don't apply." To which I say: BULLSHIT. What's "new economy" about selling boxes of books? They're doing the exact same thing as Sears-Roebuck did at the turn of the last century. The only difference is in the catalog presentation and the ordering. There are still people in huge warehouses handling orders and ensuring shipments go out.
Oh, yeah, the diff between the old Sears and Amazon: good luck getting a human being at Amazon to deal with the inevitable order fuckups.
I use Powell's when ordering online.
Nothing's wrong with Apple. What with Clear Channel's takeover of most radio stations complete, and the non-CC stations using the same formats, there's no radio worth listening to in most cities.
At least I can get WFMU on the internet ...
Depends on the "openness" of the hardware. In many cases, the answer will simply be "forever."
When asked for personal information, I usually enter:
Name: George W. Bush
Address: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washingon, DC 20500, (202) 456-1414
E-Mail: president@whitehouse.gov
I find this useful when applying for the discount cards at the local supermarkets.
[i]"He (Berners-Lee) invented the World Wide Web."[/i] He did so soon after facetiousness was invented.
Mod parent up, please. +5, Insightful.
How would you label the buttons on a two-button mouse? I can't think of anything more obvious than "left" and "right." The problem is that non-geek users (the vast majority of computer users) find the difference between "clicking" and "right-clicking" to be non-obvious.
Also regarding labelling: I have a couple of the new (gray/black w/LED tracking) Kensington Expert Mouse trackballs. (BTW, the scroll ring thing is amazing. Try it, you'll love it!) It's got four buttons and you can re-assign them however you wish. I find that it's more comfortable if I make the upper-right button the "right mouse button," lower left remains as "left mouse button," and upper left becomes the "middle mouse button." I've assigned lower right to be "browser back" or another application-dependent function.
Point is "how to label the buttons if the user can -- and will -- reassign them?"
PS: while the Mighty Mouse is a Great Leap Forward for Apple, I'm stickin' with the Kensington Experts.
funny, that sort of feature has been in OS X forever.
huh? Seems to me that if you actually pay for the software, then you would support policies that prevent others from getting for free the same thing you paid for.
They buy a zillion motherboards a year, and one would assume that they specify what they want on those mothersboards. That would include what's in the firmware. Not a suprise at all that Dell is involved.
How the hell can you have "±40" people? That implies that you may have, for example, -25 people. Neat trick.
Consider that MS gets a chunk of change for each PC that ships with pre-installed Windows (even if Windows will be wiped and replaced with Linux or *BSD or whatever).
Lots of PCs sold == Lots of royalties for MS.
Oy! No way I'm gonna install it. I'll wait for Windows EMACS.
Are you sure you're not running Mozilla 1.6?
It's nothing flash and helluva lot of people on Slashdot already know how to do this, be they Linux, Windows, Other OS users."
Come on. The average end user doesn't know how to plug in a goddamn USB cable, so do you really expect them to know how to run nslookup on the return addresses in suspect e-mail?
"In fact, an automated script on my mail server already did this for me and SpamAssassin had already captured this as a Spam email."
Now you've moved on to the world of uber-geek. Again, even if your idea is good, the typical user doesn't know what the hell you're going on about.
"As with the MIG environment, all software components--whether from Microsoft or a third party--need to meet robustness and compliance rules to be allowed to operate within the Protected Environment.
"The PUMA process will refuse to load any software modules found to be on the Microsoft Global Revocation List. This applies to both Microsoft and third-party-supplied modules. Replacement versions of revoked modules are typically supplied at revocation time using a Windows Update mechanism."
In other words, say you're a software developer and you're working on some new audio hardware with a software rendering/filtering/whatever component (think Digi M-Box/ProTools). Assume that before you can actually get it "certified" by Microsoft, it has to work, so it has to be debugged. So, how do you prevent MS from essentially deleting your driver while you're working on it?
Oh yeah -- special (high $$$$) developer versions of Longhorn.
Of course, one way around all of this is to use ASIO or other custom audio drivers. So what if your device doesn't enumerate as a Windows Audio Device, as long as your software (again, think M-Box/ProTools) knows what to look for and how to use it. So the point here is that someone could come up with an open-source alternative audio driver interface, and all of the cool apps (Audacity, open-source MP3 players, etc) could use it. Maybe someone can port the Linux audio stuff to Windows?
Also FTFWP: "While there might not be many discrete audio cards in 2006, there more than likely will be HDMI discrete graphics cards that have HD Audio controllers."
I'm sure that Digi, Roland, Creative and a bunch of other cmopanies that specialize in external (USB or FireWire) audio I/O boxes would hope there would be "many" discrete audio cards in 2006!
At least they (sorta) admit that adding hardware authentication to audio devices is a non-starter: "The proposed plan is that the hardware AES engine that does the decryption would be in the codec chip. This is a harder than in the case of a graphics chip, because codecs have far fewer gates and are also more price sensitive. The desire to not over burden codec chips is a contributing factor in not pushing to introduce audio encryption quickly. Adding AES engines to codec chips would at best take many years, and might turn out not to be feasible."
I developed a specialized USB audio device, used for measurement applications. It was a challenge to get the cost down to what the client thought it should be, while at the same time implementing some necessary features. Imagine adding some kind of DRM chip that costs five bucks -- does the end user really want to pay another $50 for this "feature" that's not necessary for the application but is required by the OS?
And I wonder how much it will cost to get the Special MS Certification? What if it costs more than getting a CE or TUV mark? Sheesh. The mind boggles.
Tell me why should Hoboken be special?
oh, yeah, I remember: Maxwell's!
That department used to be called the Department of War, but it was changed (after WWII, I believe) because "War" implies aggression, whereas "defense" seems more palatable.
Although with Rummy in charge, it's back to the War Department.