Who are you protecting with filters? Yourself or other people? Fact of life is posts like ones on/. range from good to bad. Without the bad posts, it would be harder to know what was good. It's all part of a continuim, so if something is taken out, it's no longer a natural continium. It is your continium.
Why in the world couldn't/. record the interview, then convert it to MP3? That would have been much more enjoyable. Though that might eat up quite a bit of bandwidth.
Since your encounter with RIAA, have you come across other researchers/projects that are hindered in real academic or corporate research? If so, what is the depth and range of the effect? If not, what do you see as potential unintentional implications, which legislators and companies have no considered, but is possible under the new copy protection laws?
If you haven't heard of this yet, there is a annual conference at University of California at Riverside that covers these topics. I don't know if it is still running these days, since the funding for the conference in 97 was getting pretty thin.
There are tons of paper cover the exact topic you are exploring. A Comparative literature professor is an expert in the field and has managed to build the largest scholastic collection of science fiction. In 1997, the second closest collection had half the number of books.
Everyone seems to be mentioning the big names, but there are a lot of smaller authors who influenced the science fiction genre. There are a lot of science fiction experts in the Comparative Literature field, so consider looking there for really specific information with citations. I won't bother trying to remember the essays I've read in those topics. The material is numerous and the field of study is about 20 years old.
The equivalent saying in console would have to be "games, games, games". If you ain't got great games that are addictive as cocaine, you can forget about making a dent in the business. Just because microsoft can make a few PC games, it hardley has a great track record compared to the real heavy weights.
Contrary to what Microsoft might have thought early in the beginning, they are now realizing how different console games are. It's not just the controller is different or that keyboards are missing. It's a totally different mind set. But then again, ask any experienced game developer. They'll clear that cob web from your eyes with a good slap in the face.
I can't actually see the site, since it's been/.ed. The whole prospect of standardizing software engineering is a nice idea, but that's all it is. Although most software projects are failures and a lot of bad software is sold, it's not about a lack of standardized software development. Too many people who know nothing about real software development try to impose a top down model.
Just like every other profession, there are good and bad people. I'm sure people have come across good mechanics with no certification, but could tell you what's wrong with your car in 10 minutes. Then there are other shops that use a bunch of high tech gear only to replace a bunch of good parts to make more money. There will always be greedy people who get into a profession thinking "I can make a quick buck and retire."
Sure having a standard makes it easier for non-technical people to get some assurance a person is capable of doing the job. But then again, look at the SAT. There are tons of people who Memorize for the test and do great, but couldn't think themselves out of a hole. Rather than look at the real core of the problem, yet another organization is trying to make money by telling others what to do. Instead of addressing the problem in realistic terms, it's just another bad paint job that will rust with a little bit of weather.
wasn't the MS/SGI pack just a ploy to borrow/steal
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OpenGL 2.0 White Papers
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· Score: 2, Interesting
From the time Microsoft and SGI announced they were working together to improve 3D performance on windows, I assumed it was a way for each of them to learn/borrow/steal ideas from each other.
Unfortunately for SGI, there wasn't much to learn from Microsoft and MS is better at deception. As others have mentioned, DX has borrowed/stolen api and ideas from other competing API. It's great for gamers, but bad for the competition.
Is anyone really surprised Microsoft hasn't released new openGL drivers for windows? Unless game development on other platforms gain momentum, DX will eventually win and OpenGL will fade away. It's really shame, since OpenGL and Glide are better, but what does average joe care about. If it runs fast on their windows box, no one really cares. At the current rate of performance improvement in GPU's, no one is really going to care about squeezing out the last ounce of power. Only exception I can think is scientific application that absolutely need every ounce of power. Doing realtime simulations/modeling require insane power. But those are nitch products.
I haven't used C#, but I am using.NET on a project. From my experience so far, the.NET platform has a long way to go. It's good that C# will make things easier for developers, but like all languages with wide adoption, bloat will inevitably occur.
The first release of.NET will still be 2-3 releases from full fault tolerance and enterprise level computing. There are alot of complicated processes in enterprise computing and Microsoft's.NET platform as it stands today is far from meeting those needs. Microsoft has yet to define really useful modules and standards for complex processes that span multiple systems which include legacy VMS systems and modern solaris 8 applications.
SOAP is great for simple processes, but it is far from adaquate to handle distributed and transactional processes. Using standards like UDDI is a great step towards easing multi-platform integration. Instead of having different divisions of the same company design different API for publishing resources, it will be easier to have a common way of doing those things. It is not uncommon for financial institutions to store information differently. Take a simple think like address. Some places may store the number in a separate field, while others may replace "jr" with "junior". Anyone who has worked with large mixed environments knows this fact. SOAP is a message centric way of doing things. It is not designed for complex processes. The stuff IBM is building around SOAP is more complete than Microsoft's offering, but then again IBM has been at services longer.
Are these angels good or bad? and if they get wings, does this mean it counts as a good deed towards heaven? Or does it depend on your religion?
If I buy pr0n, does it create another hell spawn? Taxes and angels confusing...
I would have to disagree. Some of the best moments in movies are accidental. Take the last fight in Return of the Dragon. The camera starts rolling, bruce and chuck spar. That fight was totally not coreographed. There are other movies like A Fish Called Wanda. In the sex scene, kevin kline sings opera because he didn't know what else to do. When he was interviewed on Inside the Actors Studio, kline said he didn't expect it to be in the movie, but it is one of the funniest scenes.
You can't plan accidents or spontaniety. Considering how time consuming CG work is and how much planning is needed, spontaniety is close to impossible to achieve. Sure the voice actors can improvise like eddie murphy in Shrek, but the physical subtle accidents will be lost.
When anthony hopkins was interviewed about the sound he makes to jodi foster in Silence of the Lambs, he said it just came to him. That is result of the moment, not detailed story boards or careful planning.
To me the more appropriate question is what is quicker/easier to develop? Configuring the network firewall, servers and router is the job of the Network and system administrator, so do you really have much influence over those factors?
Having done sys admin work, it's much easier and less work to go through port 80. That's one less port to keep track of and allows me to build expertise on securing HTTP. Learning to secure a lot of different ports isn't hard though time consuming. Teaching it to new staff and making sure they understand all of it isn't. That's one reason for the adoption of SOAP and other XML/HTTP protocols.
From a developer perspective, would you rather build in IPSec to your IIOP, CORBA application, or setup HTTPS and go through a well tested system? Rolling your own security on top of IIOP and CORBA isn't a trivial task. You could build your own encryption wrapper for IIOP or CORBA, but you would have to handle all the key storage, key management, encryp/decrypt, secure sessions, and authentication to create robust, reliable security.
If your application really needs greater than 128bit SSL, then going through a web server on port 80 doesn't do anything 4 U. To my knowledge RMI can make HTTP connections via java.rmi.server.RMISocketFactory. There are existing Java libs to handle both SSL and key management, so going with port 80 is really a administration choice.
When I moved cross country, I packed my monitor in a superheavy double-ply cardboard box and used about 7 layers of big bubble wrap followed by 3-5 inches of plastic peanuts. It was probably about 6-14 inches of padding(front back had more padding than sides). I also shipped my computers in cardboard boxes, but again I rolled 4-6 layers of heavy duty bubble wrap and a ton of duct tape on the outside. 5 computers, 3 monitors and a 27" TV all made it safely. Some of the boxes were dented when it arrived, but all of it worked. If you have to use cardboard boxes, use heavy duty double-ply boxes. They usually have rating numbers. I don't know if there is a standard way of numbering them, but the ones I used were 5 and rated for appliances.
Having read through the whole document one phrase caught my eye. The RIAA claims it finds the fan and markets to them. First off, the idea there is a ready made fan for some piece of music is absurd.
That's like saying "We have this new single made by the Dixie Chicks, country music lovers will eat it up." will always be true. Everyone knows what makes successful or great music isn't the genre, artist or the label. Artists will be the first ones to say success is skill, dedication and a lot of luck. RIAA's argument paints a picture they are the ones who play match the card. To RIAA, the artist is just a barrier. The only thing they see of value is "the recording".
The question I have is, "How in the world, does the legal system not see the flaw in the argument?" The assumption is obviously flawed and yet the legal system sided with RIAA. Perhaps I am too hopeful the judicial system still has a few judges who believe in ethics and morality. Then again, RIAA has a lot of money to push their interests before consumers and artists. Too bad none of their legal posturing will change the fact a new breed of artists are growing up with digital technology and know how to use it for their own benefit. More and more artists will choose to use digital equipment at home to record, mix and master their albums. As more people grow up with technology, it becomes easier to distribute artwork and allows artists a greater degree of freedom. The one thing RIAA has no control over, "the creative process" is what scares them the most.
Obviously you can't go into details about the application you're building, but from what your post tells us there are a few questions you might want to ask yourself.
Alot of people have already mentioned some great points and specifics about threads, I/O and other platform specific issues to consider.
If I was in the position to build such an application I would ask myself the following questions. I'm assuming the application is hitting an existing server which has proprietary API.
can the UI be a browser? If not why? If so, what limitations exist and would those limitations ever become an issue?
Assuming browser could work, how can I create a generalized middle layer that will allow me to use either browsers or custom GUI?
Assuming browsers wouldn't work. Is the scope of the project too ambitious and not modular enough?
Are the limitations/requirement of the UI a result of design flaw?
Have I totally mis-understood the problem and approaching this the wrong way?
Should I limit the user interface to just windows and unix?
are there too many platform specific items in the requirement?
Since there's very little details about what kinds of system the application will hit, it's all guess work at this point. But, if I had to come up with a flexible architecture for an energy/utility grid for a couple universities, I would consider doing the following.
reguardless of what ever API the systems have, I would build a middle layer that uses MVC style architecture heavily. The middle layer would normalize all the communication between the different systems. Say you have 4 different types of system to interface with and they all have different API, normalizing all the API into say RDF or another XML format will save you a lot of headaches. Create a solid set of interfaces, factories and managers.
use a markup language to communicate between the middle layer and the GUI. this will allow you to use browsers in the early phases of the development and move to a custom GUI later on. This will also save you headaches when some one tries to view from AIX, IRIX or VMS.
assuming there are some realtime aspects to this application, using an asynchronis design like publish/subscribe is a good way to go.
Of course this is all hypothetical and could just be garbage.
Defining "globalization" in many ways is like defining poetry. For a couple thousand years now, people have been debating what constitutes poetry. Probably best description or answer is "I'll tell you when I see it."
Behind all of it is the idea of "connecting". NO, I don't mean plugging your monitor into the video port. It's the idea two living creatures come to an agreement. It can be as simple as a dog licking an owners hand after getting a treat. The owner and dog agree they have affection for each other. On a global scale, connection means a million different things. It's people playing games across the world at the same time, business men teleconferencing, instant messaging, watching a soccer game and everything else. What scares people (myself included) is all the geographical, linguistic and political barrier begin to dissintegrate rapidly. What people are afraid of is loosing the sense of self vs connecting to the world. Before 1960's, Americans chose to down play their foriegn heritage and adopt a common culture. Transpose this scenario on a global scale, and you can see why so many people are terrified. What makes life interesting is differences between people. Not everyone is ready to learn 8 languages, or adopt one global language. Nor is everyone ready for international cuisine. As Lao-Tzsu said, "The only thing certain is change."
From the review it sounds interesting. From a practicle perspective, how the heck does this help developers who are working for lemmings. Do you really think lemming managers are going to buy the book, read it and actually change their behavior. Lemming managers don't know they suck and don't ever think "it" applies to them. It sucks that people have been laid off right and left, but the one good thing is it does weed out a lot of poser wannabe who entered web development/programming for the hype. There are a lot of smart people who entered the engineering for the money, only to turn out crap because they absolutely hate the profession, but love the money.
Having met both great and terrible programmers, periodic weeding is a necessary part of every industry. Books like these are no different to books that analyze the early years of a new industry. Perhaps a better question to ask or better book to write about is "why don't people learn from history?"
But then again maybe this book is written for a laugh and some humor.
Although I doubt the validity of the email, it does shed some light into the whole (imaginary/real) platform war.
Even if the article is a work of fiction, there are some truths about sales, deployment and cost. First and foremost, what wins with management isn't the technology itself, but the perception of it's usefulness. Microsoft sales staff are highly trained at stating what execs want to hear. Most of what execs want to hear isn't technical gibberish about kernels, exploits, architecture, languages or other detailed technical gems.
What should we the community do?
learn to speak human talk (non-geek techno babble)
learn how to distill technological advantages into real value (not things like, you can change the code if there is a bug)
learn what questions to ask, if you're given the task of convincing customer X to use linux. Too often geeks (myself included) are so enraptured with technology to ask the person in front of them "what do you want to do with your company and how do you see it fitting in?"
learn to listen closely and see where the customer wants to go.
remember customers don't care about open source and always try to give an unbiased opinion. Even if it means saying "Exchange is your best bet."
put your customer's needs before "what would be the most fun for you"
I am sure everyone knows non-technical people whose eyes gloss over when words like kernel, port scan and ssh are mentioned. If the open source community wants to ensure a strong future, more technical people will need to spend a lot of time educating the average joe/jane about technology. Once people understand technology, the advantages/disadvantages become obvious. That is perhaps the best weapon against Microsoft. Knowledge is power and Microsoft will never be in the game of real education.
First off I am pretty impressed such a cheap satellite is able to stay up for a month. Although it shows it is possible to build a functional satellite from off-the-shelf parts, it isn't going to revolutionize the space industry. More likely than not, it will drastically change how schools teach engineering, physics and astronomy. As others have mentioned, big expensive satellites are engineered to a different reliability standard. If our national telecommunications infrastructure was built with a bunch of small cheap satellites, I doubt our phones and television would be as reliable.
Where all this really matters is with the next generation of engineers, scientists and inventors entering college in the next few years. They are the ones that will benefit from this type of experimentation. Not only will students be able to get valuable hands on experience about real world engineering, but they will get others interested in the field. Developments like these bring exotic technologies down to earth and show students they can do something really challenging. With so many posts on/. about burning out, boring classes, and disillusionment, this may bring in a breath of fresh air.
The down side of having a lot of students launching small satellites is it polutes space and makes the job of tracking dangerous objects more difficult for NASA. All of these developments aren't free, because there are a lot of other financial, political and environmental concerns attached to satellites.
JBuilder, TogetherJ or VAJ
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Java IDEs?
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· Score: 1
The ide really depends on the platform you are using. Jbuilder can hook into cvs for source control. VAJ has it's own source control and has tons of hooks for websphere. If your platform includes a lot of EJB that use container managed beans, and websphere, VAJ is probably your best bet. On the otherhand, if you want a full featured IDE that is mature and stable Jbuilder is a good choice. If you're into UML style of OOD, then TogetherJ is a good choice.
Although linux can run large RDBMS like Oracle, and sybase, the issue is disk storage and hardware redundancy. Things like having Veritas hooked up to a couple of large systems to handle failover is crucial. Large in my mind is systems with more than 10terabytes of data. Buying enterprise level storage solutions for solaris is more plentiful than for PC solutions. Things like getting a solid gigabit ethernet card or bonding several together has been tested on solaris longer than on linux. Who in their right mind wants to be responsible when the cheap storage device dies and failover doesn't kick in? I sure wouldn't.
Linux can run RDBMS just fine, it's all the other stuff that is lagging. Manufacturers of fiber storage and other high end products tend to focus on solaris more than linux. Large RDBMS includes a lot of other important details that need constant management and attention. Building a PC box with redudant powersource, fans, backup CPU's and motherboards gets you close to solaris prices, so enterprise projects tend to choose solaris or mainframes.
Education is not the end all of the world as universities would like you to think. Sure I got my BA, but remember college/universities are primarily there to let you experience new things, not inspire you. If you're lucky enough to find teachers who inspire you, take every class they teach. I was lucky enough to have great teachers in Literature.
I always knew I'd work with computers, so I bagged the formal education and decided to broaden my perception of the world. There are people who think "you have to take a class to learn how to do it right" and there are people who need it. There are no right or wrong ways to learn. It's all a matter of clearing one's head of all the stupid BS and focus on what matters. Of course clearing all the BS is hard to do and even harder when you're in school.
Probably the best advice I've heard in college was, "learn to think critically." If you can do that, doesn't matter what your degree is. The percentage of people who graduate w/o a grain of critical thinking is the same in every major. On the otherhand, it never hurts experimenting with electives. Take some classes that aren't in your requirements. You might find it refreshing and make you realize classes are all the same. The only difference between the grind and fun is a subtle shift in perspective.
We humans have a tendency to think we are smart and know how the physical world works. That is until some scientists come across a phenomenon that counters current theories. The last time I checked, science defines/accepts theories as laws after a sufficiently long test period. Once the theory is put to test and proves to be better than other theories, it is accepted as a physical law. One important fact people tend to forget is everything we based on observable information. There are numerous phenomena we can't observe or are beyond our abilities, therefore all theories are subject to a large margin of error.
Statements like "this will change how scientists think about x" really shows how self centered our species are. I find the scientists' reaction far more interesting than the fact there is no donut around the blackhole.
Maybe it's shy:p or it let his neighbor borrow his donut.
I am biased, but the books I've looked at often are gibberish or common sense. As others have stated, anyone who is a serious professional focused on producing quality already has a good grasp of project development.
People tend to confuse bad developers and managers with a lack of process. If a person is focused on getting the job done and fluid operation, process isn't critical. Sure process helps improve metrics of performance and efficiency, but a process is only as powerful as the people using them. I've seen the implementation and lack of process kill projects. I've also seen situations where process was organic and worked fluid. At the core of it all is "who" you work with and now "how". Of all the MBA's I've met, those who stick to text books fail miserably. The best managers I've had didn't get a MBA degree, nor do they hold to a set of rules like pilars of heaven. As Lao Tzu said, "the only certainty is uncertainty." More people should read classical literature(all languages) and realize none of these problems are new.
I haven't read the book, but from the description, I wouldn't bother. Get a job and learn first hand. That's the real way to figure out what works for you and those you work with. No book can teach you how a real person works.
The issue here seems to be driven by copyright and other related legal issues. Sony doesn't tell him he can't write his own programs from scratch. They just don't like him de-compiling Sony's applications. Doing so gives Sony's competitors tools and it raises other legal issues with support and warranty.
The guy should know better and just write his own from scratch. Look at all the Lego related applications that were written from scratch specifically to avoid those kinds of issues.
Slashdot Mirror
That makes it less valuable in my mind.
Why in the world couldn't /. record the interview, then convert it to MP3? That would have been much more enjoyable. Though that might eat up quite a bit of bandwidth.
Since your encounter with RIAA, have you come across other researchers/projects that are hindered in real academic or corporate research? If so, what is the depth and range of the effect? If not, what do you see as potential unintentional implications, which legislators and companies have no considered, but is possible under the new copy protection laws?
There are tons of paper cover the exact topic you are exploring. A Comparative literature professor is an expert in the field and has managed to build the largest scholastic collection of science fiction. In 1997, the second closest collection had half the number of books.
Everyone seems to be mentioning the big names, but there are a lot of smaller authors who influenced the science fiction genre. There are a lot of science fiction experts in the Comparative Literature field, so consider looking there for really specific information with citations. I won't bother trying to remember the essays I've read in those topics. The material is numerous and the field of study is about 20 years old.
Contrary to what Microsoft might have thought early in the beginning, they are now realizing how different console games are. It's not just the controller is different or that keyboards are missing. It's a totally different mind set. But then again, ask any experienced game developer. They'll clear that cob web from your eyes with a good slap in the face.
Just like every other profession, there are good and bad people. I'm sure people have come across good mechanics with no certification, but could tell you what's wrong with your car in 10 minutes. Then there are other shops that use a bunch of high tech gear only to replace a bunch of good parts to make more money. There will always be greedy people who get into a profession thinking "I can make a quick buck and retire."
Sure having a standard makes it easier for non-technical people to get some assurance a person is capable of doing the job. But then again, look at the SAT. There are tons of people who Memorize for the test and do great, but couldn't think themselves out of a hole. Rather than look at the real core of the problem, yet another organization is trying to make money by telling others what to do. Instead of addressing the problem in realistic terms, it's just another bad paint job that will rust with a little bit of weather.
Unfortunately for SGI, there wasn't much to learn from Microsoft and MS is better at deception. As others have mentioned, DX has borrowed/stolen api and ideas from other competing API. It's great for gamers, but bad for the competition.
Is anyone really surprised Microsoft hasn't released new openGL drivers for windows? Unless game development on other platforms gain momentum, DX will eventually win and OpenGL will fade away. It's really shame, since OpenGL and Glide are better, but what does average joe care about. If it runs fast on their windows box, no one really cares. At the current rate of performance improvement in GPU's, no one is really going to care about squeezing out the last ounce of power. Only exception I can think is scientific application that absolutely need every ounce of power. Doing realtime simulations/modeling require insane power. But those are nitch products.
The first release of .NET will still be 2-3 releases from full fault tolerance and enterprise level computing. There are alot of complicated processes in enterprise computing and Microsoft's .NET platform as it stands today is far from meeting those needs. Microsoft has yet to define really useful modules and standards for complex processes that span multiple systems which include legacy VMS systems and modern solaris 8 applications.
SOAP is great for simple processes, but it is far from adaquate to handle distributed and transactional processes. Using standards like UDDI is a great step towards easing multi-platform integration. Instead of having different divisions of the same company design different API for publishing resources, it will be easier to have a common way of doing those things. It is not uncommon for financial institutions to store information differently. Take a simple think like address. Some places may store the number in a separate field, while others may replace "jr" with "junior". Anyone who has worked with large mixed environments knows this fact. SOAP is a message centric way of doing things. It is not designed for complex processes. The stuff IBM is building around SOAP is more complete than Microsoft's offering, but then again IBM has been at services longer.
Are these angels good or bad? and if they get wings, does this mean it counts as a good deed towards heaven? Or does it depend on your religion? If I buy pr0n, does it create another hell spawn? Taxes and angels confusing...
You can't plan accidents or spontaniety. Considering how time consuming CG work is and how much planning is needed, spontaniety is close to impossible to achieve. Sure the voice actors can improvise like eddie murphy in Shrek, but the physical subtle accidents will be lost.
When anthony hopkins was interviewed about the sound he makes to jodi foster in Silence of the Lambs, he said it just came to him. That is result of the moment, not detailed story boards or careful planning.
Having done sys admin work, it's much easier and less work to go through port 80. That's one less port to keep track of and allows me to build expertise on securing HTTP. Learning to secure a lot of different ports isn't hard though time consuming. Teaching it to new staff and making sure they understand all of it isn't. That's one reason for the adoption of SOAP and other XML/HTTP protocols.
From a developer perspective, would you rather build in IPSec to your IIOP, CORBA application, or setup HTTPS and go through a well tested system? Rolling your own security on top of IIOP and CORBA isn't a trivial task. You could build your own encryption wrapper for IIOP or CORBA, but you would have to handle all the key storage, key management, encryp/decrypt, secure sessions, and authentication to create robust, reliable security.
If your application really needs greater than 128bit SSL, then going through a web server on port 80 doesn't do anything 4 U. To my knowledge RMI can make HTTP connections via java.rmi.server.RMISocketFactory. There are existing Java libs to handle both SSL and key management, so going with port 80 is really a administration choice.
When I moved cross country, I packed my monitor in a superheavy double-ply cardboard box and used about 7 layers of big bubble wrap followed by 3-5 inches of plastic peanuts. It was probably about 6-14 inches of padding(front back had more padding than sides). I also shipped my computers in cardboard boxes, but again I rolled 4-6 layers of heavy duty bubble wrap and a ton of duct tape on the outside. 5 computers, 3 monitors and a 27" TV all made it safely. Some of the boxes were dented when it arrived, but all of it worked. If you have to use cardboard boxes, use heavy duty double-ply boxes. They usually have rating numbers. I don't know if there is a standard way of numbering them, but the ones I used were 5 and rated for appliances.
That's like saying "We have this new single made by the Dixie Chicks, country music lovers will eat it up." will always be true. Everyone knows what makes successful or great music isn't the genre, artist or the label. Artists will be the first ones to say success is skill, dedication and a lot of luck. RIAA's argument paints a picture they are the ones who play match the card. To RIAA, the artist is just a barrier. The only thing they see of value is "the recording".
The question I have is, "How in the world, does the legal system not see the flaw in the argument?" The assumption is obviously flawed and yet the legal system sided with RIAA. Perhaps I am too hopeful the judicial system still has a few judges who believe in ethics and morality. Then again, RIAA has a lot of money to push their interests before consumers and artists. Too bad none of their legal posturing will change the fact a new breed of artists are growing up with digital technology and know how to use it for their own benefit. More and more artists will choose to use digital equipment at home to record, mix and master their albums. As more people grow up with technology, it becomes easier to distribute artwork and allows artists a greater degree of freedom. The one thing RIAA has no control over, "the creative process" is what scares them the most.
Alot of people have already mentioned some great points and specifics about threads, I/O and other platform specific issues to consider.
If I was in the position to build such an application I would ask myself the following questions. I'm assuming the application is hitting an existing server which has proprietary API.
Since there's very little details about what kinds of system the application will hit, it's all guess work at this point. But, if I had to come up with a flexible architecture for an energy/utility grid for a couple universities, I would consider doing the following.
Of course this is all hypothetical and could just be garbage.
Behind all of it is the idea of "connecting". NO, I don't mean plugging your monitor into the video port. It's the idea two living creatures come to an agreement. It can be as simple as a dog licking an owners hand after getting a treat. The owner and dog agree they have affection for each other. On a global scale, connection means a million different things. It's people playing games across the world at the same time, business men teleconferencing, instant messaging, watching a soccer game and everything else. What scares people (myself included) is all the geographical, linguistic and political barrier begin to dissintegrate rapidly. What people are afraid of is loosing the sense of self vs connecting to the world. Before 1960's, Americans chose to down play their foriegn heritage and adopt a common culture. Transpose this scenario on a global scale, and you can see why so many people are terrified. What makes life interesting is differences between people. Not everyone is ready to learn 8 languages, or adopt one global language. Nor is everyone ready for international cuisine. As Lao-Tzsu said, "The only thing certain is change."
Having met both great and terrible programmers, periodic weeding is a necessary part of every industry. Books like these are no different to books that analyze the early years of a new industry. Perhaps a better question to ask or better book to write about is "why don't people learn from history?"
But then again maybe this book is written for a laugh and some humor.
Even if the article is a work of fiction, there are some truths about sales, deployment and cost. First and foremost, what wins with management isn't the technology itself, but the perception of it's usefulness. Microsoft sales staff are highly trained at stating what execs want to hear. Most of what execs want to hear isn't technical gibberish about kernels, exploits, architecture, languages or other detailed technical gems.
What should we the community do?
I am sure everyone knows non-technical people whose eyes gloss over when words like kernel, port scan and ssh are mentioned. If the open source community wants to ensure a strong future, more technical people will need to spend a lot of time educating the average joe/jane about technology. Once people understand technology, the advantages/disadvantages become obvious. That is perhaps the best weapon against Microsoft. Knowledge is power and Microsoft will never be in the game of real education.
Where all this really matters is with the next generation of engineers, scientists and inventors entering college in the next few years. They are the ones that will benefit from this type of experimentation. Not only will students be able to get valuable hands on experience about real world engineering, but they will get others interested in the field. Developments like these bring exotic technologies down to earth and show students they can do something really challenging. With so many posts on /. about burning out, boring classes, and disillusionment, this may bring in a breath of fresh air.
The down side of having a lot of students launching small satellites is it polutes space and makes the job of tracking dangerous objects more difficult for NASA. All of these developments aren't free, because there are a lot of other financial, political and environmental concerns attached to satellites.
The ide really depends on the platform you are using. Jbuilder can hook into cvs for source control. VAJ has it's own source control and has tons of hooks for websphere. If your platform includes a lot of EJB that use container managed beans, and websphere, VAJ is probably your best bet. On the otherhand, if you want a full featured IDE that is mature and stable Jbuilder is a good choice. If you're into UML style of OOD, then TogetherJ is a good choice.
Linux can run RDBMS just fine, it's all the other stuff that is lagging. Manufacturers of fiber storage and other high end products tend to focus on solaris more than linux. Large RDBMS includes a lot of other important details that need constant management and attention. Building a PC box with redudant powersource, fans, backup CPU's and motherboards gets you close to solaris prices, so enterprise projects tend to choose solaris or mainframes.
Education is not the end all of the world as universities would like you to think. Sure I got my BA, but remember college/universities are primarily there to let you experience new things, not inspire you. If you're lucky enough to find teachers who inspire you, take every class they teach. I was lucky enough to have great teachers in Literature.
I always knew I'd work with computers, so I bagged the formal education and decided to broaden my perception of the world. There are people who think "you have to take a class to learn how to do it right" and there are people who need it. There are no right or wrong ways to learn. It's all a matter of clearing one's head of all the stupid BS and focus on what matters. Of course clearing all the BS is hard to do and even harder when you're in school.
Probably the best advice I've heard in college was, "learn to think critically." If you can do that, doesn't matter what your degree is. The percentage of people who graduate w/o a grain of critical thinking is the same in every major. On the otherhand, it never hurts experimenting with electives. Take some classes that aren't in your requirements. You might find it refreshing and make you realize classes are all the same. The only difference between the grind and fun is a subtle shift in perspective.
Statements like "this will change how scientists think about x" really shows how self centered our species are. I find the scientists' reaction far more interesting than the fact there is no donut around the blackhole.
Maybe it's shy :p or it let his neighbor borrow his donut.
I am biased, but the books I've looked at often are gibberish or common sense. As others have stated, anyone who is a serious professional focused on producing quality already has a good grasp of project development.
People tend to confuse bad developers and managers with a lack of process. If a person is focused on getting the job done and fluid operation, process isn't critical. Sure process helps improve metrics of performance and efficiency, but a process is only as powerful as the people using them. I've seen the implementation and lack of process kill projects. I've also seen situations where process was organic and worked fluid. At the core of it all is "who" you work with and now "how". Of all the MBA's I've met, those who stick to text books fail miserably. The best managers I've had didn't get a MBA degree, nor do they hold to a set of rules like pilars of heaven. As Lao Tzu said, "the only certainty is uncertainty." More people should read classical literature(all languages) and realize none of these problems are new.
I haven't read the book, but from the description, I wouldn't bother. Get a job and learn first hand. That's the real way to figure out what works for you and those you work with. No book can teach you how a real person works.
The issue here seems to be driven by copyright and other related legal issues. Sony doesn't tell him he can't write his own programs from scratch. They just don't like him de-compiling Sony's applications. Doing so gives Sony's competitors tools and it raises other legal issues with support and warranty.
The guy should know better and just write his own from scratch. Look at all the Lego related applications that were written from scratch specifically to avoid those kinds of issues.
The issue isn't about OSS. It's about solid programming practices that encourages good document, thoughtful design and good exception handling.