So I'll just ask the question, "Why do we care?". What can Microsoft offer the FOSS community that would entice us to come to the table and talk about a truce? I didn't even know there was a War going on.
I figure Linux and Windows makes a great natural division in the market. Those who really want to use a computer use Linux. Those who really want to do something else and just dabble with web pages, email, and instant messenger can use Windows.
PHP has its places - extremely large, mission critical applications are not one of them.
I keep hearing people putting down PHP. It's not the only interpreted language. I also hear of Python being the best thing in the toolbox.
Seems to me that if you can put your personal bias aside then just about everything can be run with some form of an interpreted language playing a core component of the overall application. After all, isn't HTML/Javascript considered interpreted?
Apache is written in C. So are all the databases one might use for a backend. All you are describing is the use of a middleware that isn't written in a compiled language being a viable candidate for enterprise applications.
I would tend to agree simply because I work in a Java house and I work on Perl and I can develop an application in Perl about ten times faster then can be developed in Java. Am I an Uber Coder? Not a chance. But I can get feedback on my applications performance as I write it making it less error prone and easier (IMHO) to debug.
A good thought. And most of these new techies will be to afraid of losing their jobs if the say the don't understand it. That's been my experience with overseas outsourcing.
On another note. I think this will backfire eventually. There is growing evidence that the real cost of overseas development is much higher than intially reported. Much of this has to do with the cost of Quality and Risk Management. How much do you money to you save if you spend millions a year backing up all your systems and you don't have a failure? How much does it cost when you backup nothing and the data center burns down? These are classic questions that typically rely on the PHB answer of "It hasn't happened yet so why should it happen now?" and "OK, so it happened and we recovered everything perfectly, so we can stop budgeting recovery expansion projects and spend it on something else"
Yeah, it certainly sucks to have someone put into this position. But how will you react when you are getting trained in your next job by some indian dude who thinks your just some corporate shill and trains you on how to wipe your ass and nothing more? You probably won't feel too good about the position you are put in. The BofA developers can't do anything about the position they have been put in by BofA, but they do have a choice in how they are going to act as human beings. What kind of response will you look back on in 20 years and be proud of?
Re:probably on Microsoft's list of next important
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Apache down, IIS up
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· Score: 1
I don't see anything that indicates Apache is DOWN. Rather, IIS is trying to pick up a lot of cheap commodotized blog sites and I personally don't believe that compares to other websites. Imagine how skewed the metrics would be if each MySpace user was actually a distinctly registered domain name on the internet?
More realistic. I would just be happy if they could get back to where the ThinkPad was, almost. Just make hardware and support Linux. Don't tie yourself into supporting only one flavor of Linux (RedHat, SuSE) because that's always going to piss off someone you don't support and it misses an opportunity for sales and support.
If they just made hardware with support, meaning the manufacturer would work willingly with the volunteer developers to create the GPL drivers necessary to distribute on any *NIX platform and keep Linux compatibility on their hardware selection requirements list it would mean worlds to the community. And the best part is, they wouldn't have to actually do anything to directly support the hardware. They just have to support the guy who wants to support the hardware and let their software product make it's own way into the distro packaging systems.
Well, for one. How does legal software become illegal? You only need to check once.
This is a simple enough program that there shouldn't ever be a need for a safety switch, and since it only runs the one time, there's no need for it.
And Microsoft has established a history of doing this kind of crap in the past. Is there any reason why anyone should expect them to behave differently today? Seriously. Is there anything which Microsoft has experienced which might give them pause to consider this behaviour as potentially improper?
No... I am one of those who remembers when Gates didn't think the Internet was going to be anything useful and almost omitted any tcp/ip stack from windows 95. Where were you?
I guess this solves a problem for me. I have a Thinkpad from a few years back that I have had some wonderful experiences with. It's been a truly wonderful machine. But I'm not in the market for a new machine within the next year.
But their decision to explicitly not support Linux, which is a not what IBM was doing when I purchased the notebook, has simplified the process. While I am not going to require that a notebook manufacturer sell Linux installed I do appreciate if a company provides even tacit support for my favorite operating system. This decision of theirs negates any past experience I have had with them.
Of course now I'm starting to watch the MAC OSX with interest. Which muddies things up a bit. But either way, I can exercise my position that anyone who is going to partner with a company that I don't care to support. Kind of like Dolphin free Tuna.
Minus the Office Suite is a pretty fucking big omission. That's second only to minus the internet. But Microsoft pulled that one out of the fire on Windows 95
Right! It is a cycle we've been repeating. But I think with each cycle we get measurably better at it. Fewer Heads-on-Pikes and a shorter duration for the serfdoms.
It's the sign of some improvement that makes it worth doing.
You don't understand what Free Market means and have forgotten about Adam Smiths Invisible Hand force first presented in economic theories circa 1776. If a truly Free Market did exist, then there would be a natural backlash against your proposed MEGABIGCO when people realized that they were not serving the best interests of the customers.
Example: Linux gained ground against Microsoft because Linux presented an alternative solution to Microsoft that freed the consumers from the MEGABIGCO Effect even though it was not capable of matching performance on every aspect. In the last decade this force has been vehemently fought by everything Microsoft was able to throw at it including their own attempts a forcing regulations and market restrictions upon the consumer through legislature, FUD, and just about everything in between.
You're case is seriously lacking fundamentals and is wrapped in as much aluminum foil as your head. A Free Market is the required path of conducting business because it's the only mechanism which is equally complex, reactive, and adaptable as the creativity of the products that can be deployed into the industry.
CopyRight and Patent law acts to slow down the rate of ingenuity and creativity in the market because it acts to protect a given idea from being expanded upon for a fixed number of years to allow the creator the opportunity to develop a viable business model and market demand for their own product. This is a mechanism to counter act the MEGABIGCO Effect, but it's been so sadly abused and manipulated over the last 100 years that it's now a tool for more for the benefit of the largest corporations than to protect any new ventures.
Regulation has it's place in the Free Market environment to establish limitations of behaviour to enforce a level of moral conduct. Positive examples of this would be regulations against slave labor, safe work environments, pollution controls. These are all broadly defined and generalized components of a business infrastructure.
If the government were to get involved in regulating the internet they had better stop at the level of regulation controls similar to what they have on the National Interstate system: They ensure the roads are at a minimun safe level of passage for a given speed. They enforce a minimum safety level of the vehicles on these roads. DOT regulations do not control content of your vehicle unless that content is potentially dangerous to the others on the road. This means it's safe to ship porn but not high grade radioactive isotopes. If we try to start regulating the internet on the grounds of Politically Correct or Good Taste then we can just give it up and go back to BBS systems.
The difficulty at this juncture in the Internet development is that Regulations are things that can be done by politicians to gain popular appeal because they are limiting content (you can't ship porn or isotopes) and they are gaining election contributions by working in the best interests of the MEGABIGCO (you can only drive on these roads if you have a vehicle made by...). This is not the fault of the politicians or the MEGABIGCO's themselves. They are doing what is necessary to survive. What might be lacking here is the Invisible Hand calling out the politicians and Corps to push back on these legislative efforts.
Re:The diplomatic response
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The CVS Cop-Out
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· Score: 3, Interesting
This is certainly a PC response and only slightly better than the response, if any, you would receive from proprietary software. Of course, proprietary software would have a response more akin to "It's in the next release." which is essentially what is described herein.
I think a claim that the issue has been addressed and not yet released is a bit of a grey area between the ideologies of Release Early, Release Often and a perception of great stability in software (It Just Works). It can be argued that the OP is a whiney-ass cream-puff who wants what he wants when he wants it. Just as easily it can be argued that a statement with an inferred attitude of "It's in CVS alread, quit yer bitchin!" really is just an example of what always happens when the developer community and the user community approach each other.
Users want everything now but bitch about daily installs/builds. Which means that a CVS "fix" won't do them any good in the first place since they only use the "released" versions. Meanwhile the developers are doing what they can to fix things on the time they have but would like to have a release be something that's more stable than buggy. After all, their name might be on it.
Personally, the fact that it's being addressed in CVS means that they know about it, they fixed it, and it's coming soon to a package near you. If this is unacceptable at least you have the option of pulling the CVS version ahead of the released package version. If this is all too much to handle than think of things in terms of a proprietary software product. The bug, if serious enough, will be fixed at the next major release in 6 to 12 months. That's the alternative. Open source allows you to put yourself in between these two ends of the spectrum. If you are going to call CVS a cop out, then go to the other end and keep quiet.
This is really odd news but probably something to just quietly watch without screaming about how Apple betrayed all the OSX users or some stuff like that.
Apple will be serving as the lab rat for Open versus Closed source development. It will be interesting to see if they do anything which drives home anyones point.
At first I was thinking the clay idea wasn't too bad, especially when you consider how much clay will move when you fire it. This means that high precision products made of clay cannot be manufactured without some extra steps to polish the post-fired product to tolerances.
But you more you talk of malleability the more I think of Silly Putty. Sure you can shape it to stand up tall, but it creeps and falls over given time. Which is a horrible analogy to software because it implies that software isn't stable.
Software isn't complex. Software is actually really simple once you understand the language(s) involved. To state the Software Engineering is complex means you don't understand the concept. There might be a lot of steps to it, but it's never hard.
What is difficult is trying to get Software to represent an accurate mathematical model of the real world as we understand it. And this takes us back to the Charles Dickens novels or even the Bible or other fundamental publication of a major Religion.
People interpret their world differently. Given the same book they will create different meanings. If this weren't true there would still be only one Christian based Church and only one Mulsim based Religion (maybe not, it's about prophets not publications but I don't know enough to be sure). If you could get everyone to agree on the definition and meaning and behaviour of their modelled world then software becomes easy. But that's rarely the case.
Where software becomes difficult is trying to define this modelled universe. In the real world there are certain rules that you simply can't violate (at least under Newtonian Physics) and those rules form the basis of our world. Mechanical Engineering would be pretty screwed if they had to work in a world of Quantum Physics and String Theory. Cars would be scarey to drive! But most of Mechanical Engineering falls into a handful of Rules to live by.
But when someone tries to map a Business Model to a Mathematical Model they tend to violate these simple rules to present a simpler business model. Ever heard the phrase, "An Exercise for the Reader"? My experience has shown that too often the Business Model as layed out to the software people is poorly constructed with holes and contradictions galore and no interest to fix let alone recognize them. And it's left to the software dude, who has no idea what's really going on as a Business Model, to guess which way to procede. Almost appears like someone is introducing Quantum Probability into a Business Model. Unfortunately with 100 million lines of code you get a lot of guesses and a lot of unexpected behaviour.
I just layed out two very short examples of spam and good email, 20-30 words each, and had him identify which was the spam. Easy enough and the interaction got me 30 seconds into the presentation and he was still with me.
It got a bit trickier when I hit the conclusion that I was not using Bayes theorem for identification of spam but to qualify logged events in a 37GB log file. Talk about bloat! But he understood well enough that my identification of a word/phrase worked the same way that he would qualify the word cialis and that was all that mattered.
I found graphical representations using either analogous formats or simplified images, with an option for light humour, work effectively. But you have to use things in their world and minimize your own terminology. The terminology is something that will inherently bring fear into their hearts and that will turn them away.
Oh God!! I was't really prepared to wade through a flame war over distros this morning. What a bunch of freaking zealots! You distro fanatics make me want to puke.
I started on Slackware because someone said it's a good distro to use if you want to learn what's really going on. I stand by that statement today. If you want to learn Linux then don't use some mamby-pamby cute distro. If you want to be a user of Linux then use whatever most resembles whatever floats your boat. Some might argue it's best to use something that looks most like Windows. Some wouldn't.
I ran into an intersting discussion in the real world this week that I thought pertinent. The conclusion goes as follows:
If you want a great GUI, use Mac OS-X as there is nothing even close to it.
If you want a simplified server then you can choose from RedHat, SuSE, or a dozen others.
If you want a highly customizable server then you can choose from the less pretty distros of Debian, Slackware, Gentoo where changes are tightly controlled and lightly managed by the package manager.
If you want to have a workstation (any OS) that is both a simplified interface and ultimately customizable then you won't find it.
From a practical point: most *nix servers that are not Linux based (HP/Sun/IBM) have little in the way of cute interface management tools. On these heavy lift platforms the configuration tool of choice seems to be vi more than a GUI. I don't think anyone has been able to surpass this customization and I'm not certain that it is a requirement that they do. If you don't understand the workings of the applications then a GUI interface will only permit you to do damage.
It's very likely that my proposed list of distro's will create a lot of controversy, but first consider where you sit on the spectrum between ultimate customization of the machine and "I'll take what I get" user.
After 15 years using MS Office, I've never found a "common" (to me) feature that OpenOffice can't replicate. YMMV.
I think what this announcement translates to is "Resistance is futile! You will be assimulated." Meaning: We will ensure that every time you us a MSFT product to open a ODF file, it will be converted to the superior technology without delay and we will repeatedly question the intelligence of any motions to continue with this puny ODF format. This is typical behaviour for their software applications and I don't think they will miss a beat taking this one in like any other.
Unfortunately, exportation to ODF will be something of a hit-n-miss procedure by design.
Of course, if ODF and OpenOffice is so great, why are we even wasting our time concerning ourselves with the press releases of MSFT? When was the last time, since the 1980's, that anyone stood up and took notice of what Lotus or Novell was announcing? I think MSFT's time is passing quickly.
Some day people will look back and try to identify the turning point in MSFT's history. Some will say it was Mac OSX, other Linux 2.4. I think it's the combination of Mac OSX, Linux 2.4, Mozilla, and OpenOffice that formed the greatest software tide. The hardware tide is a bit different. In that regard, the fact that 64-bit hardware was first supported by Linux and Mac rather than Windows is the true hardware turning point.
I used to work for a guy who very nicely summed up software development as: Ready, Shoot, Aim. This is similar to the notion of most hobbyists with the time will eventually rewrite something they get working because now that they understand what it is they really want to do, they can get it right the second time.
Seems to me that the olde school development model of the Linux Kernel had a valid point of doing an odd numbered release (2.5) for feature development and then an even numbered release (2.6) for refinements before we start the next wave of features (2.7). I was a little dismayed that the decision was made to drop this practice as it seemed to be one of the most intelligent things I've heard of in software development.
I'm getting ahead of myself here, but I do hope that the commercial investment in the Linux Kernel doesn't start pressing the Linux Kernel to be developed in the same manner as commercial OS. I'm not talking specifically about Microsoft, but any company software development project. They tend to go for the features before they spend the time to fix anything. And then it's an uphill battle to get anything fixed. If the Linux Kernel development takes the same path then there shouldn't be any surprises if they start to fall down and hurt themselves more frequently. And eventually, Linux will be surpassed by someone who has the better practices in development then what they have adopted.
I don't expect people to get it right the first time, but I would appreciate it if people would get it right rather than just ignoring it. If it becomes too difficult to get it right, then they need to establish a sunset limit on the age of hardware they are willing to support, or simply not allow any (buggy) support to enter in the first place. As extremes they probably don't want to keep supporting MCA buss but it might be a bit much to drop EIDE, ISA, COM, and PS2 and only work on FireWire, SATA, SAS, USB2.0 support.
I tried Suse for along time and realized that the IQ of the SuSE mailing list was significantly lower than the IQ of the Debian list. SuSE doesn't have the developers officially supporting the mailing list and as a result, the mailing list consists of people who think they understand what the problems are and how to fix them.
And I'm finding the documentation of Perl to be a significant advantage over Ruby. I'm spoiled by the expectation that everything is documented, eventually.
Very well put. About the only property that differentiates Ubunto from everyone else seems to be the Pop Culture aspect. I do think APT is something that might set them apart except that they didn't create it. They could well be making a good case for why having many distros is a Bad Thing if it can be shown that Ubuntu migrants are coming from the parent Debian, thereby reducing the effectiveness of user feedback in bugsquashing and general user support.
Seeing as I've never installed it, I can't say much about it, but I think it's going to be hard to beat the Debian installer anymore. While largely still black and white without all the cute graphics, you only have to hit about 6 times to install a workstation. Everything else is figured out for you. If you count button presses, it's easier than Suse or Redhat.
I don't think it will be a problem for nude art. Most museums don't put the paintings on the street, you have to go through the door. I don't think this is any different than the home page being an anteroom to the virtual museum.
I think the basic intent here is valid, if you promote pornography, and most who do know that they do, then you should make an effort to identify yourself as such and not promote it through false pretenses. I don't think anyone is going to have a serious problem with distribution of pornography. It's the mis-representation and mis-direction that many sites rely on as a means of promoting their business.
But I'm of the opinion that mis-representation of your content shouldn't stop at pornography. Informercial content is just as misleading.
Slashdot Mirror
So I'll just ask the question, "Why do we care?". What can Microsoft offer the FOSS community that would entice us to come to the table and talk about a truce? I didn't even know there was a War going on.
I figure Linux and Windows makes a great natural division in the market. Those who really want to use a computer use Linux. Those who really want to do something else and just dabble with web pages, email, and instant messenger can use Windows.
PHP has its places - extremely large, mission critical applications are not one of them.
I keep hearing people putting down PHP. It's not the only interpreted language. I also hear of Python being the best thing in the toolbox.
Seems to me that if you can put your personal bias aside then just about everything can be run with some form of an interpreted language playing a core component of the overall application. After all, isn't HTML/Javascript considered interpreted?
Apache is written in C. So are all the databases one might use for a backend. All you are describing is the use of a middleware that isn't written in a compiled language being a viable candidate for enterprise applications.
I would tend to agree simply because I work in a Java house and I work on Perl and I can develop an application in Perl about ten times faster then can be developed in Java. Am I an Uber Coder? Not a chance. But I can get feedback on my applications performance as I write it making it less error prone and easier (IMHO) to debug.
A good thought. And most of these new techies will be to afraid of losing their jobs if the say the don't understand it. That's been my experience with overseas outsourcing.
On another note. I think this will backfire eventually. There is growing evidence that the real cost of overseas development is much higher than intially reported. Much of this has to do with the cost of Quality and Risk Management. How much do you money to you save if you spend millions a year backing up all your systems and you don't have a failure? How much does it cost when you backup nothing and the data center burns down? These are classic questions that typically rely on the PHB answer of "It hasn't happened yet so why should it happen now?" and "OK, so it happened and we recovered everything perfectly, so we can stop budgeting recovery expansion projects and spend it on something else"
Yeah, it certainly sucks to have someone put into this position. But how will you react when you are getting trained in your next job by some indian dude who thinks your just some corporate shill and trains you on how to wipe your ass and nothing more? You probably won't feel too good about the position you are put in. The BofA developers can't do anything about the position they have been put in by BofA, but they do have a choice in how they are going to act as human beings. What kind of response will you look back on in 20 years and be proud of?
I don't see anything that indicates Apache is DOWN. Rather, IIS is trying to pick up a lot of cheap commodotized blog sites and I personally don't believe that compares to other websites. Imagine how skewed the metrics would be if each MySpace user was actually a distinctly registered domain name on the internet?
More realistic. I would just be happy if they could get back to where the ThinkPad was, almost. Just make hardware and support Linux. Don't tie yourself into supporting only one flavor of Linux (RedHat, SuSE) because that's always going to piss off someone you don't support and it misses an opportunity for sales and support.
If they just made hardware with support, meaning the manufacturer would work willingly with the volunteer developers to create the GPL drivers necessary to distribute on any *NIX platform and keep Linux compatibility on their hardware selection requirements list it would mean worlds to the community. And the best part is, they wouldn't have to actually do anything to directly support the hardware. They just have to support the guy who wants to support the hardware and let their software product make it's own way into the distro packaging systems.
Well, for one. How does legal software become illegal? You only need to check once.
This is a simple enough program that there shouldn't ever be a need for a safety switch, and since it only runs the one time, there's no need for it.
And Microsoft has established a history of doing this kind of crap in the past. Is there any reason why anyone should expect them to behave differently today? Seriously. Is there anything which Microsoft has experienced which might give them pause to consider this behaviour as potentially improper?
No... I am one of those who remembers when Gates didn't think the Internet was going to be anything useful and almost omitted any tcp/ip stack from windows 95. Where were you?
I guess this solves a problem for me. I have a Thinkpad from a few years back that I have had some wonderful experiences with. It's been a truly wonderful machine. But I'm not in the market for a new machine within the next year.
But their decision to explicitly not support Linux, which is a not what IBM was doing when I purchased the notebook, has simplified the process. While I am not going to require that a notebook manufacturer sell Linux installed I do appreciate if a company provides even tacit support for my favorite operating system. This decision of theirs negates any past experience I have had with them.
Of course now I'm starting to watch the MAC OSX with interest. Which muddies things up a bit. But either way, I can exercise my position that anyone who is going to partner with a company that I don't care to support. Kind of like Dolphin free Tuna.
Minus the Office Suite is a pretty fucking big omission. That's second only to minus the internet. But Microsoft pulled that one out of the fire on Windows 95
Right! It is a cycle we've been repeating. But I think with each cycle we get measurably better at it. Fewer Heads-on-Pikes and a shorter duration for the serfdoms.
It's the sign of some improvement that makes it worth doing.
You don't understand what Free Market means and have forgotten about Adam Smiths Invisible Hand force first presented in economic theories circa 1776. If a truly Free Market did exist, then there would be a natural backlash against your proposed MEGABIGCO when people realized that they were not serving the best interests of the customers.
Example: Linux gained ground against Microsoft because Linux presented an alternative solution to Microsoft that freed the consumers from the MEGABIGCO Effect even though it was not capable of matching performance on every aspect. In the last decade this force has been vehemently fought by everything Microsoft was able to throw at it including their own attempts a forcing regulations and market restrictions upon the consumer through legislature, FUD, and just about everything in between.
You're case is seriously lacking fundamentals and is wrapped in as much aluminum foil as your head. A Free Market is the required path of conducting business because it's the only mechanism which is equally complex, reactive, and adaptable as the creativity of the products that can be deployed into the industry.
CopyRight and Patent law acts to slow down the rate of ingenuity and creativity in the market because it acts to protect a given idea from being expanded upon for a fixed number of years to allow the creator the opportunity to develop a viable business model and market demand for their own product. This is a mechanism to counter act the MEGABIGCO Effect, but it's been so sadly abused and manipulated over the last 100 years that it's now a tool for more for the benefit of the largest corporations than to protect any new ventures.
Regulation has it's place in the Free Market environment to establish limitations of behaviour to enforce a level of moral conduct. Positive examples of this would be regulations against slave labor, safe work environments, pollution controls. These are all broadly defined and generalized components of a business infrastructure.
If the government were to get involved in regulating the internet they had better stop at the level of regulation controls similar to what they have on the National Interstate system: They ensure the roads are at a minimun safe level of passage for a given speed. They enforce a minimum safety level of the vehicles on these roads. DOT regulations do not control content of your vehicle unless that content is potentially dangerous to the others on the road. This means it's safe to ship porn but not high grade radioactive isotopes. If we try to start regulating the internet on the grounds of Politically Correct or Good Taste then we can just give it up and go back to BBS systems.
The difficulty at this juncture in the Internet development is that Regulations are things that can be done by politicians to gain popular appeal because they are limiting content (you can't ship porn or isotopes) and they are gaining election contributions by working in the best interests of the MEGABIGCO (you can only drive on these roads if you have a vehicle made by...). This is not the fault of the politicians or the MEGABIGCO's themselves. They are doing what is necessary to survive. What might be lacking here is the Invisible Hand calling out the politicians and Corps to push back on these legislative efforts.
This is certainly a PC response and only slightly better than the response, if any, you would receive from proprietary software. Of course, proprietary software would have a response more akin to "It's in the next release." which is essentially what is described herein.
I think a claim that the issue has been addressed and not yet released is a bit of a grey area between the ideologies of Release Early, Release Often and a perception of great stability in software (It Just Works). It can be argued that the OP is a whiney-ass cream-puff who wants what he wants when he wants it. Just as easily it can be argued that a statement with an inferred attitude of "It's in CVS alread, quit yer bitchin!" really is just an example of what always happens when the developer community and the user community approach each other.
Users want everything now but bitch about daily installs/builds. Which means that a CVS "fix" won't do them any good in the first place since they only use the "released" versions. Meanwhile the developers are doing what they can to fix things on the time they have but would like to have a release be something that's more stable than buggy. After all, their name might be on it.
Personally, the fact that it's being addressed in CVS means that they know about it, they fixed it, and it's coming soon to a package near you. If this is unacceptable at least you have the option of pulling the CVS version ahead of the released package version. If this is all too much to handle than think of things in terms of a proprietary software product. The bug, if serious enough, will be fixed at the next major release in 6 to 12 months. That's the alternative. Open source allows you to put yourself in between these two ends of the spectrum. If you are going to call CVS a cop out, then go to the other end and keep quiet.
This is really odd news but probably something to just quietly watch without screaming about how Apple betrayed all the OSX users or some stuff like that.
Apple will be serving as the lab rat for Open versus Closed source development. It will be interesting to see if they do anything which drives home anyones point.
At first I was thinking the clay idea wasn't too bad, especially when you consider how much clay will move when you fire it. This means that high precision products made of clay cannot be manufactured without some extra steps to polish the post-fired product to tolerances.
But you more you talk of malleability the more I think of Silly Putty. Sure you can shape it to stand up tall, but it creeps and falls over given time. Which is a horrible analogy to software because it implies that software isn't stable.
Software isn't complex. Software is actually really simple once you understand the language(s) involved. To state the Software Engineering is complex means you don't understand the concept. There might be a lot of steps to it, but it's never hard.
What is difficult is trying to get Software to represent an accurate mathematical model of the real world as we understand it. And this takes us back to the Charles Dickens novels or even the Bible or other fundamental publication of a major Religion.
People interpret their world differently. Given the same book they will create different meanings. If this weren't true there would still be only one Christian based Church and only one Mulsim based Religion (maybe not, it's about prophets not publications but I don't know enough to be sure). If you could get everyone to agree on the definition and meaning and behaviour of their modelled world then software becomes easy. But that's rarely the case.
Where software becomes difficult is trying to define this modelled universe. In the real world there are certain rules that you simply can't violate (at least under Newtonian Physics) and those rules form the basis of our world. Mechanical Engineering would be pretty screwed if they had to work in a world of Quantum Physics and String Theory. Cars would be scarey to drive! But most of Mechanical Engineering falls into a handful of Rules to live by.
But when someone tries to map a Business Model to a Mathematical Model they tend to violate these simple rules to present a simpler business model. Ever heard the phrase, "An Exercise for the Reader"? My experience has shown that too often the Business Model as layed out to the software people is poorly constructed with holes and contradictions galore and no interest to fix let alone recognize them. And it's left to the software dude, who has no idea what's really going on as a Business Model, to guess which way to procede. Almost appears like someone is introducing Quantum Probability into a Business Model. Unfortunately with 100 million lines of code you get a lot of guesses and a lot of unexpected behaviour.
I had to actually do this!!!
I just layed out two very short examples of spam and good email, 20-30 words each, and had him identify which was the spam. Easy enough and the interaction got me 30 seconds into the presentation and he was still with me.
It got a bit trickier when I hit the conclusion that I was not using Bayes theorem for identification of spam but to qualify logged events in a 37GB log file. Talk about bloat! But he understood well enough that my identification of a word/phrase worked the same way that he would qualify the word cialis and that was all that mattered.
I found graphical representations using either analogous formats or simplified images, with an option for light humour, work effectively. But you have to use things in their world and minimize your own terminology. The terminology is something that will inherently bring fear into their hearts and that will turn them away.
If you are an American you drink Coffee.
If you are English you drink Tea.
Anything else and you need to consult page 4,532 of the Manly Man Manual.
Oh God!! I was't really prepared to wade through a flame war over distros this morning. What a bunch of freaking zealots! You distro fanatics make me want to puke.
I started on Slackware because someone said it's a good distro to use if you want to learn what's really going on. I stand by that statement today. If you want to learn Linux then don't use some mamby-pamby cute distro. If you want to be a user of Linux then use whatever most resembles whatever floats your boat. Some might argue it's best to use something that looks most like Windows. Some wouldn't.
I ran into an intersting discussion in the real world this week that I thought pertinent. The conclusion goes as follows:
From a practical point: most *nix servers that are not Linux based (HP/Sun/IBM) have little in the way of cute interface management tools. On these heavy lift platforms the configuration tool of choice seems to be vi more than a GUI. I don't think anyone has been able to surpass this customization and I'm not certain that it is a requirement that they do. If you don't understand the workings of the applications then a GUI interface will only permit you to do damage.
It's very likely that my proposed list of distro's will create a lot of controversy, but first consider where you sit on the spectrum between ultimate customization of the machine and "I'll take what I get" user.
After 15 years using MS Office, I've never found a "common" (to me) feature that OpenOffice can't replicate. YMMV.
I think what this announcement translates to is "Resistance is futile! You will be assimulated." Meaning: We will ensure that every time you us a MSFT product to open a ODF file, it will be converted to the superior technology without delay and we will repeatedly question the intelligence of any motions to continue with this puny ODF format. This is typical behaviour for their software applications and I don't think they will miss a beat taking this one in like any other.
Unfortunately, exportation to ODF will be something of a hit-n-miss procedure by design.
Of course, if ODF and OpenOffice is so great, why are we even wasting our time concerning ourselves with the press releases of MSFT? When was the last time, since the 1980's, that anyone stood up and took notice of what Lotus or Novell was announcing? I think MSFT's time is passing quickly.
Some day people will look back and try to identify the turning point in MSFT's history. Some will say it was Mac OSX, other Linux 2.4. I think it's the combination of Mac OSX, Linux 2.4, Mozilla, and OpenOffice that formed the greatest software tide. The hardware tide is a bit different. In that regard, the fact that 64-bit hardware was first supported by Linux and Mac rather than Windows is the true hardware turning point.
I used to work for a guy who very nicely summed up software development as: Ready, Shoot, Aim. This is similar to the notion of most hobbyists with the time will eventually rewrite something they get working because now that they understand what it is they really want to do, they can get it right the second time.
Seems to me that the olde school development model of the Linux Kernel had a valid point of doing an odd numbered release (2.5) for feature development and then an even numbered release (2.6) for refinements before we start the next wave of features (2.7). I was a little dismayed that the decision was made to drop this practice as it seemed to be one of the most intelligent things I've heard of in software development.
I'm getting ahead of myself here, but I do hope that the commercial investment in the Linux Kernel doesn't start pressing the Linux Kernel to be developed in the same manner as commercial OS. I'm not talking specifically about Microsoft, but any company software development project. They tend to go for the features before they spend the time to fix anything. And then it's an uphill battle to get anything fixed. If the Linux Kernel development takes the same path then there shouldn't be any surprises if they start to fall down and hurt themselves more frequently. And eventually, Linux will be surpassed by someone who has the better practices in development then what they have adopted.
I don't expect people to get it right the first time, but I would appreciate it if people would get it right rather than just ignoring it. If it becomes too difficult to get it right, then they need to establish a sunset limit on the age of hardware they are willing to support, or simply not allow any (buggy) support to enter in the first place. As extremes they probably don't want to keep supporting MCA buss but it might be a bit much to drop EIDE, ISA, COM, and PS2 and only work on FireWire, SATA, SAS, USB2.0 support.
I have to agree with you on these points.
I tried Suse for along time and realized that the IQ of the SuSE mailing list was significantly lower than the IQ of the Debian list. SuSE doesn't have the developers officially supporting the mailing list and as a result, the mailing list consists of people who think they understand what the problems are and how to fix them.
And I'm finding the documentation of Perl to be a significant advantage over Ruby. I'm spoiled by the expectation that everything is documented, eventually.
Keep on writing!!!!
If you can't stand the complexity of the software, hire someone who does!
Do you do your own HVAC repair?
Do you do your own Vehicle Diagnostics and repair?
Television repair?
How is this different?
Very well put. About the only property that differentiates Ubunto from everyone else seems to be the Pop Culture aspect. I do think APT is something that might set them apart except that they didn't create it. They could well be making a good case for why having many distros is a Bad Thing if it can be shown that Ubuntu migrants are coming from the parent Debian, thereby reducing the effectiveness of user feedback in bugsquashing and general user support.
Seeing as I've never installed it, I can't say much about it, but I think it's going to be hard to beat the Debian installer anymore. While largely still black and white without all the cute graphics, you only have to hit about 6 times to install a workstation. Everything else is figured out for you. If you count button presses, it's easier than Suse or Redhat.
So Escher was ahead of his time?
I don't think it will be a problem for nude art. Most museums don't put the paintings on the street, you have to go through the door. I don't think this is any different than the home page being an anteroom to the virtual museum.
I think the basic intent here is valid, if you promote pornography, and most who do know that they do, then you should make an effort to identify yourself as such and not promote it through false pretenses. I don't think anyone is going to have a serious problem with distribution of pornography. It's the mis-representation and mis-direction that many sites rely on as a means of promoting their business.
But I'm of the opinion that mis-representation of your content shouldn't stop at pornography. Informercial content is just as misleading.
Student A needs to get laid, like that'll ever happen...