Right. Well. You raise some valid concerns - you may be interested in this read:
The Machinery of Freedom: A Guide to Radical Capitalism
by David D. Friedman
Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0812 690699/
He's Milton's son and a professor of economics himself.
The book is extremely anarcho-capitalist and outlines what seem to me to be very workable approaches to solving many of the problems you outline without recourse to legislation...
As technology improves, we can effectively reduce the size of "the commons" and allow individuals access to courts to argue for damages due to things like loss of clean air, clean water, ozone layers, etc. The net effect would be economic tools for measuring harm to the commons and assigning "true" costs to consumption of resources previously considered "common".
(Aside: you also ignore currently-used "markets" in emissions, which have demonstrated an ability to efficiently allocate resources such as "pollution credits" to reduce pollution more effectively than command-and-control legislation)
If we accept, and Greenspan certainly does, that private property and the rule of law support economic growth, then an ability to assign and measure resource use would be a good thing.
And that's not the only issue Friedman has solutions for - chapters take on topics ranging from education to roadbuilding to national defense.
I worked at a place that _emailed_ programming tests out to potential applicants - it was on the honor system - send back the code, tell us how long you spent on design/implementation/debug. We used problems that lent themselves to solutions in particular languages, to see in what language people chose to solve the problem.
It was useful, and good programmers usually enjoyed it - we got a small number of "this sucks, I'm not doing this" responses, but managed to hire a number of good folks this way.
Saves interview time - both in only interviewing folks who we knew could code, and in not wasting time watching them think by making them code during the interview.
...and the reviewer captured it - I'd like some discussion on this point:
---
at least one of the parties taking a big risk on the project: if the project is 'fixed price, fixed scope' the developers take all the risk, if it's 'time & materials' the customer takes a risk---
I've seen plenty of this and I believe it's nearly always true. And I think the reviewer is correct in stating that this is not unique to web projects.
So, with that in mind, I'll assert that it would be overall _more efficient_ (less waste of money and resources) if both parties were able to manage uncertainty and risk in projects in a less adversarial manner.
Call me on that assertion if you want, but risk management is an important part of managing the software development process for just that reason. So, why _not_ come up with a better way to manage risk across organizations??
I don't think contracts are bad things (just the opposite) and I don't have The Answer...but I'm imagining a better contractural toolkit and a better set of development and project methodologies that allow some uncertainty and flexibility and assigns risk at a more granular level than 100%-0% or vice versa...
For an analogy that's pretty far afield, I saw a report recently that said something like 50% of mergers and acquisitions fail to add value, but if the M&A was contested or if there were multiple bidders, it goes up to 70-80%. Demonstrating, I think, that while people enter into contracts freely, those entities or contracts that are more adversarial are more wasteful of resources;^)
OK, let's all get out there and fix the consulting business so it's more fun to work on projects for clients...:^) Comments??
This guy, despite being an AC;^), is on to something...there are all sorts of things you can do to fly commercial parts if you do some good systems thinking about it.
I worked on a science instrument a decade back or so and we flew a National NS32CO16 - waited a long time for some hardened versions that never appeared, but I believe we ended up flying a commercial one that we shielded.
And for storage, we flew 1Mbit DRAMs (about the largest currently available at the time) by using 2-detect, 1-correct EDAC encoding and latchup protection circuitry as well as Al oxide shielding over them. It all worked just peachy:^)
This was interplanetary, so cosmic rays were a real concern - hang around earth and get some shielding and energetic particle fluence is reduced significantly.
For comparison, the largest capacity storage device on the JPL approved parts list at the time was a 16k RAM.:^(
Slashdot Mirror
Right. Well. You raise some valid concerns - you may be interested in this read:2 690699/
The Machinery of Freedom: A Guide to Radical Capitalism by David D. Friedman
Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/081
He's Milton's son and a professor of economics himself.
The book is extremely anarcho-capitalist and outlines what seem to me to be very workable approaches to solving many of the problems you outline without recourse to legislation...
As technology improves, we can effectively reduce the size of "the commons" and allow individuals access to courts to argue for damages due to things like loss of clean air, clean water, ozone layers, etc. The net effect would be economic tools for measuring harm to the commons and assigning "true" costs to consumption of resources previously considered "common".
(Aside: you also ignore currently-used "markets" in emissions, which have demonstrated an ability to efficiently allocate resources such as "pollution credits" to reduce pollution more effectively than command-and-control legislation)
If we accept, and Greenspan certainly does, that private property and the rule of law support economic growth, then an ability to assign and measure resource use would be a good thing.
And that's not the only issue Friedman has solutions for - chapters take on topics ranging from education to roadbuilding to national defense.
I worked at a place that _emailed_ programming tests out to potential applicants - it was on the honor system - send back the code, tell us how long you spent on design/implementation/debug. We used problems that lent themselves to solutions in particular languages, to see in what language people chose to solve the problem.
It was useful, and good programmers usually enjoyed it - we got a small number of "this sucks, I'm not doing this" responses, but managed to hire a number of good folks this way. Saves interview time - both in only interviewing folks who we knew could code, and in not wasting time watching them think by making them code during the interview.
I've seen plenty of this and I believe it's nearly always true. And I think the reviewer is correct in stating that this is not unique to web projects.
So, with that in mind, I'll assert that it would be overall _more efficient_ (less waste of money and resources) if both parties were able to manage uncertainty and risk in projects in a less adversarial manner.
Call me on that assertion if you want, but risk management is an important part of managing the software development process for just that reason. So, why _not_ come up with a better way to manage risk across organizations??
I don't think contracts are bad things (just the opposite) and I don't have The Answer...but I'm imagining a better contractural toolkit and a better set of development and project methodologies that allow some uncertainty and flexibility and assigns risk at a more granular level than 100%-0% or vice versa...
For an analogy that's pretty far afield, I saw a report recently that said something like 50% of mergers and acquisitions fail to add value, but if the M&A was contested or if there were multiple bidders, it goes up to 70-80%. Demonstrating, I think, that while people enter into contracts freely, those entities or contracts that are more adversarial are more wasteful of resources
OK, let's all get out there and fix the consulting business so it's more fun to work on projects for clients...:^) Comments??
The sooner you get behind, the more time you have to catch up. A motto to live by!
Folks,
;^), is on to something...there are all sorts of things you can do to fly commercial parts if you do some good systems thinking about it.
:^)
:^(
This guy, despite being an AC
I worked on a science instrument a decade back or so and we flew a National NS32CO16 - waited a long time for some hardened versions that never appeared, but I believe we ended up flying a commercial one that we shielded.
And for storage, we flew 1Mbit DRAMs (about the largest currently available at the time) by using 2-detect, 1-correct EDAC encoding and latchup protection circuitry as well as Al oxide shielding over them. It all worked just peachy
This was interplanetary, so cosmic rays were a real concern - hang around earth and get some shielding and energetic particle fluence is reduced significantly.
For comparison, the largest capacity storage device on the JPL approved parts list at the time was a 16k RAM.