And if they build to same incompetent product management w/o any knowledge or understanding of what the customer actually wants, they'll end up with 3 unusable products.
I'm sorry to be so negative, but the only situations I've seen work is where the programmer has some contact either directly with the customer, or with an inhouse person who has a really good understanding of the customer's business. You could have someone 12,000 miles away build 10 products, all perfectly to spec, and all perfectly unusable.
#2 (Management doesn't know what they want) has ALWAYS been the dominant problem during the 20+ years I've been programming. They are always willing to TELL programmers what to build, but usually there needs to be back and forth because it's obvious to the programmers that no one would want what product management has specified. Have grunts 12,000 miles away build exactly what has been specified cheaply isn't going to improve the situation.
Re:The main issue with XML is performance
on
Effective XML
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· Score: 1
Do you have any idea *why* it was taking 40 seconds instead of 2 seconds? Was it sending hundreds of times more data? Making hundreds of more calls?
I've worked on several apps where data is transmitted from client to server and back again in xml format, and I can't see I've seen any speed issues that are related to using xml.
My point is that this doesn't set a precedent. It's been going on since "Ugg" the caveman claimed credit for inventing fire. My wife spent part of her youth in a southern town where "the common folk" weren't supposed to read the Bible... they had it "interpreted" to them, to make sure they somehow didn't end up thinking for themselves.
It won't be our generation that is affected by this alteration/deletion. But if we allow this to continue then our past, as "remembered" by the future, will be skewed to the finaglings of the "powers that be."
If you think our generation hasn't been affected by alteration and deletion, I have bad news for you. History is always written from one particular point of view. "Revisionists" aren't any better, they simply rewrite history from their own point of view. And given the ease of faking information and the prevalence of "urban myths" it's not clear that the Internet improves the situation a whole lot.
Time pulling an article from their website is a tempest in a teapot.
Whether or not it's a security hole is irrelevant. Microsoft's response reveals that their mindset is to not worry about problems until after they happen. It would be nice if they were thinking ahead a little. I honestly don't think they can get away with their current approach much longer.
To me the most interesting part is Microsoft's response:
A Microsoft spokesman said future versions of Windows would ship with Messenger turned off but said the company should not be faulted for enabling Windows Messenger.
"At the time we released Windows XP (news - web sites), it wasn't an issue that was being abused," Microsoft spokesman Sean Sundwall said.
In other words, despite all the hype about security and code reviews, Microsoft just doesn't view exploitable *features* as holes until the exploit actually occurs. The idea of trying to make the systems they release secure from the start still hasn't taken hold.
Ok, where does the OS end and the application begin?
This is the core of the problem. I talked to a guy I had worked with who was at MS and was complaining about how the MS Office group was implementing all sorts of O/S features in Office because they needed them. MS has never had the concept of seperating O/S functions from application functions. As a result, you end up with holes because the core O/S is performing operations that should be in apps, and the apps are doing the work of the O/S.
Perhaps in theory Windows has now been layered to an extent that it could function similar to UNIX, but in practice MS continues to prefer lots of functionality over security. And as the interview shows, that attitude comes down right from the top.
Actually what Brooks proposed was more radical. The comparison he made was between surgery and hog butchering. Typically coding is done like hog butchering, with everyone grabbing a knife and hackng away. In Brooks' model, the master surgeon would in fact be the person doing most (or all) of the coding.
The other folks would then be support personnel whose job in life is to make the master surgeon as productive as possible. This includes someone building test cases, a "language lawyer" who would research arcane programming language issues, someone doing documentation, etc etc etc. There might also be an assistant surgeon reviewing code and writing some.
Well, I've done my own online study in Everquest the last 3 years. And time after time, the people that I've talked to have clearly in the over-30 crowd. So the "older folks don't play games" doesn't hold up.
It doesn't even make sense... as he points out, video games have been around a long time. The original generation that played them has grown up. Even if they had forgotten about them, when they buy games for their kids, you think they don't play along with them?
I thought the article was pretty good, but I agree, some old folks do play video games. My wife and I have played both Warcraft 2 and Everquest with her grandson. I don't think of myself as "old" but somehow that's gotta qualify.
I would agree that not too many older folk play online shooters, but clearly you know someone who does.
I liked most of his other points. Particularly about Myst... I absolutely loved that game. Maybe it inspired a generation of bad followon games, but the original was gorgeous, had puzzles that were the right level of difficulty, wasn't too big or too small, etc etc etc. I spents months, off and on, trying to figure out the damn elevator, and when I did I was ecstatic.
Don't be ridiculous, you don't *have* to play 80 hours a week. If your guild expected you to play that much, find another guild. You let some online people you never actually met manipulate you into spending every waking moment sitting at a keyboard?
Particularly with the recent Lost Dungeons addon to EQ, you certainly don't have to play hours and hours. It actually has a time limit on adventures that forces you to complete them in 90 minutes. Even with the normal overhead you are talking 2, maybe 2.5 hours, and you have a really good time... no sitting around killing the same thing over and over.
For instance, when I was working at Sony (Electonics) in 2000, it was a widely discussed phenomenon concerning the $3.5 million in pure *profit* that Sony raked in per *month* from Everquest. This was after server fees, support fees, and everyone involved had gotten thier paychecks
I believe right now there are about 400,000 EQ subscribers. Even if there were that many in 2000, which I very much doubt, that would be $4mil a month. I don't think $3.5mil of that was pure profit, although I'm sure that EQ is extremely profitable.
It costs $50 to pick up a game at the store
Maybe when the game is new, but you can buy EQ plus 1st 2 expansions for $20. That's plenty to let you know whether you want to play or not.
As the article pointed out, $10-$15 a month is cheap compared to other forms of entertainment. How much do you pay for your cable tv? How much to go to the movies or a ballgame?
How do you think people filled their bellies all the thousands of years when currency itself didn't exist?
Pretty safe bet they didn't run around saying that "food wants to be free". They probably *paid* for it, in one form or another, either by harvesting it themselves or trading something of value.
I'm willing to be that some of the people in this thread who are so annoyed that Valve isn't addressing the Linux desktop market are the same people who don't want Linux to demean itself by catering to the unwashed masses. If the desktop Linux market was bigger, convincing software houses to port to Linux wouldn't be such a big deal.
Textbooks and refrence books were the killer-app for e-books. unfortunately the textbook and tech book makers are very against technology
I think magazines and newspapers are the "killer" app for ebooks (if there is one). When it comes to regular books, the last thing I want to do is lug around a laptop-ish device, or strain to look at a tiny screen. But for newspapers and magazines, you can get your daily download, and no throwing away / recycling. You tend to read such in small chunks over a cup of coffee anyway, so eye strain isn't such a big deal.
You might want to try reading the article. What it specifically says is that there are a *few* ports (3 or 4) that are both often attacked, and that Microsoft has said should not be used on open networks. Those particular ports should be blocked. The only people hindered would be attackers.
Even better, how about you become the "close friend" of the bank robber and stick to him like glue until he gets nervous and disarms the bomb. What's he going to do, blow you up?
I saw it a couple of different nites, and I was absolutely blown away by how spectacular it was. I've done a fair amount of casual stargazing since I was child and I don't ever recall seeing a planet that bright. I've seen all the naked eye planets except Mercury (sigh) and this viewing of Mars really stands out.
You know, every once in a while someone makes a really stupid comparison between the people who were responsible for the murder of millions of human beings, and something incredibly trivial like using the "wrong" type of software. And it really pisses me off.
Yes, I have a sense of humor. No, this isn't funny.
What gets me every time is when there is, say, an explosion (ala Star Wars) in space, and it goes "Boom!".
Obviously, without air, there would be no sound. I think it's much more dramatic to see the explosion without hearing the sound, like they did in 2001: A Space Oddessy, rather than the way they did it in Star Wars, which came across as rather cartoonish in comparison.
Quite a while back I read a book about the making of the original Star Trek show. They knew very well that the Enterprise wouldn't make sound in space, and they filmed the opening credits that way, with it just zooming past silently. And it just didn't work. Eventually they added a "swoosh" as it goes by, and the opening scene felt right.
The book had a quote from somebody (Roddenberry?) saying that it was all very well to be scientific, but they had to remember that the show was going to be watched by people living on earth in the 20th century, not space dwellers in the 24th.
I'm not saying they are right, I certainly don't agree with them. But I can't see any other way they could come up with a count of millions of lines of Linux being "derivative". All I'm saying is that if they can get a court to buy it, then all the "this is no big deal" talk is wrong. And courts have bought some pretty strange arguments in the past.
I was just watching a Steven Seagal movie on the tube as sort of background while doing something else. I just don't understand how anyone could like him. He didn't change expression once during the movie, even when his daugher or niece or something was being threatened by the evil sadistic madman.
I suspect what SCO is arguing is not that all of the changes were stolen, but rather something like "function f() was illegally released by IBM. Function g() calls function f(), so all the code in g() is derivative. Functions h1(), h2(), and h3() all call, g(), so they are all derivative. etc etc etc."
Which, if they could get it accepted, would put a big hole in the "we'll just rewrite whatever SCO code is out there in a couple of days" argument.
Slashdot Mirror
And if they build to same incompetent product management w/o any knowledge or understanding of what the customer actually wants, they'll end up with 3 unusable products.
I'm sorry to be so negative, but the only situations I've seen work is where the programmer has some contact either directly with the customer, or with an inhouse person who has a really good understanding of the customer's business. You could have someone 12,000 miles away build 10 products, all perfectly to spec, and all perfectly unusable.
This works if you can also move the customer to India.
#2 (Management doesn't know what they want) has ALWAYS been the dominant problem during the 20+ years I've been programming. They are always willing to TELL programmers what to build, but usually there needs to be back and forth because it's obvious to the programmers that no one would want what product management has specified. Have grunts 12,000 miles away build exactly what has been specified cheaply isn't going to improve the situation.
Do you have any idea *why* it was taking 40 seconds instead of 2 seconds? Was it sending hundreds of times more data? Making hundreds of more calls?
I've worked on several apps where data is transmitted from client to server and back again in xml format, and I can't see I've seen any speed issues that are related to using xml.
My point is that this doesn't set a precedent. It's been going on since "Ugg" the caveman claimed credit for inventing fire. My wife spent part of her youth in a southern town where "the common folk" weren't supposed to read the Bible... they had it "interpreted" to them, to make sure they somehow didn't end up thinking for themselves.
Trust me, this has been going on forever.
If you think our generation hasn't been affected by alteration and deletion, I have bad news for you. History is always written from one particular point of view. "Revisionists" aren't any better, they simply rewrite history from their own point of view. And given the ease of faking information and the prevalence of "urban myths" it's not clear that the Internet improves the situation a whole lot.
Time pulling an article from their website is a tempest in a teapot.
Whether or not it's a security hole is irrelevant. Microsoft's response reveals that their mindset is to not worry about problems until after they happen. It would be nice if they were thinking ahead a little. I honestly don't think they can get away with their current approach much longer.
To me the most interesting part is Microsoft's response:
In other words, despite all the hype about security and code reviews, Microsoft just doesn't view exploitable *features* as holes until the exploit actually occurs. The idea of trying to make the systems they release secure from the start still hasn't taken hold.
Perhaps in theory Windows has now been layered to an extent that it could function similar to UNIX, but in practice MS continues to prefer lots of functionality over security. And as the interview shows, that attitude comes down right from the top.
Actually what Brooks proposed was more radical. The comparison he made was between surgery and hog butchering. Typically coding is done like hog butchering, with everyone grabbing a knife and hackng away. In Brooks' model, the master surgeon would in fact be the person doing most (or all) of the coding.
The other folks would then be support personnel whose job in life is to make the master surgeon as productive as possible. This includes someone building test cases, a "language lawyer" who would research arcane programming language issues, someone doing documentation, etc etc etc. There might also be an assistant surgeon reviewing code and writing some.
Well, I've done my own online study in Everquest the last 3 years. And time after time, the people that I've talked to have clearly in the over-30 crowd. So the "older folks don't play games" doesn't hold up.
It doesn't even make sense... as he points out, video games have been around a long time. The original generation that played them has grown up. Even if they had forgotten about them, when they buy games for their kids, you think they don't play along with them?
I thought the article was pretty good, but I agree, some old folks do play video games. My wife and I have played both Warcraft 2 and Everquest with her grandson. I don't think of myself as "old" but somehow that's gotta qualify.
I would agree that not too many older folk play online shooters, but clearly you know someone who does.
I liked most of his other points. Particularly about Myst... I absolutely loved that game. Maybe it inspired a generation of bad followon games, but the original was gorgeous, had puzzles that were the right level of difficulty, wasn't too big or too small, etc etc etc. I spents months, off and on, trying to figure out the damn elevator, and when I did I was ecstatic.
Don't be ridiculous, you don't *have* to play 80 hours a week. If your guild expected you to play that much, find another guild. You let some online people you never actually met manipulate you into spending every waking moment sitting at a keyboard?
Particularly with the recent Lost Dungeons addon to EQ, you certainly don't have to play hours and hours. It actually has a time limit on adventures that forces you to complete them in 90 minutes. Even with the normal overhead you are talking 2, maybe 2.5 hours, and you have a really good time... no sitting around killing the same thing over and over.
Where does the $50 come from? $20 gets you EQ plus the first two expansions.
I believe right now there are about 400,000 EQ subscribers. Even if there were that many in 2000, which I very much doubt, that would be $4mil a month. I don't think $3.5mil of that was pure profit, although I'm sure that EQ is extremely profitable.
Maybe when the game is new, but you can buy EQ plus 1st 2 expansions for $20. That's plenty to let you know whether you want to play or not.
As the article pointed out, $10-$15 a month is cheap compared to other forms of entertainment. How much do you pay for your cable tv? How much to go to the movies or a ballgame?
Pretty safe bet they didn't run around saying that "food wants to be free". They probably *paid* for it, in one form or another, either by harvesting it themselves or trading something of value.
I'm willing to be that some of the people in this thread who are so annoyed that Valve isn't addressing the Linux desktop market are the same people who don't want Linux to demean itself by catering to the unwashed masses. If the desktop Linux market was bigger, convincing software houses to port to Linux wouldn't be such a big deal.
I think magazines and newspapers are the "killer" app for ebooks (if there is one). When it comes to regular books, the last thing I want to do is lug around a laptop-ish device, or strain to look at a tiny screen. But for newspapers and magazines, you can get your daily download, and no throwing away / recycling. You tend to read such in small chunks over a cup of coffee anyway, so eye strain isn't such a big deal.
You might want to try reading the article. What it specifically says is that there are a *few* ports (3 or 4) that are both often attacked, and that Microsoft has said should not be used on open networks. Those particular ports should be blocked. The only people hindered would be attackers.
Even better, how about you become the "close friend" of the bank robber and stick to him like glue until he gets nervous and disarms the bomb. What's he going to do, blow you up?
I saw it a couple of different nites, and I was absolutely blown away by how spectacular it was. I've done a fair amount of casual stargazing since I was child and I don't ever recall seeing a planet that bright. I've seen all the naked eye planets except Mercury (sigh) and this viewing of Mars really stands out.
You know, every once in a while someone makes a really stupid comparison between the people who were responsible for the murder of millions of human beings, and something incredibly trivial like using the "wrong" type of software. And it really pisses me off.
Yes, I have a sense of humor. No, this isn't funny.
Quite a while back I read a book about the making of the original Star Trek show. They knew very well that the Enterprise wouldn't make sound in space, and they filmed the opening credits that way, with it just zooming past silently. And it just didn't work. Eventually they added a "swoosh" as it goes by, and the opening scene felt right.
The book had a quote from somebody (Roddenberry?) saying that it was all very well to be scientific, but they had to remember that the show was going to be watched by people living on earth in the 20th century, not space dwellers in the 24th.I'm not saying they are right, I certainly don't agree with them. But I can't see any other way they could come up with a count of millions of lines of Linux being "derivative". All I'm saying is that if they can get a court to buy it, then all the "this is no big deal" talk is wrong. And courts have bought some pretty strange arguments in the past.
I was just watching a Steven Seagal movie on the tube as sort of background while doing something else. I just don't understand how anyone could like him. He didn't change expression once during the movie, even when his daugher or niece or something was being threatened by the evil sadistic madman.
I suspect what SCO is arguing is not that all of the changes were stolen, but rather something like "function f() was illegally released by IBM. Function g() calls function f(), so all the code in g() is derivative. Functions h1(), h2(), and h3() all call, g(), so they are all derivative. etc etc etc."
Which, if they could get it accepted, would put a big hole in the "we'll just rewrite whatever SCO code is out there in a couple of days" argument.