At this point, neither JDE, Peoplesoft nor Oracle are offering enough employment opportunities to the IT sector to warrant much debate about their future. And "Yeah," I'm considering their install base, too (all that work has gone to the already over-worked, full-time IT monkeys).
To me, it looks like M$ doesn't have to step in (re: "Waking the Giant"); all it has to do is sit by and watch the sharks tear up and savage each other -- there's no prey left, so what else do they have to eat? As INFOworld summed it up a few *YEARS* back -- The ERP sector underestimated resistance to innovation by the management personnel of mid-sized corporations in the Midwest. (I guess the boys couldn't show the "Show Me" states.)
Every day spent gnawing each other's guts over who's gonna be #2 or #3 is another day spent neglecting the real business of scrapping the ugly program templates and software architecture of an ERP industry that was never set up right to begin with. Any banker will tell you: marketing only goes so far; sooner or later you have got to have a decent product that exceeds the expectations of the customer.
Oh quitchyerbitchin!!! Everybody knows its true, if not quite practical, that what has been needed from the get-go has been an overhaul of ERP. That's why JDE was so great. Configurable Network Computing. (Huh? Well, I thought this was a tech website.)
Don't get me wrong. JDE is crap, too. But at least with JDE, if its broke (and it probably is out of the box), there's usually some way that local people on-site can finagle and develop a fix somehow. Add a few servers here, optimize a database there, patch some C++ here, a few stored procedures there; and voila!, a few environment mappings later, management can get back to the business of ignoring the crap that they just paid twenty million bucks for and concentrate on using it the 10 or 20% that they end up doing anyway. The problems were never corrected, per se; but bottlenecks were eased, irregularities were smoothed over, reports ran and got printed, settings didn't just disappear, etc.
You can work all the IT magic with Peoplesoft or Oracle that you want. But uhh ahh, the fix ain't happening. Not without a redesign. JDE can be redesigned on-site by non-PhD's, and most decent installations are (sic). Unless management insists otherwise (sic). That's the reason why Peoplesoft NEEDS JDE. Peoplesoft is about as easy to turn around as an ocean liner. And guess what, that's the reason why Oracle needs JDE, too; hence, the hostile bid for Peoplesoft. (Financial analysts are giving JDE either a strong buy or hold rating! Some valuable property there.)
But as with everything else about the perverse computer industry, it seems that the best stuff is the first to go belly up. Then what's left around stirs like the flushing contents of a too-well used toilet that never seems to go down (i.e. the "Cardinal Rule of the Computer Industry").
Oh... by the way, several years back Ed McVanney (JDE's old CEO) turned down an offer of 60+ bucks a share for JDE from Billy Gates (imagine that). I guess he still (stupidly) had faith in his product. I say "stupidly," because as a person who is supposed to be aware of such things, he ignored the cardinal rule of the computer industry (see above).
Just about four months ago, McVanney was ousted from JDE. Now we know why! He was standing in the way of progress!!! BwwWWahhhAhhahhahhhahhahh.
Could it be because of management (see rules 5 and 6)? In case anyone was wondering about the ground rules:
Corporations 101
(for the new employee)
1. Management is not there to help.
2. If you actually understood what management was saying, you would quit.
3. Don't bother trying to understand what role management plays in a corporation. They don't know, and nobody else does either.
4. If you don't do what management says, everything works out just fine.
5. Excellence is the farthest thing from management's "mind." Uppermost is fooling people into believing that it is.
6. Management doesn't mind presiding over a corporation comprised simply of itself and a Human Resources department. And often they get by without the Human Resources department.
7. Stock price is the barometer by which one can tell how well management's retirement fund is padded.
8. The CEO never gives a f**k, and banks upon being quietly and summarily dismissed.
9. Every executive hopes to become CEO.
10. This is the best system the world has to offer.
We DO need AI and could have it, but be carefull
on
AI Going Nowhere?
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As profound as human intelligence is, it is encumbered by politics and prejudice (perhaps the same thing). Encumbered? Hell! Its legs are cut off and eyes poked out by governments, institutions, industrialist tycoons, poverty, social stratification, systems of imposed ignorance (i.e. what Noam Chomsky calls universtities), religions, social conventions, the masses being addicted to television and the Internet, small group social interactions (like the "good ol' boys network and Minsky's phobias, etc.), inherent bias (due to the human perspective), etc., etc.
It is a wonder that any kind of objective truth can be salvaged out of such a host of cognitive wet blankets.
The bug-a-boo of all human mental endeavor has been the struggle to free the mind from the slants and penchants which keep ideas encircling in ever tighter patterns 'round the same old perspectives on the hard questions which have for recorded history haunted humanity.
How do we get some objectivity?! How to get beyond the investigations of the ancient Greek philosophers, which are as true now as when they were first commenced? How to get beyond the piecemeal approach of "scientific method" in order to delve what we intuitively recognize as the interior logic upon which hangs the universe? How to start thinking for ourselves, uninfluenced by our employers, our civil authorities, our need to earn a living, our need to integrate into society, our personal needs for love and companionship, bodily limitations of whereabouts, memory, retrieval, etc.
THAT is the crux of why we NEED AI, people. Its not particularly to play more and more interesting computer games, believe it or not. Pursuing technology will require that we abandon old modes of thinking. But as human beings, we invest ourselves into our ideas, become professors over our ideas, and most certainly compete in the arena of ideas. New ideas are subjected to harsh criticism, not objective cultivation. In such an environment, to discovery something radically new is as welcome as realizing that one has fallen off the deep end, and is insane.
Since the middle of last century, Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revlutions" has made it acceptable even in academic realms to point out that the patterns of paradigmization which academia uses severely inhibit the progress of understanding the world, rather than help. Go figure.
I realize that many here on/. are rabid fans of competion among ideas, but try to understand that in circles traditionally outside the realm of technology - philosophy, etc. - the competion of ideas is thought to be a very primitive way to go about epistemology. It may have its place in designing business plans, but has very little to do with PROMOTING an environment conducive to paradigm development. Eventually paradigms must be compared in order to separate the chaff from the wheat, but assessment is worlds apart from triage.
Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Inteligence (i.e. the strong hypothesis of AI) might just be able to do that for us... to give us a firm objective ground upon which to reflect subjectivity (rather than resorting to the "physical" construct derived out of complexes of bodily experience which we do naturally). This would achieve genuine reflex-reflexivity of consciousness through means other than... "the for-it-self...perpetually determining itself not to be the in-it-self" (Jean Paul Sartre... Being and Nothingness, p. 134., Washington Square Press paperback edition, May 1966).
As to how that maycome about, see the following papers on my website:
THINKING DIFFERENTLY ABOUT DOING AI: Toward a satisfactory epistemic methodology of the strong hypothesis
I. Rationality Is Not Enough: AI should simulate integral thought
II. Hierarchical Planning Is Not Enough: AI should espouse the origin of common sense
III. Holographic Intelligence Is Not Enough: AI should acknowledge the ontology of reason
found at http://www.angelfire.com/ab7/almound2000/
Just heaping on top like the rest, to show disfavor and all. Actually, pop-ups aren't a problem with Mozilla. But I do have to use Internet Exploiter for certain websites occasionally (like my bank). Happily my bank is technically the equivalent of a geranium, so they don't utilize too many pop-up ads... yet. (Some Madison avenue-type will probably sell it to them, though. And that'll be the day I close my account. Betcha they still won't get it. Wink.)
The fatal flaw of the law is the money that must be spent in order to ensure justice. (Of course, your post is technically correct. But whether or not there is a material breach, however, must be settled naturally in a court of law... debated upon ad nauseum by very high-priced lawyers with no incentive to end the invective.)
The problem is not that the RIAA or Kazaa users are violating laws. Clearly, everyone violates laws (there are just so many of them - we are all doing something illegal, even now, for which we just haven't been caught yet... that's how ridiculous it has become).
No, the real issue is the Internet itself and how it has been allowed to become the dragnet of every government agency with the wherewithall to get off its big, fat duff and bark out an order for "compliance" by the lapdog ISPs to give up the personal information that they obligingly store for just such purposes. (Ohhh... now I understand why DARPA "gave" the public the Intenet for free! Geesh!!! And I thought John Poindexter was being nice.)
In other words, the system's rigged, my boys. Get used to it.
Then get on to building an alternative!!!
(Freenet is a great concept for starters, but until all the bandwidth wastage is cut by about 10%, the extra load of data encryption is going to make for some glutted pipes. However, for those in the know, using multiple pipes is a solution. Still, it might be hard to explain all the encrypted traffic to the Feds once the slimey ISP informs it of your bit-ratio.)
Wake Up Amerika!!! Stop living off Government Surplus Cheese.
I'm wise to them now - I don't buy anything on rebate, anymore. Fooled twice, any more and it is my fault.
Of course, there are a lot of suckers out there, and I don't expect rebates will go away any time soon. But that's just like every other scam that is being perpetrated in the name of "business" these days.
Spam, junk mail, unsolicited phone calls, club memberships, point systems, etc., etc. Some schmucks use them.
That's why they'll never go away. The only thing you can do is educate your children against them (and your significant other).
Ah, one more quote from WAYYYYYY back (03/02) wherein I explained the facts of life to, then, non-plussed slashdotters... Well, how do you like me now?! Can you believe that I only got a single lousy slashpoint for this?
Although jet_silver mentions a Sturgeon's law (i.e. 90% of everything is crap), he states it as though it were somehow a law of nature. Rather, the theoretical basis that he should be referring to is that of the bastardized capitalism that corporate mediocrity adopts.
In that paradigm, it is not optimally profitable to produce an optimum product. True enough. But the topic at hand is not about corporate greed. It is about the widening technology gap. (NOTE: which resulted in IT sector unemployment!)
Consumers that are unable to use and/or are frustrated with gimmicky, hard-to-use technology will nip corporate greed in the bud, and right quick, by just not buying. (I believe that I don't have to justify that statement in light of the recent "economic down-turn," do I?).
Corporate greed says, "no problem!" And turns its mangey head toward another victim to exploit, leaving the technology sector maimed and bleeding. eCommerce becomes an epithet. Consultants are laid off in mid-project. "Tech jobs" becomes an oxymoron. (Again, I trust that I don't have to justify that statement in light of recent events.)
Left to their own devices, corporations will do this to ANYTHING they touch. That's their nature (sorry, Rush Limbaugh). They were created to exploit, to dispell blame, to act as a legal firewall, etc.,etc. They were NOT created to give us jobs, by the way. (I don't have to run over it again.)
MY POINT IS..... the people of the tech sector are not necessarily the corporations (sic). Its up to us to win back public confidence by doing tech right from now on. Just like most people who respond at./, I have a stake in seeing tech succeed... FOR THE LONG HAUL. And the way that the computer/ communications tech revolution has been introduced and cultivated throughout the last twenty years has shown that very little (that could be extrapolated to information processing) has been learned and applied from the history of dismal failures (and some stunning successes) that surrounded other technologically related industries.
BUT THAT DOESN'T MATTER! That's just about corporate profits. I mean, yes, corporations should have cared about developing the tech sector with an eye toward long range design feasability and public acceptance. But they didn't. What truly matters now is that, as an industry, we gain back the confidence of people at large. To do that, the same old cavilier attitude toward the end-user must be abolished. Elitism has no place in a tech-savvy world.
The people aren't going for the doctor/lawyer superiority crap anymore. They aren't going to be hiring you just because you know something they don't. (If that were true, there would have been no fall off in tech sector employment.) The consumer will bite the bullet and do without the information processing. Because they are SICK of it. And it has turned out to be simply a drain on resources and the bottom line for far too long. Yes, they DO have a choice. And things went along very nicely before all of this hulla-baloo, thank you very much. WE may think that's BS, but probably not the customer.
Until there is some change, there may be slight resurgences of demand for tech products, but they will fall off quickly enough. As a recent article concerning the down-turn in CIO.com mag mentioned, the tech industry badly under-estimated the reluctance of small to medium sized manufacturing corporations, mainly in the mid-west by the way, to climb on board the eCommerce band-wagon.
Folks did their homework, and discovered that not only has computerization been a net loss to most businesses fool-hardy go whole-hog over them, but that suddenly the tech industry
****Here's what I wrote a few centuries back (11/02):
Reading the replies here, I begin to see now why the tech bust hasn't been over long ago. If you let the company use you like a whore, you will be treated like the whore that you are and you shouldn't expect any better treatment. Unfortunately, the replies to this inquiry confirm that some people don't mind being scabs (i.e. temp workers brought in to obviate the need to hire workers full-time).
Consulting is one thing, but I draw the line when the client is the company that layed me off in the first place... then discover that they really do need somebody around to actually do the work (an indian, not a chief). And as for consulting, well, the fees are pretty stiff.
We made a ton of money back during the 90's. Use the freedom that that doe gives you to resist this kind of exploitation. I do.
Otherwise, it will just be more of the same old, same old. You can count on it. Stop being a whore and think like a responsible human being. Make the companies understand that there are consequences for their actions. That when they hire you, it is a partnership which requires some responsibility to you on their part.
Stop acting like a co-dependent spouse (you know... "battered spouse" syndrome). Have a little self-respect, otherwise the tech industry will never develop into a profession, on a par with other engineers and architects.
****But my words were all in vain... and now those who wouldn't listen are chiming in, agreeing with me when I wrote (02/03):
The honeymoon is over, people. Unfortunately, I am coming to the realization that the battle is lost already.
...
I was a fairly well-paid computer professional from 1994 through 2000. But a sickness overtook the computer industry. It is a sickness imposed by forces which during the same time period tried to impose similar types of maladies on the health care and legal professions. Unfortunately, the computer industry (being in its infancy) was more susceptible than the others. Without strong professional organization and fraught by endemic sabotage by mega-corporations from within, the computer industry was doomed to succumb.
Currently, I am enrolled in a mathematics course of study which will degree me in Statistics, and am changing my profession out of the computer technology field altogether. For those still brave enough to tough it out under the current conditions:
May God have mercy on your souls.
****Read 'em and weep, people. Or else, organize. But you're too cool to be doing that. So, go code yerself an egg.
The honeymoon is over, people. Unfortunately, I am coming to the realization that the battle is lost already. I now understand that I will never again enjoy privacy on the Net. Mega-corporations have got there first, and the piecemeal approach of fire walls, anonymizers, proxy server kludges, and spam eliminators is just not going to protect me.
I foresee that I have to plan for the fact that I will not be able to use the Internet ever again unrestrictedly, and have been preparing for a complete break of private Internet use for about a year now. Shortly, I will be discontinuing my cable modem service forever, and will only use the Internet in a public forum such as at work, in a college, or in a Cybercafe, wherein I will obey every single law applicable (and will refrain from doing ANYTHING that may potentially break some law). However paranoid that may make me, it is worth it. We haven't even seen the beginning of how savage the witch hunts are about to become.
Yes, this is a boycot. Boycotting the Internet in this fashion may sound extreme, but then again I think the Patriot Act is a bit extreme... particularly the enhancement that the Justice Department is planning to shortly introduce to the Patriot Act.
http://www.public-i.org/dtaweb/home.asp
Look for the icon the reads, "Patriot Act II"
One way to fight such rabid facism is to disconnect from the system. (This works because the Internet is a closed system. Without Internet users, there will be no commercial use for the Interent and no inherent need for vigorous policing of it.) I believe alternative networks will spring up out of the void so created, and, if those information avenues appears safe, I will surely take advantage of them. In the meantime, I plan to concentrate on fully utilizing the plentiful software already available which computing has afforded me.
I was a fairly well-paid computer professional from 1994 through 2000. But a sickness overtook the computer industry. It is a sickness imposed by forces which during the same time period tried to impose similar types of maladies on the health care and legal professions. Unfortunately, the computer industry (being in its infancy) was more susceptible than the others. Without strong professional organization and fraught by endemic sabotage by mega-corporations from within, the computer industry was doomed to succumb.
Currently, I am enrolled in a mathematics course of study which will degree me in Statistics, and am changing my profession out of the computer technology field altogether. For those still brave enough to tough it out under the current conditions:
May God have mercy on your souls.
Crop circles/communication? Be more scientific..
on
Top of the Crops 2002
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Everybody is entitled to their own pet theory (at least as long as the present powers-that-be refrain from setting new precedents... a few more days, maybe).
All this discussion brings to mind Thomas Kuhn and his book, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions."
Be forewarned, people, anyone who dares gainsay the scientific crowd (in evidence is one proudly on display at/.), such a heretic stands subject to persecution more rabid than that wreaked by the Puritans of Salem.
Burning witches is a scientist's stock and trade. One should not be surprised at that. They tell you repeatedly that no theory is sacrocanct, no assertion is above scrutiny, only peer review based upon the least common denominator of the hypothetico-deductive/analytico-inferential method can purify.
The problem is, hypothetico-deductive/analytico-inferential methods are shoddy logic and, besides, haven't been endorsed by mainstream academics for at least 70 years (I'm thinking of a quote from the Chair of MIT's Physics department while Richard Feynman was attending... I'll hunt around for it). Peer review has degenerated into a cat and mouse game of fudge factors and political favoritism. Scrutiny is meaningless if there is an unwillingness to think differently.
This forum is an illustration that one should not be surprised at any scientific community's astounding ignorance. One should rather be astounded when someone is given a proper hearing.
Apparently all the yahooing on/. is to mask the fact that, actually, those who make fun of this and other supernormal subjects are in the minority (a very tiny minority).
That minority may like to think that it is the voice of reason in a world gone mad, but as others have noted well... the scientific community is, if anything, more rabid than the Puritans of Salem. Burning witches is their stock and trade.
As understood by the scientific community at large, scientific method involves prediction and therefore, of necessity, must presume causality. In other words, scientific hypotheses are to be derived in such a fashion that, upon inspection of the methods employed and the conclusions drawn, no contradiction to causal reasoning may be found. It is central to Western thought that, whatever logic is used to frame such reasoning, such logic must be consonant with the doctrine of cause and effect.
But curiously, academe's leading authorities regardless of the absolutist or relativist nature of their thought are unwittingly assaulting the doctrine of cause and effect. Objectivist Bayesians, artificial intelligence connectionists, existential deconstructionists, logical positivists, political ideologues and religious fanatics, all put forth arguments which either imply or state outright that application of their discipline requires consideration which runs contrary to principles of cause and effect reasoning. Many do not realize this even as they do so.
All of them believe themselves to be hard-nosed realists, however, merely responding to the facts as they see them. But if they happen to found their thinking upon a phenomenology which admits of objective, absolute truth they face the difficulty that, ultimately, such a doctrine must be accepted on faith. This is true in either case, whether they are absolutist or relativist.
If they are absolutist and believe in an infinite universe, then direct verification of each fact in their system of truth is impossible, which means they must agree to maintain a belief that the laws that they discover in any one region of space must apply to any other region of space, leaving them to examine region after region of space for inconsistencies ad inifinitum. Or, which is not much better, if they believe the universe to be finite (just vast) they must resort to inductive reasoning rather than through direct verification, and inductive reasoning is subject to all sorts of contradictions to Leibniz' principle of logical necessity (Russell's Paradox, Goedel's proof of the inconsistency of First Order Logic, the linguistic research cited by Derrida, Riceour, et al, the doctrine of prior probabilities, the Chinese room paradox, etc., etc.). In either instance, an absolutist must do some fast talking to get his audience to bide their time while the details are worked out.
It may be argued that this critique of absolutism -- which finds absolutism to be faith-based, epistemologically bankrupt, and ultimately antithetical to cause and effect reasoning -- involves their doctrines taken to the extreme (sic). It is unfair to harp upon that, but one should rather recognize moderate absolutists (sic), logical positivists, say, as those who best represent the absolutist point-of-view. These are pragmatic people who adopt an attitude of dealing with issues at hand, rather than dabbling in so much philosophy. They are interested in rigor, and not so much interested in wrangling how many angels can fit on the had of a pin.
We have just two words for this counter-argument... "quantum mechanics." Scientific exploration has come full-circle, arriving at a point where scientists can no longer do without philosophical considerations given up some time in the nineteenth century. While it is true that most scientists even today adopt a "shoot from the hip" approach (i.e. "just figure out those equations; if they fit the data, the theory will follow"), this stance merely makes the point presented here. Their approach is calculatedly acausal. If derivation of the equations of science is not based upon causal reasoning but upon the happenstance of a conjectural model, it is illogical to assume that experimental data should "fit" the model after the fact. (Reasoning is either causal or acausal.)
On the other hand, if an authority founds their thinking upon a phenomenology which admits of relativism, then that fact alone precludes strict casusal reasoning. The absolutist is quite right to thumb their nose at relativists, insisting that the relativists listen to their version of the absolute truth - yet one more time - because, after all, everything is relative, right? So why shouldn't their diatribe be legitimate? To this, relativists have nothing to say other than, "have a nice day." They might even agree and affirm that relativism actually means having one's bread buttered on both sides.
But note that this inclusiveness does nothing to clarify matters concerning cause and effect reasoning, but in fact emphasizes the relativists' departure from it. Relativism is encumbered with all the issues noted above about absolutism, but in addtion takes on issues such as how best to find fiducial starting points for reasoning, what constitutes meaningful consecution which avoids tautology, and, because of these two difficulties, defining inherence and cogent hierarchies of knowledge. Epistemology becomes a shambles for the relativist.
In sum, just because the formulated results of scientific method must pass causal muster one thereby cannot conclude that the mental acts which perform such scientific derivation had to adhere during formulation to principles of cause and effect. If that is true of scientific method, then what is the justification for such practices as debunking?
Actually, the most widely acknowledged authorities of philosophy in the twentieth century all adopted a stance which brought into question the very possibility of phenomenology (without which any science can exist). At best, such questions are left up in the air and ignored by today's cognoscenti. At worst, they are vilified as Nazi propaganda. But such questions are not going to be just wished away. Until there is a lot more thinking in this regard, I think that scientific objectivism might want to keep from calling the kettle black.
Reading the replies here, I begin to see now why the tech bust hasn't been over long ago. If you let the company use you like a whore, you will be treated like the whore that you are and you shouldn't expect any better treatment. Unfortunately, the replies to this inquiry confirm that some people don't mind being scabs (i.e. temp workers brought in to obviate the need to hire workers full-time).
Consulting is one thing, but I draw the line when the client is the company that layed me off in the first place... then discover that they really do need somebody around to actually do the work (an indian, not a chief). And as for consulting, well, the fees are pretty stiff.
We made a ton of money back during the 90's. Use the freedom that that doe gives you to resist this kind of exploitation. I do.
Otherwise, it will just be more of the same old, same old. You can count on it. Stop being a whore and think like a responsible human being. Make the companies understand that there are consequences for their actions. That when they hire you, it is a partnership which requires some responsibility to you on their part.
Stop acting like a co-dependent spouse (you know... "battered spouse" syndrome). Have a little self-respect, otherwise the tech industry will never develop into a profession, on a par with other engineers and architects.
I suppose controlling cookies and pop-up windows doesn't count? Afterall, every single one of us out here wants to be spied on, harassed, tagged and tracked, and then sold to the highest bidder. What could be more obvious?
Mozilla plays a significant part in my strategy to prevent such b.s. from happening to me. I repeat - it is NOT the only thing that I do to protect it. But Mozilla is a damn sight better for certain aspects of accomplishing this basic objective than Internet Exploiter.
As anyone who knows anything about the Internet should realize, you had better take your privacy seriously or someone will come along and steal it.
Apparently the jokers who wrote the review can't appreciate such subtleties.
First of all, this is mismanagement, plain and simple. Of course, nowadays mismanagement is taken as a matter of course in the corporate world. The jokers pretending to run the show have become woefully ignorant of the consequences of their actions.
Second of all, I've already abandoned ship. I'm taking all those nice "excess earnings" made back a few years ago and investing them in going back to school and getting out of the computer industry. It doesn't deserve my talent right now.
I'm glad that the tech moniker is on my resume, but until some realism about who is actually generating the profits comes about and a genuine meritocracy ensues there's no need to remain.
As technology people, we must insist upon the recognition that we deserve. Managers will have a hard time of it doing the tech themselves. Good luck to them.
Not that I'm the only one, mind you... but if anyone's counting...
Yeah, its a bad idea. Stinko! An idea about as prone to the law of unintended consequences as I've ever seen anybody from the open source crowd make. And that's just for starters.
You can't force anyone to change anything. You can't force anyone to change anything! You can't force anyone to change anything!!
You have to make them WANT to change. But don't think they're going to do it next week. That's just not the way people are. STOP fighting their natural flow (or lack thereof). Be a bit more mindful of the Tao.
"Grasshopper, if user sits like a lump - then you must find a way to use this inertia to your advantage. Your life will go much better that way. "
What am I saying? Its this, don't depend so much on upgrades.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Much of the reason for this has been the effort by techies to be cute.
Yeah, cute!
The mouse is simply a remote control device. It did not help to improve understanding or to sell computers by calling it a mouse. Calling it a mouse was cute. Perhaps it was marketing's fault, or more likely it was just the effort to be cute.... cool?.... which caused the term to be employed by the Tech sector. But whatever... confusion was introduced.
Not because of calling the remote control device a "mouse," but because every part of the machine was given a special name.... all at once.... without regard for how that would affect the end-users understanding. A new and arcane vocabulary became demanded of the user in order to use the computer, not merely just new kinesthetic skills, new concepts of interfacing with machines (period), and new subtleties of mental operation (keystrokes, macros, menus, etc.).
The intellectual demands placed upon new users is EXTREME! It is not trivial, and the point bears repeating yet again. Those who dismiss this point cavalierly express their own ignorance.
Computers should have started out having an on and off switch, just like every other appliance in the household (not a one and zero switch).
Likening the hard drive mechanism to a record player would have softened the blow (and alot of people would have understood the difference between virtual and physical memory because of it), but it wouldn't have been "cool." Yet, turntables were known to have "drive" systems. (And yes, there were turntables still at the dawn of the PC industry. Alot more people were familiar with that terminology than then they were with the term "hard drive.")
The tech sector should have imparted an understanding that, though there may be many, many ways to go about doing one's computing, in reality there are actually only a few ways of doing so efficiently and in such a manner so as not to be constantly reinstalling the operating system and programs. This alone would have given relief to practically anyone just starting out. (Corporations became aware of this principle early on, and products such as Ghost and ImageCast, PartitionMagic, Norton Utilities, etc., became central to their IT departments. Similar programs should become so for ANY user, as well as should the savvy to use them in combination to provide quickly restorable boot partitions with no data loss... because the data is on another partition.)
The term "backup" should never have been promulgated. The phrase "make a copy of your data" would have sufficed, but again it wouldn't have been "cool," would it?
There are innumerable other points similar to those above. That jargon and acronyms were made central to the design of human-computer interface is a shame and a folly that won't be quickly effaced. I predict that more jobs will be lost in the Tech sector, not less, until these and similar breeches of communication are rectified (or else smoothed over by time, i.e., the dying off of those born before their introduction).
Amen. But while reading the responses to this topic, I've come across alot of attitude, alot of nonsense, and alot of ill-considered opinion.
But I haven't come across alot of understanding. There are those who claim that they are lucky enough to have a decent job still in the tech sector, but who are writing responses that amount to boasting about their income, flaming John Katz, and ignoring the issue of the Widening Tech-Savvy Gap. How am I supposed to take that?
A person who scorns anybody in the tech sector that doesn't have a well-paying job, who boasts of taking advantage of the monopoly known as M$oft, who actively seeks to keep the public in the dark about tech just to profit on their ignorance, that person deserves the disregard for their character that such an attitude garners anyone in a profession.
This topic is all about professionalism, actually. The Tech Gap is widening because of a lack of professionalism on the part of those participating in the industry. Sound incredible?
If it sounds incredible, then please read the myriad of books on excellence which have been written by respected authors from other industries. The fact that there is a Tech Gap (and I'm reading no response making a credible argument against the proposition) is the Tech sector's fault, not the general public's fault.
And guess what? The fact that there is a Tech Gap puts your supposedly cushy, well-paying job in the Tech sector (if indeed you HAVE one) in jeopardy.
This response by bildstorm deserves a strong, unqualified endorsement.
Although jet_silver mentions a Sturgeon's law (i.e. 90% of everything is crap), he states it as though it were somehow a law of nature. Rather, the theoretical basis that he should be referring to is that of the bastardized capitalism that corporate mediocrity adopts.
In that paradigm, it is not optimally profitable to produce an optimum product. True enough. But the topic at hand is not about corporate greed. It is about the widening technology gap.
Consumers that are unable to use and/or are frustrated with gimmicky, hard-to-use technology will nip corporate greed in the bud, and right quick, by just not buying. (I believe that I don't have to justify that statement in light of the recent "economic down-turn," do I?).
Corporate greed says, "no problem!" And turns its mangey head toward another victim to exploit, leaving the technology sector maimed and bleeding. eCommerce becomes an epithet. Consultants are laid off in mid-project. "Tech jobs" becomes an oxymoron. (Again, I trust that I don't have to justify that statement in light of recent events.)
Left to their own devices, corporations will do this to ANYTHING they touch. That's their nature (sorry, Rush Limbaugh). They were created to exploit, to dispell blame, to act as a legal firewall, etc.,etc. (I don't have to run over it again.)
MY POINT IS..... the people of the tech sector are not necessarily the corporations (sic). Its up to us to win back public confidence by doing tech right from now on. Just like most people who respond at./, I have a stake in seeing tech succeed... FOR THE LONG HAUL. And the way that the computer/ communications tech revolution has been introduced and cultivated throughout the last twenty years has shown that very little (that could be extrapolated to information processing) has been learned and applied from the history of dismal failures (and some stunning successes) that surrounded other technologically related industries.
BUT THAT DOESN'T MATTER! That's just about corporate profits. I mean, yes, corporations should have cared about developing the tech sector with an eye toward long range design feasability and public acceptance. But they didn't. What truly matters now is that, as an industry, we gain back the confidence of people at large. To do that, the same old cavilier attitude toward the end-user must be abolished. Elitism has no place in a tech-savvy world.
The people aren't going for the doctor/lawyer superiority crap anymore. They aren't going to be hiring you just because you know something they don't. (If that were true, there would have been no fall off in tech sector employment.) The consumer will bite the bullet and do without the information processing. Because they are SICK of it. And it has turned out to be simply a drain on resources and the bottom line for far too long. Yes, they DO have a choice. And things went along very nicely before all of this hulla-baloo, thank you very much. WE may think that's BS, but probably not the customer.
Until there is some change, there may be slight resurgences of demand for tech products, but they will fall off quickly enough. As a recent article concerning the down-turn in CIO.com mag mentioned, the tech industry badly under-estimated the reluctance of small to medium sized manufacturing corporations, mainly in the mid-west by the way, to climb on board the eCommerce band-wagon.
Folks did their homework, and discovered that not only has computerization been a net loss to most businesses fool-hardy go whole-hog over them, but that suddenly the tech industry had turned into this incredibly hungry leech that would vend buggy software apparently just to reap IMMENSE consulting profits installing, customizing, repairing, and re-customizing, starting the cycle over at the next upgrade, doing updates, partial updates, system integration, etc., etc., etc.
All that, and with an attitude, too.
Well, guess what? Attitude doesn't fly anymore. The jig is up. Time to quit playing ping-pong and get down to business. And I'm not talking about Redmond only, here (i.e. M$oft).
It has to start with the tech sector itself getting their head screwed on right. I'm talking about the people in the trenches. Its up to us to get our collective act together and bring some integrity to the bargaining table. Its up to us to explain to management (they will never be so humble as during the hard times) that their company(s) can't just keep on vending buggy software apparently just to reap IMMENSE consulting profits installing, customizing, repairing, and re-customizing, starting the cycle over at the next upgrade, doing updates, partial updates, system integration, etc., etc., etc! You can't build an industry that way!!!
We can't go on playing the customer for a sucker like some con artist and expect business to go on as usual. It just ain't happening.
I'm having trouble just transfering my domain PERIOD! God only knows what kind of BS I would get if some mega-corporation decided it wanted my domain. Geesh...look what I got back even when I attempted to comply with this mafia's hoops of fire:
*********** Thank you for contacting VeriSign.
Your fax request was received, however, we have noticed the following problems. The sections marked by an "X" are missing information or have been incorrectly completed. Please make the necessary corrections and resubmit your request.
*The authorization letter should be on the organization's letterhead as stated in our database.
*The authorization letter did not reference a NIC-tracking number and/or a domain name. An example of a NIC-tracking number is NIC000414.1a2d.
*The authorization letter referenced a NIC-tracking number that is either invalid or incorrect. Please provide the appropriate NIC-tracking number for your modification request. An example of a NIC-tracking number is NIC000414.1a2d.
*There was not a template attached to the tracking number.
*The authorization letter did not contain a statement of authorization.
*The authorization letter was not signed.
*The authorization letter was not accompanied by a signature and title of an individual with the authorization to legally bind the registrant. This authority is generally held by an officer of the company, or someone with one of the following titles: Owner, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operations Officer, President, Senior Vice President, Vice President, Director, General Manager, General Partner, Managing Director, Sole Proprietor, Treasurer.
*The authorization letter was not accompanied by proof of the registrant's identity, such as a copy of a driver's license, passport, military ID, university ID, etc. Please be sure to enlarge and lighten your photo-copy so that your transmission will be legible.
*The authorization letter was not accompanied by proof of the registrant's address, such as a copy of a utility bill or phone bill that establishes his/her address as stated in our database.
*The fax is missing pages or is illegible.
Due to numerous attempts to corrupt files of domain records by unauthorized persons, if any of the above items is missing the faxed request will not be processed. We regret the inconvenience, however, it is necessary to protect the integrity of our clients' registrations.
Please be sure to re-send your fax to 703-326-7000 with the following information:
a) If the domain is registered to a company, it must be on company letterhead. b) If the request is to update a contact record or if it is for a domain that is owned by a person , a photo-copy of a state issued ID or passport. Please be sure to enlarge and lighten your photo-copy so that your transmission will be legible. c) Tracking # of your original email request to our hostmaster---see above d) Signature and Title of Company Officer or Contact who can take legal responsibility. e) Phone number and email address.
Best regards, Kwame Am VeriSign, Inc. http://www.networksolutions.com
**********
Whatever you do... DO NOT subject yourself to this kind of treatment by using a mafia like that which scrawled its name across the above communication. Treat yourself better than that.
Uh... there is freeware spreadsheet software that you and your customers can use. But you say, they won't use anything else but Excel? So, you need to convert to Excell? There's such a thing as comma delimited format, so just have your program export the spreadsheet that way. The result doesn't import into Excel properly? Now who's fault is that? The moral of the story about licensing? The 800 pound gorilla will eventually be able to ignore standards, such as comma delimited format.
Licensing of software is a slippery slope, and there's no bottom. Afterall, who's licensed ASCII or EBCDIC? When will they start to clammor about royalties? How's about the rights to write ACSII to ferromagnetic media? What about the power companies? Afterall, if there was no juice going through your computers... etc., etc., etc.
Sound over the top? Just keep going on with the licensing absurdity that exists today. You'll see it.
Slashdot Mirror
At this point, neither JDE, Peoplesoft nor Oracle are offering enough employment opportunities to the IT sector to warrant much debate about their future. And "Yeah," I'm considering their install base, too (all that work has gone to the already over-worked, full-time IT monkeys).
... by the way, several years back Ed McVanney (JDE's old CEO) turned down an offer of 60+ bucks a share for JDE from Billy Gates (imagine that). I guess he still (stupidly) had faith in his product. I say "stupidly," because as a person who is supposed to be aware of such things, he ignored the cardinal rule of the computer industry (see above).
To me, it looks like M$ doesn't have to step in (re: "Waking the Giant"); all it has to do is sit by and watch the sharks tear up and savage each other -- there's no prey left, so what else do they have to eat? As INFOworld summed it up a few *YEARS* back -- The ERP sector underestimated resistance to innovation by the management personnel of mid-sized corporations in the Midwest. (I guess the boys couldn't show the "Show Me" states.)
Every day spent gnawing each other's guts over who's gonna be #2 or #3 is another day spent neglecting the real business of scrapping the ugly program templates and software architecture of an ERP industry that was never set up right to begin with. Any banker will tell you: marketing only goes so far; sooner or later you have got to have a decent product that exceeds the expectations of the customer.
Oh quitchyerbitchin!!! Everybody knows its true, if not quite practical, that what has been needed from the get-go has been an overhaul of ERP. That's why JDE was so great. Configurable Network Computing. (Huh? Well, I thought this was a tech website.)
Don't get me wrong. JDE is crap, too. But at least with JDE, if its broke (and it probably is out of the box), there's usually some way that local people on-site can finagle and develop a fix somehow. Add a few servers here, optimize a database there, patch some C++ here, a few stored procedures there; and voila!, a few environment mappings later, management can get back to the business of ignoring the crap that they just paid twenty million bucks for and concentrate on using it the 10 or 20% that they end up doing anyway. The problems were never corrected, per se; but bottlenecks were eased, irregularities were smoothed over, reports ran and got printed, settings didn't just disappear, etc.
You can work all the IT magic with Peoplesoft or Oracle that you want. But uhh ahh, the fix ain't happening. Not without a redesign. JDE can be redesigned on-site by non-PhD's, and most decent installations are (sic). Unless management insists otherwise (sic). That's the reason why Peoplesoft NEEDS JDE. Peoplesoft is about as easy to turn around as an ocean liner. And guess what, that's the reason why Oracle needs JDE, too; hence, the hostile bid for Peoplesoft. (Financial analysts are giving JDE either a strong buy or hold rating! Some valuable property there.)
But as with everything else about the perverse computer industry, it seems that the best stuff is the first to go belly up. Then what's left around stirs like the flushing contents of a too-well used toilet that never seems to go down
(i.e. the "Cardinal Rule of the Computer Industry").
Oh
Just about four months ago, McVanney was ousted from JDE. Now we know why! He was standing in the way of progress!!! BwwWWahhhAhhahhahhhahhahh.
Could it be because of management (see rules 5 and 6)? In case anyone was wondering about the ground rules:
Corporations 101
(for the new employee)
1. Management is not there to help.
2. If you actually understood what management was saying, you would quit.
3. Don't bother trying to understand what role management plays in a corporation. They don't know, and nobody else does either.
4. If you don't do what management says, everything works out just fine.
5. Excellence is the farthest thing from management's "mind." Uppermost is fooling people into believing that it is.
6. Management doesn't mind presiding over a corporation comprised simply of itself and a Human Resources department. And often they get by without the Human Resources department.
7. Stock price is the barometer by which one can tell how well management's retirement fund is padded.
8. The CEO never gives a f**k, and banks upon being quietly and summarily dismissed.
9. Every executive hopes to become CEO.
10. This is the best system the world has to offer.
As profound as human intelligence is, it is encumbered by politics and prejudice (perhaps the same thing). Encumbered? Hell! Its legs are cut off and eyes poked out by governments, institutions, industrialist tycoons, poverty, social stratification, systems of imposed ignorance (i.e. what Noam Chomsky calls universtities), religions, social conventions, the masses being addicted to television and the Internet, small group social interactions (like the "good ol' boys network and Minsky's phobias, etc.), inherent bias (due to the human perspective), etc., etc.
/. are rabid fans of competion among ideas, but try to understand that in circles traditionally outside the realm of technology - philosophy, etc. - the competion of ideas is thought to be a very primitive way to go about epistemology. It may have its place in designing business plans, but has very little to do with PROMOTING an environment conducive to paradigm development. Eventually paradigms must be compared in order to separate the chaff from the wheat, but assessment is worlds apart from triage.
... to give us a firm objective ground upon which to reflect subjectivity (rather than resorting to the "physical" construct derived out of complexes of bodily experience which we do naturally). This would achieve genuine reflex-reflexivity of consciousness through means other than ... "the for-it-self...perpetually determining itself not to be the in-it-self" (Jean Paul Sartre ... Being and Nothingness, p. 134., Washington Square Press paperback edition, May 1966).
It is a wonder that any kind of objective truth can be salvaged out of such a host of cognitive wet blankets.
The bug-a-boo of all human mental endeavor has been the struggle to free the mind from the slants and penchants which keep ideas encircling in ever tighter patterns 'round the same old perspectives on the hard questions which have for recorded history haunted humanity.
How do we get some objectivity?! How to get beyond the investigations of the ancient Greek philosophers, which are as true now as when they were first commenced? How to get beyond the piecemeal approach of "scientific method" in order to delve what we intuitively recognize as the interior logic upon which hangs the universe? How to start thinking for ourselves, uninfluenced by our employers, our civil authorities, our need to earn a living, our need to integrate into society, our personal needs for love and companionship, bodily limitations of whereabouts, memory, retrieval, etc.
THAT is the crux of why we NEED AI, people. Its not particularly to play more and more interesting computer games, believe it or not. Pursuing technology will require that we abandon old modes of thinking. But as human beings, we invest ourselves into our ideas, become professors over our ideas, and most certainly compete in the arena of ideas. New ideas are subjected to harsh criticism, not objective cultivation. In such an environment, to discovery something radically new is as welcome as realizing that one has fallen off the deep end, and is insane.
Since the middle of last century, Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revlutions" has made it acceptable even in academic realms to point out that the patterns of paradigmization which academia uses severely inhibit the progress of understanding the world, rather than help. Go figure.
I realize that many here on
Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Inteligence (i.e. the strong hypothesis of AI) might just be able to do that for us
As to how that maycome about, see the following papers on my website:
THINKING DIFFERENTLY ABOUT DOING AI: Toward a satisfactory epistemic methodology of the strong hypothesis
I. Rationality Is Not Enough: AI should simulate integral thought
II. Hierarchical Planning Is Not Enough: AI should espouse the origin of common sense
III. Holographic Intelligence Is Not Enough: AI
should acknowledge the ontology of reason
found at http://www.angelfire.com/ab7/almound2000/
Just heaping on top like the rest, to show disfavor and all. Actually, pop-ups aren't a problem with Mozilla. But I do have to use Internet Exploiter for certain websites occasionally (like my bank). Happily my bank is technically the equivalent of a geranium, so they don't utilize too many pop-up ads ... yet. (Some Madison avenue-type will probably sell it to them, though. And that'll be the day I close my account. Betcha they still won't get it. Wink.)
The fatal flaw of the law is the money that must be spent in order to ensure justice. (Of course, your post is technically correct. But whether or not there is a material breach, however, must be settled naturally in a court of law ... debated upon ad nauseum by very high-priced lawyers with no incentive to end the invective.)
... that's how ridiculous it has become).
... now I understand why DARPA "gave" the public the Intenet for free! Geesh!!! And I thought John Poindexter was being nice.)
The problem is not that the RIAA or Kazaa users are violating laws. Clearly, everyone violates laws (there are just so many of them - we are all doing something illegal, even now, for which we just haven't been caught yet
No, the real issue is the Internet itself and how it has been allowed to become the dragnet of every government agency with the wherewithall to get off its big, fat duff and bark out an order for "compliance" by the lapdog ISPs to give up the personal information that they obligingly store for just such purposes. (Ohhh
In other words, the system's rigged, my boys. Get used to it.
Then get on to building an alternative!!!
(Freenet is a great concept for starters, but until all the bandwidth wastage is cut by about 10%, the extra load of data encryption is going to make for some glutted pipes. However, for those in the know, using multiple pipes is a solution. Still, it might be hard to explain all the encrypted traffic to the Feds once the slimey ISP informs it of your bit-ratio.)
Wake Up Amerika!!! Stop living off Government Surplus Cheese.
I'm wise to them now - I don't buy anything on rebate, anymore. Fooled twice, any more and it is my fault.
Of course, there are a lot of suckers out there, and I don't expect rebates will go away any time soon. But that's just like every other scam that is being perpetrated in the name of "business" these days.
Spam, junk mail, unsolicited phone calls, club memberships, point systems, etc., etc. Some schmucks use them.
That's why they'll never go away. The only thing you can do is educate your children against them (and your significant other).
****But my words were all in vain
****Read 'em and weep, people. Or else, organize. But you're too cool to be doing that. So, go code yerself an egg.
The honeymoon is over, people. Unfortunately, I am coming to the realization that the battle is lost already. I now understand that I will never again enjoy privacy on the Net. Mega-corporations have got there first, and the piecemeal approach of fire walls, anonymizers, proxy server kludges, and spam eliminators is just not going to protect me.
... particularly the enhancement that the Justice Department is planning to shortly introduce to the Patriot Act.
I foresee that I have to plan for the fact that I will not be able to use the Internet ever again unrestrictedly, and have been preparing for a complete break of private Internet use for about a year now. Shortly, I will be discontinuing my cable modem service forever, and will only use the Internet in a public forum such as at work, in a college, or in a Cybercafe, wherein I will obey every single law applicable (and will refrain from doing ANYTHING that may potentially break some law). However paranoid that may make me, it is worth it. We haven't even seen the beginning of how savage the witch hunts are about to become.
Yes, this is a boycot. Boycotting the Internet in this fashion may sound extreme, but then again I think the Patriot Act is a bit extreme
http://www.public-i.org/dtaweb/home.asp
Look for the icon the reads, "Patriot Act II"
One way to fight such rabid facism is to disconnect from the system. (This works because the Internet is a closed system. Without Internet users, there will be no commercial use for the Interent and no inherent need for vigorous policing of it.) I believe alternative networks will spring up out of the void so created, and, if those information avenues appears safe, I will surely take advantage of them. In the meantime, I plan to concentrate on fully utilizing the plentiful software already available which computing has afforded me.
I was a fairly well-paid computer professional from 1994 through 2000. But a sickness overtook the computer industry. It is a sickness imposed by forces which during the same time period tried to impose similar types of maladies on the health care and legal professions. Unfortunately, the computer industry (being in its infancy) was more susceptible than the others. Without strong professional organization and fraught by endemic sabotage by mega-corporations from within, the computer industry was doomed to succumb.
Currently, I am enrolled in a mathematics course of study which will degree me in Statistics, and am changing my profession out of the computer technology field altogether. For those still brave enough to tough it out under the current conditions:
May God have mercy on your souls.
Everybody is entitled to their own pet theory (at least as long as the present powers-that-be refrain from setting new precedents ... a few more days, maybe).
/.), such a heretic stands subject to persecution more rabid than that wreaked by the Puritans of Salem.
... I'll hunt around for it). Peer review has degenerated into a cat and mouse game of fudge factors and political favoritism. Scrutiny is meaningless if there is an unwillingness to think differently.
All this discussion brings to mind Thomas Kuhn and his book, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions."
Be forewarned, people, anyone who dares gainsay the scientific crowd (in evidence is one proudly on display at
Burning witches is a scientist's stock and trade. One should not be surprised at that. They tell you repeatedly that no theory is sacrocanct, no assertion is above scrutiny, only peer review based upon the least common denominator of the hypothetico-deductive/analytico-inferential method can purify.
The problem is, hypothetico-deductive/analytico-inferential methods are shoddy logic and, besides, haven't been endorsed by mainstream academics for at least 70 years (I'm thinking of a quote from the Chair of MIT's Physics department while Richard Feynman was attending
This forum is an illustration that one should not be surprised at any scientific community's astounding ignorance. One should rather be astounded when someone is given a proper hearing.
Apparently all the yahooing on /. is to mask the
... the scientific community is,
fact that, actually, those who make fun of this
and other supernormal subjects are in the minority
(a very tiny minority).
That minority may like to think that it is the
voice of reason in a world gone mad, but as others
have noted well
if anything, more rabid than the Puritans of
Salem. Burning witches is their stock and trade.
As understood by the scientific community at large, scientific method involves prediction and therefore, of necessity, must presume causality. In other words, scientific hypotheses are to be derived in such a fashion that, upon inspection of the methods employed and the conclusions drawn, no contradiction to causal reasoning may be found. It is central to Western thought that, whatever logic is used to frame such reasoning, such logic must be consonant with the doctrine of cause and effect.
... "quantum mechanics." Scientific exploration has come full-circle, arriving at a point where scientists can no longer do without philosophical considerations given up some time in the nineteenth century. While it is true that most scientists even today adopt a "shoot from the hip" approach (i.e. "just figure out those equations; if they fit the data, the theory will follow"), this stance merely makes the point presented here. Their approach is calculatedly acausal. If derivation of the equations of science is not based upon causal reasoning but upon the happenstance of a conjectural model, it is illogical to assume that experimental data should "fit" the model after the fact. (Reasoning is either causal or acausal.)
But curiously, academe's leading authorities regardless of the absolutist or relativist nature of their thought are unwittingly assaulting the doctrine of cause and effect. Objectivist Bayesians, artificial intelligence connectionists, existential deconstructionists, logical positivists, political ideologues and religious fanatics, all put forth arguments which either imply or state outright that application of their discipline requires consideration which runs contrary to principles of cause and effect reasoning. Many do not realize this even as they do so.
All of them believe themselves to be hard-nosed realists, however, merely responding to the facts as they see them. But if they happen to found their thinking upon a phenomenology which admits of objective, absolute truth they face the difficulty that, ultimately, such a doctrine must be accepted on faith. This is true in either case, whether they are absolutist or relativist.
If they are absolutist and believe in an infinite universe, then direct verification of each fact in their system of truth is impossible, which means they must agree to maintain a belief that the laws that they discover in any one region of space must apply to any other region of space, leaving them to examine region after region of space for inconsistencies ad inifinitum. Or, which is not much better, if they believe the universe to be finite (just vast) they must resort to inductive reasoning rather than through direct verification, and inductive reasoning is subject to all sorts of contradictions to Leibniz' principle of logical necessity (Russell's Paradox, Goedel's proof of the inconsistency of First Order Logic, the linguistic research cited by Derrida, Riceour, et al, the doctrine of prior probabilities, the Chinese room paradox, etc., etc.). In either instance, an absolutist must do some fast talking to get his audience to bide their time while the details are worked out.
It may be argued that this critique of absolutism -- which finds absolutism to be faith-based, epistemologically bankrupt, and ultimately antithetical to cause and effect reasoning -- involves their doctrines taken to the extreme (sic). It is unfair to harp upon that, but one should rather recognize moderate absolutists (sic), logical positivists, say, as those who best represent the absolutist point-of-view. These are pragmatic people who adopt an attitude of dealing with issues at hand, rather than dabbling in so much philosophy. They are interested in rigor, and not so much interested in wrangling how many angels can fit on the had of a pin.
We have just two words for this counter-argument
On the other hand, if an authority founds their thinking upon a phenomenology which admits of relativism, then that fact alone precludes strict casusal reasoning. The absolutist is quite right to thumb their nose at relativists, insisting that the relativists listen to their version of the absolute truth - yet one more time - because, after all, everything is relative, right? So why shouldn't their diatribe be legitimate? To this, relativists have nothing to say other than, "have a nice day." They might even agree and affirm that relativism actually means having one's bread buttered on both sides.
But note that this inclusiveness does nothing to clarify matters concerning cause and effect reasoning, but in fact emphasizes the relativists' departure from it. Relativism is encumbered with all the issues noted above about absolutism, but in addtion takes on issues such as how best to find fiducial starting points for reasoning, what constitutes meaningful consecution which avoids tautology, and, because of these two difficulties, defining inherence and cogent hierarchies of knowledge. Epistemology becomes a shambles for the relativist.
In sum, just because the formulated results of scientific method must pass causal muster one thereby cannot conclude that the mental acts which perform such scientific derivation had to adhere during formulation to principles of cause and effect. If that is true of scientific method, then what is the justification for such practices as debunking?
Actually, the most widely acknowledged authorities of philosophy in the twentieth century all adopted a stance which brought into question the very possibility of phenomenology (without which any science can exist). At best, such questions are left up in the air and ignored by today's cognoscenti. At worst, they are vilified as Nazi propaganda. But such questions are not going to be just wished away. Until there is a lot more thinking in this regard, I think that scientific objectivism might want to keep from calling the kettle black.
Who died and left scientific objectivism as God?
Reading the replies here, I begin to see now why the tech bust hasn't been over long ago. If you let the company use you like a whore, you will be treated like the whore that you are and you shouldn't expect any better treatment. Unfortunately, the replies to this inquiry confirm that some people don't mind being scabs (i.e. temp workers brought in to obviate the need to hire workers full-time).
... then discover that they really do need somebody around to actually do the work (an indian, not a chief). And as for consulting, well, the fees are pretty stiff.
... "battered spouse" syndrome). Have a little self-respect, otherwise the tech industry will never develop into a profession, on a par with other engineers and architects.
Consulting is one thing, but I draw the line when the client is the company that layed me off in the first place
We made a ton of money back during the 90's. Use the freedom that that doe gives you to resist this kind of exploitation. I do.
Otherwise, it will just be more of the same old, same old. You can count on it. Stop being a whore and think like a responsible human being. Make the companies understand that there are consequences for their actions. That when they hire you, it is a partnership which requires some responsibility to you on their part.
Stop acting like a co-dependent spouse (you know
I suppose controlling cookies and pop-up windows doesn't count? Afterall, every single one of us out here wants to be spied on, harassed, tagged and tracked, and then sold to the highest bidder. What could be more obvious?
Mozilla plays a significant part in my strategy to prevent such b.s. from happening to me. I repeat - it is NOT the only thing that I do to protect it. But Mozilla is a damn sight better for certain aspects of accomplishing this basic objective than Internet Exploiter.
As anyone who knows anything about the Internet should realize, you had better take your privacy seriously or someone will come along and steal it.
Apparently the jokers who wrote the review can't appreciate such subtleties.
Executive managemnet will never let a middle manager do the job sanely. Sorry.
First of all, this is mismanagement, plain and simple. Of course, nowadays mismanagement is taken as a matter of course in the corporate world. The jokers pretending to run the show have become woefully ignorant of the consequences of their actions.
Second of all, I've already abandoned ship. I'm taking all those nice "excess earnings" made back a few years ago and investing them in going back to school and getting out of the computer industry. It doesn't deserve my talent right now.
I'm glad that the tech moniker is on my resume, but until some realism about who is actually generating the profits comes about and a genuine meritocracy ensues there's no need to remain.
As technology people, we must insist upon the recognition that we deserve. Managers will have a hard time of it doing the tech themselves. Good luck to them.
Not that I'm the only one, mind you ... but if anyone's counting ...
Yeah, its a bad idea. Stinko! An idea about as prone to the law of unintended consequences as I've ever seen anybody from the open source crowd make. And that's just for starters.
You can't force anyone to change anything. You can't force anyone to change anything! You can't force anyone to change anything!!
You have to make them WANT to change. But don't think they're going to do it next week. That's just not the way people are. STOP fighting their natural flow (or lack thereof). Be a bit more mindful of the Tao.
"Grasshopper, if user sits like a lump - then you must find a way to use this inertia to your advantage. Your life will go much better that way. "
What am I saying? Its this, don't depend so much on upgrades.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Much of the reason for this has been the effort by techies to be cute.
.... cool? .... which caused the term to be employed by the Tech sector. But whatever ... confusion was introduced.
.... all at once .... without regard for how that would affect the end-users understanding. A new and arcane vocabulary became demanded of the user in order to use the computer, not merely just new kinesthetic skills, new concepts of interfacing with machines (period), and new subtleties of mental operation (keystrokes, macros, menus, etc.).
... because the data is on another partition.)
Yeah, cute!
The mouse is simply a remote control device. It did not help to improve understanding or to sell computers by calling it a mouse. Calling it a mouse was cute. Perhaps it was marketing's fault, or more likely it was just the effort to be cute
Not because of calling the remote control device a "mouse," but because every part of the machine was given a special name
The intellectual demands placed upon new users is EXTREME! It is not trivial, and the point bears repeating yet again. Those who dismiss this point cavalierly express their own ignorance.
Computers should have started out having an on and off switch, just like every other appliance in the household (not a one and zero switch).
Likening the hard drive mechanism to a record player would have softened the blow (and alot of people would have understood the difference between virtual and physical memory because of it), but it wouldn't have been "cool." Yet, turntables were known to have "drive" systems. (And yes, there were turntables still at the dawn of the PC industry. Alot more people were familiar with that terminology than then they were with the term "hard drive.")
The tech sector should have imparted an understanding that, though there may be many, many ways to go about doing one's computing, in reality there are actually only a few ways of doing so efficiently and in such a manner so as not to be constantly reinstalling the operating system and programs. This alone would have given relief to practically anyone just starting out. (Corporations became aware of this principle early on, and products such as Ghost and ImageCast, PartitionMagic, Norton Utilities, etc., became central to their IT departments. Similar programs should become so for ANY user, as well as should the savvy to use them in combination to provide quickly restorable boot partitions with no data loss
The term "backup" should never have been promulgated. The phrase "make a copy of your data" would have sufficed, but again it wouldn't have been "cool," would it?
There are innumerable other points similar to those above. That jargon and acronyms were made central to the design of human-computer interface is a shame and a folly that won't be quickly effaced. I predict that more jobs will be lost in the Tech sector, not less, until these and similar breeches of communication are rectified (or else smoothed over by time, i.e., the dying off of those born before their introduction).
Amen. But while reading the responses to this topic, I've come across alot of attitude, alot of nonsense, and alot of ill-considered opinion.
But I haven't come across alot of understanding. There are those who claim that they are lucky enough to have a decent job still in the tech sector, but who are writing responses that amount to boasting about their income, flaming John Katz, and ignoring the issue of the Widening Tech-Savvy Gap. How am I supposed to take that?
A person who scorns anybody in the tech sector that doesn't have a well-paying job, who boasts of taking advantage of the monopoly known as M$oft, who actively seeks to keep the public in the dark about tech just to profit on their ignorance, that person deserves the disregard for their character that such an attitude garners anyone in a profession.
This topic is all about professionalism, actually. The Tech Gap is widening because of a lack of professionalism on the part of those participating in the industry. Sound incredible?
If it sounds incredible, then please read the myriad of books on excellence which have been written by respected authors from other industries. The fact that there is a Tech Gap (and I'm reading no response making a credible argument against the proposition) is the Tech sector's fault, not the general public's fault.
And guess what? The fact that there is a Tech Gap puts your supposedly cushy, well-paying job in the Tech sector (if indeed you HAVE one) in jeopardy.
This response by bildstorm deserves a strong, unqualified endorsement.
..... the people of the tech sector are not necessarily the corporations (sic). Its up to us to win back public confidence by doing tech right from now on. Just like most people who respond at ./, I have a stake in seeing tech succeed ... FOR THE LONG HAUL. And the way that the computer/ communications tech revolution has been introduced and cultivated throughout the last twenty years has shown that very little (that could be extrapolated to information processing) has been learned and applied from the history of dismal failures (and some stunning successes) that surrounded other technologically related industries.
Although jet_silver mentions a Sturgeon's law (i.e. 90% of everything is crap), he states it as though it were somehow a law of nature. Rather, the theoretical basis that he should be referring to is that of the bastardized capitalism that corporate mediocrity adopts.
In that paradigm, it is not optimally profitable to produce an optimum product. True enough. But the topic at hand is not about corporate greed. It is about the widening technology gap.
Consumers that are unable to use and/or are frustrated with gimmicky, hard-to-use technology will nip corporate greed in the bud, and right quick, by just not buying. (I believe that I don't have to justify that statement in light of the recent "economic down-turn," do I?).
Corporate greed says, "no problem!" And turns its mangey head toward another victim to exploit, leaving the technology sector maimed and bleeding. eCommerce becomes an epithet. Consultants are laid off in mid-project. "Tech jobs" becomes an oxymoron. (Again, I trust that I don't have to justify that statement in light of recent events.)
Left to their own devices, corporations will do this to ANYTHING they touch. That's their nature (sorry, Rush Limbaugh). They were created to exploit, to dispell blame, to act as a legal firewall, etc.,etc. (I don't have to run over it again.)
MY POINT IS
BUT THAT DOESN'T MATTER! That's just about corporate profits. I mean, yes, corporations should have cared about developing the tech sector with an eye toward long range design feasability and public acceptance. But they didn't. What truly matters now is that, as an industry, we gain back the confidence of people at large. To do that, the same old cavilier attitude toward the end-user must be abolished. Elitism has no place in a tech-savvy world.
The people aren't going for the doctor/lawyer superiority crap anymore. They aren't going to be hiring you just because you know something they don't. (If that were true, there would have been no fall off in tech sector employment.) The consumer will bite the bullet and do without the information processing. Because they are SICK of it. And it has turned out to be simply a drain on resources and the bottom line for far too long. Yes, they DO have a choice. And things went along very nicely before all of this hulla-baloo, thank you very much. WE may think that's BS, but probably not the customer.
Until there is some change, there may be slight resurgences of demand for tech products, but they will fall off quickly enough. As a recent article concerning the down-turn in CIO.com mag mentioned, the tech industry badly under-estimated the reluctance of small to medium sized manufacturing corporations, mainly in the mid-west by the way, to climb on board the eCommerce band-wagon.
Folks did their homework, and discovered that not only has computerization been a net loss to most businesses fool-hardy go whole-hog over them, but that suddenly the tech industry had turned into this incredibly hungry leech that would vend buggy software apparently just to reap IMMENSE consulting profits installing, customizing, repairing, and re-customizing, starting the cycle over at the next upgrade, doing updates, partial updates, system integration, etc., etc., etc.
All that, and with an attitude, too.
Well, guess what? Attitude doesn't fly anymore. The jig is up. Time to quit playing ping-pong and get down to business. And I'm not talking about Redmond only, here (i.e. M$oft).
It has to start with the tech sector itself getting their head screwed on right. I'm talking about the people in the trenches. Its up to us to get our collective act together and bring some integrity to the bargaining table. Its up to us to explain to management (they will never be so humble as during the hard times) that their company(s) can't just keep on vending buggy software apparently just to reap IMMENSE consulting profits installing, customizing, repairing, and re-customizing, starting the cycle over at the next upgrade, doing updates, partial updates, system integration, etc., etc., etc! You can't build an industry that way!!!
We can't go on playing the customer for a sucker like some con artist and expect business to go on as usual. It just ain't happening.
I'm having trouble just transfering my domain PERIOD! God only knows what kind of BS I would get if some mega-corporation decided it wanted my domain. Geesh...look what I got back even when I attempted to comply with this mafia's hoops of fire:
... DO NOT subject yourself to this kind of treatment by using a mafia like that which scrawled its name across the above communication. Treat yourself better than that.
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Whatever you do
Silly rabbit, you can't teach Americans anything!
Uh ... there is freeware spreadsheet software that you and your customers can use. But you say, they won't use anything else but Excel? So, you need to convert to Excell? There's such a thing as comma delimited format, so just have your program export the spreadsheet that way. The result doesn't import into Excel properly? Now who's fault is that? The moral of the story about licensing? The 800 pound gorilla will eventually be able to ignore standards, such as comma delimited format.
Licensing of software is a slippery slope, and there's no bottom. Afterall, who's licensed ASCII or EBCDIC? When will they start to clammor about royalties? How's about the rights to write ACSII to ferromagnetic media? What about the power companies? Afterall, if there was no juice going through your computers ... etc., etc., etc.
Sound over the top? Just keep going on with the licensing absurdity that exists today. You'll see it.