A chap wrote a book called The Mythical Man Month which talked about lots of lessons that IT project managers and others could learn about the successfull delivery of IT systems. Including a very developer focused methodology called "The surgical Team".
Oddly nothing in the article is actually stuff that businesses that do IT well could learn from Open Source, as Open Source has learnt it from people who do IT well. The worst bit is that 30 years on people are still putting forward the bleeding obvious of project management as being "best practice" and most (including this article) don't come close to a book written in the 70s, written by a chap who worked at that ultimate of old school organisations, IBM.
If anyone is working in IT and hasn't read the Mythical Man Month, then you should especially the special edition I linked to, best book in IT ever by a mile.
Good project managers can teach other projects managers lots about running programmes, no matter whether in closed or open source, product or end-user applications. Trouble is too many people go into project management because they don't have the talent elsewhere, that is like having the quarterback as the weakest member of an American Football team.
Given that Vista is going to be here from 2006 through to 2009 at least one big concern is surely how it supports multi-core as Windows hasn't always been the best SMP machine (event Data Center tops out at 64 way, 64 bit). With people like Sun releasing 32 way CPUs recently its not unreasonable to expect AMD and Intel to be pushing that barrier or more in 2009.
I've not seen much around Vista and SMP, which is odd given that its the current hardware buzz in the market.
You might be right if these boys were specialist IT analysts, but they aren't they are financial analysts making a series of pretty big assumptions that don't match reality. These are also the folks that hyped the.com as the future and didn't spot the gaming market or mobile markets (don't believe me go and look at the reports from 1999).
So we have the Cell... currently for sale on development boxes... so not quite experimental
Then we get the slip until 2007. This is based on the Cell being too new (its in production) and some assumptions.
So in terms of who I'd trust around it? Me I'd go for the IEEE who reckoned that the Cell would be one of the hits of 2006, but hell they are only the most established electronics and computer organisation on the planet.
Don't trust analysts, remember most of them don't beat the market.
Mildly interesting but in terms of modern games it won't cut the mustard so then you are looking at smaller games and a platform to learn on. IMO there is only one top platform to learn game programming for and that is the Java mobile phone platform J2ME that even comes with a standard (and pretty simple) 3D API. Its also the fastest growing gaming market out there at the moment, and its still an area where mere mortals can break in and create the killer game and make money. Aiming at the PC market means you are against the multi-million dollar budget folks and that just isn't sensible.
If you want to learn game programming... get a decent phone.
Let me get this straight, you think that in future access to the internet will be completely free. So who will pay for the wireless access points, for the people to install them, to maintain them and for the monitoring of them? Some one will have to... or do you mean that internet access is an right granted by the US Constitution? If you are talking about goverment provided internet access for all then this is NOT free its paid for my the tax-payer.
It really gets my goat that people seem to regard health-care as something for the rich, but internet should be provided to everyone (read the middle-class and above). Its one screwed up country that thinks that free internet, but not free-water, free-gas, free-electricty and certainly not universal healthcare is something to aim for.
Its much more secure if you personally just dialup and squark and squeek at the handset processing all of the information yourself, you can't do this with DSL because its a digitial line so you can't hear what it is saying properly. Personally this form of internet communication, while a little slow (around 2 baud) has never resulted in any security problems.
In summary
Your friend is a muppet, probably Fozzy, potentially Gonzo.
With the iPod now running video, and 3G networks streaming TV shows to mobile phones, and Apple linking up with Motorola one question around the Newton experience is whether iPods will start to gain WiFi or Cellphone type facilties (e.g. for buying tunes on the move) and hence become more multi-modal devices. Clearly the PDA market isn't a growth sector as the smart-phone revolution is fully underway, but is there a market in which Apple start extending the iPod or building on ROKR to move into smartphones.
Newton is dead, but whether Apple gets into the smart devices market is probably more open.
The reason I ask is that most people seem to use the Java front-end or the HTML front-end. I haven't seen people use ActiveX at all with eBusiness Suite or Oracle database....
Just checking the install that I have... yup that just uses Java as well.
I can't find ActiveX anywhere on the various Oracle products I've got installed at the moment.
Dell's aim is to have the best supply chain and produce computers cheaper than anyone else, this means they don't really do any innovation its more of a Wallmart sort of play. Now you can get very big being a Wallmart type of business but the challenge is that Dell are in a field where competition has almost always been around innovation. From a margin perspective the aim of Dell is to operate at low margin but sell in bulk, Apple are aiming at high margin and selling decent volumes. The reason people pay more for Apple's stuff is the innovation and design, the reason more people buy Dell machines than Apple's is because of the cost.
Two different models, its not comparing two similar businesses.
The IEEE Spectrum magazine (surely a better source for Slashdot readers) predicts that Cell will be a winner in the multimedia space, noting that already its going into TVs made by Toshiba.
Why is it that so rarely, and with US shows almost never, Sci-Fi can contain humour as well as the fantastic? Dr Who, paticularly this new series, has been a superb combination of both the "serious" science fiction combined with the humour of having HUMANS involved in it. This isn't the gag line humour of STNG but the actual real humour of decent TV programmes. The writing in Dr Who is brilliant, the pathos parts are strong, its got the science fantastic and both Rose and Dr Who (as well as Captain Jack) have top moments of both drama and humour.
Series 1 was superb, and Series 2 is shaping up to be even better.
Rose: "But you sound like you come from the North" Dr: "Lots of planets have a North"
Clearly this is a rumour based on some late night beer thinking but really why would Google bother getting into the PC business or OS business? Cost of entry is very high, unless they just re-badge a Linux distro, in which case they'd be better off buying one of the smaller distro companies out there. But even with that why would they bother. The whole principle of what they are doing is about moving things to being more and more connected and providing facilities (Google Desktop) that tie people into that connected metaphor at all times. They want to turn the desktop into a virtual environment where information is collected and stored via Google elements, so they don't need to own the whole OS, they just need the brand and the plug-ins. Google to produce a database driven file system for Windows Vista? Now that would be a much more interesting rumour.
Newton in the same bracket? Lets not over-play everyone else here. The rest (including Einstein) are all behind him (Einstein on Newton's legacy) not just for his impact in physics, or his postulation (which he didn't put in the final optics as it wasn't "testable" hence only a hypothesis not a theory) of wave particle duality. This was the bloke who created the scientific method, created a new branch of maths and (when head of the Royal Mint) came up with a fraud prevention device (milled edges) for coins. He also forced a change in English Law that enabled a greater freedom of religon which led in no small part to the rise of organisations like the quakers et al who drove the Industrial Revolution.
Einstein was a certifiable, grade A genius. Newton, in part thanks to the point in history he appeared at, changed not just Physics but all of science and a large part of the rest of the world.
There will not be another Newton, or Einstein (he wasn't the "next Newton") there will only be the next "X", and I for one am looking forward to what the smart-arsed bastard comes up with.
Given that a major purpose of the FAA is controlling airspace over the US, and given that the FAA has impressively failed over the last 15-20 years to build an integrated Air Traffic Control system (its not that hard as even the European's have one at Mastrict for upper airways, and are proposing a new single system in the next 20 years) and have allowed systems that crash at places like LAX, are they really the people to start defining rules for Space Tourism, sure Branson says he is kicking off from the US, but if it hits revenue why not drop south into Mexico or just go to Russia/China/some nice Island in the Pacific ?
Nice attempt by the FAA to expand its remit into space, but they'd have more respect if they could build a decent ATC system first.
Nope, as an example when British Airways set up a low-cost airline spin-off they had to put in a single payment after which the company had to survive or die. This was because having a larger parent company bank-rolling the smaller company would amount to unfair competition.
This is almost exactly the same as what MS are doing with XBox, except in this case they are continually bank-rolling the smaller company to create unfair competition in the marketplace.
Put it this way, Playstation's money helped drive the investment in PS2, which has driven the investment into PS3. If Sony had lost money on Playstation or PS2 (ala Sega) they wouldn't be doing PS3. Microsoft can use their big bankroll to continue backing a loss making venture against competition who don't have that luxury.
Not only is Microsoft still a monopoly (you don't have to be a monopoly in everything to be a monopoly, Standard Oil and Bell only dominated one defined area) and WORSE than this they are a monopoly who uses that position to effectively engage in "dumping" on other segments by using monopoly revenues to subsidise new businesses. This is also against most trading rules but oddly MS get away with it.
XBox is the perfect case in point, they continue to push a non-profitable model using subsidies from the parent company in order to get to a market dominant position where they will make a profit.
God knows how this is WTO compliant let alone compliant with US and European business rules.
Ah, yes. Just what we all want. Command-line administration of Active Directory and Exchange.
Amazingly people who adminster LDAPs and things like Domino or Sun Messaging have been doing this without using EITHER a Command-line or a GUI on the server... that is because... shock horror you administer the SOFTWARE remotely, INDEPENDENTLY of the Operating system. This way you can configure clusters and networks in a more logical manner.
GUI tools can help server management, this is why most enterprise systems have worked out that the Network Operation Centre (NOC) is physically and logically seperate from the server so a logical connection model and a physical split between server and administration console made sense.
Or maybe its just that bloggers are more likely to return the favour of a free pass/meal/hotel etc with a good review than traditional journos... half of good press is quite probably knowing who to bribe.
Slashdot Mirror
A chap wrote a book called The Mythical Man Month which talked about lots of lessons that IT project managers and others could learn about the successfull delivery of IT systems. Including a very developer focused methodology called "The surgical Team".
Oddly nothing in the article is actually stuff that businesses that do IT well could learn from Open Source, as Open Source has learnt it from people who do IT well. The worst bit is that 30 years on people are still putting forward the bleeding obvious of project management as being "best practice" and most (including this article) don't come close to a book written in the 70s, written by a chap who worked at that ultimate of old school organisations, IBM.
If anyone is working in IT and hasn't read the Mythical Man Month, then you should especially the special edition I linked to, best book in IT ever by a mile.
Good project managers can teach other projects managers lots about running programmes, no matter whether in closed or open source, product or end-user applications. Trouble is too many people go into project management because they don't have the talent elsewhere, that is like having the quarterback as the weakest member of an American Football team.
Given that Vista is going to be here from 2006 through to 2009 at least one big concern is surely how it supports multi-core as Windows hasn't always been the best SMP machine (event Data Center tops out at 64 way, 64 bit). With people like Sun releasing 32 way CPUs recently its not unreasonable to expect AMD and Intel to be pushing that barrier or more in 2009.
I've not seen much around Vista and SMP, which is odd given that its the current hardware buzz in the market.
You might be right if these boys were specialist IT analysts, but they aren't they are financial analysts making a series of pretty big assumptions that don't match reality. These are also the folks that hyped the .com as the future and didn't spot the gaming market or mobile markets (don't believe me go and look at the reports from 1999).
So we have the Cell... currently for sale on development boxes... so not quite experimental
We have blue-ray price of $350 a unit, some what odd given that you can already get BURNERS for under $1000. And these are at the low volume end while the PS3 will be high volume.
Then we get the slip until 2007. This is based on the Cell being too new (its in production) and some assumptions.
So in terms of who I'd trust around it? Me I'd go for the IEEE who reckoned that the Cell would be one of the hits of 2006, but hell they are only the most established electronics and computer organisation on the planet.
Don't trust analysts, remember most of them don't beat the market.
Mildly interesting but in terms of modern games it won't cut the mustard so then you are looking at smaller games and a platform to learn on. IMO there is only one top platform to learn game programming for and that is the Java mobile phone platform J2ME that even comes with a standard (and pretty simple) 3D API. Its also the fastest growing gaming market out there at the moment, and its still an area where mere mortals can break in and create the killer game and make money. Aiming at the PC market means you are against the multi-million dollar budget folks and that just isn't sensible.
If you want to learn game programming... get a decent phone.
constant free internet access
Let me get this straight, you think that in future access to the internet will be completely free. So who will pay for the wireless access points, for the people to install them, to maintain them and for the monitoring of them? Some one will have to... or do you mean that internet access is an right granted by the US Constitution? If you are talking about goverment provided internet access for all then this is NOT free its paid for my the tax-payer.
It really gets my goat that people seem to regard health-care as something for the rich, but internet should be provided to everyone (read the middle-class and above). Its one screwed up country that thinks that free internet, but not free-water, free-gas, free-electricty and certainly not universal healthcare is something to aim for.
Its by the same writer as father Ted and the producers of the office. Father Ted had 4 main characters and lasted for several series.
Intense focus in a sit-com isn't bad, lets face it this is normal, low number of core characters and sets with occasional colour add ons.
Fraser - 3 sets (appartement, Studio, coffee shop) - 5 main characters
Cheers - 1 set (bar) depending on series between 4 and 6 characters
Friends - 2 sets (appartement & coffee shop) - 6 characters
Office - 1 set (Office) 4 main characters
Father Ted - 1 set (the house) 4 main characters
So Sitcom history seems to say that you almost NEED an intense small group of sets and characters.
You would be a producer or DISTRIBUTOR of the music, there is a big difference between that and being the artist.
Which appears to be what the judge has decided.
Its much more secure if you personally just dialup and squark and squeek at the handset processing all of the information yourself, you can't do this with DSL because its a digitial line so you can't hear what it is saying properly. Personally this form of internet communication, while a little slow (around 2 baud) has never resulted in any security problems.
In summary
Your friend is a muppet, probably Fozzy, potentially Gonzo.
With the iPod now running video, and 3G networks streaming TV shows to mobile phones, and Apple linking up with Motorola one question around the Newton experience is whether iPods will start to gain WiFi or Cellphone type facilties (e.g. for buying tunes on the move) and hence become more multi-modal devices. Clearly the PDA market isn't a growth sector as the smart-phone revolution is fully underway, but is there a market in which Apple start extending the iPod or building on ROKR to move into smartphones.
Newton is dead, but whether Apple gets into the smart devices market is probably more open.
So the world's largest database vendor is paring up with the world's largest big server provider as competition to Windows and
Sounds like Microsoft joining up with Dell to compete with Apple on the desktop.
The reason I ask is that most people seem to use the Java front-end or the HTML front-end. I haven't seen people use ActiveX at all with eBusiness Suite or Oracle database....
Just checking the install that I have... yup that just uses Java as well.
I can't find ActiveX anywhere on the various Oracle products I've got installed at the moment.
Dell's aim is to have the best supply chain and produce computers cheaper than anyone else, this means they don't really do any innovation its more of a Wallmart sort of play. Now you can get very big being a Wallmart type of business but the challenge is that Dell are in a field where competition has almost always been around innovation. From a margin perspective the aim of Dell is to operate at low margin but sell in bulk, Apple are aiming at high margin and selling decent volumes. The reason people pay more for Apple's stuff is the innovation and design, the reason more people buy Dell machines than Apple's is because of the cost.
Two different models, its not comparing two similar businesses.
The IEEE Spectrum magazine (surely a better source for Slashdot readers) predicts that Cell will be a winner in the multimedia space, noting that already its going into TVs made by Toshiba.
They also mention Linux on page 2.
Why is it that so rarely, and with US shows almost never, Sci-Fi can contain humour as well as the fantastic? Dr Who, paticularly this new series, has been a superb combination of both the "serious" science fiction combined with the humour of having HUMANS involved in it. This isn't the gag line humour of STNG but the actual real humour of decent TV programmes. The writing in Dr Who is brilliant, the pathos parts are strong, its got the science fantastic and both Rose and Dr Who (as well as Captain Jack) have top moments of both drama and humour.
Series 1 was superb, and Series 2 is shaping up to be even better.
Rose: "But you sound like you come from the North"
Dr: "Lots of planets have a North"
Python seems to be devouring everything these days... even replacing Perl
From Dice.com
Python : 545 matches
Perl: 3809
C#: 3850
Ummm over 1/8 of the demand of Perl or C#
Java: 11856
Java+BEA: 621
So Python is smaller than one specific application servers development requirements.
Python is better than Perl, but in terms of devouring? Its like saying that American Football is devouring other sports around the world.
Buying one for your wife... meaning you have to upgrade your home machine to play iTunes... honest dear it just won't run on this single CPU one...
Clearly this is a rumour based on some late night beer thinking but really why would Google bother getting into the PC business or OS business? Cost of entry is very high, unless they just re-badge a Linux distro, in which case they'd be better off buying one of the smaller distro companies out there. But even with that why would they bother. The whole principle of what they are doing is about moving things to being more and more connected and providing facilities (Google Desktop) that tie people into that connected metaphor at all times. They want to turn the desktop into a virtual environment where information is collected and stored via Google elements, so they don't need to own the whole OS, they just need the brand and the plug-ins. Google to produce a database driven file system for Windows Vista? Now that would be a much more interesting rumour.
Newton in the same bracket? Lets not over-play everyone else here. The rest (including Einstein) are all behind him (Einstein on Newton's legacy) not just for his impact in physics, or his postulation (which he didn't put in the final optics as it wasn't "testable" hence only a hypothesis not a theory) of wave particle duality. This was the bloke who created the scientific method, created a new branch of maths and (when head of the Royal Mint) came up with a fraud prevention device (milled edges) for coins. He also forced a change in English Law that enabled a greater freedom of religon which led in no small part to the rise of organisations like the quakers et al who drove the Industrial Revolution.
Einstein was a certifiable, grade A genius. Newton, in part thanks to the point in history he appeared at, changed not just Physics but all of science and a large part of the rest of the world.
There will not be another Newton, or Einstein (he wasn't the "next Newton") there will only be the next "X", and I for one am looking forward to what the smart-arsed bastard comes up with.
Given that a major purpose of the FAA is controlling airspace over the US, and given that the FAA has impressively failed over the last 15-20 years to build an integrated Air Traffic Control system (its not that hard as even the European's have one at Mastrict for upper airways, and are proposing a new single system in the next 20 years) and have allowed systems that crash at places like LAX, are they really the people to start defining rules for Space Tourism, sure Branson says he is kicking off from the US, but if it hits revenue why not drop south into Mexico or just go to Russia/China/some nice Island in the Pacific ?
Nice attempt by the FAA to expand its remit into space, but they'd have more respect if they could build a decent ATC system first.
Nope, as an example when British Airways set up a low-cost airline spin-off they had to put in a single payment after which the company had to survive or die. This was because having a larger parent company bank-rolling the smaller company would amount to unfair competition.
This is almost exactly the same as what MS are doing with XBox, except in this case they are continually bank-rolling the smaller company to create unfair competition in the marketplace.
Put it this way, Playstation's money helped drive the investment in PS2, which has driven the investment into PS3. If Sony had lost money on Playstation or PS2 (ala Sega) they wouldn't be doing PS3. Microsoft can use their big bankroll to continue backing a loss making venture against competition who don't have that luxury.
Not only is Microsoft still a monopoly (you don't have to be a monopoly in everything to be a monopoly, Standard Oil and Bell only dominated one defined area) and WORSE than this they are a monopoly who uses that position to effectively engage in "dumping" on other segments by using monopoly revenues to subsidise new businesses. This is also against most trading rules but oddly MS get away with it.
XBox is the perfect case in point, they continue to push a non-profitable model using subsidies from the parent company in order to get to a market dominant position where they will make a profit.
God knows how this is WTO compliant let alone compliant with US and European business rules.
Ah, yes. Just what we all want. Command-line administration of Active Directory and Exchange.
Amazingly people who adminster LDAPs and things like Domino or Sun Messaging have been doing this without using EITHER a Command-line or a GUI on the server... that is because... shock horror you administer the SOFTWARE remotely, INDEPENDENTLY of the Operating system. This way you can configure clusters and networks in a more logical manner.
GUI tools can help server management, this is why most enterprise systems have worked out that the Network Operation Centre (NOC) is physically and logically seperate from the server so a logical connection model and a physical split between server and administration console made sense.
Welcome to 1985 Microsoft.
Or maybe its just that bloggers are more likely to return the favour of a free pass/meal/hotel etc with a good review than traditional journos... half of good press is quite probably knowing who to bribe.
And it appears they are right....
Also note.. Sarcasm is NOT the same as irony, and irony is NOT like "goldy" or "silvery".
Red Wine = Lower risk of heart disease
Coffee = Lower risk of Liver disease
Turns out the smug buggers were right all along to laugh at the latest health craze from the US.