Absolutely! Creating a "web service*" is much more productive than generating yet another flat file feed, interfacing with a proprietary messaging system, or spending time developing native RPC methods. The learning curve is very shallow, and most anything can use it.
I would venture to guess that most programmers work in heterogenous corporate environments where deployment costs and interfacing between vendor software takes up most of their time. Really. Would you rather deploy binaries to dozens of retail businesses in five states or just make a change to a web application?
I would say that enterprises, especially mid-size companies, are adopting web applications and web services faster rather than slower.
*SOAP, XML-RPC, HTML-JavaScript, JSON... Ahh, the wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. Sorta makes interoperability a little harder though.:-)
The answer to your question is in the second sentance of the article:
Despite fewer workers within the profession, the IT unemployment rate has nearly doubled since the beginning of the millennium.
Read further and you will see the breakdowns by job category. Some are in more demand. Others, such as systems analysts like me, are in less demand. The net effect is an increase in the number of unemployed who call themselves computer professionals. If they had learned another trade - or had jobs - they would have answered the Census Bureau survey differently.
Well, I cannot think of a more natural and inherent human right than sharing information: stories, songs, music, etc. We as a civil society have limited that right for the temporary benefit of content producers to promote the useful arts and sciences - in theory at least. The quote at the end of a recent article linked to by Slashdot really burns me.
Many Net swappers "think it is their God-given right to steal music," Whitmore says. "They don't know any better. We have to teach them."
Rather than encourage children to think of creative ways to use the Internet to share, the recording industry would be much more comfortable maintaining the status quo. This really is Newspeak!
Sharing music online may be illegal, but we (in theory) have the ability to change the law. We have the ability (let me be optimistic) to invent new methods of temporarily compensating content producers to promote the useful arts and sciences. The RIAA want to introduce a framework of thoughts and words that make such a system seem inherently immoral.
Reduce the cost of your tools and increase the productivity of your labor.
I've worked as a contractor on a number of database and batch environments in and around a small city. The amount of duplicated effort is astounding. Everyone has their own half-baked, written-from-scratch solution that is expensive to maintain and lacking in some respects. As a contractor, I have the advantage since I can apply some of what I learn at company X to company Y.
However, for legal reasons I need to very careful not to re-use code from one place to another. I'm also very careful not to reveal trade secrets that might seem obvious to everyone but a lawyer. Really, I think most companies see sharing of code as a legal thicket instead of a common-sense approach to saving effort.
(Now, I'm not saying a company should give away all its code, just the dull-but-imporant stuff unrelated to the core business.)
I think most of the primary contributors to significant open source projects do so with the backing of a company with an enlightened view of self-interest. I really hope this view catches on, since it would make the workdays of slobs like me that much more rewarding.
You are missing the point. Microsoft has been found guilty in the court of public opinion, and this latest episode just makes matters worse.
Who cares if what they did was legal? If Microsoft proves they did not break the law, will that improve their image? Would you still want to enter into a contract with them?
FTP is used as a control protocol in plenty of environments. It's really quite simple. You upload one or more files with instructions in it. Then you upload a semaphore file to say your message is complete. The receiving end reads the directory every 10 seconds or so and starts processing when it sees the last file. I imagine that the satellite would return data instead of instructions, and then the process would repeat. The FTP protocol per se has nothing to do with controlling the satellite; it's all about using files as messages.
I've seen credit card authorizations go through this way. UNIX and mainframe machines often exchange data this way when turn-around time is not important. I would assume NASA doesn't need to control the satellite second-by-second.
Given the tone of most of the comments here, one might think that the slides merely reveal Microsoft's errors. In fact, they indicate what problems the company faced scaling their NT development team from 200 to 1400 programmers and their solutions. The conclusion is, "With the new environment in place, the team is working a lot like they did in the NT 3.1 days with a small, fast moving, development team."
As Linux grows, it is headed for the same sorts of problems. The open source movement can learn a lot from Microsoft's struggles. The fact that Linus opted to use a new source control system -- just as Microsoft realized that their in-house system was not up to the task and so switched -- gives me hope.
P.S. May we please have better summaries for the articles on the front page?
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely! Creating a "web service*" is much more productive than generating yet another flat file feed, interfacing with a proprietary messaging system, or spending time developing native RPC methods. The learning curve is very shallow, and most anything can use it.
I would venture to guess that most programmers work in heterogenous corporate environments where deployment costs and interfacing between vendor software takes up most of their time. Really. Would you rather deploy binaries to dozens of retail businesses in five states or just make a change to a web application?
I would say that enterprises, especially mid-size companies, are adopting web applications and web services faster rather than slower.
*SOAP, XML-RPC, HTML-JavaScript, JSON... Ahh, the wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. Sorta makes interoperability a little harder though. :-)
The answer to your question is in the second sentance of the article:
Read further and you will see the breakdowns by job category. Some are in more demand. Others, such as systems analysts like me, are in less demand. The net effect is an increase in the number of unemployed who call themselves computer professionals. If they had learned another trade - or had jobs - they would have answered the Census Bureau survey differently.
Absolutely.
To store data indefinitely:
Why even bother trying to save CDs for 50 years?
Well, I cannot think of a more natural and inherent human right than sharing information: stories, songs, music, etc. We as a civil society have limited that right for the temporary benefit of content producers to promote the useful arts and sciences - in theory at least. The quote at the end of a recent article linked to by Slashdot really burns me.
Rather than encourage children to think of creative ways to use the Internet to share, the recording industry would be much more comfortable maintaining the status quo. This really is Newspeak!
Sharing music online may be illegal, but we (in theory) have the ability to change the law. We have the ability (let me be optimistic) to invent new methods of temporarily compensating content producers to promote the useful arts and sciences. The RIAA want to introduce a framework of thoughts and words that make such a system seem inherently immoral.
Reduce the cost of your tools and increase the productivity of your labor.
I've worked as a contractor on a number of database and batch environments in and around a small city. The amount of duplicated effort is astounding. Everyone has their own half-baked, written-from-scratch solution that is expensive to maintain and lacking in some respects. As a contractor, I have the advantage since I can apply some of what I learn at company X to company Y.
However, for legal reasons I need to very careful not to re-use code from one place to another. I'm also very careful not to reveal trade secrets that might seem obvious to everyone but a lawyer. Really, I think most companies see sharing of code as a legal thicket instead of a common-sense approach to saving effort.
(Now, I'm not saying a company should give away all its code, just the dull-but-imporant stuff unrelated to the core business.)
I think most of the primary contributors to significant open source projects do so with the backing of a company with an enlightened view of self-interest. I really hope this view catches on, since it would make the workdays of slobs like me that much more rewarding.
You are missing the point. Microsoft has been found guilty in the court of public opinion, and this latest episode just makes matters worse.
Who cares if what they did was legal? If Microsoft proves they did not break the law, will that improve their image? Would you still want to enter into a contract with them?
FTP is used as a control protocol in plenty of environments. It's really quite simple. You upload one or more files with instructions in it. Then you upload a semaphore file to say your message is complete. The receiving end reads the directory every 10 seconds or so and starts processing when it sees the last file. I imagine that the satellite would return data instead of instructions, and then the process would repeat. The FTP protocol per se has nothing to do with controlling the satellite; it's all about using files as messages.
I've seen credit card authorizations go through this way. UNIX and mainframe machines often exchange data this way when turn-around time is not important. I would assume NASA doesn't need to control the satellite second-by-second.
Given the tone of most of the comments here, one might think that the slides merely reveal Microsoft's errors. In fact, they indicate what problems the company faced scaling their NT development team from 200 to 1400 programmers and their solutions. The conclusion is, "With the new environment in place, the team is working a lot like they did in the NT 3.1 days with a small, fast moving, development team."
As Linux grows, it is headed for the same sorts of problems. The open source movement can learn a lot from Microsoft's struggles. The fact that Linus opted to use a new source control system -- just as Microsoft realized that their in-house system was not up to the task and so switched -- gives me hope.
P.S. May we please have better summaries for the articles on the front page?