The number one problem with wikis and all other systems that try to 'store' employee's knowledge is that it requires people to make their knowledge explicit.
In your daily life and in your work, many things (if not almost everything) you do is based on implicit knowledge. You implicitly know how stuff is done, but to describe the steps you take and the thought processes you have, takes a lot of time and energy of your employees/colleagues. And then of course there's also the issue of keeping the knowledge up-to-date. Adding it is one thing, but keeping it fresh and ensuring people update the explicit knowledge in the wiki, also takes time and energy. Especially in IT, because the way things work changes relatively often.
And last but not least, people are often not willing to make their knowledge explicit, because their implicit knowledge makes them valuable as an employee. Overall you could say that the intrinsic motivation for people to make their knowledge explicit is very low.
Many scientific papers have been written on this subject. I suggest you try to find some answers there, although they may not be easy to find.
The guy I'd need to hire would have to know a lot of languages
There's your problem right there. If you are doing in-house development, you should stick to one language. Especially if you have a small company, but it kind of holds up for larger companies as well.
e.g. if you have four programmers, two proficient in C, two in Java and a Java programmer quits, then suddenly your single Java programmer needs to do all the Java work. If you have 4 programmers proficient in Java, then if one quits, you still have 3 Java programmers left. In the end multiple languages just means less flexibility in capacity.
You see, before computers, companies used to have room full of people manually calculating and processing stuff. It wasn't until the computer came that they could fire all those people and save a ton of money on their collective salaries. Now, my question is: what happened to that money they saved?
This is largely incorrect, I think. Most companies that invested in computer systems didn't fire their employees. Instead, because of the computer systems, most of these companies suddenly had more capacity to deliver more of the product/service that they deliver. So companies that invested enough in computer systems gain more market share, while companies that did not invest enough in computer systems lost market share, went bankrupt and/or were taken over by a competitor.
If a company has a product that is only suitable for IE6, they didn't invest enough in maintenance in the last 10 years!
Working in the software industry, I experience daily that people think that if you buy a software product / application / website that you buy it once and then it "just works" until you want new functionality and it magically keeps working with newer browsers, etc. This thought is wrong. You need to invest money in maintenance to keep your software product up-to-date.
So when IE7 came out, the company should have invested in ensuring their product also worked with IE7. And the same for IE8, Firefox, IE9, Safari, Chrome and IE10. If you do not invest time and money in maintenance, in the long term you have a system that is not up-to-date, is a pain in the ass to deal with and needs to be replaced to ensure your company will not be stuck by legacy systems.
If you calculate money in cents, you only need integers. This is valid for many programming languages by the way and can be applied in almost all situations.
Somewhat related, but not quite the solution is the Distributed Bill of Materials (DBOM): http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=924533 (and related articles); The DBOM tells the devolvers how to devolve a product and what the resulting parts are made of.
If expected loss is not (nearly) 0, you need to manage probability as well. So while the hazard (expected loss) may be less than estimated before, it says nothing about the probability. And in my opinion it is the probability in nuclear plants that is the issue.
This is of course besides the question what a "lower hazard estimate" means. A lower hazard estimate can still be pretty high.
I think the largest problem with roundabouts in cities is that crossings are often 'linked' to each other. If you have a traffic light on one crossing, and a roundabout on the next, then the traffic towards and from the roundabout is influenced by the traffic light. This is especially a problem if the crossings are close to one another.
In The Netherlands there has been a large increase in roundabouts, since 15-20 years. You see them virtually everywhere, even on 100km/h roads. The only objection so far is that emergency services, like ambulances and firetrucks have more difficulty passing other cars on roundabouts than on traffic lights, because the emergency services can manipulate the traffic lights, but not the roundabouts of course.
The approach that if situations are more difficult, people will start paying attention is also used in the "Shared space" concept. In The Netherlands this concept became quite popular, especially by Hans Monderman, who implemented it in for example the city of Drachten as well the village of Makkinga. In the latter they removed _all_ roadsigns, road markings, stopping restrictions, parking restrictions, etc. In Drachten they replaced a really busy crossing (22,000+ cars/day) with a roundabout which works really well. Searching for videos on 'shared space Monderman' gives some really interesting results, I would say.
The idea of Shared Space is that a lot of road signs are removed, making people actually look to each other (making eye contact to see what the other person is going to do) instead of "looking at the lines" ("coloring between the lines"). This is actually only possible if your driver license is sufficiently difficult to get, so people not only know how to drive, but also learn how to anticipate to potentially unexpected events.
11 wins, 4 ties, 5 losses. Actually, winning on veteran mode is not that difficult. The computer only knows what all other people did and it responds to your actions by using the actions of all other users. So in fact the computer is limited by the actions of all other people; it predicts that you are the same as one of those other people. If you can predict what most users would do, than you know what the response of the computer will do and so you pick a different option.
So in fact you only have to beat the average guy.
"You have twenty-five-thousand-six-hundred-and-thirty-three new messages. First new message received on Tuesday, February first at seven fifty-nine am"
You're confusing only-having-AppStore with not-allowing-other-programs.
Of course the average quality of the programs is higher, because all programs are checked. However, allowing other programs on the iPhone, while still having the AppStore as an easy way to buy/sell programs, would result in the AppStore having a similar quality level, while enabling choice for both developers and consumers.
pro-consumers will likely install applications from other sources, but then they choose to get a potential lower quality application. The same is valid for developers. If you want to be able to get your app in the AppStore, you'll need your app to be of higher quality. In other words: you could also see the AppStore in this case as a quality level.
Again: having an AppStore should not exclude the possibility of developing/using apps through a different way.
There are lots of things that I can afford but choose not to buy. It doesn't mean that no effort went into producing them, it means that their value to me is lower than their cost.
I agree. And then you even forget the opportunity costs. Even if the value of the "thing" you're considering buying is larger than its cost, you can only spend the money once. Thus, you buy the "thing" that has the highest value for the price you pay.
Clean, as in: do you know how much greenhouse gases are emitted when getting uranium/plutonium out of the ground and processed to be able to use it in a nuclear reactor?
Bundling products is allowed, but that is not the point. The point is that the product is bundled, without giving customers the option of buying only the unbundled product.
You can buy the engine of a car without buying the whole car. You can also buy an Intel processor without the whole computer. But you cannot buy an iPhone without an AT&T contract.
One out of five laptops that your friend sells now have LINUX on them instead of the Windows operating system. Actually 1:5 means that it is one out of six.
But the real point is of course what the buyers are going to do with the laptop, once they bought it. If they buy the Linux laptop because it is cheaper and put Windows on it afterwards, nothing is really happening here.
You are correct in the fact that you don't have to give back modifications when using the BSD license. However, you cannot change/remove the original copyright and that was what all the fuss was about in this case.
Slashdot Mirror
The number one problem with wikis and all other systems that try to 'store' employee's knowledge is that it requires people to make their knowledge explicit.
In your daily life and in your work, many things (if not almost everything) you do is based on implicit knowledge. You implicitly know how stuff is done, but to describe the steps you take and the thought processes you have, takes a lot of time and energy of your employees/colleagues. And then of course there's also the issue of keeping the knowledge up-to-date. Adding it is one thing, but keeping it fresh and ensuring people update the explicit knowledge in the wiki, also takes time and energy. Especially in IT, because the way things work changes relatively often.
And last but not least, people are often not willing to make their knowledge explicit, because their implicit knowledge makes them valuable as an employee. Overall you could say that the intrinsic motivation for people to make their knowledge explicit is very low.
Many scientific papers have been written on this subject. I suggest you try to find some answers there, although they may not be easy to find.
The US is not (that I've heard anyway) using economic pressure to influence Ukrainian politics.
I think you are wrong here. The US uses economic pressure on almost every country in the world.
The guy I'd need to hire would have to know a lot of languages
There's your problem right there. If you are doing in-house development, you should stick to one language. Especially if you have a small company, but it kind of holds up for larger companies as well.
e.g. if you have four programmers, two proficient in C, two in Java and a Java programmer quits, then suddenly your single Java programmer needs to do all the Java work. If you have 4 programmers proficient in Java, then if one quits, you still have 3 Java programmers left.
In the end multiple languages just means less flexibility in capacity.
You see, before computers, companies used to have room full of people manually calculating and processing stuff. It wasn't until the computer came that they could fire all those people and save a ton of money on their collective salaries. Now, my question is: what happened to that money they saved?
This is largely incorrect, I think. Most companies that invested in computer systems didn't fire their employees. Instead, because of the computer systems, most of these companies suddenly had more capacity to deliver more of the product/service that they deliver. So companies that invested enough in computer systems gain more market share, while companies that did not invest enough in computer systems lost market share, went bankrupt and/or were taken over by a competitor.
If a company has a product that is only suitable for IE6, they didn't invest enough in maintenance in the last 10 years!
Working in the software industry, I experience daily that people think that if you buy a software product / application / website that you buy it once and then it "just works" until you want new functionality and it magically keeps working with newer browsers, etc. This thought is wrong. You need to invest money in maintenance to keep your software product up-to-date.
So when IE7 came out, the company should have invested in ensuring their product also worked with IE7. And the same for IE8, Firefox, IE9, Safari, Chrome and IE10. If you do not invest time and money in maintenance, in the long term you have a system that is not up-to-date, is a pain in the ass to deal with and needs to be replaced to ensure your company will not be stuck by legacy systems.
Really? IE supports VBScript, but I can't remember Firefox, Webkit or Opera having support for it.
If you calculate money in cents, you only need integers. This is valid for many programming languages by the way and can be applied in almost all situations.
Distributed => Disassembly
Somewhat related, but not quite the solution is the Distributed Bill of Materials (DBOM): http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=924533 (and related articles); The DBOM tells the devolvers how to devolve a product and what the resulting parts are made of.
Risk = Probability x expected loss
If expected loss is not (nearly) 0, you need to manage probability as well. So while the hazard (expected loss) may be less than estimated before, it says nothing about the probability. And in my opinion it is the probability in nuclear plants that is the issue.
This is of course besides the question what a "lower hazard estimate" means. A lower hazard estimate can still be pretty high.
I think the largest problem with roundabouts in cities is that crossings are often 'linked' to each other. If you have a traffic light on one crossing, and a roundabout on the next, then the traffic towards and from the roundabout is influenced by the traffic light. This is especially a problem if the crossings are close to one another.
In The Netherlands there has been a large increase in roundabouts, since 15-20 years. You see them virtually everywhere, even on 100km/h roads. The only objection so far is that emergency services, like ambulances and firetrucks have more difficulty passing other cars on roundabouts than on traffic lights, because the emergency services can manipulate the traffic lights, but not the roundabouts of course.
The approach that if situations are more difficult, people will start paying attention is also used in the "Shared space" concept. In The Netherlands this concept became quite popular, especially by Hans Monderman, who implemented it in for example the city of Drachten as well the village of Makkinga. In the latter they removed _all_ roadsigns, road markings, stopping restrictions, parking restrictions, etc. In Drachten they replaced a really busy crossing (22,000+ cars/day) with a roundabout which works really well. Searching for videos on 'shared space Monderman' gives some really interesting results, I would say.
The idea of Shared Space is that a lot of road signs are removed, making people actually look to each other (making eye contact to see what the other person is going to do) instead of "looking at the lines" ("coloring between the lines"). This is actually only possible if your driver license is sufficiently difficult to get, so people not only know how to drive, but also learn how to anticipate to potentially unexpected events.
11 wins, 4 ties, 5 losses. Actually, winning on veteran mode is not that difficult. The computer only knows what all other people did and it responds to your actions by using the actions of all other users. So in fact the computer is limited by the actions of all other people; it predicts that you are the same as one of those other people. If you can predict what most users would do, than you know what the response of the computer will do and so you pick a different option. So in fact you only have to beat the average guy.
"You have twenty-five-thousand-six-hundred-and-thirty-three new messages. First new message received on Tuesday, February first at seven fifty-nine am"
Linux is developed by about 70% paid employees.
Wrong. 70% of the development (i.e. 70% of the commits) is done by paid employees. See also: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-20024219-62.html
You're confusing only-having-AppStore with not-allowing-other-programs.
Of course the average quality of the programs is higher, because all programs are checked. However, allowing other programs on the iPhone, while still having the AppStore as an easy way to buy/sell programs, would result in the AppStore having a similar quality level, while enabling choice for both developers and consumers.
pro-consumers will likely install applications from other sources, but then they choose to get a potential lower quality application. The same is valid for developers. If you want to be able to get your app in the AppStore, you'll need your app to be of higher quality. In other words: you could also see the AppStore in this case as a quality level.
Again: having an AppStore should not exclude the possibility of developing/using apps through a different way.
There are lots of things that I can afford but choose not to buy. It doesn't mean that no effort went into producing them, it means that their value to me is lower than their cost.
I agree. And then you even forget the opportunity costs. Even if the value of the "thing" you're considering buying is larger than its cost, you can only spend the money once. Thus, you buy the "thing" that has the highest value for the price you pay.
Clean, as in: do you know how much greenhouse gases are emitted when getting uranium/plutonium out of the ground and processed to be able to use it in a nuclear reactor?
If you would know, you wouldn't call it clean.
Cheap is also largely untrue.
See (for example): http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3250 to debunk your clean and cheap arguments.
Once oil will not be profitable enough, Shell will just buy the company with 'the good solar array network' or some other nice green energy company.
It's not just a dog; it's a _dwarf_ dog.
Bundling products is allowed, but that is not the point. The point is that the product is bundled, without giving customers the option of buying only the unbundled product.
You can buy the engine of a car without buying the whole car. You can also buy an Intel processor without the whole computer. But you cannot buy an iPhone without an AT&T contract.
The earth is round, just like a pancake.
I'm really missing the basic geek words and phrases here: "series of tubes", "The Interwebs", "pwnage", etc.
But the real point is of course what the buyers are going to do with the laptop, once they bought it. If they buy the Linux laptop because it is cheaper and put Windows on it afterwards, nothing is really happening here.
You are correct in the fact that you don't have to give back modifications when using the BSD license. However, you cannot change/remove the original copyright and that was what all the fuss was about in this case.
Me is no in dineal! Englihs is no ambigurous!