The regime maintains power through fear and the projection of military strength while the basic necessites for citizens are ignored. Without external aid, this might be the one legitimate regime that may decide "you know, fuck it. Let's take someone else with us."
Well definitely in Linux world. I'd say of all the browsers out there for linux world, I find netscape (or mozilla) much better. When it comes to windows obviously there is no need to look beyond IE.
I think you are missing an important point. Most open source (succesful) projects do not make money from selling the software but instead by consultation for that product. So if you consider DoomIV, what kind of consultation are ou going to offer? How to get to level 5 in 10 minutes? You are relating two entirely diffrent genres of software products.
Businees world thrives on consulting. On an average a reputed consultant can charge you anywhere between 250-500/hr. even if you sell the product for say $50, you still can make tons by providing consultation. Let me throw another example - my univ recently adopted SAP. It spent close to 25 million on getting it set up. You know how much it cost just to buy it? close to 2 million, that means 23 million went for consultation!!!
Federal funding controls the research, evidentally.
I think America has reached a point where the private sector can fund a lot of research on its own. Except for may be military applications most of the research can be done private sector. So the only way I see feds controlling the research is through "regulations" and not funds.
I am tired of Foriegn students coming to America and taking up spots in good Universities and Colleges that could go to Americans.
You know why America still holds its place as a technological leader? Not becoz of just american researchers but a significant foreign nationals working in America, who wouldn't have that same oppurtunity in other countries. AFAIK, America's support for intelligence and research skills over nationality has let it remain supreme.
I think we should close our borders to people who only want to go to school here, and then leave the country when they finish their education!
Wrong again, most of the students who come here don't make plans to leave. They settle here. In my past 3.5 yrs in college I have seen 90% of foreign nationals do something or other to stay even overstay their visa time.
Foriegn students are a big security risk! Their loyalties are always in question.
Agreed, but solution is not to close borders. And again you cannot let people walk freely in and out just for the sake of technology or research. Its neither a one line solution nor can be found in a week. May be this is the risk we have to take for the sake of free economy otherwise we have to turn like those chinese closing down thousands of internet kiosks and putting restrictions on our citizens! Not good!
May be you are right. But thats such a minimalistic attitude. It might give sense of completeness for a while but not in the long run. Then how and when do you say that you are successful. I'd say successful is a very relative term. Why? Becoz as human beings we measure our success based on something. Say your neighbour or your brother or the guy who got a nobel prize.
To be successful, I'd say just the opposite - 'never settle'. If you accept life as it comes, in due process, you will be eliminated as you violate the basic principle of evolution. You have to innovate and improve every second of your life. Now thats easier said than done. But I'd say this style of life would be much satisfying than sitting on a lazy-boy, gulping down beer and cheering for some football team.
That sums up alright. When I saw the line About a year ago, Patrick McCartney, a Johnson Center project manager, created a Linux desktop environment... I couldn't believe it for a moment. Single person, that too a manager, creating an environment. Phew! sounded some work!
But if you are CMM level 5 certified, you will have at least fully documented your lack of common sense
That is a very big misconception that people carry around. I don't think CMM states gives a guidelines to document "common sense". Well obvously you document all your successes and failures and you are expected to analyze those and have your common sense prevail. But more often than not no body takes that daunting task. And moreover it is the SPEG which analyzes these documents and it is their job to educate their developers. But somewhere down the communication ladder everything is lost or misinterpretted.
I heard that CMMi solves some of these problems but I have not looked in to it yet.
We routinely poor out millions of lines of code in mammoth projects that take sever hundreds or thousands of man-years to complete.
It is not so much as pouring out millions of lines of code, but how useful those millions of lines of code are. Best example is the Air Traffic Control system which took lot of time and money. But then again wasit useful? The methodologies goal is not the amount of code written but the quality of software produced. But even though organizations (claim to) follow those methodologies strictly, in 99% of cases they have not.
But then one might think, so if we follow as preached do we get "finished" product? That is where the concept of "No Silver Bullet" comes in. In my research I have found that people are so much consumed in methodologies and their hype, they forget something important - "Common sense" . There are tons of examples of actual projects where developers opted to follow what is preached over their better judgement. Why? One simple reason you do not have to answer to anybody if you follow those "Best Practices". Hey after all that practice was best.
Then what is the reason that they fail time and again. When I spoke to a few colleagues about this, they immediately say "Hey those guys were incompetent". Maybe but not all. The problem is with the terminology itself. Consider the term "Best Practice". The biggest flaw with this term is that we forget that it worked in a certain situation with totally different requirements. It might work the next time in a similar situation but it is not guaranteed, because the situation is different, the environment is different and requirements are different. We should understand that the term 'best practices', does not represent the only 'right way'. They should not be blindly followed, instead adapted to each situation. If we rephrase the term as "Best practices for me, your mileage may vary" we can see them in a whole different light.
As far as I think, doesn't matter if you are CMM level 5 certified. If you lack common sense, you can never produce good software.
I mean if we want to understand life experiments like the one in the article are probably necessary
Show me one good example of putting this kind of knowledge to use. Off the top of my head two very bad examples are - cloning and weapons. I don't see these researchers spending billions of dollars gaining this knowledge to save mankind. Well atleast Einstein thought e=mc2 could enlighten mankind and use the energy constuctively, the rest is history.
Free will and knowlegde are burden. Carry it responsibly otherwise you go down with it.
IT is just cheaper on Linux and old hardware. Which the country of India has plenty of
1) If India has anything in plenty it is people. Even though there are lot of techies from India, on a average one computer is share by atleast 3 guys in schools. And as far as I know I have never seen an Indian throw away stuff just becoz it is old.
2)Your notion of IT being cheap on Linux is very wrong. In fact if not properly implemented you will end up investing a lot on IT, just for the simple reason that you need linux admins who are good (considering that it is for govt). Even then administring linux is not as simple as windows.
the only way to avoid massive layers of backwards-compatible cruft is to just slough off the existing infrastructure and create the OS anew for every release.
My take on this "impractical". A new version of OS comes out in every couple of years, and in near future I can expect it to be every year. Now that means shelling out money on new, improved version of apps and systems. Let me tell you there are people still using win95 and very happy with it coz it still works. Tell them to upgrade every year and shell out $500 a year on system. They'll just smile at you and say -"boy are you out of your mind, no way"
The funny thing is that this happened to me. Two weeks ago I was in a bar and apparently I was wearing a shirt with tux on it. And this chick walks up to me and says - "Hey, I use slackware, what do you use?" U can bet suddenly she seemed totally hot
"Expect to see several established products fail or be withdrawn because they are too invasive, have unfriendly interfaces, or are found to be considerably less effective than claimed."
1) Apparently this guy hasn't been using windows.
2) He hasn't read the book "Mythical Man Month".
As I see it this statement is not insightful but redundant.
Most people are stupid.
No most people are plain ignorant.
Stupid people don't know linux.
Using Linux doesn't make you intelligent, smart and sexy either
Teaching Stupid people == Money
It also takes patience and knowledge on your part.
I don't know why people consider themselves to above the rest when they start using linux. Let me tell you its just an OS, get over it. Every person is good at what he/she does. For eg my mom, even after working on a pc for 8 yrs now thinks its her fault when something goes wrong or system hangs. She just plainly hits the reboot button. But at the same time she is very calm and composed on a surgery table even in an emergency. I have seen her being at her best. But not once have I seen her calling others stupid, even if that person has no sense of medicine.
Personally its been over 30 years since people working on computers were considered god. Even my 7 yr old nephew can install a dual boot. And guess what he cannot spell most of the words properly.
I suggest people contact their representatives to cancel the DMCA instead.
Recently there has been so much out cry against DMCA on slashdot, I thought I shall talk to my dad and convince them to talk to our constituents representatives. You know what my dad said "forget it son, there are lot more pressing issues than copying a cd".
I thought may be he was just being indifferent to me, but guess what none of my friends bother either. When I talked to them about this issue and even pointed to all the disadvantages, none of them were even winked. They said "dude right now my immediate concern is whether I'm going to get a job when I graduate, not whether I'll be able to copy a cd".
Now is this mere isolated instance of indifference or ignorance (well 99% of people I talked to never heard of DMCA)? So I think DMCA or corporate America is not the problem the, problem is plain ignorance and indifference. Doesn't matter if this article gets about 1000 comments and every one feels the same way. We've got to do something and by something I don't mean talking to representatives, I mean educating people. Only then can our voice have some effect.
Remember those anti-tobacco ads - "Knowledge is contagious"
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't you read her reasoning behind this project. She wants to have bunch of 'em running around in the morning, jeez!
Wow seems more like our policy than theirs.
Now I can pay for worms and viruses!
Well definitely in Linux world. I'd say of all the browsers out there for linux world, I find netscape (or mozilla) much better. When it comes to windows obviously there is no need to look beyond IE.
Businees world thrives on consulting. On an average a reputed consultant can charge you anywhere between 250-500/hr. even if you sell the product for say $50, you still can make tons by providing consultation. Let me throw another example - my univ recently adopted SAP. It spent close to 25 million on getting it set up. You know how much it cost just to buy it? close to 2 million, that means 23 million went for consultation!!!
I think America has reached a point where the private sector can fund a lot of research on its own. Except for may be military applications most of the research can be done private sector. So the only way I see feds controlling the research is through "regulations" and not funds.
You know why America still holds its place as a technological leader? Not becoz of just american researchers but a significant foreign nationals working in America, who wouldn't have that same oppurtunity in other countries. AFAIK, America's support for intelligence and research skills over nationality has let it remain supreme.
I think we should close our borders to people who only want to go to school here, and then leave the country when they finish their education!Wrong again, most of the students who come here don't make plans to leave. They settle here. In my past 3.5 yrs in college I have seen 90% of foreign nationals do something or other to stay even overstay their visa time.
Foriegn students are a big security risk! Their loyalties are always in question.
Agreed, but solution is not to close borders. And again you cannot let people walk freely in and out just for the sake of technology or research. Its neither a one line solution nor can be found in a week. May be this is the risk we have to take for the sake of free economy otherwise we have to turn like those chinese closing down thousands of internet kiosks and putting restrictions on our citizens! Not good!
May be you are right. But thats such a minimalistic attitude. It might give sense of completeness for a while but not in the long run. Then how and when do you say that you are successful. I'd say successful is a very relative term. Why? Becoz as human beings we measure our success based on something. Say your neighbour or your brother or the guy who got a nobel prize.
To be successful, I'd say just the opposite - 'never settle'. If you accept life as it comes, in due process, you will be eliminated as you violate the basic principle of evolution. You have to innovate and improve every second of your life. Now thats easier said than done. But I'd say this style of life would be much satisfying than sitting on a lazy-boy, gulping down beer and cheering for some football team.
That sums up alright. When I saw the line About a year ago, Patrick McCartney, a Johnson Center project manager, created a Linux desktop environment... I couldn't believe it for a moment. Single person, that too a manager, creating an environment. Phew! sounded some work!
That is a very big misconception that people carry around. I don't think CMM states gives a guidelines to document "common sense". Well obvously you document all your successes and failures and you are expected to analyze those and have your common sense prevail. But more often than not no body takes that daunting task. And moreover it is the SPEG which analyzes these documents and it is their job to educate their developers. But somewhere down the communication ladder everything is lost or misinterpretted.
I heard that CMMi solves some of these problems but I have not looked in to it yet.
It is not so much as pouring out millions of lines of code, but how useful those millions of lines of code are. Best example is the Air Traffic Control system which took lot of time and money. But then again wasit useful? The methodologies goal is not the amount of code written but the quality of software produced. But even though organizations (claim to) follow those methodologies strictly, in 99% of cases they have not.
But then one might think, so if we follow as preached do we get "finished" product? That is where the concept of "No Silver Bullet" comes in. In my research I have found that people are so much consumed in methodologies and their hype, they forget something important - "Common sense" . There are tons of examples of actual projects where developers opted to follow what is preached over their better judgement. Why? One simple reason you do not have to answer to anybody if you follow those "Best Practices". Hey after all that practice was best.
Then what is the reason that they fail time and again. When I spoke to a few colleagues about this, they immediately say "Hey those guys were incompetent". Maybe but not all. The problem is with the terminology itself. Consider the term "Best Practice". The biggest flaw with this term is that we forget that it worked in a certain situation with totally different requirements. It might work the next time in a similar situation but it is not guaranteed, because the situation is different, the environment is different and requirements are different. We should understand that the term 'best practices', does not represent the only 'right way'. They should not be blindly followed, instead adapted to each situation. If we rephrase the term as "Best practices for me, your mileage may vary" we can see them in a whole different light.
As far as I think, doesn't matter if you are CMM level 5 certified. If you lack common sense, you can never produce good software.
Show me one good example of putting this kind of knowledge to use. Off the top of my head two very bad examples are - cloning and weapons. I don't see these researchers spending billions of dollars gaining this knowledge to save mankind. Well atleast Einstein thought e=mc2 could enlighten mankind and use the energy constuctively, the rest is history.
Free will and knowlegde are burden. Carry it responsibly otherwise you go down with it.Yes, we are here...
Not to be cynical but when will man reallize that playing god never pays off!
1) If India has anything in plenty it is people. Even though there are lot of techies from India, on a average one computer is share by atleast 3 guys in schools. And as far as I know I have never seen an Indian throw away stuff just becoz it is old.
2)Your notion of IT being cheap on Linux is very wrong. In fact if not properly implemented you will end up investing a lot on IT, just for the simple reason that you need linux admins who are good (considering that it is for govt). Even then administring linux is not as simple as windows.
the front page photo looks like a nazi regime guy naming all his allies. No wonder every decided to stay away.
Thats easy ALIENS...
Looks like even they are "Anonymous" like you
Well I guess it is implied, don't you think?
My take on this "impractical". A new version of OS comes out in every couple of years, and in near future I can expect it to be every year. Now that means shelling out money on new, improved version of apps and systems. Let me tell you there are people still using win95 and very happy with it coz it still works. Tell them to upgrade every year and shell out $500 a year on system. They'll just smile at you and say -"boy are you out of your mind, no way"
Sun burns are such a menace!
1) Apparently this guy hasn't been using windows.
2) He hasn't read the book "Mythical Man Month".
As I see it this statement is not insightful but redundant.
or some one else finds this article kind of predictable. I thought I'd see some insightful discussion from such a leading person in the field.
No most people are plain ignorant.
Stupid people don't know linux.
Using Linux doesn't make you intelligent, smart and sexy either
Teaching Stupid people == Money
It also takes patience and knowledge on your part.
I don't know why people consider themselves to above the rest when they start using linux. Let me tell you its just an OS, get over it. Every person is good at what he/she does. For eg my mom, even after working on a pc for 8 yrs now thinks its her fault when something goes wrong or system hangs. She just plainly hits the reboot button. But at the same time she is very calm and composed on a surgery table even in an emergency. I have seen her being at her best. But not once have I seen her calling others stupid, even if that person has no sense of medicine.
Personally its been over 30 years since people working on computers were considered god. Even my 7 yr old nephew can install a dual boot. And guess what he cannot spell most of the words properly.
Recently there has been so much out cry against DMCA on slashdot, I thought I shall talk to my dad and convince them to talk to our constituents representatives. You know what my dad said "forget it son, there are lot more pressing issues than copying a cd".
I thought may be he was just being indifferent to me, but guess what none of my friends bother either. When I talked to them about this issue and even pointed to all the disadvantages, none of them were even winked. They said "dude right now my immediate concern is whether I'm going to get a job when I graduate, not whether I'll be able to copy a cd".
Now is this mere isolated instance of indifference or ignorance (well 99% of people I talked to never heard of DMCA)? So I think DMCA or corporate America is not the problem the, problem is plain ignorance and indifference. Doesn't matter if this article gets about 1000 comments and every one feels the same way. We've got to do something and by something I don't mean talking to representatives, I mean educating people. Only then can our voice have some effect.
Remember those anti-tobacco ads - "Knowledge is contagious"