If he's left behind a mess then all he has to do to spin it his way is this: "Gee it looks like those guys at MS are really struggling since I left. That just shows how good I am."
Yes, you would expect a bit more oversight on such a critical project with such a huge budget.
Even if the manager does not jump ship, he might get killed in a plane crash etc.
The cool thing for a ship-jumping manager is that he gets away clean. Even if he leaves a mess behind he can always twist it: "Now that I've left, everything has fallen apart. Look at how good I am! Hand me another million share options".
WinFS has been the "new great feature" promised in every release since the early 1990s (ie for well over ten years now). Talk is cheap, delivering something that works well is hard, which is why WinFS always gets ripped out.
People have very short memories. They see the fanfare and forget the 5 year death march.
I've seen this effect before. A manager in a company I worked for was angling for a position in a different business unit in the company. He wanted to show focus, leadership etc so he whitewashed the problems in the project he was directing and pushed for a premature release. He forced design choices that looked OK in the short term (from outside) and ignored the longterm consequences. He got the new job and a big write-up about how he had managed this project so well. Of course the project was flawed, but he did not have to clean up the mess anfd the product got canned a few months later.
Release decisions etc should not be made by exiting managers. They shopuld be made by the new management team that has to keep things going.
Vista cost $5bn, Yahoo could cost $40+bn. That has to say something about where MS's current management priorities lie. They are Google obsessed.
If you're competition focussed, and not customer focussed, then don't expect your business to grow. MS has a lot of momentum, so it won't die overnight.
They've puled the Vista SP1 and that's not getting much of Ballmer's energy. Nope he's off buying Danger and trying for Yahoo to try make a fight with Google.
Google must be pissing themselves. Both Yahoo and MS are sinking in service space and there is no reason to think that they will be more productive together than as they currently are, while Google is growing.
It would be relatively easy for DRAM to be augmented with internal circuitry that nukes the ram cells if they have not been placed in slef-refresh mode.
The main purpose behind the security is to keep the population frightened and annoyed. A frightened populaton is easier to control. To claim the prize you need to demonstrate its effectiveness at keeping the population under control too.
It hangs around trying to get your attention and annoys you until you respond. If it could spill juice and barf then it would be closer.
Remember this is junk science reporting from Science Daily so don't take it too seriously. These are the same folk that tried to say that the "walks on water" robot works the same wy as a water strider - which it does not.
Unlearning 20 years of finger memory is hard to do, especially if you still use Windows and Linux. It's a bit like having exactly the same keyboard layout except for having the S and D keys swapped around.
CNN and other organisations need to toe the line otherwise they get poor responsiveness from the Pentagon, Whitehouse etc. That's why people like Peter Arnett (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Arnett) get fired for doing good investigation.
The media know that if they don't keep their reporters in line they will get screwed over. Instead of having their field staff embedded with frontline fighters to send back sexy footage they'll get embedded with the people washing trucks at the transport park. Instead of getting geed feedback from WHitehouse/Pentagon/whatever press officers they'll get delayed responses.
The media know they must keep their noses clean to stay in the game and that's why they'll repremand or fire anyone that looks like a loose cannon and will upset theri relationships with these organisations.
In the words of the Clash: "You have the right to free speach, unless you actually try it."
Mainly because the batterioes can't go flat when the kids play with them or the switch is bumped on in your backpack etc etc. A quick wind for ten seconds and you have light for a minute. Wind for a couple of minutes and you have light for 15 minutes or more.
Easy-to-use is largely a perception issue and depends on what you've used before, just like the vi vs emacs thing. For example something I readlly, really hate on OSX is that home and end keys take you to the start/end of the whole doc, not just the line.
Photoshop is the industry leader and a lot of effort has been put into usability. GIMP might even be better once you've learnt it(I won't argue about something I don't know much about), but it is a huge effort to transition to it or start using it. If you're working at $100/hour and know photoshop then it costs you a few k to ramp up on GIMP. May as well just buy Windows and Photoshop and save the trauma.
Where OpenOffice is great is that it is easy to get into if you're an MS Office user. You can attend community college courses on word processing etc and use those skills. There is no such skills portability for people trained on photoshop.
The GIMP might be very powerful and feature packed, but the learning curve to get into it is cliff shaped. That makes for a vey significant barrier for newbies.
Most people don't want to do hugely complex photoshopping, just remove red eye from phots and a few other simple effects.
I've tried to use GIMP a few times, without using the manuals, but after a few minutes of getting nowhere I've fired up a Windows box and used photoshop (also without a manual).
Perhaps this exercise will give the GIMP people a bit of motivation to make the software more newbie-friendly.
We're getting to the stage where Linux is almost simple to use. "It was hard to write, so it should be hard to use" no longer cuts it.
I mostly agree with parent in that you still need to understand what you read. If you have a company or lots of money riding on it, then get independent legal advice. An overview of various licenses to describe the options/variants is quite handy.
What I object to is the "you should..." bits which indicate that the authors are suggesting courses of action. I'd rather just have the lawyers unwind the legalese and make it human readable and let me make the decisions as to what I should and should not do. This makes it feel like the authors have an agenda that they are pushing.
If someone is drinking the Scientology Kool Aid, then does it really matter whether or not they get discounted second hand equipment? If Scientology has their hooks into you they will get your money one way or another.
What they're really trying to control is the purchase of scientology collectables by non-scientologists.
To stop the runaway borrowing requires that the voters be prepared to tighten their belts and vote in politicains with tighter controls. Of course that will be painful for a nation that loves to spend **now**.
Debt-backed money is still money. What is difference is that there is no corresponding creation of value which leads to inflation. The impact of inflation can be pushed out by further debt, but eventually it must bite. Basically this means spending now and leaving future generations with the bills.
If he's left behind a mess then all he has to do to spin it his way is this: "Gee it looks like those guys at MS are really struggling since I left. That just shows how good I am."
Even if the manager does not jump ship, he might get killed in a plane crash etc.
The cool thing for a ship-jumping manager is that he gets away clean. Even if he leaves a mess behind he can always twist it: "Now that I've left, everything has fallen apart. Look at how good I am! Hand me another million share options".
WinFS has been the "new great feature" promised in every release since the early 1990s (ie for well over ten years now). Talk is cheap, delivering something that works well is hard, which is why WinFS always gets ripped out.
I've seen this effect before. A manager in a company I worked for was angling for a position in a different business unit in the company. He wanted to show focus, leadership etc so he whitewashed the problems in the project he was directing and pushed for a premature release. He forced design choices that looked OK in the short term (from outside) and ignored the longterm consequences. He got the new job and a big write-up about how he had managed this project so well. Of course the project was flawed, but he did not have to clean up the mess anfd the product got canned a few months later.
Release decisions etc should not be made by exiting managers. They shopuld be made by the new management team that has to keep things going.
If you're competition focussed, and not customer focussed, then don't expect your business to grow. MS has a lot of momentum, so it won't die overnight.
They've puled the Vista SP1 and that's not getting much of Ballmer's energy. Nope he's off buying Danger and trying for Yahoo to try make a fight with Google.
Google must be pissing themselves. Both Yahoo and MS are sinking in service space and there is no reason to think that they will be more productive together than as they currently are, while Google is growing.
It would be relatively easy for DRAM to be augmented with internal circuitry that nukes the ram cells if they have not been placed in slef-refresh mode.
Some people will get a shiny glory and some will feel annoyed bbecause their projects/contributions have not been tracked.
The main purpose behind the security is to keep the population frightened and annoyed. A frightened populaton is easier to control. To claim the prize you need to demonstrate its effectiveness at keeping the population under control too.
You've been misinformed. You don't need a condom for masturbation.
It isn't just the number of bonds but the strength of those bonds.
Remember this is junk science reporting from Science Daily so don't take it too seriously. These are the same folk that tried to say that the "walks on water" robot works the same wy as a water strider - which it does not.
Unlearning 20 years of finger memory is hard to do, especially if you still use Windows and Linux. It's a bit like having exactly the same keyboard layout except for having the S and D keys swapped around.
The media know that if they don't keep their reporters in line they will get screwed over. Instead of having their field staff embedded with frontline fighters to send back sexy footage they'll get embedded with the people washing trucks at the transport park. Instead of getting geed feedback from WHitehouse/Pentagon/whatever press officers they'll get delayed responses.
The media know they must keep their noses clean to stay in the game and that's why they'll repremand or fire anyone that looks like a loose cannon and will upset theri relationships with these organisations.
In the words of the Clash: "You have the right to free speach, unless you actually try it."
Mainly because the batterioes can't go flat when the kids play with them or the switch is bumped on in your backpack etc etc. A quick wind for ten seconds and you have light for a minute. Wind for a couple of minutes and you have light for 15 minutes or more.
Easy-to-use is largely a perception issue and depends on what you've used before, just like the vi vs emacs thing. For example something I readlly, really hate on OSX is that home and end keys take you to the start/end of the whole doc, not just the line.
Photoshop is the industry leader and a lot of effort has been put into usability. GIMP might even be better once you've learnt it(I won't argue about something I don't know much about), but it is a huge effort to transition to it or start using it. If you're working at $100/hour and know photoshop then it costs you a few k to ramp up on GIMP. May as well just buy Windows and Photoshop and save the trauma.
Where OpenOffice is great is that it is easy to get into if you're an MS Office user. You can attend community college courses on word processing etc and use those skills. There is no such skills portability for people trained on photoshop.
The GIMP might be very powerful and feature packed, but the learning curve to get into it is cliff shaped. That makes for a vey significant barrier for newbies.
Most people don't want to do hugely complex photoshopping, just remove red eye from phots and a few other simple effects.
I've tried to use GIMP a few times, without using the manuals, but after a few minutes of getting nowhere I've fired up a Windows box and used photoshop (also without a manual).
Perhaps this exercise will give the GIMP people a bit of motivation to make the software more newbie-friendly.
We're getting to the stage where Linux is almost simple to use. "It was hard to write, so it should be hard to use" no longer cuts it.
What I object to is the "you should ..." bits which indicate that the authors are suggesting courses of action. I'd rather just have the lawyers unwind the legalese and make it human readable and let me make the decisions as to what I should and should not do. This makes it feel like the authors have an agenda that they are pushing.
To paraphrase: "We can't think of any other alternatives so this one must be true!". Gee that's a scientific approach!
... and where did the dark matter come from? Well it was created from normal matter by running time backwards.
If you buy software, or a system, and it does not do what you may reasonably expect then you get your money back.
What they're really trying to control is the purchase of scientology collectables by non-scientologists.
If you don't read the signs then I don't feel sory for you when the shit hits the fan.
Debt-backed money is still money. What is difference is that there is no corresponding creation of value which leads to inflation. The impact of inflation can be pushed out by further debt, but eventually it must bite. Basically this means spending now and leaving future generations with the bills.
The biggest problem is that nobody wants to stop the party.