We have data we keep on clinical trials that must be saved for 15 years after the patient dies. So we have to store data for 20 to 40 years. We also have to be able to revive the data and possibly process it. Clearly the storage strategy to meet this REQUIREMENT should not include proprietary data formats or programs.
The ACLU is a principled advocate for the rights of common citizens. The Cato institute and Heritage foundation are shills for the hyper-wealthy.
Successfully concentrating 70% of the country's wealth into 2% of the population - in a Democratic Republic like ours - requires convincing the electorate that this is somehow in their best interest. The Cato institute and Heritage foundation perform this function admirably. They need no help from us.
...try "Constructing the User Interface with Statecharts" by Ian Horrocks. If the complexity you are dealing with is logic complexity rather than "...put the buttons here" then this methodological approach to UI/application state design may interest you.
When I was a young SW Engineer working on military systems, I frequently had "great" ideas involving hardware "shot-down" (pun intended) because the system requirements from the gvt. demanded components that had a "second source." This prevented the system from being dependent upon a sole provider of a component. So even if more technically advanced hardware was available, that did not matter because a single supplier placed the whole system at risk... the risk that we may not be able to replace that component in the future - rendering the whole system useless based upon the unavailability of one component.
I believe open source needs to be looked at the same way...and, in fact, many gvt's around the world are doing just that.
Stop saying that requiring open source EXCLUDES MS. It does NOT. The problem is that MS does not have any products which meet the customer's system requirement for multiple sources for system components.
MS (the company) is not excluded, their closed-source products are. If they wish to compete for systems that require multiply-sourced components,they should make products for that market.
Java lives on in the server-side world as a kind of VB-for-people-who-hate-Microsoft
Since VB does not run on Unix servers, Linux servers or Mac OS X servers, I can only presume that your work experience is totally Microsoft. Certainly your "limited" view of why Java is an effective programing environment for server-based software leads me to believe that.
And whether you know it or not...HTML killed VB on the client too. Sure, you can sit around maintaining legacy client-server VB apps...we will find you a seat over there next to the COBOL guys.
When I first started playing pinball (I'm 46) a game was 5 cents. You got 5 balls for that and a free game at 200 points.
The free game notifier was a loud "pop" that everyone in the place could hear. Each time you scored a point, the bell would ring and you could tell when someone was "racking-up" a big score by the constantly ringging bell and the loud pop indicating a free game.
This would draw on-lookers like mad...they would crowd the machine...sometimes, a younger fellow would put his hands on the table and he would be quietly admonished by the onlookers...the player too entranced with keeping the ball alive.
The game was about precision flipping...it was about gently pushing the table so that a ball bounced off a bumper just right - avoiding a potentially hazardous trip down the side...and also...it was about luck.
Truthfully, I walk past those pinball machines most of the time now. It's not the same with all the exotic stuff on the table - at least for me. I think a simpler game was a better game. Maybe I'm just getting older. Oh well...
...and Bush is not only letting them off... but he is promoting them. Bush sees political contributions for helping this criminal company at the expense of lawful ones. Crony Capitalism at its worst.
In the case of Peru, open software and public file formats are REQUIREMENTS. Nobody is keeping Microsoft out. If Microsoft wants to compete in Peru's market then they have to meet their requirements.
Government systems commonly require candidate system components to have a second source - multiple suppliers. This kind of thing is done all the time on US Government contracts. If a particular single-sourced processor is chosen for a critical weapons system, for example, and after the system is deployed, the vendor goes out of business, what do we do?
Peru has every right to require open source and public file formats. If Microsoft wants to get into markets where this is a requirement then they should make that commitment.
Your post seems to imply that Peru no right to establish these requirements. How childish is that?
...often sit in front of large corporations and screen incomming resumes and candidates. If you can't get past the screeners, you never get a shot at a job. I often wonder what kind of deal these screeners do with other agencies vs. taking resumes submitted directly to them over the internet. I see lots of listings at a number of big pharma corps. in my area but I'll be damned if I could ever get past the sceeners. However, as soon as I meet somebody on the "inside" (like at a java/linux/perl/oracle users group meeting) I usually get prompt consideration.
It's a perfect plan...
on
.NET for Apache
·
· Score: 2, Funny
...developers could use Apache for the stuff that HAS to work and they could use IIS for the stuff that doesn't...
I think it's great that the Linux community got a big "sale" here.
If M$ came up with the gig, it would be being portrayed as a marvel of modern Capitalism.
The community created a better product and gave it away....
Even in our "enlightened" economic system - one finds it hard to compete with better and free.
In fact, my economist friend tells me that if you plug "better and free" into a model of our economic system, you either quickly achieve 100% market penetration or you get a bunch of divide by zero errors...
...or I should say, we will lease them like we used to lease phones from the phone company. MS will be like Ma Bell...Content providers will line up to get on board with MS to deliver and charge for content. It will be like a wierd mix of the phone company and pay-per-view and those sex booths where you put the quarters in and the sliding door gives you a peak at what love is all about. Hell, I don't know about you guys but I've got my pants down around my knees already...
I suspect that many if not most of the problems with software today are that the requirements that drive the designs that drive the implementation suck. If testing is the answer then we should realize that test plans are constructed from functional requirements documents. If you don't know what your building, then how can you test it?
1. Got their OS tied to IBM PC's. When business joined the PC revolution, many bought IBM because they had mainframes. MS was carried along.
2. They bundled word processing, spreadsheet, drawining/presentation, and lightweight database into one "integrated" package. Perhaps none of the individual applications were best of breed but they sold businesses on the integration between the apps and integration with the OS. They bought it.
3. They created ODBC. Since they did not have a lock on the database market, they had to play nice. Creating a generic db interface enabled VB and VBA to compete in the client-server revolution (remember that?)
These three things together made business choose MS rather than other products. Remember too that for many people, they bought their first "home computer" at this time. Since they were learning MS at work, they bought one for home. The upgrade spiral has caused home computer owners to reconsider. What is the last appliance you bought for your home that cost $2000 and only lasted for 3 years?
...when it is solving a problem for which all of the user requirements are already known. Operating systems, programming languages, drawing applications etc. have user requirements that are pretty much understood. So building the software for these applications can, for the most part, begin with design.
The major expense for creating a software solution is in the requirements definition phase of the project (see "No Silver Bullet Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering" by Fredrick Brooks.) The problem Mr. Carrol has in writing this piece is NOT that he doesn't have a handle on the nature of programming but that he doesn't have a handle on software engineering.
It seems to me that the greatest opportunity for closed source development is for problems in which eliciting user requirements still poses the largest component of the total budget of the project.
There is nothing "leftist" about making a case for the fact that a missile defense system has a low probability of achieving its objectives. There are very strong arguments in favor of that position. There is also the issue that the Bush administration has had a fixation on missile defense. A case can be made that this fixation was partly responsible for a lack of focus on domestic security (see the Hart-Rudman domestic security report that was virtually ignored by the Bush administration.)
Finally, as an ex-Boeing Helicopters employee, ex-chairman of the North Dakota Libertarian Party, and U.S. Air Force veteran, I find your remarks about the author's decency out of line. Look, the ability to critique the government is one of the most important rights and responsibilities we have. And this right is steadly being eroded as we speak. As a Libertarian, you should be speaking out about that.
I agree. I worked at the same plant during the late 80's and early 90's. One crash was due to the fact that a plug was not idiot proof and was plugged in upside down causing the controls to respond opposite to what they should. Another was caused by a test pilot pushing the aircraft beyond its limits.
A real problem was that some administrations wanted the project and others did not. This caused Boeing and Bell to have to produce a production version before it was really ready. Our pay "Tricky-Dick" Cheney was responsible for that.
I think if the government had decided to build the plane and accepted reasonable schedules, a lot of this misfortune could have been avoided.
If you had ever seen one operating up close, you'd probably be impressed. It's a friggin cool airplane!
How about they spend the next month modularizing their OS...Of course, one has to wonder how difficult it must have been to add security to all that spaghetti code...
Slashdot Mirror
We have data we keep on clinical trials that must be saved for 15 years after the patient dies. So we have to store data for 20 to 40 years. We also have to be able to revive the data and possibly process it. Clearly the storage strategy to meet this REQUIREMENT should not include proprietary data formats or programs.
...here's the link.
I will tell you what a tablet pc would be good for. when you want to browse the internet in bed or on the pot.
Yes, on the pot...that's why the price has to come down...so I can afford both.
The ACLU is a principled advocate for the rights of common citizens. The Cato institute and Heritage foundation are shills for the hyper-wealthy.
Successfully concentrating 70% of the country's wealth into 2% of the population - in a Democratic Republic like ours - requires convincing the electorate that this is somehow in their best interest. The Cato institute and Heritage foundation perform this function admirably. They need no help from us.
...try "Constructing the User Interface with Statecharts" by Ian Horrocks. If the complexity you are dealing with is logic complexity rather than "...put the buttons here" then this methodological approach to UI/application state design may interest you.
If the cost for each additional Linux contributor is zero, then we are not bankrupt...rather the opposite...we are infinitely wealthy.
When I was a young SW Engineer working on military systems, I frequently had "great" ideas involving hardware "shot-down" (pun intended) because the system requirements from the gvt. demanded components that had a "second source." This prevented the system from being dependent upon a sole provider of a component. So even if more technically advanced hardware was available, that did not matter because a single supplier placed the whole system at risk... the risk that we may not be able to replace that component in the future - rendering the whole system useless based upon the unavailability of one component.
I believe open source needs to be looked at the same way...and, in fact, many gvt's around the world are doing just that.
Stop saying that requiring open source EXCLUDES MS. It does NOT. The problem is that MS does not have any products which meet the customer's system requirement for multiple sources for system components.
MS (the company) is not excluded, their closed-source products are. If they wish to compete for systems that require multiply-sourced components,they should make products for that market.
Java lives on in the server-side world as a kind of VB-for-people-who-hate-Microsoft
Since VB does not run on Unix servers, Linux servers or Mac OS X servers, I can only presume that your work experience is totally Microsoft. Certainly your "limited" view of why Java is an effective programing environment for server-based software leads me to believe that.
And whether you know it or not...HTML killed VB on the client too. Sure, you can sit around maintaining legacy client-server VB apps...we will find you a seat over there next to the COBOL guys.
When I first started playing pinball (I'm 46) a game was 5 cents. You got 5 balls for that and a free game at 200 points.
The free game notifier was a loud "pop" that everyone in the place could hear. Each time you scored a point, the bell would ring and you could tell when someone was "racking-up" a big score by the constantly ringging bell and the loud pop indicating a free game.
This would draw on-lookers like mad...they would crowd the machine...sometimes, a younger fellow would put his hands on the table and he would be quietly admonished by the onlookers...the player too entranced with keeping the ball alive.
The game was about precision flipping...it was about gently pushing the table so that a ball bounced off a bumper just right - avoiding a potentially hazardous trip down the side...and also...it was about luck.
Truthfully, I walk past those pinball machines most of the time now. It's not the same with all the exotic stuff on the table - at least for me. I think a simpler game was a better game. Maybe I'm just getting older. Oh well...
...and Bush is not only letting them off... but he is promoting them. Bush sees political contributions for helping this criminal company at the expense of lawful ones. Crony Capitalism at its worst.
In the case of Peru, open software and public file formats are REQUIREMENTS. Nobody is keeping Microsoft out. If Microsoft wants to compete in Peru's market then they have to meet their requirements.
Government systems commonly require candidate system components to have a second source - multiple suppliers. This kind of thing is done all the time on US Government contracts. If a particular single-sourced processor is chosen for a critical weapons system, for example, and after the system is deployed, the vendor goes out of business, what do we do?
Peru has every right to require open source and public file formats. If Microsoft wants to get into markets where this is a requirement then they should make that commitment.
Your post seems to imply that Peru no right to establish these requirements. How childish is that?
...I mean why script the OS with anything else?
...often sit in front of large corporations and screen incomming resumes and candidates. If you can't get past the screeners, you never get a shot at a job. I often wonder what kind of deal these screeners do with other agencies vs. taking resumes submitted directly to them over the internet. I see lots of listings at a number of big pharma corps. in my area but I'll be damned if I could ever get past the sceeners. However, as soon as I meet somebody on the "inside" (like at a java/linux/perl/oracle users group meeting) I usually get prompt consideration.
...developers could use Apache for the stuff that HAS to work and they could use IIS for the stuff that doesn't...
...it's to be gainfully employed.
I think it's great that the Linux community got a big "sale" here.
If M$ came up with the gig, it would be being portrayed as a marvel of modern Capitalism.
The community created a better product and gave it away....
Even in our "enlightened" economic system - one finds it hard to compete with better and free.
In fact, my economist friend tells me that if you plug "better and free" into a model of our economic system, you either quickly achieve 100% market penetration or you get a bunch of divide by zero errors...
...or I should say, we will lease them like we used to lease phones from the phone company. MS will be like Ma Bell...Content providers will line up to get on board with MS to deliver and charge for content. It will be like a wierd mix of the phone company and pay-per-view and those sex booths where you put the quarters in and the sliding door gives you a peak at what love is all about. Hell, I don't know about you guys but I've got my pants down around my knees already...
I suspect that many if not most of the problems with software today are that the requirements that drive the designs that drive the implementation suck. If testing is the answer then we should realize that test plans are constructed from functional requirements documents. If you don't know what your building, then how can you test it?
1. Got their OS tied to IBM PC's. When business joined the PC revolution, many bought IBM because they had mainframes. MS was carried along.
2. They bundled word processing, spreadsheet, drawining/presentation, and lightweight database into one "integrated" package. Perhaps none of the individual applications were best of breed but they sold businesses on the integration between the apps and integration with the OS. They bought it.
3. They created ODBC. Since they did not have a lock on the database market, they had to play nice. Creating a generic db interface enabled VB and VBA to compete in the client-server revolution (remember that?)
These three things together made business choose MS rather than other products. Remember too that for many people, they bought their first "home computer" at this time. Since they were learning MS at work, they bought one for home. The upgrade spiral has caused home computer owners to reconsider. What is the last appliance you bought for your home that cost $2000 and only lasted for 3 years?
...knowlege of data warehousing and database performance issues including query optimization...because the databases are so large.
...when it is solving a problem for which all of the user requirements are already known. Operating systems, programming languages, drawing applications etc. have user requirements that are pretty much understood. So building the software for these applications can, for the most part, begin with design.
The major expense for creating a software solution is in the requirements definition phase of the project (see "No Silver Bullet
Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering" by Fredrick Brooks.) The problem Mr. Carrol has in writing this piece is NOT that he doesn't have a handle on the nature of programming but that he doesn't have a handle on software engineering.
It seems to me that the greatest opportunity for closed source development is for problems in which eliciting user requirements still poses the largest component of the total budget of the project.
There is nothing "leftist" about making a case for the fact that a missile defense system has a low probability of achieving its objectives. There are very strong arguments in favor of that position. There is also the issue that the Bush administration has had a fixation on missile defense. A case can be made that this fixation was partly responsible for a lack of focus on domestic security (see the Hart-Rudman domestic security report that was virtually ignored by the Bush administration.)
Finally, as an ex-Boeing Helicopters employee, ex-chairman of the North Dakota Libertarian Party, and U.S. Air Force veteran, I find your remarks about the author's decency out of line. Look, the ability to critique the government is one of the most important rights and responsibilities we have. And this right is steadly being eroded as we speak. As a Libertarian, you should be speaking out about that.
I agree. I worked at the same plant during the late 80's and early 90's. One crash was due to the fact that a plug was not idiot proof and was plugged in upside down causing the controls to respond opposite to what they should. Another was caused by a test pilot pushing the aircraft beyond its limits.
A real problem was that some administrations wanted the project and others did not. This caused Boeing and Bell to have to produce a production version before it was really ready. Our pay "Tricky-Dick" Cheney was responsible for that.
I think if the government had decided to build the plane and accepted reasonable schedules, a lot of this misfortune could have been avoided.
If you had ever seen one operating up close, you'd probably be impressed. It's a friggin cool airplane!
How about they spend the next month modularizing their OS...Of course, one has to wonder how difficult it must have been to add security to all that spaghetti code...
...don't know themselves to be a river...
ssshhhh!!! Don't tell them!