The 30k guy was referring to civis. So you missed my point there.
Also, you missed HIS point on this also.
And you double missed my point in that the US soldier deaths are held in such great esteem while the civilian/innocent deaths are misquoted and almost ignored in the majority.
You attitude throughout and you figures above are more evidence of this.
I think the 30,000 figure was people in total, not just American soldiers dude.
People (i.e. including woman and children) count too. In my book innocent people, as in the mentioned, who do not show up with a gun matter more in my book.
I googled it to make sure. His figure is WAAAAAAAAY off. The actual figure is sickening.
It is very interesting that the only figure that seems to matter here is the 5000 figure. The other figure, you know the dead woman and children including one, cannot even be quoted correctly within an order of magnitude.
That figure is (according to studies in 2006): over 655k.
Some say closer to 1 million.
The problem is that because the entire infrastructure of the country was destroyed and the number of documented deaths is only 100k. Obviously the number is a lot larger than that.
At any rate, even if you put your head in your ass and take the 100k figure it is 3x the one above.
I believe the term "read them and weep" takes on a whole new meaning here.
While I agree with the sentiment, the problem is harder than this to solve.
As soon as you try and define and write done said standards that will cover each and every case in a meaningful way you have pages of bureaucratic nonsense that few developers will remember or try to stick to.
Standards are better "enforced" coercively via peer review etc. If you are not doing peer review, you really should be. Of course this practice requires a level of discipline also, just not as much.
There are many ways to write readable and maintainable code and this can change based on the type of code you are writing as well as the language.
I totally agree. I don't know what the love affair with amazon is (well, maybe advertising revenue) but I would suggest that they have shown on several counts that their reader is a BIG risk and that other readers are far better. Triply so if you do not live in the US.
1984 being recalled? DRM? Not supporting other ebook types so you can purchase where you want? Charging a 40% premium in the UK?
Yeah. You can keep your reader amazon, I am just not that stupid. Even Sony is coming to the table with something better and they INVENTED this game.:)
Then I have to agree to disagree. People have had laptops and PDAs for some time and have used them for long periods for reading as part of work.
You are trying to say that the technology advances are a simple coincidence even thought the largest player in the market is hinging its whole strategy on its own version made at great expense. (with no LCD alternatives)
I think this is far fetched. Beg to differ and all that.
You totally missed the point. The reason ebooks have become popular in the market is because of this technology which removes the main reason people have not liked reading books electronically. Prior to this, EVERY SINGLE ONE of the things you mentioned already existed for ebooks. And they did not take off. Why? Because reading novels on an LCD makes most people's eyes hurt. It really is that simple.
Your argument about academics is also missing the point. I am talking about mass market books here and not niche use. PDF has been around and used for all sorts of things for a very long time. Academic articles can be downloaded/bought/printed per paper and that is why they are liked. Besides, almost all students and researchers I knew (I taught at university for a while) printed the articles they liked/needed and referenced them that way.
"I find backlit LCDs perfectly acceptable. " You would be the exception then. It also has nothing to do with the quality of your eye sight.
And perhaps that is it then? You are one of the few who can spend hours reading an LCD ebook after working a desk job doing the same without it effecting your eyes? I am pretty sure that is not the rule?
I have excellent LCD monitors at home and work and could not fathom it without getting bad migraines.
The whole dichotomy over printed books vs. ebooks just seems strange
Some of the arguments here from people really come from those who have not actually tried the eink readers and really should not be commenting on them until they do. I mostly agree with your listed advantages and analysis but i think you missed the most important feature of ebook readers here and it has led to a very false premise.
1)The key benefit of ebook readers are NOT available on PDAs and laptops. Eink technology makes the screen look like paper. That means that us technology friendly people who stare at screens all day as part of our job will not get the serious eye strain associated with reading ebooks from back lighted monitors. (at least anymore than reading a printed book) Any technology that does not have this is simply a non-starter for most people. This is the SINGLE feature has allowed the ebook revolution to begin, period. Every other aspect of ebooks themselves existed before with little effect. 2) Amazon, public libraries and google's foray into ebooks is on the backs of eink (or similar) readers. Ebooks have no future with LCD alone. Most of the momentum that is building at the moment is speculative based on the future ebook reader. (e.g. projected sales this Christmas) Amazon sees it coming and wants to corner the market. 3) The resolution of e-ink is PERFECTLY FINE for the printed word. Pictures and high-res diagrams may struggle, but for the printed word it is PERFECTLY FINE. This is a straw man argument based on some very erroneous assumptions are specs vs real life usability. 4)There are many book publishers out there NOT doing DRM or platform restricted books. Amazon has become the "slavering corporate dog" here by its recent DRM actions and restrictions, but it is easily circumvented at the moment via other distributors. They know this, hence their very early push into this market. Personally I would stay right away from the kindle. They have already shown what they are all about with the "1984" saga, but their use of DRM is also a worry.
Not to be a dick (because I agree with the sentiment) but I suggest you look at some of the "public private partnerships" that governments trying to hide privatization use. I assume the current system with books is similar in this without the name.
Government fronts large sum of cash for development by private entity who then leases item back to government or charges to the tax payer who funded it. Sometimes even with government backed insurance on the investment in the worst case. Sometimes the item has a near monopoly as in prescribed texts, tolled roads and tunnels etc.
The UK has some fantastic examples and in NZ we had a great one with a school where the leasing cost twice as much as to build it.
You are underestimating the complexity of such systems by an order of magnitude.
What I fin most funny (and naive) about all the posts of your nature is that you have NO IDEA what the original system looks like and have not spoken to any of the people involved and you are sooooo sure that you can do it all.
Yup. So how long have you been a PM??
"The problem with project managers is that they have the word 'manager' in their name."
However I think that you believing that it would be real easy to solve their problems and reimplement their entire system using some OS software and grad students is even more naive than the original post.
You are. The board is legally obliged to do what is in the best interests of the shareholder's profit margins. This filters on down as does other things. The idea is that the CEO or the board cannot just run the company into the ground for some bizzare reason because they have a majority shareholding and the other shareholders are effectively powerless. Of course there are no specifics about being a reasonable citizen or effect on society or any of that "fluffy" stuff.
Currently the only two limits on the "evil that men do" in corporations is:
a) Laws. Obviously. Written by people who are actively lobbied (with millions) by said corporations b) Marketing. Many corps don't care about this and some are set up specifically to sheild their parents/trading partners from the liability of this. (e.g. coca cola and their numerous south american/other escapades.)
That is what is going on here and always has done. That is why things are the way they are.
So the grand answer to the oft asked question "why is the world so fucked up" is easily answered here:
Because we gave the rich and greedy men the power to do almost anything they like in the name of a corporeal (heh) enity that has effectively the same rights as us, but none of the limitations of being mortal.
You misunderstood. This is not a bounty for their arrest. It is a recruitment bounty so they can teach them to make software that is not so full of holes you would mistake it for a premise for war or something.
If they distributed that food around the world at prices they could afford to pay and also allowed them to sell freely, your economy would tank overnight and/or your entire way of life would have to change. The 1st world way of life is ONLY sustainable off the backs of cheap, underfed 3rd world countries helping out by providing us production capcacity at ridiculously low prices. e.g. Your entire farming industry is almost entirely sustained at its current level because of protectionism. (e.g. tariffs/handouts/wierd ethanol policy that makes no sense/etc) e.g. Your cup of coffee is only so cheap because a lot of coffee farmers around the world are 2 beans from starvation. Imagine what would happen to our 1st world countries if the cost of food quadrupled and the price of 3rd world goods did the same? (what you are proposing essentially)
When 50k people die from starvation a day. 16k are children. http://www.bread.org/learn/hunger-basics/hunger-facts-international.html Those are the DEATHS. 820 million more are living on less than minimum healthy lifestyle number of calories which is what you would use to measure if we were "feeding the world".(i.e. not starving) In 2005, 1.4 billion people lived below the poverty line.
To top it all off the largest economies in the world are also the largest distributors of weapons in the world and a HUGE number of these end up in africa, usually traded for food/oil/diamonds/etc as they have no money. Resources that could have been traded for food and economic success.
I would call you and idiot, but I don't beleive that insulting someone personally lends weight to my argument. In fact quite the opposite.
Good point!! Let's NOT blame the fact that we (the first world + china etc) raped and pillaged our way through anything of value in those countries ove the last 300+ years and then sold them weapons and backed tirants and even sometimes incited wars directly. (e.g. In the sudan the chinese have been trading oil for weapons to the guy committing genocide??) Now we have trade policies specifically designed to ensure that our cup of coffee costs nothing while their farmers starve to death as soon as they have a dry summer.
Nope. They should realise that their lives and country is so worthless that them procreating is a stain on humanity.
I mean, as animals, it is not as if this is one of our major priorities! How selfish and greedy they are!?
Unfortunately I have had this problem on multiple windows machines and the spikes do not show up on this app in 90% of cases. The other 10% became obvious as a proper spike. (auto virus checking or some app doing something sensible)
No. And quoting one sentence from wiki does not win an argument.
Of course Agile is iterative?? Just because two things share a subset of common features does not make them the same - even if some of those features are fundamentals.
Airplanes have wheels, engines, seats and a steering mechanism. Cars have these also. Wheels etc are fundamental. Are they both modes of transport? Yes. Are airplanes and cars even close to being the same? No.
Before this discussion would even start you would have to point out that "waterfall" only covers the design, coding and testing portion of development. Agile ALSO covers organisational and team structure, philosophy, interaction with the customer, etc.
NB: I am defaulting to SCRUM here, fully realising there are other flavours.
Agile encompasses a new style of requirements gathering, customer focus, team structure and ethic, etc AS WELL as development process. There are discussions around agile architecture, refactoring, TDD, priority setting, costing, pigs and chickens, etc. Now obviously this process is iterative (e.g. in Scum it is sprints), but that does not make it "the same" as iterative waterfall. Now I am sure that the waterfall model has discourse around all these issues and I am also sure that the discussions come to vastly different conclusions. e.g the waterfall model does NOT prescribe specific methods and techniques for focussing on customer requirements and priorities of work. This is nebulus to the waterfall model.
Is agile iterative? Of course it is!?
Does that make it iterative waterfall? NO.
Agile is as much about the team and its interaction with the company and client as it is about the development process itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Surprisingly I see we are in agreement. :)
It is just a sore issue for me to see the US casualties given to the man so accurately and the others just thrown about or completely ignored.
I have spoken to refugees of that country and some of the stories they had to tell. They are real people and deserve better.
The 30k guy was referring to civis. So you missed my point there.
Also, you missed HIS point on this also.
And you double missed my point in that the US soldier deaths are held in such great esteem while the civilian/innocent deaths are misquoted and almost ignored in the majority.
You attitude throughout and you figures above are more evidence of this.
I think the 30,000 figure was people in total, not just American soldiers dude.
People (i.e. including woman and children) count too. In my book innocent people, as in the mentioned, who do not show up with a gun matter more in my book.
I googled it to make sure. His figure is WAAAAAAAAY off. The actual figure is sickening.
It is very interesting that the only figure that seems to matter here is the 5000 figure. The other figure, you know the dead woman and children including one, cannot even be quoted correctly within an order of magnitude.
That figure is (according to studies in 2006): over 655k.
Some say closer to 1 million.
The problem is that because the entire infrastructure of the country was destroyed and the number of documented deaths is only 100k. Obviously the number is a lot larger than that.
At any rate, even if you put your head in your ass and take the 100k figure it is 3x the one above.
I believe the term "read them and weep" takes on a whole new meaning here.
So insightful...not.
Democrats are not liberals.
Only in America could they be called that without someone laughing.
Only in America could they be called socialist without someone laughing.
But try just voting in the republicans back in again next time to fix this mess.
I am sure it will work this time...
You guys really need a third party..and less lobbyists.
Oh well, best everyone vote rep next time to clean up this mess...
And so it goes...
You guys really need a third party..and less lobbyists.
While I agree with the sentiment, the problem is harder than this to solve.
As soon as you try and define and write done said standards that will cover each and every case in a meaningful way you have pages of bureaucratic nonsense that few developers will remember or try to stick to.
Standards are better "enforced" coercively via peer review etc. If you are not doing peer review, you really should be.
Of course this practice requires a level of discipline also, just not as much.
There are many ways to write readable and maintainable code and this can change based on the type of code you are writing as well as the language.
Nice to see Fox News listeners coming on to slashdot to contribute. You guys are always good for a laugh!
You forgot the link relating child birth mortality to driving.
Good luck with that...
I totally agree. I don't know what the love affair with amazon is (well, maybe advertising revenue) but I would suggest that they have shown on several counts that their reader is a BIG risk and that other readers are far better. Triply so if you do not live in the US.
1984 being recalled?
DRM?
Not supporting other ebook types so you can purchase where you want?
Charging a 40% premium in the UK?
Yeah. You can keep your reader amazon, I am just not that stupid. Even Sony is coming to the table with something better and they INVENTED this game. :)
Then I have to agree to disagree. People have had laptops and PDAs for some time and have used them for long periods for reading as part of work.
You are trying to say that the technology advances are a simple coincidence even thought the largest player in the market is hinging its whole strategy on its own version made at great expense. (with no LCD alternatives)
I think this is far fetched. Beg to differ and all that.
Still, interesting discussion.
You totally missed the point. The reason ebooks have become popular in the market is because of this technology which removes the main reason people have not liked reading books electronically.
Prior to this, EVERY SINGLE ONE of the things you mentioned already existed for ebooks. And they did not take off. Why? Because reading novels on an LCD makes most people's eyes hurt. It really is that simple.
Your argument about academics is also missing the point. I am talking about mass market books here and not niche use. PDF has been around and used for all sorts of things for a very long time.
Academic articles can be downloaded/bought/printed per paper and that is why they are liked.
Besides, almost all students and researchers I knew (I taught at university for a while) printed the articles they liked/needed and referenced them that way.
"I find backlit LCDs perfectly acceptable. "
You would be the exception then. It also has nothing to do with the quality of your eye sight.
And perhaps that is it then? You are one of the few who can spend hours reading an LCD ebook after working a desk job doing the same without it effecting your eyes? I am pretty sure that is not the rule?
I have excellent LCD monitors at home and work and could not fathom it without getting bad migraines.
The whole dichotomy over printed books vs. ebooks just seems strange
Some of the arguments here from people really come from those who have not actually tried the eink readers and really should not be commenting on them until they do. I mostly agree with your listed advantages and analysis but i think you missed the most important feature of ebook readers here and it has led to a very false premise.
1)The key benefit of ebook readers are NOT available on PDAs and laptops. Eink technology makes the screen look like paper. That means that us technology friendly people who stare at screens all day as part of our job will not get the serious eye strain associated with reading ebooks from back lighted monitors. (at least anymore than reading a printed book)
Any technology that does not have this is simply a non-starter for most people. This is the SINGLE feature has allowed the ebook revolution to begin, period.
Every other aspect of ebooks themselves existed before with little effect.
2) Amazon, public libraries and google's foray into ebooks is on the backs of eink (or similar) readers. Ebooks have no future with LCD alone. Most of the momentum that is building at the moment is speculative based on the future ebook reader. (e.g. projected sales this Christmas) Amazon sees it coming and wants to corner the market.
3) The resolution of e-ink is PERFECTLY FINE for the printed word. Pictures and high-res diagrams may struggle, but for the printed word it is PERFECTLY FINE.
This is a straw man argument based on some very erroneous assumptions are specs vs real life usability.
4)There are many book publishers out there NOT doing DRM or platform restricted books. Amazon has become the "slavering corporate dog" here by its recent DRM actions and restrictions, but it is easily circumvented at the moment via other distributors. They know this, hence their very early push into this market.
Personally I would stay right away from the kindle. They have already shown what they are all about with the "1984" saga, but their use of DRM is also a worry.
Not to be a dick (because I agree with the sentiment) but I suggest you look at some of the "public private partnerships" that governments trying to hide privatization use.
I assume the current system with books is similar in this without the name.
Government fronts large sum of cash for development by private entity who then leases item back to government or charges to the tax payer who funded it. Sometimes even with government backed insurance on the investment in the worst case. Sometimes the item has a near monopoly as in prescribed texts, tolled roads and tunnels etc.
The UK has some fantastic examples and in NZ we had a great one with a school where the leasing cost twice as much as to build it.
Pretty much what geeoid said more or less.
You are underestimating the complexity of such systems by an order of magnitude.
What I fin most funny (and naive) about all the posts of your nature is that you have NO IDEA what the original system looks like and have not spoken to any of the people involved and you are sooooo sure that you can do it all.
Yup. So how long have you been a PM??
"The problem with project managers is that they have the word 'manager' in their name."
- me, one of my favourites.
I am not defending their decision.
However I think that you believing that it would be real easy to solve their problems and reimplement their entire system using some OS software and grad students is even more naive than the original post.
I am a software architect and ex comp sci. lecturer.
I guarantee you are being exceptionally naive.
You are. The board is legally obliged to do what is in the best interests of the shareholder's profit margins. This filters on down as does other things.
The idea is that the CEO or the board cannot just run the company into the ground for some bizzare reason because they have a majority shareholding and the other shareholders are effectively powerless.
Of course there are no specifics about being a reasonable citizen or effect on society or any of that "fluffy" stuff.
Currently the only two limits on the "evil that men do" in corporations is:
a) Laws. Obviously. Written by people who are actively lobbied (with millions) by said corporations
b) Marketing. Many corps don't care about this and some are set up specifically to sheild their parents/trading partners from the liability of this. (e.g. coca cola and their numerous south american/other escapades.)
That is what is going on here and always has done. That is why things are the way they are.
So the grand answer to the oft asked question "why is the world so fucked up" is easily answered here:
Because we gave the rich and greedy men the power to do almost anything they like in the name of a corporeal (heh) enity that has effectively the same rights as us, but none of the limitations of being mortal.
You misunderstood. This is not a bounty for their arrest.
It is a recruitment bounty so they can teach them to make software that is not so full of holes you would mistake it for a premise for war or something.
If they distributed that food around the world at prices they could afford to pay and also allowed them to sell freely, your economy would tank overnight and/or your entire way of life would have to change.
The 1st world way of life is ONLY sustainable off the backs of cheap, underfed 3rd world countries helping out by providing us production capcacity at ridiculously low prices.
e.g. Your entire farming industry is almost entirely sustained at its current level because of protectionism. (e.g. tariffs/handouts/wierd ethanol policy that makes no sense/etc)
e.g. Your cup of coffee is only so cheap because a lot of coffee farmers around the world are 2 beans from starvation.
Imagine what would happen to our 1st world countries if the cost of food quadrupled and the price of 3rd world goods did the same? (what you are proposing essentially)
When 50k people die from starvation a day. 16k are children. http://www.bread.org/learn/hunger-basics/hunger-facts-international.html
Those are the DEATHS. 820 million more are living on less than minimum healthy lifestyle number of calories which is what you would use to measure if we were "feeding the world".(i.e. not starving)
In 2005, 1.4 billion people lived below the poverty line.
To top it all off the largest economies in the world are also the largest distributors of weapons in the world and a HUGE number of these end up in africa, usually traded for food/oil/diamonds/etc as they have no money. Resources that could have been traded for food and economic success.
I would call you and idiot, but I don't beleive that insulting someone personally lends weight to my argument. In fact quite the opposite.
Good point!!
Let's NOT blame the fact that we (the first world + china etc) raped and pillaged our way through anything of value in those countries ove the last 300+ years and then sold them weapons and backed tirants and even sometimes incited wars directly. (e.g. In the sudan the chinese have been trading oil for weapons to the guy committing genocide??)
Now we have trade policies specifically designed to ensure that our cup of coffee costs nothing while their farmers starve to death as soon as they have a dry summer.
Nope. They should realise that their lives and country is so worthless that them procreating is a stain on humanity.
I mean, as animals, it is not as if this is one of our major priorities! How selfish and greedy they are!?
Unfortunately I have had this problem on multiple windows machines and the spikes do not show up on this app in 90% of cases.
The other 10% became obvious as a proper spike. (auto virus checking or some app doing something sensible)
Not helpful for this sort of thing.
And these are all completely different to agile.
Thanks for proving my point.
You should stick to what you know. I am not hung up on terminology at all. I am hung up on calling two completely different things the same.
Since you are an english major, or a student at all, I assume you do not have a working knowledge of both these?
No. And quoting one sentence from wiki does not win an argument.
Of course Agile is iterative?? Just because two things share a subset of common features does not make them the same - even if some of those features are fundamentals.
Airplanes have wheels, engines, seats and a steering mechanism. Cars have these also. Wheels etc are fundamental.
Are they both modes of transport? Yes.
Are airplanes and cars even close to being the same? No.
Before this discussion would even start you would have to point out that "waterfall" only covers the design, coding and testing portion of development. Agile ALSO covers organisational and team structure, philosophy, interaction with the customer, etc.
I have spoken more in response to another post.
NB: I am defaulting to SCRUM here, fully realising there are other flavours.
Agile encompasses a new style of requirements gathering, customer focus, team structure and ethic, etc AS WELL as development process. There are discussions around agile architecture, refactoring, TDD, priority setting, costing, pigs and chickens, etc.
Now obviously this process is iterative (e.g. in Scum it is sprints), but that does not make it "the same" as iterative waterfall.
Now I am sure that the waterfall model has discourse around all these issues and I am also sure that the discussions come to vastly different conclusions.
e.g the waterfall model does NOT prescribe specific methods and techniques for focussing on customer requirements and priorities of work. This is nebulus to the waterfall model.
Is agile iterative? Of course it is!?
Does that make it iterative waterfall? NO.
Agile is as much about the team and its interaction with the company and client as it is about the development process itself.
Apples and oranges to be honest.
I am sorry dude. Either you have never done agile or you just never got it.
Agile is not "iterative waterfall". It never was and never is. If you find yourself doing "iterative waterfall", then you are doing it all wrong.
You are not the first person I have heard say this and I dare say you wont be the last...