In my job, we do the equivalent of 'mob programming' at the start of a project, or when implementing something interesting, such as a complex framework component intended to be reused by all the developers. The other 80% of the time, it's far more efficient to sit at your desk, headphones on, and bang out code that is integrated at appropriate intervals.
This assumes that we are all writing modular and structured code, otherwise, good luck with integration.
It's a hell of a lot better than Microsoft's previous formats, which were practically binary-only, and which were proprietary, meaning no one was legally allowed to write software that output files in that format. OPen Document format is similar to ODF, in that it's basically a zipped XML file, which contains enough data to read and make sense of the entire document, in most cases. It's not hard to write apps that read, write and process that data, nor is it illegal to do so.
I agree that in some cases, the 'standard' is convoluted and contains edge cases that make it nearly impossible to render OpenXML documents 100% accurately, however, it is quite possible to produce valid OpenXML documents using any decent programming tools.
As far as standards that are a "complicated mess", I really don't need to look much past HTML / CSS. The scope of what HTML can do is supposed to be much less than the entire Office suite of software, however, there are still major incompatibilities and unsupported features for all browsers. (of course, IE is a a major source of issues, but Safari does make me want to cry sometimes)
The intention of this, and many similar laws that have materialized in recent years is to effectively lower the burden of proof for detaining, questioning and ultimately convicting anyone who may or may be planning to 'perform terrorist acts' - an overly broad definition of which actually includes anyone who disagrees with current political thinking.
For example, under standard criminal law, suspects need to have actually performed a crime to be prosecuted. Without an actual crime, there is the lesser charge of 'conspiring' to commit a crime. However, you still need strong evidence that some kind of criminal activity has, or is about to take place. Laws like this one only require someone to publicly oppose the government, and unless they are a registered (in which case they are pretty much screwed anyway - their activities will no doubt be scrutinised), they can be detained without any evidence that they are actually considering doing anything of a crimnal nature. This is, in my opinion anyway, a way of implementing harsh penalties for 'thought crime'. The only effect will be to cause resentment and to drive any non-mainstream political movements underground.
The sentiment portrayed by the author of that article is a very common one among IT workers. That somehow, our best efforts are undermined by the need for our work to be costed, audited and planned by external (to us) business interests. I personally try and produce code that meets and exceeds the business requirement, and does so within the time-frame set by the business. The problem, I think is that software engineers, in general, are a bunch of perfectionists, and we like to hold off announcing a 'final version' until the last possible moment. (Google Mail was in beta for how long?)
What I have come to realize, though, is that it is not just the IT departments that feel this way. In general, there are some people in every department, of every company that belive that their performance would improve if only they had a greater measure of self-determination. Perhaps the number of people who feel this way is highest in IT, but it is certainly not exclusive to IT. So what it comes down to, I feel, is that we are slowly drifting towards a business culture where the individual has more control over their job, and where sucess is measured by job satisfaction instead of economics.
At least, that's the direction I hope we are heading in.
Say what you like about the Sanyo, it is a pretty terrible looking bike, but the gocycle is definately as ugly, if not worse. On top of that, the gocycle looks like it would break in half if it ever hit a speed bump.
If you only have a single task to do, and weeks to do it, then you are 1) not being very prducttive, and 2) selling yourself short.
In every job I've had, I have always worked simultaneously on several projects, along with having to deal with client issues, documentation, R&D for the next version, meetings etc.
You just need to throw yourself at more tasks, until you reach a level where you don't find yourself procrastinating for more than a few minutes at a time.
This is how I develop, and it works very well. My peers and managers are happy, because I am productive. I am happy because I don't feel like I'm procrastinating for long periods. Too much 'sitting on your hands' is boring, it makes the days drag on, and is not really helping you write good code. For me, that is what job satisfaction is all about.
If this is only a short term thing, why not rent a shiny new laptop for a few months. Not only will you be able to show it off at cafe's, but it will also be a tax-deductible expense.
As a bonus, I guess your 'partner' could use it to 'play games' while in bed.
I think it's great that someone is drafting some ground rules for what will undoubtedly become the 'future of warfare', but I wonder how this can possibly be enforcable in the real world.
The 1st generation robots will have the governor software, but once the second gen hits, made cheaply by a rogue state, then thigs will get complicated very quickly. And unlike nuclear weapons, which are kept under control because the materials and technology are relatively hard to come by, I reckon that death-bots will be made of far more readily available materials, and easily mass-produced.
There are rules of engagement now which many armies happily ignore, so how can the world enforce a rule that only ethical robots will be able to autonomously fire weapons?
Perhaps the software that allows the autonomous behaviour can be encrypted and protected in such a way that it is difficult to reverse-engineer, though once an enterprising hacker gets his hands on the hardware, it's only a matter of time before the open-source version, curiously missing the 'ethics governance' will be available as a.torrent somewhere.
What I did was install a second-hand alarm panel like one of these with 6 IR sensors, door and window sensors, and a mobile phone card, hooked up to a cheap prepaid mobile plan. The phone card is able to send custom SMS messages to 5 numbers, with info on which zones were triggered. Each number can be triggered by a different combination of zone faults, with a custom message for each number. I have the fire alarm hooked into the system as well, though it currently only calls my number in case of any zone faults.
While this has no webcam, it's capable of notifying me, the police, fire brigade or ambulance that something has happened-depending on the nature of the alarm.
My next project will be to install a NAS and Server in the attic, protected with UPS. I was thinking of hooking up a couple of webcams which could be set up to start recording if an alarm zone fault is triggered, but I don't think that webcam coverage is that useful though, because most burglaries happen at night, and the thieves will probably use torches instead of turning on all the lights.
I guess one could go to the trouble of setting up X10 lighting to illuminate the house while the webcams start recording, though if you live in a fairly safe suburb, your neighbours will probably start worrying about you.
If your alarm system is web-enabled, how will you monitor it if the power goes out, or your internet is down.
Nevermind the fact that burglars often cut phone lines if they are really trying to get into a joint, and suspect that a monitored alarm may be installed.
I do agree that we will see some 'cultural disintegration', but not for the reasons cited in the article (which I, of course did not read).
The reasons?
New media models that require "monthly access fees" (yes Blizzard, Sony, I'm looking at you), and DRM protected media.
Sure, some companies will 'do the right thing' and open their media to the public once they are not actively using it as a revenue source, but they will be in the tiny minority.
My kids will probably never be able to dust off the World of Warcraft DVD, insert it into their holo-reader and find out what our generation did for fun. Likewise with the millions of songs that are stored precariously on iPods throughout the world. Once the iPod breaks, and the iTunes servers are switched off for the last time, that music is lost forever to the people who loved it dearly, but were foolish enough to accept a 'limited rights' version of their media.
Looking back, we can still enjoy art from the entire history of humanity - cave paintings, books, canvas and sheet music, just to name a few. Apart from the physical disintegration of the medium, little can destroy these expressions of our culture. With our new encoded, protected and limited DRM-riddled media, there will be very little to look back on from an individuals point of view.
I expect that organizations will spring up to restore these lost works of art, and efforts will be made to make our current culture accessible in fifty or a hundred years. But where does that leave the young kid who finds the suitcase full of DVD's, or Blue-Ray discs in his attic, left to him by his grandfather? Will he or she be able to take a glimpse into history, in the way that our generation has been able to dust off the old vinyl record player, and reverently remove that piece of vinyl from its weathered cardboard cover, to listen to a crackly rendition of Muddy Water's 'Baby Please Don't Go'
I doubt it.
In my mis-spent youth, I was able to get free credits from certain arcade machines by holding the exposed part of a lighter (the piezo-ignition type) against the coin slot, and pressing button to set off the electric charge. Every 10 or so 'clicks' would result in a free credit.
If these voting machines are susceptible to static electricity, using a clicker on it would likely cause some sort of mischief as well.
Oh well, back to the old lead pencil and paper voting, I say:)
Although I'm not sure of the legalities, I have contacted publishers several times to replace defective audio, movie, game, and application media, and each time I have been sent a replacement either at cost of postage or no cost at all. They will require that you send them the original defective media though, so make sure you don't throw that out:)
With regard to software, I once recieved a much improved and upgraded version of the application, without having to pay the rather steep upgrade cost (Rosetta Stone language learning);)
A 400-800 Mhz CPU with 256 Mb RAM will do 90% of the stuff you do on a PC (unless you're a gamer). I can run Damn Small Linux, Ubuntu or Windows 2000, OpenOffice, Firefox and many other applications without any problems.
This is on the kind of PC you can often pick up lying in the street or at you local landfill.
I don't think that punishing the individuals within a corporation is an answer though - simply because in the wonderfully flawed justice systems in the western world, the people who actually made the decisions would not be standing before the judge - except maybe to give evidence against the scapegoat who's going to take the blame.
So why not punish the whole corporation? The threat of dissolution of the company - and the ruination of their career - would be more of a deterrent than some fines and / or jail time for *someone* in the company.
I guess there may already be laws in place already to punish corporations, but I contend that they should be used more often - I can't think of many cases where a company has been punished to an extent proportionate to their crimes. There were the EU fines against Microsoft, which many people still called rather soft, but that's about all I can think of off the top of my head.
Slashdot Mirror
In my job, we do the equivalent of 'mob programming' at the start of a project, or when implementing something interesting, such as a complex framework component intended to be reused by all the developers. The other 80% of the time, it's far more efficient to sit at your desk, headphones on, and bang out code that is integrated at appropriate intervals. This assumes that we are all writing modular and structured code, otherwise, good luck with integration.
I agree that in some cases, the 'standard' is convoluted and contains edge cases that make it nearly impossible to render OpenXML documents 100% accurately, however, it is quite possible to produce valid OpenXML documents using any decent programming tools.
As far as standards that are a "complicated mess", I really don't need to look much past HTML / CSS. The scope of what HTML can do is supposed to be much less than the entire Office suite of software, however, there are still major incompatibilities and unsupported features for all browsers. (of course, IE is a a major source of issues, but Safari does make me want to cry sometimes)
The intention of this, and many similar laws that have materialized in recent years is to effectively lower the burden of proof for detaining, questioning and ultimately convicting anyone who may or may be planning to 'perform terrorist acts' - an overly broad definition of which actually includes anyone who disagrees with current political thinking.
For example, under standard criminal law, suspects need to have actually performed a crime to be prosecuted.
Without an actual crime, there is the lesser charge of 'conspiring' to commit a crime. However, you still need strong evidence that some kind of criminal activity has, or is about to take place.
Laws like this one only require someone to publicly oppose the government, and unless they are a registered (in which case they are pretty much screwed anyway - their activities will no doubt be scrutinised), they can be detained without any evidence that they are actually considering doing anything of a crimnal nature.
This is, in my opinion anyway, a way of implementing harsh penalties for 'thought crime'. The only effect will be to cause resentment and to drive any non-mainstream political movements underground.
I personally try and produce code that meets and exceeds the business requirement, and does so within the time-frame set by the business. The problem, I think is that software engineers, in general, are a bunch of perfectionists, and we like to hold off announcing a 'final version' until the last possible moment. (Google Mail was in beta for how long?)
What I have come to realize, though, is that it is not just the IT departments that feel this way. In general, there are some people in every department, of every company that belive that their performance would improve if only they had a greater measure of self-determination. Perhaps the number of people who feel this way is highest in IT, but it is certainly not exclusive to IT.
So what it comes down to, I feel, is that we are slowly drifting towards a business culture where the individual has more control over their job, and where sucess is measured by job satisfaction instead of economics.
At least, that's the direction I hope we are heading in.
Say what you like about the Sanyo, it is a pretty terrible looking bike, but the gocycle is definately as ugly, if not worse. On top of that, the gocycle looks like it would break in half if it ever hit a speed bump.
In every job I've had, I have always worked simultaneously on several projects, along with having to deal with client issues, documentation, R&D for the next version, meetings etc. You just need to throw yourself at more tasks, until you reach a level where you don't find yourself procrastinating for more than a few minutes at a time.
This is how I develop, and it works very well. My peers and managers are happy, because I am productive. I am happy because I don't feel like I'm procrastinating for long periods. Too much 'sitting on your hands' is boring, it makes the days drag on, and is not really helping you write good code. For me, that is what job satisfaction is all about.
As a bonus, I guess your 'partner' could use it to 'play games' while in bed.
The 1st generation robots will have the governor software, but once the second gen hits, made cheaply by a rogue state, then thigs will get complicated very quickly. And unlike nuclear weapons, which are kept under control because the materials and technology are relatively hard to come by, I reckon that death-bots will be made of far more readily available materials, and easily mass-produced.
There are rules of engagement now which many armies happily ignore, so how can the world enforce a rule that only ethical robots will be able to autonomously fire weapons?
Perhaps the software that allows the autonomous behaviour can be encrypted and protected in such a way that it is difficult to reverse-engineer, though once an enterprising hacker gets his hands on the hardware, it's only a matter of time before the open-source version, curiously missing the 'ethics governance' will be available as a .torrent somewhere.
What I did was install a second-hand alarm panel like one of these with 6 IR sensors, door and window sensors, and a mobile phone card, hooked up to a cheap prepaid mobile plan.
The phone card is able to send custom SMS messages to 5 numbers, with info on which zones were triggered. Each number can be triggered by a different combination of zone faults, with a custom message for each number. I have the fire alarm hooked into the system as well, though it currently only calls my number in case of any zone faults.
While this has no webcam, it's capable of notifying me, the police, fire brigade or ambulance that something has happened-depending on the nature of the alarm.
My next project will be to install a NAS and Server in the attic, protected with UPS. I was thinking of hooking up a couple of webcams which could be set up to start recording if an alarm zone fault is triggered, but I don't think that webcam coverage is that useful though, because most burglaries happen at night, and the thieves will probably use torches instead of turning on all the lights. I guess one could go to the trouble of setting up X10 lighting to illuminate the house while the webcams start recording, though if you live in a fairly safe suburb, your neighbours will probably start worrying about you.
If your alarm system is web-enabled, how will you monitor it if the power goes out, or your internet is down. Nevermind the fact that burglars often cut phone lines if they are really trying to get into a joint, and suspect that a monitored alarm may be installed.
I do agree that we will see some 'cultural disintegration', but not for the reasons cited in the article (which I, of course did not read). The reasons? New media models that require "monthly access fees" (yes Blizzard, Sony, I'm looking at you), and DRM protected media. Sure, some companies will 'do the right thing' and open their media to the public once they are not actively using it as a revenue source, but they will be in the tiny minority. My kids will probably never be able to dust off the World of Warcraft DVD, insert it into their holo-reader and find out what our generation did for fun. Likewise with the millions of songs that are stored precariously on iPods throughout the world. Once the iPod breaks, and the iTunes servers are switched off for the last time, that music is lost forever to the people who loved it dearly, but were foolish enough to accept a 'limited rights' version of their media. Looking back, we can still enjoy art from the entire history of humanity - cave paintings, books, canvas and sheet music, just to name a few. Apart from the physical disintegration of the medium, little can destroy these expressions of our culture. With our new encoded, protected and limited DRM-riddled media, there will be very little to look back on from an individuals point of view. I expect that organizations will spring up to restore these lost works of art, and efforts will be made to make our current culture accessible in fifty or a hundred years. But where does that leave the young kid who finds the suitcase full of DVD's, or Blue-Ray discs in his attic, left to him by his grandfather? Will he or she be able to take a glimpse into history, in the way that our generation has been able to dust off the old vinyl record player, and reverently remove that piece of vinyl from its weathered cardboard cover, to listen to a crackly rendition of Muddy Water's 'Baby Please Don't Go' I doubt it.
shhh.. don't tell the government..
In my mis-spent youth, I was able to get free credits from certain arcade machines by holding the exposed part of a lighter (the piezo-ignition type) against the coin slot, and pressing button to set off the electric charge. Every 10 or so 'clicks' would result in a free credit. If these voting machines are susceptible to static electricity, using a clicker on it would likely cause some sort of mischief as well. Oh well, back to the old lead pencil and paper voting, I say :)
Try something from Pixar Animation. The animated movies show much better colour on BluRay in my opinion.
Although I'm not sure of the legalities, I have contacted publishers several times to replace defective audio, movie, game, and application media, and each time I have been sent a replacement either at cost of postage or no cost at all. They will require that you send them the original defective media though, so make sure you don't throw that out :)
With regard to software, I once recieved a much improved and upgraded version of the application, without having to pay the rather steep upgrade cost (Rosetta Stone language learning) ;)
You fudge it with a nonsensical but repeatable and predicatable algorithm, like quantum theory
Give me a reason why I would want to embed a video in a spreadsheet..
In 20 years when labsize is measured in Giga-physicists, this quote will come back to haunt you.
Old programmers never die, they just GOSUB with no RETURN
#6: People who hate Microsoft, and would prefer to use an abacus to MS software (37% of slashdot users)
How old are we talking here?
A 400-800 Mhz CPU with 256 Mb RAM will do 90% of the stuff you do on a PC (unless you're a gamer). I can run Damn Small Linux, Ubuntu or Windows 2000, OpenOffice, Firefox and many other applications without any problems.
This is on the kind of PC you can often pick up lying in the street or at you local landfill.
Get the mop, I've just had and arithmetic overflow error!
I don't think that punishing the individuals within a corporation is an answer though - simply because in the wonderfully flawed justice systems in the western world, the people who actually made the decisions would not be standing before the judge - except maybe to give evidence against the scapegoat who's going to take the blame.
So why not punish the whole corporation? The threat of dissolution of the company - and the ruination of their career - would be more of a deterrent than some fines and / or jail time for *someone* in the company.
I guess there may already be laws in place already to punish corporations, but I contend that they should be used more often - I can't think of many cases where a company has been punished to an extent proportionate to their crimes. There were the EU fines against Microsoft, which many people still called rather soft, but that's about all I can think of off the top of my head.
I've always been of the opinion that equivalent fines and punishments should be imposed on corporations compared with persons.
Instead of jail time, perhaps a 'cease trading' time, where the gross income of a company for a period of time is taken away by the state.
Instead of the death penalty, a complete dissolution of the business, with all proceeds going to the state.
Instead of an individual fine, the fine an individual would receive for the crime should be multiplied by the number of employees in the corporation.
My $0.02 worth
Touché! Everything runs on SUN!