Excellent article. Doesn't really seem like it was Siebel's software that was the real problem though. Sounds like several amazingly bad decisions by AT&T Wireless. The description of how their CRM v6 worked, with heavy coupling between systems shows a long history of bad decisions. Then their decision to start offshoring the maintenance of a system that was still in development is just classic. It's kind of nice to see that poor technology and poor decisions get punished just as they should be.
This guy is wrong about everything. Many others have pointed out how these new Suns are all AMD Opteron x86-64 based and have been certified to run Windows and Linux, as well as Solaris. That invalidates 2/3 of the post. Even the other 1/3 is wrong too. Sun says they were distracted by the dot com boom. He calls this revisionism saying that Sun was guilty of hyping the dot com boom. How is this revisionism? That's exactly what Sun is saying as well. Sun is saying they made a mistake in trying to be "the dot in dot com" and should have instead paid more attention to what large corporate customers wanted: cheaper, standardized hardware that could run multipler operating systems.
Seriously, this post should be quoted in Wikipedia as a perfect example of a troll.
1.5 is much faster than Firefox 1.0. It seems identical in speed to Deer Park Alpha 2. Of course still much slower than Opera. It was about 30% slower on BenchJS on my old P3-1.2 GHz laptop.
You don't seem to understand how laws and legal precedents work. Let's say that you reverse engineer AIM. Now let's say that AIM's EULA includes provisions against reverse engineering. Now let's say that AOL sues you. When a judge looks at the rulings bnetd they won't consider that "at the heart of it all it's about piracy." Yes that was the motivation for Blizzard suing, but it had nothing to do with their legal position. Their position was validated by their EULA. So that is all that could be considered in our hypothetical AOL lawsuit. Thus legal precedence would dictate that AOL would win and your reverse engineering of AIM would be illegal. It doesn't matter if AOL was harmed in any way, they don't have to prove that. All they have to prove is that their EULA said you can't reverse engineered, you agreed to the EULA, and that you reverse engineered. That's enough. And that's why this case is about so much more than piracy.
Did you read the ruling at all? The ruling was not based on bnetd promoting/assisting/whatever pirated software. It had nothing to do with pirated software at all. It was all about reverse engineering, stating that user had willingly given up their right to reverse engineer when they accepted the EULA. Have you read AIM or MS Office's EULA? Does it include provisions against reverse engineering?
You guys are both wrong. It's not the method that matters, it's the people. Good software engineering is the key in either system, and neither system is perfect for all situations.
The key to agile programming is being able to actually handle massive requirement changes. I'm talking about the kind of requirement changes where all of those precious unit tests and acceptance tests you wrote get invalidated overnight. If your requirement changes are more minimal, then they're not going to be a problem with either method. They key to being able to handle massive requirements changes is good software design. Excessive coupling between components means that when one component becomes worthless (because of said changes) its hard to salvage other components that are still valuable because they are too tied to the deprecated component. Without good software design, agile programming won't help in the worst case scenario. This is especially important for agile programming, because its approach increases the likelihood of the worst case scenario.
Now I will say that a waterfall approach leads to several bad practices. First, it leads to a mythical man-month type of fallacy. Management tends to think that because of all the documentation present that they can manipulate "resources" like pawns in a game of chess. Second, it encourages bad design because you think you know everything. Third, and this is the worst to me, it gives false value to low value assets, i.e. people who don't actually produce anything. When a company values its process more than its employees, then it winds up hiring lots of people whose only function is to manage the process. Of course this is not unique to waterfall companies, but their emphasis on process does encourage this.
Agile programming also encourages several bad things. It encourages the over-valuing of development and under-valuing of design. I've often seen programmers with the attitude that's ok to build something that sucks because they will make it better in the future. Second, it tends to encourage overly-conservative programming. Its faster cycles discourages tasks that don't easily fit into these shorter cycles.
Of course the biggest limitation of agile programming comes from its roots. It clearly shows its consulting roots with its need for customer involvement. The kind of customer involvement it wants is very expensive for the customer (if we're talking enterprise software, maybe it's cheaper for consumer software.) If the customer is already paying you to build the software, then they might be willing to make this investment. If instead the customer is only a potential customer who might buy the software when it's done, then they are much less likely to make such a large investment.
You are mostly right, except your point about China. My company outsources to both India and China, mostly for QA work but also for some maintenance programming. Of course programming is more expensive than QA work. However, Chineese programming is still cheaper than Indian QA. Of course I think the main reason for this is your point #2. All of our Indian resources speak pretty good English, but that is not true of the Chineese ones. So if a project is more or less self-contained, then we send it to China. If it is something more collaborative (which is usually the case), we send it to India.
But seriously, who in the hell seriously believes they've drained the market of talent?
You are correct. One company cannot drain the market of talent, even one with Google's ever expanding resources.
How many readers honestly do not know at least a dozen people who want to leave but cannot due to a poor job market or fear of a pay cut?
I can't speak for you, but I don't know anybody who is staying with their company for the reasons you listed. Now I did know a few people in that situation several years ago, but not many. Most "really talented" programmers (whatever that means) were able to change jobs at will and see their salaries increase even during the leanest years (2002-2003.) Personally I changed jobs by choice twice from 2002-2004. I never feared not finding a new job and never even considered taking any kind of pay cut. I don't think there's anything that special about me either. I knew lots of people who did the same thing during that time.
The company I work for now saw a lot of people leave starting in 2004 and continuing this year. We also hired more people and saw overall salaries increase both in 2004 and 2005, based on merit. We actually did a lose two people to Google and one person to Yahoo. We also hired some people from IBM and Yahoo, and several people who had been at PeopleSoft, were retained by Oracle, but didn't like it and split after a few months there. So all in all, it seems like a healthy market to me, but I don't think Google has had that much to do with it.
Well then you shouldn't take this drug if/when it becomes available! Pretty simple, right?
Now there will be people who do want to use this. Certainly some professions like the military, doctors, truck drivers, rescue workers, air traffic controllers, etc. will find this useful. And just imagine combining a supply of this stuff with an offshore programming facility...
The fact of the matter is that the free market is a failure for any utility.
I like how you say this is a fact, but you fail to provide any supporting facts. The only thing close in your arguments is the mentioning of Enron and the partial de-regulation of electric utilities. You are correct that these de-regulations failed, but it is a matter of debate as to why. IMO, it failed because it was only a partial de-regulation. If you fix the price that a company must charge for a product, but allow it the price it must pay to produce this product, then of course it could wind up losing money or being unable to meet the demand for the product.
Internet is a utility today.
This is even more ridiculous. Maybe you wish that high-speed internet access was a necessity for life, but that is hardly the case. You cannot compare it to electricity, water, gas, or even telephone service (courtesy of 911.) Even if it was a necessity (which it is not) then you still must contend with dial-up access. There are people who do not need internet access. There are people who only need dial-up access. You would take away the choices of these people.
As an independent provider, I am literally being forced out of business, slowly, by changing government policy that erodes the regulations which forced the telcom monopolies to open up their networks.
Ahh so here's your real motivation. You want the government to assist your business, but you want to claim it is in the interest of the public. This is exactly why possibly well-meaning government regulations just become a way for one company to use the power of the government to help their business. The government does not have the right to help your company at the expense of another. That's what the original regulation did.
It's time to stop watching Fox News and stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.
Nice how you try to stereotype. Here's a news flash for you. I've been a card-carrying Democrat since I turned 18. Why? Because I value freedom. That includes freedom to have a choice about internet access.
Notice how I encouraged government taxation and regulation? Damn, I must be a communist.
Actually your attitude is much in line with a Fascist. You don't want the government to become the sole provider of internet access. You want the government to force people to buy internet access from your company, possibly via their tax dollars. That's Fascism.
Or a rural US citizen who is underserved. Take your pick.
The "progressive" tax system of this country serves to redistribute wealth from urban areas to rural areas. So in fact you are most likely overserved by your tax dollars, i.e. you receive more benefit from them than what you pay. This also makes you more likely to favor more taxation since it helps you more than it hurts you.
Your idea of an "alternate reality" is truly naive. If I currently sell broadband, then what happens to me in your alternate reality?
The government forces me out of business by selling the same product I am selling, but by giving people no choice about by charging them through their taxes.
The government forces me out of business by forcing me to sell to places where I will lose money.
The government forces me to sell to places where I will lose money, but they subsidize me so that I can stay in business. They do this by forcing all taxpayers to pay for my subsidies.
Maybe you're not bothered by the first two choices because you dehumanize anybody who is in business to make a profit. You have no problems using force against "fat cat corporations."
Maybe you're not bothered by the last choice. It's the government doing what's best for the people right? Maybe you think the government can make this decision, that all people should pay a tax to allow all people to have broadband access.
In either case, think about this consequence. Imagine two years later there is some new technology that allows for better, cheaper broadband access. In any of the three cases listed above, the government will have to support this new technology or otherwise it will not have a chance. In all the three cases above, there will be powerful vested interests in keeping the status quo.
In a free market, such a superior technology will surely win out. In a "progressive" market like you want, it might win out, but it might not. One can simply look at the history of telecom in the US and Europe and see many cases where such a technology either did not win out, or it took decades longer than it should have for it to win out because of government regulated markets.
If you don't think that the service you receive is worth what you are paying for it, then why are you paying it? If it's not worth it, then don't pay for it. Of course if it was the government that was providing this service and you were paying for it with your tax dollars, then you would have no choice.
However I would say that the inferior service you receive is worth the higher price because you are paying for it. It's just frustrating to you that better service might be available in a larger city at a lower price. Well that is one of the tradeoffs you make when you live somewhere rural. Here's a news flash for you, a small house in a city costs a lot more than a big house in a rural area. So should people living in small houses in cities demand that the government do something about this? After all they are paying more for an inferior product.
If there were enough of you that were willing to pay enough then somebody would supply it because they would make money supplying it to you. So if nobody is supplying it to you, then should we conclude A.) They're evil companies who would rather screw over rural America than make money or B.) There is not enough demand in rural America to make it profitable for them to sell there? Maybe you think Option A is correct, but if it is Option B, then don't ask for my tax dollars to fix the problem.
Take the price of a 6 MB DSL line with VOIP included in France - you can get the whole thing for $30 (~20 euro).
You need to consider something before you make an ignorant statement like this. How much of the price of that dsl line is actually in the form of tax dollars? So if you pay $30 directly, but another $100 (depending on tax bracket) more, then is your cost really $30? Now of course that extra $100 is being taken through income tax, so it's not as obvious, but you still must consider it.
Please note that I am not actually claiming that $100/month in this guy's taxes is going towards broadband subsidization in France. I am simply stating that there is some extra tax cost to pay for the government subsidized monopoly.
It's the role of the government to ensure competition in a marketplace.
Is what makes the second statement possible:
The current FCC is ruling in favour of monopoly/oligopoly pricing structures, since big telecom companies want government to ensure appropriate return on investment.
If the gov left markets alone, even those where a monopoly is present, then it would not have the power to enforce monopolies like you claim the FCC is doing. When you ask the government to "correct" a market, you are begging for corruption and government backed monopolies. A "natural" monopoly can be ended through market forces, but a government backed monopoly is much tougher to get rid of.
Amen brother. Broadband should only be found in places where there are enough people with enough money and demand to make it wortwhile for suppliers to provide it. Nobody should "force" suppliers to provide broadband to rural areas or low income areas. That's not freedom, that's coercion. Similarly, I don't want to pay for broadband to be provided to rural and low income areas. I pay for it to be provided to my house. I don't want my money to be used to subsidize it for others. If other countries want to do these things, who cares? Not me. I don't want to be involved in a pissing for distance contest over broadband penetration, especially since it would be my tax dollars that would have to pay for it.
The way how you've designed that bad boy, it would'nt scale in any language.
Not true. Just flip a switch on Weblogic (for example) and you'll have session sharing across application servers. That's scalibility. Now the author should probably learn about sticky-sessions, but maybe he already realizes the potential pitfalls of that anti-pattern.
Bottleneck? The database, but then you throw big iron at that.
All you've done is put off your scailibility issues to your database. That's not a terrible move, but does not mean you've achieved scailibility. Databases are generally more efficient than most application languages like PHP, Java, etc. Still it's only a temporary solution.
Look, the web is stateless, if applications are designed from the get-go realizing that fact, heck, you can get a shell script sitting in cgi-bin to scale with your server pool.
You sound exactly like Microsoft when they were promoting the original ASP. They were wrong, and you're not right just because you're using PHP instead of VB.
Update on compatibility... A number of sites that check for version number have issues. Yahoo! Mail gives you a warning and only lets you use an older version of the site. GMail automatically gives you the "old browser" version of their site. A product we use internally at my business from Rational (IBM) completely refuses to deal with IE7. It looks like MS did not put the version number in the user agent string?
I was very surprised to see Google as my default search engine
The tab layout is nice. It looked weird to see the blank half-tab, but it's a nice visual clue for people not used to tabs. Glad to see that ctrl-T and middle clicks work just like in Firefox.
Seems much slower than IE6. Tried it on BenchJS and its scores were very unimpressive. It's just a beta, I know, but still interesting to note. Compare it to Firefox's current Deer Park beta. That beta is faster than the production version of Firefox, kind of showing where the Firefox priorities are vs. Microsoft's.
No compatibility problems so far, which is what I would expect.
Sounds like there's no upgrade from XP option as of yet? Can anyone confirm this? I guess that will definitely keep in the hands of developers or other power users who know all about dual-booting (or can dedicate a machine to it.) Probably harder to discover software compatibility bugs, like the many that plagued XP SP2. I was thinking about installing it at home, but have a strong suspicion that it won't work with my old Belkin PCI wireless card, thus making it not worth the effort of dual booting that machine.
The report found that in businesses with 250 employees or more, 17 percent of the employees were running Mac OS X on their desktop computer at work.
What's this? Intelligent choices being made by PHBs?
Nine percent of companies with 250 employees or more used Mac OS X Server, while 14 percent of companies with 10,000 employees or more used Apple's Server software.
Ahh, now that's more like it. OSX Server is really crap becuase of
OSX's poor thread management. So if the first statistic is true, then the second one makes sense, i.e. it's just a knee-jerk reaction. There are many good arguments for OSX on desktops over Linux, but very few ones for OSX Server over Linux. Of course there are certainly good ones for OSX (or Linux) over Windows just based real security risks.
I've been using Deer Park alpha 1 for awhile, and it is a great upgrade. Significant speed increase. Pages using AJAX, like GMail, really show a big difference in responsiveness. I actually installed it on my home computer, because Firefox was being very unstable for my wife. She only has one extension installed (User Agent Switcher) but it still became very unstable with about five crashes per week. Deer Park has had zero crashes with the same extension installed, despite its alpha-1 status. I look forward to the feature complete beta. Hopefully its extra features won't slow it down.
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Excellent article. Doesn't really seem like it was Siebel's software that was the real problem though. Sounds like several amazingly bad decisions by AT&T Wireless. The description of how their CRM v6 worked, with heavy coupling between systems shows a long history of bad decisions. Then their decision to start offshoring the maintenance of a system that was still in development is just classic. It's kind of nice to see that poor technology and poor decisions get punished just as they should be.
This guy is wrong about everything. Many others have pointed out how these new Suns are all AMD Opteron x86-64 based and have been certified to run Windows and Linux, as well as Solaris. That invalidates 2/3 of the post. Even the other 1/3 is wrong too. Sun says they were distracted by the dot com boom. He calls this revisionism saying that Sun was guilty of hyping the dot com boom. How is this revisionism? That's exactly what Sun is saying as well. Sun is saying they made a mistake in trying to be "the dot in dot com" and should have instead paid more attention to what large corporate customers wanted: cheaper, standardized hardware that could run multipler operating systems.
Seriously, this post should be quoted in Wikipedia as a perfect example of a troll.
1.5 is much faster than Firefox 1.0. It seems identical in speed to Deer Park Alpha 2. Of course still much slower than Opera. It was about 30% slower on BenchJS on my old P3-1.2 GHz laptop.
You don't seem to understand how laws and legal precedents work. Let's say that you reverse engineer AIM. Now let's say that AIM's EULA includes provisions against reverse engineering. Now let's say that AOL sues you. When a judge looks at the rulings bnetd they won't consider that "at the heart of it all it's about piracy." Yes that was the motivation for Blizzard suing, but it had nothing to do with their legal position. Their position was validated by their EULA. So that is all that could be considered in our hypothetical AOL lawsuit. Thus legal precedence would dictate that AOL would win and your reverse engineering of AIM would be illegal. It doesn't matter if AOL was harmed in any way, they don't have to prove that. All they have to prove is that their EULA said you can't reverse engineered, you agreed to the EULA, and that you reverse engineered. That's enough. And that's why this case is about so much more than piracy.
Did you read the ruling at all? The ruling was not based on bnetd promoting/assisting/whatever pirated software. It had nothing to do with pirated software at all. It was all about reverse engineering, stating that user had willingly given up their right to reverse engineer when they accepted the EULA. Have you read AIM or MS Office's EULA? Does it include provisions against reverse engineering?
You guys are both wrong. It's not the method that matters, it's the people. Good software engineering is the key in either system, and neither system is perfect for all situations.
The key to agile programming is being able to actually handle massive requirement changes. I'm talking about the kind of requirement changes where all of those precious unit tests and acceptance tests you wrote get invalidated overnight. If your requirement changes are more minimal, then they're not going to be a problem with either method. They key to being able to handle massive requirements changes is good software design. Excessive coupling between components means that when one component becomes worthless (because of said changes) its hard to salvage other components that are still valuable because they are too tied to the deprecated component. Without good software design, agile programming won't help in the worst case scenario. This is especially important for agile programming, because its approach increases the likelihood of the worst case scenario.
Now I will say that a waterfall approach leads to several bad practices. First, it leads to a mythical man-month type of fallacy. Management tends to think that because of all the documentation present that they can manipulate "resources" like pawns in a game of chess. Second, it encourages bad design because you think you know everything. Third, and this is the worst to me, it gives false value to low value assets, i.e. people who don't actually produce anything. When a company values its process more than its employees, then it winds up hiring lots of people whose only function is to manage the process. Of course this is not unique to waterfall companies, but their emphasis on process does encourage this.
Agile programming also encourages several bad things. It encourages the over-valuing of development and under-valuing of design. I've often seen programmers with the attitude that's ok to build something that sucks because they will make it better in the future. Second, it tends to encourage overly-conservative programming. Its faster cycles discourages tasks that don't easily fit into these shorter cycles.
Of course the biggest limitation of agile programming comes from its roots. It clearly shows its consulting roots with its need for customer involvement. The kind of customer involvement it wants is very expensive for the customer (if we're talking enterprise software, maybe it's cheaper for consumer software.) If the customer is already paying you to build the software, then they might be willing to make this investment. If instead the customer is only a potential customer who might buy the software when it's done, then they are much less likely to make such a large investment.
You are mostly right, except your point about China. My company outsources to both India and China, mostly for QA work but also for some maintenance programming. Of course programming is more expensive than QA work. However, Chineese programming is still cheaper than Indian QA. Of course I think the main reason for this is your point #2. All of our Indian resources speak pretty good English, but that is not true of the Chineese ones. So if a project is more or less self-contained, then we send it to China. If it is something more collaborative (which is usually the case), we send it to India.
The company I work for now saw a lot of people leave starting in 2004 and continuing this year. We also hired more people and saw overall salaries increase both in 2004 and 2005, based on merit. We actually did a lose two people to Google and one person to Yahoo. We also hired some people from IBM and Yahoo, and several people who had been at PeopleSoft, were retained by Oracle, but didn't like it and split after a few months there. So all in all, it seems like a healthy market to me, but I don't think Google has had that much to do with it.
Well then you shouldn't take this drug if/when it becomes available! Pretty simple, right?
Now there will be people who do want to use this. Certainly some professions like the military, doctors, truck drivers, rescue workers, air traffic controllers, etc. will find this useful. And just imagine combining a supply of this stuff with an offshore programming facility...
France Telecom is a government backed monopoly.
- The government forces me out of business by selling the same product I am selling, but by giving people no choice about by charging them through their taxes.
- The government forces me out of business by forcing me to sell to places where I will lose money.
- The government forces me to sell to places where I will lose money, but they subsidize me so that I can stay in business. They do this by forcing all taxpayers to pay for my subsidies.
Maybe you're not bothered by the first two choices because you dehumanize anybody who is in business to make a profit. You have no problems using force against "fat cat corporations."Maybe you're not bothered by the last choice. It's the government doing what's best for the people right? Maybe you think the government can make this decision, that all people should pay a tax to allow all people to have broadband access.
In either case, think about this consequence. Imagine two years later there is some new technology that allows for better, cheaper broadband access. In any of the three cases listed above, the government will have to support this new technology or otherwise it will not have a chance. In all the three cases above, there will be powerful vested interests in keeping the status quo.
In a free market, such a superior technology will surely win out. In a "progressive" market like you want, it might win out, but it might not. One can simply look at the history of telecom in the US and Europe and see many cases where such a technology either did not win out, or it took decades longer than it should have for it to win out because of government regulated markets.
If you don't think that the service you receive is worth what you are paying for it, then why are you paying it? If it's not worth it, then don't pay for it. Of course if it was the government that was providing this service and you were paying for it with your tax dollars, then you would have no choice.
However I would say that the inferior service you receive is worth the higher price because you are paying for it. It's just frustrating to you that better service might be available in a larger city at a lower price. Well that is one of the tradeoffs you make when you live somewhere rural. Here's a news flash for you, a small house in a city costs a lot more than a big house in a rural area. So should people living in small houses in cities demand that the government do something about this? After all they are paying more for an inferior product.
If there were enough of you that were willing to pay enough then somebody would supply it because they would make money supplying it to you. So if nobody is supplying it to you, then should we conclude A.) They're evil companies who would rather screw over rural America than make money or B.) There is not enough demand in rural America to make it profitable for them to sell there? Maybe you think Option A is correct, but if it is Option B, then don't ask for my tax dollars to fix the problem.
So you're saying that if I wanted to start selling DSL in France that I could do it without paying France Telecom?
Please note that I am not actually claiming that $100/month in this guy's taxes is going towards broadband subsidization in France. I am simply stating that there is some extra tax cost to pay for the government subsidized monopoly.
Amen brother. Broadband should only be found in places where there are enough people with enough money and demand to make it wortwhile for suppliers to provide it. Nobody should "force" suppliers to provide broadband to rural areas or low income areas. That's not freedom, that's coercion. Similarly, I don't want to pay for broadband to be provided to rural and low income areas. I pay for it to be provided to my house. I don't want my money to be used to subsidize it for others. If other countries want to do these things, who cares? Not me. I don't want to be involved in a pissing for distance contest over broadband penetration, especially since it would be my tax dollars that would have to pay for it.
Update on compatibility... A number of sites that check for version number have issues. Yahoo! Mail gives you a warning and only lets you use an older version of the site. GMail automatically gives you the "old browser" version of their site. A product we use internally at my business from Rational (IBM) completely refuses to deal with IE7. It looks like MS did not put the version number in the user agent string?
Sounds like there's no upgrade from XP option as of yet? Can anyone confirm this? I guess that will definitely keep in the hands of developers or other power users who know all about dual-booting (or can dedicate a machine to it.) Probably harder to discover software compatibility bugs, like the many that plagued XP SP2. I was thinking about installing it at home, but have a strong suspicion that it won't work with my old Belkin PCI wireless card, thus making it not worth the effort of dual booting that machine.
I've been using Deer Park alpha 1 for awhile, and it is a great upgrade. Significant speed increase. Pages using AJAX, like GMail, really show a big difference in responsiveness. I actually installed it on my home computer, because Firefox was being very unstable for my wife. She only has one extension installed (User Agent Switcher) but it still became very unstable with about five crashes per week. Deer Park has had zero crashes with the same extension installed, despite its alpha-1 status. I look forward to the feature complete beta. Hopefully its extra features won't slow it down.