Very funny, but Roddenberry's corpse would probably do a better job directing than Shatner.
The problem with Star Trek is that the premise is tired. Dick and Dorothy Seaton have conquered the Chlorans, there's nothing left to do.
I'd like to see someone like Neal Stephenson come up with a videoverse that's more interesting. How about it, bud? Stop living in the fucking past and give us some more of that craaaaaazy future.
You know what? Forget Grandma. Spending all this effort on a desktop that, quite frankly, looks like the worst goddamn thing I've ever imagined myself using, is a huge waste of effort.
My grandma, an intelligent woman, can't use the remote, can't use the VCR, can't use email, and sometimes can't even turn on the TV, despite hours of patient training and careful organization of screen icons, remotes, and so forth. Don't waste your time.
If all this effort was spent on a new way to think about file systems and file organizations, maybe we'd get somewhere. I'd like to see the open source community out-Longhorn Longhorn, for example, before the goddamn thing even shows up. I've always thought a relational or cross-indexing metaphor works best anyway. We abandoned hierarchies in the 70's, for chrissakes, when we dropped CODASYL on its ass.
Another password hack that works: take an old telephone number that you still remember (like that of your first girlfriend) and move it down to the home row. (A) it types really fast, (B) it's really hard for someone to see what keys you're hitting, and (C) it's unguessable.
Unfortunately nobody here HAS an old girlfriend, so maybe it's the number of the D&D Master, or something.
Nice point, what was the vendor supposed to do? Invite all their customers to a secret club meeting where the club handshake and the club password is needed to get in the door, and the patch is handed out by invitation only?
I guess another plan would have been to disguise the patch inside an "update" that modified a lot of the rest of the code, making it harder for the script kiddies to latch onto the key changes.
Maybe we are heading toward an era in which patches are issued in encrypted form, and special top secret super duper decrypto modules are the only mechanisms that can unpack and install the patch. Still would have to change a lot of unrelated stuff, though, because the crackers will have dumped core previously in preparation for a diff.
That's certainly true, but the "usual problems" can be mitigated with careful thought and good design. I've built lots of software from inadequate specifications. It's possible to do a good job if you take the time to understand the problem domain, even if the specification is poor or nonexistent.
Neither of the following examples involved me, but I was an interested contemporaneous observer of both.
Case study #1: Web application (buying portal). The app was designed with J2EE tools, and the Architect allowed the tools to automagically generate the schema that supported the app. Problem: The Architect did not consider that reports would need to be generated from the schema, some day. When it came time to write them, the task was horrific and nearly impossible, and the team almost failed. Who is guilty, management, for not specifying all the reports up front, or the architect, for not anticipating the need for reporting? The Architect, of course, blamed management; management, naturally, blamed the Architect.
Case study #2: A very arge commercial bank wanted a system for loan portfolio analysis. The Architect endured management displeasure over his long-ish timeline by designing a pseudo-language first, in which the team ultimately wrote the portfolio analysis package. The Architect did this because he envisioned massive downstream changes to the specification. Numerous changes to the specification then occurred over a two-year period, just as the Architect had predicted. Result: The Architect's company pocketed huge sums by bidding half of what the competition bid on the same project, and incurring almost zero cost, because the pseudo-language changes were so trivial to make.
You think Question 6 is unanswerable, later on it gets worse, and it ends up twisting you into categories where you don't belong. I had no choice but to bail before finishing. I claim the results will be uninterpretable.
Your idea about insulating Finance from the rest of the company (or forcing them to VNC into some Windows server) is interesting. The conceptual problem I've always had with such suggestions is the viral nature of office applications. If Finance is using Excel, then how do they share their results with Operations?
In support of your point of view, Calc does have a version of pivot tables, and it does have Basic macros. You are also correct that not many Excel models have heavy dependencies on VBA, and those few that do can probably be converted. I'd like to hear a first-person account, though, from a power user, on how difficult it was to convert over. Do you have any links to offer?
The case for replacing Word is much clearer, I think. I've used Write heavily, and it works fine. It has a few minor glitches, and they are frustrating, but so what, Word 2000 has plenty of glitches, too -- in fact yesterday I got so mad at the bugs in its outline view that I may dump it for good.
My little company tries to make money selling software, but I'll tell you what, I sure can't afford to shoulder liability for our mistakes. If you make me liable, I'm out of business. You use my software at your own risk, and if for some reason it becomes impossible for me to say that to you, I'm through.
The other thing that makes me laugh is "indemnification." I'm running around "indemnifying" multi-billion dollar corporations against lawsuits from people who might claim that our code violates their patents or their intellectual property. If I refuse to sign the indemnification clause, I don't get their business, it's as simple as that.
Obviously, one nuisance lawsuit from some asshole somewhere means that I'm finished. Probably they'll come after my personal property, too, and I'll die penniless in some gutter. What can I do? I'm screwed.
It's time to reform the whole goddamn tort system, because I can tell you, it's really no fun at all out here, trying to sell software, when who knows what jackass is going to emerge from some closet somewhere and claim to have patented the "if" statement.
Welcome to the insanity. Move your money to the Cook Islands while you still can. Me, I don't have enough to bother at this point.
I can't totally prove it, because I can't tell which of about 3 different MS patches did the dirty deed, and I'm not particularly interested in de-installing them to hunt down the issue, but over the course of about six weeks my HP printer (officejet v40) driver software rotted and died. Re-installing the driver software didn't help at all, same symptoms. I don't use the device that much, so it's impossible to pinpoint exactly when the driver got hosed up. I do know that I didn't install anything else during that time.
I had to de-install the HP software, and I'm now running with the default MS drivers, which are actually better than the HP drivers (only downside, if you can call it a downside, is that The Gimp is now my scanner interface).
So, yeah, I'd say these updates definitely break stuff. I always cross my fingers and pray they don't break anything important. Sooner or later, though, I know I'll be screwed in some important way, it's just a matter of when.
My United States and EU customers are accountants and finance types who are Windows business users. I can assure you that pretty much all they care about is running Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
In order to be credible to business users like these people, a Linux desktop has to support those core products. That won't ever happen, at least to anyone's complete satisfaction, because Microsoft will make sure that it is as difficult as possible to run its Office products on anything other than a Windows platform. Whether they use licensing, "undocumented" API tricks, or some other mechanism to make this true, is just a detail. Pick one.
Converting to Star Office or Open Office isn't an option for the business user, because the macro languages and the products aren't compatible enough. These are power users. They use ALL the Excel features -- macros, VBA, pivot tables, etc. You can't just ask them to convert to something much less capable (and potentially incompatible with models that have years of effort invested in them).
The bottom line is that Microsoft has to be split up before their stranglehold on the business user can be broken. The Office products division needs to be an independent company. What independent Office products company, looking at a crystal ball right now, wouldn't produce a Linux version? Only one owned by Microsoft. So as long as Microsoft controls the business application user, Linux can't supplant Windows on the business desktop.
To my mind, this is the most important reason why Microsoft needs to be broken into pieces. Perhaps someday an appeals court will agree.
Unfortunately, Wal-Mart can't build the road in a Libertarian paradise, because there will be some farmer somewhere who refuses to sell his back 40 to make room for the highway. Because we're Libertarians, his property rights argument trumps our eminent-domain argument.
By the way, isn't Wal-Mart *almost* one of the monopolies that's in the process of being created? It has already put a large number of supermarkets out of business, and is about to drive the rest of them under as well. Soon, if you want Pop-Tarts, you'll be driving to Wal-Mart. There won't be any alternative.
As far as your IBM example is concerned, I'm old enough to remember when IBM was the big bad monopolist, back in the 70's. You couldn't escape the bastards. They refused to publish specs on their hardware, or published bad specs, so third-party peripheral hardware vendors couldn't compete -- basically they played very dirty indeed (sound familiar?) It was only after they were sued by Uncle Sam for anti-trust violations -- seriously sued -- that they had to start keeping their noses clean and play fair. Everyone caught a huge break at that point. But it was grim for a while, very grim.
OK, I'll take up the gauntlet, although this isn't intended as a flame.
The problem with Libertarians is that they assume that things will get done "just because." If a bridge ought to exist over a river, then someone will build the bridge and charge others to cross it; Libertarians reason that if the bridge can't pay for itself, then it shouldn't exist, and nobody will build it, and that's fine, QED.
In reality, I suspect that very little along these lines would get done at all. People are far too selfish and too short-sighted to build selflessly for the future. The interstate highway system would never exist. For that matter, neither would the US highway system that preceded it. Or the state highway system. And, it takes a lot of years to pay back an interstate highway construction project, even if you do collect tolls. Who has the capital to do that? Nobody.
Oh, sure, people will get together, pool their resources, blah blah blah. If we only enforced property rights, polluters could never get away with polluting blah blah blah. I love Libertarians. Everything has an easy answer. Let's give guns to children, then Columbine would never have happened (I heard this argument at a dinner party, from a former Libertarian candidate for president).
Like government or hate it, there is a need for government, so there's a need for taxes to support it. Someone/something had to stop Standard Oil, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and the Union Pacific Railroad, before they screwed us all. I can hear the Libertarians yelling in the background: "Government CAUSES monopolies! Monopolies buy government influence!" Sure, maybe. But no capitalist would refute the essential truth that the ultimate outcome of unrestricted capitalism is monopoly. SOMEONE WILL WIN IN EVERY MARKET. Then what? Then you need government to smash the monopoly so we can start over. Isn't working too well at the moment with Microsoft, but wait a few years. Didn't happen overnight with Standard Oil, either.
They can do what they like, patent-wise, but they can't kill Linux. The genie is out of the bottle. The Chinese, the Indians, the Russians, and the rest of the world (with the possible exception of the EU) will never bend over for any wacky patent or copyright claims from McNealy and Gates.
I can see the Chinese giggling right now. They've been copying MS disks for years and distributing them for free, despite government lip service RE shutting the counterfeiters down. Now the West is going to step on its own dick by restricting intellectual ideas? Great, say the Chinese, let us know how else we can eat your lunch, you stupid motherfuckers.
Linux development will continue unchecked. If Linux is stopped in the US and EU, so what. The rest of the world will continue merrily on. So fuck you, Bill, and fuck you, Scott. Enjoy the cash while you can, because the end of the story is being written, and you won't make it to the last chapter.
Yeah, don't you love Maher -- welcome to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, where health care is apparently an option and safety nets are non-existent.
But I'm glad you care about the quality of your work.
When I offshored a chunk of work from the US to India -- mostly because the group I inherited had (a) fucked up by the numbers, blown $15M, and produced nothing; and (b) couldn't code their way out of a paper bag even when properly managed -- quality went up, not down.
No outsourcing would have occurred had this group been able to produce. We threw out hundreds of thousands of lines of code. All worthless. We didn't have time to recruit locally, and we couldn't get the $15M back. Offshoring saved the company.
Your boss should care -- very much -- about the quality of your work. I would seriously think about changing jobs if s/he doesn't.
Although I wish both of you could spell the word "compromise," this is actually an interesting point. Many security experts think that compromising "tier one" is "OK," because (to them) it means that the "big database" on some other server is still secure. Um, no. If I control your front end, I have you by the nuts, it's only a matter of how much information I decide to extract.
No, I've seen this kind of sissy fight before. Believe me, the "rules of engagement" were purely electronic. They were probably arguing that they didn't want any "disruptions" of their service. Now they have a big disruption shoved right up their asses, well-deservedly so IMO.
Re:Polluting other planets
on
Melting Europa
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· Score: 1
No, no, no. He should have run for the hills immediately. Gone to the john and never came back. Slipped out the other side of the cab. Got the hell away as fast as his nerdly legs could carry him.
Any kind of relationship with a nut case is dangerous, because nutty on one point means nutty on all points. Next thing you know, "God" would have instructed her to ram a chopstick through his left eyeball.
The cage is turning but the hamster is dead. Keep your distance.
Slashdot Mirror
But anyway, you should just be creating PNGs anyway.
Anyway I would PNGs but anyway IE doesn't display them properly so anyway I can't use them anyway.
Um, it's called "irony." See, you take this really old and shitty sci-fi epic, and you compare it to the... never mind.
Very funny, but Roddenberry's corpse would probably do a better job directing than Shatner.
The problem with Star Trek is that the premise is tired. Dick and Dorothy Seaton have conquered the Chlorans, there's nothing left to do.
I'd like to see someone like Neal Stephenson come up with a videoverse that's more interesting. How about it, bud? Stop living in the fucking past and give us some more of that craaaaaazy future.
You know what? Forget Grandma. Spending all this effort on a desktop that, quite frankly, looks like the worst goddamn thing I've ever imagined myself using, is a huge waste of effort.
My grandma, an intelligent woman, can't use the remote, can't use the VCR, can't use email, and sometimes can't even turn on the TV, despite hours of patient training and careful organization of screen icons, remotes, and so forth. Don't waste your time.
If all this effort was spent on a new way to think about file systems and file organizations, maybe we'd get somewhere. I'd like to see the open source community out-Longhorn Longhorn, for example, before the goddamn thing even shows up. I've always thought a relational or cross-indexing metaphor works best anyway. We abandoned hierarchies in the 70's, for chrissakes, when we dropped CODASYL on its ass.
Hilarious. Thanks for making my morning!
Another password hack that works: take an old telephone number that you still remember (like that of your first girlfriend) and move it down to the home row. (A) it types really fast, (B) it's really hard for someone to see what keys you're hitting, and (C) it's unguessable.
Unfortunately nobody here HAS an old girlfriend, so maybe it's the number of the D&D Master, or something.
I did, and still missed it. Sigh. Must be age.
Nice point, what was the vendor supposed to do? Invite all their customers to a secret club meeting where the club handshake and the club password is needed to get in the door, and the patch is handed out by invitation only?
I guess another plan would have been to disguise the patch inside an "update" that modified a lot of the rest of the code, making it harder for the script kiddies to latch onto the key changes.
Maybe we are heading toward an era in which patches are issued in encrypted form, and special top secret super duper decrypto modules are the only mechanisms that can unpack and install the patch. Still would have to change a lot of unrelated stuff, though, because the crackers will have dumped core previously in preparation for a diff.
Perfect! I love this site. Check out C. J. Date's demolition of UML. ROTFL.
That's certainly true, but the "usual problems" can be mitigated with careful thought and good design. I've built lots of software from inadequate specifications. It's possible to do a good job if you take the time to understand the problem domain, even if the specification is poor or nonexistent.
Neither of the following examples involved me, but I was an interested contemporaneous observer of both.
Case study #1: Web application (buying portal). The app was designed with J2EE tools, and the Architect allowed the tools to automagically generate the schema that supported the app. Problem: The Architect did not consider that reports would need to be generated from the schema, some day. When it came time to write them, the task was horrific and nearly impossible, and the team almost failed. Who is guilty, management, for not specifying all the reports up front, or the architect, for not anticipating the need for reporting? The Architect, of course, blamed management; management, naturally, blamed the Architect.
Case study #2: A very arge commercial bank wanted a system for loan portfolio analysis. The Architect endured management displeasure over his long-ish timeline by designing a pseudo-language first, in which the team ultimately wrote the portfolio analysis package. The Architect did this because he envisioned massive downstream changes to the specification. Numerous changes to the specification then occurred over a two-year period, just as the Architect had predicted. Result: The Architect's company pocketed huge sums by bidding half of what the competition bid on the same project, and incurring almost zero cost, because the pseudo-language changes were so trivial to make.
You think Question 6 is unanswerable, later on it gets worse, and it ends up twisting you into categories where you don't belong. I had no choice but to bail before finishing. I claim the results will be uninterpretable.
Good survey design is difficult. Very difficult.
Your idea about insulating Finance from the rest of the company (or forcing them to VNC into some Windows server) is interesting. The conceptual problem I've always had with such suggestions is the viral nature of office applications. If Finance is using Excel, then how do they share their results with Operations?
In support of your point of view, Calc does have a version of pivot tables, and it does have Basic macros. You are also correct that not many Excel models have heavy dependencies on VBA, and those few that do can probably be converted. I'd like to hear a first-person account, though, from a power user, on how difficult it was to convert over. Do you have any links to offer?
The case for replacing Word is much clearer, I think. I've used Write heavily, and it works fine. It has a few minor glitches, and they are frustrating, but so what, Word 2000 has plenty of glitches, too -- in fact yesterday I got so mad at the bugs in its outline view that I may dump it for good.
My little company tries to make money selling software, but I'll tell you what, I sure can't afford to shoulder liability for our mistakes. If you make me liable, I'm out of business. You use my software at your own risk, and if for some reason it becomes impossible for me to say that to you, I'm through.
The other thing that makes me laugh is "indemnification." I'm running around "indemnifying" multi-billion dollar corporations against lawsuits from people who might claim that our code violates their patents or their intellectual property. If I refuse to sign the indemnification clause, I don't get their business, it's as simple as that.
Obviously, one nuisance lawsuit from some asshole somewhere means that I'm finished. Probably they'll come after my personal property, too, and I'll die penniless in some gutter. What can I do? I'm screwed.
It's time to reform the whole goddamn tort system, because I can tell you, it's really no fun at all out here, trying to sell software, when who knows what jackass is going to emerge from some closet somewhere and claim to have patented the "if" statement.
Welcome to the insanity. Move your money to the Cook Islands while you still can. Me, I don't have enough to bother at this point.
I can't totally prove it, because I can't tell which of about 3 different MS patches did the dirty deed, and I'm not particularly interested in de-installing them to hunt down the issue, but over the course of about six weeks my HP printer (officejet v40) driver software rotted and died. Re-installing the driver software didn't help at all, same symptoms. I don't use the device that much, so it's impossible to pinpoint exactly when the driver got hosed up. I do know that I didn't install anything else during that time.
I had to de-install the HP software, and I'm now running with the default MS drivers, which are actually better than the HP drivers (only downside, if you can call it a downside, is that The Gimp is now my scanner interface).
So, yeah, I'd say these updates definitely break stuff. I always cross my fingers and pray they don't break anything important. Sooner or later, though, I know I'll be screwed in some important way, it's just a matter of when.
My United States and EU customers are accountants and finance types who are Windows business users. I can assure you that pretty much all they care about is running Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
In order to be credible to business users like these people, a Linux desktop has to support those core products. That won't ever happen, at least to anyone's complete satisfaction, because Microsoft will make sure that it is as difficult as possible to run its Office products on anything other than a Windows platform. Whether they use licensing, "undocumented" API tricks, or some other mechanism to make this true, is just a detail. Pick one.
Converting to Star Office or Open Office isn't an option for the business user, because the macro languages and the products aren't compatible enough. These are power users. They use ALL the Excel features -- macros, VBA, pivot tables, etc. You can't just ask them to convert to something much less capable (and potentially incompatible with models that have years of effort invested in them).
The bottom line is that Microsoft has to be split up before their stranglehold on the business user can be broken. The Office products division needs to be an independent company. What independent Office products company, looking at a crystal ball right now, wouldn't produce a Linux version? Only one owned by Microsoft. So as long as Microsoft controls the business application user, Linux can't supplant Windows on the business desktop.
To my mind, this is the most important reason why Microsoft needs to be broken into pieces. Perhaps someday an appeals court will agree.
Unfortunately, Wal-Mart can't build the road in a Libertarian paradise, because there will be some farmer somewhere who refuses to sell his back 40 to make room for the highway. Because we're Libertarians, his property rights argument trumps our eminent-domain argument.
By the way, isn't Wal-Mart *almost* one of the monopolies that's in the process of being created? It has already put a large number of supermarkets out of business, and is about to drive the rest of them under as well. Soon, if you want Pop-Tarts, you'll be driving to Wal-Mart. There won't be any alternative.
As far as your IBM example is concerned, I'm old enough to remember when IBM was the big bad monopolist, back in the 70's. You couldn't escape the bastards. They refused to publish specs on their hardware, or published bad specs, so third-party peripheral hardware vendors couldn't compete -- basically they played very dirty indeed (sound familiar?) It was only after they were sued by Uncle Sam for anti-trust violations -- seriously sued -- that they had to start keeping their noses clean and play fair. Everyone caught a huge break at that point. But it was grim for a while, very grim.
OK, I'll take up the gauntlet, although this isn't intended as a flame.
The problem with Libertarians is that they assume that things will get done "just because." If a bridge ought to exist over a river, then someone will build the bridge and charge others to cross it; Libertarians reason that if the bridge can't pay for itself, then it shouldn't exist, and nobody will build it, and that's fine, QED.
In reality, I suspect that very little along these lines would get done at all. People are far too selfish and too short-sighted to build selflessly for the future. The interstate highway system would never exist. For that matter, neither would the US highway system that preceded it. Or the state highway system. And, it takes a lot of years to pay back an interstate highway construction project, even if you do collect tolls. Who has the capital to do that? Nobody.
Oh, sure, people will get together, pool their resources, blah blah blah. If we only enforced property rights, polluters could never get away with polluting blah blah blah. I love Libertarians. Everything has an easy answer. Let's give guns to children, then Columbine would never have happened (I heard this argument at a dinner party, from a former Libertarian candidate for president).
Like government or hate it, there is a need for government, so there's a need for taxes to support it. Someone/something had to stop Standard Oil, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and the Union Pacific Railroad, before they screwed us all. I can hear the Libertarians yelling in the background: "Government CAUSES monopolies! Monopolies buy government influence!" Sure, maybe. But no capitalist would refute the essential truth that the ultimate outcome of unrestricted capitalism is monopoly. SOMEONE WILL WIN IN EVERY MARKET. Then what? Then you need government to smash the monopoly so we can start over. Isn't working too well at the moment with Microsoft, but wait a few years. Didn't happen overnight with Standard Oil, either.
They can do what they like, patent-wise, but they can't kill Linux. The genie is out of the bottle. The Chinese, the Indians, the Russians, and the rest of the world (with the possible exception of the EU) will never bend over for any wacky patent or copyright claims from McNealy and Gates.
I can see the Chinese giggling right now. They've been copying MS disks for years and distributing them for free, despite government lip service RE shutting the counterfeiters down. Now the West is going to step on its own dick by restricting intellectual ideas? Great, say the Chinese, let us know how else we can eat your lunch, you stupid motherfuckers.
Linux development will continue unchecked. If Linux is stopped in the US and EU, so what. The rest of the world will continue merrily on. So fuck you, Bill, and fuck you, Scott. Enjoy the cash while you can, because the end of the story is being written, and you won't make it to the last chapter.
Yeah, don't you love Maher -- welcome to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, where health care is apparently an option and safety nets are non-existent.
But I'm glad you care about the quality of your work.
When I offshored a chunk of work from the US to India -- mostly because the group I inherited had (a) fucked up by the numbers, blown $15M, and produced nothing; and (b) couldn't code their way out of a paper bag even when properly managed -- quality went up, not down.
No outsourcing would have occurred had this group been able to produce. We threw out hundreds of thousands of lines of code. All worthless. We didn't have time to recruit locally, and we couldn't get the $15M back. Offshoring saved the company.
Your boss should care -- very much -- about the quality of your work. I would seriously think about changing jobs if s/he doesn't.
No, see, that would require real work and maybe writing some checks. The lawyers are already on the payroll.
Although I wish both of you could spell the word "compromise," this is actually an interesting point. Many security experts think that compromising "tier one" is "OK," because (to them) it means that the "big database" on some other server is still secure. Um, no. If I control your front end, I have you by the nuts, it's only a matter of how much information I decide to extract.
No, I've seen this kind of sissy fight before. Believe me, the "rules of engagement" were purely electronic. They were probably arguing that they didn't want any "disruptions" of their service. Now they have a big disruption shoved right up their asses, well-deservedly so IMO.
No they're not.
No, no, no. He should have run for the hills immediately. Gone to the john and never came back. Slipped out the other side of the cab. Got the hell away as fast as his nerdly legs could carry him.
Any kind of relationship with a nut case is dangerous, because nutty on one point means nutty on all points. Next thing you know, "God" would have instructed her to ram a chopstick through his left eyeball.
The cage is turning but the hamster is dead. Keep your distance.
So true. Just bought a gig from Crucial, Dell's price was 3X higher.