>> Is that quote laughable? Or has the software development industry stabilized to an off-the-self commodity?"
The article makes a tremendous mis-assumption that Computer Science and all software development is only about business software apps.
For example, my job is to develop avionics software that flies in large aircraft. Anyone suggesting we could replace our custom software with off-the-shelf packages would be asking to have their brain examined. For example, would you even get on a plane if you knew the flight controls used any Microsoft software? Not me...
Sensible world of soccer? Super Mario 3? WTF? These are much less cultural icons than Adventure, Space Invaders, Pacman, Donkey Kong, Unreal and many other games.
as the speed of sound through water is not a constant, but is affected by water temperature. Furthermore you can't presume the water temperature is constantly the same as the temperature of that measured outside the sub, as the temperature of the sea is not constant and the sea has transient thermal layers, which themselves reflect sound at the boundaries.
Is that the only reason Gates/Microsoft are behind this is to getting Microsoft products (only) and Microsoft brainwashing into the up-coming generation of engineers and managers, just to further strengthen the Microsoft monopoly.
Can anyone who actually goes to these MS-funded schools tell me how Linux or opensource software are viewed (or ignored) there and if they are even allowed to use it on campus?
I don't want to be charged extra to be able to plug in an iPod I don't have.
It wouldn't be so bad if it really was just a standard aux socket, but some car manufacturers are actually providing ipod-specific docking sockets which are useless if you happen to have any other player.
Your logic is faulty. Its true Great Education != Great Teachers but Poor Education absolutely == Bad Teachers.
Its not enough to have a general skill in teaching but know nothing about the subject you're meant to be teaching. Its perfectly valid to hire teachers at a pay rate based on their education, then fire them if they demonstrate they don't do a good job of teaching it. Its called the Free-Market Economy.
They've made so many obviously crappy products, bodged workarounds and security leaks, I'm glad to see them go because I don't want to trust their equipment with my vote.
I just hope they fire all the staff that produced the voting systems instead of relocate them to their ATM products where they can do more harm as they clearly don't have a clue.
Having come to the US from the UK 5 years ago, one of the obvious differences I noticed is how seriously most people take religion in the US. Its also obvious how much radical christianity is rammed down your throat on TV here, especially in the bible belt, and how 'athiest' is now as much of dirty label as 'communist' was in the mcCarthy era.
I think this highlights cultural cause and effect much more than the likelyhood that its in our DNA somehow. If it was in our human makeup, then there wouldn't be such a difference between the UK and the US in this sense.
I can't help but wonder what the guy's motivation is to spend time developing something the size of an attache case with about the same processing power as a pocket calculator.
It will be relatively easy for them to find something in all that complexity that may possibly be to blame, then totally ignore the possibility that this really might be an unknown external influence.
This will reduce play time and therefore marginalize the big labels crapmercial pop music even more so that we get less of the same old bland diet of whichever talentless model they're currently trying to market.
There are many incredible bands that produce excellent music but don't get offered contracts because some bureaucrat like Simon Cowell with no musical ability and a very one-dimensional taste decides their image isn't right or whatever. Hopefully this will mean that internet radio will now only play indy stuff as its royalty-free. The benefit to us listeners is airplay of better and more original and varied music.
Lets hope this is a small step towards more musicians getting work because of their actual music, not their image or teen-marketability.
When will the MPAA realise their existing monopoly-based sales model doesn't work any more? They should do something innovative instead of trying to release pointless and unwanted variants of the old sales model.
I say this is pointless because anyone with a dvd burner and a subscription to netflix or blockbuster can already do more than this 'new concept' is offering. Furthermore they can still use standard media, and it probably costs a lot less per copy.
>> Theories include viruses, some type of fungus, poor bee nutrition, and pesticides."...or could it be those guys in Monsanto coveralls sneaking round the countryside with flamethrowers killing all the bees thay can find, so farmers have to buy GM crop seed?
This came along too quickly after the threat of a ban on their products for GE to have innovated this recently. So why did it take the threat of a ban on their products before GE made this technology available? Could it be that the cost of a tooling change was more important to them than our environment?
>> The standard UK means of communication with a submerged boat is VLF radio from a single massively secure shore transmitter. It is shore-to-ship only, and extremely low bandwidth (say 300 baud). Even this vanishingly thin, one-way, inaccessible pipe isn't always there, and it isn't directly connected to the sub's command system anyhow.
I can see it now. While at sea every PC suddenly displaying following message: TO CONTINUE PLEASE DOWNLOAD WINDOWS GENUINE ADVANTAGE AND AUTHENTICATE YOUR COPY OF WINDOWS AT MICROSOFT.COM.
>> but am able to put together computer models in C++, R (SPLUS), python, etc.
With all due repsect, people like you are a part of the problem. People that think that being able to hack code is the same as doing a good job.
It sounds like you are being paid for your banking/business skills, not your software development skills, which is fine. but please don't fool yourself that you can produce high-quality software. You will never produce software with the same quality as someone who was motivated to do a CS degree and who got the proper education. The fact that you didn't do a CS degree points to the fact that the subject didn't interest you as much as the subject you studied, or that you have enough training to even be aware of some of the issues.
How would you feel if you were going in for an operation by a surgeon who studied history of art but taught himself to be handy with a knife?
After the dot.com bust, there were a siginificant amount of unemployed programmers suddenly on the market place amd employers got used to paying artificially cheap salaries to programmers, who just took any offer to get a job.
The situation now is that employers have got used to cheap developers and now don't want to wake up and smell the coffee and pay us what we're really worth again, so the job is less attractive to those currently making career decisions. This actually benefits those of us who are already qualified/employed, as our value goes up further due to the ongoing shortage.
Its not hard to see that the next phase coming is a period of high developer turnover, as more enlightened companies offer more realistic salaries and attract developers from lower-paid companies.
Those companies that choose not to substantially increase their developers salaries will lose out by being forced to contract out. This will hurt most the companies that outsource to places like India as they consequently get further hurt by massive hidden costs due to large amounts of rework through the lack of quality in the resulting product, developers lack of cultural understanding of the product's market, lack of workable project management, and sharply rising salaries in India.
It always amazes me that employers consitently never can see the real hidden costs of letting their best developers walk out the door, and usually choose a path where they loose millions in rework and lost sales rather than increase salaries by a few thousand.
...there will now shortly be a new media format announced that supercedes blu-ray and HD-DVD.
Now that picture and audio quality is already better than humans can perceive, I wonder what new marketing bullshit feature they'll come up with this time to persuade the public they really need spend thousands more on yet newer hardware just because it has even more restrictive DRM and no bacwkard-compatability.
Look out for super ultra mega HD resolution media and players with 12.1 audio and smellyvision coming to your local store soon!
Slashdot Mirror
>> Is that quote laughable? Or has the software development industry stabilized to an off-the-self commodity?"
The article makes a tremendous mis-assumption that Computer Science and all software development is only about business software apps.
For example, my job is to develop avionics software that flies in large aircraft. Anyone suggesting we could replace our custom software with off-the-shelf packages would be asking to have their brain examined. For example, would you even get on a plane if you knew the flight controls used any Microsoft software? Not me...
Sensible world of soccer? Super Mario 3?
WTF?
These are much less cultural icons than Adventure, Space Invaders, Pacman, Donkey Kong, Unreal and many other games.
as the speed of sound through water is not a constant, but is affected by water temperature.
Furthermore you can't presume the water temperature is constantly the same as the temperature of that measured outside the sub, as the temperature of the sea is not constant and the sea has transient thermal layers, which themselves reflect sound at the boundaries.
Is that the only reason Gates/Microsoft are behind this is to getting Microsoft products (only) and Microsoft brainwashing into the up-coming generation of engineers and managers, just to further strengthen the Microsoft monopoly.
Can anyone who actually goes to these MS-funded schools tell me how Linux or opensource software are viewed (or ignored) there and if they are even allowed to use it on campus?
I don't want to be charged extra to be able to plug in an iPod I don't have.
It wouldn't be so bad if it really was just a standard aux socket, but some car manufacturers are actually providing ipod-specific docking sockets which are useless if you happen to have any other player.
Your logic is faulty. Its true Great Education != Great Teachers but Poor Education absolutely == Bad Teachers.
Its not enough to have a general skill in teaching but know nothing about the subject you're meant to be teaching. Its perfectly valid to hire teachers at a pay rate based on their education, then fire them if they demonstrate they don't do a good job of teaching it. Its called the Free-Market Economy.
Why anyone smart enough to buy a Mac and avoid Windows would then want to buy Office, especially when they can download OpenOffice for free.
They've made so many obviously crappy products, bodged workarounds and security leaks, I'm glad to see them go because I don't want to trust their equipment with my vote.
I just hope they fire all the staff that produced the voting systems instead of relocate them to their ATM products where they can do more harm as they clearly don't have a clue.
Having come to the US from the UK 5 years ago, one of the obvious differences I noticed is how seriously most people take religion in the US. Its also obvious how much radical christianity is rammed down your throat on TV here, especially in the bible belt, and how 'athiest' is now as much of dirty label as 'communist' was in the mcCarthy era.
I think this highlights cultural cause and effect much more than the likelyhood that its in our DNA somehow. If it was in our human makeup, then there wouldn't be such a difference between the UK and the US in this sense.
I can't help but wonder what the guy's motivation is to spend time developing something the size of an attache case with about the same processing power as a pocket calculator.
It will be relatively easy for them to find something in all that complexity that may possibly be to blame, then totally ignore the possibility that this really might be an unknown external influence.
This will reduce play time and therefore marginalize the big labels crapmercial pop music even more so that we get less of the same old bland diet of whichever talentless model they're currently trying to market.
There are many incredible bands that produce excellent music but don't get offered contracts because some bureaucrat like Simon Cowell with no musical ability and a very one-dimensional taste decides their image isn't right or whatever. Hopefully this will mean that internet radio will now only play indy stuff as its royalty-free. The benefit to us listeners is airplay of better and more original and varied music.
Lets hope this is a small step towards more musicians getting work because of their actual music, not their image or teen-marketability.
When will the MPAA realise their existing monopoly-based sales model doesn't work any more?
They should do something innovative instead of trying to release pointless and unwanted variants of the old sales model.
I say this is pointless because anyone with a dvd burner and a subscription to netflix or blockbuster can already do more than this 'new concept' is offering. Furthermore they can still use standard media, and it probably costs a lot less per copy.
Its not an issue if you don't give it internet access.
so?
If it already does what you need it to do, why worry about support?
this sends a stronger "Get a Clue" message to the US Patents office than they're used to ignoring.
having untied shoes on his feet would mean they would flap around making it harder for him to walk properly.
>> Theories include viruses, some type of fungus, poor bee nutrition, and pesticides." ...or could it be those guys in Monsanto coveralls sneaking round the countryside with flamethrowers killing all the bees thay can find, so farmers have to buy GM crop seed?
Nintendo are funding them
This came along too quickly after the threat of a ban on their products for GE to have innovated this recently.
So why did it take the threat of a ban on their products before GE made this technology available?
Could it be that the cost of a tooling change was more important to them than our environment?
is how much its going to cost them in lost sales through pissing off customers by keeping DRM.
>> The standard UK means of communication with a submerged boat is VLF radio from a single massively secure shore transmitter. It is shore-to-ship only, and extremely low bandwidth (say 300 baud). Even this vanishingly thin, one-way, inaccessible pipe isn't always there, and it isn't directly connected to the sub's command system anyhow.
I can see it now. While at sea every PC suddenly displaying following message:
TO CONTINUE PLEASE DOWNLOAD WINDOWS GENUINE ADVANTAGE AND AUTHENTICATE YOUR COPY OF WINDOWS AT MICROSOFT.COM.
>> but am able to put together computer models in C++, R (SPLUS), python, etc.
With all due repsect, people like you are a part of the problem. People that think that being able to hack code is the same as doing a good job.
It sounds like you are being paid for your banking/business skills, not your software development skills, which is fine. but please don't fool yourself that you can produce high-quality software. You will never produce software with the same quality as someone who was motivated to do a CS degree and who got the proper education. The fact that you didn't do a CS degree points to the fact that the subject didn't interest you as much as the subject you studied, or that you have enough training to even be aware of some of the issues.
How would you feel if you were going in for an operation by a surgeon who studied history of art but taught himself to be handy with a knife?
After the dot.com bust, there were a siginificant amount of unemployed programmers suddenly on the market place amd employers got used to paying artificially cheap salaries to programmers, who just took any offer to get a job.
The situation now is that employers have got used to cheap developers and now don't want to wake up and smell the coffee and pay us what we're really worth again, so the job is less attractive to those currently making career decisions. This actually benefits those of us who are already qualified/employed, as our value goes up further due to the ongoing shortage.
Its not hard to see that the next phase coming is a period of high developer turnover, as more enlightened companies offer more realistic salaries and attract developers from lower-paid companies.
Those companies that choose not to substantially increase their developers salaries will lose out by being forced to contract out. This will hurt most the companies that outsource to places like India as they consequently get further hurt by massive hidden costs due to large amounts of rework through the lack of quality in the resulting product, developers lack of cultural understanding of the product's market, lack of workable project management, and sharply rising salaries in India.
It always amazes me that employers consitently never can see the real hidden costs of letting their best developers walk out the door, and usually choose a path where they loose millions in rework and lost sales rather than increase salaries by a few thousand.
...there will now shortly be a new media format announced that supercedes blu-ray and HD-DVD.
Now that picture and audio quality is already better than humans can perceive, I wonder what new marketing bullshit feature they'll come up with this time to persuade the public they really need spend thousands more on yet newer hardware just because it has even more restrictive DRM and no bacwkard-compatability.
Look out for super ultra mega HD resolution media and players with 12.1 audio and smellyvision coming to your local store soon!