Most folks that I know use usb flash drives for backup and sneaker-net transfer. I wonder what the tranfer rate will be on this. Filling a 1G drive right now takes a fair while. If the transfer rates don't go up, having all that extra space doesn't really help you in a practical -I need to get this copy done and catch the bus in 10 minutes- kind of way.
To change would be a very poor bet because the risk is too high.
Think of it like this: each situation has exactly one drawback at this moment. Your current isn't as much fun as you want, while the other pays lower. However, the variables of the current situation are known, whereas the variables of the new situation are unknown.
If things go perfectly, it's a toss up whether you choose more money or more fun. However, things never go perfectly, and if any of the variables of the new situation go sour, your decision will become a bad one.
So, in my opinion, it's a bad bet. I wouldn't touch it and not regret the pass for a moment.
They just don't want scientists running around spouting off all kinds of ideas/theories only to result in the media latching on to these ideas as some sort of "official NASA position." The public is a fairly skittish beast,...
Right. That's what it's superficially about. One step down is the question of whether the public should be trusted in a democratic, free society. Now, I know lots of Chinese who claim that the People's Republic of China is a democratic, free society, and by their personal standards, they are correct. Many outside China see it otherwise.
The article is about asking what definition of "free" you want. Believing that the public is a "skittish beast" is a very divisive opinion.
Seriously, could someone explain to me why patterns are what is needed here? From my experience, user interface design takes a deep understanding of customer requirements. Applying patterns would seem (imo) like an entrapping short cut that ultimately would be a waste of time. Any thoughts?
Not with 3Dfx and QA, but with a consulting firm and a dev job. First thing I noticed when I walked into my prospective boss's office was that there was no whiteboard. So I asked my interviewer why I was being interviewed by a non-dev. He asked what made me think that, I tell him about the lack of whiteboard. It was the only interview I've ever done where the interviewer didn't have one. Well, he got quite defensive replying, "you never know, I might be a techie." Through the course of the interview, we discovered that he was not. Not surprisingly, I didn't get the job. But a friend of mine got it a week later and confirmed that this person was a complete market-droid, not a very good one at that, and had almost zero technical chops. The place laid my friend off 7 months later, and folder 2 months after that.
Yes. The funny thing about the linked to set of mp3s is that if you listen to the songs, they don't really do semantic cramming. There's acutally fairly little hard to remember content in there. As such, other than being an amusing novelty, I would say these songs are just about useless or worse, depending if the student gets distracted by the tune rather than linking it to the lyrics.
Besides, I happen to subscribe to the notion that it's one of a student's primary jobs to find their own ways to be interested in a subject. Reducing course material to infotainment does not help a student learn how to learn.
Best mouse/trackball I ever had and I would use it again in a heartbeat if I could just get scroll wheel functionality working. Do you know where I could get drivers for XP?
Yeah, I hear you. I remember thinking back when I as first learning calculus, "How did people come up with these theorems, let alone the proofs, in the first place?" At the time the teacher in question certainly didn't make that apparent!
But when you do get prof who 'wings it', you find out that math actually is one of the most flexible, creative games going. The only problem is, is that pure abstraction is just plain really, really hard if you're not naturally wired for it. And it takes a special kind of personality to really dig the aethestic involved.
In my case, I like using math, and it can be fun sometimes, but it's not compelling for me in any way. I guess what I'm saying is that math can be useful and fun, regardless of what type of person you are, but it doesn't have to be more than that.
The problem is finding a real mathmetician who can you show you the tactics and strategies that all the little rote stuff youv'e memorized gets plugged into. And the only way to do that is by watching one of these guys in action at a level that you're already equipped to handle. It's very intuitive. Unfortunately, at best, most people can only hope for profs that can explain the rote stuff clearly, and miss the real profit from it altogether.
While it's true that the "what" of what you learn in math isn't necessarily applicable to programming, the "how" definitely is. Watch any math teacher that wings it in coming up with proofs, and you'll see the exact same process at work as any comp sci teacher putting together an algorithm. Problem is, most teachers go by rote, so you never see any process at all. But once you understand that the process is the same, math becomes much more applicable.
Plus probability, number theory, and algebra are always useful; they just give you a boost that can't be faked.
The computer is a help, but it really shines if you also have a digital camera. Snapshotting whiteboards is great! (make sure the flash is off) Put a microphone on the lecturn and you can make a simple multimedia presentation of each lesson with almost zero effort. You should still take notes, but it can really help fill in the gaps when you re-read your scribbling and can't figure out what they h*ck the prof was talking about.
You're worried about a (sub) $1000 machine lasting more than two years? This a different situation than your 1994 experience. To answer your question, anyone in their right mind considering buying one, can safely ignore the junking issue.
If the machine costs $4000 - $5000, yeah we can start debating whether one should worry about fat-binaries carrying the PPC platform forward. After all, a high priced machine should meet the demands of software x years down the road. But if you're buying a mini or a iBook, you pretty much have said that you are not interested in forward demands because, regardless of processor manufacturer, they are the low end of the power range.
Just to be clear, high end machines have future proofing as part of the price, low end do not. This is true whether you build it yourself, buy it from Dell, or pick it up at the Apple Store.
In the low end case the issue then becomes, whether your current software will be supported going forward. Go read any book on sales and marketing. Existing customers are more valuable than new customers because they require less outlay. In short, fat-binaries for existing software makes a lot of sense, and those companies who don't produce them probably are on very shakey management to begin with. In future, your mini or iBook will be supported or not, but not on the basis of its CPU.
Buying PPC on the low end, today, is still a safe choice.
It's about your emotional state. If your computer is more fun to use, then you are more likely to enjoy your work, which in turn helps your productivity.
one way which is more efficient: (x & y) | (y & z) | (z & x)
another way which scales better for more terms: ((x ^ y ^ z) & (x | y | z)) | (x & y & z)
Hm, you really use that to figure out who's a good potential hire? I prefer to work with people who think clearly and do good design spontaneously.
As a recent hire candidate, I both loved and hated bit flipping questions. I loved them because they're easy and you get the warm fuzzy feeling for solving a problem. I hated them because it was a horrible task to try to reveal actual abilities that I cared about. I'm not an architect, but I yeared for an employer to give me good design questions.
Try this: ask them about how they would structure and design things framed in an area outside of their immediate area of expertise. See how they organize how they think. Bullshitters are easy to pick out as they will start giving shopping lists of ideas rather than bringing a structure to the problem at hand. Then move on to question which exercise technical job requirements.
Personally, I put less value on how well someone can do bit tricks or otherwise. Tricky thinking helps you in certain cases, for example debugging and working around broken models, but clear thinking makes the difference between heaven and hell at work.
Oh well, I'm rambling. I guess I wouldn't hire myself:-)
Not all art is self-flattering. Anyway, please explain how programming fits the actual definition of science, being:
"The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment."
Art is self-flattering? Absolutely not! I did not mean or imply that in any way. What is self flattery is when you call yourself an artist when you are not. For that matter, it self flattery when you call yourself anything that is admirable when you are not.
Fine, let's use the OED definition.
Depending on your definition of "natural", the definition of science that you have put forward may exclude all pure mathematics. However, I would strongly argue that the abstractions of mathematics is not so much created as discovered. That is, it would be observation of natural world. Computer science is a branch of mathematics. Programming can be applied computer science. Not all programming is, but some can be.
I would say that while programming, I perform computer science on a semi-regular basis. That is, I come up with variations on theoretical themes that fit the need at hand, and then I code them up. In a small way, I am not just playing with software lego blocks (well, that happens a lot of the time too), I am making discoveries. It's what makes programming tollerable over the years. Now, they're not contributed to the world, but they are small, rigorous discoveries about abstractions. It's still observation of the natural world, hence science.
Develop it, and make a fortune charging folks for access to your information!
Oh wait... no one in IT would pay. They'd yell "information wants to be free"!
Nevermind.
I realize you're being humorous, but to be serious for a moment, you're both right and wrong. Develop for the wrong market and getting money from people is more traumatic than pulling bones from living animals. (yeah, I'm a programmer) It's just plain hell. However, develop for the right market and people gladly spend money on your product or service.
For example, a service for unemployed people will likely be a hard sell because people don't want spend money while they don't have income. It's all about emotional state, and the unemployed are insecure. They will still buy things, but not something that is targeted at them because they don't have income. In any case, it's not clear what the emotional value of this service would be for said market.
Now, if you could target the friends and relatives of the unemployed, then you've got a market you can sell to. In this case you are selling help/aid/home-charity. Clear emotional value, and the problem can now move to the next step, which is marketing. How do you get message out to friends and relatives that if unemployed Joe only knew how much he could be making, then his life would be so much better?
This isn't a creative problem, it's market research. Talk to people that have unemployed relatives, and see if you can get them to think that giving your information would make things better. Find out what, if any, messages work. Then find out how they would want to give the information to start determining pricing and packaging.
But note, you haven't developed anything yet. If you didn't find an effective message, at least you haven't burned away too much time and living expenses. The last two steps are, 1) build a prototype, and 2) build a business plan. Now you're on your way to making a fortune charging folks for access to your information! It's not quick, easy, or without loads of risk, but realistically "information wants to be free" doesn't have to enter into the struggle.
And what good did any of this do for OS/2? I remember personally contacting ISVs to talk to them about porting their popular software to OS/2, and the answer I always got was "why, when it runs our Windows software so well?". They didn't care one whit about the desktop environment, or the fact that their Win13 and Win32s applications looked bad on OS/2, and ran worse than native applications, didn't integrate into the desktop environment, couldn't use long filenames, etc. They cared only about one thing: how do we target the largest possible market at the lowest cost?
Yes, what they said is all very well, but the truth of the matter is that there simply wasn't a customer demand for OS/2. At the time, Window was largely "free" in that it either came with your hardware or was readily pirated. Remember those were the days before license enforcement actually happened. Anyway, contrasting that to the price of OS/2 which was, I forget the exact figure, but in the ball-park of several hundred bucks, it's not hard to see why uptake on OS/2 was sluggish.
No customers, no ISVs. OS/2 lost on price alone. But unlike OS/2 vs. Windows, both OSX and Windows now cost, and there is an existing market for OSX. The battlefield today isn't cost, it's (some notion of) value. My gut feeling is that OSX is not going to go the OS/2 way primarily because Apple will bust it's blankity-blank to position itself as at least equal or better value to Windows.
In that sense, the move to Intel and the potential of Wine does just the opposite of what Windows support in OS/2 did. In OS/2 it provided an excuse for developers to ignore the platform even for the tiny market that was there and subsequently that market dwindled because of being ignored. What this really shows is that there wasn't a core market for OS/2 without the Windows support. But OSX is doing just fine without Windows. Now adding Wine adds value.
As long as the value of OSX without Windows support is still at the same as or better than the value of Windows, OSX will be healthier than it is today.
Amazing reasoning for quitting the 'project'. "I decided that C-OS is not worth the hassle, not now or in the future. C-OS went to work without brushing its teeth or taking a shower, it was not ready."
Apparently, he means that he couldn't dress up an open source project enough before violating the copyright. Strange justification for stopping. Or maybe his potential customer realized that they were dealing with a crook and the 'worth' evaporated.
Perhaps there's a shift in perception about coders and IP, such that companies are not asking to own you rather than your work for them. Or perhaps the place I work at just has a lot of O/S programmers. Don't know yet.
I just signed on with a mid-sized software company. The IP section of the contract was specifically set up to allow coders to keep working on their home projects. They had a list of requirements such as: don't use company time, equipment, IP, market advantage, and don't compete with their product. If you meet these requirements, then anything you write is basically yours, including if you want to give it away for free or sell it commercially. I didn't have to haggle with them at all. It was great.
Soil quality is a very big and very basic issue that no one talks about. Our agricultural fields are dying, folks. I'm sorry I'm only offering anecdotal evidence in this post, but I remember 20 years ago in southern Ontario seeing what crop yields were like and the difference today is bizarre. Fields that were then very fertile are now just gray dust. They suffer horribly from erosion and require huge amounts of chemical fertilizer to get a barely minimal yield.
These are not isolated, ignorant farmers who just plant corn. These farmers are doing their hardest to follow best practices and be competitve in the agri-industry, and honestly, they're still killing their land. Unless we make a big change in how soil quality is treated, our ability to produce food is going to take nose dive. It's simple.
And don't start on the vegetarianism rant. In North America, plant production with the overuse of petroleum based chemical fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides is what is killing soil - not grazing.
There is enough software in the world now to run for the next 10 years.
Ah yes. An interesting point of view that I personally do not share. Please do not take what I am about to say as an attack on you. I think you're point of view is widely held and I want to make an arguement against it, not on you.
I would hazard to say that in general most non-developers do share your opinion. In my experience with product development, users love to complain bitterly about the software they are using, point out all sorts of inconveniences, problems, and outright flaws. Then when you address their issues and provide them with a competitive alternative, they Stick With What They've Got. Even asking them if they would consider trying out an alternative, will usually only cause them to say no.
Having done presentations and conducted surveys for marketing and product design, I can assure you it's not because they are gun-shy about new bugs, compatibility, costs, training or any other rational argument you might have. Yes, these reasons come up, but the real reason that gets hammered home is that the new software is not what they already use. It's like going to the doctor, complaining about an ailment, and refusing treatment because you're not already taking it.
It's very frustrating. My personal guess why this happens is that their current software has broken its marketed promises and they are just disinclined to trust software promises again. Regardless of who the doctor is, medicine is medicine, and if the previous medicine didn't work, why should the new medicine be any better? In these days of hardball economics and broken promises, cynicism is easy. Well, this is just my guess.
But the reality is that software is not perfect for our needs, there are ailments, and solutions still need to be written. The saving grace that allows software companies to survive is that our market is big and volatile enough that your stated and widely held point of view doesn't bring things to a grinding halt. In effect, your newer competitors will have a leg up and prove you wrong.
I agree that there has been an avalanche of terrible ideas promoted as progress. But as a developer who believes in the notion that we can invent better ways of doing things, and that hope does not damn us, I think there is plenty of good, new software that should be written today.
Nice brain fart. You and the twits who moderated you up have confused the notion of a defacto application standard with an artificial file format standard. Which is to say, M$ doesn't have to be ISO compliant. Simply put, as long as your customers / business associates / other wing your of enterprise or government / grandmother use MSO, and OOo can't cut it for whatever reason, then you use MSO too. Then where's the motivation for M$ to be ISO compliant?
Look, if OOo works, then no-one's complaining. If it doesn't work, then you complain, but you also end up buying MSO. Now do you really think a bunch of whiney managers and admins, who buy MSO anyway, are going to make M$ change its mind so that they lose market share??? Uh, right. Future-proofing with an ISO standard is all nice and good, kind of like esperanto, but we actually have to communicate today. Standards, in the ISO sense, have nothing to do with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice toy for about 10 minutes. Boring results afterwards.
Most folks that I know use usb flash drives for backup and sneaker-net transfer. I wonder what the tranfer rate will be on this. Filling a 1G drive right now takes a fair while. If the transfer rates don't go up, having all that extra space doesn't really help you in a practical -I need to get this copy done and catch the bus in 10 minutes- kind of way.
Think of it like this: each situation has exactly one drawback at this moment. Your current isn't as much fun as you want, while the other pays lower. However, the variables of the current situation are known, whereas the variables of the new situation are unknown.
If things go perfectly, it's a toss up whether you choose more money or more fun. However, things never go perfectly, and if any of the variables of the new situation go sour, your decision will become a bad one.
So, in my opinion, it's a bad bet. I wouldn't touch it and not regret the pass for a moment.
Right. That's what it's superficially about. One step down is the question of whether the public should be trusted in a democratic, free society. Now, I know lots of Chinese who claim that the People's Republic of China is a democratic, free society, and by their personal standards, they are correct. Many outside China see it otherwise.
The article is about asking what definition of "free" you want. Believing that the public is a "skittish beast" is a very divisive opinion.
Seriously, could someone explain to me why patterns are what is needed here? From my experience, user interface design takes a deep understanding of customer requirements. Applying patterns would seem (imo) like an entrapping short cut that ultimately would be a waste of time. Any thoughts?
Not with 3Dfx and QA, but with a consulting firm and a dev job. First thing I noticed when I walked into my prospective boss's office was that there was no whiteboard. So I asked my interviewer why I was being interviewed by a non-dev. He asked what made me think that, I tell him about the lack of whiteboard. It was the only interview I've ever done where the interviewer didn't have one. Well, he got quite defensive replying, "you never know, I might be a techie." Through the course of the interview, we discovered that he was not. Not surprisingly, I didn't get the job. But a friend of mine got it a week later and confirmed that this person was a complete market-droid, not a very good one at that, and had almost zero technical chops. The place laid my friend off 7 months later, and folder 2 months after that.
It seems there's a pattern ...
Besides, I happen to subscribe to the notion that it's one of a student's primary jobs to find their own ways to be interested in a subject. Reducing course material to infotainment does not help a student learn how to learn.
Well, I've got a wind up alarm clock with 'Intel Inside' on it :)
And if you'll notice, that dye chemist who actually solved the problem is not listed on the company's website at all. It's like he doesn't exist!
Best mouse/trackball I ever had and I would use it again in a heartbeat if I could just get scroll wheel functionality working. Do you know where I could get drivers for XP?
But when you do get prof who 'wings it', you find out that math actually is one of the most flexible, creative games going. The only problem is, is that pure abstraction is just plain really, really hard if you're not naturally wired for it. And it takes a special kind of personality to really dig the aethestic involved.
In my case, I like using math, and it can be fun sometimes, but it's not compelling for me in any way. I guess what I'm saying is that math can be useful and fun, regardless of what type of person you are, but it doesn't have to be more than that.
The problem is finding a real mathmetician who can you show you the tactics and strategies that all the little rote stuff youv'e memorized gets plugged into. And the only way to do that is by watching one of these guys in action at a level that you're already equipped to handle. It's very intuitive. Unfortunately, at best, most people can only hope for profs that can explain the rote stuff clearly, and miss the real profit from it altogether.
Plus probability, number theory, and algebra are always useful; they just give you a boost that can't be faked.
The computer is a help, but it really shines if you also have a digital camera. Snapshotting whiteboards is great! (make sure the flash is off) Put a microphone on the lecturn and you can make a simple multimedia presentation of each lesson with almost zero effort. You should still take notes, but it can really help fill in the gaps when you re-read your scribbling and can't figure out what they h*ck the prof was talking about.
If the machine costs $4000 - $5000, yeah we can start debating whether one should worry about fat-binaries carrying the PPC platform forward. After all, a high priced machine should meet the demands of software x years down the road. But if you're buying a mini or a iBook, you pretty much have said that you are not interested in forward demands because, regardless of processor manufacturer, they are the low end of the power range.
Just to be clear, high end machines have future proofing as part of the price, low end do not. This is true whether you build it yourself, buy it from Dell, or pick it up at the Apple Store.
In the low end case the issue then becomes, whether your current software will be supported going forward. Go read any book on sales and marketing. Existing customers are more valuable than new customers because they require less outlay. In short, fat-binaries for existing software makes a lot of sense, and those companies who don't produce them probably are on very shakey management to begin with. In future, your mini or iBook will be supported or not, but not on the basis of its CPU.
Buying PPC on the low end, today, is still a safe choice.
It's about your emotional state. If your computer is more fun to use, then you are more likely to enjoy your work, which in turn helps your productivity.
another way which scales better for more terms: ((x ^ y ^ z) & (x | y | z)) | (x & y & z)
Hm, you really use that to figure out who's a good potential hire? I prefer to work with people who think clearly and do good design spontaneously.
As a recent hire candidate, I both loved and hated bit flipping questions. I loved them because they're easy and you get the warm fuzzy feeling for solving a problem. I hated them because it was a horrible task to try to reveal actual abilities that I cared about. I'm not an architect, but I yeared for an employer to give me good design questions.
Try this: ask them about how they would structure and design things framed in an area outside of their immediate area of expertise. See how they organize how they think. Bullshitters are easy to pick out as they will start giving shopping lists of ideas rather than bringing a structure to the problem at hand. Then move on to question which exercise technical job requirements.
Personally, I put less value on how well someone can do bit tricks or otherwise. Tricky thinking helps you in certain cases, for example debugging and working around broken models, but clear thinking makes the difference between heaven and hell at work.
Oh well, I'm rambling. I guess I wouldn't hire myself :-)
"The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment."
Art is self-flattering? Absolutely not! I did not mean or imply that in any way. What is self flattery is when you call yourself an artist when you are not. For that matter, it self flattery when you call yourself anything that is admirable when you are not.
Fine, let's use the OED definition.
Depending on your definition of "natural", the definition of science that you have put forward may exclude all pure mathematics. However, I would strongly argue that the abstractions of mathematics is not so much created as discovered. That is, it would be observation of natural world. Computer science is a branch of mathematics. Programming can be applied computer science. Not all programming is, but some can be.
I would say that while programming, I perform computer science on a semi-regular basis. That is, I come up with variations on theoretical themes that fit the need at hand, and then I code them up. In a small way, I am not just playing with software lego blocks (well, that happens a lot of the time too), I am making discoveries. It's what makes programming tollerable over the years. Now, they're not contributed to the world, but they are small, rigorous discoveries about abstractions. It's still observation of the natural world, hence science.
Computer science is a discipline to develop advanced programmers. Therefore programming is at best a science.
Any other claim leads to self-aggrandizement.
Oh wait... no one in IT would pay. They'd yell "information wants to be free"!
Nevermind.
I realize you're being humorous, but to be serious for a moment, you're both right and wrong. Develop for the wrong market and getting money from people is more traumatic than pulling bones from living animals. (yeah, I'm a programmer) It's just plain hell. However, develop for the right market and people gladly spend money on your product or service.
For example, a service for unemployed people will likely be a hard sell because people don't want spend money while they don't have income. It's all about emotional state, and the unemployed are insecure. They will still buy things, but not something that is targeted at them because they don't have income. In any case, it's not clear what the emotional value of this service would be for said market.
Now, if you could target the friends and relatives of the unemployed, then you've got a market you can sell to. In this case you are selling help/aid/home-charity. Clear emotional value, and the problem can now move to the next step, which is marketing. How do you get message out to friends and relatives that if unemployed Joe only knew how much he could be making, then his life would be so much better?
This isn't a creative problem, it's market research. Talk to people that have unemployed relatives, and see if you can get them to think that giving your information would make things better. Find out what, if any, messages work. Then find out how they would want to give the information to start determining pricing and packaging.
But note, you haven't developed anything yet. If you didn't find an effective message, at least you haven't burned away too much time and living expenses. The last two steps are, 1) build a prototype, and 2) build a business plan. Now you're on your way to making a fortune charging folks for access to your information! It's not quick, easy, or without loads of risk, but realistically "information wants to be free" doesn't have to enter into the struggle.
Whatever.
Yes, what they said is all very well, but the truth of the matter is that there simply wasn't a customer demand for OS/2. At the time, Window was largely "free" in that it either came with your hardware or was readily pirated. Remember those were the days before license enforcement actually happened. Anyway, contrasting that to the price of OS/2 which was, I forget the exact figure, but in the ball-park of several hundred bucks, it's not hard to see why uptake on OS/2 was sluggish.
No customers, no ISVs. OS/2 lost on price alone. But unlike OS/2 vs. Windows, both OSX and Windows now cost, and there is an existing market for OSX. The battlefield today isn't cost, it's (some notion of) value. My gut feeling is that OSX is not going to go the OS/2 way primarily because Apple will bust it's blankity-blank to position itself as at least equal or better value to Windows.
In that sense, the move to Intel and the potential of Wine does just the opposite of what Windows support in OS/2 did. In OS/2 it provided an excuse for developers to ignore the platform even for the tiny market that was there and subsequently that market dwindled because of being ignored. What this really shows is that there wasn't a core market for OS/2 without the Windows support. But OSX is doing just fine without Windows. Now adding Wine adds value.
As long as the value of OSX without Windows support is still at the same as or better than the value of Windows, OSX will be healthier than it is today.
Apparently, he means that he couldn't dress up an open source project enough before violating the copyright. Strange justification for stopping. Or maybe his potential customer realized that they were dealing with a crook and the 'worth' evaporated.
I just signed on with a mid-sized software company. The IP section of the contract was specifically set up to allow coders to keep working on their home projects. They had a list of requirements such as: don't use company time, equipment, IP, market advantage, and don't compete with their product. If you meet these requirements, then anything you write is basically yours, including if you want to give it away for free or sell it commercially. I didn't have to haggle with them at all. It was great.
These are not isolated, ignorant farmers who just plant corn. These farmers are doing their hardest to follow best practices and be competitve in the agri-industry, and honestly, they're still killing their land. Unless we make a big change in how soil quality is treated, our ability to produce food is going to take nose dive. It's simple.
And don't start on the vegetarianism rant. In North America, plant production with the overuse of petroleum based chemical fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides is what is killing soil - not grazing.
Ah yes. An interesting point of view that I personally do not share. Please do not take what I am about to say as an attack on you. I think you're point of view is widely held and I want to make an arguement against it, not on you.
I would hazard to say that in general most non-developers do share your opinion. In my experience with product development, users love to complain bitterly about the software they are using, point out all sorts of inconveniences, problems, and outright flaws. Then when you address their issues and provide them with a competitive alternative, they Stick With What They've Got. Even asking them if they would consider trying out an alternative, will usually only cause them to say no.
Having done presentations and conducted surveys for marketing and product design, I can assure you it's not because they are gun-shy about new bugs, compatibility, costs, training or any other rational argument you might have. Yes, these reasons come up, but the real reason that gets hammered home is that the new software is not what they already use. It's like going to the doctor, complaining about an ailment, and refusing treatment because you're not already taking it.
It's very frustrating. My personal guess why this happens is that their current software has broken its marketed promises and they are just disinclined to trust software promises again. Regardless of who the doctor is, medicine is medicine, and if the previous medicine didn't work, why should the new medicine be any better? In these days of hardball economics and broken promises, cynicism is easy. Well, this is just my guess.
But the reality is that software is not perfect for our needs, there are ailments, and solutions still need to be written. The saving grace that allows software companies to survive is that our market is big and volatile enough that your stated and widely held point of view doesn't bring things to a grinding halt. In effect, your newer competitors will have a leg up and prove you wrong.
I agree that there has been an avalanche of terrible ideas promoted as progress. But as a developer who believes in the notion that we can invent better ways of doing things, and that hope does not damn us, I think there is plenty of good, new software that should be written today.
Look, if OOo works, then no-one's complaining. If it doesn't work, then you complain, but you also end up buying MSO. Now do you really think a bunch of whiney managers and admins, who buy MSO anyway, are going to make M$ change its mind so that they lose market share??? Uh, right. Future-proofing with an ISO standard is all nice and good, kind of like esperanto, but we actually have to communicate today. Standards, in the ISO sense, have nothing to do with it.