The problem here is that there is a strong and ironic tendency for temporary things to become more permanent than things built to be permanent. If you let someone build a pile of crap for that reason, a manager trying to fight their own prioritized fire will say, "Use it for now and you can get back to it later." By then everyone will have got used to it, POS and all, will have already jury rigged solutions to its POS-ness and felt ownership for them. At this point they won't want to give them up, and your test bed is your new defacto company standard for 20 years. Better to at least try to build the better mousetrap from the start.:)
I really have no clue what you mean by menu-based file browsing, but have you looked at Thunar? I believe it is XFCE and I install it on Kubuntu because dolphin is too bloated for my taste. I rarely need any of the crap that it has beyond file browsing and when I do it isn't much to use a better program suited to the task.
So when your workstation crashes it takes out both your working code/directories and the repository? Very convenient. Much simpler to crater that way. I like a different machine to keep code on. One that gets backed up regularly.
testing code on a fraction has led to misconceptions about scalability to a far larger data set
This is real. The solution is to manage expectations. If people know that the tests just show functionality and not scalability, and that scalability testing is required (when warranted), you should be good. More importantly if the decision makers know this, you are good.
if the real data contains people's shipping addresses or other PII?
Scrub the data. Addresses are not personal information though. The fact a specific person lives there might. Open a phone book (if you can find one now-a-days. They have reams of addresses as well as phone numbers tied to real people. This is public knowledge. Personal information involves things more like name, age, finances, medical records, etc.
For the stuff that is real personal information, randomizing names to create fake people tied to real addresses is not hard at all (real addresses are often necessary when system tie into others where shipping or location are requirements). You can take real information and put it in a can and scrambled to make fake people. I think testers should be proficient enough to be able generate this kind of data.
As to one other comment made by the OP:
and now a versioning system would mean going through proper deployment/rollback in order to get real feedback.
Versioning systems do no such thing if you don't use them that way. If you want a "proper deployment and rollback cycle" you can do that. Or not. But at least you'll be able to go back in time to find the code that actually worked if you need to. No coder should work without the safety net of version control. Whether it be CVS, SVN, GIT, it matters less what it is than whether you have one or not. Pick one and use it.
Sometimes (OK often) I think it is one of the reasons that companies think young guys are better programmers. Because too many managers want to believe the young programmers who do this. Yep might as well get rid of the older guys who say it'll take a month when this kid can do it in a week. And if the kid does it in a week it is shit, but everyone is so excited the feature is done that they refuse to notice it really sucks for a few weeks.. And then we get people writing papers about what is wrong with the software industry and blah blah blah. Rose coloured glasses on almost every manager sinks both projects and reasonable programmers.
In the late 90s I was at a software company that created circulation system software for the newspaper industry. We had a good number of system testers (pretty much all of them) who had never worked at a newspaper before. As one of the senior leads, on every project I worked on I made sure that a system tester went on site with me to sit with the various departments and help them understand/learn the new system (as opposed to just classroom teaching). This was a 'bonus' for the customer.
My bosses were leery of not getting money for this extra training. But when they realized that the system test people improved by orders of magnitude because they actually understood implicitly what the features were for they started sending coders on site as well (to program in situ on projects). The quality of our system improved immensely, much quicker than otherwise would have happened.
About 20 years ago I worked at a chemical company. Almost all the junior engineers hired had to work out in production facilities for six months to a year, disigning and implementing the occasional needed improvement they discover. After that they were allowed to become office based engineers if they wanted, or stay in operations but move to real management. It worked very well.
One time we had an electrical engineer who was trained to program Distributed Control Systems, and somehow he was never required to work in a production facility before that time. He built some attrocious logic into the system making it a pain to manage the smelter I was at. Things that should have been grouped for safety (i.e. you adjust a control, but the reading you needed to watch was on another screen) or just good functionality so the operators could focus on the situation in the plant and not switching screens all the time.
When we complained he told us we were whiners and not capable. Since a few of us were actually closer to the operations manager in terms of grade, we had him forced to use his own software in production on a few weeks of midnight shifts. There was a noticable improvement in functionality before the 3 weeks were up. And even more in the months that followed. It is often very good to forcefully put people in someone else's shoes, since they will often say it, but not do it on their own (even metaphorically).
IT professionals usually have an aversion to lying or even stretching the truth via "spin".
Of course programmers never say things like, "this will only take a couple days," only to see the end result a couple weeks later (and not because of changing requirements). Programmers are just a capable of over-promissing as anyone else. Sometimes more-so.
You're right, and the vision in them is spectacular. And they never break. And if they do, there is a tech who travels with you all the time. Ever wonder why the military makes you get in really good shape and still has soldiers do forced marches with all their gear. Because they know the first thing to go in a war where the two sides are evenly matched, is the technology. In those cases your black Cadillacs (your boots) will eventually become your all terrain vehicle. Your night vision will be your eyes. And in case you don't know, other than light amplification only something with a lot of armour would use infra-red (unless it is passive).
Between high school and college I worked a season at a farm chemical packaging company in Winnipeg. It was a kind of farm Coop chemical company. There was this one brand of herbicide there that was so potent/dangerous (called Stampede) that they had a separate room where it was poured from the mixing tanks to the bottles. Anyone who worked in that room had to wear a respirator all the time, was only allowed in one or two days a week to keep exposure down, and everyone on that line, even outside the pouring room, had to wear dosimeters (like in a nuclear facility but for chemicals) and have them checked daily. None of the other products had to be separated this way. Often guys were shunted to safer lines (like the Roundup packaging line) because the dose level was too high. And the Roundup and other lines didn't require the same level of protection.
Now you might think this is because they really cared about the workers. But one time when one of the workers asked the plant superintendent, an asshole who we called Varmint, what would happen if they spilled any on themselves he said, "Don't worry about it, you'll piss it out in a few days." Needless to say, I never got the impression management was all that concerned about the workers. None of that shit is good for you by a long shot. And yes it's really fucking scary that Roundup is one of the safer ones.
If you are sitting out on sentry at night and really amped up, sometimes you'll see a bush move. You can even convince your buddy sometimes. Less so as you get more experience but it still happens. You can tell yourself it was nerves and ignore it, but for that one time when it isn't nerves and it really is a bad guy on the other side... I wonder if the computers can also weed out false positives from humans. That way you would have more confidence to shoot the bush and hit a bad guy hiding behind it instead of just waking everyone up and being called a bonehead for fucking up whatever little sleep they get. By then we really would probably be becoming Borgs. Speaking of which, on this article, I think that would have been a better icon than the HAL one.
This was my first thought, only about 10% of the world's population can probably afford them. Even in India you will see iPhones, but outside of areas where people have relatively high incomes (like the other 1 point something billion people there), no one will own one because they can't afford it. Same for the rest of the world. So why should Apple care? It's not a big risk.
On the other hand I was thinking that since the iPhone is really made in sweatshops in China, the cost probably isn't as much as we are lead to believe based on what they charge in North America and Europe; which in all likelihood is probably what accounts for sales in the less affluent countries. They can probably charge half or only a quarter as much in poorer countries. But regardless, compared to what they rake in from Euromerica, Cupertino still won't be concerned with losing that much business because of this descission. Most people should know this old trick, charge more and advertise wisely to make people think they should buy your product because, hey, it has to be better because it looks cool and costs more; right? Just look at the price. 10:1 all the Apple phonies (see what I did there?!) fall for this.
I few years ago I was flying across the U.S. I had managed a good deal on first class tickets. So I was sitting beside someone who ran an electronics company which used contract manufacturers in China. I asked him about piracy of his IP. He said, and with a straight face so well that I think he believed it, that they keep the important stuff segregated, and the assembly distributed among several plants so that the Chinese would not be able to pirate their IP.
WTF? I believe that is what the majority of these jokers who offshore think or think they have successfully led us to believe. But I really believe it is what they think. I have to. Why else would they spend BILLIONS of dollars on patent lawsuits, just so they can have their ideas built in China where everyone except them (it seems), KNOW that the designs will be stolen and copied. These so called leaders of business can't be that stupid can they? After all most have business degrees and MBA's. Do they count so little? Actually I think they aren't so stupid but are cynical pricks who only look out for their own pocket books. Globalization means global for those with the money, and they have the money. It doesn't matter what the condition of your country if you live in a gated community.
Mind you, what does it say about the majority of people who help them to become millionaires, based on what? You'd think we'd learn by now after what we had to do to get Wall Street types from being paid huge bonuses just for showing up... wait, never mind.....
But seriously, why spend all that money on lawsuits for IP when they just have it built in China? It's like pouring water on the fire after the house has burned down. (Unless it's all a pretense?!) Why keep stealth fighters secret when you build most of the parts in China and hire Chinese nationals or ex-nationals without sufficient oversight (given the proven track record of Chinese spies in the defence and nuclear research areas). Actually, I think most members of the government are that stupid and/or naive since their main focus is really on getting re-elected and lining their pockets, and not on what is really happening. After all they don't have to know anything, just hire people who know everything. Isn't that how it works?
The government's talking heads will say that it just 'looks like an F-35' but the parts are different. We know the defence industry gets most of their electronics from China. I know that 1 + 1 = 2. They seem to think we think it adds up to 1.9. When the big hand is on the 12 and the little hand is on the 12, I know what time it is.
And now China is pushing its weight like crazy in the South China Sea. There were anti-Japanese riots closing Japanese factories in China today. They are not a benign factory for the world. They never were.
I read somewhere that once you get into orbit, it isn't that much of a difference in terms of resources, getting from there into Lunar orbit versus Martian orbit. The first step is a doozy though.
Tell congress there are Arabs and Oil on Titan and there'll be 300,000 marines there inside a month. Seriously, if they would spend even a part of the money that is spent unnecessarily on defence (seioursly... with that kind of spending how can they calll it defense?), there would not only be a moon base, but Disneyland and NFL franchises there AND on Mars. It is a fact that America spends almost as much money on its military as all other countries combined. If you want a reason why things aren't happening the way they should be, look at that number. And the repubicans want to spend MORE on the military. And never mind moon bases (which would be awesome), think of what could be done with healthcare (but why... can't we decrease the surplus population Ebenizer?). But that is another subject.
This sounds like something from "Way Station" (1964) by Clifford Simak. It wasn't the main thrust of the story, which was more about the guy who ran a galactic way station, but definitely was central to it. Travellers would materialize as copies of themselves light-years away, their bodies dying (or being killed, I can't remember) on the sending end. Then the (way station) attendant on the sending end dissolves them in a vat. I read this story a long time ago (in the 70s) but it was the first thing I thought of when I read this article.
If I recall correctly, according to the story the travelling process worked across significant distances, as in light-years, but it was limited. So the alien managers of the system would go to planets and recruit locals to run 'way stations' where aliens would materialize and then be routed to the next appropriate station (once again leaving their bodies behind to be dissolved). Earth was never the end point for the travellers to this guy's way station. He has to stay secluded in a rural area, living seemingly in a simple home or shack in an Appalachian backwater surrounded by hillbillies. This is because the aliens don't consider earthlings ready for this technology nor entry into the wider galactic society. And he was kept young through alien technology because they couldn't spend the time to come back and hire new guys all the time. This latter part is very central to the story.
I am pretty sure that is the story in question. The way station attendant on earth was hired during the American Civil War and a government agent is trying to figure out about the rumours of some guy who is supposed to be 130 years old but still looks young (but now that I think about it, it may have something to do with birth and death records... the guy may have faked being his father and grandfather). It takes place in the sixties and has a kind of anti nuclear war twist. It also seems to predate by a couple of years, the earliest references some articles make talking about the same kind of quantum-like teleportation in fiction (like the Wikipedia article on that).
Anyway, I remember this thing about the vats and the government agent sent to investigate, who manages to get into the way station and sees some of the alien bodies before they are dissolved. Now I could be getting a couple of stories mixed up but I don't think so. I remember thinking that if I have to be killed on either end I'd rather not go because how can I be sure that they didn't kill the real me?
The whole thing about causality confuses me. What does it have to do with how fast you go? Is it like you can't travel faster than sound because if you yell and then travel faster than sound you beat your voice there and you shouldn't be able to say something contrary to what you said further away? Or is it deeper. That is a trollish way to ask, but I really don't get it and it sounds far fetched to a non-theoretical physicist.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem here is that there is a strong and ironic tendency for temporary things to become more permanent than things built to be permanent. If you let someone build a pile of crap for that reason, a manager trying to fight their own prioritized fire will say, "Use it for now and you can get back to it later." By then everyone will have got used to it, POS and all, will have already jury rigged solutions to its POS-ness and felt ownership for them. At this point they won't want to give them up, and your test bed is your new defacto company standard for 20 years. Better to at least try to build the better mousetrap from the start. :)
I really have no clue what you mean by menu-based file browsing, but have you looked at Thunar? I believe it is XFCE and I install it on Kubuntu because dolphin is too bloated for my taste. I rarely need any of the crap that it has beyond file browsing and when I do it isn't much to use a better program suited to the task.
It also doesn't use RPMs. That's why I use Kubuntu and Ubuntu Server.
So when your workstation crashes it takes out both your working code/directories and the repository? Very convenient. Much simpler to crater that way. I like a different machine to keep code on. One that gets backed up regularly.
At the risk of being modded OT, I'd like to point out to others that the link is awesome.
This is real. The solution is to manage expectations. If people know that the tests just show functionality and not scalability, and that scalability testing is required (when warranted), you should be good. More importantly if the decision makers know this, you are good.
Scrub the data. Addresses are not personal information though. The fact a specific person lives there might. Open a phone book (if you can find one now-a-days. They have reams of addresses as well as phone numbers tied to real people. This is public knowledge. Personal information involves things more like name, age, finances, medical records, etc.
For the stuff that is real personal information, randomizing names to create fake people tied to real addresses is not hard at all (real addresses are often necessary when system tie into others where shipping or location are requirements). You can take real information and put it in a can and scrambled to make fake people. I think testers should be proficient enough to be able generate this kind of data.
As to one other comment made by the OP:
Versioning systems do no such thing if you don't use them that way. If you want a "proper deployment and rollback cycle" you can do that. Or not. But at least you'll be able to go back in time to find the code that actually worked if you need to. No coder should work without the safety net of version control. Whether it be CVS, SVN, GIT, it matters less what it is than whether you have one or not. Pick one and use it.
Do you have an English language link to the voting story?
I forgot to mention that the caveat to this was to not let the programmers stay long enough to develop a kind of Stockholm Syndrome>
Sometimes (OK often) I think it is one of the reasons that companies think young guys are better programmers. Because too many managers want to believe the young programmers who do this. Yep might as well get rid of the older guys who say it'll take a month when this kid can do it in a week. And if the kid does it in a week it is shit, but everyone is so excited the feature is done that they refuse to notice it really sucks for a few weeks.. And then we get people writing papers about what is wrong with the software industry and blah blah blah. Rose coloured glasses on almost every manager sinks both projects and reasonable programmers.
In the late 90s I was at a software company that created circulation system software for the newspaper industry. We had a good number of system testers (pretty much all of them) who had never worked at a newspaper before. As one of the senior leads, on every project I worked on I made sure that a system tester went on site with me to sit with the various departments and help them understand/learn the new system (as opposed to just classroom teaching). This was a 'bonus' for the customer.
My bosses were leery of not getting money for this extra training. But when they realized that the system test people improved by orders of magnitude because they actually understood implicitly what the features were for they started sending coders on site as well (to program in situ on projects). The quality of our system improved immensely, much quicker than otherwise would have happened.
About 20 years ago I worked at a chemical company. Almost all the junior engineers hired had to work out in production facilities for six months to a year, disigning and implementing the occasional needed improvement they discover. After that they were allowed to become office based engineers if they wanted, or stay in operations but move to real management. It worked very well.
One time we had an electrical engineer who was trained to program Distributed Control Systems, and somehow he was never required to work in a production facility before that time. He built some attrocious logic into the system making it a pain to manage the smelter I was at. Things that should have been grouped for safety (i.e. you adjust a control, but the reading you needed to watch was on another screen) or just good functionality so the operators could focus on the situation in the plant and not switching screens all the time.
When we complained he told us we were whiners and not capable. Since a few of us were actually closer to the operations manager in terms of grade, we had him forced to use his own software in production on a few weeks of midnight shifts. There was a noticable improvement in functionality before the 3 weeks were up. And even more in the months that followed. It is often very good to forcefully put people in someone else's shoes, since they will often say it, but not do it on their own (even metaphorically).
Of course programmers never say things like, "this will only take a couple days," only to see the end result a couple weeks later (and not because of changing requirements). Programmers are just a capable of over-promissing as anyone else. Sometimes more-so.
If they keep stretching movies out like that they'll end up like this. Also The Onion (linked from the page above).
You're right, and the vision in them is spectacular. And they never break. And if they do, there is a tech who travels with you all the time. Ever wonder why the military makes you get in really good shape and still has soldiers do forced marches with all their gear. Because they know the first thing to go in a war where the two sides are evenly matched, is the technology. In those cases your black Cadillacs (your boots) will eventually become your all terrain vehicle. Your night vision will be your eyes. And in case you don't know, other than light amplification only something with a lot of armour would use infra-red (unless it is passive).
Between high school and college I worked a season at a farm chemical packaging company in Winnipeg. It was a kind of farm Coop chemical company. There was this one brand of herbicide there that was so potent/dangerous (called Stampede) that they had a separate room where it was poured from the mixing tanks to the bottles. Anyone who worked in that room had to wear a respirator all the time, was only allowed in one or two days a week to keep exposure down, and everyone on that line, even outside the pouring room, had to wear dosimeters (like in a nuclear facility but for chemicals) and have them checked daily. None of the other products had to be separated this way. Often guys were shunted to safer lines (like the Roundup packaging line) because the dose level was too high. And the Roundup and other lines didn't require the same level of protection.
Now you might think this is because they really cared about the workers. But one time when one of the workers asked the plant superintendent, an asshole who we called Varmint, what would happen if they spilled any on themselves he said, "Don't worry about it, you'll piss it out in a few days." Needless to say, I never got the impression management was all that concerned about the workers. None of that shit is good for you by a long shot. And yes it's really fucking scary that Roundup is one of the safer ones.
What do you mean small? It might overwhelm the rest of the word.
If you are sitting out on sentry at night and really amped up, sometimes you'll see a bush move. You can even convince your buddy sometimes. Less so as you get more experience but it still happens. You can tell yourself it was nerves and ignore it, but for that one time when it isn't nerves and it really is a bad guy on the other side... I wonder if the computers can also weed out false positives from humans. That way you would have more confidence to shoot the bush and hit a bad guy hiding behind it instead of just waking everyone up and being called a bonehead for fucking up whatever little sleep they get. By then we really would probably be becoming Borgs. Speaking of which, on this article, I think that would have been a better icon than the HAL one.
If you pay them enough they will.
This was my first thought, only about 10% of the world's population can probably afford them. Even in India you will see iPhones, but outside of areas where people have relatively high incomes (like the other 1 point something billion people there), no one will own one because they can't afford it. Same for the rest of the world. So why should Apple care? It's not a big risk.
On the other hand I was thinking that since the iPhone is really made in sweatshops in China, the cost probably isn't as much as we are lead to believe based on what they charge in North America and Europe; which in all likelihood is probably what accounts for sales in the less affluent countries. They can probably charge half or only a quarter as much in poorer countries. But regardless, compared to what they rake in from Euromerica, Cupertino still won't be concerned with losing that much business because of this descission. Most people should know this old trick, charge more and advertise wisely to make people think they should buy your product because, hey, it has to be better because it looks cool and costs more; right? Just look at the price. 10:1 all the Apple phonies (see what I did there?!) fall for this.
Ambition doesn't equal intelligence.
I few years ago I was flying across the U.S. I had managed a good deal on first class tickets. So I was sitting beside someone who ran an electronics company which used contract manufacturers in China. I asked him about piracy of his IP. He said, and with a straight face so well that I think he believed it, that they keep the important stuff segregated, and the assembly distributed among several plants so that the Chinese would not be able to pirate their IP.
WTF? I believe that is what the majority of these jokers who offshore think or think they have successfully led us to believe. But I really believe it is what they think. I have to. Why else would they spend BILLIONS of dollars on patent lawsuits, just so they can have their ideas built in China where everyone except them (it seems), KNOW that the designs will be stolen and copied. These so called leaders of business can't be that stupid can they? After all most have business degrees and MBA's. Do they count so little? Actually I think they aren't so stupid but are cynical pricks who only look out for their own pocket books. Globalization means global for those with the money, and they have the money. It doesn't matter what the condition of your country if you live in a gated community.
Mind you, what does it say about the majority of people who help them to become millionaires, based on what? You'd think we'd learn by now after what we had to do to get Wall Street types from being paid huge bonuses just for showing up... wait, never mind.....
But seriously, why spend all that money on lawsuits for IP when they just have it built in China? It's like pouring water on the fire after the house has burned down. (Unless it's all a pretense?!) Why keep stealth fighters secret when you build most of the parts in China and hire Chinese nationals or ex-nationals without sufficient oversight (given the proven track record of Chinese spies in the defence and nuclear research areas). Actually, I think most members of the government are that stupid and/or naive since their main focus is really on getting re-elected and lining their pockets, and not on what is really happening. After all they don't have to know anything, just hire people who know everything. Isn't that how it works?
The government's talking heads will say that it just 'looks like an F-35' but the parts are different. We know the defence industry gets most of their electronics from China. I know that 1 + 1 = 2. They seem to think we think it adds up to 1.9. When the big hand is on the 12 and the little hand is on the 12, I know what time it is.
And now China is pushing its weight like crazy in the South China Sea. There were anti-Japanese riots closing Japanese factories in China today. They are not a benign factory for the world. They never were.
I read somewhere that once you get into orbit, it isn't that much of a difference in terms of resources, getting from there into Lunar orbit versus Martian orbit. The first step is a doozy though.
Tell congress there are Arabs and Oil on Titan and there'll be 300,000 marines there inside a month. Seriously, if they would spend even a part of the money that is spent unnecessarily on defence (seioursly... with that kind of spending how can they calll it defense?), there would not only be a moon base, but Disneyland and NFL franchises there AND on Mars. It is a fact that America spends almost as much money on its military as all other countries combined. If you want a reason why things aren't happening the way they should be, look at that number. And the repubicans want to spend MORE on the military. And never mind moon bases (which would be awesome), think of what could be done with healthcare (but why... can't we decrease the surplus population Ebenizer?). But that is another subject.
This sounds like something from "Way Station" (1964) by Clifford Simak. It wasn't the main thrust of the story, which was more about the guy who ran a galactic way station, but definitely was central to it. Travellers would materialize as copies of themselves light-years away, their bodies dying (or being killed, I can't remember) on the sending end. Then the (way station) attendant on the sending end dissolves them in a vat. I read this story a long time ago (in the 70s) but it was the first thing I thought of when I read this article.
If I recall correctly, according to the story the travelling process worked across significant distances, as in light-years, but it was limited. So the alien managers of the system would go to planets and recruit locals to run 'way stations' where aliens would materialize and then be routed to the next appropriate station (once again leaving their bodies behind to be dissolved). Earth was never the end point for the travellers to this guy's way station. He has to stay secluded in a rural area, living seemingly in a simple home or shack in an Appalachian backwater surrounded by hillbillies. This is because the aliens don't consider earthlings ready for this technology nor entry into the wider galactic society. And he was kept young through alien technology because they couldn't spend the time to come back and hire new guys all the time. This latter part is very central to the story.
I am pretty sure that is the story in question. The way station attendant on earth was hired during the American Civil War and a government agent is trying to figure out about the rumours of some guy who is supposed to be 130 years old but still looks young (but now that I think about it, it may have something to do with birth and death records... the guy may have faked being his father and grandfather). It takes place in the sixties and has a kind of anti nuclear war twist. It also seems to predate by a couple of years, the earliest references some articles make talking about the same kind of quantum-like teleportation in fiction (like the Wikipedia article on that).
Anyway, I remember this thing about the vats and the government agent sent to investigate, who manages to get into the way station and sees some of the alien bodies before they are dissolved. Now I could be getting a couple of stories mixed up but I don't think so. I remember thinking that if I have to be killed on either end I'd rather not go because how can I be sure that they didn't kill the real me?
The whole thing about causality confuses me. What does it have to do with how fast you go? Is it like you can't travel faster than sound because if you yell and then travel faster than sound you beat your voice there and you shouldn't be able to say something contrary to what you said further away? Or is it deeper. That is a trollish way to ask, but I really don't get it and it sounds far fetched to a non-theoretical physicist.