Damn right the browser wars are back! I won't name names, to avoid embarassing the guilty, but on Monday I ran across a site that had "this page best viewed with Firefox" on it. I cried.
Okay, as someone who has chosen QA as a career, does all this damned paperwork actually improve the quality of the code? Really now, does it? Or is it just a way for non-technical people to pretend that they're engineers?
In theory QA sounds great. In practice though QA does not produce anything other than process. The only reason QA reduces defects is because it reduces the rate at which all code gets written. It's like improving highway safety by removing the number of cars on the highways.
My company, like many others, is engaged in a strange boom/bust cycle. The boom cycle consists of rah-rah process improvements, efforts to improve CMM ratings, firing coders to make room for QA auditors, etc. Then the bust comes when we realize we haven't shippped a product in over two years, and the CEO has to descend from on high and handcuff the process police.
...but others seem heavily influenced by his recent MBA. In particular, he has a lot to say about Quality Assurance in the software world...
Software QA by normal people: Test the product.
Software QA by MBAs: Assure that twenty thousand meaningless documents are signed, perform audits to ensure that these documents are signed, provide mandatory training so engineers know how to sign these documents, award bonuses to those who sign the most documents, define productivity to be the number of signed documents in an engineer's cabinet.
Re:It will probably do you more harm than good
on
PhD's in the Industry?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
There are exceptions out there? some shops are very focused on the sciences, and a PhD would be considered the norm.
That's the key right there. If you've got a PhD, don't go applying for web development or desktop administration. On the other hand, my company is hiring PhDs right now to program digital signal processing. We make embedded medical imaging systems, and we've even hired MDs to do SQA testing! My immediate boss has a PhD from Brown. With only a bachelors degree, and a bachelor of *arts* at that, I feel like the dumb guy at my job.
But I guess the knee-jerk "It's a Bush comsperacie!" crap is appropriate for slashdot.
Of course! This is Slashdot, where every speculation is taken as the ultimate truth. If you ever get low on karma, just post a comment about the Bush being responsible for the execution of Jimmie Hoffa, and like magic you'll get it all back.
Ron Paul (L-Texas) voted for this bill but he was the lone dissenter in the last spyware bill. It would be interesting to find out what was different about this bill (or what poison pill was in the last one).
One of the more insistant and vocal themes heard in the desktop debate is that that Unix desktop needs to be like Windows. It is said that multiple widget toolkits, inconsistant dialogs, and other evidences of a decentralized development model must be removed before the masses will accept a Unix destkop. This cry for uniformity can be especially shrill, almost as if the very survival of a certain free operating system depended upon it. But is the underlying premise true? Is Windows really a consistant and uniform desktop?
The answer is resoundingly negative.
While conducting a quick survey of configuration dialogs under Windows, in an attempt to understand what a newbie user of my software would be familiar with, I discovered that there was no standard procedure for these dialogs. Even configuration dialogs from the same manufacturer varied wildly. By all Slashdot accounts, Windows users must certainly be mentally damaged from their constant exposure to such inconsistant interfaces.
Where is the configuration dialog located for a Windows application? Using the Windows system I use every day at work, I discovered that even this simple item was highly variable. Microsoft Word had two configuration dialogs, "Tools->Customize" and "Tools->Options", while Microsoft Outlook added an additional "Tools->Services". Microsoft WordPad had only one under a completely different menu "View->Options". Moving on to non-Microsoft products, I see that Adobe Reader and Quicktime Player have "Edit->Preferences". But lest you think those are consistant, Adobe Reader has a single dialog, while Quicktime Player has a submenu of three dialogs. Firefox and Roxio Creator Classic follow the WordPad model of placement.
What about the dialog contents themselves? Microsoft Word has modal tabbed dialogs, while Microsoft Outlook has a modeless tabbed dialog without a help button. Adobe Reader and Firefox have modal dialogs using a listbox instead of tabs to separate the pages. Quicktime Player is similar, but uses a combobox instead of a listbox. Some of these dialogs had help buttons while the rest lacked them.
Okay, what about the look and feel? Certainly the Windows platform has a consistant widget set? Sadly, no. Adobe Reader has an almost-but-not-quite Win2K look, that matches neither the Windows Classic nor Luna themes that comes with Windows XP. Roxio Creator Classic has a "brushed plastic" look with odd splitter controls. Quicktime player has, of course, a look and feel straight out of another operating system! Comparing native Microsoft applications only improves matters slightly. Microsoft Word has a completely different toolbar style than Microsoft WordPad! I could continue on to some truly egregious examples of inconsistancy, but I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.
I think by now that I have thoroughly debunked the notion that the Windows desktop is uniform and consistant. The question remains though, is the Unix desktop better? The answer is similarly, "no". But since Windows isn't consistant, the urgency of the question is clearly lessoned. Newbies aren't going to be rendered insane by seeing Evolution running alongside Konqueror. They aren't going to go running back to Windows when their distro forgot to include Plastik icons with Mozilla.
What's the big deal? The receptionist as FooBar Corp isn't going to deciding this stuff, the trained sysadmins at FooBar Corp will. And if your sysadmins are too dumb to make a decision like this, you have bigger problems facing you to worry about this.
What's next? Do we remove the choice between vi and emacs because some sysadmin panicked during the install?
Why do people hold to this illusion that having 3 parties will fix anything? The third party will be as corrupt as the first two.
Your question was actually answered by a libertarian candidate several elections ago. I seem to recall it was Ron Paul but I could be wrong. To paraphrase: "If the Libertarian party became a dominate party, we might end up as corrupt as the Democrats and Republicans in twenty years. But at least that's twenty years without corruption!"
The other two leaders are there purely for show, I think.
If the other two leaders are smart, they'll put the fire to the two major leaders and keep them honest. That's where the US CPD breaks down, there's no one around to talk about the failure of the drug war. No one to talk about corporate statism. Heck, considering this years debate, it would be nice to have someone bring up a domestic issue, ANY domestic issue.
I'm all in favor of this. Political parties are in essence private organizations. Their candidates should only be chosen by their members. They should not get the benefit of public moneys to decide their leadership.
If the poster can convince a number of people to vote third party, he will tend to hurt the Democrats more than the Republicans
A third party vote in any election, in any year, in the two-party US system, will always help one of the two major parties more than the other. Next election it might help the Dems. The one after that the Reps.
In EVERY election there will always be one major candidate you dislike more than the other. ALWAYS. By your logic no one should ever vote for a third party. That's stupid.
I'm voting third party because neither Kerry nor Bush represent my interests. Their philosophies of governance are opposed to mine. I am opposed to virtually every position on either of their platforms. That Bush might be marginally worse than Kerry in my eyes does not make voting for Kerry palatable. Even if they were the only two names on the ballot, I would still write in "none of the above".
You know, it's idiotic shit like this that makes me nuts about America.
Why don't you go back and read his post? He isn't saying anything about banning Stern, outlawing Stern, or sending the 82nd Airborne down on Stern's ass. All he is saying is that he doesn't want to listen to Stern.
What's idiotic is people like you ranting and raving about our diminishing freedom of choice every time someone makes a choice different from yours. You can be for the decriminalization of marijuana without being a pothead. Really!
I live in the San Fransisco bay area. And over here it seems like the exact opposite it the rule. In the liberal mind, anything that might possibly benefit the Right is evil and hateful and anti-American, whereas any of the well-documented dirty tricks of the Left are legitimate politics.
Wow, I must have hit a chord with this many responses?
Since I don't use Windows, I'm completely unfamiliar with this emotion that makes people want to throw spyware authors in jail. I'm one of the lucky ones I guess, because in my entire life I have not once been subjected to spyware nor infected by a virus or trojan. Nor do I ever expect to be. But my mom gets hit by this crap all the time. What makes her different from me? Her behavior. In terms of spyware, she really does consent to it. If there's a button on a webpage that says "click here", you have to restrain her to prevent her from clicking on it.
If software can install itself on a computer without any user consent, then it's a virus or worm. We have laws against that right now. If it tricks the user into installing it, then it's a trojan. We have laws against that right now. If the EULA is deliberately vague and misleading, then we have a full slough of laws to cover that.
The problem with spyware is that it doesn't preemptively disclose its full nature. You think you're getting a weather applet but you end up with a weather applet that tracks and reports your usage patterns. You could have determined this extra "functionality" beforehand, but you didn't bother to check. This is certainly annoying, but it doesn't reach into the realm of the criminal, IMO. Not everything that annoys us should be made a criminal act. That's why we have civil courts. That's why we have lawsuits.
If you've been "victimized" by spyware, sue the spyware manufacturers. No need for an act of congress. No need for legislation that steps ever so slightly beyond the scope of its title.
Have you read the full text of this law? It's doesn't just step slightly beyond the scope of its title, it takes broad leaps! The Opera browser has been outlawed by this bill because it displays advertisements that you can't turn off! If you write a program that installs an entry into the users bookmarks, you're a criminal! Write a keystroke logger for a usability study, activated only by user consent, and you're a criminal! Install a content filter and go to jail!
Slashdot Mirror
Damn right the browser wars are back! I won't name names, to avoid embarassing the guilty, but on Monday I ran across a site that had "this page best viewed with Firefox" on it. I cried.
Okay, as someone who has chosen QA as a career, does all this damned paperwork actually improve the quality of the code? Really now, does it? Or is it just a way for non-technical people to pretend that they're engineers?
In theory QA sounds great. In practice though QA does not produce anything other than process. The only reason QA reduces defects is because it reduces the rate at which all code gets written. It's like improving highway safety by removing the number of cars on the highways.
My company, like many others, is engaged in a strange boom/bust cycle. The boom cycle consists of rah-rah process improvements, efforts to improve CMM ratings, firing coders to make room for QA auditors, etc. Then the bust comes when we realize we haven't shippped a product in over two years, and the CEO has to descend from on high and handcuff the process police.
...but others seem heavily influenced by his recent MBA. In particular, he has a lot to say about Quality Assurance in the software world...
Software QA by normal people: Test the product.
Software QA by MBAs: Assure that twenty thousand meaningless documents are signed, perform audits to ensure that these documents are signed, provide mandatory training so engineers know how to sign these documents, award bonuses to those who sign the most documents, define productivity to be the number of signed documents in an engineer's cabinet.
There are exceptions out there? some shops are very focused on the sciences, and a PhD would be considered the norm.
That's the key right there. If you've got a PhD, don't go applying for web development or desktop administration. On the other hand, my company is hiring PhDs right now to program digital signal processing. We make embedded medical imaging systems, and we've even hired MDs to do SQA testing! My immediate boss has a PhD from Brown. With only a bachelors degree, and a bachelor of *arts* at that, I feel like the dumb guy at my job.
But I guess the knee-jerk "It's a Bush comsperacie!" crap is appropriate for slashdot.
Of course! This is Slashdot, where every speculation is taken as the ultimate truth. If you ever get low on karma, just post a comment about the Bush being responsible for the execution of Jimmie Hoffa, and like magic you'll get it all back.
Since it was Saudis who attacked on 9/11, why did Bush invade Iraq
Or to rephrase that question, since it was Japan who attacked on 12/7, why did Roosevelt invade Germany?
The answer is the same to both questions. The US didn't invade Germany because of 12/7, and it didn't invade Iraq because of 9/11.
Ron Paul (L-Texas) voted for this bill but he was the lone dissenter in the last spyware bill. It would be interesting to find out what was different about this bill (or what poison pill was in the last one).
Remember, these people run Windows.
If that's all they can handle, then don't bother with anything else. Just give them Windows and forget about them. Sheesh.
Solaris 9 gives you a choice of CDE or GNOME.
KHTML will be obsolete
Bullshit! Every professional web developer I hang out with uses Safari, a KHTML based browser.
One of the more insistant and vocal themes heard in the desktop debate
is that that Unix desktop needs to be like Windows. It is said that
multiple widget toolkits, inconsistant dialogs, and other evidences of
a decentralized development model must be removed before the masses
will accept a Unix destkop. This cry for uniformity can be especially
shrill, almost as if the very survival of a certain free operating
system depended upon it. But is the underlying premise true? Is
Windows really a consistant and uniform desktop?
The answer is resoundingly negative.
While conducting a quick survey of configuration dialogs under
Windows, in an attempt to understand what a newbie user of my software
would be familiar with, I discovered that there was no standard
procedure for these dialogs. Even configuration dialogs from the same
manufacturer varied wildly. By all Slashdot accounts, Windows users
must certainly be mentally damaged from their constant exposure to
such inconsistant interfaces.
Where is the configuration dialog located for a Windows application?
Using the Windows system I use every day at work, I discovered that
even this simple item was highly variable. Microsoft Word had two
configuration dialogs, "Tools->Customize" and "Tools->Options",
while Microsoft Outlook added an additional
"Tools->Services". Microsoft WordPad had only one under a completely
different menu "View->Options". Moving on to non-Microsoft products, I
see that Adobe Reader and Quicktime Player have
"Edit->Preferences". But lest you think those are consistant, Adobe Reader
has a single dialog, while Quicktime Player has a submenu of three
dialogs. Firefox and Roxio Creator Classic follow the WordPad model of
placement.
What about the dialog contents themselves? Microsoft Word has modal
tabbed dialogs, while Microsoft Outlook has a modeless tabbed dialog without
a help button. Adobe Reader and Firefox have modal dialogs using a listbox
instead of tabs to separate the pages. Quicktime Player is similar,
but uses a combobox instead of a listbox. Some of these dialogs had
help buttons while the rest lacked them.
Okay, what about the look and feel? Certainly the Windows platform has
a consistant widget set? Sadly, no. Adobe Reader has an
almost-but-not-quite Win2K look, that matches neither the Windows
Classic nor Luna themes that comes with Windows XP. Roxio Creator
Classic has a "brushed plastic" look with odd splitter
controls. Quicktime player has, of course, a look and feel straight
out of another operating system! Comparing native Microsoft
applications only improves matters slightly. Microsoft Word has a
completely different toolbar style than Microsoft WordPad! I could
continue on to some truly egregious examples of inconsistancy, but
I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.
I think by now that I have thoroughly debunked the notion that the
Windows desktop is uniform and consistant. The question remains
though, is the Unix desktop better? The answer is similarly, "no". But
since Windows isn't consistant, the urgency of the question is clearly
lessoned. Newbies aren't going to be rendered insane by seeing
Evolution running alongside Konqueror. They aren't going to go running
back to Windows when their distro forgot to include Plastik icons with
Mozilla.
Funny, Solaris ships with a choice in desktops, and I don't see admins dying of panic attacks...
What's the big deal? The receptionist as FooBar Corp isn't going to deciding this stuff, the trained sysadmins at FooBar Corp will. And if your sysadmins are too dumb to make a decision like this, you have bigger problems facing you to worry about this.
What's next? Do we remove the choice between vi and emacs because some sysadmin panicked during the install?
Why do people hold to this illusion that having 3 parties will fix anything? The third party will be as corrupt as the first two.
Your question was actually answered by a libertarian candidate several elections ago. I seem to recall it was Ron Paul but I could be wrong. To paraphrase: "If the Libertarian party became a dominate party, we might end up as corrupt as the Democrats and Republicans in twenty years. But at least that's twenty years without corruption!"
The libertarian party wouldn't be doing this if they were in the debate, even if all the other 'third' parties were excluded.
In that situation the Libertarian party wouldn't be a party [sic] to that case.
The other two leaders are there purely for show, I think.
If the other two leaders are smart, they'll put the fire to the two major leaders and keep them honest. That's where the US CPD breaks down, there's no one around to talk about the failure of the drug war. No one to talk about corporate statism. Heck, considering this years debate, it would be nice to have someone bring up a domestic issue, ANY domestic issue.
I'm all in favor of this. Political parties are in essence private organizations. Their candidates should only be chosen by their members. They should not get the benefit of public moneys to decide their leadership.
Ummm... just counting? That they said this implies that they were NOT using major numbers to mark a major release.
If the poster can convince a number of people to vote third party, he will tend to hurt the Democrats more than the Republicans
A third party vote in any election, in any year, in the two-party US system, will always help one of the two major parties more than the other. Next election it might help the Dems. The one after that the Reps.
In EVERY election there will always be one major candidate you dislike more than the other. ALWAYS. By your logic no one should ever vote for a third party. That's stupid.
I'm voting third party because neither Kerry nor Bush represent my interests. Their philosophies of governance are opposed to mine. I am opposed to virtually every position on either of their platforms. That Bush might be marginally worse than Kerry in my eyes does not make voting for Kerry palatable. Even if they were the only two names on the ballot, I would still write in "none of the above".
You mean Carter and Clinton country? Byrd and Gore country? Who would have thunk it?
You know, it's idiotic shit like this that makes me nuts about America.
Why don't you go back and read his post? He isn't saying anything about banning Stern, outlawing Stern, or sending the 82nd Airborne down on Stern's ass. All he is saying is that he doesn't want to listen to Stern.
What's idiotic is people like you ranting and raving about our diminishing freedom of choice every time someone makes a choice different from yours. You can be for the decriminalization of marijuana without being a pothead. Really!
I live in the San Fransisco bay area. And over here it seems like the exact opposite it the rule. In the liberal mind, anything that might possibly benefit the Right is evil and hateful and anti-American, whereas any of the well-documented dirty tricks of the Left are legitimate politics.
Translation: Don't vote for someone, vote against someone. Subordinate your beliefs to the expedient. Let me tell you how to vote.
The editorial board of a small town newspaper is not indicative of anything. But you're making it out to be big news. Sheesh.
Wow, I must have hit a chord with this many responses?
Since I don't use Windows, I'm completely unfamiliar with this emotion that makes people want to throw spyware authors in jail. I'm one of the lucky ones I guess, because in my entire life I have not once been subjected to spyware nor infected by a virus or trojan. Nor do I ever expect to be. But my mom gets hit by this crap all the time. What makes her different from me? Her behavior. In terms of spyware, she really does consent to it. If there's a button on a webpage that says "click here", you have to restrain her to prevent her from clicking on it.
If software can install itself on a computer without any user consent, then it's a virus or worm. We have laws against that right now. If it tricks the user into installing it, then it's a trojan. We have laws against that right now. If the EULA is deliberately vague and misleading, then we have a full slough of laws to cover that.
The problem with spyware is that it doesn't preemptively disclose its full nature. You think you're getting a weather applet but you end up with a weather applet that tracks and reports your usage patterns. You could have determined this extra "functionality" beforehand, but you didn't bother to check. This is certainly annoying, but it doesn't reach into the realm of the criminal, IMO. Not everything that annoys us should be made a criminal act. That's why we have civil courts. That's why we have lawsuits.
If you've been "victimized" by spyware, sue the spyware manufacturers. No need for an act of congress. No need for legislation that steps ever so slightly beyond the scope of its title.
Have you read the full text of this law? It's doesn't just step slightly beyond the scope of its title, it takes broad leaps! The Opera browser has been outlawed by this bill because it displays advertisements that you can't turn off! If you write a program that installs an entry into the users bookmarks, you're a criminal! Write a keystroke logger for a usability study, activated only by user consent, and you're a criminal! Install a content filter and go to jail!