I'll tell you something that may resonate with Australians, and especially the ones who have DVD players. Basically, this trade agreement means that we cannot get any more multiregion DVDs. Tell people that it will be now illegal to buy a DVD player that plays movies from Europe and America and you will get people to listen to you.
Its funny how this government brought in laws that allowed parallel importation of CDs to increase competition and are doing the opposite and disrupting competition by effectively banning people buying legitimate DVDs from overseas and using them on their now illegal multiregion DVD player.
A lot of the proponents of outsourcing claim India as a bottomless supply of talent because they have a population close to a billion of mostly educated people. This is wrong.
India is a country of diversity where there are hundreds if not thousands of languages, having a caste system which means that there are the educated and non educated as it has been for thousands of years. Many indians do not become more than what they are because they believe it is bad karma. If you are a begger than you stay a begger because you believe that you will be something better when you become reincarnated.
Most of the IT companies in India are concentrated on the west coast of India (bounded by the mountain ranges to the east) and therefore only a fraction of the population of India would be highly skilled. Moves to expand the IT industry in India will stalled because of cultural reasons.
It is possible that most of the companies that have taken advantage of India's talent would have taken the cream of the crop. As with anything that has a great amount of hype behind it, Indian outsourcing will suffer from a bubble effect... Early adopters benefit while others find that the later they outsource the benefits become diminished. Others will find a detremental effect to their business.
Perhaps a policy to slow down outsourcing to India would be good thing for America in the same way that raising interest rates - in order to stop the economy overheating - is a good thing. This will have the benefit of stopping the bubble effect described above and at the same time will give time for American programmers to adjust and adapt to the new outsourcing reality.
The blind rush of people outsourcing to India also means that people forget that there are other countries with highly educated and undervalued people.
There are many professions that may never be outsourced like programmers. Managers, doctors and lawyers they have a competative advantage that professionals in other countries cannot imitate. In order to survive software developers need to be able to think and act like a business. Things like finding a competative advantage which outsourcing cannot compete against. Maybe rebranding yourself. Maybe building your capability to take advantage of new opportunities out there. But its frigging tough when one moment you have a job and the next you don't.
One more thing I want to add... corporations have a primitive drive to increase profit by either increasing revenue, decreasing costs or both. So therefore much of the politics related to business involve 1. protecting revenue sources, 2. reducing costs.
Now patents/copyrights is a actively discussed in/. and really is a form of protectionism that enables sustainable development of intellectual property and maintains corporate revenue. Outsourcing is also actively discussed on/. and is against job protection.
Now people who argue for job protection are also arguing against intellectual property protection and people who argue against intellectual property protection probably argue for job protection. My point is that beauty and sustainability must be a balance between nurture and freedom. Like a garden you pull out the weeds if you can, or if you can't destroy the weeds because you will hurt the good plants then you leave the weeds alone.
This is a patent covering backing up preferences on a remote server so that someone can safely upgrade their OS or move computers.
There may be prior art but this sure aint novel.
As most people would agree here this patent would be solved by a person who is properly trained in software engineering, who finds themselves facing the same problem as these guys, would solve in a similar if not identical way.
Software engineers are just natural innovators. Its in our blood. We just find it insulting to our intellegence when we find crud like this being patented when we know that its our job to come up with creative solutions to problems of a similar stature to this patent.
If software patents are to be allowed then software developement must be understood as a prerequisite.
Does this mean that software DVD players on Linux are okay because they acheive interoperability and does this mean that software that breaks through ebooks are okay too because they achieve interoperability? This interoperability clause could then be stretched to mean anything...wouldn't that bee cool!:)
Bugs/inefficient code arise because:
Human error... which is exasabated by bad programming practice and lack of human mind to view complexity... which is exasabated by people starting to loose track of overall design of a system... which is exasabated by people having to redesign a system because it does not do what the customer wanted in the first place.
In today's management-driven culture, that's easy: your managers have to decide what your customers will accept, and you do what they tell you.
Taylorism and other management techniques that emerged out of the industrial revolution view organisations as machines where the people working within the organisation are viewed as parts of the machine. This view as seeing people as expandable lead to the slash and burn mentality of the 80s and 90s which meant that organisations severly diminished their capacity to adapt and compete in new business opportunities.
In a more engineering-oriented culture, it's also easy: you do things properly. If your engineers could discuss the problem with their engineers, all sides would probably agree on this, and make the decision that is, in the long time, in the interests of both your company and your client, which is almost certainly to rework the broken system properly, from scratch if necessary.
However some organisations are departing from this viewpoint and viewing organisations more like living organisms. With this view, people within the organisation are seen as key to the success of the organisation. Organisations with this view are able to adapt and change to new business opportunities. This is something that is being seen as good management practice not only in engineering circles as the lessons learned from the service and manufacturing sectors have led to seeing organisations more organically.
What surprises me is today alot of organisations are outsourcing IT out of the organisations where organisations at the same time are viewing IT as key to their competative advantage. IT professionals are amoungst the most innovative people and organisations are simply throwing away this talent. It will hit them back in the future...
Regarding the original topic. It may be the case that planning to the nth degree is a waste of money. Then again it may be a good idea to spend time in the analysis and design stages to make sure costly mistakes aren't taken. But the best way for this to be decided is by a bunch of highly talented and empowered professionals that understand the needs of the organisation and can respond appropriately.
I believe it goes even deeper than this. I believe that there is a fundamental problem with the culture within Microsoft. Microsoft was built on adding features to its software in order to appeal to the masses. But this resulted on all but core features being very buggy. To break this cycle means to break nearly 2 decades of history and tradition in the organisation.
I doubt that Microsoft will ever do this. So organisationally it is putting on a facade as we all know.
Porting a VB app to VB.NET hey... Good luck! I think that when Microsoft was developing.NET they focused on the ASP.NET stuff and forgot about window app development. There are many bugs and here are some examples:
The Grid control is extremely buggy and cumbersome to use if you want to do anything fancy like highlight a column. If you want you application to use a grid then buy third part software.
Try doing stuff using the combo boxes or list boxes. They do not work properly if you are using "DataMember" and "ValueMember" properties.
Try duplicating a DataTable with a column that has an expression. I believe this was fixed in Framework 1.1 but in the Framework 1.1 try using an MDI window with more than 4 child windows.
Try loading data from an XML file into a dataset which has expressions. This again was meant to be fixed in Framework 1.1 but again the MDI problem.
These are some that I have come across, but I bet there are an incalculatable amout out there. This is typical of Microsoft, develop for the most profitable market segment and make a half-arsed attempt at covering other market segments. Do something that they design the product for you spend x effort. Try to do something different or innovative spend 100x effort. For all intents and purposes you might as well move your windows app to ASP.NET because you will have a heck of a time using the windows.NET stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
Would the efficiency of a neural network relate to the problem of training a neural network to peform an XOR function?
I read an article in New Scientist where there was a breakthrough that allowed a neural network to peform an XOR function.
Just a thought....
I'll tell you something that may resonate with Australians, and especially the ones who have DVD players. Basically, this trade agreement means that we cannot get any more multiregion DVDs. Tell people that it will be now illegal to buy a DVD player that plays movies from Europe and America and you will get people to listen to you.
Its funny how this government brought in laws that allowed parallel importation of CDs to increase competition and are doing the opposite and disrupting competition by effectively banning people buying legitimate DVDs from overseas and using them on their now illegal multiregion DVD player.
A lot of the proponents of outsourcing claim India as a bottomless supply of talent because they have a population close to a billion of mostly educated people. This is wrong.
India is a country of diversity where there are hundreds if not thousands of languages, having a caste system which means that there are the educated and non educated as it has been for thousands of years. Many indians do not become more than what they are because they believe it is bad karma. If you are a begger than you stay a begger because you believe that you will be something better when you become reincarnated.
Most of the IT companies in India are concentrated on the west coast of India (bounded by the mountain ranges to the east) and therefore only a fraction of the population of India would be highly skilled. Moves to expand the IT industry in India will stalled because of cultural reasons.
It is possible that most of the companies that have taken advantage of India's talent would have taken the cream of the crop. As with anything that has a great amount of hype behind it, Indian outsourcing will suffer from a bubble effect... Early adopters benefit while others find that the later they outsource the benefits become diminished. Others will find a detremental effect to their business.
Perhaps a policy to slow down outsourcing to India would be good thing for America in the same way that raising interest rates - in order to stop the economy overheating - is a good thing. This will have the benefit of stopping the bubble effect described above and at the same time will give time for American programmers to adjust and adapt to the new outsourcing reality.
The blind rush of people outsourcing to India also means that people forget that there are other countries with highly educated and undervalued people.
There are many professions that may never be outsourced like programmers. Managers, doctors and lawyers they have a competative advantage that professionals in other countries cannot imitate. In order to survive software developers need to be able to think and act like a business. Things like finding a competative advantage which outsourcing cannot compete against. Maybe rebranding yourself. Maybe building your capability to take advantage of new opportunities out there. But its frigging tough when one moment you have a job and the next you don't.
One more thing I want to add... corporations have a primitive drive to increase profit by either increasing revenue, decreasing costs or both. So therefore much of the politics related to business involve 1. protecting revenue sources, 2. reducing costs.
Now patents/copyrights is a actively discussed in /. and really is a form of protectionism that enables sustainable development of intellectual property and maintains corporate revenue. Outsourcing is also actively discussed on /. and is against job protection.
Now people who argue for job protection are also arguing against intellectual property protection and people who argue against intellectual property protection probably argue for job protection. My point is that beauty and sustainability must be a balance between nurture and freedom. Like a garden you pull out the weeds if you can, or if you can't destroy the weeds because you will hurt the good plants then you leave the weeds alone.
There may be prior art but this sure aint novel.
As most people would agree here this patent would be solved by a person who is properly trained in software engineering, who finds themselves facing the same problem as these guys, would solve in a similar if not identical way.
Software engineers are just natural innovators. Its in our blood. We just find it insulting to our intellegence when we find crud like this being patented when we know that its our job to come up with creative solutions to problems of a similar stature to this patent.
If software patents are to be allowed then software developement must be understood as a prerequisite.
Does this mean that software DVD players on Linux are okay because they acheive interoperability and does this mean that software that breaks through ebooks are okay too because they achieve interoperability? This interoperability clause could then be stretched to mean anything...wouldn't that bee cool! :)
If a company makes press releases with fraudulent claims for the purpose of increasing share value is this fraud?
Make sure the drives are different brands. It is plausible that the drives would fail because of a manufacturing fault.
Bugs/inefficient code arise because: Human error... which is exasabated by bad programming practice and lack of human mind to view complexity... which is exasabated by people starting to loose track of overall design of a system... which is exasabated by people having to redesign a system because it does not do what the customer wanted in the first place.
Taylorism and other management techniques that emerged out of the industrial revolution view organisations as machines where the people working within the organisation are viewed as parts of the machine. This view as seeing people as expandable lead to the slash and burn mentality of the 80s and 90s which meant that organisations severly diminished their capacity to adapt and compete in new business opportunities.
However some organisations are departing from this viewpoint and viewing organisations more like living organisms. With this view, people within the organisation are seen as key to the success of the organisation. Organisations with this view are able to adapt and change to new business opportunities. This is something that is being seen as good management practice not only in engineering circles as the lessons learned from the service and manufacturing sectors have led to seeing organisations more organically.
What surprises me is today alot of organisations are outsourcing IT out of the organisations where organisations at the same time are viewing IT as key to their competative advantage. IT professionals are amoungst the most innovative people and organisations are simply throwing away this talent. It will hit them back in the future...
Regarding the original topic. It may be the case that planning to the nth degree is a waste of money. Then again it may be a good idea to spend time in the analysis and design stages to make sure costly mistakes aren't taken. But the best way for this to be decided is by a bunch of highly talented and empowered professionals that understand the needs of the organisation and can respond appropriately.
completely and uttery wrong. Patents do NOT protect ideas. They protect inventions. That is, something that is actually real.
I believe it goes even deeper than this. I believe that there is a fundamental problem with the culture within Microsoft. Microsoft was built on adding features to its software in order to appeal to the masses. But this resulted on all but core features being very buggy. To break this cycle means to break nearly 2 decades of history and tradition in the organisation.
I doubt that Microsoft will ever do this. So organisationally it is putting on a facade as we all know.
The Grid control is extremely buggy and cumbersome to use if you want to do anything fancy like highlight a column. If you want you application to use a grid then buy third part software.
Try doing stuff using the combo boxes or list boxes. They do not work properly if you are using "DataMember" and "ValueMember" properties.
Try duplicating a DataTable with a column that has an expression. I believe this was fixed in Framework 1.1 but in the Framework 1.1 try using an MDI window with more than 4 child windows.
Try loading data from an XML file into a dataset which has expressions. This again was meant to be fixed in Framework 1.1 but again the MDI problem.
These are some that I have come across, but I bet there are an incalculatable amout out there. This is typical of Microsoft, develop for the most profitable market segment and make a half-arsed attempt at covering other market segments. Do something that they design the product for you spend x effort. Try to do something different or innovative spend 100x effort. For all intents and purposes you might as well move your windows app to ASP.NET because you will have a heck of a time using the windows .NET stuff.