Is sharing the documents really a problem? I don't know about the Free software world, but, while I never tried it, Office can open and save as works documents, so technically a MS Office user wouldn't even notice. I guess its more of an issue if you want to READ a document sent to you, but then Office has a free viewer... Leaving only one scenario (while I'll admit, a common one) is to edit a file that was sent to you...
But that still leaves quite a few scenarios covered.
You missed the memo? Here, if we look at the memory usage of our 4 gig ram Core 2 Quad go higher than 250 megs of ram (half of which is taken by Apache and Firefox), then we need to trim on something. Memory is meant to show off in your sig on hardware forums, NOT to be used, as it might make the hardware age faster! Caching is also the root of all evil, duh.
If the ad system is completly server side, let say, while the phone is trying to make a connection, is when the ad plays, pushed by the server in the same way voice would be (that is, the phone "thinks" the person picked up already, even though it didnt even start ringing), how exactly are you going to crack it from your side?
Yeah, I agree. Well, I guess my example was incomplete, but my point remain the same (which you confirmed with your precision): its not as easy to replace Office than IE, because Office works, IE's broken.
Many people made the comparison with Firefox, and while good, it has a major flaw. One big thing thats pushing firefox, among other things, is the fact that IE doesn't work. Its buggy. If IE used an unstandard HTML/CSS type thing that actually WORKS (and used it for over a decade, so WPF and stuff doesn't count), Firefox would have had a much harder time going through. But IE doesn't even have that, and even non-geek (but still techies) have made web pages and hit IE's bugs in the past.
By far its not the biggest reason behind Firefox's momentum, but its one big thing that the whole Office thing doesn't have: MS Office actually works. IE doesn't.
Of course, the above has incredibly little to do with C#, and everything to do with MSI. Given that context, and having the MSI design tools in front of you, the meaning of that snippet would be quite obvious:)
That being said, for the most part Microsoft Press books are pretty bad, with a few notable exception, though if you want to see something awful, the chapter on configuration of the 70-536 training kit book is something out of this world...
How did they not? The license lets you see the code, play with it, change it, go wild, own what you make with it, etc. So people can't go and say "waaaah, its not as secure cuz I can't see the code!", or "what if Microsoft goes bankrupt??? I won't have the code!". On the other hand, it has some pretty rough requirements, like the whole "this is only valid if you're using the code on windows" or whatsnot.
Compromise, as in "in between". It sure isn't a valid license if they want a little certificate of approval, as far as I understand, I'll give you that. But it has all the properties of a partial step forward.
Its called compromising. MS is a large company with conflicting interests from the inside. So they take baby steps. There are shareholders that will (try) to stop certain things from happening if it goes too fast: when you are the size of Microsoft, you can't do bold moves, ever. Little, progressive changes, one by one, is how things work. Anything else and you end up like Novell.
On top of that, in the inside you have the ideas of the project managers, architects, developers, etc, all conflicting. People with different backgrounds give different opinions (which was, btw, the source of why.NET is the way it is, supporting multiple languages: from the inside, they couldn't get a consensus as to what would be the real.NET language, so they allowed em all). Some are for GPL3, some are for close source only, and there are people everywhere in between. So they compromise, and that means that (for now), they won't use existing open source licenses across the board. Give em time.
they sound all sound like whiny 15 year olds that think they are cool since they know how install linux on their machine
Thats because thats exactly what many of em ARE. (Well, maybe a bit older than 15, but I'd be interested in statistics on how many of the people that post stuff like that even have a full time job...)
Yup, thats the important part... even coal power plants are infinitely more efficient than car engines. And of course, there are already quite a lot of places where hydroelectricity and other means are available. -MORE- than enough to make a significant difference.
Indeed. I have never looked at statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised if, taking aside commercial uses (planes, vans, etc), the "short trips to the grocery stores or whatever thats 3 blocks away" account for most of the fuel use. Cars like that would be perfect for most use. Even better in places like in Quebec where electricity is produced relatively cleanly and is dirt cheap. That would pay for itself much, MUCH faster than current hybrids.
Same here, I've been with Nintendo the whole way, only getting a PS2 at the end of last gen's for KH2, and when Nintendo showed off the "Revolution", I was like "Bleh...I'm not getting caught THREE times in a row Nintendo, hell no!". Then E3 happened, and we can guess the rest: I was in line in November at midnight (and didn't get one until january...)
Im not american either, but here, if you get a SSN stolen, with a bit of creativity you could gather enough info to get a loan or rent an apartment in the name of the person that you stole it from. Then well, never pay it back, ruin their credit rating, etc. Powerful stuff.
Indeed. Thats why I've always refused to work on CRTs for extended amount of time, and if CRT was all that was available, I'd use my lap-top.
Not an option for everyone, but from my experience, it seems my eyes are quite a bit more sensitive than most to such things, so CRTs make me cry. Literally.
Considering the blogs of the people from the IE team, especially an interesting one that I read a while back that was about how they patch IE's bugs using external proxy processes and crap, I think thats the last thing we'd like to see.
Since Microsoft's wake up call around 2004-2005ish, they've been doing some pretty decent code. The one thats not full of legacy crap, thats the one you'd be interested in seeing (of course, most of it is in.NET and you can look at it in Reflector, so....)
Im not quite sure you are aware of how much API microsoft developed... I don't think its humanly possible, honestly. And each of those APIs are quite large, and projects can touch quite a few. Learning 80% of the ones they're touching? Yes, definately. Learning 100%? Thats just not realistic.
At first glance (I didnt read the article), I'd be saying the patents in question were american awarded ones, yes? If so, then it would be a bit hard to use said patents to hurt non-americans. In the same way if Monsanto had patents (maybe they do!) in, let say, australia, it would be correct to say they would be used to hurt and bankrupt australian farmers, no?
The thing, and this is what the example of the checkers game shows, is that while humans can do a lot more things than a computer, and might always will, only a certain set of things "matter" if you're trying to achieve perfection (depending on what you consider perfect). Everything else is irrelevent. One of humans strong points is to recover from mistakes. If you don't make mistakes, ever, in the first place, an amazingly large subset of the human brain becomes totally useless.
You're right now, if that was to happen, there's a possibility that we'll -physically- evolve further from what we are now, and thus the computer will be playing catch up.
Whistler and Longhorn are code names, temporary, and are discarded after the real name of the product comes in. For tiger and panther, well, yes, they are more professional names:) (and I hate apple, so its not fanboyism)
All of those aside like 2 are describing my current work environment. The last one on your list (the project manager not having enough power) is an incredibly huge one, that way, way too many people miss. My current project manager is a former software architect. He's SEEING all the problems, and he KNOWS how to fix them, but doesn't have the power to enforce it (neither do I unfortunately). So he's just watching the train wreck, trying to do what he can...its sad really.
The requirements process is also a killer. Too many teams know about use cases (both high level and technical), but not about how to gather a good set of requirements. _BOTH_ are required, but companies go too often with one, but not the other. Current place has use cases, but no requirements. Previous job had full sets of requirements, but no use cases. Both end in failures (requirements as you mentionned can be ditched in certain environments like Agile if done right, but these were not agile shops). Part of it comes from too many businesses and development teams thinking that software goes -> preliminary analysis -> UML -> code -> test -> deployment. Thats skipping quite the important step(s).
As a side note, have you noticed that as a contractor, working for so many different places in such short time (compared to most other developers or IT people), you tend to learn (for the first few years) by seeing what NOT to do, more so than by seeing what -works-? Almost a process of elimination.
Rule 1 is so especially true. If you admit that you're about to fail, you can't completly fail, ever, because you'll (almost) always be able to fix things before its too late... Project that fails are almost always caused because no one was willing to admit the project was screwed until no one could go back.
I'm in a situation where the preliminary analysis was wrong on several, severe cases, so the project scope is ending to be on an order of magnitude greater than what was originally anticipated. We're being asked to cut corners everywhere to make it happen anyway, and finding "simple" solutions to all problems. Catch is, those "simple" solutions do NOT get the job done, so we end up with non-functional implementations. If people had admitted that they had screwed up as soon as it became obvious, we could have re-scoped the project, and succeeded with a slight spill on the budget. But now, it looks like its going to be a 1 year project that will take two, and the team's moral couldn't be any lower.
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Is sharing the documents really a problem? I don't know about the Free software world, but, while I never tried it, Office can open and save as works documents, so technically a MS Office user wouldn't even notice. I guess its more of an issue if you want to READ a document sent to you, but then Office has a free viewer... Leaving only one scenario (while I'll admit, a common one) is to edit a file that was sent to you...
But that still leaves quite a few scenarios covered.
You missed the memo? Here, if we look at the memory usage of our 4 gig ram Core 2 Quad go higher than 250 megs of ram (half of which is taken by Apache and Firefox), then we need to trim on something. Memory is meant to show off in your sig on hardware forums, NOT to be used, as it might make the hardware age faster! Caching is also the root of all evil, duh.
If the ad system is completly server side, let say, while the phone is trying to make a connection, is when the ad plays, pushed by the server in the same way voice would be (that is, the phone "thinks" the person picked up already, even though it didnt even start ringing), how exactly are you going to crack it from your side?
Yeah, I agree. Well, I guess my example was incomplete, but my point remain the same (which you confirmed with your precision): its not as easy to replace Office than IE, because Office works, IE's broken.
Many people made the comparison with Firefox, and while good, it has a major flaw. One big thing thats pushing firefox, among other things, is the fact that IE doesn't work. Its buggy. If IE used an unstandard HTML/CSS type thing that actually WORKS (and used it for over a decade, so WPF and stuff doesn't count), Firefox would have had a much harder time going through. But IE doesn't even have that, and even non-geek (but still techies) have made web pages and hit IE's bugs in the past.
By far its not the biggest reason behind Firefox's momentum, but its one big thing that the whole Office thing doesn't have: MS Office actually works. IE doesn't.
Of course, the above has incredibly little to do with C#, and everything to do with MSI. Given that context, and having the MSI design tools in front of you, the meaning of that snippet would be quite obvious :)
That being said, for the most part Microsoft Press books are pretty bad, with a few notable exception, though if you want to see something awful, the chapter on configuration of the 70-536 training kit book is something out of this world...
How did they not? The license lets you see the code, play with it, change it, go wild, own what you make with it, etc. So people can't go and say "waaaah, its not as secure cuz I can't see the code!", or "what if Microsoft goes bankrupt??? I won't have the code!". On the other hand, it has some pretty rough requirements, like the whole "this is only valid if you're using the code on windows" or whatsnot.
Compromise, as in "in between". It sure isn't a valid license if they want a little certificate of approval, as far as I understand, I'll give you that. But it has all the properties of a partial step forward.
Its called compromising. MS is a large company with conflicting interests from the inside. So they take baby steps. There are shareholders that will (try) to stop certain things from happening if it goes too fast: when you are the size of Microsoft, you can't do bold moves, ever. Little, progressive changes, one by one, is how things work. Anything else and you end up like Novell.
.NET is the way it is, supporting multiple languages: from the inside, they couldn't get a consensus as to what would be the real .NET language, so they allowed em all). Some are for GPL3, some are for close source only, and there are people everywhere in between. So they compromise, and that means that (for now), they won't use existing open source licenses across the board. Give em time.
On top of that, in the inside you have the ideas of the project managers, architects, developers, etc, all conflicting. People with different backgrounds give different opinions (which was, btw, the source of why
Of course, I doubt that MS will have that client used for anything but their files, so in the end, its not like its even competing with BT at all.
Yup, thats the important part... even coal power plants are infinitely more efficient than car engines. And of course, there are already quite a lot of places where hydroelectricity and other means are available. -MORE- than enough to make a significant difference.
Since he said round trip, he's not cutting it close at all. He can -almost- do the trip twice on one charge.
Indeed. I have never looked at statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised if, taking aside commercial uses (planes, vans, etc), the "short trips to the grocery stores or whatever thats 3 blocks away" account for most of the fuel use. Cars like that would be perfect for most use. Even better in places like in Quebec where electricity is produced relatively cleanly and is dirt cheap. That would pay for itself much, MUCH faster than current hybrids.
Same here, I've been with Nintendo the whole way, only getting a PS2 at the end of last gen's for KH2, and when Nintendo showed off the "Revolution", I was like "Bleh...I'm not getting caught THREE times in a row Nintendo, hell no!". Then E3 happened, and we can guess the rest: I was in line in November at midnight (and didn't get one until january...)
Im not american either, but here, if you get a SSN stolen, with a bit of creativity you could gather enough info to get a loan or rent an apartment in the name of the person that you stole it from. Then well, never pay it back, ruin their credit rating, etc. Powerful stuff.
Indeed. Thats why I've always refused to work on CRTs for extended amount of time, and if CRT was all that was available, I'd use my lap-top.
Not an option for everyone, but from my experience, it seems my eyes are quite a bit more sensitive than most to such things, so CRTs make me cry. Literally.
Considering the blogs of the people from the IE team, especially an interesting one that I read a while back that was about how they patch IE's bugs using external proxy processes and crap, I think thats the last thing we'd like to see. Since Microsoft's wake up call around 2004-2005ish, they've been doing some pretty decent code. The one thats not full of legacy crap, thats the one you'd be interested in seeing (of course, most of it is in .NET and you can look at it in Reflector, so....)
Im not quite sure you are aware of how much API microsoft developed... I don't think its humanly possible, honestly. And each of those APIs are quite large, and projects can touch quite a few. Learning 80% of the ones they're touching? Yes, definately. Learning 100%? Thats just not realistic.
At first glance (I didnt read the article), I'd be saying the patents in question were american awarded ones, yes? If so, then it would be a bit hard to use said patents to hurt non-americans. In the same way if Monsanto had patents (maybe they do!) in, let say, australia, it would be correct to say they would be used to hurt and bankrupt australian farmers, no?
Namco announced the sequel of Tales of Symphonia as a Wii exclusive. Do we -really- need anything else? That justifies the console right there for me.
Yup, regardless of what one may think about Nintendo's games, its hard to deny that whoever thought up their recent business plans is a genius.
The thing, and this is what the example of the checkers game shows, is that while humans can do a lot more things than a computer, and might always will, only a certain set of things "matter" if you're trying to achieve perfection (depending on what you consider perfect). Everything else is irrelevent. One of humans strong points is to recover from mistakes. If you don't make mistakes, ever, in the first place, an amazingly large subset of the human brain becomes totally useless.
You're right now, if that was to happen, there's a possibility that we'll -physically- evolve further from what we are now, and thus the computer will be playing catch up.
Whistler and Longhorn are code names, temporary, and are discarded after the real name of the product comes in. For tiger and panther, well, yes, they are more professional names :) (and I hate apple, so its not fanboyism)
All of those aside like 2 are describing my current work environment. The last one on your list (the project manager not having enough power) is an incredibly huge one, that way, way too many people miss. My current project manager is a former software architect. He's SEEING all the problems, and he KNOWS how to fix them, but doesn't have the power to enforce it (neither do I unfortunately). So he's just watching the train wreck, trying to do what he can...its sad really.
The requirements process is also a killer. Too many teams know about use cases (both high level and technical), but not about how to gather a good set of requirements. _BOTH_ are required, but companies go too often with one, but not the other. Current place has use cases, but no requirements. Previous job had full sets of requirements, but no use cases. Both end in failures (requirements as you mentionned can be ditched in certain environments like Agile if done right, but these were not agile shops). Part of it comes from too many businesses and development teams thinking that software goes -> preliminary analysis -> UML -> code -> test -> deployment. Thats skipping quite the important step(s).
As a side note, have you noticed that as a contractor, working for so many different places in such short time (compared to most other developers or IT people), you tend to learn (for the first few years) by seeing what NOT to do, more so than by seeing what -works-? Almost a process of elimination.
Rule 1 is so especially true. If you admit that you're about to fail, you can't completly fail, ever, because you'll (almost) always be able to fix things before its too late... Project that fails are almost always caused because no one was willing to admit the project was screwed until no one could go back.
I'm in a situation where the preliminary analysis was wrong on several, severe cases, so the project scope is ending to be on an order of magnitude greater than what was originally anticipated. We're being asked to cut corners everywhere to make it happen anyway, and finding "simple" solutions to all problems. Catch is, those "simple" solutions do NOT get the job done, so we end up with non-functional implementations. If people had admitted that they had screwed up as soon as it became obvious, we could have re-scoped the project, and succeeded with a slight spill on the budget. But now, it looks like its going to be a 1 year project that will take two, and the team's moral couldn't be any lower.