All things are relative and there are no absolutes. This is an important teaching if you read history. For instance, look at slavery in america. Some very moral people in america believed in slavery. They did not believe that blacks were fully people and did not think they could live in a free society. It was a moral belief that slavery and being a "good" slave owner was the best way to be.
Very "moral" men on the supreme court rued against Dred Scott. They believed they were doing the right thing.
You can't view history or other cultures through the lens of your own morals. Evey time and culture has their own.
If you think that morality is a subjective term, you are amoral.
Well, if you think "morality" is not subjective, you lack any knowledge of history or cultures other than your own. Morality is very much the product of culture.
An islamic family is trying to perform an honor killing of their daughter for adultery. To me that is immoral. To them it is highly moral. I may commit, what is to me, a "moral" act and try to save her. To them, I would be acting immorally preventing them from acting morally in their culture.
One can still act morally while having different morals than others. Amoral means you have no morals.
Sony claims that THEY took down the system after they discovered the breach
This is something I find funny. I've worked on a number of high scale systems and have yet to see one that truly has the ability to track access violations. We have one of two possibilities to consider: (1) Sony has a system that can detect and report a data breach, yet, is taking them weeks to fix or (2) Sony is lying to save face.
It's not Sony that may have irreparable damage done to them... it's the users.
I think the important point is that they are "Sony users." Which, moving forward may not be something people want to be, which, of course, would be the objective. The best and worst thing for a business is word of mouth.
This could be a new Microsoft patented competition strategy.
Sony pissed off a lot of geeks, many of whom are smart and amoral
I think it is too easy to dismiss hackers as "amoral." I think very much it it probably not the case. I think hackers probably consider themselves as very "moral."
The problem with morality is that it is a subjective term.
How is fucking over tens of millions of people "justice"? If anything, it'll only get their backs up and give more support to companies like Sony going after those purporting to be speaking for the "common man".
Collateral damage.
How many innocent lives were lost in the quest for Osama Bin Laden? Sadam? Al Capone?
I don't think it is merely "criminal greed," If it were simply greed, they would not have brought down the system. A "thief" would not want to leave any indication that they were ever there. A person who steals for greed or need seldom goes out of their way to damage. A person who defaces things will also steal, but the motivation isn't merely greed, there is retribution involved.
I'm sure no one believes that this is not an example of vigilante justice being played out against Sony. This is deeply concerning.
As police, lawmakers, judges, and governments become more and more puppets of corporate interests at the expense of the rights of citizens, I fear that vigilante justice will be the only avenue through which to seek justice. The basis of a working society is a working justice system. If citizens can not find justice officially, then they will find it unofficially.
I am reminded of a quote from "Young Frankenstein" "A riot is an ugly thing, and I think it is just about time we had one."
And what's this thing about "the engine is only suited for hybrid-electric vehicles, but that's okay. "... what does THAT mean?
Somehow I doubt this is going to pan out quite like they say it will.
Well, my guess is that it has very little torque but high RPM, like a turbine. A piston engine has a torque curve like a distorted parabola. Where the vertical axis is torque and the horizontal axis is RPM. The wider the torque curve, the better performance the engine has, allowing you to "stay in gear" longer. A turbine tends to have a torque curve shaped more like a positive slope with an abrupt end. Requiring a different type of transmission.
Energy is force over time, and engine power is measured as torque * RPM. So, the problem: for cars, torque is king. 0-60 is all about torque. "Driving Excitement" is acceleration. While a turbine may produce more power, that power comes from high RPM, but, unfortunately, low torque. Gearing is not much of an answer because transmissions are fairly inefficient. Just try to use a hand mixer in gear oil.
Using a turbine to produce electricity is a great idea. Let's be honest here, regardless of what they call it or how it looks, it is just a new kind of turbine. You can spin that sucker at its most efficient RPM, produce as much electricity as you need, and let electric current give you your torque. Will this be more efficient than a gas engine? Maybe or maybe not. We'll see. (or not)
Sure, theft and murder are bad, but a mass global ID means that anonymous existence will become impossible. Just think what access to such a system will mean to governments that run by dictators. Even the oh so sweet and trustworthy "democracies" will abuse this. Sometimes, it is important for the good of mankind to disappear into a crowd.
OK, I hear you. Some seemingly intelligent people believe that crap. So be it. Forrest Mims? A fool is one who believes in foolish things or acts in foolish ways.
Intelligent Design and Creationism is the ultimate intellectual cop-out and cancer. Belief in it is a sign that the critical thinking centers of the brain have been compromised and that there is a high likelihood that many more non-rational lapses of judgment exist. "ID" is nothing more than the pursuit of distorting real scientific fact with plausible sounding nonsense to act as a crowbar to teach creationism in schools. The perpetrators of it are either cynically evil or pathetically ignorant. The arguments they put forth, such as "irreducible complexity," only work on lay people who have no interest in knowing better and absolutely do not stand true scientific scrutiny.
I whole heartedly say, YES, discriminate against people who believe in literal creationism and intelligent design. Any politician that puts forward a law to protect these fantasies is, himself, a danger to others and it is our duty to lock him up.
While a lot of people dismiss this as a money grab, and it may very well be, but there are important societal issues here. OK, Facebook is a private business, we all get that, but at what point is a "private business" so pervasive or necessary that it is no longer "private?" If a private institution becomes vital, like AT&T in the last century, the government used the sherman act.
I'm not saying Facebook is vital, but for a lot of people it is their primary contact medium. It may not be universally vital, but it may be to them. I am able to keep in touch and up to date with my extended family better than I ever had before now with Facebook. This is the *only* reason I have an account. If I were to have my facebook account shut off without any recourse, it would cost me some emotional loss. I hate admitting that, but if you use facebook at all, you may never admit it either, but you would secretly agree.
Just as you can't deny general commerce in the U.S. (i.e. you can't deny serving someone because of the color of their skin) I don't think you have to right to arbitrarily deny service to someone without any sort of recourse. Let the suit go through and may service companies that we come to depend on, take their service seriously.
There are lots and lots of bands and musicians that don't sign with RIAA members. (i.e. MOST of them) There are lots of music categories that have nothing to do with RIAA.
And if the Apple store refuses to alter their standard service contract or warranty to accomodate the geek with a few loose screws of his own, what then?
Sue them for breach of contract, specifically the warranty.
But it is Apple's repair shop.
But they have a contractual obligation to perform service.
You are not going to get far with the AG if your iDevice is brought up to current factory specs.
Not true, informed consent is a powerful thing. A lack of "informed consent" to an action against you or your property is actionable. If they alter your property in a way that you do not authorize, with "informed consent," then they are in trouble.
I doubt they have a clause that says: "we reserve the right to replace standard screws in your device in order to prevent you from servicing your own property." Without which, they won't be protected.
mlwmoohawk: (Shaking, agitated) "They took my Phillips head screws out of my iPhone and replaced them with pentalobular torx!" Secretary: "What?" mlwmoohawk: Apple has altered my personal property in a scheme that infringes on my property rights. As a corporate policy, they are replacing standard components with proprietary ones without informed consent and directly impacts my rights as a citizen. This policy is nation wide, and wide spread through out the state. A blow against this sort of blatant disregard for consumer rights will help Martha Coakly get reelected. Secretary: "NICE! I need something after being beaten by a male model."
"Take it to your states AG, and start a criminal investigation"
Do you really believe a state AG or anyone will really care that an Apple store replaced a couple of tiny screws with slightly different tiny screws? All that costing you possibly less than $10 in damages if you could even call that damages?
With that logic they could find your wallet, take a $10 out, put in a different $10, and be guilty of stealing your original $10.
It isn't about $1.00 worth of screws and we all know it. It is about the right to access your own property. If Apple alters your property to disallow you access after the fact, that is a criminal act which is actionable.
Even if you sign a service contract, any section that supposedly allows this is probably something the courts would ignore. It would depend largely on the venue and the wording, but my bet is that any such clause would be outside of the scope of a "service agreement," and thus potentially fraudulent. For instance if they say it was necessary for repair, that is fraud.
Take a picture of your laptop or device, carefully documenting the screws. Take it in for service Tell them not to change the screws If they change the screws, ask them to put the old ones back. Document change in screws Take it to your states AG, and start a criminal investigation.
ITS YOUR COMPUTER, if they change it against your will, we have laws to protect you. It is illegal for them to do this without your permission.
I have been giving the whole security argument some thought lately, and I think security through obscurity has merit in the short term. It should be obvious that security holes can be found quicker when you have the source than when you don't. All products have security flaws. All products tend to have more security problems initially and they get corrected over time.
Where open source helps is almost like homoeopathy, to cure your disease, you basically force your body to have symptoms in order to get the immune system working overtime. Open source exacerbates the security threat, initially, finding (and fixing) more of the security holes, that every product has, more quickly. So, at inception, an open source program or package would seem to have way more security holes up front, but once the initial wave passes, it will have far fewer. Closed source, on the other hand, never gets that initial wave, and their security holes get discovered regularly over time, usually very quietly.
A couple cycles of open source, and you'll have something tested to be secure. Using Windows as an example, you'll never be able to have any way to quantify the risk in a closed source package or product.
The TSA is the scariest organization in the USA. It is huge. The regulations it seeks to enforce are classified for national security. It highers only low wage under-educated people. The belligerence you encounter dealing with the TSA is astounding.
It is a recipe for violations of civil rights and suppression of freedom and expression.
The TSA is, in itself, an anathema to freedom and the constitution.
If you are trying to explain why something won't work for hours and hours and hours, and it's not sinking in, the problem is more likely with your communications skills than it is with your audience's listening skills and understanding.
It is obvious that you've never been in a situation where people don't want to be informed and merely want to demand and get their way regardless of facts.
Ah, I see - so it's not that people writing software don't understand their users, don't understand their audience, and so get it wrong. It's because sales and marketing and management meddle with a perfect product and won't just shut up and behave like the engineers tell them to? You're simply demonstrating your inability to communicate with non-technical people here.
I'm not talking about a feature set, per se' I'm talking about the realities of the environment. I've seen more companies go under because of bad sales and marketing than I have seen an inability to deliver product.
If sales and marketing, and the management, of the company are not competent enough to understand, as an example, that most users have a personal firewall, and their "zero administration" product won't work because of the firewalls, then the product will be a failure. "Can't you just go through the firewall?" "Umm, a firewall is made to prevent this sort of access."
So, what is left is engineering saying "You have to modify the product marketing plan and spec, because it can't work that way." and marketing saying "It has to work this way or we can't sell it." Then you have clever people in engineering trying to solve the problem of getting through the firewall without admin access so the product will work.
It takes at least twice as long to develop and has a lot more support issues. Engineering will be spending its time working around an arbitrary requirement conceived in marketing that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the actual use case of the application.
All things being equal, this is not the usual case. It is my description of the pathological death spiral for a software company. I had never seen anything like up until about 10 years ago. I'd read about it in Dilbert of course, but never seen it. In the last 10 years, it has become more and more common place.
The problem is, many experts try to cram their 20 years of domain experience into that 20 minutes, with the result being a confused audience and glazed-over eyes indicating that you've communicated absolutely nothing of value to them
The problem comes from the, addressing the original point, when sales, marketing, and management try to get involved in engineering.
To understand a subject on a basic level, yes can be done in about 20 minutes. That is an entirely different problem. If you have someone interested in learning a subject, that is different than someone who actively rejects that experience or expertise account for anything, i.e. sales, marketing, and management.
Thus, you are presented with a problem. You outline an amount of work and a course of development that will solve the problem. You try to explain why solving this particular problem has a certain set of issues and forces a set of requirements.
Sales, marketing, and management are incapable of understanding the issue, because, like you, they assume that *anything* can be communicated and understood in 20 minutes or less. You spend frustrating hours as they try to convince you that you have the engineering plan wrong and you spend that same frustrating number of hours explaining how what they want to do won't work the way they want it to work.
Point by point, they don't get the issues. They don't understand the connections between systems. How a change in one layer affects components above and below.
If you've spend any time doing complex systems, you automatically avoid certain practices because, although they should work, they don't, and then you have to explain all the reasons why.
Then, depending on the reasonableness of the management team, one of three things happen. (1) They finally give up and let you design the damn product and you get to make it and it ships, or (2) they say the accept the design, but then constantly undercut your efforts and you never finish, or (3) they fire your ass and hire someone who will do it the way they want and they never finish.
That's why greater than 90% of all software companies go out of business.
It would seem you two are having completely different conversations at each other.
You're saying that in order to properly diagnose & address a malfunction with a complicated piece of machinery takes skill that the average layman lacks. This is true. But the point GP is raising is that you don't need the same skill-set to understand the underlying purpose of a complicated piece of machinery when it is in working order. This is also true.
Well, analogies are always inexact, but the point I was trying to make had to do with some things being more complex than can be easily explained to a layman.
My example was diagnosing a malfunctioning system, because that is something that most people have been on either side of. That is merely an example of the point.
I'm sure you can extrapolate this to something like computer architecture or design.
You seem stuck on the notion that "explaining heart surgery to someone" requires that they have gone through 8 years of medical school & residencies & internships before you can even begin. It doesn't. Teaching someone to perform heart surgery isn't required for them to understand what it is, and what function it serves.
That's a very simplistic point of view and not what I was referring too and the nature of the discussion is inhibiting the actual discussion because an analogy that is easy to understand will not do justice to the subject.
The best I can do for an analogy is starting a car in the winter. Under normal circumstances, it should start up. If however, there is a problem, then there is a whole host of possibilities. Is it spark or gas? Is it a computer issue? Is it cranking? Battery? Fuel filter? MAP sensor? Choke? one or more of these system? Remember, when its cold, these have to work more or less right, or it will never start.
If you called me and said, "I can't start my car, can you help me?" It is very unlikely that, unless you know cars well enough, that no amount of explanation of what to listen or look for will do you any good. You don't have the knowledge or experience to understand. Different engines can sound differently with similar problems, but a knowledgeable ear will hear whether or not the spark plugs are igniting the gas sporadically. It is almost impossible to describe the subtle difference, but if you've diagnosed a few engines that you'll begin to pick up on the subtlety.
I know this is a low-tech example, but it is one that most people are familiar with. I could not tell you on the phone how to start your car. Unless you know about cars yourself, you have no hope in diagnosing the problem. I could tell you to check or replace X,Y,or Z, but I wouldn't actually be explaining it to you. You would be a part swapping monkey, not actually knowing why you were testing X,Y,or Z with regard to the situation in front of you.
In reality, a good mechanic can usually get the car started, sometimes with starter fluid if necessary, and tell you exactly why it won't start. It would be impossible to explain that whole process to you. I might say, you need new spark plugs and say that they are worn. I might say your ECM error was 300 on the engine, which means you need a new distributor cap.
Computer programs and operating systems are 10s of thousands of time more complex than a car engine. When things are broken, I can explain what you need to do, but don't have any illusion that you will understand the explanation of "why" unless you have some background in the subject.
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All things are relative and there are no absolutes. This is an important teaching if you read history. For instance, look at slavery in america. Some very moral people in america believed in slavery. They did not believe that blacks were fully people and did not think they could live in a free society. It was a moral belief that slavery and being a "good" slave owner was the best way to be.
Very "moral" men on the supreme court rued against Dred Scott. They believed they were doing the right thing.
You can't view history or other cultures through the lens of your own morals. Evey time and culture has their own.
Just because two cultures disagree about what is moral does not mean that either both are right or that both are wrong
Except in the example given, it was displayed that there can be complete disagreement. One person's "moral" can be another's "immoral."
You, in your post, acknowledge that two cultures may disagree about what is considered moral, therefore it must be subjective.
The problem with morality is that it is a subjective term.
No. No, it's not.
So, you find girls in bikinis morally offensive? Do you think woman who have sex out of wedlock should be stoned to death?
To some people, these are moral questions and obviously affirmative.
If you think that morality is a subjective term, you are amoral.
Well, if you think "morality" is not subjective, you lack any knowledge of history or cultures other than your own. Morality is very much the product of culture.
An islamic family is trying to perform an honor killing of their daughter for adultery. To me that is immoral. To them it is highly moral. I may commit, what is to me, a "moral" act and try to save her. To them, I would be acting immorally preventing them from acting morally in their culture.
One can still act morally while having different morals than others. Amoral means you have no morals.
Sony claims that THEY took down the system after they discovered the breach
This is something I find funny. I've worked on a number of high scale systems and have yet to see one that truly has the ability to track access violations. We have one of two possibilities to consider: (1) Sony has a system that can detect and report a data breach, yet, is taking them weeks to fix or (2) Sony is lying to save face.
Ummm, I know which scenario is most likely.
It's not Sony that may have irreparable damage done to them... it's the users.
I think the important point is that they are "Sony users." Which, moving forward may not be something people want to be, which, of course, would be the objective. The best and worst thing for a business is word of mouth.
This could be a new Microsoft patented competition strategy.
Sony pissed off a lot of geeks, many of whom are smart and amoral
I think it is too easy to dismiss hackers as "amoral." I think very much it it probably not the case. I think hackers probably consider themselves as very "moral."
The problem with morality is that it is a subjective term.
How is fucking over tens of millions of people "justice"? If anything, it'll only get their backs up and give more support to companies like Sony going after those purporting to be speaking for the "common man".
Collateral damage.
How many innocent lives were lost in the quest for Osama Bin Laden? Sadam? Al Capone?
I don't think it is merely "criminal greed," If it were simply greed, they would not have brought down the system. A "thief" would not want to leave any indication that they were ever there. A person who steals for greed or need seldom goes out of their way to damage. A person who defaces things will also steal, but the motivation isn't merely greed, there is retribution involved.
I'm sure no one believes that this is not an example of vigilante justice being played out against Sony. This is deeply concerning.
As police, lawmakers, judges, and governments become more and more puppets of corporate interests at the expense of the rights of citizens, I fear that vigilante justice will be the only avenue through which to seek justice. The basis of a working society is a working justice system. If citizens can not find justice officially, then they will find it unofficially.
I am reminded of a quote from "Young Frankenstein" "A riot is an ugly thing, and I think it is just about time we had one."
And what's this thing about "the engine is only suited for hybrid-electric vehicles, but that's okay. " ... what does THAT mean?
Somehow I doubt this is going to pan out quite like they say it will.
Well, my guess is that it has very little torque but high RPM, like a turbine. A piston engine has a torque curve like a distorted parabola. Where the vertical axis is torque and the horizontal axis is RPM. The wider the torque curve, the better performance the engine has, allowing you to "stay in gear" longer. A turbine tends to have a torque curve shaped more like a positive slope with an abrupt end. Requiring a different type of transmission.
Energy is force over time, and engine power is measured as torque * RPM. So, the problem: for cars, torque is king. 0-60 is all about torque. "Driving Excitement" is acceleration. While a turbine may produce more power, that power comes from high RPM, but, unfortunately, low torque. Gearing is not much of an answer because transmissions are fairly inefficient. Just try to use a hand mixer in gear oil.
Using a turbine to produce electricity is a great idea. Let's be honest here, regardless of what they call it or how it looks, it is just a new kind of turbine. You can spin that sucker at its most efficient RPM, produce as much electricity as you need, and let electric current give you your torque. Will this be more efficient than a gas engine? Maybe or maybe not. We'll see. (or not)
Sure, theft and murder are bad, but a mass global ID means that anonymous existence will become impossible. Just think what access to such a system will mean to governments that run by dictators. Even the oh so sweet and trustworthy "democracies" will abuse this. Sometimes, it is important for the good of mankind to disappear into a crowd.
OK, I hear you. Some seemingly intelligent people believe that crap. So be it. Forrest Mims? A fool is one who believes in foolish things or acts in foolish ways.
Intelligent Design and Creationism is the ultimate intellectual cop-out and cancer. Belief in it is a sign that the critical thinking centers of the brain have been compromised and that there is a high likelihood that many more non-rational lapses of judgment exist. "ID" is nothing more than the pursuit of distorting real scientific fact with plausible sounding nonsense to act as a crowbar to teach creationism in schools. The perpetrators of it are either cynically evil or pathetically ignorant. The arguments they put forth, such as "irreducible complexity," only work on lay people who have no interest in knowing better and absolutely do not stand true scientific scrutiny.
I whole heartedly say, YES, discriminate against people who believe in literal creationism and intelligent design. Any politician that puts forward a law to protect these fantasies is, himself, a danger to others and it is our duty to lock him up.
While a lot of people dismiss this as a money grab, and it may very well be, but there are important societal issues here. OK, Facebook is a private business, we all get that, but at what point is a "private business" so pervasive or necessary that it is no longer "private?" If a private institution becomes vital, like AT&T in the last century, the government used the sherman act.
I'm not saying Facebook is vital, but for a lot of people it is their primary contact medium. It may not be universally vital, but it may be to them. I am able to keep in touch and up to date with my extended family better than I ever had before now with Facebook. This is the *only* reason I have an account. If I were to have my facebook account shut off without any recourse, it would cost me some emotional loss. I hate admitting that, but if you use facebook at all, you may never admit it either, but you would secretly agree.
Just as you can't deny general commerce in the U.S. (i.e. you can't deny serving someone because of the color of their skin) I don't think you have to right to arbitrarily deny service to someone without any sort of recourse. Let the suit go through and may service companies that we come to depend on, take their service seriously.
There are lots and lots of bands and musicians that don't sign with RIAA members. (i.e. MOST of them)
There are lots of music categories that have nothing to do with RIAA.
These people piss me off.
And if the Apple store refuses to alter their standard service contract or warranty to accomodate the geek with a few loose screws of his own, what then?
Sue them for breach of contract, specifically the warranty.
But it is Apple's repair shop.
But they have a contractual obligation to perform service.
You are not going to get far with the AG if your iDevice is brought up to current factory specs.
Not true, informed consent is a powerful thing. A lack of "informed consent" to an action against you or your property is actionable. If they alter your property in a way that you do not authorize, with "informed consent," then they are in trouble.
I doubt they have a clause that says: "we reserve the right to replace standard screws in your device in order to prevent you from servicing your own property." Without which, they won't be protected.
mlwmoohawk: (Shaking, agitated) "They took my Phillips head screws out of my iPhone and replaced them with pentalobular torx!"
Secretary: "What?"
mlwmoohawk: Apple has altered my personal property in a scheme that infringes on my property rights. As a corporate policy, they are replacing standard components with proprietary ones without informed consent and directly impacts my rights as a citizen. This policy is nation wide, and wide spread through out the state. A blow against this sort of blatant disregard for consumer rights will help Martha Coakly get reelected.
Secretary: "NICE! I need something after being beaten by a male model."
"Take it to your states AG, and start a criminal investigation"
Do you really believe a state AG or anyone will really care that an Apple store replaced a couple of tiny screws with slightly different tiny screws? All that costing you possibly less than $10 in damages if you could even call that damages?
With that logic they could find your wallet, take a $10 out, put in a different $10, and be guilty of stealing your original $10.
It isn't about $1.00 worth of screws and we all know it. It is about the right to access your own property. If Apple alters your property to disallow you access after the fact, that is a criminal act which is actionable.
Even if you sign a service contract, any section that supposedly allows this is probably something the courts would ignore. It would depend largely on the venue and the wording, but my bet is that any such clause would be outside of the scope of a "service agreement," and thus potentially fraudulent. For instance if they say it was necessary for repair, that is fraud.
Take a picture of your laptop or device, carefully documenting the screws.
Take it in for service
Tell them not to change the screws
If they change the screws, ask them to put the old ones back.
Document change in screws
Take it to your states AG, and start a criminal investigation.
ITS YOUR COMPUTER, if they change it against your will, we have laws to protect you. It is illegal for them to do this without your permission.
I have been giving the whole security argument some thought lately, and I think security through obscurity has merit in the short term. It should be obvious that security holes can be found quicker when you have the source than when you don't. All products have security flaws. All products tend to have more security problems initially and they get corrected over time.
Where open source helps is almost like homoeopathy, to cure your disease, you basically force your body to have symptoms in order to get the immune system working overtime. Open source exacerbates the security threat, initially, finding (and fixing) more of the security holes, that every product has, more quickly. So, at inception, an open source program or package would seem to have way more security holes up front, but once the initial wave passes, it will have far fewer. Closed source, on the other hand, never gets that initial wave, and their security holes get discovered regularly over time, usually very quietly.
A couple cycles of open source, and you'll have something tested to be secure. Using Windows as an example, you'll never be able to have any way to quantify the risk in a closed source package or product.
The TSA is the scariest organization in the USA. It is huge. The regulations it seeks to enforce are classified for national security. It highers only low wage under-educated people. The belligerence you encounter dealing with the TSA is astounding.
It is a recipe for violations of civil rights and suppression of freedom and expression.
The TSA is, in itself, an anathema to freedom and the constitution.
If you are trying to explain why something won't work for hours and hours and hours, and it's not sinking in, the problem is more likely with your communications skills than it is with your audience's listening skills and understanding.
It is obvious that you've never been in a situation where people don't want to be informed and merely want to demand and get their way regardless of facts.
Ah, I see - so it's not that people writing software don't understand their users, don't understand their audience, and so get it wrong. It's because sales and marketing and management meddle with a perfect product and won't just shut up and behave like the engineers tell them to? You're simply demonstrating your inability to communicate with non-technical people here.
I'm not talking about a feature set, per se' I'm talking about the realities of the environment. I've seen more companies go under because of bad sales and marketing than I have seen an inability to deliver product.
If sales and marketing, and the management, of the company are not competent enough to understand, as an example, that most users have a personal firewall, and their "zero administration" product won't work because of the firewalls, then the product will be a failure. "Can't you just go through the firewall?" "Umm, a firewall is made to prevent this sort of access."
So, what is left is engineering saying "You have to modify the product marketing plan and spec, because it can't work that way." and marketing saying "It has to work this way or we can't sell it." Then you have clever people in engineering trying to solve the problem of getting through the firewall without admin access so the product will work.
It takes at least twice as long to develop and has a lot more support issues. Engineering will be spending its time working around an arbitrary requirement conceived in marketing that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the actual use case of the application.
All things being equal, this is not the usual case. It is my description of the pathological death spiral for a software company. I had never seen anything like up until about 10 years ago. I'd read about it in Dilbert of course, but never seen it. In the last 10 years, it has become more and more common place.
The problem is, many experts try to cram their 20 years of domain experience into that 20 minutes, with the result being a confused audience and glazed-over eyes indicating that you've communicated absolutely nothing of value to them
The problem comes from the, addressing the original point, when sales, marketing, and management try to get involved in engineering.
To understand a subject on a basic level, yes can be done in about 20 minutes. That is an entirely different problem. If you have someone interested in learning a subject, that is different than someone who actively rejects that experience or expertise account for anything, i.e. sales, marketing, and management.
Thus, you are presented with a problem. You outline an amount of work and a course of development that will solve the problem. You try to explain why solving this particular problem has a certain set of issues and forces a set of requirements.
Sales, marketing, and management are incapable of understanding the issue, because, like you, they assume that *anything* can be communicated and understood in 20 minutes or less. You spend frustrating hours as they try to convince you that you have the engineering plan wrong and you spend that same frustrating number of hours explaining how what they want to do won't work the way they want it to work.
Point by point, they don't get the issues. They don't understand the connections between systems. How a change in one layer affects components above and below.
If you've spend any time doing complex systems, you automatically avoid certain practices because, although they should work, they don't, and then you have to explain all the reasons why.
Then, depending on the reasonableness of the management team, one of three things happen. (1) They finally give up and let you design the damn product and you get to make it and it ships, or (2) they say the accept the design, but then constantly undercut your efforts and you never finish, or (3) they fire your ass and hire someone who will do it the way they want and they never finish.
That's why greater than 90% of all software companies go out of business.
It would seem you two are having completely different conversations at each other.
You're saying that in order to properly diagnose & address a malfunction with a complicated piece of machinery takes skill that the average layman lacks. This is true. But the point GP is raising is that you don't need the same skill-set to understand the underlying purpose of a complicated piece of machinery when it is in working order. This is also true.
Well, analogies are always inexact, but the point I was trying to make had to do with some things being more complex than can be easily explained to a layman.
My example was diagnosing a malfunctioning system, because that is something that most people have been on either side of. That is merely an example of the point.
I'm sure you can extrapolate this to something like computer architecture or design.
You seem stuck on the notion that "explaining heart surgery to someone" requires that they have gone through 8 years of medical school & residencies & internships before you can even begin. It doesn't. Teaching someone to perform heart surgery isn't required for them to understand what it is, and what function it serves.
That's a very simplistic point of view and not what I was referring too and the nature of the discussion is inhibiting the actual discussion because an analogy that is easy to understand will not do justice to the subject.
The best I can do for an analogy is starting a car in the winter. Under normal circumstances, it should start up. If however, there is a problem, then there is a whole host of possibilities. Is it spark or gas? Is it a computer issue? Is it cranking? Battery? Fuel filter? MAP sensor? Choke? one or more of these system? Remember, when its cold, these have to work more or less right, or it will never start.
If you called me and said, "I can't start my car, can you help me?" It is very unlikely that, unless you know cars well enough, that no amount of explanation of what to listen or look for will do you any good. You don't have the knowledge or experience to understand. Different engines can sound differently with similar problems, but a knowledgeable ear will hear whether or not the spark plugs are igniting the gas sporadically. It is almost impossible to describe the subtle difference, but if you've diagnosed a few engines that you'll begin to pick up on the subtlety.
I know this is a low-tech example, but it is one that most people are familiar with. I could not tell you on the phone how to start your car. Unless you know about cars yourself, you have no hope in diagnosing the problem. I could tell you to check or replace X,Y,or Z, but I wouldn't actually be explaining it to you. You would be a part swapping monkey, not actually knowing why you were testing X,Y,or Z with regard to the situation in front of you.
In reality, a good mechanic can usually get the car started, sometimes with starter fluid if necessary, and tell you exactly why it won't start. It would be impossible to explain that whole process to you. I might say, you need new spark plugs and say that they are worn. I might say your ECM error was 300 on the engine, which means you need a new distributor cap.
Computer programs and operating systems are 10s of thousands of time more complex than a car engine. When things are broken, I can explain what you need to do, but don't have any illusion that you will understand the explanation of "why" unless you have some background in the subject.