You got paid to write somebody else's code. They made the monetary investment in the code, and you produced it.
To relate this to the topic at hand, how do you think the company would feel if the code they invested in was taken by a competitor and used to gain an advantage? The competitor made no investment, they just took it. You aren't hurt because you got paid, but that's completely beside the point.
Sure writing software is a service. You are providing a service to whomever you're writing the software for, even if it's for yourself. Services cost money. The problem is when a 3rd party benefits from a service without investing in the service. They gain an immediate advantage because, simply, they didn't pay for the service.
Donating $40 billion dollars to a non-profit is a pretty shitty tax evasion scheme....even if it's your own non-profit. I'm curious how you envision it paying off?
I would love to agree with you, but in this case the woman is really at fault.
It's not her fault for not understanding Ubuntu or not knowing that "Write" = "Word" or not knowing that she doesn't need a CD to connect to the Internet (which she actually might, depending on the service provider, and perhaps she had a USB modem instead of a router?).
However, there is no way that this scenario should have caused her to drop out of school for TWO semesters. At worst, this is a week or two worth of problems.
Day One: computer doesn't "work right", call Dell. Dell talks her out of switching to Windows.
Day Two: computer still doesn't "work right". At this point, call Dell and arrange an RMA.
Days Later: new computer arrives. Go to fake school.
Even if there was a time crunch and she needed the computer to work right away it's still primarily her fault. What if the machine did have Windows but arrived with a defect? What if it had Windows but she didn't realize that she also needed Office? You need to allow a small amount of time to make sure that your new computer is going to work before you insist that it must work or you're going to drop out of school for an entire year.
Agreed. Using a targeted network like Adsense would be minimalist and not dilute the "integrity" of the site. When we talk about the problem of advertising influencing content, we're talking about an advertiser or group of advertisers who demand that content be changed or removed. This really should not be a problem with an ad network because advertisers don't have direct control over where their ads appear, and there is enough competition that a single advertiser or even a group of advertisers really don't have any weight. This is a new advertising model that doesn't share much in common with traditional advertising.
Considering my own limited use of Adsense in the past, even a small sidebar on Wikipedia should generate enormous revenue with minimal distraction.
I love it when applications make passwords "right". I've got a newer 3Com Baseline switch that truncates passwords to 8 characters. The problem is that it truncates them behind the scenes when it stores them. However, if you re-enter the password from the web form using more than 8 characters it doesn't work. Doesn't give you any hints about the problem either...just says invalid password.
Yep, "the Internet is broken" is becoming the starting point of many of my phone calls anymore. Lots of people use MSN as their start page simply because that's what IE defaults to. So when MSN has a hiccup, nobody can "get on the Internet."
It's very, very difficult to explain to people how a single website can be slow while our actual Internet connection, and of course the Internet itself, is working just fine. I don't know what kind of metaphor to use at this point. I've tried tubes and cars and whatever else, but it just doesn't sink in.
The problem is intensified by memory. Once a person has an "the internet is slow" moment, every other time "the internet is slow" makes them believe even more that there is some underlying problem that essentially I need to "fix." In fact, after experiencing "the internet is slow", people often perceive their entire machine as being slow. What really sucks is that repeatedly saying that "the website you're on must be slow" just makes me look like a jackass. But it's almost always true. We use a few banking / financial sites that are frequently slow. And during the holidays some types of websites, like travel and some shopping sites can start to slow down.
I think that people simply don't believe "computer guys" because they've gotten so used to being blamed for their own problems. When you call tech support at some big ISP, for instance, the first thing they do try to put the blame back on the user. Perhaps they're right most of the time, but it really just gets people pissed off to the point where they don't even listen; they just want it fixed.
In my experience, it would be even more likely for the user to say: "Do you want me to save it in Word?"
It's amazing how many people use Microsoft Word for everything from file management to image editing. Some of these people never even see their "desktop" during the day. Word is their interface.
I had a user once who was a woman in her mid 50s. Most of her job duties were performed on the computer, so she could get around a little bit (a lot perhaps, considering that she got fired for spending upwards of 10-20 hours per week playing solitaire and shopping online).
Anyhow, she calls me up one day and says that something is wrong with her computer: "It says CHECK SIGNAL CABLE in big red letters!"
So I wander on down and sure enough, the monitor reads CHECK SIGNAL CABLE. Recognizing that the message was from the monitor itself, I started poking around at the back of the machine trying to see if anything was disconnected. After about five minutes and a big self-slap on the forehead I asked, "ummm...is your computer on?"
"Well of course it's on, it says CHECK SIGNAL CABLE."
"Yeah, but I mean the computer itself. You know, the "tower", or the "CPU", or the "hard drive", or whatever you happen to call it." (I wasn't really so snippy)
She suddenly realized what I was talking about, and she proceeded to turn her computer on. We had a good laugh about it and I went back to my hole.
About a week later I get another call: "Something is wrong with my computer. It says CHECK SIGNAL CABLE."
I was speechless at first, and almost thought she was joking. After a moment I calmly asked her if she had turned her actual "computer" on, and not just the monitor. She gave an embarrassed laugh and made some apologies and I told her not to worry about it, everybody "has those days."
Maybe a week or two later I get another call from the same lady: "Something is wrong with my computer, it says CHECK.... oh wait, nevermind."
I hung up the phone and took a moment to reflect on how fragile reality can be.
A week or two later I happen to be walking past this lady's desk and one of the guys from our engineering department is looking at the back of her computer and pulling on wires and whatnot. Being a bit dumbfounded I just decided to keep walking on by.
A few hours later I caught up with the guy from engineering and asked him what was up. Sure enough, the lady had forgotten once again to turn her computer on. What really gets me though is that she called this other guy from a completely different department because she *knew* that calling me would somehow lead to embarrassment. And while she could remember this potential for embarrassment, she could not remember that the solution to this particular problem was to simply turn her computer on.
Anyhow, that's my favorite story. Maybe you had to be there. A close second was when a much younger and more savvy woman called me to fix her mouse which was "too slow". Before I was able to get into the mouse properties in Windows and adjust the speed, she insisted on explaining her hypothesis that this particular mouse was slow because it's cord was very long.
Which brings up an interesting reality. I bet that a large number of the support calls I get are solved by having people re-adjust the location of their wireless mouse receiver, which is rarely described as "my mouse isn't working right" but more often "my computer (or 'the internet') is slow, I have to click on things ten times before they open."
Another large number of calls are solved by having people shake the crap out of their keyboards... a stuck ALT or CTRL key can be hard to diagnose the first time.:)
I must say that I agree very much with many of the points he's made in this paper. Anthropomorphizing concepts and excessive use of analogy is bad for teaching programming and it's bad for teaching many other concepts.
In terms of programming, one thing I absolutely hate are "real life analogies." Take the "Head First" series of books. On one hand they're very good at diving into subjects and explaining the concepts in several different ways. On the other hand, all of their examples are so far removed from reality that they're meaningless outside of the context of high level discussion. "Bill and Ted want to order a pizza, but Bill wants a Chicago style pizza and Ted wants a New York style pizza. What they need is a Pizza Factory!" Huh? I mean, I get it, but completely outrageous analogies don't really help when you get into the process of actually writing code. If outrageous analogies did work, then naming would be a breeze....writing comments would be fun!
Another example of poor example is the familiar "let me teach you about Object Oriented Programming by considering a circle, a rectangle, and a square." Of course these three things are all "shapes", and invariably they all "draw()" themselves. You can replace this example with the tried and untrue animal (or dinosaur) example in which an array of animals or dinosaurs are all related and differentiated and all, of course, "bite()" or "move()". These examples are horrible because they ask more questions than they answer. That is, the concepts behind OOP are not so complex that they require high level analogy to explain -- as if the people who will be writing OOP programs are non-programmers. And when the brain starts to consider how these analogies apply to real-life situations, it wonders things like, "wait a minute, why would a circle draw itself? What does that even mean? On my screen? In a window? On some paper in my printer? Or does it just return some data structure containing points? What is the value of that?" and "ok, my dinosaur just "bit()", but what did it bite on? How can my cheetah "move()" without knowing about its environment?"
In the end, the concept is understood but the actual implementation -- how these concepts can actually help us in the completely abstract unreality of a computer program -- is missing. What's most disturbing is when a text book will start with one of these corny high-level examples and then actually IMPLEMENT the example verbatim. That is, they'll have crazy polymorphic tyranosauruses and cheetahs and ducks all biting on shit in a completely meaningless exercise that wouldn't even apply to video game design.
In the non-computing world, poor use of analogy and anthropomorphizing concepts has an even greater impact on our reality. Consider the following statements: "buffalo travel in herds because there is safety in numbers." "Lions have eyes in the front of their heads to focus on their prey, and zebras have eyes on the sides of their heads so that they can watch out for lions."
Both of these statements would be considered basically true, however they are completely false. Buffalo travel in herds because that's what they do. Lions and zebras have eyes where they have eyes because that's where their eyes are. They had no choice in the matter. Their evolution was not one of decision making, but of beneficial mutations and lots and lots of death over thousands of generations. Explaining this as though some sort of strategy were involved only complicates matters and makes it more difficult to grasp the scope of time required or appreciate the concept of genetic mutation as something that has nothing to do with the Incredible Hulk.
I don't think I have to explain why injecting decision making into evolution is a dumb and dangerous thing to do, and does not help to further our knowledge of the subject but in fact just the opposite. Ok, I will explain it: intelligent design.
Yeah... and that's why home builders build houses for no charge and give them away for free. They make their real money fixing toilets and repairing roofs.
In all seriousness I agree with the purpose of your analogy in that I don't think that recurring fees for software *use* are appropriate, I just don't think it fits the discussion properly. In fact, no analogies about OSS ever fit, because the theories behind open software development are still fleshing themselves out in the real world. Frankly, I don't think anybody knows what they're talking about. If they did, the business models would be prevalent, not represented by a few notable success cases, many of whom have not stood the test of time.
You can charge for GPL software, yes, but I suspect that this part of the license only exists so that people can yell "Where in the world do all these people get the idea that you can't charge for GPL'd software?"
You can charge whatever you want for distributing your GPL software, but it only takes one person to purchase and redistribute it for free. The days of "getting a copy from your neighbor" have been replaced with "getting a copy from bittorrent", so charging for free software is inherently limiting. It can work perhaps if your software doesn't enjoy widespread use and nobody else wants to bother redistributing it (and making nice packages, etc), and/or you charge an amount so low that it's worth it to pay than to look elsewhere.
If Photoshop were free software, for example, and Adobe charged $800 per copy or whatever they currently get for it, then you can bet that there'd be a free as in beer distribution of every release which would completely undercut Adobe's ability to charge their large fee for their very popular software. In big open source company fashion, they would probably then only release part of the software under the GPL and keep the good parts proprietary, or they'd hide behind their trademark lawyers and make sure that their brand is all over the place in the software.
So of course free software requires a very different business model to be successful. It is this distinction that makes those who say "you can't charge for GPL software" both correct and incorrect at the same time.
A common route to making money from distributing free software is in the distribution itself, commercial support, and real world materials like books. But of course this means that a programming group that only likes to program must pair with a group of insane people who enjoy the support business. Sometimes I find it a bit ironic that the most expensive part of free software is the information required to run and maintain the software. I guess that information is not the kind of information that wants to be free.
Anyhow, I'm not anti-GPL. In fact I'm all for it and use a LOT of free software. I'm just still on the fence as to how well it could possibly work across the entire software industry.
Yes, it's actually quite trivial to obtain anti-depressants from general practitioners. It's as simple as walking in and asking for them. I've done it, and it's a breeze. Helpful? Not so much.
I'm on a minor cocktail of anti-depressants right now that were all prescribed by general practitioners. None of the doctors really seemed to be confident in their explanations of why they chose this drug or that. In fact one said it's just a guessing game. I dunno. What I do know is that after starting a new type of drug recently I went into a super hyper good mood. My productivity at work went from like 20% to 120%. It felt like I could do anything. Two weeks later, back to ground zero. Interestingly enough, that was around the time that the side effects disappeared. I found myself taking higher doses to reproduce the side effect (nausea mostly) which seemed to improve my attitude.
Interesting also is that prior to taking medication I would "improve" my mood by doing physical labor and not eating. Upon day two of not eating and hard work, a certain calmness sets in. It's kind of like being stoned. The volume is turned down on everything. I don't imagine it's a healthy way to live though.
Anyway, the point here being that just this week I've been thinking about quitting or changing the medication that I take. I've told my doctor(s) many times that I can't be certain if I feel better or if I just think that I should feel better. I can never seem to remember what I used to feel like when I thought I felt bad. It's very confusing. After the last drug change and its short lived super-success, I really started to give more weight to the placebo idea.
But here's what's got me: if you take a drug that actually works, but believe that it does not work, does it work? I would imagine not as well. A reverse-placebo I suppose.
What's clear to me is that the mind is what needs convincing the most, and has the largest impact on overall well-being. I don't believe that so much of our population should need a drug to enjoy life. I don't believe that we're all depressed because of corn-fed beef and the whole "omega vitamin" thing. I don't believe that an herb packaged like medication will have the same affect as the medication they claim to replace...aside from them both very likely not addressing the issue.
The solution to many problems, then, must be sheer will. Unfortunately, it's hard to come by these days. I am unable to will myself out of moods very often, but it does seem possible. The best part about this approach is that its placebo affect has the exact same affect. It's very hard though. Very very hard.
I will agree that Atari and Intellivision had great consoles before the Nintendo, but the NES was just an unstoppable force. Everybody had one, or wanted one. Nintendo became a thing to do: "hey, let's play Nintendo." It just worked, very well, and many of the games were highly addictive and long (think Zelda and Mario).
The Nintendo brought about the video game rental business, at least around here. I remember scraping up as much change as I could and riding my bike to the video store to rent games...hoping that Ikari Warriors was finally back in.:) Games had to be back by 6PM the next evening, and there would be no sleep until then.
I think the NES craze is what started everyone really thinking about video games. With computer games and even the Atari, people considered those systems to be "educational" (and more or less they were). The earlier consoles were much more rare, and simply a "cool" thing for anyone to own, regardless of age. But it was the Nintendo that gave us the video game stereotype: fat kids sitting around all day playing games (a deserved stereotype perhaps). The Nintendo brought about much of the public "awareness" of the "dangers" of video games. The Nintendo brought about a new set of harsh parental rules, such as: "one hour of Nintendo per evening after homework!!" The Nintendo put callouses on the thumbs of millions of kids. The Nintendo taught an entire generation of kids how to push a button with amazing speed via the tensed-up-arm-jitter technique (thanks Track & Field!). The Nintendo taught us about electronics, and how to change the battery in a Zelda cartridge. It taught us that that smacking an expensive piece of gear real hard was an acceptable form of maintenance. It gave us the phrase: "hey don't throw the controller!!!"
Aside from Robby the Robot his weird ass gyros, the Nintendo was a phenomenal success that was all alone for quite some time. Consoles have become more and more popular over time, but now they are just the norm, and the competition is good enough that there's no single household name in the console world. I gave up on them after the NES when I decided that computers were just the way to go with video games, at least for geeks.
I used to get a *lot* of spam to my verizon phone. Upwards of 10 per day, at $0.11 each. It didn't come to phonenumber@vtext.com, however, it came to the email name I created with verizon, e.g. emailname@vtext.com. I'm very glad I set that email address up, because all I had to do to fix the problem was change the email name. If it had come directly to my phone number, then I would have had to get a new wireless number. I can't remember exactly how to set the email address up, but if you're a verizon customer then you should dig for it before using the email feature with your telephone number.
I typically only use my text messaging email address for tech support type stuff. Servers send me status messages, that sort of thing. The problem started happening after I published the address on a support website. D'oh.
I'm talking about WSUS specifically. Anyone who is auto approving is in for a surprise if they're not paying attention.
Forcing an application upgrade as a security update is unacceptable. They've been using this tactic with IE7 for a long time. There are even tools designed to specifically block IE7 from being installed. That's just retarded.
I've been using Firefox for years now. It's simply a better browser, and there are some great plugins. You can install it right now without screwing up IE.
Opera is also a nice browser. Some claim it's better.
The grandparent isn't talking about HTML/CSS concerns. That would be silly. I'm assuming that his document management system uses ActiveX controls or some Microsoft proprietary features to improve the interface. They could also be doing SSO to IIS which can be difficult with a non-MS browser.
Yeah it's short sighted to rely on a browser that you can't install and uninstall like a regular application. But it's understandable that people will be upset that IE7 is being forced.
It came with Donkey Kong, and we bought Venture along with it. Interesting controllers on the Coleco, especially considering that none of the games I played on it used the big keypad that took up most of the controller. When we got our first color TV shortly thereafter, the first thing we did was hook up the Coleco to see it in all its glory. Holy shit, red! And blue! (not that color TVs were uncommon around 1980, but we had a black & white then)
At the arcade I was mostly into Pacman, Tron, and that first person Star Wars x-wing game with the awesome controller. At Pizza Hut I was way into the tabletop 2 player asteroids game.
Around then I also started getting time on various apple PCs (we couldn't afford one) and wrote a bunch of silly games in basic. Spent a lot of time with my buddies typing in code from those "100 PC GAMES!" books. Played various text adventures then too.
There were two major turning points in my gaming life though that were very much like "firsts". One was the NES. The NES was simply the shit, and for the first time I could RENT video games. Sooo many games! The second was Wolfenstein 3D. Yeah I'd played a lot of side-scrollers and stuff like that on my sweet 386 16Mhz, but Wolf3d blew me away. Since that game I've never owned another console. I'm a PC gamer for sure.
Your example here is actually a good one in favor of open source. As you say, you want to work as a photographer, not run a software business. If you get a good start on some software, and think you can sell it, then you've just started your very own software business.
On the other hand, if you get a good start on some software and release it as open source, you might find a few other photographers out there in a similar position who might be able to expand upon it. You benefit. They benefit. You're not running a software business. Your photography business becomes more effective.
P.S. - nobody can really take your software and sell it as their own without also releasing the source, making them just as vulnerable as you feel (assuming GPL).
Any teacher who teaches the theory of evolution as a fact, is not qualified to teach science.
And I don't think that it's possible to devolve. I mean, by definition and whatnot (e.g. not evolving = death).
Oh yeah, and the study of evolution is not concerned with the origins of life. Scientists studying evolution are not trying to determine where life came from. Evolution is about critters that are or were already living, and how they came to be by looking at how they were then (or predicting how they were then by how they are now, etc etc). The study of the origins of life is called abiogenesis (life from non-living matter).
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You got paid to write somebody else's code. They made the monetary investment in the code, and you produced it.
To relate this to the topic at hand, how do you think the company would feel if the code they invested in was taken by a competitor and used to gain an advantage? The competitor made no investment, they just took it. You aren't hurt because you got paid, but that's completely beside the point.
Sure writing software is a service. You are providing a service to whomever you're writing the software for, even if it's for yourself. Services cost money. The problem is when a 3rd party benefits from a service without investing in the service. They gain an immediate advantage because, simply, they didn't pay for the service.
Donating $40 billion dollars to a non-profit is a pretty shitty tax evasion scheme....even if it's your own non-profit. I'm curious how you envision it paying off?
I would love to agree with you, but in this case the woman is really at fault.
It's not her fault for not understanding Ubuntu or not knowing that "Write" = "Word" or not knowing that she doesn't need a CD to connect to the Internet (which she actually might, depending on the service provider, and perhaps she had a USB modem instead of a router?).
However, there is no way that this scenario should have caused her to drop out of school for TWO semesters. At worst, this is a week or two worth of problems.
Day One: computer doesn't "work right", call Dell. Dell talks her out of switching to Windows.
Day Two: computer still doesn't "work right". At this point, call Dell and arrange an RMA.
Days Later: new computer arrives. Go to fake school.
Even if there was a time crunch and she needed the computer to work right away it's still primarily her fault. What if the machine did have Windows but arrived with a defect? What if it had Windows but she didn't realize that she also needed Office? You need to allow a small amount of time to make sure that your new computer is going to work before you insist that it must work or you're going to drop out of school for an entire year.
Scratch astronaut off my list of things I want to be when I grow up. That leaves only cowboy or truck driver.
Agreed. Using a targeted network like Adsense would be minimalist and not dilute the "integrity" of the site. When we talk about the problem of advertising influencing content, we're talking about an advertiser or group of advertisers who demand that content be changed or removed. This really should not be a problem with an ad network because advertisers don't have direct control over where their ads appear, and there is enough competition that a single advertiser or even a group of advertisers really don't have any weight. This is a new advertising model that doesn't share much in common with traditional advertising.
Considering my own limited use of Adsense in the past, even a small sidebar on Wikipedia should generate enormous revenue with minimal distraction.
I love it when applications make passwords "right". I've got a newer 3Com Baseline switch that truncates passwords to 8 characters. The problem is that it truncates them behind the scenes when it stores them. However, if you re-enter the password from the web form using more than 8 characters it doesn't work. Doesn't give you any hints about the problem either...just says invalid password.
Yep, "the Internet is broken" is becoming the starting point of many of my phone calls anymore. Lots of people use MSN as their start page simply because that's what IE defaults to. So when MSN has a hiccup, nobody can "get on the Internet."
It's very, very difficult to explain to people how a single website can be slow while our actual Internet connection, and of course the Internet itself, is working just fine. I don't know what kind of metaphor to use at this point. I've tried tubes and cars and whatever else, but it just doesn't sink in.
The problem is intensified by memory. Once a person has an "the internet is slow" moment, every other time "the internet is slow" makes them believe even more that there is some underlying problem that essentially I need to "fix." In fact, after experiencing "the internet is slow", people often perceive their entire machine as being slow. What really sucks is that repeatedly saying that "the website you're on must be slow" just makes me look like a jackass. But it's almost always true. We use a few banking / financial sites that are frequently slow. And during the holidays some types of websites, like travel and some shopping sites can start to slow down.
I think that people simply don't believe "computer guys" because they've gotten so used to being blamed for their own problems. When you call tech support at some big ISP, for instance, the first thing they do try to put the blame back on the user. Perhaps they're right most of the time, but it really just gets people pissed off to the point where they don't even listen; they just want it fixed.
In my experience, it would be even more likely for the user to say: "Do you want me to save it in Word?"
It's amazing how many people use Microsoft Word for everything from file management to image editing. Some of these people never even see their "desktop" during the day. Word is their interface.
I had a user once who was a woman in her mid 50s. Most of her job duties were performed on the computer, so she could get around a little bit (a lot perhaps, considering that she got fired for spending upwards of 10-20 hours per week playing solitaire and shopping online).
Anyhow, she calls me up one day and says that something is wrong with her computer: "It says CHECK SIGNAL CABLE in big red letters!"
So I wander on down and sure enough, the monitor reads CHECK SIGNAL CABLE. Recognizing that the message was from the monitor itself, I started poking around at the back of the machine trying to see if anything was disconnected. After about five minutes and a big self-slap on the forehead I asked, "ummm...is your computer on?"
"Well of course it's on, it says CHECK SIGNAL CABLE."
"Yeah, but I mean the computer itself. You know, the "tower", or the "CPU", or the "hard drive", or whatever you happen to call it." (I wasn't really so snippy)
She suddenly realized what I was talking about, and she proceeded to turn her computer on. We had a good laugh about it and I went back to my hole.
About a week later I get another call: "Something is wrong with my computer. It says CHECK SIGNAL CABLE."
I was speechless at first, and almost thought she was joking. After a moment I calmly asked her if she had turned her actual "computer" on, and not just the monitor. She gave an embarrassed laugh and made some apologies and I told her not to worry about it, everybody "has those days."
Maybe a week or two later I get another call from the same lady: "Something is wrong with my computer, it says CHECK.... oh wait, nevermind."
I hung up the phone and took a moment to reflect on how fragile reality can be.
A week or two later I happen to be walking past this lady's desk and one of the guys from our engineering department is looking at the back of her computer and pulling on wires and whatnot. Being a bit dumbfounded I just decided to keep walking on by.
A few hours later I caught up with the guy from engineering and asked him what was up. Sure enough, the lady had forgotten once again to turn her computer on. What really gets me though is that she called this other guy from a completely different department because she *knew* that calling me would somehow lead to embarrassment. And while she could remember this potential for embarrassment, she could not remember that the solution to this particular problem was to simply turn her computer on.
Anyhow, that's my favorite story. Maybe you had to be there. A close second was when a much younger and more savvy woman called me to fix her mouse which was "too slow". Before I was able to get into the mouse properties in Windows and adjust the speed, she insisted on explaining her hypothesis that this particular mouse was slow because it's cord was very long.
Which brings up an interesting reality. I bet that a large number of the support calls I get are solved by having people re-adjust the location of their wireless mouse receiver, which is rarely described as "my mouse isn't working right" but more often "my computer (or 'the internet') is slow, I have to click on things ten times before they open."
Another large number of calls are solved by having people shake the crap out of their keyboards... a stuck ALT or CTRL key can be hard to diagnose the first time. :)
If public flogging and hanging actually worked to solve problems like this, then why was there so much flogging and public hanging going on?
I must say that I agree very much with many of the points he's made in this paper. Anthropomorphizing concepts and excessive use of analogy is bad for teaching programming and it's bad for teaching many other concepts.
In terms of programming, one thing I absolutely hate are "real life analogies." Take the "Head First" series of books. On one hand they're very good at diving into subjects and explaining the concepts in several different ways. On the other hand, all of their examples are so far removed from reality that they're meaningless outside of the context of high level discussion. "Bill and Ted want to order a pizza, but Bill wants a Chicago style pizza and Ted wants a New York style pizza. What they need is a Pizza Factory!" Huh? I mean, I get it, but completely outrageous analogies don't really help when you get into the process of actually writing code. If outrageous analogies did work, then naming would be a breeze....writing comments would be fun!
Another example of poor example is the familiar "let me teach you about Object Oriented Programming by considering a circle, a rectangle, and a square." Of course these three things are all "shapes", and invariably they all "draw()" themselves. You can replace this example with the tried and untrue animal (or dinosaur) example in which an array of animals or dinosaurs are all related and differentiated and all, of course, "bite()" or "move()". These examples are horrible because they ask more questions than they answer. That is, the concepts behind OOP are not so complex that they require high level analogy to explain -- as if the people who will be writing OOP programs are non-programmers. And when the brain starts to consider how these analogies apply to real-life situations, it wonders things like, "wait a minute, why would a circle draw itself? What does that even mean? On my screen? In a window? On some paper in my printer? Or does it just return some data structure containing points? What is the value of that?" and "ok, my dinosaur just "bit()", but what did it bite on? How can my cheetah "move()" without knowing about its environment?"
In the end, the concept is understood but the actual implementation -- how these concepts can actually help us in the completely abstract unreality of a computer program -- is missing. What's most disturbing is when a text book will start with one of these corny high-level examples and then actually IMPLEMENT the example verbatim. That is, they'll have crazy polymorphic tyranosauruses and cheetahs and ducks all biting on shit in a completely meaningless exercise that wouldn't even apply to video game design.
In the non-computing world, poor use of analogy and anthropomorphizing concepts has an even greater impact on our reality. Consider the following statements: "buffalo travel in herds because there is safety in numbers." "Lions have eyes in the front of their heads to focus on their prey, and zebras have eyes on the sides of their heads so that they can watch out for lions."
Both of these statements would be considered basically true, however they are completely false. Buffalo travel in herds because that's what they do. Lions and zebras have eyes where they have eyes because that's where their eyes are. They had no choice in the matter. Their evolution was not one of decision making, but of beneficial mutations and lots and lots of death over thousands of generations. Explaining this as though some sort of strategy were involved only complicates matters and makes it more difficult to grasp the scope of time required or appreciate the concept of genetic mutation as something that has nothing to do with the Incredible Hulk.
I don't think I have to explain why injecting decision making into evolution is a dumb and dangerous thing to do, and does not help to further our knowledge of the subject but in fact just the opposite. Ok, I will explain it: intelligent design.
Yeah... and that's why home builders build houses for no charge and give them away for free. They make their real money fixing toilets and repairing roofs.
In all seriousness I agree with the purpose of your analogy in that I don't think that recurring fees for software *use* are appropriate, I just don't think it fits the discussion properly. In fact, no analogies about OSS ever fit, because the theories behind open software development are still fleshing themselves out in the real world. Frankly, I don't think anybody knows what they're talking about. If they did, the business models would be prevalent, not represented by a few notable success cases, many of whom have not stood the test of time.
Ah, not quite.
You can charge for GPL software, yes, but I suspect that this part of the license only exists so that people can yell "Where in the world do all these people get the idea that you can't charge for GPL'd software?"
You can charge whatever you want for distributing your GPL software, but it only takes one person to purchase and redistribute it for free. The days of "getting a copy from your neighbor" have been replaced with "getting a copy from bittorrent", so charging for free software is inherently limiting. It can work perhaps if your software doesn't enjoy widespread use and nobody else wants to bother redistributing it (and making nice packages, etc), and/or you charge an amount so low that it's worth it to pay than to look elsewhere.
If Photoshop were free software, for example, and Adobe charged $800 per copy or whatever they currently get for it, then you can bet that there'd be a free as in beer distribution of every release which would completely undercut Adobe's ability to charge their large fee for their very popular software. In big open source company fashion, they would probably then only release part of the software under the GPL and keep the good parts proprietary, or they'd hide behind their trademark lawyers and make sure that their brand is all over the place in the software.
So of course free software requires a very different business model to be successful. It is this distinction that makes those who say "you can't charge for GPL software" both correct and incorrect at the same time.
A common route to making money from distributing free software is in the distribution itself, commercial support, and real world materials like books. But of course this means that a programming group that only likes to program must pair with a group of insane people who enjoy the support business. Sometimes I find it a bit ironic that the most expensive part of free software is the information required to run and maintain the software. I guess that information is not the kind of information that wants to be free.
Anyhow, I'm not anti-GPL. In fact I'm all for it and use a LOT of free software. I'm just still on the fence as to how well it could possibly work across the entire software industry.
Yes, it's actually quite trivial to obtain anti-depressants from general practitioners. It's as simple as walking in and asking for them. I've done it, and it's a breeze. Helpful? Not so much.
I'm on a minor cocktail of anti-depressants right now that were all prescribed by general practitioners. None of the doctors really seemed to be confident in their explanations of why they chose this drug or that. In fact one said it's just a guessing game. I dunno. What I do know is that after starting a new type of drug recently I went into a super hyper good mood. My productivity at work went from like 20% to 120%. It felt like I could do anything. Two weeks later, back to ground zero. Interestingly enough, that was around the time that the side effects disappeared. I found myself taking higher doses to reproduce the side effect (nausea mostly) which seemed to improve my attitude.
Interesting also is that prior to taking medication I would "improve" my mood by doing physical labor and not eating. Upon day two of not eating and hard work, a certain calmness sets in. It's kind of like being stoned. The volume is turned down on everything. I don't imagine it's a healthy way to live though.
Anyway, the point here being that just this week I've been thinking about quitting or changing the medication that I take. I've told my doctor(s) many times that I can't be certain if I feel better or if I just think that I should feel better. I can never seem to remember what I used to feel like when I thought I felt bad. It's very confusing. After the last drug change and its short lived super-success, I really started to give more weight to the placebo idea.
But here's what's got me: if you take a drug that actually works, but believe that it does not work, does it work? I would imagine not as well. A reverse-placebo I suppose.
What's clear to me is that the mind is what needs convincing the most, and has the largest impact on overall well-being. I don't believe that so much of our population should need a drug to enjoy life. I don't believe that we're all depressed because of corn-fed beef and the whole "omega vitamin" thing. I don't believe that an herb packaged like medication will have the same affect as the medication they claim to replace...aside from them both very likely not addressing the issue.
The solution to many problems, then, must be sheer will. Unfortunately, it's hard to come by these days. I am unable to will myself out of moods very often, but it does seem possible. The best part about this approach is that its placebo affect has the exact same affect. It's very hard though. Very very hard.
I will agree that Atari and Intellivision had great consoles before the Nintendo, but the NES was just an unstoppable force. Everybody had one, or wanted one. Nintendo became a thing to do: "hey, let's play Nintendo." It just worked, very well, and many of the games were highly addictive and long (think Zelda and Mario).
:) Games had to be back by 6PM the next evening, and there would be no sleep until then.
The Nintendo brought about the video game rental business, at least around here. I remember scraping up as much change as I could and riding my bike to the video store to rent games...hoping that Ikari Warriors was finally back in.
I think the NES craze is what started everyone really thinking about video games. With computer games and even the Atari, people considered those systems to be "educational" (and more or less they were). The earlier consoles were much more rare, and simply a "cool" thing for anyone to own, regardless of age. But it was the Nintendo that gave us the video game stereotype: fat kids sitting around all day playing games (a deserved stereotype perhaps). The Nintendo brought about much of the public "awareness" of the "dangers" of video games. The Nintendo brought about a new set of harsh parental rules, such as: "one hour of Nintendo per evening after homework!!" The Nintendo put callouses on the thumbs of millions of kids. The Nintendo taught an entire generation of kids how to push a button with amazing speed via the tensed-up-arm-jitter technique (thanks Track & Field!). The Nintendo taught us about electronics, and how to change the battery in a Zelda cartridge. It taught us that that smacking an expensive piece of gear real hard was an acceptable form of maintenance. It gave us the phrase: "hey don't throw the controller!!!"
Aside from Robby the Robot his weird ass gyros, the Nintendo was a phenomenal success that was all alone for quite some time. Consoles have become more and more popular over time, but now they are just the norm, and the competition is good enough that there's no single household name in the console world. I gave up on them after the NES when I decided that computers were just the way to go with video games, at least for geeks.
I used to get a *lot* of spam to my verizon phone. Upwards of 10 per day, at $0.11 each. It didn't come to phonenumber@vtext.com, however, it came to the email name I created with verizon, e.g. emailname@vtext.com. I'm very glad I set that email address up, because all I had to do to fix the problem was change the email name. If it had come directly to my phone number, then I would have had to get a new wireless number. I can't remember exactly how to set the email address up, but if you're a verizon customer then you should dig for it before using the email feature with your telephone number.
I typically only use my text messaging email address for tech support type stuff. Servers send me status messages, that sort of thing. The problem started happening after I published the address on a support website. D'oh.
I'm talking about WSUS specifically. Anyone who is auto approving is in for a surprise if they're not paying attention.
Forcing an application upgrade as a security update is unacceptable. They've been using this tactic with IE7 for a long time. There are even tools designed to specifically block IE7 from being installed. That's just retarded.
I've been using Firefox for years now. It's simply a better browser, and there are some great plugins. You can install it right now without screwing up IE.
Opera is also a nice browser. Some claim it's better.
Not supporting IE6 is understandable. Pushing the update to the unaware is not cool IMO.
The grandparent isn't talking about HTML/CSS concerns. That would be silly. I'm assuming that his document management system uses ActiveX controls or some Microsoft proprietary features to improve the interface. They could also be doing SSO to IIS which can be difficult with a non-MS browser.
Yeah it's short sighted to rely on a browser that you can't install and uninstall like a regular application. But it's understandable that people will be upset that IE7 is being forced.
It came with Donkey Kong, and we bought Venture along with it. Interesting controllers on the Coleco, especially considering that none of the games I played on it used the big keypad that took up most of the controller. When we got our first color TV shortly thereafter, the first thing we did was hook up the Coleco to see it in all its glory. Holy shit, red! And blue! (not that color TVs were uncommon around 1980, but we had a black & white then)
At the arcade I was mostly into Pacman, Tron, and that first person Star Wars x-wing game with the awesome controller. At Pizza Hut I was way into the tabletop 2 player asteroids game.
Around then I also started getting time on various apple PCs (we couldn't afford one) and wrote a bunch of silly games in basic. Spent a lot of time with my buddies typing in code from those "100 PC GAMES!" books. Played various text adventures then too.
There were two major turning points in my gaming life though that were very much like "firsts". One was the NES. The NES was simply the shit, and for the first time I could RENT video games. Sooo many games! The second was Wolfenstein 3D. Yeah I'd played a lot of side-scrollers and stuff like that on my sweet 386 16Mhz, but Wolf3d blew me away. Since that game I've never owned another console. I'm a PC gamer for sure.
Your example here is actually a good one in favor of open source. As you say, you want to work as a photographer, not run a software business. If you get a good start on some software, and think you can sell it, then you've just started your very own software business.
On the other hand, if you get a good start on some software and release it as open source, you might find a few other photographers out there in a similar position who might be able to expand upon it. You benefit. They benefit. You're not running a software business. Your photography business becomes more effective.
P.S. - nobody can really take your software and sell it as their own without also releasing the source, making them just as vulnerable as you feel (assuming GPL).
Any teacher who teaches the theory of evolution as a fact, is not qualified to teach science.
And I don't think that it's possible to devolve. I mean, by definition and whatnot (e.g. not evolving = death).
Oh yeah, and the study of evolution is not concerned with the origins of life. Scientists studying evolution are not trying to determine where life came from. Evolution is about critters that are or were already living, and how they came to be by looking at how they were then (or predicting how they were then by how they are now, etc etc). The study of the origins of life is called abiogenesis (life from non-living matter).
What's a good song for a workflow engine?
You're hired!