What actually happened was that the arrow got closer and closer, right, but by then the satellite had moved away a bit. Only a bit, but that's all it needed. So now the arrow moves closer to the satellite's new position, but by then the satellite's moved a tiny bit further away again. This keeps on happening, so eventually the arrow ends up infinitely close to the satellite but never actually reaches it. QED.
"If you do not think that spy satellites are not weapons you are just nuts."
They aren't. Spy satellites are intelligence-gathering devices that allow you to know where to point your weapons. They're no more a weapon themselves than your lungs are a weapon - hey, without lungs you'd have no oxygen to power your muscles to move your finger to press the button that fires the nuke that actually is a weapon...
Ok, I'm being slightly facetious, but you get the point. You can gather all the information you like up there, but keep weapons here on earth.
Disingenuous how? What, like we didn't have satellites during the cold war?
Anti-satellite strikes would have been about the only thing the cold-war USSR/US could really have got away with, since they could be argued to be counter-espionage actions rather than overt attacks on the other superpower.
CoolTechZone didn't impress me in the slightest with its earlier misconception-heavy informed-opinion-light gibberish. In fact, it annoyed me so much I ended up responding point-for point to the article. Summary: most of it was uninformed ranty BS, with about one piece of valid criticism in the whole thing.
This "printers" piece was even written by the same underinformed fanboy as the last "Linux 5uXx anD M$ i5 t3h r0xxoRZ!!!" crap.
I haven't RTFA yet, but my advice would be to take with a metric tonne of salt.
"...and at this point I stopped reading, realising you dont understand what you're talking about."
Terribly sorry, AC - didn't realise not understanding every detail of the (closed-source) Microsoft driver kernel-modification process was a bar to commenting on general computing issues that actually have nothing to do with them! My apologies!
Fuckwit.
"So Windows recompiles the kernel when you install a new device? Since when did MS ship the kernel source with every installation?"
Sigh. Where do I begin?
The fact that I put "recompile" in quotes for this very reason (ie, it could be modified somehow in binary form, and that could be what the, um, uneducated article-writer meant by "recompile")?
How about the fact that I was producing a hypothetical situation, given what the article-writer had stated?
"It (Microsoft) pioneered the mass market software principle."
Right - its business model was brilliant. Why does that mean they should be given kudos? They've made a lot of money for themselves and convinced a lot of people to buy their stuff. I reserve kudos for people who do good things for me or other people. Merely finding a great way of making themselves money doesn't count.
"Not really windows is still a more complex piece of software compared to apache. I see just as many bugs from linux through my CERT alerts."
Oh jesus, are you trolling? (Checks post-log) Ah, possibly.
The empirical disproof to this argument is Apache vs Microsoft IIS. Apache is (still) much more widely used. Apache is still much less widely cracked than IIS. Apache (last I read) still has far fewer known issues than IIS. Apache is also smaller, more efficient and (arguably) scalable than IIS.
Windows is neither here nor there - the Apache/IIS comparison has been trotted out so many times to disprove this argument that I (erroneously, apparently) assumed everyone would understand without explanation.
"kinda coolw hat windows did here. Drivers are not allowed to touch the kernel at all. Drivers go through the OS layer interface through hooks and doesn't interact directly with the hardware. Except for direct x.. which does hit the hardware "
Aaaaah. So in other words his criticism here was valid. Fair play then. Does windows' kernel then count as a microkernel, or is that something different again?
"Again you need to keep fact from comments out if you wish to argue against the author's comments."
Fair play - Microsoft do put a lot of effort into the ergonomics of their user-interface, and I should have acknowledged that. However, they're quite, quite happy to literally lobotomise their products if it ensures vendor-lockin or they think for a second they can convince you to dole out hundreds of dollars more for a "Pro" version. Look at the differences between XP Home, Pro and (IIRC) Server 2003. The major differences were a few registry settings and a couple of software tools included on the CD, but they were happy to charge hundreds (thousands?) of dollars more for XP Pro or Server 2003.
Microsoft provides great ease-of-use for their UI, but much less for interoperability or developers.
"Egads.. if i recall you still have a computer and i'm sure you're content on using it."
You're assuming it was Windows that lead to the computing revolution. I'm inclined to think it was far more Compaq's (IIRC) reverse-engineering of the PC BIOS - once the hardware was cheap enough, any commercial OS would have filled the hole. Microsoft saw a wave and rode it successfully - kudos goes to those who created the wave in the first place.
"they give away money... and much more then any of these linux companies have =) rest of your comments I'd agree with"
Who, exactly, gives away money? Sure the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gives away money, but that's not Microsoft. And, of course, there's still the whole philosophical argument that 50p from a beggar is more charitable than $100 from a millionaire.
Most Linux companies may not give away money (the side-product of their work) - they give away their products. They give away systems that allow people to make their own money, by capitalising on them to produce products and services without huge up-front startup costs.
Like they say, give a man a fish and he's fed for a day - teach him to fish (or, in this case, give him a free fishing rod) and he's fed for life.
(Actually, I always preferred Terry Pratchett's take on this: Give a man a fire and he's warm for an evening - set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.)
Again, for empirical proof look at the results - The B&MGF gives money away in lump sums, benefitting small groups o
"This means that their kernel will work on just about any system and to change "device drivers" so to say, all you need to do is have your kernel sources, grab a new driver (spca5xx comes directly to mind), compile/install it, and reinsert the module."
Sorry - I'm not following you. When changing device drivers (ignore initial installation) do you have to manually recompile (at least part of) the kernel or not?
If you do, he's got a legitimate point in on Linux (since Windows hides all this from the user).
If not, he's talking rubbish, and his criticism isn't valid.
If Linux also by default automates and hides the recompilation from the user (even if you can do it manually), the point is moot and his criticism is again invalid.
Forgive me if I'm being stupid, but your post just seemed to imply he was right all along, while being phrased as if he wasn't.
Re:Windows programming is purposely vague..
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That's a fair point - I didn't mean to imply specific cases, just illustrate general trends.
In addition, all the "amateur" examples you give are your own work. Fair play for your contributions, but where are the multiple-contributor independant equivalents of CPAN?
The closest thing I've found is forum sites like Experts Exchange, but these tend to deal with everything from Visual C++ to PHP, so they're hardly Microsoft-centric, just general developer resources.
MSDN is pretty much the free resource for all things Microsoft, and it sufers greatly for it. It's not run by talented amateurs, so what you get tends to be the "party line". Something isn't documented in the help, chances are it isn't documented in MSDN. There are "tips & tricks" articles, granted, but they're generally in wildly different places to the hardcore technical documentation, so their usefulness is limited.
It's also hard for "outsiders" to contribute improvements, corrections and content, so as a lot of posters have pointed out a lot of what's there risks being incomplete or incorrect.
This is also a single huge site, so personally I find finding anything to be extremely hard - search is often next to useless, and there's very little way to compartmentalise your search (eg, to just Visual C++, or "the latest-but-one version of ASP.NET").
I've always blamed this situation on the essential differences between the cultures - open source seems to value transparent and free information-flow as its highest priority, whereas businesses only take any action if it's perceived ultimately to add value to the shares, and this can often mean restricting information rather than publishing it competely and accurately.
I'm not making any judgement here on which of these aims is the most noble, but which would you expect to lead to the most complete, informative documentation?
"If you hate them that much go buy 1000 Xbox 360s and don't buy any games. There, you just took $10,000 from Billy boy."
What, Microsoft only loses $10 on each XBox? If that's true they might as well charge $20 more and make a profit on it and the games...
I'd say this guy is merely a pro-MS zealot, exactly like the anti-MS zealots here on Slashdot that he bashes.
Let's look at the article piece by piece:
Recap on alternative/joke names for MS.
States explicitely that "I love Microsoft. Absolutely adore it and what's more, I hate Linux. I think it's the most over rated piece of software ever built and survives simply out of spite and not because it is terribly good at doing something because it is not!". He's clearly already marked out his opinion as essentially content-less uninformed flaming, exactly what he complains about when it happen to MS.
Calls Windows a "pioneering effort". Now, I'm no Linux or Mac fanboy, but I was under the distinct impression that Windows had very little innovation compared to the Mac. IIRC various Microsofties have even admitted as much before, albeit off the record.
Regurgitates the long-disproven "popularity => more successful breakins" argument. More popularity equals more cracking attempts, I'll grant you, but that's not the same as successful security breaches. And anyway, haven't we already disproven this whole argument?
"Considering the fact that everyone who knows how to write two bits of code dreams of hitting windows with a virus, the guys at the "Redmond Giant" are doing a spectacular job."
Bwaaaaahahahahahaaaaaa! As everyone knows, the two main groups who write viruses are security professionals offering a "proof of concept", and script kiddies. The overwhelming majority of coders/developers have never written (or certainly released) a virus in their lives.
In addition, given it's mostly VBScript kiddies - who are almost universally poor programmers - the runaway success of most Windows viruses is even more damning.
"XP is such a joy when it comes to simply connecting a device and watching the pretty little bubble detecting it and saying "its installed and ready for use" makes the slightly high price absolutely worth it."
Dunno what version of windows he's using, and not to deny Windows has got better over the years, but I still have plenty of issues even these days with unrecognised hardware, pieces of hardware detected twice, crashes due to dodgy device drivers, etc.
"In Linux, you have to recompile a kernel if you want to so much as change your modem!"
Now, I'm not that au fait with the low-level Windows or Linux processes, but I understood that they both used monolithic kernels (ie, drivers not in userland). Surely this means that Windows also has to "recompile" the kernel when the device drivers change? If so it might be hidden behind a pretty user-interface, but it's the same damn architecture and the same design problem.
Tackles the anti-trust cases. Totally ignores Microsoft's documented illegal behaviour and instead blames it on jealousy from competitors. Riiiiiight...
Suggests Sun and Oracle's business models are based around sueing Microsoft. Is he confusing "Sun" with (the Microsoft-backed) SCO, and "Microsoft" with Linux?
He's actually suggesting these companies sue Microsoft because they see it as an easy revenue-earner, rather than a highly risky attempt at redress against the richest organisation (with the most expensive and persuasive legal team) in the world. Mind-boggling.
"Microsoft made some products which it would like to ship together with its OS, no where in the EULA does it say that "you are not authorized to install other software" If Mr. John Doe thinks media player is the worst piece of software he has ever used, he is free to go and download Winamp or Musicmatch Jukebox (neither of these offer free full versions)."
Yeah, they don't write it into the EULA where anyone could see it, but you don't need to do that when you've got the CEO of Dell's balls in your office drawer. It's harder to prove, and leaves less obvious marks for the next lawsuit.
Oh, and the key thi
Re:Windows programming is purposely vague..
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"There are gobs of forums, resource sites, how-tos, tutorials, and so on."
There are indeed, but the majority of these tend to be small-scale or very, very elementary, only really useful for learning.
In terms of useful, comprehensive sites like CPAN (especially which don't require membership), there's surprisingly little, especially given the huge number of Microsoft-centric programmers.
I've always had trouble finding good examples of more advanced functionality, and finding well-written, comprehensive pre-written modules or libraries that you don't have to pay through the nose for is often an exercise in frustration. OTOH, I can jump onto CPAN (or many "amateur" websites) and find better-written, more correct and more comprehensive examples, for free.
I think part of the problem is the different cultures at work here - the share-for-free Open Source culture versus the proprietary paid-for-consultancy of the Windows world.
When an OSS programmer becomes good enough to start writing libraries or modules he tends to make them available for free, as source code, since he took advantage of others' free examples when learning. He's also more likely to "open" something he wrote for himeself, if it looks like it might be useful to others.
This sharing leads to a strong sense of community, as a side-effect so he's also more likely to hang out on bulletin boards and forums (fora?) to share the knowledge with others.
When a MS-centric programmer becomes good enough to produce stuff of worth to other people, he's more likely to charge consultancy fees or just sell it as a pre-compiled downloadable.OCX control for $60+.
This leads to a proprietary culture where since you have to pay to acquire much of value, you're less likely to give away your work, since that would represent a net loss.
This is again understandable, since in my experience many MS-centric programmers tend to pay for training courses to learn new skills (and they see nothing wrong with trying to recoup those costs in turn), whereas in OSS people are more likely to take a few hours off and sit down with a good website/book and a compiler - they gain the knowledge cheaper/free thanks to the altruism of others, and so are predisposed to pay it back in their turn.
Well yeah, but you volunteered by joining the military. I hate to sound unsympathetic, but you chose that route.
What we're talking about is the general decay of workers rights. We didn't voluntarily give up those rights - they're being taken from us, so your analogy is pretty irrelevant (unless you were conscripted, which I doubt)...
"Today's employees, and employers, for that matter, need to figure out how they're going to out-perform, out-think, and out-hussle the competition."
Indeed. Employees do that by:
Being motivated, giving their all, working hard and excelling at what they do.
Unfortunately employers do that by:
Downsizing and laying off staff, hiring "consultants" and instituting petty rules like the number of toilet-breaks allowed each day or banning cigarette breaks, treating their employees as faceless commodity-level drones and shipping off as much of the work as possible to third-world countries.
Can you blame the younger generation for not wanting to sign up for that deal?
You're coming (presumably) from a number of years ago, when there was the expectation of a single career arc, reward for your loyalty and a job for life.
Kids in IT these days know they'll have to re-learn all their skills every couple of years just to stay ahead, they'll be treated like commodity units instead of valued team-members (like they're told they are), and they can be sacked in a heartbeat along with a thousand of their co-workers, just to preserve a few points on the company stock or to pay for the CEO's new solid-gold toilet seat in the executive washroom.
The implied social contract is breaking down, and I don't think the kids started it.
"The US is in an economic war that, given most of the attitudes I see today towards education and work, we're going to lose."
Yeah. Unfortunately in your metaphor the companies and corporations are the arms manufacturers - they started it by playing off the US job market against the rest of the world, and they're the only ones to profit.
The US economy goes down the tubes, and the workers themselves have no power to change shitty conditions. Meanwhile the companies (and the select few who run them) get slightly richer. Again, are you really surprised?
Congratulations - you've just espoused the mindset that leads to Windows, Visual Basic, Lotus Notes and the like, and one which will never, ever lead to Mac OS/X, Linux, Firefox, *BSD or Perl/Python/PHP. Which of these groups are more generally known to be high-quality, stable, robust and interoperable?
Spolsky's writing from the perspective of a small development house, so he's not separating "design" from "implementation" - since they're often done by the same person/people it's all included under his catch-all "programmer".
I personally would be more likely to use the word "developer", but that's just his phraseology.
You can self-evidently get away with having a few "just average" programmers around. In fact, it's possibly a good idea since truly talented hackers tend to get demotivated when given shitty, trivial or uninteresting jobs to do.
However, to suggest that developer-skill doesn't matter at all is insane - who designs and develops the "processes" you're talking about - non programmers? Then (empirically) they're unrealistic, buggy and prone to security holes. People with any experience of programming? Then they're part of what Spolsky calls his "programmers".
You might also notice that:
Single, monolithic systems are generally buggier/more complex than small, efficient toolsets.
Design-by-committee is universally reviled as a Bad Thing.
In Windows and the like, security holes and serious bugs are more often things like buffer overflows (individual programmer errors).
Which are all symptoms of poor programmers working in large groups, rather than one (or a few) talented individuals implementing a clear but extensible vision.
"Software should not be made by programmers, but processes. It's like talking about how you can build a better building with quality bricks."
Not really. It's more like saying you want your walls to be made out of brick rather than paper. Paper walls might be easier to work with and cheaper, but there's a reason we use bricks to build houses.
And yes, you can build a monstrosity out of bricks, but you can also do it out of paper - at least the brock version will be stable, hardwearing and not prone to collapsing in the first a slight wind.
"I know how that is. That's the same management that'll tell you "You're not showing the proper dedication" if you *only* work the 40 hours you're 'supposed' to."
Yep. In the place I'm working at now, I used to get regular (unofficial) complaints from my boss that I was turning up "only" ten minutes before work started. Based on the fact I was paid to be there from 09:00 onwards, I asked exactly what the problem was.
"You might be late one day" was the best he could do, followed by "other people in the department get here at 08:00 or 08:30. I have to come in at 07:30 every morning!".
I had to point out that what he was neglecting to take into account, however, was that I have a life outside of work, and if anyone (in fact, one or two from a deparetment of about 8) was unstimulated enough to turn up to work an hour early because they have nothing else to do, that's their voluntary choice.
And as regards his working day starting at 07:30, well, that's why he's a manager and probably on at least double the salary and perks I am.
The best bit was when I got in at 08:55, sat down and started my computer, and he came and had a whinge. He pointed out that by the time I'd got in, sat down, got a cup of coffee and waited for my computer to boot it was after nine before I was ready to work.
I pointed out that technically I'd got there five minutes early, I didn't drink coffee first thing in the morning, and my machine had been booted and waiting for me to work on it since 08:56. It was now 09:10, so in fact (phrased terribly, terribly carefully) I was fulfilling my contractual obligations, and he'd already cost me fifteen minutes working time by complaining unnecessarily.
You eat irradiated food every single day of your life - practically all sealed refrigerated food is irradiated after it's sealed to kill all the bugs inside it and keep it fresh for longer.
So, in fact, this could even serve to keep food and water edible for longer on the trip.
Indeed. It might seem like I'm arguing against the trip here, but I was only arguing practical considerations. As I've said elsewhere in the thread, if I had the chance of going to Mars, cancer or no, I wouldn't even stop to pack;-)
To be fair, compare the size of the fuel tanks those rockets are dragging, compared to the the size of the tanks used once you're out of earth's gravity well. And remember that the tanks get lighter (ok, contain less mass) as time goes on.
You're right in that a shallower gravity well would be an advantage, but when you're basically talking about plating the outside of the rocket in several feet of processed rock (and bonus - which doesn't get lighter as the journey goes on), I doubt very much it would scale up enough to make the plan viable.
Can you imaging the weedy probe engine pushing something even half the weight of a Saturn V rocket?
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you're right - everyone knows the bestsoftware is determined solely by market share. Especially with concepts like "monopoly", "de-facto standard", "must interoperate" and "FUD" around.
Market share determines who has the best marketing department, who was first to market, who's willing to abuse their position to extend a monopoly of theirs into other areas, or who has the most successful vendor-lockin. While ideally quality alone will win out, in practice it very, very rarely does, since any of the examples listed above generally trump mere "quality" on its own.
I'd agree that markets would be a perfect selector: in a perfect world, all things being equal, if every piece of software worked in isolation and every purchaser was perfectly accurately educated in the pros and cons of evry product on the market.
Unfortunately, this ain't going to happen any time soon.
Certainly, but only if you remember to set the mission priorities right. Now, remind me - does "Mission success" come above or below "Astronaut survival"...?
I don't know if you've ever worked with real programmers before, but if you have to "motivate" them to learn something, they really don't want to learn it, and really aren't going to enjoy doing so.
In addition, what's the point of trying games to "enthuse" people who are already highly motivated to learn? You'd do better by chucking them a book or website and letting them get on with it.
The entire subtext of the question seems to indicate they aren't already interested in learning.
" This is just another reason to make it a one way mission and just colonize the place."
Without a couple of trips and a sample-return mission we won't know enough about what conditions are like there to mount a colonisation effort.
"A) If there is alien life on Mars, the dumbest thing to do is bring it back to Earth."
Well yeah, apart from the astronomically (literally) unlikely chance that anything that's evolved from first principles on an entirely alien planet would be able to survive in our ecosystem, let alone invade our bodies and fend off our immune systems long enough to reproduce, make us sick and spread.
"B) If you're going to go, a round trip will only double the exposure to cosmic rays. Go once, go well and be first to land and die on mars."
Indeed. Very soon after landing, in fact, if we don't know enough about the conditions to set up a viable biosphere.
"C) Use older astronauts. These guys are going to die sooner anyhow. Let them go out with glory (not a blaze) as the founders of a colony and explorers."
This is a possibility, but as I understand it as you get older your genetic integrity breaks down, and you're more likely to get cancer, not less. Plus, of course, the extreme physical rigour and high level of fitness necessary to get into space, land on Mars and survive in a hostile alien environment for an unspecified time. All in all space exploration looks more like a young person's game, cancer-risk notwithstanding.
Anyway, who's seriously worried about this? 10% chance of contracting cancer you might have got anyway, vs. the chance of being the first man on Mars? I wouldn't even stop to pack...
Slashdot Mirror
No no - common misconception.
What actually happened was that the arrow got closer and closer, right, but by then the satellite had moved away a bit. Only a bit, but that's all it needed. So now the arrow moves closer to the satellite's new position, but by then the satellite's moved a tiny bit further away again. This keeps on happening, so eventually the arrow ends up infinitely close to the satellite but never actually reaches it. QED.
Right?
"If you do not think that spy satellites are not weapons you are just nuts."
They aren't. Spy satellites are intelligence-gathering devices that allow you to know where to point your weapons. They're no more a weapon themselves than your lungs are a weapon - hey, without lungs you'd have no oxygen to power your muscles to move your finger to press the button that fires the nuke that actually is a weapon...
Ok, I'm being slightly facetious, but you get the point. You can gather all the information you like up there, but keep weapons here on earth.
Disingenuous how? What, like we didn't have satellites during the cold war?
Anti-satellite strikes would have been about the only thing the cold-war USSR/US could really have got away with, since they could be argued to be counter-espionage actions rather than overt attacks on the other superpower.
Seconded.
CoolTechZone didn't impress me in the slightest with its earlier misconception-heavy informed-opinion-light gibberish. In fact, it annoyed me so much I ended up responding point-for point to the article. Summary: most of it was uninformed ranty BS, with about one piece of valid criticism in the whole thing.
This "printers" piece was even written by the same underinformed fanboy as the last "Linux 5uXx anD M$ i5 t3h r0xxoRZ!!!" crap.
I haven't RTFA yet, but my advice would be to take with a metric tonne of salt.
"...and at this point I stopped reading, realising you dont understand what you're talking about."
Terribly sorry, AC - didn't realise not understanding every detail of the (closed-source) Microsoft driver kernel-modification process was a bar to commenting on general computing issues that actually have nothing to do with them! My apologies!
Fuckwit.
"So Windows recompiles the kernel when you install a new device? Since when did MS ship the kernel source with every installation?"
Sigh. Where do I begin?
The fact that I put "recompile" in quotes for this very reason (ie, it could be modified somehow in binary form, and that could be what the, um, uneducated article-writer meant by "recompile")?
How about the fact that I was producing a hypothetical situation, given what the article-writer had stated?
Again, fuckwit.
"It (Microsoft) pioneered the mass market software principle."
.. which does hit the hardware "
.. if i recall you still have a computer and i'm sure you're content on using it."
... and much more then any of these linux companies have =) rest of your comments I'd agree with"
Right - its business model was brilliant. Why does that mean they should be given kudos? They've made a lot of money for themselves and convinced a lot of people to buy their stuff. I reserve kudos for people who do good things for me or other people. Merely finding a great way of making themselves money doesn't count.
"Not really windows is still a more complex piece of software compared to apache. I see just as many bugs from linux through my CERT alerts."
Oh jesus, are you trolling? (Checks post-log) Ah, possibly.
The empirical disproof to this argument is Apache vs Microsoft IIS. Apache is (still) much more widely used. Apache is still much less widely cracked than IIS. Apache (last I read) still has far fewer known issues than IIS. Apache is also smaller, more efficient and (arguably) scalable than IIS.
Windows is neither here nor there - the Apache/IIS comparison has been trotted out so many times to disprove this argument that I (erroneously, apparently) assumed everyone would understand without explanation.
"kinda coolw hat windows did here. Drivers are not allowed to touch the kernel at all. Drivers go through the OS layer interface through hooks and doesn't interact directly with the hardware. Except for direct x
Aaaaah. So in other words his criticism here was valid. Fair play then. Does windows' kernel then count as a microkernel, or is that something different again?
"Again you need to keep fact from comments out if you wish to argue against the author's comments."
Fair play - Microsoft do put a lot of effort into the ergonomics of their user-interface, and I should have acknowledged that. However, they're quite, quite happy to literally lobotomise their products if it ensures vendor-lockin or they think for a second they can convince you to dole out hundreds of dollars more for a "Pro" version. Look at the differences between XP Home, Pro and (IIRC) Server 2003. The major differences were a few registry settings and a couple of software tools included on the CD, but they were happy to charge hundreds (thousands?) of dollars more for XP Pro or Server 2003.
Microsoft provides great ease-of-use for their UI, but much less for interoperability or developers.
"Egads
You're assuming it was Windows that lead to the computing revolution. I'm inclined to think it was far more Compaq's (IIRC) reverse-engineering of the PC BIOS - once the hardware was cheap enough, any commercial OS would have filled the hole. Microsoft saw a wave and rode it successfully - kudos goes to those who created the wave in the first place.
"they give away money
Who, exactly, gives away money? Sure the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gives away money, but that's not Microsoft. And, of course, there's still the whole philosophical argument that 50p from a beggar is more charitable than $100 from a millionaire.
Most Linux companies may not give away money (the side-product of their work) - they give away their products. They give away systems that allow people to make their own money, by capitalising on them to produce products and services without huge up-front startup costs.
Like they say, give a man a fish and he's fed for a day - teach him to fish (or, in this case, give him a free fishing rod) and he's fed for life.
(Actually, I always preferred Terry Pratchett's take on this: Give a man a fire and he's warm for an evening - set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.)
Again, for empirical proof look at the results - The B&MGF gives money away in lump sums, benefitting small groups o
"This means that their kernel will work on just about any system and to change "device drivers" so to say, all you need to do is have your kernel sources, grab a new driver (spca5xx comes directly to mind), compile/install it, and reinsert the module."
Sorry - I'm not following you. When changing device drivers (ignore initial installation) do you have to manually recompile (at least part of) the kernel or not?
If you do, he's got a legitimate point in on Linux (since Windows hides all this from the user).
If not, he's talking rubbish, and his criticism isn't valid.
If Linux also by default automates and hides the recompilation from the user (even if you can do it manually), the point is moot and his criticism is again invalid.
Forgive me if I'm being stupid, but your post just seemed to imply he was right all along, while being phrased as if he wasn't.
That's a fair point - I didn't mean to imply specific cases, just illustrate general trends.
In addition, all the "amateur" examples you give are your own work. Fair play for your contributions, but where are the multiple-contributor independant equivalents of CPAN?
The closest thing I've found is forum sites like Experts Exchange, but these tend to deal with everything from Visual C++ to PHP, so they're hardly Microsoft-centric, just general developer resources.
MSDN is pretty much the free resource for all things Microsoft, and it sufers greatly for it. It's not run by talented amateurs, so what you get tends to be the "party line". Something isn't documented in the help, chances are it isn't documented in MSDN. There are "tips & tricks" articles, granted, but they're generally in wildly different places to the hardcore technical documentation, so their usefulness is limited.
It's also hard for "outsiders" to contribute improvements, corrections and content, so as a lot of posters have pointed out a lot of what's there risks being incomplete or incorrect.
This is also a single huge site, so personally I find finding anything to be extremely hard - search is often next to useless, and there's very little way to compartmentalise your search (eg, to just Visual C++, or "the latest-but-one version of ASP.NET").
I've always blamed this situation on the essential differences between the cultures - open source seems to value transparent and free information-flow as its highest priority, whereas businesses only take any action if it's perceived ultimately to add value to the shares, and this can often mean restricting information rather than publishing it competely and accurately.
I'm not making any judgement here on which of these aims is the most noble, but which would you expect to lead to the most complete, informative documentation?
"If you hate them that much go buy 1000 Xbox 360s and don't buy any games. There, you just took $10,000 from Billy boy." What, Microsoft only loses $10 on each XBox? If that's true they might as well charge $20 more and make a profit on it and the games...
"Almost"?
I'd say this guy is merely a pro-MS zealot, exactly like the anti-MS zealots here on Slashdot that he bashes.
Let's look at the article piece by piece:
Recap on alternative/joke names for MS.
States explicitely that "I love Microsoft. Absolutely adore it and what's more, I hate Linux. I think it's the most over rated piece of software ever built and survives simply out of spite and not because it is terribly good at doing something because it is not!". He's clearly already marked out his opinion as essentially content-less uninformed flaming, exactly what he complains about when it happen to MS.
Calls Windows a "pioneering effort". Now, I'm no Linux or Mac fanboy, but I was under the distinct impression that Windows had very little innovation compared to the Mac. IIRC various Microsofties have even admitted as much before, albeit off the record.
Regurgitates the long-disproven "popularity => more successful breakins" argument. More popularity equals more cracking attempts, I'll grant you, but that's not the same as successful security breaches. And anyway, haven't we already disproven this whole argument?
"Considering the fact that everyone who knows how to write two bits of code dreams of hitting windows with a virus, the guys at the "Redmond Giant" are doing a spectacular job."
Bwaaaaahahahahahaaaaaa! As everyone knows, the two main groups who write viruses are security professionals offering a "proof of concept", and script kiddies. The overwhelming majority of coders/developers have never written (or certainly released) a virus in their lives.
In addition, given it's mostly VBScript kiddies - who are almost universally poor programmers - the runaway success of most Windows viruses is even more damning.
"XP is such a joy when it comes to simply connecting a device and watching the pretty little bubble detecting it and saying "its installed and ready for use" makes the slightly high price absolutely worth it."
Dunno what version of windows he's using, and not to deny Windows has got better over the years, but I still have plenty of issues even these days with unrecognised hardware, pieces of hardware detected twice, crashes due to dodgy device drivers, etc.
"In Linux, you have to recompile a kernel if you want to so much as change your modem!"
Now, I'm not that au fait with the low-level Windows or Linux processes, but I understood that they both used monolithic kernels (ie, drivers not in userland). Surely this means that Windows also has to "recompile" the kernel when the device drivers change? If so it might be hidden behind a pretty user-interface, but it's the same damn architecture and the same design problem.
Tackles the anti-trust cases. Totally ignores Microsoft's documented illegal behaviour and instead blames it on jealousy from competitors. Riiiiiight...
Suggests Sun and Oracle's business models are based around sueing Microsoft. Is he confusing "Sun" with (the Microsoft-backed) SCO, and "Microsoft" with Linux?
He's actually suggesting these companies sue Microsoft because they see it as an easy revenue-earner, rather than a highly risky attempt at redress against the richest organisation (with the most expensive and persuasive legal team) in the world. Mind-boggling.
"Microsoft made some products which it would like to ship together with its OS, no where in the EULA does it say that "you are not authorized to install other software" If Mr. John Doe thinks media player is the worst piece of software he has ever used, he is free to go and download Winamp or Musicmatch Jukebox (neither of these offer free full versions)."
Yeah, they don't write it into the EULA where anyone could see it, but you don't need to do that when you've got the CEO of Dell's balls in your office drawer. It's harder to prove, and leaves less obvious marks for the next lawsuit.
Oh, and the key thi
"There are gobs of forums, resource sites, how-tos, tutorials, and so on."
.OCX control for $60+.
There are indeed, but the majority of these tend to be small-scale or very, very elementary, only really useful for learning.
In terms of useful, comprehensive sites like CPAN (especially which don't require membership), there's surprisingly little, especially given the huge number of Microsoft-centric programmers.
I've always had trouble finding good examples of more advanced functionality, and finding well-written, comprehensive pre-written modules or libraries that you don't have to pay through the nose for is often an exercise in frustration. OTOH, I can jump onto CPAN (or many "amateur" websites) and find better-written, more correct and more comprehensive examples, for free.
I think part of the problem is the different cultures at work here - the share-for-free Open Source culture versus the proprietary paid-for-consultancy of the Windows world.
When an OSS programmer becomes good enough to start writing libraries or modules he tends to make them available for free, as source code, since he took advantage of others' free examples when learning. He's also more likely to "open" something he wrote for himeself, if it looks like it might be useful to others.
This sharing leads to a strong sense of community, as a side-effect so he's also more likely to hang out on bulletin boards and forums (fora?) to share the knowledge with others.
When a MS-centric programmer becomes good enough to produce stuff of worth to other people, he's more likely to charge consultancy fees or just sell it as a pre-compiled downloadable
This leads to a proprietary culture where since you have to pay to acquire much of value, you're less likely to give away your work, since that would represent a net loss.
This is again understandable, since in my experience many MS-centric programmers tend to pay for training courses to learn new skills (and they see nothing wrong with trying to recoup those costs in turn), whereas in OSS people are more likely to take a few hours off and sit down with a good website/book and a compiler - they gain the knowledge cheaper/free thanks to the altruism of others, and so are predisposed to pay it back in their turn.
Why would anyone want to brick up a chicken?
Well yeah, but you volunteered by joining the military. I hate to sound unsympathetic, but you chose that route.
What we're talking about is the general decay of workers rights. We didn't voluntarily give up those rights - they're being taken from us, so your analogy is pretty irrelevant (unless you were conscripted, which I doubt)...
"Today's employees, and employers, for that matter, need to figure out how they're going to out-perform, out-think, and out-hussle the competition."
Indeed. Employees do that by:
Being motivated, giving their all, working hard and excelling at what they do.
Unfortunately employers do that by:
Downsizing and laying off staff, hiring "consultants" and instituting petty rules like the number of toilet-breaks allowed each day or banning cigarette breaks, treating their employees as faceless commodity-level drones and shipping off as much of the work as possible to third-world countries.
Can you blame the younger generation for not wanting to sign up for that deal?
You're coming (presumably) from a number of years ago, when there was the expectation of a single career arc, reward for your loyalty and a job for life.
Kids in IT these days know they'll have to re-learn all their skills every couple of years just to stay ahead, they'll be treated like commodity units instead of valued team-members (like they're told they are), and they can be sacked in a heartbeat along with a thousand of their co-workers, just to preserve a few points on the company stock or to pay for the CEO's new solid-gold toilet seat in the executive washroom.
The implied social contract is breaking down, and I don't think the kids started it.
"The US is in an economic war that, given most of the attitudes I see today towards education and work, we're going to lose."
Yeah. Unfortunately in your metaphor the companies and corporations are the arms manufacturers - they started it by playing off the US job market against the rest of the world, and they're the only ones to profit.
The US economy goes down the tubes, and the workers themselves have no power to change shitty conditions. Meanwhile the companies (and the select few who run them) get slightly richer. Again, are you really surprised?
Spolsky's writing from the perspective of a small development house, so he's not separating "design" from "implementation" - since they're often done by the same person/people it's all included under his catch-all "programmer".
I personally would be more likely to use the word "developer", but that's just his phraseology.
You can self-evidently get away with having a few "just average" programmers around. In fact, it's possibly a good idea since truly talented hackers tend to get demotivated when given shitty, trivial or uninteresting jobs to do.
However, to suggest that developer-skill doesn't matter at all is insane - who designs and develops the "processes" you're talking about - non programmers? Then (empirically) they're unrealistic, buggy and prone to security holes. People with any experience of programming? Then they're part of what Spolsky calls his "programmers".
You might also notice that:
Which are all symptoms of poor programmers working in large groups, rather than one (or a few) talented individuals implementing a clear but extensible vision.
"Software should not be made by programmers, but processes. It's like talking about how you can build a better building with quality bricks."
Not really. It's more like saying you want your walls to be made out of brick rather than paper. Paper walls might be easier to work with and cheaper, but there's a reason we use bricks to build houses.
And yes, you can build a monstrosity out of bricks, but you can also do it out of paper - at least the brock version will be stable, hardwearing and not prone to collapsing in the first a slight wind.
"I know how that is. That's the same management that'll tell you "You're not showing the proper dedication" if you *only* work the 40 hours you're 'supposed' to."
Yep. In the place I'm working at now, I used to get regular (unofficial) complaints from my boss that I was turning up "only" ten minutes before work started. Based on the fact I was paid to be there from 09:00 onwards, I asked exactly what the problem was.
"You might be late one day" was the best he could do, followed by "other people in the department get here at 08:00 or 08:30. I have to come in at 07:30 every morning!".
I had to point out that what he was neglecting to take into account, however, was that I have a life outside of work, and if anyone (in fact, one or two from a deparetment of about 8) was unstimulated enough to turn up to work an hour early because they have nothing else to do, that's their voluntary choice.
And as regards his working day starting at 07:30, well, that's why he's a manager and probably on at least double the salary and perks I am.
The best bit was when I got in at 08:55, sat down and started my computer, and he came and had a whinge. He pointed out that by the time I'd got in, sat down, got a cup of coffee and waited for my computer to boot it was after nine before I was ready to work.
I pointed out that technically I'd got there five minutes early, I didn't drink coffee first thing in the morning, and my machine had been booted and waiting for me to work on it since 08:56. It was now 09:10, so in fact (phrased terribly, terribly carefully) I was fulfilling my contractual obligations, and he'd already cost me fifteen minutes working time by complaining unnecessarily.
That was a fun conversation.
Irradiated != Radioactive
You eat irradiated food every single day of your life - practically all sealed refrigerated food is irradiated after it's sealed to kill all the bugs inside it and keep it fresh for longer.
So, in fact, this could even serve to keep food and water edible for longer on the trip.
Indeed. It might seem like I'm arguing against the trip here, but I was only arguing practical considerations. As I've said elsewhere in the thread, if I had the chance of going to Mars, cancer or no, I wouldn't even stop to pack ;-)
To be fair, compare the size of the fuel tanks those rockets are dragging, compared to the the size of the tanks used once you're out of earth's gravity well. And remember that the tanks get lighter (ok, contain less mass) as time goes on.
You're right in that a shallower gravity well would be an advantage, but when you're basically talking about plating the outside of the rocket in several feet of processed rock (and bonus - which doesn't get lighter as the journey goes on), I doubt very much it would scale up enough to make the plan viable.
Can you imaging the weedy probe engine pushing something even half the weight of a Saturn V rocket?
That whizzing sound was the 2001:A Space Odyssey reference passing you by ;-)
haaaa hahahahahaha.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you're right - everyone knows the best software is determined solely by market share. Especially with concepts like "monopoly", "de-facto standard", "must interoperate" and "FUD" around.
Everyone knows markets are the perfect selectors of quality, right? That's why crappy Linux or *BSD can't break into the desktop, and Microsoft owns the world.
Numbnuts.
Market share determines who has the best marketing department, who was first to market, who's willing to abuse their position to extend a monopoly of theirs into other areas, or who has the most successful vendor-lockin. While ideally quality alone will win out, in practice it very, very rarely does, since any of the examples listed above generally trump mere "quality" on its own.
I'd agree that markets would be a perfect selector: in a perfect world, all things being equal, if every piece of software worked in isolation and every purchaser was perfectly accurately educated in the pros and cons of evry product on the market.
Unfortunately, this ain't going to happen any time soon.
Certainly, but only if you remember to set the mission priorities right. Now, remind me - does "Mission success" come above or below "Astronaut survival"...?
I don't know if you've ever worked with real programmers before, but if you have to "motivate" them to learn something, they really don't want to learn it, and really aren't going to enjoy doing so.
In addition, what's the point of trying games to "enthuse" people who are already highly motivated to learn? You'd do better by chucking them a book or website and letting them get on with it.
The entire subtext of the question seems to indicate they aren't already interested in learning.
" This is just another reason to make it a one way mission and just colonize the place."
Without a couple of trips and a sample-return mission we won't know enough about what conditions are like there to mount a colonisation effort.
"A) If there is alien life on Mars, the dumbest thing to do is bring it back to Earth."
Well yeah, apart from the astronomically (literally) unlikely chance that anything that's evolved from first principles on an entirely alien planet would be able to survive in our ecosystem, let alone invade our bodies and fend off our immune systems long enough to reproduce, make us sick and spread.
"B) If you're going to go, a round trip will only double the exposure to cosmic rays. Go once, go well and be first to land and die on mars."
Indeed. Very soon after landing, in fact, if we don't know enough about the conditions to set up a viable biosphere.
"C) Use older astronauts. These guys are going to die sooner anyhow. Let them go out with glory (not a blaze) as the founders of a colony and explorers."
This is a possibility, but as I understand it as you get older your genetic integrity breaks down, and you're more likely to get cancer, not less. Plus, of course, the extreme physical rigour and high level of fitness necessary to get into space, land on Mars and survive in a hostile alien environment for an unspecified time. All in all space exploration looks more like a young person's game, cancer-risk notwithstanding.
Anyway, who's seriously worried about this? 10% chance of contracting cancer you might have got anyway, vs. the chance of being the first man on Mars? I wouldn't even stop to pack...