One quick observation: system-level programmers tend to be talented and have a high degree of skill, while application programmers, in many cases, do not have the same level of education or expertise.
I would guess most of the criticism below towards commercial software is directed towards application software.
An advanced malware author is almost certainly going to fit more into the systems-level programmer category. These are not people who just picked up a C# book three years ago. These are people who eat, sleep, and breathe computer science.
Size of teams and software are probably also a factor. Malware is probably going to be written by a handful of focused programmers, not a 300-person team using five kinds of bloated "platforms."
What the Dems did accomplish was to prevent a panic, which may be the best anybody can really expect of government in this kind of crisis. Republicans probably would have focused on lowering taxes, so big business could take that money and use it for overseas jobs.
Maybe we all need to consider that American politicians just are not able to fix this problem.
Microsoft is basically a Windows company (well, Windows + Office), but not for lack of trying.
The company has a long history of trying to break into other markets and Failing. Hell, if it weren't for Microsoft's anti-competitive lock-in, they might not have such high market share for those products, either.
Agreed, the real problem here is corporate personhood (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood).
Businesses have something approaching the full rights of a human being, except, as the quote goes "They (corporations) have no soul to save and they have no body to incarcerate."
Combine this with the ideas of limited liability, proprietary knowledge, and the common practice of boards of directors being friends with the executives they appoint, and what you have is a class of corporate management run amok with little or no accountability to shareholders. Management has access to billions of dollars to spend towards their own interests, which in many cases are not the interests of the shareholders.
That said, I believe the government does have the authority to dissolve corporations, so a repeat felon corporation could be dissolved or fined into non-existance, although I don't know of any time this has happened before. The US guidelines to sentencing organizations (http://www.ussc.gov/2009guid/CHAP8.htm) mention fining an exclusively criminal organization of all its assets, but I see no mention of dissolving repeat offenders. Maybe someone else can chime in here.
Doctors and lawyers can easily bring in double the salary of a software engineer because quality is top priority.. They have "mission critical" jobs.
Software engineering, OTOH, has seen a race to the bottom in terms of salary.
Why? Because quality is not top priority for software. Secure code is not seen as mission critical, and somehow programming is a lower-class job.
The software industry needs to wake up and recognize that software quality is mission critical, and can't be automated in the same way as manufacturing a car.. Writing good code requires talent and training, just like writing good contracts, researching case histories, diagnosing illness, or performing surgeries.
Bad code leads to bad things.. Crashed aircraft, stolen intellectual property, dead patients; everyone on slashdot knows these things. In 2002, the NIST concluded software bugs cost the US economy $59 billion annually. A 2007 IEEE paper concluded vulnerability announcements typically reduce a firm's stock price by 0.63% on the day of announcement. http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/TSE.2007.70712
Try requiring similar levels of training and accountability from your programmers. Pay commensurate with that expertise.
Ceglia's case for 80+% of the company might be unlikely to succeed, but it is in the courts and does have a real chance. It was not the first significant lawsuit against Facebook, and who knows? It may not be the last. FB seems to have a lot of ghosts in its closet.
FB just has too much uncertainty around it now, and too few assets. My guess is, that's one major reason they haven't gone public. They might not like what happens in the marketplace.
Who cares why he does anything? He's not a remarkable person. Why do you think the book was called Accidental Billionaires?
More notable is his lack of character. He got where he did by screwing over friends, breaking contracts, and treating FB users with contempt.
Despite some other posts here, not all geeks are like that. The Google guys actually invented something incredible, revolutionized the world, created whole industries, and seem to still have a bright future ahead. Fyodor of NMap created a tool that deserves more geek cool cred than FB + Google combined, yet he manages to remain modest, describing himself as a benevolent steward of his project, even as he makes money from the project and contributes back to the open source / security communities. I can respect those guys.
I fail to see any kind of genius in FB or zuckerberg. PHP ain't rocket science.
Seriously, I can't remember any time in the past several years I saw a commercial for a car/cookie/cereal/mouthwash/etc and planned to buy the item.
Content of commercials just has not ever figured in to how I shop. When I go to a store, I know what I want, I find the best deal, I get the hell out of there.
I agree that social media like facebook, twitter, and even blogs promotes weak social ties.
Anybody remember BBSs? Back before the Internet got big?
Most of the boards back in the day had close-nit groups. The kinds of people who met on the board, then got to know each other well enough to trust each other and possibly meet in real life.
Fast forward to today, and the old style message boards have been replaced by a "wall" and "pokes." There are tons of content, but it's all shallow and breezy. Maybe modern social media just sucks.
I would tell the corporate world that free software is good for the economy, and good for their business.
There are plenty of vendors out there who have built products on top of Linux, Apache, etc.
If Linux, Apache, etc. were not available for free, these vendors either would not have been able to launch their products, or would have paid huge licensing fees for crap like the Microsoft web server, driving up their prices.
If it weren't for these kinds of public software projects, everything would be more expensive, from consumer electronics to enterprise appliances.
My car has all kinds of computer-controlled features that adjust how it reacts, and they feel very natural.
The electric steering adjusts depending on speed, and also how quickly I pull the wheel; it's smooth and stable unless I am avoiding a collision, and then it steers the car more abruptly.
The car also has traction control, that detects slippage of the wheels and compensates using brakes.
So, my car has a sort of context awareness that makes it a pleasure to drive, keeps me in control, and has saved my butt on a few occasions. If I went back to driving my circa '97 car, it would feel clunky in comparison.
Maybe mood sensing could have its uses.. If I tell my phone to shut the hell up, it could stop whatever it's doing and apologize.
I love these articles that ascribe some kind of human intelligence to modern robots.
The article makes it clear that the designers programmed the robots to deceive and developed an algorithm to measure the options.
The robot didn't learn anything more than my laptop does when I install a new Ubuntu package. The robot didn't make a decision any more than my toaster "decides" to pop out my toast.
With Cable TV, you pay for the service, and then "pay" again when you watch commercials. Then you pay more if you want digital, then even more if you want HD or DVR. You pay extra for each box.
AT&T wants to charge you an internet access fee, then a fee to up your total bandwidth, then another fee to up your Web Video bandwidth, and probably a hefty fee for them to follow QoS for VoIP apps.
Unlike cable, uses for Internet Protocol are out of the telco's hands. If I develop a new app on port 3032 (say), how will AT&T prioritize it? Will traffic on new, unusual ports go to the back of the line?
In the business model AT&T wants, we will end up paying $100+ for internet service, just like we do for Cable or Satellite. What a drain on the economy, in return for no innovation. Also, it will stifle innovation of new protocols and apps. Add in the fact that your local cable company has a monopoly on your coax, and your local phone company has a monopoly on your twisted pair, and what do you get?
A country that spends its whole monthly paycheck on basic services. Which suck.
I seriously doubt many people genuinely used their PS3 for Linux - and Sony could easily dig up numbers to support that,
I bought my PS3 specifically to code a physics simulator on the Cell processor. IBM and Sony had set up Georgia Tech as a center of competency for Cell development with this kind of purpose in mind. Hell, the Air Force bought thousands of PS3s with no intention of gaming.
After the firmware update was announced, I stopped development on the PS3 and reworked the code for CUDA.
Sony killed the Cell, and I am not going to waste time developing on a dead platform. I use my PS3 to watch netflix now.
Think about this.. Not everyone who goes to college can work in theory or design. There just aren't enough jobs, especially in this economy.
I know people with doctorates who work the same jobs that people with a BS work.
I also know people with college degrees who work IT jobs.
I attended an excellent CS school, and work as a security engineer (right now). Salary is the same as friends who develop system software in silicon valley, without the 80-hour work weeks.
I should also point out that your boss will probably have a management degree, which means he prepared for 4 years to lie and screw people, not to think. And he will make 50% - 100% more than you.
McAfee does a lot more than consumer AV, and is a serious security company. They bring in $2B in revenue per year.
They acquired Secure Computing a couple years ago, which included the former CipherTrust products.
I'm not sure exactly what Intel has planned, though. Either they have some grand strategy to integrate the two lines of business, or they just want a slice of the security pie to subsidize their research.
Slashdot Mirror
ha, I struck a nerve and some app programmer modded me down.
One quick observation: system-level programmers tend to be talented and have a high degree of skill, while application programmers, in many cases, do not have the same level of education or expertise.
I would guess most of the criticism below towards commercial software is directed towards application software.
An advanced malware author is almost certainly going to fit more into the systems-level programmer category. These are not people who just picked up a C# book three years ago. These are people who eat, sleep, and breathe computer science.
Size of teams and software are probably also a factor. Malware is probably going to be written by a handful of focused programmers, not a 300-person team using five kinds of bloated "platforms."
Maybe the font is intentionally blurry so you can't use your own OCR to scrape the book from Google.
What the Dems did accomplish was to prevent a panic, which may be the best anybody can really expect of government in this kind of crisis. Republicans probably would have focused on lowering taxes, so big business could take that money and use it for overseas jobs.
Maybe we all need to consider that American politicians just are not able to fix this problem.
Microsoft is basically a Windows company (well, Windows + Office), but not for lack of trying.
The company has a long history of trying to break into other markets and Failing. Hell, if it weren't for Microsoft's anti-competitive lock-in, they might not have such high market share for those products, either.
So, we have valuations of facebook and zynga that are:
a) speculative
b) so high that knowledgeable people say, "really?"
c) based on unsustainable annualized growth rates as high as 250% http://www.secondshares.com/2010/04/06/zynga-5-billion-valuation-buy-%E2%80%93-early-leader-in-social-gaming-is-printing-money/
Draw your own conclusions.
Agreed, the real problem here is corporate personhood (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood).
Businesses have something approaching the full rights of a human being, except, as the quote goes "They (corporations) have no soul to save and they have no body to incarcerate."
Combine this with the ideas of limited liability, proprietary knowledge, and the common practice of boards of directors being friends with the executives they appoint, and what you have is a class of corporate management run amok with little or no accountability to shareholders. Management has access to billions of dollars to spend towards their own interests, which in many cases are not the interests of the shareholders.
That said, I believe the government does have the authority to dissolve corporations, so a repeat felon corporation could be dissolved or fined into non-existance, although I don't know of any time this has happened before. The US guidelines to sentencing organizations (http://www.ussc.gov/2009guid/CHAP8.htm) mention fining an exclusively criminal organization of all its assets, but I see no mention of dissolving repeat offenders. Maybe someone else can chime in here.
Doctors and lawyers can easily bring in double the salary of a software engineer because quality is top priority.. They have "mission critical" jobs.
Software engineering, OTOH, has seen a race to the bottom in terms of salary.
Why? Because quality is not top priority for software. Secure code is not seen as mission critical, and somehow programming is a lower-class job.
The software industry needs to wake up and recognize that software quality is mission critical, and can't be automated in the same way as manufacturing a car.. Writing good code requires talent and training, just like writing good contracts, researching case histories, diagnosing illness, or performing surgeries.
Bad code leads to bad things.. Crashed aircraft, stolen intellectual property, dead patients; everyone on slashdot knows these things. In 2002, the NIST concluded software bugs cost the US economy $59 billion annually. A 2007 IEEE paper concluded vulnerability announcements typically reduce a firm's stock price by 0.63% on the day of announcement. http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/TSE.2007.70712
Try requiring similar levels of training and accountability from your programmers. Pay commensurate with that expertise.
At least those kinds of permissions can be audited.
Better than where we are now, but certainly no silver bullet.
Facebook also has some outstanding liability.
Ceglia's case for 80+% of the company might be unlikely to succeed, but it is in the courts and does have a real chance. It was not the first significant lawsuit against Facebook, and who knows? It may not be the last. FB seems to have a lot of ghosts in its closet.
FB just has too much uncertainty around it now, and too few assets. My guess is, that's one major reason they haven't gone public. They might not like what happens in the marketplace.
Who cares why he does anything? He's not a remarkable person. Why do you think the book was called Accidental Billionaires?
More notable is his lack of character. He got where he did by screwing over friends, breaking contracts, and treating FB users with contempt.
Despite some other posts here, not all geeks are like that. The Google guys actually invented something incredible, revolutionized the world, created whole industries, and seem to still have a bright future ahead. Fyodor of NMap created a tool that deserves more geek cool cred than FB + Google combined, yet he manages to remain modest, describing himself as a benevolent steward of his project, even as he makes money from the project and contributes back to the open source / security communities. I can respect those guys.
I fail to see any kind of genius in FB or zuckerberg. PHP ain't rocket science.
Agreed.
And although I really am determined to hate Facebook, someone should also point out that News Corp, who owns WSJ, also owns MySpace.
Seriously, I can't remember any time in the past several years I saw a commercial for a car/cookie/cereal/mouthwash/etc and planned to buy the item.
Content of commercials just has not ever figured in to how I shop. When I go to a store, I know what I want, I find the best deal, I get the hell out of there.
I agree that social media like facebook, twitter, and even blogs promotes weak social ties.
Anybody remember BBSs? Back before the Internet got big?
Most of the boards back in the day had close-nit groups. The kinds of people who met on the board, then got to know each other well enough to trust each other and possibly meet in real life.
Fast forward to today, and the old style message boards have been replaced by a "wall" and "pokes." There are tons of content, but it's all shallow and breezy. Maybe modern social media just sucks.
I would tell the corporate world that free software is good for the economy, and good for their business.
There are plenty of vendors out there who have built products on top of Linux, Apache, etc.
If Linux, Apache, etc. were not available for free, these vendors either would not have been able to launch their products, or would have paid huge licensing fees for crap like the Microsoft web server, driving up their prices.
If it weren't for these kinds of public software projects, everything would be more expensive, from consumer electronics to enterprise appliances.
This is not always true.
My car has all kinds of computer-controlled features that adjust how it reacts, and they feel very natural.
The electric steering adjusts depending on speed, and also how quickly I pull the wheel; it's smooth and stable unless I am avoiding a collision, and then it steers the car more abruptly.
The car also has traction control, that detects slippage of the wheels and compensates using brakes.
So, my car has a sort of context awareness that makes it a pleasure to drive, keeps me in control, and has saved my butt on a few occasions. If I went back to driving my circa '97 car, it would feel clunky in comparison.
Maybe mood sensing could have its uses.. If I tell my phone to shut the hell up, it could stop whatever it's doing and apologize.
I love these articles that ascribe some kind of human intelligence to modern robots.
The article makes it clear that the designers programmed the robots to deceive and developed an algorithm to measure the options.
The robot didn't learn anything more than my laptop does when I install a new Ubuntu package. The robot didn't make a decision any more than my toaster "decides" to pop out my toast.
The article claims narcissists and people with low self-esteem are heavy users of facebook, it doesn't say they are the only users of facebook.
This drags down facebook, because narcissists are not very interesting.
With Cable TV, you pay for the service, and then "pay" again when you watch commercials. Then you pay more if you want digital, then even more if you want HD or DVR. You pay extra for each box.
AT&T wants to charge you an internet access fee, then a fee to up your total bandwidth, then another fee to up your Web Video bandwidth, and probably a hefty fee for them to follow QoS for VoIP apps.
Unlike cable, uses for Internet Protocol are out of the telco's hands. If I develop a new app on port 3032 (say), how will AT&T prioritize it? Will traffic on new, unusual ports go to the back of the line?
In the business model AT&T wants, we will end up paying $100+ for internet service, just like we do for Cable or Satellite. What a drain on the economy, in return for no innovation. Also, it will stifle innovation of new protocols and apps. Add in the fact that your local cable company has a monopoly on your coax, and your local phone company has a monopoly on your twisted pair, and what do you get?
A country that spends its whole monthly paycheck on basic services. Which suck.
I seriously doubt many people genuinely used their PS3 for Linux - and Sony could easily dig up numbers to support that,
I bought my PS3 specifically to code a physics simulator on the Cell processor. IBM and Sony had set up Georgia Tech as a center of competency for Cell development with this kind of purpose in mind. Hell, the Air Force bought thousands of PS3s with no intention of gaming.
After the firmware update was announced, I stopped development on the PS3 and reworked the code for CUDA.
Sony killed the Cell, and I am not going to waste time developing on a dead platform. I use my PS3 to watch netflix now.
Now, now, name calling is not nice.
Think about this.. Not everyone who goes to college can work in theory or design. There just aren't enough jobs, especially in this economy.
I know people with doctorates who work the same jobs that people with a BS work.
I also know people with college degrees who work IT jobs.
I attended an excellent CS school, and work as a security engineer (right now). Salary is the same as friends who develop system software in silicon valley, without the 80-hour work weeks.
I should also point out that your boss will probably have a management degree, which means he prepared for 4 years to lie and screw people, not to think. And he will make 50% - 100% more than you.
McAfee does a lot more than consumer AV, and is a serious security company. They bring in $2B in revenue per year. They acquired Secure Computing a couple years ago, which included the former CipherTrust products. I'm not sure exactly what Intel has planned, though. Either they have some grand strategy to integrate the two lines of business, or they just want a slice of the security pie to subsidize their research.
Google should build into Linux the same features that Bill wanted in winfs. That would really piss him off!