my favourite part of programming is debugging, and it's hard to explain to someone else the joy of examining a large call stack, looking at every parameter, and tracing the root problem all the way back to its origin.
Takes all kinds to make a world, but that's just weird;p
The other thing that isn't taught is how to take that 'bad design' and refactor it to become a good design.
Totally agree. Ongoing maintenance in general (which is at least a huge chunk of the jobs out there) isn't taught well.
What I actually think would be a good way to do this, is have some software application that is maintained for _years_ by the various classes. As a project, each class has to add new functionality to it... upgrade it to the latest technology, etc. The grading would cover not only that the new functionality worked, but that all the existing functionality continued to work and that the code base was still in a maintainable-ish state. I'm sure one could come up with some pretty clever "new functionality requirements" that would require extensive re-work and refactoring to make functional.
A disturbing interest in the kind of things that put off the kids described in this article
There are exceptions, but most of the programmers I know (and myself), when first exposed to computers, immediately started wondering how they worked and how we could "make programs". If that curiosity and interest isn't automatic and you have to be "tricked" into it... in my opinion you'll probably be a bad programmer.
It's hard for young students to see the purpose of these kinds of exercises, particularly when there is already plenty of software available to accomplish the same tasks, with no programming required.
The big problem with doing large "real" projects while still learning is that eventually you hit a point where you realize your initial design was bad. On a small "make work" project you can start over.. on a large project you just kind of have to go with it. Obviously this happens in real life to seasoned pros as well... but while you are still learning the fundementals it's apt to happen way more often and would seem to hold less educational value.
Somewhat offtopic, something that isn't done enough when people are learning to do design and coding, is to analyze failures. If you come up with a bad design, don't just bin it and start fresh.. really look at the process you went through to end up with that bad design. Sometimes it is a lack of understanding of some concept (especially true when initially learning OO fundementals)... but sometimes it is a way that you looked at a problem. I think a lot can be learnt not just from looking at a bad design and analysing why it is bad, but also looking at we arrived at that design.
I agree facebook will die (and for the love of the great fire cactus I hope it's soon).. but social networking isn't going anywhere.
It may not be the "hot new thing", but I'd say at this point it's like search. People have gotten a taste for it, and unless something else comes along that totally changes everything, we are just going to see one social networking system replaced with another.
I've seen a few of these done as concept.. the one that looked the most viable used a treadmill.
Personally I think it would be damn near impossible to work on a computer and keep up a good pace... but I guess if you did something tedious (like data entry) it would be ok. Would probably make stress injuries a lot more likely though (dunno what the ergonomics guide says on the topic of "upright walking while typing".. but it's probably not good).
My point, since I should get to it, is the any real life person has diverse interests that can not be reliably predicted from incidental qualities like gender. I fit the stereotype in some ways, and I don't fit it in others. Just like everyone.
Of course, and there is nothing wrong with diversity (in fact it is a pretty damn good thing). Stereotypes do exist for a reason however. On an individual level they can not be predicted because as you say, everyone is probably going to deviate from the stereotype in some way. On the large aggregate though, you can use them to define a target audience and specifically cater to them. You can make a game that appeals mainly to the "subset of things guys generally like" and expect to generate a game that largely appeals to a male audience. You can take a little from both columns and end up with a game like The Sims or Portal. It's reasonable to assume you could take from the female column and make a game that would largely appeal to a female audience, but as my original point, you'd have people jumping down your throat for doing it.
So essentially, if people point out how their personal experience differs from this, that's covered by "there are always exceptions", and yet you can get away with treating your point as self-evident.
When talking aggregate, specific experience is irrelevant. I have a female co-worker who not only follows UFC religiously, but could probably participate... she is like the anti-stereotype. That said, if you randomly picked 1000 women and 1000 men and asked them if they watched UFC.. I suspect you'd see a pretty heavy leaning towards the men.
The answer is: the same reason everything else is for mac and windows.
First off, assuming those "other OSes" is Linux, releasing a propriatary app for use on Linux is non-trivial. Every distro is a little different, so you either support one specific distro (used to be red-hat, now will probably be Ubuntu) or have to keep on top of 6+ distributions. And if you make it available, and sell it as "Linux compatible", you have to support it. All this to get a _very tiny_ chunk of market share.
Assuming you don't want the software and only care about the hardware, it _might_ just work if it's done as a USB HID device and not some weird propriatary format. Either way, they are still not going to put "linux compatible" on the box because it's not worth the support headache for the few sales they might get. Unfortunately there is no marketting friendly way of saying "should work on linux, but we don't guarantee or support it" so at least one person has to bite the bullet and buy the thing.. then post on some forum ranting about how well it worked or how it wasen't even recognized.
Sucks, but that's the choice we make by choosing not to use one of the mainstream operating systems. At least USB has made this a little better... a lot of stuff "just works" now, where before everything had it's own weird format and most of the time you were shit outa luck.
This is seriously a world first?!!??
on
USB Foot Controls
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· Score: 1
That wasn’t meant to be facetious I just assumed this already existed. Maybe not with pressure/location sensitive buttons in this exact incarnation... but I assumed the basic idea of “USB connected foot board” was already around.
I currently use my computer as a guitar amplifier (not as bad as it sounds really, with a decent (or even shitty) guitar interface/DI, impendence matcher, guitarix/rakarrack/jack-rack and all the assorted jack DAW stuff.. it’s actually pretty good (or at least good enough for an amateur like myself).
I had planned at some point on getting some kind of computer connected foot switch board (I’ve seen MIDI versions of this) to control the virtual effect pedals, and just assumed this kind of product already existed. If it doesn’t and this is the cheapest they come maybe I’ll be building my own;p
Also I really hate how distros mark software deemed stable by upstream as totally experimental and dangerous (applies to pretty much everyone).
Stable doesn't just relate to the software, but how the software works on a specific platform (that is, whether it plays nice with other libraries and such, whether the dependancies have been specified properly in the ebuild (or whatever your distro of choice uses), etc..).
Alternately, if the field did more to actively court female designers and programmers, elements that a broad swath of female gamers would like will be more likely to appear in games (or things that actively drive them away will be less likely to appear).
This isn't the 40's. While there is still some sexism, I think "the field" is plenty open to women developers. Heck, I see no boundry preventing an entire company of women developers established for the sole purpose of building a non-sexist female oriented game.
The fact that you don't hear about this happening to me indicates either: - There really isn't a substantial non-casual gaming interest in the female population - Been tried and failed because of the first option - Something about software development is a huge turn off for women - I'm not paying attention and the industry is extremely sexist. - I'm not paying attention and there is actually a huge female gaming genre
It was also from a different time period (well, kinda). Reading reviews of duke nukem forever, most people (guys included) seem to agree that the sexist nature of the duke nukem series, while cool and taboo at the time (when most of us were teenagers at a time when for most guys swear words were cool), seems out of place in the current culture. Maybe this is an encouraging sign?
Think Bayonetta. You think women came up with that character and her impressive decolletage, skin tight tights and porn-star glasses?
As I recall this came out of Japan, where cultural views towards women are actually kinda scary for a fairly advanced culture.
You mean like they had to change all the sports to tailor them for women?
Couldn't judge from the tone of your post, but was that a statement or a counter. If the latter, see: womens hockey.
No, maybe women aren't into gaming because there are better things to do (and I say this as a dedicated gamer).
That kind of goes along the steriotype that most women are at most casual gamers, and even if there were tailored games, they would have no interest. This could very well be true, but I don't think we've seen enough serious titles aimed at women to make a judgement. Would be if all movies were either chick flicks or fluff comedies, as a guy I would probably make the same kind of "I have better things to do" statement.
Also, many of the best-known games are openly hostile to women. People are surprised that women aren't rushing to play Duke Nukem Forever?
Would say many, but not most. Duke Nukem is kind of an extreme example. Either way this is symptom of games either being targetted at everyone (casual games mainly) or guys.
I don't generally like to encourage trolls... but that was pretty funny.
And trolling aside, The Sims actually is a good example of the design by committee-esq games you get when you try to make something with broad appeal. Just enough to keep both gender steriotypes happy, but not really mind blowing for either.
If you really want to bring women into gaming at a mainstream level, you have to make games specifically tailored for women... and thanks to politically correct "gender neutral" types ready to jump on anyone who tries it, probably not going to happen any time soon. What we'll see is women gamers who enjoy steriotypical guy games, and casual women gamers...
I don't think it's just whether there is a storyline or not, or how focal it is, but also the contents of said story.
There are lots of exceptions, but in general there is a fairly clear list of "things women prefer" and "things men prefer" in their storylines and characters. We see this not just in games but in other media (books, movies, tv shows). The problem is that trying to make the gaming equivalent of a "chick flick" would be a PC nightmare.
I don't understand why a game developer would want to tailor games to a single sex, male of female.
Despite what certain groups have tried to say during the years, there are key differences in the genders. While there are always exceptions, there is a fairly obvious list of "things that guys like" and "things that girls like". I won't bother to list these as it's not the point. If you try to make a game which appeals to both, you will get the design by committee effect, and generate a game which sorta appeals to both, but not as much as a game tailor made to the specific group.
Someone trolled about this earlier, but The Sims was a really good example of this. Just enough to keep both gender stereotypes happy, but wasn't "mind blowing" for most.
Now the real problem (and I promise I'm not trolling here!) is that if you actually made a game that targets women, the PC "gender neutral" types would be all over your ass in a heart beat. Even if the game really was something women would enjoy (nurturing, drama, etc) the backlash would make it not worth it... especially as society has no problem making a "kill everything with a big gun" game for the guys.
They are lacking because companies don't organize. One company doesn't speak to another (even on an unrelated area) to start a common project (it wouldn't raise any legal concern if the project isn't for profit) and share the costs.
Most companies compete with each other. Yes, I'd love to see a group of companies get together and say "hey, we all need a decent software package, why don't we work together for a common goal and make it happen!".. but I think I'll see everyone in the middle east holding hands and dancing around in a big circle before that ever happens.
While they say that FOSS is a huge risk they overlook all the EULAs where the company is agreeing to be open for an external audit at any time, that all the company's data can be accessed by a third party, that the rights of use given to the company can change at any time, and it may have to aquire new licenses just to keep using the software they already brought at the discretion of a third party.
As a consumer off the street going into a store and buying Microsoft word.. yes. But as I said in my post, when you operate at that level, by all means go with open source. When you are spending real money on specialized software though, you generally have a lot more say in the contract. As for being stupid, again, when you are a small start up the stakes are a lot different than when you have millions in assets for someone to go after. The Cisco thing put the fear of god into large companies.. and you frequently hear about "company x accused of GPL violation". In the eyes of many suits, it's better to go with something that you know comes with no risk (license clearly states we own it, can do anything we want with it) than to even bother looking at something with a GPL like license. Much as I love open source, I actually don't blame large organizations for this.
Great in theory, and in some applications great in practice as well.. however FOSS is somewhat lacking in the business software category (probably because a lot of business-y apps are no fun to develop).
Additionally there are a lot of niche markets, where there are maybe 200 users of a piece of software (each who pay a pretty hefty premium for said software) where FOSS alternatives don't exist due to lack of demand.
Plus a lot of companies see using FOSS as a huge risk. It's one thing to be a small startup, read the GPL, and say "yeah, we can use this with no problems". It's another thing to be a large company and do the same. Been my experience that even if a team of lawyers signs off, most companies would rather whip out the cheque book and pay for something which comes with a "yes, you now own this" license than go with FOSS.
Brunton questioned whether any media is "truly dead," except in rare cases, such as the Rongorongo tablets found at Easter Island, which no one now knows how to read or even decipher the reason they were created.
This whole 4 page article came off as a bunch of gum flapping over semantics. If I say something is a “dead technology”, I generally mean that very few people are using it.. not that it has completely disappeared from the face of the earth. I think the same is true of most people. Was the whole point of this to say that for most technologies, someone, somewhere, is still using it? If so it took a long damn time to make that point.
Also the fact that an older technology is somehow embodied in the new technology that supersedes it is a pretty damn obvious statement. We invent new things to do old things in a better way. Of _course_ my word processor incorporates the same concepts of the typewriter, it was designed to be a replacement for it!
This has been happening to us in the software world for some time. It's purely a cost thing (imo), which "dealing with IT" is a factor of, but in general I think it is a lot simpler.
Need some software. Your options be:
- Pay a team of developers to design, build, and maintain the software you use. Advantage is you get exactly (or well, in theory anyway) what you want. Disadvantage is it can take time to get the bugs sorted out
- Buy something off the shelf which is close enough. Advantage is you get it right away, it is generally mature out of the box, and you don’t need to keep a bunch of guys around to sort out bugs. Additionally because they sell this software to hundreds of users, they can throw way more development resources as it than you ever could (ye old horizontal market). Disadvantage is you don’t get exactly the features you want, but even that is changing as stuff becomes more extendable and more companies offer “customization”.
Option 2 starts looking very good, with option 1 becoming more reserved for “weird” or original software that no one else has written. A depressing trend.
I suspect as this same thing happens with infrastructure, you will find the same. Most businesses use some external provider, and the “real IT” jobs are mainly at places providing infrastructure to others, or handling really unusual cases.
Cheapest locks you can find, cosco security system, and if you are really lucky... some rent-a-cop.
The only time you ever see real security is when: - you have an "incident" and company makes a token gesture to appease everyone - it's required by some regulation... and even then it's usually the bare minimum to meet the requirement
I've never seen a pure hardware solution. Enter multi-factor authentication, which while not a silver bullet, is a lot better than a password.
Mallory can guess Alice's password. He can also steal her cell phone. Doing both however is considerably more difficuly. He needs the phone to even start guessing passwords, and once the phone is stolen there is only a short window for the guessing.
You can even throw in a biometric method, though personally I don't see much future for them. Most can be copied, and you can't just change your fingerprint when someone at the gas station makes a copy. As a third factor maybe they add some security, but I would never rely on them to replace either a token or a password.
Slashdot Mirror
my favourite part of programming is debugging, and it's hard to explain to someone else the joy of examining a large call stack, looking at every parameter, and tracing the root problem all the way back to its origin.
Takes all kinds to make a world, but that's just weird ;p
The other thing that isn't taught is how to take that 'bad design' and refactor it to become a good design.
Totally agree. Ongoing maintenance in general (which is at least a huge chunk of the jobs out there) isn't taught well.
What I actually think would be a good way to do this, is have some software application that is maintained for _years_ by the various classes. As a project, each class has to add new functionality to it... upgrade it to the latest technology, etc. The grading would cover not only that the new functionality worked, but that all the existing functionality continued to work and that the code base was still in a maintainable-ish state. I'm sure one could come up with some pretty clever "new functionality requirements" that would require extensive re-work and refactoring to make functional.
A disturbing interest in the kind of things that put off the kids described in this article
There are exceptions, but most of the programmers I know (and myself), when first exposed to computers, immediately started wondering how they worked and how we could "make programs". If that curiosity and interest isn't automatic and you have to be "tricked" into it... in my opinion you'll probably be a bad programmer.
It's hard for young students to see the purpose of these kinds of exercises, particularly when there is already plenty of software available to accomplish the same tasks, with no programming required.
The big problem with doing large "real" projects while still learning is that eventually you hit a point where you realize your initial design was bad. On a small "make work" project you can start over .. on a large project you just kind of have to go with it. Obviously this happens in real life to seasoned pros as well... but while you are still learning the fundementals it's apt to happen way more often and would seem to hold less educational value.
Somewhat offtopic, something that isn't done enough when people are learning to do design and coding, is to analyze failures. If you come up with a bad design, don't just bin it and start fresh.. really look at the process you went through to end up with that bad design. Sometimes it is a lack of understanding of some concept (especially true when initially learning OO fundementals) ... but sometimes it is a way that you looked at a problem. I think a lot can be learnt not just from looking at a bad design and analysing why it is bad, but also looking at we arrived at that design.
I agree facebook will die (and for the love of the great fire cactus I hope it's soon) .. but social networking isn't going anywhere.
It may not be the "hot new thing", but I'd say at this point it's like search. People have gotten a taste for it, and unless something else comes along that totally changes everything, we are just going to see one social networking system replaced with another.
I've seen a few of these done as concept.. the one that looked the most viable used a treadmill.
Personally I think it would be damn near impossible to work on a computer and keep up a good pace ... but I guess if you did something tedious (like data entry) it would be ok. Would probably make stress injuries a lot more likely though (dunno what the ergonomics guide says on the topic of "upright walking while typing" .. but it's probably not good).
My point, since I should get to it, is the any real life person has diverse interests that can not be reliably predicted from incidental qualities like gender. I fit the stereotype in some ways, and I don't fit it in others. Just like everyone.
Of course, and there is nothing wrong with diversity (in fact it is a pretty damn good thing). Stereotypes do exist for a reason however. On an individual level they can not be predicted because as you say, everyone is probably going to deviate from the stereotype in some way. On the large aggregate though, you can use them to define a target audience and specifically cater to them. You can make a game that appeals mainly to the "subset of things guys generally like" and expect to generate a game that largely appeals to a male audience. You can take a little from both columns and end up with a game like The Sims or Portal. It's reasonable to assume you could take from the female column and make a game that would largely appeal to a female audience, but as my original point, you'd have people jumping down your throat for doing it.
So essentially, if people point out how their personal experience differs from this, that's covered by "there are always exceptions", and yet you can get away with treating your point as self-evident.
When talking aggregate, specific experience is irrelevant. I have a female co-worker who not only follows UFC religiously, but could probably participate... she is like the anti-stereotype. That said, if you randomly picked 1000 women and 1000 men and asked them if they watched UFC.. I suspect you'd see a pretty heavy leaning towards the men.
You're seriously asking this ;p
The answer is: the same reason everything else is for mac and windows.
First off, assuming those "other OSes" is Linux, releasing a propriatary app for use on Linux is non-trivial. Every distro is a little different, so you either support one specific distro (used to be red-hat, now will probably be Ubuntu) or have to keep on top of 6+ distributions. And if you make it available, and sell it as "Linux compatible", you have to support it. All this to get a _very tiny_ chunk of market share.
Assuming you don't want the software and only care about the hardware, it _might_ just work if it's done as a USB HID device and not some weird propriatary format. Either way, they are still not going to put "linux compatible" on the box because it's not worth the support headache for the few sales they might get. Unfortunately there is no marketting friendly way of saying "should work on linux, but we don't guarantee or support it" so at least one person has to bite the bullet and buy the thing.. then post on some forum ranting about how well it worked or how it wasen't even recognized.
Sucks, but that's the choice we make by choosing not to use one of the mainstream operating systems. At least USB has made this a little better... a lot of stuff
"just works" now, where before everything had it's own weird format and most of the time you were shit outa luck.
That wasn’t meant to be facetious I just assumed this already existed. Maybe not with pressure/location sensitive buttons in this exact incarnation... but I assumed the basic idea of “USB connected foot board” was already around.
I currently use my computer as a guitar amplifier (not as bad as it sounds really, with a decent (or even shitty) guitar interface/DI, impendence matcher, guitarix/rakarrack/jack-rack and all the assorted jack DAW stuff.. it’s actually pretty good (or at least good enough for an amateur like myself).
I had planned at some point on getting some kind of computer connected foot switch board (I’ve seen MIDI versions of this) to control the virtual effect pedals, and just assumed this kind of product already existed. If it doesn’t and this is the cheapest they come maybe I’ll be building my own ;p
Also I really hate how distros mark software deemed stable by upstream as totally experimental and dangerous (applies to pretty much everyone).
Stable doesn't just relate to the software, but how the software works on a specific platform (that is, whether it plays nice with other libraries and such, whether the dependancies have been specified properly in the ebuild (or whatever your distro of choice uses), etc..).
Alternately, if the field did more to actively court female designers and programmers, elements that a broad swath of female gamers would like will be more likely to appear in games (or things that actively drive them away will be less likely to appear).
This isn't the 40's. While there is still some sexism, I think "the field" is plenty open to women developers. Heck, I see no boundry preventing an entire company of women developers established for the sole purpose of building a non-sexist female oriented game.
The fact that you don't hear about this happening to me indicates either:
- There really isn't a substantial non-casual gaming interest in the female population
- Been tried and failed because of the first option
- Something about software development is a huge turn off for women
- I'm not paying attention and the industry is extremely sexist.
- I'm not paying attention and there is actually a huge female gaming genre
It's also one of the most famous games ever.
It was also from a different time period (well, kinda). Reading reviews of duke nukem forever, most people (guys included) seem to agree that the sexist nature of the duke nukem series, while cool and taboo at the time (when most of us were teenagers at a time when for most guys swear words were cool), seems out of place in the current culture. Maybe this is an encouraging sign?
Think Bayonetta. You think women came up with that character and her impressive decolletage, skin tight tights and porn-star glasses?
As I recall this came out of Japan, where cultural views towards women are actually kinda scary for a fairly advanced culture.
You mean like they had to change all the sports to tailor them for women?
Couldn't judge from the tone of your post, but was that a statement or a counter. If the latter, see: womens hockey.
No, maybe women aren't into gaming because there are better things to do (and I say this as a dedicated gamer).
That kind of goes along the steriotype that most women are at most casual gamers, and even if there were tailored games, they would have no interest. This could very well be true, but I don't think we've seen enough serious titles aimed at women to make a judgement. Would be if all movies were either chick flicks or fluff comedies, as a guy I would probably make the same kind of "I have better things to do" statement.
Also, many of the best-known games are openly hostile to women. People are surprised that women aren't rushing to play Duke Nukem Forever?
Would say many, but not most. Duke Nukem is kind of an extreme example. Either way this is symptom of games either being targetted at everyone (casual games mainly) or guys.
I don't generally like to encourage trolls... but that was pretty funny.
And trolling aside, The Sims actually is a good example of the design by committee-esq games you get when you try to make something with broad appeal. Just enough to keep both gender steriotypes happy, but not really mind blowing for either.
If you really want to bring women into gaming at a mainstream level, you have to make games specifically tailored for women... and thanks to politically correct "gender neutral" types ready to jump on anyone who tries it, probably not going to happen any time soon. What we'll see is women gamers who enjoy steriotypical guy games, and casual women gamers...
I don't think it's just whether there is a storyline or not, or how focal it is, but also the contents of said story.
There are lots of exceptions, but in general there is a fairly clear list of "things women prefer" and "things men prefer" in their storylines and characters. We see this not just in games but in other media (books, movies, tv shows). The problem is that trying to make the gaming equivalent of a "chick flick" would be a PC nightmare.
I don't understand why a game developer would want to tailor games to a single sex, male of female.
Despite what certain groups have tried to say during the years, there are key differences in the genders. While there are always exceptions, there is a fairly obvious list of "things that guys like" and "things that girls like". I won't bother to list these as it's not the point. If you try to make a game which appeals to both, you will get the design by committee effect, and generate a game which sorta appeals to both, but not as much as a game tailor made to the specific group.
Someone trolled about this earlier, but The Sims was a really good example of this. Just enough to keep both gender stereotypes happy, but wasn't "mind blowing" for most.
Now the real problem (and I promise I'm not trolling here!) is that if you actually made a game that targets women, the PC "gender neutral" types would be all over your ass in a heart beat. Even if the game really was something women would enjoy (nurturing, drama, etc) the backlash would make it not worth it... especially as society has no problem making a "kill everything with a big gun" game for the guys.
Totally agree, though I'll point out that morse code is still used a fair bit in the ham radio community, sometimes even in novel ways.
They are lacking because companies don't organize. One company doesn't speak to another (even on an unrelated area) to start a common project (it wouldn't raise any legal concern if the project isn't for profit) and share the costs.
Most companies compete with each other. Yes, I'd love to see a group of companies get together and say "hey, we all need a decent software package, why don't we work together for a common goal and make it happen!" .. but I think I'll see everyone in the middle east holding hands and dancing around in a big circle before that ever happens.
While they say that FOSS is a huge risk they overlook all the EULAs where the company is agreeing to be open for an external audit at any time, that all the company's data can be accessed by a third party, that the rights of use given to the company can change at any time, and it may have to aquire new licenses just to keep using the software they already brought at the discretion of a third party.
As a consumer off the street going into a store and buying Microsoft word.. yes. But as I said in my post, when you operate at that level, by all means go with open source. When you are spending real money on specialized software though, you generally have a lot more say in the contract. As for being stupid, again, when you are a small start up the stakes are a lot different than when you have millions in assets for someone to go after. The Cisco thing put the fear of god into large companies.. and you frequently hear about "company x accused of GPL violation". In the eyes of many suits, it's better to go with something that you know comes with no risk (license clearly states we own it, can do anything we want with it) than to even bother looking at something with a GPL like license. Much as I love open source, I actually don't blame large organizations for this.
Great in theory, and in some applications great in practice as well.. however FOSS is somewhat lacking in the business software category (probably because a lot of business-y apps are no fun to develop).
Additionally there are a lot of niche markets, where there are maybe 200 users of a piece of software (each who pay a pretty hefty premium for said software) where FOSS alternatives don't exist due to lack of demand.
Plus a lot of companies see using FOSS as a huge risk. It's one thing to be a small startup, read the GPL, and say "yeah, we can use this with no problems". It's another thing to be a large company and do the same. Been my experience that even if a team of lawyers signs off, most companies would rather whip out the cheque book and pay for something which comes with a "yes, you now own this" license than go with FOSS.
Brunton questioned whether any media is "truly dead," except in rare cases, such as the Rongorongo tablets found at Easter Island, which no one now knows how to read or even decipher the reason they were created.
This whole 4 page article came off as a bunch of gum flapping over semantics. If I say something is a “dead technology”, I generally mean that very few people are using it.. not that it has completely disappeared from the face of the earth. I think the same is true of most people. Was the whole point of this to say that for most technologies, someone, somewhere, is still using it? If so it took a long damn time to make that point.
Also the fact that an older technology is somehow embodied in the new technology that supersedes it is a pretty damn obvious statement. We invent new things to do old things in a better way. Of _course_ my word processor incorporates the same concepts of the typewriter, it was designed to be a replacement for it!
If it’s a hierarchy with said manager "in charge" of IT and everyone else, definitely.
If it's more horizontal, not always. And I think this is really the case the article refers to.
This has been happening to us in the software world for some time. It's purely a cost thing (imo), which "dealing with IT" is a factor of, but in general I think it is a lot simpler.
Need some software. Your options be:
- Pay a team of developers to design, build, and maintain the software you use. Advantage is you get exactly (or well, in theory anyway) what you want. Disadvantage is it can take time to get the bugs sorted out
- Buy something off the shelf which is close enough. Advantage is you get it right away, it is generally mature out of the box, and you don’t need to keep a bunch of guys around to sort out bugs. Additionally because they sell this software to hundreds of users, they can throw way more development resources as it than you ever could (ye old horizontal market). Disadvantage is you don’t get exactly the features you want, but even that is changing as stuff becomes more extendable and more companies offer “customization”.
Option 2 starts looking very good, with option 1 becoming more reserved for “weird” or original software that no one else has written. A depressing trend.
I suspect as this same thing happens with infrastructure, you will find the same. Most businesses use some external provider, and the “real IT” jobs are mainly at places providing infrastructure to others, or handling really unusual cases.
Also didn't mount/bind the proc or dev file systems.
And what the hell @ installing _gnome_ before grub!
And people do!
Cheapest locks you can find, cosco security system, and if you are really lucky... some rent-a-cop.
The only time you ever see real security is when: ... and even then it's usually the bare minimum to meet the requirement
- you have an "incident" and company makes a token gesture to appease everyone
- it's required by some regulation
I've never seen a pure hardware solution. Enter multi-factor authentication, which while not a silver bullet, is a lot better than a password.
Mallory can guess Alice's password. He can also steal her cell phone. Doing both however is considerably more difficuly. He needs the phone to even start guessing passwords, and once the phone is stolen there is only a short window for the guessing.
You can even throw in a biometric method, though personally I don't see much future for them. Most can be copied, and you can't just change your fingerprint when someone at the gas station makes a copy. As a third factor maybe they add some security, but I would never rely on them to replace either a token or a password.