At the end of the day, there really is no such thing as a completely free system -- at least not one that is practical for most people to use. Every PC in existence has some sort of firmware and most of that firmware is closed. Moving the firmware out of the kernel and into ROM doesn't improve anything. Running a system with only completely open firmware/hardware will leave you without a working wireless connection, without working 3D acceleration, without a working HDD controller and pretty much without a processor. So that leaves --- nothing.
So I agree, the debate is pointless. You have to say that free software is an ideal that we should strive towards, but we have to make comprises somewhere unless we're willing to throw out the whole copyright and patent systems.
Your main points are certainly valid. I've seen many projects tank because the requirements are poorly understood by all involved -- developers, analysts, project managers and the business unit(s) driving the code. The cause is usually the business not being specific enough in specifying requirements. Another, related cause is that the analysts and/or projects managers are not sufficiently skilled in gathering requirements and ofen, like the business, do not understand the technology involved.
Not understanding the technology is usually a failure of the person(s) doing the hiring. Never hire a developer who doesn't already have a firm grounding in what you're trying to do. It helps to have a proven veteran on the development staff who can accurately gauge a candidate's level of knowledge and experience. Of course, the proven veteran must himself have a good understanding of the technology.;)
The last item is a failure of the project managers -- they often push the development staff to work long hours in order to finish a project on-time, rather than actually setting realistic deadlines. Project managers almost never actually try to gauge the amount of time a development project is going to take by asking the developers -- instead they go by 'industry averages,' which almost always going to be dead, flat, fscking wrong.
The industry average is estimated to be 10-20 defects per 1000 lines of code. Every non-essential line of code you write risks introducing a bug.
Why do people always quote these useless statistics? When everyone wrote everything in C, these statistics made more sense, but these days of dynamic languages like C#, Python, Perl, Ruby, and Tcl/Tk change the rules significantly. Consider, for instance, this report, this blog post, and this Google search.
The number of lines of code go down significantly and, unlike C, which was designed for ultimate programmer precision, these modern languages are actually designed to increase programmer productivity, though they do it with varying degrees of success (IMHO).
I know as a software developer I can write the same application in Python vs. C much more quickly and with far fewer errors.
I think we need to rethink software development metrics. Badly.
Lots of homes have water filters and water heaters. But very few homes own the water pipes.
Hmmm? What are you talking about?
You own the pipes inside the house. You also own the section of pipe that connects to the mains.
The chief difference with this is that instead of the city owning the mains, an HOA owns the mains.
Personally, I think it's a stupid idea. If you want municipal Internet access, then make municipal Internet access -- don't try slide it in the back door. The city of Wyandotte, Michigan, has its own municipal cable company, which provides cable TV and cable Internet to all residents of Wyandotte. So there you go. Cities could model after Wyandotte.
I think Denny's may be able to claim prior art here. Denny's has a system that splits the check by seat. Each seat gets a separate section in the bill. One bill is issued for the whole table, but the server can break out any portion of the bill by saying, say, seats 2 and 3 are now a separate bill. The system spits out a new check just for seats 2 and 3, marking those seats on the master bill as paid.
Explosives sniffers often look for high concentration of nitrogen, since nitrogen is a key component in virtual all explosives. Perhaps you've heard of such things as Tri-Nitro-Toluene (TNT)? How about Composition C4? A key chemical component of cyclonite (C4 is cyclonite mixed with plasticizers) is nitric acid?
Unfortunately, most addicts are given drugs and/or forced to attend $ADDICTION anonymous meetings which do more harm that good: If you were a drunk, would want to do be forced into a smoke-filled room crammed in with other folks who are just as pissed for being there as you are, probably fiending for drinks?
Hmmmm...have you been to $ADDICTION anonymous meetings? Most of the people there are not pissed off, at least not at the good meetings. Most aren't court ordered, either.
Also, the "higher power" thing dosen't work for atheists.
Sure it does. Check this guy out. Atheists just usually say something along the lines of 'higher power' == 'the power of the program' or some such.
Really. Don't knock the 12 Step programs until you've tried them -- in earnest.
The liquid nitrogen is in a closed system right? So the explosive sniffers shouldn't catch it, right? It's not like the TSA is going to know that the notebook has liquid nitrogen in it. They're not that bright and they're not that coordinated.
Of course it requires the use of a cellular network. That means that if the would-be thief really wants to steal your notebook with data intact, all he or she needs to do is either A) pull out the cellular card or B) if the cellular card is built-in, encase the laptop in a carefully-crafted metal box to designed to block the cell signal.
Either way, it's only a deterrent to people who don't know what they're doing.
Well, just because the person behind the counter doesn't speak English well, that doesn't mean that they've 'outsourced' their drive-thru window. (Yes, it's spelled 'drive-thru,' grammar nazis, deal with it.) I'm assuming by you're saying you live in NOVA that you mean the Canadian Province of Nova Scotia. The U.S. and Canada are melting societies -- at one time it might have been your ancestors that came to this country and didn't speak English too well.
Bill Gates is misguided by greed. Obviously he fails to realize that patent reform would actually be good for Microsoft and even the whole rest of the computer software and hardware industries.
The problem now is that patents are used by companies the way that nuclear weapons are used by countries -- they are a weapon of last resort, and used more as a threat than for anything else.
A reform of patent law would probably mean that these companies could 'disarm,' in the end lowering their legal costs.
Why not? How do the police deal with an uncooperative bank robber? They convince him to let the hostages go and/or lure him out and open a can of lead whoop-ass on him.
Right. But it's effectively no change... Microsoft really can't afford to piss off IBM with a patent suit against anyone over Linux. That's what SCO v. IBM has shown the world -- IBM is the world's largest patent holder, they've staked a good portion of their business on Linux, and if you mess with Linux, IBM is going to send their Nazgul after you, just as they 'blackened the skies of Lindon, UT' with lawyers.
Even Microsoft can't go up against IBM in a patent fight. Tring to beat IBM in a patent fight is like trying to take down an F-22 with a slingshot.
No, no. Real pirates. With guns. Maybe the pirates took down the 'pirates'!;) Seriously, didn't we see a story stating that HavenCo. was shutting down?
But Sealand is 'grandfathered in'. There's a controversy surrounding it, but at the end of the day the 'sovereignty' of Sealand is not tested in court.
Saying that, if you enjoy playing with this, go ahead! Just be honest with yourself about. If you still want to do it, wallow in it. But it's an extremely pernicious thing to do to link this with working on something that is done to benefit everyone. It simply is not the same thing.
Exactly. Working on FOSS is a magnanimous thing to do. You are giving freely to the entire world -- anyone who needs done what your particular code does. It's volunteerism.
When you participate in the Netflix competition, you might not be getting paid, but the work you're doing benefits only Netflix and you -- if you win the $1 million prize, that is. There are side benefits even if you don't win the million dollar prize -- you increase your own abilities in the areas of programming, mathematics, critical thinking, etc.
But that's the only place where there are similarities in working on FOSS, and it's where the similarities end. At the end of the day, doing the Netflix competition is spec work at best. If you exclude the $1m -- which is very cheap, BTW, The sole beneficiary is Netflix.
But if you write something that benefits others in the world who share your problem and distribute that freely to the world, the beneficiary is the entire world, or at least some portion of it.
Slashdot Mirror
At the end of the day, there really is no such thing as a completely free system -- at least not one that is practical for most people to use. Every PC in existence has some sort of firmware and most of that firmware is closed. Moving the firmware out of the kernel and into ROM doesn't improve anything. Running a system with only completely open firmware/hardware will leave you without a working wireless connection, without working 3D acceleration, without a working HDD controller and pretty much without a processor. So that leaves --- nothing.
So I agree, the debate is pointless. You have to say that free software is an ideal that we should strive towards, but we have to make comprises somewhere unless we're willing to throw out the whole copyright and patent systems.
Your main points are certainly valid. I've seen many projects tank because the requirements are poorly understood by all involved -- developers, analysts, project managers and the business unit(s) driving the code. The cause is usually the business not being specific enough in specifying requirements. Another, related cause is that the analysts and/or projects managers are not sufficiently skilled in gathering requirements and ofen, like the business, do not understand the technology involved.
Not understanding the technology is usually a failure of the person(s) doing the hiring. Never hire a developer who doesn't already have a firm grounding in what you're trying to do. It helps to have a proven veteran on the development staff who can accurately gauge a candidate's level of knowledge and experience. Of course, the proven veteran must himself have a good understanding of the technology. ;)
The last item is a failure of the project managers -- they often push the development staff to work long hours in order to finish a project on-time, rather than actually setting realistic deadlines. Project managers almost never actually try to gauge the amount of time a development project is going to take by asking the developers -- instead they go by 'industry averages,' which almost always going to be dead, flat, fscking wrong.
The industry average is estimated to be 10-20 defects per 1000 lines of code. Every non-essential line of code you write risks introducing a bug.
Why do people always quote these useless statistics? When everyone wrote everything in C, these statistics made more sense, but these days of dynamic languages like C#, Python, Perl, Ruby, and Tcl/Tk change the rules significantly. Consider, for instance, this report, this blog post, and this Google search.
The number of lines of code go down significantly and, unlike C, which was designed for ultimate programmer precision, these modern languages are actually designed to increase programmer productivity, though they do it with varying degrees of success (IMHO).
I know as a software developer I can write the same application in Python vs. C much more quickly and with far fewer errors.
I think we need to rethink software development metrics. Badly.
Lots of homes have water filters and water heaters. But very few homes own the water pipes.
Hmmm? What are you talking about?
You own the pipes inside the house. You also own the section of pipe that connects to the mains.
The chief difference with this is that instead of the city owning the mains, an HOA owns the mains.
Personally, I think it's a stupid idea. If you want municipal Internet access, then make municipal Internet access -- don't try slide it in the back door. The city of Wyandotte, Michigan, has its own municipal cable company, which provides cable TV and cable Internet to all residents of Wyandotte. So there you go. Cities could model after Wyandotte.
I think Denny's may be able to claim prior art here. Denny's has a system that splits the check by seat. Each seat gets a separate section in the bill. One bill is issued for the whole table, but the server can break out any portion of the bill by saying, say, seats 2 and 3 are now a separate bill. The system spits out a new check just for seats 2 and 3, marking those seats on the master bill as paid.
Explosives sniffers often look for high concentration of nitrogen, since nitrogen is a key component in virtual all explosives. Perhaps you've heard of such things as Tri-Nitro-Toluene (TNT)? How about Composition C4? A key chemical component of cyclonite (C4 is cyclonite mixed with plasticizers) is nitric acid?
Unfortunately, most addicts are given drugs and/or forced to attend $ADDICTION anonymous meetings which do more harm that good: If you were a drunk, would want to do be forced into a smoke-filled room crammed in with other folks who are just as pissed for being there as you are, probably fiending for drinks?
Hmmmm...have you been to $ADDICTION anonymous meetings? Most of the people there are not pissed off, at least not at the good meetings. Most aren't court ordered, either.
Also, the "higher power" thing dosen't work for atheists.
Sure it does. Check this guy out. Atheists just usually say something along the lines of 'higher power' == 'the power of the program' or some such.
Really. Don't knock the 12 Step programs until you've tried them -- in earnest.
The liquid nitrogen is in a closed system right? So the explosive sniffers shouldn't catch it, right? It's not like the TSA is going to know that the notebook has liquid nitrogen in it. They're not that bright and they're not that coordinated.
You can expect SSDs to become cheaper than hard disks in about two years, at least for the smaller capacity drives.
But .... that's what you SSD guys said 2 years ago. :-P
Of course it requires the use of a cellular network. That means that if the would-be thief really wants to steal your notebook with data intact, all he or she needs to do is either A) pull out the cellular card or B) if the cellular card is built-in, encase the laptop in a carefully-crafted metal box to designed to block the cell signal.
Either way, it's only a deterrent to people who don't know what they're doing.
What are you talking about?
A 'sandwich' is some kind of filling placed between two or more slices of bread, right? Meat+condiments+vegetables == filling, bun == bread.
How difficult is this to understand?
Well, just because the person behind the counter doesn't speak English well, that doesn't mean that they've 'outsourced' their drive-thru window. (Yes, it's spelled 'drive-thru,' grammar nazis, deal with it.) I'm assuming by you're saying you live in NOVA that you mean the Canadian Province of Nova Scotia. The U.S. and Canada are melting societies -- at one time it might have been your ancestors that came to this country and didn't speak English too well.
Bill Gates is misguided by greed. Obviously he fails to realize that patent reform would actually be good for Microsoft and even the whole rest of the computer software and hardware industries.
The problem now is that patents are used by companies the way that nuclear weapons are used by countries -- they are a weapon of last resort, and used more as a threat than for anything else.
A reform of patent law would probably mean that these companies could 'disarm,' in the end lowering their legal costs.
Please don't tell me that you are suggesting that all Somalians are pirates?
Why not? How do the police deal with an uncooperative bank robber? They convince him to let the hostages go and/or lure him out and open a can of lead whoop-ass on him.
Right. But it's effectively no change... Microsoft really can't afford to piss off IBM with a patent suit against anyone over Linux. That's what SCO v. IBM has shown the world -- IBM is the world's largest patent holder, they've staked a good portion of their business on Linux, and if you mess with Linux, IBM is going to send their Nazgul after you, just as they 'blackened the skies of Lindon, UT' with lawyers.
Even Microsoft can't go up against IBM in a patent fight. Tring to beat IBM in a patent fight is like trying to take down an F-22 with a slingshot.
Well, the U.S. military has held off armed raders before, too. That doesn't mean they don't lose some battles. :-/
No, no. Real pirates. With guns. Maybe the pirates took down the 'pirates'! ;) Seriously, didn't we see a story stating that HavenCo. was shutting down?
But Sealand is 'grandfathered in'. There's a controversy surrounding it, but at the end of the day the 'sovereignty' of Sealand is not tested in court.
Take your girlfriend to the hospital. Now.
Your probably not logged in.
Such as? Google Code? Google Groups? Blogger?
How are these community projects 'unsuccessful'? Or are you talking about something else?
If this bug is true..
Uh, so how'd that banking transaction with Nigerian Prince go for you?
Saying that, if you enjoy playing with this, go ahead! Just be honest with yourself about. If you still want to do it, wallow in it. But it's an extremely pernicious thing to do to link this with working on something that is done to benefit everyone. It simply is not the same thing.
Exactly. Working on FOSS is a magnanimous thing to do. You are giving freely to the entire world -- anyone who needs done what your particular code does. It's volunteerism.
When you participate in the Netflix competition, you might not be getting paid, but the work you're doing benefits only Netflix and you -- if you win the $1 million prize, that is. There are side benefits even if you don't win the million dollar prize -- you increase your own abilities in the areas of programming, mathematics, critical thinking, etc.
But that's the only place where there are similarities in working on FOSS, and it's where the similarities end. At the end of the day, doing the Netflix competition is spec work at best. If you exclude the $1m -- which is very cheap, BTW, The sole beneficiary is Netflix.
But if you write something that benefits others in the world who share your problem and distribute that freely to the world, the beneficiary is the entire world, or at least some portion of it.
Its surprisingly interesting and sucks you in. In fact I might go play with it now.
Next week on Life of Geeks: More things not to say on slashdot.