I am realizing that far more explanation is needed here. As always it is dangerous to just throw numbers around with techy types, but to give all the details would have resulted in a 10,000 word article. Not exactly something for/. ya know! I left out an awful lot of detail because I made some assumptions, like perhaps you understand I knew what I was doing and who I was dealing with.
One important assumption I made was that most people can understand PHB thinking to some small extent. Since that appears not to be the case, let me clue you in: Budgets are the important thing. To budget properly you must guess how much money something will cost over the next few years and then you must, somehow, come in pretty damn close to that guess.
So it is very important to a PHB that they know with some certainty what the costs for something are before hand. Now, underestimating can be bad (less budget next time) but overestimating is far worse. Unlike money in your pocket, budgets which are approved at several layers of administration are not fungible!
So PHBs like things such as maintenance contracts because they know exactly what that will cost ahead of time. They don't like fuzzy numbers like "Well, it will cost probably.25 FTE the first year, but then it will probably drop to.05 afterwards." If they budget that and they are wrong it will not go well with them. OTOH, although saving money is nice, a higher cost is still good -- so long as you can budget it ahead of time!
Now FTE time, unlike budget, *is* somewhat fungible. If you over-estimate it a little that is fine because your FTE probably has more than they can handle for all the other things you couldn't forsee anyway.
But how does this bring us to the cost estimate? Well it works like this; when you present something that costs money to a PHB you need to back it up with hard numbers. If you don't have a hard number you make an educated guess, back up the guess with what facts you have and then pad it a little so they can derive comfort. After all the actual cost isn't nearly as important as going over the budget. Sure 'cost' and 'budget' sound like the same thing to you and me, but not to the PHB.
So the figures I used can be thought of as 'PHB' numbers. Although I was aware they might be high, at least I knew they wouldn't be low. Meaning that they were as correct as I could make them with what I knew. My surprise came from the fact that they added up over time to such a large figure!
But the imporant part here is that, from the PHB perspective, the O.S. costs *were* higher -- something PHBs have been telling us for years. Somehow I didn't expect that. You and I can argue technicalities all night and all day. But in the final analysis I have to bring something to them that they understand. Not a buncha techspeak and hand-waving.
So, was 10% of an FTE too high? That certainly seems to be the consensus here. This could well have been a mistake on my part and changing it certainly changes the final result. The questions are: What is the proper figure, based on everything I said above? And, think of this from a PHB perspective now, can you guarentee the new number is valid?
Another note: FTE costs include all benefits and costs of having the employee (such as training, administration, another FTE to cut checks, etc). Actual wages are considerably lower. You think I wouldn't have to mention this either, but apparently not...
My experience after 16+ years in the industry is that you can count on only three years of active support. After that the product will be EOL'd, and you will have to pay T&M for any support, contract or no contract.
Which agrees with my experience as well. But this is anecdotal (and the very reason why I did a quickie 'lifetime cost' comparison instead of doing a full TCO). In most cases lifetime costs match very easily against each other, and TCO never matches realisty anyway.
Another point is that I asked the commercial vendors for yearly license costs, in other words -- what does it cost to get automatic upgrades. So those costs were included in the lifetime costs when I had them and they do answer some of these questions. Remember, we are talking a vertical market application here. Most vendors of such are used to customers who want some assurance their long-term costs will be controlled and known in advance.
Rather than argue with your points, I would rather ask a simple question; "Do you now, or have you ever worked as a consultant producing high-availability custom software for business or government agencies who have strict operating system and support requirements?"
I suspect many of the people posting here would answer that with a "No." I also suspect more than a few who could answer it with a "Yes." would disagree with various things I have stated, but they would do it from a position of knowledge others do not posess. This isn't technical knowledge, but rather knowledge of how large organizations (who's core business is not technology) operate.
All I can say is that I honestly wanted to recommend the Open Source option, took a good try at figuring a lifetime cost for it so that I could do so (NOT A TCO! A TCO is different and more comprehensive.) and was surprised by the results. Note that in the end it turned out I couldn't recommend the Open Source option for technical reasons anyway.
A number of posts here have attacked the 10% of an FTE figure I used. These posts basically break down into "4 hours a week just to read a mailing list, that is so ridiculous!" and the more informed "You would still have to patch and update a commercial product, what about that?"
To the first I answer that it isn't 4 hours a week to read a mailing list. It also includes time to come up to speed with the product, with the tools the product uses (like 'make' and GCC which are not used in the shop) and with the programming language the product is written in (also not used in the shop).
These are not one-time costs because, as I pointed out, they do have employee turnover and it is usually the 'best and brightest' -- who would likely be the ones doing doing the support. So any one year it might be 25% of an FTE or 5%. Also I figured most of this effort was just so they could ask the right questions on the mailing list and not get a 'RTFM' in response. Sure I just took a SWAG and used 10%, but it was a figure my customers felt comfortable with.
Remember, I am a consultant. I assist my customers in making descisions, I don't make the descisions for them. If they prefer to err on the high side of something they are not sure about they are in the right to do so.
As to administration costs, sure they exist in commercial products. And I had a separate line item for that! The problem is that, even when I set the admin costs the same for both, the long-run effects of the support costs proved surprisingly high.
Note that making them the same may not have been entirely honest because the Open Source product would likely have had higher admin costs than a more 'polished' vendor supported product.
You briefly touched on this in your post, but what is the comfort level of the vendors you have found? What are the chances of them falling by the wayside, and being unable or unwilling to provide you with the support you may need. Are they large, and well-established companies, or are they smaller shops that may disappear if times remain tough?
That was an issue. Basically one of the factors we applied to the first cut was (a) how long the vendor had been around and (b) how long they had owned/supported the product. Note that many software products get sold to different companies over their lifetimes, so we really weren't interested in something that had the 'owner of the month'. Same with the Open Source products we looked at, only the ones that had been around for a while were given serious attention.
Have you also factored in support contracts, and that products purchased, may be EOL'd, and force upgrades to continue being supported. These forced upgrades could then have a trickle-down effect of increased license costs, licensing changes, and increased hardware costs (new servers).
Definately an issue and one that was discussed. The problem is that all of this is so speculative. We couldn't put even an honest estimated number to EOL/forced upgrade issues. Do you know of any studies that provide a 'figure' for this that I could plug into a project and back up with hard facts?
Not to sound to OSS Zealot-like, but by having the source code, you own it for the life of your project. With a third-party vendor, you are ate the mercy of the vendor's support staff, and development.
Certainly. But remember, my customers don't want to support this software themselves. And, if they have to, they want to know what it costs. I took a SWAG at it and came up with 1/10 FTE, and plugged that into the projections with the results I reported. Your mileage my vary.
Jack William Bell
I Do! -- Was: Who Actually USES These Patterns?
on
Design Patterns
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· Score: 2
Damn right! My copy of 'Design Patterns' has sticky notes sprouting out of it all over, coffee stains and every other indication that it is something I use all the time.
Let me point out that I have owned the book since it came out and have already been through the 'Maybe this *is* a silver bullet.' stage to arrive the 'No silver bullet, but damn useful.'
What are design patterns good for? Well, certainly not slavish adherence to a particular way of doing things. However just about every pattern in the book (and others discovered since) is really something a good programmer knows already. But the book provides a shorthand 'language' and nomenclature for discussing object designs.
And the use of patterns has some emergent qualities as well. Sometimes thinking about your designs in this way allows you to more easily see connections, opportunities and traps you might otherwise have missed...
... And I certainly remember the joke about how in Forth you "Foot in yourself shoot."
I did my Forthing many years ago (far, far too many). The usual thing, embedded systems work, but I actually did the programming on an IBM PC (original) using a Forth boot floppy (it had its own environment/OS). Then someone else did integration with the embedded system.
It was a truly weird language, and it made it far too easy to create 'write-once' unmaintainable code. But it was my first introduction to many concepts, including a language that was truly 'cross-platform'. And it led to a short job at Aldus because I already understood stack-based languages, so Postscript wasn't a shock to me.
In many ways Charles Moore is a seriously twisted genious. I have always rooted for him, despite the fact I prefer to use a cleaner, more readable language. (Can we say 'Python'? I knew we could.)
So, in the end, I cannot say I think Forth should be in everyone's toolkit. For that reason I expect this review will be of limited use to most of us. (Attn. Moderators, notice how I managed to get this post on-topic in the last sentence. Now you have to mod me down as 'flamebait' or 'boring' or something.)
Jack William Bell
Re:Its not just the dress code..
on
Suit Up Or Ship Out?
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· Score: 1, Flamebait
Hmm...
And those who can spell, understand the difference between 'there' and 'their', use proper grammer and otherwise are capable of communication that does not require multiple re-readings to understand -- what about them?
I am currently consulting on a legislation management system -- basically a giant content management/document searching/complex document creation system. And they are dealing with *all* of the issues you mention. Plus more!
Sadly, they have already done their DB design and have mapped a very complex XML DTD (derived from an older SGML DTD) to a set of relational tables with defined attributes. They attempted to define a table for every node using sequence numbers for nodes that could occur in multiples and single ID numbering for table keys across *all* tables to avoid duplicate keys when a node type can be contained by multiple other node types.
As a result they have a very complicated set of tables mapping hierarchical relationships which isn't even a good relational design (try doing an ERD for it and I will garauntee you will start wibbling your lips). And it needs to be optimized for searching and retrieving, which they are thinking right now will mean a second database, or even just flat files, which must be flowed from the first DB. YEESH!
I would love to have been there during the DB design process so I could have convinced them to try something different there, even if it *isn't* open source. Instead I am tasked with figuring out how to provide some *very* advanced search features on the existing system. (Insert wry grin here.)
Oh well, that is why they are paying me the big, *cough* *cough*, bucks.
Always buy whatever was really, really cool two years ago. When you get it it might be a little out of date compared to whatever is really, really cool right now. But the price will be less than half of what the early adopters paid and the drivers/software/etc. will finally be working right.
I know George and have met his father Freeman Dyson. And I can tell you that Freeman is still very reticent about the scientific details of the project, mostly because of the work they did designing miniature atomic weapons. Plus it is kind of a cold war mindset/cultural thing. Really it is amazing how much detail George was able to pull out of the hat when researching this book. He even came up with some test video (which I have seen). According to him the goverment attempted to re-restrict some of the information he collected after he got it via the Freedom of Information Act. Too late... Heh heh.
Still the politics of the project are illuminating themselves in how they show changing attitudes in the US and the US government over those crucial years.
Note for the interested: George Dyson lives in Bellinham WA (from where the fictional Orion-based spacecraft was launched in 'Footfall') and was GoH (Guest of Honor) at Vikingcon 17 there in the summer of 2000. Freeman Dyson has been a GoH at Vikingcon many times. Jerry Pournelle has been GoH at Vikingcon once and Larry Niven has been GoH twice, including 17. As you can guess 17 was a very cool con for Orion-based sychronicity and George gave a wonderful presentation there on the research he was doing at the time for this book.
Jack William Bell, who must admit to being the Vikingcon 18 chairvictim...
There seem to be lots of good responses here, many of which I have used myself in the past. But no-one has mentioned my favorite; the 'Toilet Tank Test'.
The 'TTT' is designed to find out if the person thinks about programming off the job, if programming excites them and just doing it is enough to motivate them all by itself. It works like this:
(After technical, logic puzzle and attitude questions are dealt with)
-- First Interview -- INTERVIEWER "OK, so let's suppose I walk into your house and go into your bathroom right now. What magazines would I find on your toilet tank, or wherever else you keep magazines you read often?"
INTERVIEWEE 1 "Uh... Golf Digest, Sports Illustrated, People I guess." (Doesn't mention Penthouse.)
INTERVIEWER "Thank you for your time. Don't call us, we'll call you."
-- Second Interview -- INTERVIEWER (asks 'TTT' question)
INTERVIEWEE 2 "Uh... Linux Journal, Dr. Dobbs, Game Developer I guess." (Doesn't mention Penthouse.)
Considering the rather cavalier Chinese attitude towards intellecual property, it wouldn't surprise me to find that this 'workalike' actually contains plenty of Microsoft code in one form or another. Alternatively they could be using Linux + Wine with extensions and having no plans of complying with the GPL. Or both.
But even if no I.P. violations are happing at all this is still kind of a 'good for the goose, good for the gander' situation eh? The thought of China 'embracing and extending' Windows?
The really funny thing about this is that Micrsoft has been making nicey-nice with the Peoples Republic lately because all those billions of people ready to buy computers look like such a wonderful market. And besides they were hoping to get China to crack down on all the mainland pirating operations and figured you attract more flies with honey, etc. Either way it tickles me that China has been getting ready to stab Bill Gates in the back all along.
Maybe there really is something to that karmic balance stuff after all. Now, considering that/. thinks my own karma is 'excellent', I should win the lottery tomorrow...
Someone modded the parent post up as 'Interesting'? It should have been modded down as 'Flamebait'!
Here you have a poster who starts out by admitting he didn't read the article or knows anything about the Mr. Gilmore, and then goes on to rant about Libertarians -- using *one* self-identified Libertarian (but clearly a nutcase) he knows as a case in point. In fact Reality Master 101 (anyone else find this handle irritatingly snobby?) implies through his argument that all Libertarians are equally nutcases.
Yeesh. This post has it all: Strawman arguments. No reference to sources (in fact admitting *no* sources). A faint pinchnose attitude (much like that you often find among the kind of 'Liberal Progressives' that would never have actually have dinner with a black man). Even the post subject is objectionable.
Mr (Un)Reality, you sir (and I say this with all the respect due you) are off base and clearly in dire need of a strong whack from the cluestick.
Most of the posts here seem to assume this means wireless connectivety everywhere. Such is *not* the case. The article states that the players in this network will put access points in airports and other public spaces and will not try to provide access to peoples homes.
In fact this doesn't seem to be so much a 'Wireless Network' as a bunch of access points connected to the Internet. Not what I was hoping for when I saw the subject line.
What I want is a nationwide variant of the Ricochet network. Anyone remember them? They used light-pole mounted units that acted as wireless routers, letting them provide access anywhere by routing the packets through the air to the closest wired router. It worked pretty damn well (if slow). I used it here in Seattle for a couple of years and being able to check my email while stuck in traffic alone made it worth the cost. The fact that I had Internet connectivety pretty much everywhere else was just gravy.
A similar scheme can work with 802.11 devices, given cheap hardware and proper software. Many groups are already working on this. Here in Seattle there is even a group trying to set up a non-profit community network this way -- http://www.seattlewireless.org
If such home-brewed networks were to spread across the country we could tie them together via the Internet, or even via leased lines between cities. Now that sounds like the kind of thing I would like to see! No way anyone could ever control that...
Not a bad rant there buddy. I have one moderator point left and I would give it to you if there was a 'Cool Rant' moderation choice...
OTOH I often find that people who are true believers in natural selection figure that it doesn't apply to *them*. I tend towards that myself. But then my motto is 'Live forever, or die trying'.
Jack William Bell
This review makes too great a logical leap
on
Minority Report
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· Score: 2, Insightful
This review makes too great a logical leap by trying to tie the pre-cogs/precrime plot of Minority Report to the 'War on Terrorism'. Not only is it, well I don't really have a better word, stupid -- but it seems the reviewer is trying to make a political point. Albeit with all the striking power of a wet noodle.
Sorry, this article doesn't cut it as a movie review -- or -- as a philosophical statement. It sucks on far too many levels. Moderate me offtopic if you like, but don't moderate as a troll or flamebait, this is truly my opinion and I stand behind it.
I would hope that the/. editorial staff will try not to drop such obvious dreck on us in the future. Of course history tells me differently...
My point is that I own the article, not VA. The only thing/. (or VA) ever did was provide a forum, they never purchased rights of any kind to my writing. Perhaps they pay John Katz, I dunno, but they aren't paying anyone other than the editors that I know of. So Rob does have a point, but his point includes more than just karma whoring posts. It also includes all the blurbs and articles submitted by people like me which provide/. with free content. Damn good content sometimes...
I have run into this same problem in job interviews. Usually it comes down to the fact that, on the job, I have resources at my command; books, web sites, code examples, etc. So, rather than memorizing every API (or even every keyword), I become very facile in knowing where to look up what I want very quickly.
But when I am asked questions about the same thing away from a computer and my books I start drawing blanks even about things I know in detail. This is why, IMHO, computer programming exams and even job interviews should be 'Open Book'. Memorizing details doesn't make you a good programmer -- knowing how to use the tools does.
Slashdot Mirror
I am realizing that far more explanation is needed here. As always it is dangerous to just throw numbers around with techy types, but to give all the details would have resulted in a 10,000 word article. Not exactly something for /. ya know! I left out an awful lot of detail because I made some assumptions, like perhaps you understand I knew what I was doing and who I was dealing with.
.25 FTE the first year, but then it will probably drop to .05 afterwards." If they budget that and they are wrong it will not go well with them. OTOH, although saving money is nice, a higher cost is still good -- so long as you can budget it ahead of time!
One important assumption I made was that most people can understand PHB thinking to some small extent. Since that appears not to be the case, let me clue you in: Budgets are the important thing. To budget properly you must guess how much money something will cost over the next few years and then you must, somehow, come in pretty damn close to that guess.
So it is very important to a PHB that they know with some certainty what the costs for something are before hand. Now, underestimating can be bad (less budget next time) but overestimating is far worse. Unlike money in your pocket, budgets which are approved at several layers of administration are not fungible!
So PHBs like things such as maintenance contracts because they know exactly what that will cost ahead of time. They don't like fuzzy numbers like "Well, it will cost probably
Now FTE time, unlike budget, *is* somewhat fungible. If you over-estimate it a little that is fine because your FTE probably has more than they can handle for all the other things you couldn't forsee anyway.
But how does this bring us to the cost estimate? Well it works like this; when you present something that costs money to a PHB you need to back it up with hard numbers. If you don't have a hard number you make an educated guess, back up the guess with what facts you have and then pad it a little so they can derive comfort. After all the actual cost isn't nearly as important as going over the budget. Sure 'cost' and 'budget' sound like the same thing to you and me, but not to the PHB.
So the figures I used can be thought of as 'PHB' numbers. Although I was aware they might be high, at least I knew they wouldn't be low. Meaning that they were as correct as I could make them with what I knew. My surprise came from the fact that they added up over time to such a large figure!
But the imporant part here is that, from the PHB perspective, the O.S. costs *were* higher -- something PHBs have been telling us for years. Somehow I didn't expect that. You and I can argue technicalities all night and all day. But in the final analysis I have to bring something to them that they understand. Not a buncha techspeak and hand-waving.
So, was 10% of an FTE too high? That certainly seems to be the consensus here. This could well have been a mistake on my part and changing it certainly changes the final result. The questions are: What is the proper figure, based on everything I said above? And, think of this from a PHB perspective now, can you guarentee the new number is valid?
Another note: FTE costs include all benefits and costs of having the employee (such as training, administration, another FTE to cut checks, etc). Actual wages are considerably lower. You think I wouldn't have to mention this either, but apparently not...
Jack William Bell
Which agrees with my experience as well. But this is anecdotal (and the very reason why I did a quickie 'lifetime cost' comparison instead of doing a full TCO). In most cases lifetime costs match very easily against each other, and TCO never matches realisty anyway.
Another point is that I asked the commercial vendors for yearly license costs, in other words -- what does it cost to get automatic upgrades. So those costs were included in the lifetime costs when I had them and they do answer some of these questions. Remember, we are talking a vertical market application here. Most vendors of such are used to customers who want some assurance their long-term costs will be controlled and known in advance.
Jack William Bell
Rather than argue with your points, I would rather ask a simple question; "Do you now, or have you ever worked as a consultant producing high-availability custom software for business or government agencies who have strict operating system and support requirements?"
I suspect many of the people posting here would answer that with a "No." I also suspect more than a few who could answer it with a "Yes." would disagree with various things I have stated, but they would do it from a position of knowledge others do not posess. This isn't technical knowledge, but rather knowledge of how large organizations (who's core business is not technology) operate.
All I can say is that I honestly wanted to recommend the Open Source option, took a good try at figuring a lifetime cost for it so that I could do so (NOT A TCO! A TCO is different and more comprehensive.) and was surprised by the results. Note that in the end it turned out I couldn't recommend the Open Source option for technical reasons anyway.
Jack William Bell
A number of posts here have attacked the 10% of an FTE figure I used. These posts basically break down into "4 hours a week just to read a mailing list, that is so ridiculous!" and the more informed "You would still have to patch and update a commercial product, what about that?"
To the first I answer that it isn't 4 hours a week to read a mailing list. It also includes time to come up to speed with the product, with the tools the product uses (like 'make' and GCC which are not used in the shop) and with the programming language the product is written in (also not used in the shop).
These are not one-time costs because, as I pointed out, they do have employee turnover and it is usually the 'best and brightest' -- who would likely be the ones doing doing the support. So any one year it might be 25% of an FTE or 5%. Also I figured most of this effort was just so they could ask the right questions on the mailing list and not get a 'RTFM' in response. Sure I just took a SWAG and used 10%, but it was a figure my customers felt comfortable with.
Remember, I am a consultant. I assist my customers in making descisions, I don't make the descisions for them. If they prefer to err on the high side of something they are not sure about they are in the right to do so.
As to administration costs, sure they exist in commercial products. And I had a separate line item for that! The problem is that, even when I set the admin costs the same for both, the long-run effects of the support costs proved surprisingly high.
Note that making them the same may not have been entirely honest because the Open Source product would likely have had higher admin costs than a more 'polished' vendor supported product.
Jack William Bell
That was an issue. Basically one of the factors we applied to the first cut was (a) how long the vendor had been around and (b) how long they had owned/supported the product. Note that many software products get sold to different companies over their lifetimes, so we really weren't interested in something that had the 'owner of the month'. Same with the Open Source products we looked at, only the ones that had been around for a while were given serious attention.
Definately an issue and one that was discussed. The problem is that all of this is so speculative. We couldn't put even an honest estimated number to EOL/forced upgrade issues. Do you know of any studies that provide a 'figure' for this that I could plug into a project and back up with hard facts?
Certainly. But remember, my customers don't want to support this software themselves. And, if they have to, they want to know what it costs. I took a SWAG at it and came up with 1/10 FTE, and plugged that into the projections with the results I reported. Your mileage my vary.
Jack William BellDamn right! My copy of 'Design Patterns' has sticky notes sprouting out of it all over, coffee stains and every other indication that it is something I use all the time.
Let me point out that I have owned the book since it came out and have already been through the 'Maybe this *is* a silver bullet.' stage to arrive the 'No silver bullet, but damn useful.'
What are design patterns good for? Well, certainly not slavish adherence to a particular way of doing things. However just about every pattern in the book (and others discovered since) is really something a good programmer knows already. But the book provides a shorthand 'language' and nomenclature for discussing object designs.
And the use of patterns has some emergent qualities as well. Sometimes thinking about your designs in this way allows you to more easily see connections, opportunities and traps you might otherwise have missed...
Jack William Bell
... And I certainly remember the joke about how in Forth you "Foot in yourself shoot."
I did my Forthing many years ago (far, far too many). The usual thing, embedded systems work, but I actually did the programming on an IBM PC (original) using a Forth boot floppy (it had its own environment/OS). Then someone else did integration with the embedded system.
It was a truly weird language, and it made it far too easy to create 'write-once' unmaintainable code. But it was my first introduction to many concepts, including a language that was truly 'cross-platform'. And it led to a short job at Aldus because I already understood stack-based languages, so Postscript wasn't a shock to me.
In many ways Charles Moore is a seriously twisted genious. I have always rooted for him, despite the fact I prefer to use a cleaner, more readable language. (Can we say 'Python'? I knew we could.)
So, in the end, I cannot say I think Forth should be in everyone's toolkit. For that reason I expect this review will be of limited use to most of us. (Attn. Moderators, notice how I managed to get this post on-topic in the last sentence. Now you have to mod me down as 'flamebait' or 'boring' or something.)
Jack William Bell
Hmm...
And those who can spell, understand the difference between 'there' and 'their', use proper grammer and otherwise are capable of communication that does not require multiple re-readings to understand -- what about them?
Heh!
Jack William Bell
Heh...
I have 3 moderation points left and I was *so* tempted to burn one by moderating your post as 'offtopic'. Just to prove you wrong.
Jack William Bell
Jack William Bell
I actually understood that. And I haven't done assembly language programming since the old 8086. (Segment registers, *shudder*...)
Jack William Bell
Heh.
I am currently consulting on a legislation management system -- basically a giant content management/document searching/complex document creation system. And they are dealing with *all* of the issues you mention. Plus more!
Sadly, they have already done their DB design and have mapped a very complex XML DTD (derived from an older SGML DTD) to a set of relational tables with defined attributes. They attempted to define a table for every node using sequence numbers for nodes that could occur in multiples and single ID numbering for table keys across *all* tables to avoid duplicate keys when a node type can be contained by multiple other node types.
As a result they have a very complicated set of tables mapping hierarchical relationships which isn't even a good relational design (try doing an ERD for it and I will garauntee you will start wibbling your lips). And it needs to be optimized for searching and retrieving, which they are thinking right now will mean a second database, or even just flat files, which must be flowed from the first DB. YEESH!
I would love to have been there during the DB design process so I could have convinced them to try something different there, even if it *isn't* open source. Instead I am tasked with figuring out how to provide some *very* advanced search features on the existing system. (Insert wry grin here.)
Oh well, that is why they are paying me the big, *cough* *cough*, bucks.
Jack William Bell
No way! Most lawyers are perfectly capable of holding multiple contradictory thoughts in there heads at the same time. It is part of the job.
Jack William Bell
This reminds me of a little /. feature I wrote on the subject of 'Open Source as an Art Form', er, 'Ant Farm'.
Jack William Bell
Always buy whatever was really, really cool two years ago. When you get it it might be a little out of date compared to whatever is really, really cool right now. But the price will be less than half of what the early adopters paid and the drivers/software/etc. will finally be working right.
Jack William Bell
Still the politics of the project are illuminating themselves in how they show changing attitudes in the US and the US government over those crucial years.
Note for the interested: George Dyson lives in Bellinham WA (from where the fictional Orion-based spacecraft was launched in 'Footfall') and was GoH (Guest of Honor) at Vikingcon 17 there in the summer of 2000. Freeman Dyson has been a GoH at Vikingcon many times. Jerry Pournelle has been GoH at Vikingcon once and Larry Niven has been GoH twice, including 17. As you can guess 17 was a very cool con for Orion-based sychronicity and George gave a wonderful presentation there on the research he was doing at the time for this book.
Jack William Bell, who must admit to being the Vikingcon 18 chairvictim...
There seem to be lots of good responses here, many of which I have used myself in the past. But no-one has mentioned my favorite; the 'Toilet Tank Test'.
The 'TTT' is designed to find out if the person thinks about programming off the job, if programming excites them and just doing it is enough to motivate them all by itself. It works like this:
(After technical, logic puzzle and attitude questions are dealt with)
-- First Interview --
INTERVIEWER "OK, so let's suppose I walk into your house and go into your bathroom right now. What magazines would I find on your toilet tank, or wherever else you keep magazines you read often?"
INTERVIEWEE 1 "Uh... Golf Digest, Sports Illustrated, People I guess." (Doesn't mention Penthouse.)
INTERVIEWER "Thank you for your time. Don't call us, we'll call you."
-- Second Interview --
INTERVIEWER (asks 'TTT' question)
INTERVIEWEE 2 "Uh... Linux Journal, Dr. Dobbs, Game Developer I guess." (Doesn't mention Penthouse.)
INTERVIEWER "When can you start?"
Jack William Bell
Considering the rather cavalier Chinese attitude towards intellecual property, it wouldn't surprise me to find that this 'workalike' actually contains plenty of Microsoft code in one form or another. Alternatively they could be using Linux + Wine with extensions and having no plans of complying with the GPL. Or both.
/. thinks my own karma is 'excellent', I should win the lottery tomorrow...
But even if no I.P. violations are happing at all this is still kind of a 'good for the goose, good for the gander' situation eh? The thought of China 'embracing and extending' Windows?
The really funny thing about this is that Micrsoft has been making nicey-nice with the Peoples Republic lately because all those billions of people ready to buy computers look like such a wonderful market. And besides they were hoping to get China to crack down on all the mainland pirating operations and figured you attract more flies with honey, etc. Either way it tickles me that China has been getting ready to stab Bill Gates in the back all along.
Maybe there really is something to that karmic balance stuff after all. Now, considering that
Jack William Bell
Someone modded the parent post up as 'Interesting'? It should have been modded down as 'Flamebait'!
Here you have a poster who starts out by admitting he didn't read the article or knows anything about the Mr. Gilmore, and then goes on to rant about Libertarians -- using *one* self-identified Libertarian (but clearly a nutcase) he knows as a case in point. In fact Reality Master 101 (anyone else find this handle irritatingly snobby?) implies through his argument that all Libertarians are equally nutcases.
Yeesh. This post has it all: Strawman arguments. No reference to sources (in fact admitting *no* sources). A faint pinchnose attitude (much like that you often find among the kind of 'Liberal Progressives' that would never have actually have dinner with a black man). Even the post subject is objectionable.
Mr (Un)Reality, you sir (and I say this with all the respect due you) are off base and clearly in dire need of a strong whack from the cluestick.
Jack William Bell
Most of the posts here seem to assume this means wireless connectivety everywhere. Such is *not* the case. The article states that the players in this network will put access points in airports and other public spaces and will not try to provide access to peoples homes.
In fact this doesn't seem to be so much a 'Wireless Network' as a bunch of access points connected to the Internet. Not what I was hoping for when I saw the subject line.
What I want is a nationwide variant of the Ricochet network. Anyone remember them? They used light-pole mounted units that acted as wireless routers, letting them provide access anywhere by routing the packets through the air to the closest wired router. It worked pretty damn well (if slow). I used it here in Seattle for a couple of years and being able to check my email while stuck in traffic alone made it worth the cost. The fact that I had Internet connectivety pretty much everywhere else was just gravy.
A similar scheme can work with 802.11 devices, given cheap hardware and proper software. Many groups are already working on this. Here in Seattle there is even a group trying to set up a non-profit community network this way -- http://www.seattlewireless.org
If such home-brewed networks were to spread across the country we could tie them together via the Internet, or even via leased lines between cities. Now that sounds like the kind of thing I would like to see! No way anyone could ever control that...
Jack William Bell
Not a bad rant there buddy. I have one moderator point left and I would give it to you if there was a 'Cool Rant' moderation choice...
OTOH I often find that people who are true believers in natural selection figure that it doesn't apply to *them*. I tend towards that myself. But then my motto is 'Live forever, or die trying'.
Jack William Bell
This review makes too great a logical leap by trying to tie the pre-cogs/precrime plot of Minority Report to the 'War on Terrorism'. Not only is it, well I don't really have a better word, stupid -- but it seems the reviewer is trying to make a political point. Albeit with all the striking power of a wet noodle.
/. editorial staff will try not to drop such obvious dreck on us in the future. Of course history tells me differently...
Sorry, this article doesn't cut it as a movie review -- or -- as a philosophical statement. It sucks on far too many levels. Moderate me offtopic if you like, but don't moderate as a troll or flamebait, this is truly my opinion and I stand behind it.
I would hope that the
Jack William Bell
How about VA paying me for a rather popular feature article that Rob published without even asking me first? Mind you I am not even a little angry about this (I did email it to him because I was curious if he thought it was /. material), but I would have liked a chance to fix a few typos first.
My point is that I own the article, not VA. The only thing /. (or VA) ever did was provide a forum, they never purchased rights of any kind to my writing. Perhaps they pay John Katz, I dunno, but they aren't paying anyone other than the editors that I know of. So Rob does have a point, but his point includes more than just karma whoring posts. It also includes all the blurbs and articles submitted by people like me which provide /. with free content. Damn good content sometimes...
Jack William BellAren't you just the sweetest little ray of sunshine?
Jack William Bell
I have run into this same problem in job interviews. Usually it comes down to the fact that, on the job, I have resources at my command; books, web sites, code examples, etc. So, rather than memorizing every API (or even every keyword), I become very facile in knowing where to look up what I want very quickly.
But when I am asked questions about the same thing away from a computer and my books I start drawing blanks even about things I know in detail. This is why, IMHO, computer programming exams and even job interviews should be 'Open Book'. Memorizing details doesn't make you a good programmer -- knowing how to use the tools does.
Jack William Bell