Easy, use the BigMac index: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index
According to wikipedia, one Big Mac in February 2009 costs $1.83, in the People's Republic of China. Hence, does 66 cents would give you roughly 1/3 of a burger per hour.... In other words, not a lot.
Ahum that had much more todo with the historical context in which these numbers come from. You know the seventies with the hippies. It is a well established fact that drugs usage in the Netherlands is considerable lower than the European average or the USA for that matter. See http://www.drugwarfacts.org/thenethe.htm for some hard numbers.
Now, I do wonder how many of my fellow scientists have ever published a paper with an approach, which they invalidate with their own validation in the same paper. I have the feeling the peer review process puts to much emphasize on positive results. Author perception is that reviewers easily ignore the fact that negative results are also significant. Hence, it's not worthwhile to publish something that doesn't work. However, imho knowing why something doesn't work is just as important as knowing how it should work...
Your question to the audience was:
What design/architecture qualities are shared by all good software?
However, this question has the inherent assumption that for good software design/architecture qualities are relevant. Is this the case?
Do some research on what "good software" is and you will discover a very ugly multi-headed monster. The perspective on "good software" radical differs between software engineers, management, customers, and society as a whole.
To the best of my knowledge, the % of the budget of a pharmaceutical company is bigger for marketing than for R&D. Surely this must be a sign that something is not working in the current system.
Of course you can do fundamental research as a company, but what is your incentive? Not to gain money for sure, because you don't know if ANYTHING usefull will come out of it. Therefore, there is no business case to support the research, hence no incentive for a company to invest in it.
Take your example of the Internet, it was developed by DARPA to shoot nukes at the Russians during the cold war (pretty good business case:-), but it was Tim Berners-Lee who could turn it into the world wide web due to fundamental research money at CERN. Now, CERN had never had the goal to invent something usefull for the Internet, but as the by-product of fundamental research it did give us the www we now use with slashdot.
Of the other 90% (another brand of voting machines) the dutch secret service still has to confirm whether they are safe or not. The action group responsible for this uproar has already demonstrated on television how easy it is to read out some of the information of a vote on this brand.
Probarly, nothing much is wrong with it. However, generally speaking people don't like to see the political power big companies have. This becomes especially an issue if a significant part of citizens do not agree with the politics of the company in question.
In this particular case, Microsoft was convicted for abusing their monopoly. Sure, they will ask U.S. goverment to help them out and let the EU comittee become a little bit more "reasonable". The big question is, did the U.S. government threat the EU in anyway about this case...
It seems so far Microsoft isn't really worrying over a fine of 1.5 million/day, this makes me wonder what amount of money is needed to make it an issue they want to comply with. Any ideas?
I totally agree with the parent post. However, I don't think a slashdot kind of system will become popular. A system using citations in a smart way will probarly be more effective. I think most of the resistance in academia comes from the fact that most of the (current) influencial people are editors themselves for one or more journals. Therefore, it will probarly take a decade or two for such new systems to become gradually accepted.
Slashdot Mirror
Easy, use the BigMac index: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index According to wikipedia, one Big Mac in February 2009 costs $1.83, in the People's Republic of China. Hence, does 66 cents would give you roughly 1/3 of a burger per hour .... In other words, not a lot.
Ahum that had much more todo with the historical context in which these numbers come from. You know the seventies with the hippies. It is a well established fact that drugs usage in the Netherlands is considerable lower than the European average or the USA for that matter. See http://www.drugwarfacts.org/thenethe.htm for some hard numbers.
Now, I do wonder how many of my fellow scientists have ever published a paper with an approach, which they invalidate with their own validation in the same paper. I have the feeling the peer review process puts to much emphasize on positive results. Author perception is that reviewers easily ignore the fact that negative results are also significant. Hence, it's not worthwhile to publish something that doesn't work. However, imho knowing why something doesn't work is just as important as knowing how it should work...
Your question to the audience was: What design/architecture qualities are shared by all good software? However, this question has the inherent assumption that for good software design/architecture qualities are relevant. Is this the case? Do some research on what "good software" is and you will discover a very ugly multi-headed monster. The perspective on "good software" radical differs between software engineers, management, customers, and society as a whole.
I think you are missing one major factor:
Marketing
To the best of my knowledge, the % of the budget of a pharmaceutical company is bigger for marketing than for R&D. Surely this must be a sign that something is not working in the current system.
Of course you can do fundamental research as a company, but what is your incentive? Not to gain money for sure, because you don't know if ANYTHING usefull will come out of it. Therefore, there is no business case to support the research, hence no incentive for a company to invest in it.
:-), but it was Tim Berners-Lee who could turn it into the world wide web due to fundamental research money at CERN. Now, CERN had never had the goal to invent something usefull for the Internet, but as the by-product of fundamental research it did give us the www we now use with slashdot.
Take your example of the Internet, it was developed by DARPA to shoot nukes at the Russians during the cold war (pretty good business case
Of the other 90% (another brand of voting machines) the dutch secret service still has to confirm whether they are safe or not. The action group responsible for this uproar has already demonstrated on television how easy it is to read out some of the information of a vote on this brand.
Probarly, nothing much is wrong with it. However, generally speaking people don't like to see the political power big companies have. This becomes especially an issue if a significant part of citizens do not agree with the politics of the company in question. In this particular case, Microsoft was convicted for abusing their monopoly. Sure, they will ask U.S. goverment to help them out and let the EU comittee become a little bit more "reasonable". The big question is, did the U.S. government threat the EU in anyway about this case ...
No, I come from the United States of Buy Courts
It seems so far Microsoft isn't really worrying over a fine of 1.5 million/day, this makes me wonder what amount of money is needed to make it an issue they want to comply with. Any ideas?
I totally agree with the parent post. However, I don't think a slashdot kind of system will become popular. A system using citations in a smart way will probarly be more effective. I think most of the resistance in academia comes from the fact that most of the (current) influencial people are editors themselves for one or more journals. Therefore, it will probarly take a decade or two for such new systems to become gradually accepted.