In recent years we had SOA, SOA is dead, Cloud, SOA in the Cloud. A lot of software architecture topics. Good for funding software engineering faculties. However, the database people had not that much new things to sell. Ok there is no-SQL DBs and graph-databases, but to really sell them, you need a new buzzword. And big data is superb. All the problems which where solved for small and normal data, can now reselled for big data.
Actually the is something new, it is the complexity of the data storage and its increased distribution. However, we can use all that data mining stuff from recent years and just have to scale them.
The is no other way. However, it would be more sensible to find a world governance concept without someone being at the top. But it looks like, that the US overstreched their resources already and are replaced by the Chinese, who will then "rule" for a while until they can't afford being at the top.
If the US wold not employ the brightest engineers for military stuff, but would let build them useful things, the US would not be that much behind on those nice technologies for renewable energy (solar panels), electronics, like displays, flash rams, mobile phone, hard drives, car manucatoring, tooling, steel production, trains.
But yes, they developed the most expensive military airplane. Even the EU was not able to waste that much money on the so called Eurofighter (Typhoon). Ok the French separated and spent money on Rafale which is quite similar to the Typhoon.
I actually do not think that French workers are almost twice as efficient (including all unemployed, kids, etc.) as US workers (also including the whole population).
According to official GDP and inhabitant figures, there is not much difference between the US and France. However, the CEO stated that French workers actually work only half a day. Therefore, they must be twice as efficient to get those numbers. I personally, doubt that and think the CEO is talking bullshit.
BTW: Offical unemployment figures are always lower than the actual unemployment. In the US long term unemployed people are not necessarily counted as unemployed. In Germany people who are in a special state financed training program for adults is not counted as unemployed.
Unions in Germany are pretty effective instruments to ensure fair salaries for most employees. However, there are areas where people are not organized in unions or the structure of employers is to heterogeneous, like barber shops, that salaries cannot be discussed between unions and employer alliances. In those areas salaries are low. A good instrument to ensure fair wagers are a minimum wage (which Germany does not have).
Unions in France are not that dissimilar. However, they strike more often. The comment from the CEO is nonsense and only shows that he has not seen the rest of France nor does he looked at the overall GDP of France. If US Unions are that bad. Maybe you should look at unions in Europe and choose a better model.
If you compare GDP per person figures from the US and France, the difference is not that big. (Cleaned by financial industry induced GDP, France is even better than the US). Either the French are super effective (twice as effective as an US citizen) or the CEO is a a liar.
He just does not like human rights, like health care, the right to form interest groups aka unions, higher food standards, etc.
US GDP per person: $ 47509.38 France GDP per person: $ 42471.58
If the assumption is correct, that the French work only half the time, they are still similar effective than their US pendants. The French are super efficient people. And on top of it they have a much higher rate of equality (see Gini values). So if I have to choose, I would rather life in France then in the US (when I look at these figures). However, I do not think that a French human being is almost twice as efficient than an US citizen. So the point the US dork made is wrong. The only thing he does not like are unions. Well if you do not like organized people, stay where you are. Don't come to Europe. We all have unions (even the British). Maybe he could go to Asia, they do not have worker unions in China.
We were thought similar features in university. To be precise I attended courses on operating systems, which included file systems. File systems can be distributed and files can be distributed. Especially in file systems which virtualize the block layer. The only new thing is that they do not use the newest modification time as last modification time, but established a live time value. So the new thing is "weighted file time to live". The rest is again the method to determine the most outdated file. In the end they are deleting chunks of a file, which would normally corrupt a file beyond recognition, if it is a binary file. Therefore, there type of file is either a old mainframe type of file, based on records (which were the predecessors of databases) or if chunks are not records or sequences of records, then it is just a bunch of files bundled together, where single files can be deleted.
If a chunk (which is not really a precise term) is an arbitrary long segment of bytes in a file, then any deletion must honor the file structure in a way, that the inner structure is not corrupted. This is possible when you have well defined boundaries for your chunks. Which is then only something similar that (for example) git does with file deltas with the addition that only sound chunks are accepted.
The results are highly doubtable. First, political left or right, or alternatively, liberal or conservative are very imprecise categories and not universal across countries. In political science, the opposite of liberal (with no restrictions) is totalitarian. While economic models may range between community/state driven to private/company driven or planed and market economy.
In eastern Europe lefts are conservatives in the meaning of they are against change and want to keep their power. Right wing people are totalitarian and want to keep the power too. No side is liberal.
What they found out (again) people who can cope better with change tend to fear change less.
Why should take off? What's the drive behind it? What need does it satisfy?
I sold medical hardware through the web using a 3rd party plug-in 10 years ago, and it was wow. Here is a small list Education - Planetary Systems, Engines, Inside Human Body Lets Break out of 2D - Streetview 3D...or walk where it is unsafe...Warzones, Mars...or even oil rigs safety training....or lets face it the only really one. SHOPPING, no more multiple static views of item.
3D in shops is not really necessary. In some cases a rotating view of an object is nice, but it can also be achieved with Flash/JavaFX/HTML 5
Walking through shops in 3D, which was a thing people tried to implement in the 1990ies, failed horrible, because walking takes time. And 3D is no benefit for the user. A catalog is much better.
Mars is a) too far away for live 3D, b) there is no benefit for the user (scientist), c) even if so, they could use other technology already present. They do not need a web-technology
War zones imply military or other similar or related organizations. They need reliable technology. Web technologies are not usable there. And even if they would use web technologies, the 3D stuff would only be there and would not play a role in domestic markets.
Education would not be better because we could animate planets in class. It would be another gadget. And it would be interesting for short, but the tool side is not the problem in education. Education might be the biggest market for such technology, but it is still too small and too dominated by consumers who try to decide reasonable.
A good driver for technology in the web was advertisement and porn. However, 3D advertisement would be even more distracting than the Flash crap. And people would block it or not installing the 3D component or deactivating that feature. So the need for 3D is limited and unless there is a standard and all browsers support that standard, there will be no 3D.
Sounds like a great plan. People should hang out more often. Beside that, people already go out for lunch, or park their car at work. Every time the car is parked it can also charge.
Most driving in the EU is short range. Most people commute only 45 or less minutes (one way). That resembles some 50 km (some commute over 100 km which is then 1-1.5 h). In miles that is 31 miles up to 62 miles one way or 62 miles up to 124 miles for a daily ride. The car could be charged during night or even at your work place. On a weekend the distances might get bigger. A cross country ride (max possible distance) would be around 1000 km (621 miles) with a charger station every 435 km (270 miles), this distance could be made with two stops. As the trip would require 10-14 hours anyway, two stops are definitely in order;-)
On a side note: Who wants to drive that long on a weekend anyway?
Most "developed" new medication is not better than the old one. That's why countries created drug evaluation facilities where the quality of drugs is measured. Furthermore, pharma companies do not do much basic research, it is more or less all applied research. This includes the development of plants or bacteria to produce certain substances. Base research is to investigate how cells work. Adding genes and evaluating results is what the companies do.
There are some exceptions. In the past IBM did some interesting research on magnetic particles. However, the field was very narrow. And they had applied science waiting for the results.
The LHC, however, helps us to understand the universe a little better. The discovery might change things in future. It also might not have a technical application. No one invests in such things without an outcome. Therefore these things must be government funded. The market is not solving all problems. And it is not solving many problems in the best way. It is a tool for certain areas.
It was the same in Germany. However, today own car becomes a nightmare over time (if you life in a city). As far as I know, similar changes are happening in New York as well. In China, having a car is a BIG status symbol. In future, it might decline. In Germany cars are a status symbol, but younger people (mostly 30 and younger) have different status symbols. For example, they can travel where they want (by plane) or they can communicate with their totally shiny new smart-gadget. So the transition is from "free to drive where you want" to "free to do what you want". While doing includes having free time, hang out in cafés, clubs or visit remote countries. They borrow a car if they need one. And as you can get them everywhere, personal ownership is no longer a must. Furthermore, trains and planes get you to some other places faster and cheaper.
Driving over a German, French, Swiss or Italian highway is, by the way, more like getting presents on Dec. 23rd in a large shopping mall than a free ride on a free highway. It is more or less a like combat situation. At least you have to stay alert all the time. Driving through Germany will take you 8 hours or more. No one interprets a ride on a highway as freedom. You feel relieved when you reach your destination. Therefor, you go by plane or train. And I am absolutely sure, when you ask someone from New York he or she could understand this "European" feeling, while someone from the mid west will most likely think these Europeans are crazy.
This is not a problem, as you are not driven the car. The car drives itself and you are just a passenger. Would be cool to share the car with others. Oh wait, we already have them, they are called buses. Nobody want to have other people in their car.
The future is, where you do not own a car. If you need one you borrow one. Of course it can communicate with your phone otherwise it would not know what you mean by "drive me home". Furthermore, in metropolitan areas, other means of public transport are much more efficient and easier to implement. For example, street cars, underground trains, smaller and bigger buses, which are easy to access and allow you to bring stuff with you, like buggies, trolleys or bikes. Cars supplement that, can be called, like cabs, but without a driver. Wonder where all the aliens will work in future;-) In some countries the use of mass transport facilities will be (kind of) free, as it is financed through taxes. Some towns already do that, others subsidize mass transport, as it is cheaper than building new roads. Ah yes, gasoline cars will be extinct.
To measure progress you need to be able to identify single steps. However, that is not suffice. If only allows you to find out if there is one more step to do or you are finished. In such situation most programs show a bar bouncing back and forth, show a turning wheel or something similar. If you also know that there are N steps to do you could count steps and calculate how much of the task is actually done and show a percentage.
To show users how long it actually will take you have to measure time for every step and estimate that the rest of the steps take the same amount of time. However, it is seldom the case that an operation takes exactly that much time as the previous operation. Even if you copy images, which are all merely the same size. In the beginning the cache will speed up transfers, so you might get lower transfer times, then the cache is filled and more time is required. A background process, for example you e-mail program, fetches new mail. Suddenly the transfer capacity shrinks for short time delaying the image transfer.
Still copying measures are in most cases pretty good. But that is a simple task. In other cases, like installing something or processing something along a data-driven workflow, might not only incorporate equally shaped steps, it might include different tasks, which are comprised of different step which may require different amounts of resources. To make it worse the number of steps in sub-task B might be determined by the result of sub-task A. However, there is now good way to calculate an estimate for B on the number of steps of A.
As you can see, it is not that easy to calculate the total size or time required for a task. And most software developers do not go into the topic to find out. One approach would be to calculate I/O relationships (which fails when there are databases involved and you do not know how much data there can be in at the beginning), like X input record cause Y output records, complexities, like this operation is O etc. Also you could use past progress pattern to estimate future progress pattern (which would not help for progress bars on installers).
Obviously you can give any prefix any meaning. And indeed in the past it was somewhat useful to use kMGTP in a different way in IT. However, the rest of the world does interpret these letters differently. While you could use what ever you want, to be understood it helps to use letters and symbols everyone understands.
You could argue, the 2^10*i (with i = 1 for k, 2 for M, etc.) is well established in the IT industry or at least among programmers. However, it is not so commonly known among users. To increase confusion, hard drive manufacturers moved from the 2^10 concept to the 10^3 concept years ago (mostly, I guess, to have bigger numbers in their advertisements). This resulted in some confusion, as RAM was still marketed with the old method, while hard drive used a new method (conforming to an older method). For RAM manufacturers it makes a lot of sense to use the 2^10 concept, as memory is addressed with binary numbers, and they are better dividable by two. To solve that issue, industry agreed to use separate naming concept for the 2^10 concept.
I admit, that increased the confusion in the beginning, as software showed GB meaning 2^30 bytes and other software meaning 10^9 bytes. And a lot of (older) users who are accustomed to the 2^10 concept are irritated by that. However, after a few years even MS will be able to use GiB for 2^30 and GB for 10^9 and differentiate that in their dialogs. Most common users will appreciate it.
In the moment, I am absolutely aware that introducing this "new" naming convention produces more confusion than having context aware different meanings. In Gnome (and I guess in KDE, XFCE, etc.) this issue is already fixed. I am wondering why this is an issue in Windows. Hopefully it will vanish in Win8.
k, M, G, etc. are defined SI shorthands for 10, 10^6, 10^9. They have been defined that way long (as in computer age) before computers had (that many) bits. However, when the information age broke out, computer technicians also required the shorten numbers. They decided to synchronize their system with 2^10, 2^20 etc. because it is close to the SI figures (at least for kilo and mega). That was good enough. And it was so much easier to shift values by 10 bits. However, it was in violation of the real SI meaning. To solve that issue, a new terminology was proposed where k, M,G,T meant 10, 10^6, 10^9, 10^12 and ki, Mi, Gi, Pi are 2^10, 2^20, 2^30, 2^40. The idea was to fix software in short time, people should use these *i prefixes until they are able to count and divide their number according th SI units.
Whoever uses G but means Gi should fix their software.
As a scientist, I publish my work in form of a paper. Others can use the results mentioned in the paper (for free). This is normal scientific practice. However, I do not want that some other person takes my paper, modifies it and republishes it somewhere else. BTW that is considered plagiarism, which is immoral in the scientific community. When it is about data, you can use them as input, but not modify them and say it is the same or "new version" of my data. However, you could derive your own data from it, mention where you got it and what you modified and why. For my code, it is released under Apache or Eclipse license. And yes you can do wan ever you want. However, I would like, if you would contribute and publish you additions.
I never heard of any factory worker, who works for 1€ per hour. This 1€ program is for people who are unemployed for a long time, who require help to get back in normal jobs. Therefore the state provides them with a basic income, called ALG II. which is considered the existential minimum (I personally think it should be higher, but that is not the point here. They get money to live and the state pays their rent and health insurance, definitely more than the average unemployed person in the US has). On top of that income they can earn extra money in such so call 1€ jobs. By law these job grants are not allowed to be used by employers to replace staff on normal income.
I personally think, that the German system is too harsh, but compared to the US, it is still better.
I would recommend two things in this situation: a) Found a union, based on continental European approaches. The UK and US approaches are not that good. b) If a) does not work, because your colleagues and fellow US citizen like to be mistreated, leave the country. In Europe we have standard health care above the MediCare stuff you have. You get 4 weeks holiday a year, protection from too many over hours, payed sick leave (in Germany) etc. according to apologists of neo-liberalism that will cause high unemployment rates. However, we do not have such thing in Germany.
On a side note: You really should get organized in the US. The information we get from the US looks more and more like stories normally associated with developing countries not a first world country.
There are a lot of people out there calling help or support lines. Some of them are frustrated, some of them are angry, depressed or helpless. Depending on their mood and way dealing with it, they use the support stuff as a verbal punching ball. However, for some problems there is a solution.
a) A person calls and does not have ready all the stuff required to have a successful help line talk. For example, the do not have their customer number or other details available. And they start searching for them while on line. Solutions: A) Tell the person on the other end which information they have to collect, and that they can call back when the have it. These request should include all required and optional information you want to have as a help line person. Then wish him or her goodbye.
In cases where people are waiting for hours to get through, this is often not an option. Also some company policies could require you to keep the line open. In that case use B
B) Tell the person on the other end which information they have to collect, and that you are waiting for her/him until she/he can bring all the information. To survive this situation you have to switch from a goal centric state of mind, to a service state of mind. Even if you are doing nothing beside breathing and other vegetative stuff, you are there for the caller, your pure presence is the job. This might look like nothing, but it means a lot mentally for the caller, which has now someone who is there for him or her. For Europeans and people with a similar cultural determination have often a problem with that. That's why (beside the money) India is so popular for helplines. For help on that issue ask someone who meditates or a Buddhist.
In cases where the person is angry or otherwise aggressive, it helps to think that it is not you the person is angry with. It is like parenting. If you little baby cries, it is not angry with you it is just angry. It is not personal. Therefore, do not act like you are the source of the anger. You just have to comfort the baby. For older children, the approach is a little different. However, do not try to persuade it, as it is not open to any reasonable argument. Working at a help line is very similar. And you should act similar to that. Also you might have a supervision talk with your colleagues on a regular basis. If your company is great, they pay for it. If not, do yourself a favor and organize something privately.
Why would researchers publish their code? They have only one target - to get their *papers* published in reputable venues. More often than not, such venues are closed and paywalled, so it is not surprising that they do not enforce (in fact they discourage it, to say the least) opening up bits of research.
Well conference cost is normally paid by the university or institute. Therefore, this is an bad excuse. And in addition, if you have "proofen" something and publish it in a paper. How could I reproduce your study with out your data and software? It would be nearly impossible. Therefore, publish it. A good starting point is "e-science".
Some researchers would be happy to publish their code anyway (as a matter of principles, or to promote themselves through non-academia channels) but at best they would be frowned upon by their superiors for mis-allocating their resources. At worst, they would be accused of undermining team efforts (by disclosing too much information or exposing inconvenient assumptions to competing researchers) or risking legal conflicts with publishers (copyright).
What field are you working in? In CS code publishing in almost mandatory, otherwise no one will believe you. In geo sciences and marine research (as far as I can see), publishing research data is required. Publishing of the methodology is required. And publishing the tools is encouraged (see e-science), however, not everyone is able to do so for various technical reasons, e.g., not all steps in data selection and calculation were documented properly. Or a lot of the work is done by hand. but to release Mathlab code or Fortran code is becoming more popular. The only ones who did not share their code were the big-simulation guys.
As earlier mentioned, the code written as a part of research is often poor. This is caused by the same underlying mechanism - getting as many papers published with as little work as possible. That is not (only) about procrastination. The effort put into making the code better is better spent on work on another project.
True. Code of scientists is not that well written. However, if they would release it, it could improve. Right now they all reinventing the wheel all the time.
As usual, "you get what you test for". In case of publicly funded academic projects this means "plenty of good enough papers and nothing more".
This is presently changing with the e-science (and other) initiatives and direction of thought.
Slashdot Mirror
In recent years we had SOA, SOA is dead, Cloud, SOA in the Cloud. A lot of software architecture topics. Good for funding software engineering faculties. However, the database people had not that much new things to sell. Ok there is no-SQL DBs and graph-databases, but to really sell them, you need a new buzzword. And big data is superb. All the problems which where solved for small and normal data, can now reselled for big data.
Actually the is something new, it is the complexity of the data storage and its increased distribution. However, we can use all that data mining stuff from recent years and just have to scale them.
The is no other way. However, it would be more sensible to find a world governance concept without someone being at the top. But it looks like, that the US overstreched their resources already and are replaced by the Chinese, who will then "rule" for a while until they can't afford being at the top.
If the US wold not employ the brightest engineers for military stuff, but would let build them useful things, the US would not be that much behind on those nice technologies for renewable energy (solar panels), electronics, like displays, flash rams, mobile phone, hard drives, car manucatoring, tooling, steel production, trains.
But yes, they developed the most expensive military airplane. Even the EU was not able to waste that much money on the so called Eurofighter (Typhoon). Ok the French separated and spent money on Rafale which is quite similar to the Typhoon.
Rafale: € 64 mio
Typhoon: € 90 mio
F35C: € 180 mio
I actually do not think that French workers are almost twice as efficient (including all unemployed, kids, etc.) as US workers (also including the whole population).
According to official GDP and inhabitant figures, there is not much difference between the US and France. However, the CEO stated that French workers actually work only half a day. Therefore, they must be twice as efficient to get those numbers. I personally, doubt that and think the CEO is talking bullshit.
BTW: Offical unemployment figures are always lower than the actual unemployment. In the US long term unemployed people are not necessarily counted as unemployed. In Germany people who are in a special state financed training program for adults is not counted as unemployed.
Unions in Germany are pretty effective instruments to ensure fair salaries for most employees. However, there are areas where people are not organized in unions or the structure of employers is to heterogeneous, like barber shops, that salaries cannot be discussed between unions and employer alliances. In those areas salaries are low. A good instrument to ensure fair wagers are a minimum wage (which Germany does not have).
Unions in France are not that dissimilar. However, they strike more often. The comment from the CEO is nonsense and only shows that he has not seen the rest of France nor does he looked at the overall GDP of France. If US Unions are that bad. Maybe you should look at unions in Europe and choose a better model.
If you compare GDP per person figures from the US and France, the difference is not that big. (Cleaned by financial industry induced GDP, France is even better than the US). Either the French are super effective (twice as effective as an US citizen) or the CEO is a a liar.
He just does not like human rights, like health care, the right to form interest groups aka unions, higher food standards, etc.
GDP US: M$ 14,991,300
Inhabitants US: 315,544,000
Gini: 47.7
HDI: 0.910
GDP France: M$ 2,775,518
Inhabitants France: 65,350,000
Gini: 28.9
HDI: 0.884
US GDP per person: $ 47509.38
France GDP per person: $ 42471.58
If the assumption is correct, that the French work only half the time, they are still similar effective than their US pendants. The French are super efficient people. And on top of it they have a much higher rate of equality (see Gini values). So if I have to choose, I would rather life in France then in the US (when I look at these figures). However, I do not think that a French human being is almost twice as efficient than an US citizen.
So the point the US dork made is wrong. The only thing he does not like are unions. Well if you do not like organized people, stay where you are. Don't come to Europe. We all have unions (even the British). Maybe he could go to Asia, they do not have worker unions in China.
We were thought similar features in university. To be precise I attended courses on operating systems, which included file systems. File systems can be distributed and files can be distributed. Especially in file systems which virtualize the block layer. The only new thing is that they do not use the newest modification time as last modification time, but established a live time value. So the new thing is "weighted file time to live". The rest is again the method to determine the most outdated file. In the end they are deleting chunks of a file, which would normally corrupt a file beyond recognition, if it is a binary file. Therefore, there type of file is either a old mainframe type of file, based on records (which were the predecessors of databases) or if chunks are not records or sequences of records, then it is just a bunch of files bundled together, where single files can be deleted.
If a chunk (which is not really a precise term) is an arbitrary long segment of bytes in a file, then any deletion must honor the file structure in a way, that the inner structure is not corrupted. This is possible when you have well defined boundaries for your chunks. Which is then only something similar that (for example) git does with file deltas with the addition that only sound chunks are accepted.
The results are highly doubtable. First, political left or right, or alternatively, liberal or conservative are very imprecise categories and not universal across countries. In political science, the opposite of liberal (with no restrictions) is totalitarian. While economic models may range between community/state driven to private/company driven or planed and market economy.
In eastern Europe lefts are conservatives in the meaning of they are against change and want to keep their power. Right wing people are totalitarian and want to keep the power too. No side is liberal.
What they found out (again) people who can cope better with change tend to fear change less.
Why should take off? What's the drive behind it? What need does it satisfy?
I sold medical hardware through the web using a 3rd party plug-in 10 years ago, and it was wow. Here is a small list ....or lets face it the only really one. SHOPPING, no more multiple static views of item.
Education - Planetary Systems, Engines, Inside Human Body
Lets Break out of 2D - Streetview 3D...or walk where it is unsafe...Warzones, Mars...or even oil rigs safety training
A good driver for technology in the web was advertisement and porn. However, 3D advertisement would be even more distracting than the Flash crap. And people would block it or not installing the 3D component or deactivating that feature. So the need for 3D is limited and unless there is a standard and all browsers support that standard, there will be no 3D.
No. We use wind power. We have a lot of it and sometimes the rotors are stopped because too much electricity is available. Lets dump that in cars.
Sounds like a great plan. People should hang out more often. Beside that, people already go out for lunch, or park their car at work. Every time the car is parked it can also charge.
Most driving in the EU is short range. Most people commute only 45 or less minutes (one way). That resembles some 50 km (some commute over 100 km which is then 1-1.5 h). In miles that is 31 miles up to 62 miles one way or 62 miles up to 124 miles for a daily ride. The car could be charged during night or even at your work place. On a weekend the distances might get bigger. A cross country ride (max possible distance) would be around 1000 km (621 miles) with a charger station every 435 km (270 miles), this distance could be made with two stops. As the trip would require 10-14 hours anyway, two stops are definitely in order ;-)
On a side note: Who wants to drive that long on a weekend anyway?
Most "developed" new medication is not better than the old one. That's why countries created drug evaluation facilities where the quality of drugs is measured. Furthermore, pharma companies do not do much basic research, it is more or less all applied research. This includes the development of plants or bacteria to produce certain substances. Base research is to investigate how cells work. Adding genes and evaluating results is what the companies do.
There are some exceptions. In the past IBM did some interesting research on magnetic particles. However, the field was very narrow. And they had applied science waiting for the results.
The LHC, however, helps us to understand the universe a little better. The discovery might change things in future. It also might not have a technical application. No one invests in such things without an outcome. Therefore these things must be government funded. The market is not solving all problems. And it is not solving many problems in the best way. It is a tool for certain areas.
It was the same in Germany. However, today own car becomes a nightmare over time (if you life in a city). As far as I know, similar changes are happening in New York as well. In China, having a car is a BIG status symbol. In future, it might decline. In Germany cars are a status symbol, but younger people (mostly 30 and younger) have different status symbols. For example, they can travel where they want (by plane) or they can communicate with their totally shiny new smart-gadget. So the transition is from "free to drive where you want" to "free to do what you want". While doing includes having free time, hang out in cafés, clubs or visit remote countries. They borrow a car if they need one. And as you can get them everywhere, personal ownership is no longer a must. Furthermore, trains and planes get you to some other places faster and cheaper.
Driving over a German, French, Swiss or Italian highway is, by the way, more like getting presents on Dec. 23rd in a large shopping mall than a free ride on a free highway. It is more or less a like combat situation. At least you have to stay alert all the time. Driving through Germany will take you 8 hours or more. No one interprets a ride on a highway as freedom. You feel relieved when you reach your destination. Therefor, you go by plane or train. And I am absolutely sure, when you ask someone from New York he or she could understand this "European" feeling, while someone from the mid west will most likely think these Europeans are crazy.
This is not a problem, as you are not driven the car. The car drives itself and you are just a passenger. Would be cool to share the car with others. Oh wait, we already have them, they are called buses. Nobody want to have other people in their car.
The future is, where you do not own a car. If you need one you borrow one. Of course it can communicate with your phone otherwise it would not know what you mean by "drive me home". Furthermore, in metropolitan areas, other means of public transport are much more efficient and easier to implement. For example, street cars, underground trains, smaller and bigger buses, which are easy to access and allow you to bring stuff with you, like buggies, trolleys or bikes. Cars supplement that, can be called, like cabs, but without a driver. Wonder where all the aliens will work in future ;-) In some countries the use of mass transport facilities will be (kind of) free, as it is financed through taxes. Some towns already do that, others subsidize mass transport, as it is cheaper than building new roads. Ah yes, gasoline cars will be extinct.
To measure progress you need to be able to identify single steps. However, that is not suffice. If only allows you to find out if there is one more step to do or you are finished. In such situation most programs show a bar bouncing back and forth, show a turning wheel or something similar. If you also know that there are N steps to do you could count steps and calculate how much of the task is actually done and show a percentage.
To show users how long it actually will take you have to measure time for every step and estimate that the rest of the steps take the same amount of time. However, it is seldom the case that an operation takes exactly that much time as the previous operation. Even if you copy images, which are all merely the same size. In the beginning the cache will speed up transfers, so you might get lower transfer times, then the cache is filled and more time is required. A background process, for example you e-mail program, fetches new mail. Suddenly the transfer capacity shrinks for short time delaying the image transfer.
Still copying measures are in most cases pretty good. But that is a simple task. In other cases, like installing something or processing something along a data-driven workflow, might not only incorporate equally shaped steps, it might include different tasks, which are comprised of different step which may require different amounts of resources. To make it worse the number of steps in sub-task B might be determined by the result of sub-task A. However, there is now good way to calculate an estimate for B on the number of steps of A.
As you can see, it is not that easy to calculate the total size or time required for a task. And most software developers do not go into the topic to find out. One approach would be to calculate I/O relationships (which fails when there are databases involved and you do not know how much data there can be in at the beginning), like X input record cause Y output records, complexities, like this operation is O etc. Also you could use past progress pattern to estimate future progress pattern (which would not help for progress bars on installers).
Obviously you can give any prefix any meaning. And indeed in the past it was somewhat useful to use kMGTP in a different way in IT. However, the rest of the world does interpret these letters differently. While you could use what ever you want, to be understood it helps to use letters and symbols everyone understands.
You could argue, the 2^10*i (with i = 1 for k, 2 for M, etc.) is well established in the IT industry or at least among programmers. However, it is not so commonly known among users. To increase confusion, hard drive manufacturers moved from the 2^10 concept to the 10^3 concept years ago (mostly, I guess, to have bigger numbers in their advertisements). This resulted in some confusion, as RAM was still marketed with the old method, while hard drive used a new method (conforming to an older method). For RAM manufacturers it makes a lot of sense to use the 2^10 concept, as memory is addressed with binary numbers, and they are better dividable by two. To solve that issue, industry agreed to use separate naming concept for the 2^10 concept.
I admit, that increased the confusion in the beginning, as software showed GB meaning 2^30 bytes and other software meaning 10^9 bytes. And a lot of (older) users who are accustomed to the 2^10 concept are irritated by that. However, after a few years even MS will be able to use GiB for 2^30 and GB for 10^9 and differentiate that in their dialogs. Most common users will appreciate it.
In the moment, I am absolutely aware that introducing this "new" naming convention produces more confusion than having context aware different meanings. In Gnome (and I guess in KDE, XFCE, etc.) this issue is already fixed. I am wondering why this is an issue in Windows. Hopefully it will vanish in Win8.
k, M, G, etc. are defined SI shorthands for 10, 10^6, 10^9. They have been defined that way long (as in computer age) before computers had (that many) bits. However, when the information age broke out, computer technicians also required the shorten numbers. They decided to synchronize their system with 2^10, 2^20 etc. because it is close to the SI figures (at least for kilo and mega). That was good enough. And it was so much easier to shift values by 10 bits. However, it was in violation of the real SI meaning. To solve that issue, a new terminology was proposed where k, M,G,T meant 10, 10^6, 10^9, 10^12 and ki, Mi, Gi, Pi are 2^10, 2^20, 2^30, 2^40. The idea was to fix software in short time, people should use these *i prefixes until they are able to count and divide their number according th SI units.
Whoever uses G but means Gi should fix their software.
As a scientist, I publish my work in form of a paper. Others can use the results mentioned in the paper (for free). This is normal scientific practice. However, I do not want that some other person takes my paper, modifies it and republishes it somewhere else. BTW that is considered plagiarism, which is immoral in the scientific community. When it is about data, you can use them as input, but not modify them and say it is the same or "new version" of my data. However, you could derive your own data from it, mention where you got it and what you modified and why. For my code, it is released under Apache or Eclipse license. And yes you can do wan ever you want. However, I would like, if you would contribute and publish you additions.
I never heard of any factory worker, who works for 1€ per hour. This 1€ program is for people who are unemployed for a long time, who require help to get back in normal jobs. Therefore the state provides them with a basic income, called ALG II. which is considered the existential minimum (I personally think it should be higher, but that is not the point here. They get money to live and the state pays their rent and health insurance, definitely more than the average unemployed person in the US has). On top of that income they can earn extra money in such so call 1€ jobs. By law these job grants are not allowed to be used by employers to replace staff on normal income.
I personally think, that the German system is too harsh, but compared to the US, it is still better.
I would recommend two things in this situation:
a) Found a union, based on continental European approaches. The UK and US approaches are not that good.
b) If a) does not work, because your colleagues and fellow US citizen like to be mistreated, leave the country. In Europe we have standard health care above the MediCare stuff you have. You get 4 weeks holiday a year, protection from too many over hours, payed sick leave (in Germany) etc. according to apologists of neo-liberalism that will cause high unemployment rates. However, we do not have such thing in Germany.
On a side note: You really should get organized in the US. The information we get from the US looks more and more like stories normally associated with developing countries not a first world country.
There are a lot of people out there calling help or support lines. Some of them are frustrated, some of them are angry, depressed or helpless. Depending on their mood and way dealing with it, they use the support stuff as a verbal punching ball. However, for some problems there is a solution.
a) A person calls and does not have ready all the stuff required to have a successful help line talk. For example, the do not have their customer number or other details available. And they start searching for them while on line.
Solutions:
A) Tell the person on the other end which information they have to collect, and that they can call back when the have it. These request should include all required and optional information you want to have as a help line person. Then wish him or her goodbye.
In cases where people are waiting for hours to get through, this is often not an option. Also some company policies could require you to keep the line open. In that case use B
B) Tell the person on the other end which information they have to collect, and that you are waiting for her/him until she/he can bring all the information. To survive this situation you have to switch from a goal centric state of mind, to a service state of mind. Even if you are doing nothing beside breathing and other vegetative stuff, you are there for the caller, your pure presence is the job. This might look like nothing, but it means a lot mentally for the caller, which has now someone who is there for him or her. For Europeans and people with a similar cultural determination have often a problem with that. That's why (beside the money) India is so popular for helplines. For help on that issue ask someone who meditates or a Buddhist.
In cases where the person is angry or otherwise aggressive, it helps to think that it is not you the person is angry with. It is like parenting. If you little baby cries, it is not angry with you it is just angry. It is not personal. Therefore, do not act like you are the source of the anger. You just have to comfort the baby. For older children, the approach is a little different. However, do not try to persuade it, as it is not open to any reasonable argument. Working at a help line is very similar. And you should act similar to that. Also you might have a supervision talk with your colleagues on a regular basis. If your company is great, they pay for it. If not, do yourself a favor and organize something privately.
Why would researchers publish their code? They have only one target - to get their *papers* published in reputable venues. More often than not, such venues are closed and paywalled, so it is not surprising that they do not enforce (in fact they discourage it, to say the least) opening up bits of research.
Well conference cost is normally paid by the university or institute. Therefore, this is an bad excuse. And in addition, if you have "proofen" something and publish it in a paper. How could I reproduce your study with out your data and software? It would be nearly impossible. Therefore, publish it. A good starting point is "e-science".
Some researchers would be happy to publish their code anyway (as a matter of principles, or to promote themselves through non-academia channels) but at best they would be frowned upon by their superiors for mis-allocating their resources. At worst, they would be accused of undermining team efforts (by disclosing too much information or exposing inconvenient assumptions to competing researchers) or risking legal conflicts with publishers (copyright).
What field are you working in? In CS code publishing in almost mandatory, otherwise no one will believe you. In geo sciences and marine research (as far as I can see), publishing research data is required. Publishing of the methodology is required. And publishing the tools is encouraged (see e-science), however, not everyone is able to do so for various technical reasons, e.g., not all steps in data selection and calculation were documented properly. Or a lot of the work is done by hand. but to release Mathlab code or Fortran code is becoming more popular. The only ones who did not share their code were the big-simulation guys.
As earlier mentioned, the code written as a part of research is often poor. This is caused by the same underlying mechanism - getting as many papers published with as little work as possible. That is not (only) about procrastination. The effort put into making the code better is better spent on work on another project.
True. Code of scientists is not that well written. However, if they would release it, it could improve. Right now they all reinventing the wheel all the time.
As usual, "you get what you test for". In case of publicly funded academic projects this means "plenty of good enough papers and nothing more".
This is presently changing with the e-science (and other) initiatives and direction of thought.