"It didn't take that many years to go from 0 users of HTML to where we are today despite the fact that most people didn't understand the potential at the time."
But HTML came first. Niche oportunity is already lost.
"Up-front costs might be less, but long-term costs are significantly higher"
The parent post didn't talk about "up-front costs" but about costs -full stop.
"The costs of bad code cascade."
Not my problem; as long as the overall costs are lower I'm fine, thanks.
"It's not as simple as business requirements being met: you've got to contend with significant bugs"
What's a bug but a requirement not being met? And we already stated that "requirements are met", didn't we?
"memory leaks"
A memory leak ends up with a service not working (which would render it out of requirements) or it doesn't matter.
"general system performance"
General system performance is within requirement limits, in which case I don't mind, or it's out bounds, and we already stated that requirements were met.
"If you throw a job at someone in India, you've got no way to enforce quality."
True... for every case were the job is not done by you yourself: you can enforce quality on somebody at India as much as you can enforce it on somebody on the cubicle next of yours.
"Sure, you might have a requirement in the contract saying "code must be commented, meet XYZ standards, and do CYA" but there's no guarantee they're not using ass-backwards logic to perform those tasks"
Sure, exactly the same case with your fellow proud-to-be-American programer.
"the likelihood that the code is actually commented to a degree that is useful is slim-to-nill."
Because?
"Again, back to the documentation: if you want more than just a throw-away program/system, good documentation is existential"
That might be useful for someone *within* the trade. We were talking about somebody not in the trade. Again, as long as money and requirements are met he should be perfectly glad no matter if that's because proud-to-be-American engineers or because of a mob of magic dwarves.
"the US doesn't have that. It has a system where those who have the most amount of money seek to make even more money, and those who are not in that financial class get screwed."
Which is exactly what free market means: money is the measure of power. In free market those with money smash those without it as much as in free fight the 1000 pound gorillaz smash tiny guys.
What else did you expect free market to be? Those without the power being more powerful than those with it?
"That would not happen in a truly free market."
Yeah, well... and in a truly comunist regime all would be happy and with all our needs covered, but comunism tends to give us Stalin, not Arcadia.
"so unless we totally change the society, the government has to create laws to make it the system work fairly for everyone."
So you somehow think to be fair that the 1000 pound gorilla should fight with a hand tied to the back to level the ground? That might be fair but certainly would not be free.
"as long as the requirements are met and the expense is lower, they're happy." Why shouldn't they!!!???" Because the long term results of such scenarios are usually extremely damaging to the company interests"
How are they *exactly* being damaged if requirements are still met and expense is still lower?
"if the management in question is still around to care."
And still you need to define *who* exactly is to be damaged and why, oh why, should a manager not already there care about it unles it is *him* the damaged one.
"That's not remotely a free market; it's arbitrage of labor."
And what do you think "free market" means but that the strongers are not tied by any regulations? Free market means that when you have some hundred of millions you are stronger than individuals and untied to make it your way upon them and when you have some tens of billions then you are stronger than governments and untied to make it your way upon them.
Free market means the strongest rules and that's exactly what's happening.
"It should be considered unethical if a company lays off an IT person, then ship their job to China, for example."
How goes the old saying? You can't have the cake and eat it too, isn't it?
Didn't you want free market and capitalism? Well, there you have it.
"when you ship all of that expertise elsewhere, you handicap innovation in your country. That's stupid."
Maybe it is, but then you are telling capitalism and free market are stupid. For capitalism is not about long term planning and global-wise decisions. It is about here and now and you can bet laying you off and hiring at China is a local optimum for the one taking the decision: the CEO and his bonuses and that's all about.
It doesn't matter: a uniform is a uniform. If they are not uniformed, they are not standing troops, so "rules of engadgement" forbid being the one opening fire if you *do* wear a uniform, specially in urban areas.
"In war you do not give the enemy the opportunity to fire first."
Maybe. But that's the kind of war where "rules of engadgment" are not followed so it's moot talking about them.
Oh! and, on the other hand, "in war" you say... where did you learnt that USA is in war with Afghanistan, now?
"These guys were following the rules of engagement for that battle."
You repeat so much that "rules of engagement".
Which "rules of engagement" allows for a standing troop to start fire against uncovered un-uniformed people that didn't open fire first *even* if they are armed? Which "rules of engagement" allow for shooting high cadence weapons with no prior warning shooting against uncovered un-uniformed people obviously trying to help a wounded fellow?
"If it's not a "surprise" then we have truly become desensitized to the mindless violence we practice against our own species."
Nonsense. That a youngster trained not to think because if you stop to think you are dead, under heavy stress because of a potential mortal enemy under almost any human being around him porting heavy weapons can make a carnage must come to a surprise to *no one*.
It can only come to a surprise for those drinking the cool-aid of "good wars", Hollywood films glorifying violence which look for a scape path to say "no, no, we don't behave that way, it's an horrifying exception" and just going acting the same.
Acts like this must produce in us hate, nausea, and the strong desire of never allow for something like this happening again, but never surprise or else it will happen again, and again, and again. And the best way for that not happening again is avoiding like hell putting afraid overstressed youngsters with heavy weaponry among potential enemies on far foreign lands.
"The Wikipedia article is quite good and lists several competing theories including cold tires after the safety car period and steering column breakage."
As far as I know, steering column breakage is both the official and more plausible theory.
"And let us also hope that financial backers and investors don't pass on the idea of investing in said research without the potential payout of a full term patent."
I prefer your "hope" than current status. Specially when your hope is more than backed up by past reality (there *was* gene research prior to gene patentability as there was software development prior to software patentability, so your fears are off-based).
"It's true that a suspension part going through his helmet is what killed Senna, but he went off the road in the first place because his car bottomed out on a bump into the Tamburello corner."
AFAIK it was the other way around: first the car broke, that's why he lost control.
"give me some examples where F1 developments Post 1994"
They are not as visible as they used to be, but they are very important nonetheless: clutchless transmissions, better/cheaper/more durable rubber composites on tyres, better chamber and admission geometries, beter gas mixtures, all kinds of software and electronics controlling engine combustion -both of them driving to better mileage, better undestandment about aerodynamics, esp. aroung pits and holes...
"Yeah, I remember waaaay back the saying was something like it takes 20% of the time to do the first 80% of the code, and 80% of the time to do the remaining 20%."
Maybe it's because it comes from so way back you can't remember properly but it doesn't go that way.
It goes "it takes 80% of the time to do the first 80% of the code, and 80% of the time to do the remaining 20%". There, fixed for you.
"What the wiki doesn't say (but I remember) is Senna complained that the removal of active suspension from the vehicles might get someone killed. What happened was two drivers were killed Senna and Roland Ratzenberger."
But you certainly seem to forget that neither Senna nor Ratzenberger were killed because anything related to active suspension, but a case of bad luck.
The case of Ratzenberger was understandable (was a terrible accident at very high speed) while others having gone without injuries from similar situations.
But the case of Senna was a terribly hard punch of the worst luck -what are the chances for a piece of the car to go exactly through the short window on his helmet?
"I wonder how many lives off the track have been lost because F1 does not do this job anymore."
You can't be wronger. F1 is today as technosavvy as always, it's only it's pointing technology to different objectives -which, while disputable if on purpouse or not, are much more aligned with mass production cars than ever.
Current F1 cars have to be more robust, more stable, more economic than ever. There's no point on 1500 HP engines, active suspension, massive turbochargers or floor effects for mass production but there is a point for better mileage, engines that last longer, better passive security or better general-purpose grip and stability over tyres that don't seem taken from a 20Tm bulldozer.
"During a practice session, the team can print out a graph for the slower of their two drivers(well, both drivers would have access to this kind of data, only it's more likely to be the slower driver who wants it so he can see where his teammate is faster)."
You can bet they *both* are slower. That's not a NASCAR oval but a real circuit. While certainly one of the two pilots is overall better, usually one of the pilot swill trace on part of the circuit better than the other and some rounds are better than others so both pilots (and engineers) do benefit from the whole telemetry.
"A better answer probably is: they use the data to make their cars go faster"
To some extent, "faster" is the easy part. So easy that FIA is always looking for ways to avoid them going so fast. They also need to do it securely, on the (relatively) cheap, robust enough not to break apart before the end, and without wasting too much tire and gas since they are limited.
"We like racing where the drivers and crew matter more than the computers."
Ha!
That surely explains why Michael Andretti, very reputed on USA, going into F1 on his best shape showed as mediocre while Mansell, while a brilliant F1 pilot not a real top notch star, managed to win Indy Series on his very first try when on decadency (he was 40 year old back then -1993).
"Wait, wait, don't tell me: Running an 8 year old development platform written by amateurs with an unsupported 3rd-party plugin in a 32-to-64-bit emulation layer on a modern operating system is unstable? Oh my fuck, it's Armageddon!"
You don't get it, do you?
That the application were unstable would be no news. That your 8 year old amateurish application can corrupt the memory space of a modern 64-bit OS *is* Armaggedon for the OS architect... or it should be, at the very least.
"the developers do have to prioritize the work they do."
Of course they have to, since they are a scarce resource.
"Finding and fixing a serious, but hard-to-discover security flaw before this flaw has become widely disseminated may not be worth the effort."
You are rigth... provided that was the case which, for the most part, it isn't.
We are no more on the glory days of Ada Lovelace or Alan Turing. We know (as a collective) what must be done. The case is that, for the most part, all those bugs are not "serious, but hard-to-discover" security flaws but the result of faulty practices from unknowledgeable and/or lazy programers. Maybe those bugs are hard to discover once in the source, but they usually are reasonabily if not even easy not to be there to start with -or else you can bet they wouldn't be discovered and published with such an ease even on closed-source software.
Security through obscurity is *never* a suitable engineering principle except on the mind of unkowledgeable engineers.
"When the balloon landed, they just followed the coordinates the phone sent them. [...] I question the cell phone story [...]: it only works when you are fairly close to the ground."
I'm ready to bet that once the balloon landed it was fairly close to the ground.
"I've personally never heard anyone claim that Americans would be extraordinarily rude..."
Yes, but because of the sterotype: rudeness shows a certain degree of (cunning) intelligence. The stereotyped American is too dumb to be genuinely rude.
"In fact, that is a word that most of us would probably associate with the french."
Slashdot Mirror
"It didn't take that many years to go from 0 users of HTML to where we are today despite the fact that most people didn't understand the potential at the time."
But HTML came first. Niche oportunity is already lost.
"A half dozen reasons, or more:"
Let's see them.
"Up-front costs might be less, but long-term costs are significantly higher"
The parent post didn't talk about "up-front costs" but about costs -full stop.
"The costs of bad code cascade."
Not my problem; as long as the overall costs are lower I'm fine, thanks.
"It's not as simple as business requirements being met: you've got to contend with significant bugs"
What's a bug but a requirement not being met? And we already stated that "requirements are met", didn't we?
"memory leaks"
A memory leak ends up with a service not working (which would render it out of requirements) or it doesn't matter.
"general system performance"
General system performance is within requirement limits, in which case I don't mind, or it's out bounds, and we already stated that requirements were met.
"If you throw a job at someone in India, you've got no way to enforce quality."
True... for every case were the job is not done by you yourself: you can enforce quality on somebody at India as much as you can enforce it on somebody on the cubicle next of yours.
"Sure, you might have a requirement in the contract saying "code must be commented, meet XYZ standards, and do CYA" but there's no guarantee they're not using ass-backwards logic to perform those tasks"
Sure, exactly the same case with your fellow proud-to-be-American programer.
"the likelihood that the code is actually commented to a degree that is useful is slim-to-nill."
Because?
"Again, back to the documentation: if you want more than just a throw-away program/system, good documentation is existential"
That might be useful for someone *within* the trade. We were talking about somebody not in the trade. Again, as long as money and requirements are met he should be perfectly glad no matter if that's because proud-to-be-American engineers or because of a mob of magic dwarves.
"the US doesn't have that. It has a system where those who have the most amount of money seek to make even more money, and those who are not in that financial class get screwed."
Which is exactly what free market means: money is the measure of power. In free market those with money smash those without it as much as in free fight the 1000 pound gorillaz smash tiny guys.
What else did you expect free market to be? Those without the power being more powerful than those with it?
"That would not happen in a truly free market."
Yeah, well... and in a truly comunist regime all would be happy and with all our needs covered, but comunism tends to give us Stalin, not Arcadia.
"so unless we totally change the society, the government has to create laws to make it the system work fairly for everyone."
So you somehow think to be fair that the 1000 pound gorilla should fight with a hand tied to the back to level the ground? That might be fair but certainly would not be free.
"as long as the requirements are met and the expense is lower, they're happy."
Why shouldn't they!!!???"
Because the long term results of such scenarios are usually extremely damaging to the company interests"
How are they *exactly* being damaged if requirements are still met and expense is still lower?
"if the management in question is still around to care."
And still you need to define *who* exactly is to be damaged and why, oh why, should a manager not already there care about it unles it is *him* the damaged one.
"That's not remotely a free market; it's arbitrage of labor."
And what do you think "free market" means but that the strongers are not tied by any regulations? Free market means that when you have some hundred of millions you are stronger than individuals and untied to make it your way upon them and when you have some tens of billions then you are stronger than governments and untied to make it your way upon them.
Free market means the strongest rules and that's exactly what's happening.
"as long as the requirements are met and the expense is lower, they're happy."
Why shouldn't they!!!???
"It should be considered unethical if a company lays off an IT person, then ship their job to China, for example."
How goes the old saying? You can't have the cake and eat it too, isn't it?
Didn't you want free market and capitalism? Well, there you have it.
"when you ship all of that expertise elsewhere, you handicap innovation in your country. That's stupid."
Maybe it is, but then you are telling capitalism and free market are stupid. For capitalism is not about long term planning and global-wise decisions. It is about here and now and you can bet laying you off and hiring at China is a local optimum for the one taking the decision: the CEO and his bonuses and that's all about.
"If the PDF viewer is running in a separate VM container, however, what exactly do you think it's going to accomplish?"
Well, provided that "...Qubes supports secure copy-and-paste and file sharing between the AppVMs" I'll let it opened to your own imagination.
"So what does the insurgent uniform look like?"
It doesn't matter: a uniform is a uniform. If they are not uniformed, they are not standing troops, so "rules of engadgement" forbid being the one opening fire if you *do* wear a uniform, specially in urban areas.
"In war you do not give the enemy the opportunity to fire first."
Maybe. But that's the kind of war where "rules of engadgment" are not followed so it's moot talking about them.
Oh! and, on the other hand, "in war" you say... where did you learnt that USA is in war with Afghanistan, now?
"These guys were following the rules of engagement for that battle."
You repeat so much that "rules of engagement".
Which "rules of engagement" allows for a standing troop to start fire against uncovered un-uniformed people that didn't open fire first *even* if they are armed? Which "rules of engagement" allow for shooting high cadence weapons with no prior warning shooting against uncovered un-uniformed people obviously trying to help a wounded fellow?
"If it's not a "surprise" then we have truly become desensitized to the mindless violence we practice against our own species."
Nonsense. That a youngster trained not to think because if you stop to think you are dead, under heavy stress because of a potential mortal enemy under almost any human being around him porting heavy weapons can make a carnage must come to a surprise to *no one*.
It can only come to a surprise for those drinking the cool-aid of "good wars", Hollywood films glorifying violence which look for a scape path to say "no, no, we don't behave that way, it's an horrifying exception" and just going acting the same.
Acts like this must produce in us hate, nausea, and the strong desire of never allow for something like this happening again, but never surprise or else it will happen again, and again, and again. And the best way for that not happening again is avoiding like hell putting afraid overstressed youngsters with heavy weaponry among potential enemies on far foreign lands.
"Irrelevant- it's still an economic loss if it doesn't really add value to the product or service being delivered."
Very interesting wording and probably the very basis of the last economic recession.
What about trying to add value *to the customer* for a change instead of "to the product or service"?
Since people like you won't think about it that way regulation becomes a must.
"The Wikipedia article is quite good and lists several competing theories including cold tires after the safety car period and steering column breakage."
As far as I know, steering column breakage is both the official and more plausible theory.
"And let us also hope that financial backers and investors don't pass on the idea of investing in said research without the potential payout of a full term patent."
I prefer your "hope" than current status. Specially when your hope is more than backed up by past reality (there *was* gene research prior to gene patentability as there was software development prior to software patentability, so your fears are off-based).
"It's true that a suspension part going through his helmet is what killed Senna, but he went off the road in the first place because his car bottomed out on a bump into the Tamburello corner."
AFAIK it was the other way around: first the car broke, that's why he lost control.
"MLS is a site that has clearly been designed by old school developers who know nothing but what Microsoft has taught them."
They can't be "old school" and then know nothing but Microsoft's.
"give me some examples where F1 developments Post 1994"
They are not as visible as they used to be, but they are very important nonetheless: clutchless transmissions, better/cheaper/more durable rubber composites on tyres, better chamber and admission geometries, beter gas mixtures, all kinds of software and electronics controlling engine combustion -both of them driving to better mileage, better undestandment about aerodynamics, esp. aroung pits and holes...
"Yeah, I remember waaaay back the saying was something like it takes 20% of the time to do the first 80% of the code, and 80% of the time to do the remaining 20%."
Maybe it's because it comes from so way back you can't remember properly but it doesn't go that way.
It goes "it takes 80% of the time to do the first 80% of the code, and 80% of the time to do the remaining 20%". There, fixed for you.
"What the wiki doesn't say (but I remember) is Senna complained that the removal of active suspension from the vehicles might get someone killed. What happened was two drivers were killed Senna and Roland Ratzenberger."
But you certainly seem to forget that neither Senna nor Ratzenberger were killed because anything related to active suspension, but a case of bad luck.
The case of Ratzenberger was understandable (was a terrible accident at very high speed) while others having gone without injuries from similar situations.
But the case of Senna was a terribly hard punch of the worst luck -what are the chances for a piece of the car to go exactly through the short window on his helmet?
"I wonder how many lives off the track have been lost because F1 does not do this job anymore."
You can't be wronger. F1 is today as technosavvy as always, it's only it's pointing technology to different objectives -which, while disputable if on purpouse or not, are much more aligned with mass production cars than ever.
Current F1 cars have to be more robust, more stable, more economic than ever. There's no point on 1500 HP engines, active suspension, massive turbochargers or floor effects for mass production but there is a point for better mileage, engines that last longer, better passive security or better general-purpose grip and stability over tyres that don't seem taken from a 20Tm bulldozer.
"During a practice session, the team can print out a graph for the slower of their two drivers(well, both drivers would have access to this kind of data, only it's more likely to be the slower driver who wants it so he can see where his teammate is faster)."
You can bet they *both* are slower. That's not a NASCAR oval but a real circuit. While certainly one of the two pilots is overall better, usually one of the pilot swill trace on part of the circuit better than the other and some rounds are better than others so both pilots (and engineers) do benefit from the whole telemetry.
"A better answer probably is: they use the data to make their cars go faster"
To some extent, "faster" is the easy part. So easy that FIA is always looking for ways to avoid them going so fast. They also need to do it securely, on the (relatively) cheap, robust enough not to break apart before the end, and without wasting too much tire and gas since they are limited.
"We like racing where the drivers and crew matter more than the computers."
Ha!
That surely explains why Michael Andretti, very reputed on USA, going into F1 on his best shape showed as mediocre while Mansell, while a brilliant F1 pilot not a real top notch star, managed to win Indy Series on his very first try when on decadency (he was 40 year old back then -1993).
"Wait, wait, don't tell me: Running an 8 year old development platform written by amateurs with an unsupported 3rd-party plugin in a 32-to-64-bit emulation layer on a modern operating system is unstable? Oh my fuck, it's Armageddon!"
You don't get it, do you?
That the application were unstable would be no news. That your 8 year old amateurish application can corrupt the memory space of a modern 64-bit OS *is* Armaggedon for the OS architect... or it should be, at the very least.
"the developers do have to prioritize the work they do."
Of course they have to, since they are a scarce resource.
"Finding and fixing a serious, but hard-to-discover security flaw before this flaw has become widely disseminated may not be worth the effort."
You are rigth... provided that was the case which, for the most part, it isn't.
We are no more on the glory days of Ada Lovelace or Alan Turing. We know (as a collective) what must be done. The case is that, for the most part, all those bugs are not "serious, but hard-to-discover" security flaws but the result of faulty practices from unknowledgeable and/or lazy programers. Maybe those bugs are hard to discover once in the source, but they usually are reasonabily if not even easy not to be there to start with -or else you can bet they wouldn't be discovered and published with such an ease even on closed-source software.
Security through obscurity is *never* a suitable engineering principle except on the mind of unkowledgeable engineers.
"When the balloon landed, they just followed the coordinates the phone sent them.
[...]
I question the cell phone story [...]: it only works when you are fairly close to the ground."
I'm ready to bet that once the balloon landed it was fairly close to the ground.
"I've personally never heard anyone claim that Americans would be extraordinarily rude..."
Yes, but because of the sterotype: rudeness shows a certain degree of (cunning) intelligence. The stereotyped American is too dumb to be genuinely rude.
"In fact, that is a word that most of us would probably associate with the french."
And Parisian above all French.