> Microsoft has a VERY large and very well-developed office suite that connects quite elegantly to a bunch of Microsoft's back office software.
So what? MS Office is expensive and is a hell to use. Gives me all the strange automation stuff and doesn't let me turn it off. Slow. Format changes every couple of years. Too many buttons which change locations. I hate Office. If you are happy with Office, good for you, but I welcome whatever changes possible. Be it OpenOffice, be it web apps, I don't care. If the startups keep reinventing the wheel, eventually they'll come up with something good.
1) Because a link may trick you to a phishing site, rather than the real site. For example, let's say you have an account with Bank of America (www.bankofamerica.com). Phisher sends you an e-mail with a link similar to BoA URL, but with a slight difference. For example, www.bankofamerica.net, which looks like BoA homepage, but let's say, is a phishing site. You click it, and you are sent to the phishing site. A lot of bad things can happen after that.
If you had typed in www.bankofamerica.com, this would not happen. That's why clicking an URL on an e-mail from an unknown sender is a bad idea.
2. It can be revoked. However, unless you download a CRL from GeoTrust (and all other trusted CAs) frequently, or use OCSP every time you do SSL, it does not solve the problem.
Very well said. I don't like majority of Microsoft products, but I have to give it to Bill Gates for making bigger contribution to the society than I do, by about 100,000 times.
I don't have a problem with Google's action. A company seeking business opportunities and spinning its action so that it looks positive and politically correct. Nothing new about that.
However, I have a problem with a statement like this.
But if we in the West, with our liberal political culture and our attempts to build open societies, do not engage with China then we lose the opportunity to influence them and convince them of the benefits that this brings. If the Chinese government fears instability then we should offer help and advice and support, not closed borders and locked doors.
"You cannot outsource leadership," Ms. Johnson said. The Pratt engineering school has research programs, leadership dinners, and an ethics program so its students have an edge over others graduating from Indian and Chinese universities, she said.
This seems to me an ignorant attack against Indian and Chinese universities. How can she be so sure that the foreign universities do not have research programs, leadership dinners (what?), and ethics programs? To claim the foreign universities have lower educational standard without backing it up with data is arrogant. Judging from their products (graduates), they are doing a fine job.
and bad workers are bad, regardless of the location. I have worked with good engineers and bad engineers in India. I have worked with good engineers and bad engineers in the US. In Europe. In Asia.
Don't forget that offshore development implies there is a manager in the US. The success depends heavily on the manager, too. You can't reject the idea of offshoring only because it failed in one case.
The question shouldn't be "if offshore engineering works or not". There won't be a general answer because it will always depend on the type of products you make, people you work with, etc. Of course it will work, in some cases.
The question should be "if offshore works in our case", and "how we can make offshore succeed". There are many things you can do. Frequent communication, commitment from both sides to help each other instead of blaming each other, etc.
All the power to you, as I agree with you completely.
if a patent-holder comes after you for infringement it means they are worried about you, validating that you are on the right track.
Sure, but what are you going to do when this happens? Being on the right track doesn't help you from being sued by the patent sharks to your company's death. How do you defend yourself without paying the lawyers? (I'm not being sarcastic. I really want to know if there's a way.)
I'm late to this post, but I highly recommend Le Guin as well. An excellent excellent writer.
I especially suggest "The Eye of the Heron". Although not as well known as Earthsea or Left Hand of Darkness etc., the book is a beautifully written, insightful, encouraging story about an adolescent girl growing up.
I respect and appreciate Sun's commitment to open source community. However, as a software engineer, I cannot find a reason to devote my time to extend old software created by Sun. For example, within the Java Enterprise System,
http://www.sun.com/software/javaenterprisesystem/c ompare.xml I do not find a product which is overwhelmingly exciting to me. When there are hundreds of cutting-edge, fast-developing open source projects to work on out there, I wonder how actively developers will contribute to Sun's products. I would like to know what others think. Do you see exciting things in what Sun has opened up?
Also, it's not clear to me what they have actually opened up. They opened Solaris, JES, etc., fine. What else? Compilers? Drivers? SunRay? Is there a list somewhere?
Because MS is in business of making money instead of making friends. It has nothing to do with their egos. More to do with greed and shortsightedness, I think.
As long as MS has its own Office format (even if it's open), OOo and other products can never be 100% compatible with Office. No offense to OOo developers here... I have a lot of respect to them. However, once OOo achieves 100% compatibility with Office, MS will change the format slightly so that OOo won't work 100% well. This routine repeats over and over.
Since most PC users already use Office and they receive Office documents from others, they are afraid of not being 100% compatible with Office. They opt to but Office for $100 or $200 or whatever they have to pay to avoid the inconvenience.
It seems MS isn't opening up their format after all. They will do these kinds of PR tap-dancing to avoid the heat that is being applied by the state of Massachusetts and the media, but they will do anything not to give up the lock-in, I think.
I'm guessing some marketers and engineers in MS got excited about open format and made a splash. For example, Mr. Brian Jones looked genuinely interested in doing so in his blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/). The executives learned about it later, and said "Oh, no, we can't let them open the format... we'll lose the lock-in!" and they overruled them. Happens all the time in corporations.
To build decent apps today, and Internet apps in particular, you need more than an idea, more than good tools
OK I need more than a tool.
Team System is addressing this shortfall in its Team Edition for Software Architects with a tool called Application Designer, a graphical workhorse for solution architecture.
What you said is true to some degree, but I see many exceptions, especially in these days. I've seen many mediocre engineers who dress badly in hope of impressing people they are skilled. You know, worn-out conference/startup T-shirts from 90s, etc. I personally don't trust these types, either.
I'm sure the 100 comments before me provide very good advice. I probably don't have much new information to add.
However, I would like to say this. From my software engineering experience (which includes big companies, medium sized ones and startups), too much emphasis on coding style, development process, code reviews, bug tracking systems, naming convention, etc., may hurt the team's productivity.
To do everything perfectly, engineers need to spend time indenting code, changing variable names, making sure correct information is in the bug tracking system, waiting for somebody's code review, etc. That adds a lot of hours to development time, in addition to the time to actually develop software. You may also need to hire a manager to make sure everything is OK.
Worse yet, if too much focus was put on to such things, the team's mentality may eventually shift to "let's code everything right and clean", rather than "let's develop something great and innovative and help our customers". That's not a winning formula.
So my advice is, learn the current infrastructures your teams have. Chances are they already have some kind of systems and they may be fine to a certain degree. Listen to your engineers, the lowest level ones included, on what is broken and should be improved. Fix only the broken things that are hurting productivity. Fix them in the least intrusive manner. Sometimes, the laziest engineering manager is the best one.
I'm with you, buddy, even though your post was modded to Offtopic -1. I have been reading Slashdot for close to a year now. To date, this is the article I enjoyed the least. It says so many things that are not understandable, or just wrong.
(In mid 90's) back then there weren't many files to manage either.
Huh?
No application was complete until it integrated e-mail somehow.
HUH?
Does Slashdot hand out "This Year's Worst 10 Articles Award?" If it does, I would like to nominate this one.
you can buy the same system with a hard disk twice the size with a 17" LCD monitor and Windows Media Center Edition for the same price.
Really?
According to Dell website, Dimension 3000 Base System with Windows XP Home Edition, with no monitor, is at $349. http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features. aspx/dimen_3000?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd
While 3000n, the same hardware without installed OS, is at $319.
5150n is also cheaper than 5150 by $30.
Kudos to Bernard Golden for a well written article. It summarizes the situation well and gives several perspectives - historical one, that of Microsoft, that of State of Massachusetts. I am often dissapointed by blogs written by "technology experts", but I was impressed by Golden.
Shareholders usually consider being a mature company a good thing. They think that since this company has done well for the last 10 years, it will probably do well in the next 10 years, etc. From their perspective, it's not a breaking point at all. Consider GE, IBM.
I personally don't want to work for old or big companies, but that's from an engineer's perspective.
Have there been any notable and technical inventions from IBM Research lately (say last 5 to 10 years)? The article mentions the lab's focus has been shifting.
the company's push toward services and software has prompted it to dedicate more of its laboratories toward solving business process problems
I have not seen anything as significant as RDB or Fortran in the last 10 years from the lab.
Generally speaking, I feel that computer science research from academia (research labs, universities) isn't as productive as it used to be. I can't recall any ground breaking work from academia recently (after Internet, I guess). Does this mean computer science research has matured and has reached a point where most of the progress is now made in development by corporation rather than academic research? Or I just do not know about the exciting research projects? Or, as the article suggests, most academic inventions are done outside of the US?
Slashdot Mirror
> Microsoft has a VERY large and very well-developed office suite that connects quite elegantly to a bunch of Microsoft's back office software.
So what? MS Office is expensive and is a hell to use. Gives me all the strange automation stuff and doesn't let me turn it off. Slow. Format changes every couple of years. Too many buttons which change locations. I hate Office. If you are happy with Office, good for you, but I welcome whatever changes possible. Be it OpenOffice, be it web apps, I don't care. If the startups keep reinventing the wheel, eventually they'll come up with something good.
If you had typed in www.bankofamerica.com, this would not happen. That's why clicking an URL on an e-mail from an unknown sender is a bad idea.
In a more sophisticated version of this attack, phisher can create a UNICODE string that looks exactly like www.bankofamerica.com. See http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/unic ode_url_hac_1.html
2. It can be revoked. However, unless you download a CRL from GeoTrust (and all other trusted CAs) frequently, or use OCSP every time you do SSL, it does not solve the problem.
Very well said. I don't like majority of Microsoft products, but I have to give it to Bill Gates for making bigger contribution to the society than I do, by about 100,000 times.
However, I have a problem with a statement like this.
But if we in the West, with our liberal political culture and our attempts to build open societies, do not engage with China then we lose the opportunity to influence them and convince them of the benefits that this brings. If the Chinese government fears instability then we should offer help and advice and support, not closed borders and locked doors.
China boasts 111 million Internet users http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?typ e=internetNews&storyid=2006-01-18T030843Z_01_SHA66 703_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-INTERNET.xml and 393 cell phone users http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/200 6/1/24/business/13197510&sec=business. That's a lot of information flowing around. Chinese know what Western cultures bring, good and bad, probably more than Western people do. To think China as a big dark corner of the world which The West must shine its democratic and liberal lights on, is quite romantic, but is naive.
Marketting value. Somebody in the management thinks "Teaming up with Google, Oxford and Harvard" is cool.
This seems to me an ignorant attack against Indian and Chinese universities. How can she be so sure that the foreign universities do not have research programs, leadership dinners (what?), and ethics programs? To claim the foreign universities have lower educational standard without backing it up with data is arrogant. Judging from their products (graduates), they are doing a fine job.
Don't forget that offshore development implies there is a manager in the US. The success depends heavily on the manager, too. You can't reject the idea of offshoring only because it failed in one case.
The question shouldn't be "if offshore engineering works or not". There won't be a general answer because it will always depend on the type of products you make, people you work with, etc. Of course it will work, in some cases.
The question should be "if offshore works in our case", and "how we can make offshore succeed". There are many things you can do. Frequent communication, commitment from both sides to help each other instead of blaming each other, etc.
if a patent-holder comes after you for infringement it means they are worried about you, validating that you are on the right track.
Sure, but what are you going to do when this happens? Being on the right track doesn't help you from being sued by the patent sharks to your company's death. How do you defend yourself without paying the lawyers? (I'm not being sarcastic. I really want to know if there's a way.)
Oh yeah? How about "system and method for providing reservations for restroom use"?
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-961803.html
Don't watch TV.
Thank you, very good info. Somebody please mod parent up "Informative"!
I especially suggest "The Eye of the Heron". Although not as well known as Earthsea or Left Hand of Darkness etc., the book is a beautifully written, insightful, encouraging story about an adolescent girl growing up.
Also, it's not clear to me what they have actually opened up. They opened Solaris, JES, etc., fine. What else? Compilers? Drivers? SunRay? Is there a list somewhere?
Finally can somebody decipher their license, CDDL? http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:9125 :200412:dmcacncfamieofeochbn
Let's say I take Sun's source code, add some modification and nice packaging, etc., may I sell it to customers?
As long as MS has its own Office format (even if it's open), OOo and other products can never be 100% compatible with Office. No offense to OOo developers here ... I have a lot of respect to them. However, once OOo achieves 100% compatibility with Office, MS will change the format slightly so that OOo won't work 100% well. This routine repeats over and over.
Since most PC users already use Office and they receive Office documents from others, they are afraid of not being 100% compatible with Office. They opt to but Office for $100 or $200 or whatever they have to pay to avoid the inconvenience.
It seems MS isn't opening up their format after all. They will do these kinds of PR tap-dancing to avoid the heat that is being applied by the state of Massachusetts and the media, but they will do anything not to give up the lock-in, I think.
I'm guessing some marketers and engineers in MS got excited about open format and made a splash. For example, Mr. Brian Jones looked genuinely interested in doing so in his blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/). The executives learned about it later, and said "Oh, no, we can't let them open the format ... we'll lose the lock-in!" and they overruled them. Happens all the time in corporations.
To build decent apps today, and Internet apps in particular, you need more than an idea, more than good tools
OK I need more than a tool.
Team System is addressing this shortfall in its Team Edition for Software Architects with a tool called Application Designer, a graphical workhorse for solution architecture.
So you give me a tool.
Huh?
What you said is true to some degree, but I see many exceptions, especially in these days. I've seen many mediocre engineers who dress badly in hope of impressing people they are skilled. You know, worn-out conference/startup T-shirts from 90s, etc. I personally don't trust these types, either.
However, I would like to say this. From my software engineering experience (which includes big companies, medium sized ones and startups), too much emphasis on coding style, development process, code reviews, bug tracking systems, naming convention, etc., may hurt the team's productivity.
To do everything perfectly, engineers need to spend time indenting code, changing variable names, making sure correct information is in the bug tracking system, waiting for somebody's code review, etc. That adds a lot of hours to development time, in addition to the time to actually develop software. You may also need to hire a manager to make sure everything is OK.
Worse yet, if too much focus was put on to such things, the team's mentality may eventually shift to "let's code everything right and clean", rather than "let's develop something great and innovative and help our customers". That's not a winning formula.
So my advice is, learn the current infrastructures your teams have. Chances are they already have some kind of systems and they may be fine to a certain degree. Listen to your engineers, the lowest level ones included, on what is broken and should be improved. Fix only the broken things that are hurting productivity. Fix them in the least intrusive manner. Sometimes, the laziest engineering manager is the best one.
Good luck and let us know how things go.
(In mid 90's) back then there weren't many files to manage either.
Huh?
No application was complete until it integrated e-mail somehow.
HUH?
Does Slashdot hand out "This Year's Worst 10 Articles Award?" If it does, I would like to nominate this one.
How come nobody likes the news? The 'n' series (3000n, 5150n) is $30 cheaper than the standard counterpart (3000, 5150).
. aspx/dimen_3000?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd . aspx/dimen_3000n?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd /.ers have been complaining about prebundled Windows for years. Be happy and give some love to Dell for doing this!
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features
You save 30 bucks if you don't need Windows. It's a good thing. Many
No, I don't work for Dell.
you can buy the same system with a hard disk twice the size with a 17" LCD monitor and Windows Media Center Edition for the same price.. aspx/dimen_3000?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd
Really?
According to Dell website, Dimension 3000 Base System with Windows XP Home Edition, with no monitor, is at $349.
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features
While 3000n, the same hardware without installed OS, is at $319.
5150n is also cheaper than 5150 by $30.
Kudos to Bernard Golden for a well written article. It summarizes the situation well and gives several perspectives - historical one, that of Microsoft, that of State of Massachusetts. I am often dissapointed by blogs written by "technology experts", but I was impressed by Golden.
I personally don't want to work for old or big companies, but that's from an engineer's perspective.
Have there been any notable and technical inventions from IBM Research lately (say last 5 to 10 years)? The article mentions the lab's focus has been shifting.
the company's push toward services and software has prompted it to dedicate more of its laboratories toward solving business process problems
I have not seen anything as significant as RDB or Fortran in the last 10 years from the lab.
Generally speaking, I feel that computer science research from academia (research labs, universities) isn't as productive as it used to be. I can't recall any ground breaking work from academia recently (after Internet, I guess). Does this mean computer science research has matured and has reached a point where most of the progress is now made in development by corporation rather than academic research? Or I just do not know about the exciting research projects? Or, as the article suggests, most academic inventions are done outside of the US?
Please enlighten me.
Really? How do you know?
Operating System Sucks-Rules-O-Meter
http://srom.zgp.org/
This may not be a scientifically reliable survey, but it shows a lot of people are unhappy. I would like to see good data to back your point.