I first want experience the WYSIWYG experience when I see and use their real finished product. Maybe they have an confusing amount of editions. Maybe people who migrate from XP find their hardware still lacking support. Are the drivers for new hardware out on time? Is SLI etc upported?
I own and run a startup. The deeper motivation of my startup is to make the world a better place. Not only by developing user friendly products, or things like providing an intellectual engaging working life to myself and my empolyees, etc. Now my company is still small and there isn't always enough work, so I also spend working time on pro bono basis for good causes for free. It's a little bit harder to run a business that way, but until now I didn't need any financing from banks at all. It's extremely rewarding to help others with talent, much more so than helping others with only money. And there is no bigger party than to change the world with others.
In the end there is the difference between the quality market and the price market, a different business model and thus a different way to compete. If you compete on quality and not so much on price it's possible to have the right kind of commitment to quality. If time-to-market is dominant (which is most of the time true) than you can expect sloppy development methodologies (like waterfall) and also it will be harder to retain people who are more quality minded. It might sound a little bit black and white, but from my kind of experience it makes all the difference. If been there and done that and than started my own business, I rather focus on quality and have more stamina for the long term. Anyone can compete on price, and most who compete on price in the end will be suffering a shakeout. If you have some passion as a developer and some passion for clients, you rather want to work with high quality developers and people who now how to make a business around great products. Quality means also greater challenges and less tension on idiotic number of features and put stability in the forefront of business.
Let's wait for windows 7 and see if it gets delieverd on time. The lets see how much people want to use it. If windows 7 also fails, they better extends the support a couple of years extra...
With a citrix client it is possible to run applications without the control of Apple. Maybe Microsoft is behind this, since they have such a big position in Citrix.
It's sad, for a number of reasons: it's his business, it's a very expensive cost. Not so much his costly phone bill, the more how his client might percieve it. It's especially sad because security is not a mathematical solid thing. Even the very great security specialists may be the prey of a hacker activism.
It's so easy to judge this by outsiders who don't have the details of the hack itself, most of which probabely have no serious knowledge of security what so ever. For example in the old days sendmail has a serious security exploit. Because it the specific exploit was kept secret amongst hackers.
Ifg such thing hits the news, it's better to have access to all the details (provided that he secured the issues first).
Ultimately everyone can be replaced, for the worse or the better. There was a time when Jobs recruited Sculley from Pepsi because of his Marketing skills. It nearly to bankruptcy, as Scully moved Jobs out of Apple and got Apple in a very awful financial shape.
Steve came back. The success started as Steve immediately decided industrial design was important for Apple. It is very hard to give design such an important role in a company. To be a serious creative and innovative company, it requires a different kind of leadership. The lack of innovative products proves this wisdom. You don't have to take my word for it. Ask Apple CEO Steve Jobs about it, and he'll tell you an instructive little story. Call it the Story of the Concept Car.
"Here's what you find at a lot of companies," he says, kicking back in a conference room at Apple's gleaming white Silicon Valley headquarters, which looks something like a cross between an Ivy League university and an iPod. "You know how you see a show car, and it's really cool, and then four years later you see the production car, and it sucks? And you go, What happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands! They grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory!
"What happened was, the designers came up with this really great idea. Then they take it to the engineers, and the engineers go, 'Nah, we can't do that. That's impossible.' And so it gets a lot worse. Then they take it to the manufacturing people, and they go, 'We can't build that!' And it gets a lot worse.
When the company becomes even more successful and scales up in size, it will be tempting to be to busy with the company and less with innovation. In a big bureaucracy it's hard to maintain a athmosphere where creatvity can flourish. Success can also lead mean the company loses it's identity and traditions. This can even happen now when Steve Jobs is still at Apple.. What Jobs Not Giving This Year's Macworld Keynote?
Running a much bigger company requires even more of a leader. Trying to scale up innovative power, many have tried but lost. However I think Apple set the mark. I surely hope Steve will be able to drive it much further, if not it will be extremely hard to find someone else that can. The challenge for leadership never has been bigger.
I think the common sense description of a perfect mainstream consumer desktop includes also being a perfect hassle-free entertainment platform: gaming and media. OS-X is great in media, but it still sucks in gaming. Linux and media are not as hassle-free as can be. However since youtube became dominant so did the flash media format. As Adobe had their flash player for Linux and now even 64-bit Linux the old media format war became less of a moving target. VLC also made media on Mac-OSX and Linux a lot less of a hassle. Gaming is still a hassle. Despite Wine and Darwine which enables playing windows games on Linux, it's just not good enough to describe it as completely hassle-free experience.
Despite Linux being used in increasing number of consumer devices (routers, media streaming devices, etc), it is still not a easily recognized brand by mainstream consumers. It's nice to know that an increasing number of people are enjoying having a choice. More people seem swap their dull grey boxes for Imacs, their slow windows mobile devices for Iphones, crappy mp3 players for Ipods. It's also nice to see computing platforms innovate and get mainstream adoption. It's sure great to see people buy netbooks with ubuntu Linux and gladly accept something new to them like ubuntu.
But don't forget those people who don't like the perception of change. They connect change with something new to learn, they are addicted by this perception and are so addicted to Windows. Those people maybe didn't know at the time of buying their new netbook runs some thing else than windows. They maybe didn't even know there was anything else like windows all together. They are the ones to return their netbook to the store, just because it "has no Windows".
Like Apple, Linux having a community is a great thing. Windows doesn't have an outspoken community. The Microsoft community is a silent and addicted one, people who fear choice or change. But Linux still lacks the PR to make people aware that Linux is not just for hi-tec elitist and that they don't have to learn everything from scratch again. Mac-OS and Windows are backed by powerful PR machines of their owners Microsoft and Apple. Having freedom of choice (beer or something else) is it's greatest power, but also it greatest weakness (from the PR point of view). Linux is in need of a new PR model, fueled by the community and the mainstream media.
Gaming and PR, Linux has fought tougher battles and got stronger blow by blow. It is the ever growing creep. Linux will just keep creeping into our life, as it did long before the terms "Linux" and "Business Model" could be mentioned into one sentence. But for those of use who have been using Linux distro's a long time, have seen it changing:
from a system with a very small developer oriented community to a much wider and varying community.
from a system limited in hardware support to a system which is cross platform, strongly increased hardware support (even new hardware).
from having an arcane installer to one of the neatest (may be even beating OS-X)
from having extremely limited media support to a much much broader media support
from having only arcane gui to a much much more appealing and user friendly user interface.
from a system suitable for development and administration to a system ready for basic mainstream office and home use and advancing rapdily.
Linux preinstalled, who could ever imagine that.
The linux creep is underestimated. Linux will just creep as slowly as ever did or maybe be even more. No one has been able to stop it unil this date, not Microsoft and not Apple. Games, media all remaining will be assimilated, resistance to the linux creep is futile.
Every elitist or freedom ideologist knows linux, because the community was able to spread the holy world. Now it's time the mainstream component of the community starts to evangelise. And this is happening already, but their voice is just not loud enough this moment. As mainstrea
Just like any other high educated specialists, challenge them and reward them with more knowledge and responsibility (if they are up to it). I am will play the advocate of the devil, but please note I am a developer also. I think it's very important not to treat them like hero's with power tools, it will be killing for teamwork and spoils the corporate athmosphere. There goes my karma.
The worst thing you could do it treat programmers like prima donna's. If you would take the ego of most programmers as a measure of skill, then there are simply way too many talents in this world. There is also no need to treat them like prima donna's, especially since it is also possible to outsource stuff and get high quality stuff for it.
Most programmers will also tell you that one very good programmer can do a better job than a whole bunch of average programmers. If you have such a programmer, then you have to respect this ability the same as you would respect any other highly talented and highly productive specialist. But it's important to reward this behaviour more with training, courses and responsibility (if they are real teamplayers) than it is important to pay more money. Highgly intelligent programmers like to stay challenged and learn in a fast pace, the more stupid always want to earn more. It's good to show respect to programmers, but don't encourage their ego's too much.
"I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself 'Dijkstra would not have liked this', well, that would be enough immortality for me." - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra
A lot of software engineers like to work with new technologies, new paradigms, new code design patterns, new software development technologies and other forms of complexity. Quality Assurance rules by checklists and testing, only fixing symptoms. Every coder has it's own ideology what is correct code or the correct way to do it. Correctness proven by superficial subjective quality standards, beautiful crafted hacks included.
Edsger found ways to mathematically prove programs to be correct, requiring a very high level of math skills (the same level which is needed to prove the correctless a mathematical theory). This utopistic objective quality standard. Stuff for the real hard core developers who have plenty of time.
But most haven't the time. In the end time-to-market is key. Swift hackers remain the heroes of business who craft applications which get used in the real world.
However some pragmatical things I thank Edsger Wybe Dykstra for: invention of the stack, his low opinion about the GOTO statement; shortest path-algorithm, also known as Dijkstra's algorithm; Reverse Polish Notation and related Shunting yard algorithm; Banker's algorithm; the concept of operating system rings; and the semaphore construct for coordinating multiple processors and programs. His charismatic remarks about what we would typically consider software engineering are entertaining and humbling, examples:
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence."
"APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums."
"The question of whether Machines Can Think... is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim"
"The competent programmer is fully aware of the limited size of his own skull. He therefore approaches his task with full humility, and avoids clever tricks like the plague"
"Write a paper promising salvation, make it a 'structured' something or a 'virtual' something, or 'abstract', 'distributed' or 'higher-order' or 'applicative' and you can almost be certain of having started a new cult."
"The required techniques of effective reasoning are pretty formal, but as long as programming is done by people that don't master them, the software crisis will remain with us and will be considered an incurable disease. And you know what incurable diseases do: they invite the quacks and charlatans in, who in this case take the form of Software Engineering gurus. "
FORTRAN, 'the infantile disorder', by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
"In the good old days physicists repeated each other's experiments, just to be sure. Today they stick to FORTRAN, so that they can share each other's programs, bugs included."
"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
"Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians."
"We can found no scientific discipline, nor a hearty profession, on the technical mistakes of the Department of Defense and, mainly, one computer manufacturer."
It would be nice to see antivistus software become unneccesary by solving the root causes to security flaws in Microsofts system and their code, instead of pushing thirdparty antisoftware out of the market by providing antivirus software for free. Instead of trying to patch the security related symptoms like virusses etc, microsoft would be far more convincing solve root causes that lead to insecurity symptoms. To that cause Microsoft should do something about their bugs, security architecture and other exploitable flaws.
Microsoft has proved throughout history not solving bugs or other security related issues, partly because of their interest to push new product versions into the market. So that said, it is not a very promissing story to the customer. Independent third parties have more interest in solving security related symptoms, and they are more effective at it because it's their core business. If Microsoft would be able to get a monopoly on antivirus software by providing this software or free, we all would lose.
Instead of having a laserlike focus on core business and being very good at it, Microsoft continuosly seeks to have a monopoly of mediocracy on all businesses by having no core business. Despite Microsofts succes pushing thirdparty software business out of the market, fortunately the open software community will only thrive even more with high quality solutions which make Microsofts mediocre products obsolete. In the end the open source software has proven to be superior in delivering best of breed software.
Extremely gifted people have often more one or two exceptional talents, they excel at almost anything and have a broad interest and a generic approach. A math professor might say it would be a waste not to develop the math talent and many other experts will say exactly the same regarding their field of expertise. To have a talent doesn't mean so much once you so many. Someone has no responsibility to develop one, it has to be someones own desire and choice. The beauty of Interaction Design / User Experience Design is it requires to design and visualise user interfaces while also understanding user needs, business needs and technologies.
This profession has artistic traits as well as the nerdy traits. Having studied user experience design options are plenty: scientific research, business or art. User Experience Designers/Interaction mostly work in multidiciplinary teams, a great athmosphere to develop social skills as well. Starting your own company also helps to secure you have enough room to broaden your horizon and being surrounded by likeminded people.
I have done different studies and got my master in interaction design with a A+ GPA. Before I studied I thought I had no artistic talent. Because I had grown up with the expectations of others that I had to do something with my talents I had studied many different studies which didn't had my passion. The idea of discovering my passion the eye opener for me.
I am a PC and I am made of stolen ideas only mutated in a bad way.
Apple may wished they thought of this cool I am a PC and I am a Mac commercial, too bad they don't have our patent on it...
In older days working with processes was more easy, later threads came, and then truning to processes agin. Every model works best under certain conditions, conditions change so do designs (even when it doesn't sound too much of an innovation). In the end the results count.
Design models are nice, but getting designs implemented right so they live up needed target result is something else. Google has done a nice job and so does Firefox. Microsoft should learn from this.
As long as Internet Explorer is not performing well there's so much room for others to gain marketshare. For the user to have something to choose from is a good thing.
New posibilities mean change, debate and responsibility to use them for the good. I guess often new possibilities defy established norms and cultures.
Embryo selection can be used for good. I would draw the line where the quality of life the baby would be at stake. For example a inheritable disease which means the newly born would have to deal with unbearable pain for the rest of his life. I think there is enough medical expertise to define some norms of quality of life.
I am from the Netherlands. The culture of the Netherlands is very progressive, also regarding to abortion, euthanasia, drugs and homosexual marriages.
The perfect gift from Microsoft to give to Bill Gates would be lifetime support for Windows XP, including the exclusive service packs 4 and higher, custom built for Bill Gates alone. And a DVD with some highlights of Microsoft, titled:"Developers, Developers, Developers" which includes the famous commercial for windows 1.0 starring Steve Balmer.
"No promises (seriously), but interesting work will be brought to the attention of the project manager I'm working with."
Does your manager even know about this post on Slashdot? This must be at the least a very unusual way for DARPA to acquire information. I have doubts about the seriousness of your post.
If you read a little further it says a very liberate women friendly thing:
Men are genetically evolving, they get talent for things like washing, ironing and cooking dinner. However men fall short in those thing compared to women, who have ages of genetic advantage. In 2008 this will be considered proof of intelligent design.
and also:
In 2008 oil will do 121 dollar a barrel and the 2,34 dollar will be the same as 1 euro. The euro will be a coin of a seemingly united europe. In 2020 the chinese culture has become dominant and all woman have to do all the domestic chores again, while man will go out for hunting down the last living animals and insects.
How to get on mars if these kind of projects are in hibernation? With a U.S. government debt expanding by about $1.4 billion a day how much ambitions NASA can sustain to achieve?
Epistax: "Can I have an integrated flash player that WORKS please? [...] arg please don't say contribute, I haven't the time to do anything but work and flame on slashdot"
If you don't have the time to contribute, how important is that integrated flash player for you? Contribution doesn't neccesary mean it will cost you time, contributing money (even a small sum) can be a way too. Or you could send Adobe a polite email, asking them to add support for your platform. Adobe is increasingly paying more attention to linux. A friendly reminder of lots of people helps
Epistax: "Gnash is utter crap"
There are people on projects like Gnash, GPLFlash player, etc who tried or still trying to solve your problem. It's not easy to build an open source flash player. It takes a lot of effort from people with very busy lifes who make the time to contribute code. If all open source developers had your attitude, we all wouldn't even have something like a amd64 open source distribution. So please don't say open source x or y is utter crap, but you don't have time to contribute.
Guys who think intelligent design is a sience just lack biological designed intelligence. Best way to fight it is to brainwash little kids with a sciencebased evolution theory. I am sure such an approach will lead to better presidents.
Yeah and they also are very much into designer bugs. Because every software will eventually have bugs, it's best to design them first instead of creating them unintentionally.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows 7 is actually Linux with a closed source Window Manager and a tweaked wine config. Now Microsoft is superior too.
I first want experience the WYSIWYG experience when I see and use their real finished product. Maybe they have an confusing amount of editions. Maybe people who migrate from XP find their hardware still lacking support. Are the drivers for new hardware out on time? Is SLI etc upported?
I own and run a startup. The deeper motivation of my startup is to make the world a better place. Not only by developing user friendly products, or things like providing an intellectual engaging working life to myself and my empolyees, etc. Now my company is still small and there isn't always enough work, so I also spend working time on pro bono basis for good causes for free. It's a little bit harder to run a business that way, but until now I didn't need any financing from banks at all. It's extremely rewarding to help others with talent, much more so than helping others with only money. And there is no bigger party than to change the world with others.
In the end there is the difference between the quality market and the price market, a different business model and thus a different way to compete. If you compete on quality and not so much on price it's possible to have the right kind of commitment to quality. If time-to-market is dominant (which is most of the time true) than you can expect sloppy development methodologies (like waterfall) and also it will be harder to retain people who are more quality minded. It might sound a little bit black and white, but from my kind of experience it makes all the difference. If been there and done that and than started my own business, I rather focus on quality and have more stamina for the long term. Anyone can compete on price, and most who compete on price in the end will be suffering a shakeout. If you have some passion as a developer and some passion for clients, you rather want to work with high quality developers and people who now how to make a business around great products. Quality means also greater challenges and less tension on idiotic number of features and put stability in the forefront of business.
It's good that we always have the alternative for open office. Microsoft, thousands of brave men strong and not sick at all. Mwah ha ha ha.
Let's wait for windows 7 and see if it gets delieverd on time. The lets see how much people want to use it. If windows 7 also fails, they better extends the support a couple of years extra...
With a citrix client it is possible to run applications without the control of Apple. Maybe Microsoft is behind this, since they have such a big position in Citrix.
It's sad, for a number of reasons: it's his business, it's a very expensive cost. Not so much his costly phone bill, the more how his client might percieve it. It's especially sad because security is not a mathematical solid thing. Even the very great security specialists may be the prey of a hacker activism.
It's so easy to judge this by outsiders who don't have the details of the hack itself, most of which probabely have no serious knowledge of security what so ever. For example in the old days sendmail has a serious security exploit. Because it the specific exploit was kept secret amongst hackers.
Ifg such thing hits the news, it's better to have access to all the details (provided that he secured the issues first).
Ultimately everyone can be replaced, for the worse or the better. There was a time when Jobs recruited Sculley from Pepsi because of his Marketing skills. It nearly to bankruptcy, as Scully moved Jobs out of Apple and got Apple in a very awful financial shape.
Steve came back. The success started as Steve immediately decided industrial design was important for Apple. It is very hard to give design such an important role in a company. To be a serious creative and innovative company, it requires a different kind of leadership. The lack of innovative products proves this wisdom. You don't have to take my word for it. Ask Apple CEO Steve Jobs about it, and he'll tell you an instructive little story. Call it the Story of the Concept Car.
"Here's what you find at a lot of companies," he says, kicking back in a conference room at Apple's gleaming white Silicon Valley headquarters, which looks something like a cross between an Ivy League university and an iPod. "You know how you see a show car, and it's really cool, and then four years later you see the production car, and it sucks? And you go, What happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands! They grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory! "What happened was, the designers came up with this really great idea. Then they take it to the engineers, and the engineers go, 'Nah, we can't do that. That's impossible.' And so it gets a lot worse. Then they take it to the manufacturing people, and they go, 'We can't build that!' And it gets a lot worse.
When the company becomes even more successful and scales up in size, it will be tempting to be to busy with the company and less with innovation. In a big bureaucracy it's hard to maintain a athmosphere where creatvity can flourish. Success can also lead mean the company loses it's identity and traditions. This can even happen now when Steve Jobs is still at Apple.. What Jobs Not Giving This Year's Macworld Keynote?
Running a much bigger company requires even more of a leader. Trying to scale up innovative power, many have tried but lost. However I think Apple set the mark. I surely hope Steve will be able to drive it much further, if not it will be extremely hard to find someone else that can. The challenge for leadership never has been bigger.
I think the common sense description of a perfect mainstream consumer desktop includes also being a perfect hassle-free entertainment platform: gaming and media. OS-X is great in media, but it still sucks in gaming. Linux and media are not as hassle-free as can be. However since youtube became dominant so did the flash media format. As Adobe had their flash player for Linux and now even 64-bit Linux the old media format war became less of a moving target. VLC also made media on Mac-OSX and Linux a lot less of a hassle. Gaming is still a hassle. Despite Wine and Darwine which enables playing windows games on Linux, it's just not good enough to describe it as completely hassle-free experience.
Despite Linux being used in increasing number of consumer devices (routers, media streaming devices, etc), it is still not a easily recognized brand by mainstream consumers. It's nice to know that an increasing number of people are enjoying having a choice. More people seem swap their dull grey boxes for Imacs, their slow windows mobile devices for Iphones, crappy mp3 players for Ipods. It's also nice to see computing platforms innovate and get mainstream adoption. It's sure great to see people buy netbooks with ubuntu Linux and gladly accept something new to them like ubuntu.
But don't forget those people who don't like the perception of change. They connect change with something new to learn, they are addicted by this perception and are so addicted to Windows. Those people maybe didn't know at the time of buying their new netbook runs some thing else than windows. They maybe didn't even know there was anything else like windows all together. They are the ones to return their netbook to the store, just because it "has no Windows".
Like Apple, Linux having a community is a great thing. Windows doesn't have an outspoken community. The Microsoft community is a silent and addicted one, people who fear choice or change. But Linux still lacks the PR to make people aware that Linux is not just for hi-tec elitist and that they don't have to learn everything from scratch again. Mac-OS and Windows are backed by powerful PR machines of their owners Microsoft and Apple. Having freedom of choice (beer or something else) is it's greatest power, but also it greatest weakness (from the PR point of view). Linux is in need of a new PR model, fueled by the community and the mainstream media.
Gaming and PR, Linux has fought tougher battles and got stronger blow by blow. It is the ever growing creep. Linux will just keep creeping into our life, as it did long before the terms "Linux" and "Business Model" could be mentioned into one sentence. But for those of use who have been using Linux distro's a long time, have seen it changing:
The linux creep is underestimated. Linux will just creep as slowly as ever did or maybe be even more. No one has been able to stop it unil this date, not Microsoft and not Apple. Games, media all remaining will be assimilated, resistance to the linux creep is futile.
Every elitist or freedom ideologist knows linux, because the community was able to spread the holy world. Now it's time the mainstream component of the community starts to evangelise. And this is happening already, but their voice is just not loud enough this moment. As mainstrea
Just like any other high educated specialists, challenge them and reward them with more knowledge and responsibility (if they are up to it). I am will play the advocate of the devil, but please note I am a developer also. I think it's very important not to treat them like hero's with power tools, it will be killing for teamwork and spoils the corporate athmosphere. There goes my karma.
The worst thing you could do it treat programmers like prima donna's. If you would take the ego of most programmers as a measure of skill, then there are simply way too many talents in this world. There is also no need to treat them like prima donna's, especially since it is also possible to outsource stuff and get high quality stuff for it.
Most programmers will also tell you that one very good programmer can do a better job than a whole bunch of average programmers. If you have such a programmer, then you have to respect this ability the same as you would respect any other highly talented and highly productive specialist. But it's important to reward this behaviour more with training, courses and responsibility (if they are real teamplayers) than it is important to pay more money. Highgly intelligent programmers like to stay challenged and learn in a fast pace, the more stupid always want to earn more. It's good to show respect to programmers, but don't encourage their ego's too much.
"I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself 'Dijkstra would not have liked this', well, that would be enough immortality for me." - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra
A lot of software engineers like to work with new technologies, new paradigms, new code design patterns, new software development technologies and other forms of complexity. Quality Assurance rules by checklists and testing, only fixing symptoms. Every coder has it's own ideology what is correct code or the correct way to do it. Correctness proven by superficial subjective quality standards, beautiful crafted hacks included.
Edsger found ways to mathematically prove programs to be correct, requiring a very high level of math skills (the same level which is needed to prove the correctless a mathematical theory). This utopistic objective quality standard. Stuff for the real hard core developers who have plenty of time.
But most haven't the time. In the end time-to-market is key. Swift hackers remain the heroes of business who craft applications which get used in the real world.
However some pragmatical things I thank Edsger Wybe Dykstra for: invention of the stack, his low opinion about the GOTO statement; shortest path-algorithm, also known as Dijkstra's algorithm; Reverse Polish Notation and related Shunting yard algorithm; Banker's algorithm; the concept of operating system rings; and the semaphore construct for coordinating multiple processors and programs. His charismatic remarks about what we would typically consider software engineering are entertaining and humbling, examples:
Microsoft has proved throughout history not solving bugs or other security related issues, partly because of their interest to push new product versions into the market. So that said, it is not a very promissing story to the customer. Independent third parties have more interest in solving security related symptoms, and they are more effective at it because it's their core business. If Microsoft would be able to get a monopoly on antivirus software by providing this software or free, we all would lose.
Instead of having a laserlike focus on core business and being very good at it, Microsoft continuosly seeks to have a monopoly of mediocracy on all businesses by having no core business. Despite Microsofts succes pushing thirdparty software business out of the market, fortunately the open software community will only thrive even more with high quality solutions which make Microsofts mediocre products obsolete. In the end the open source software has proven to be superior in delivering best of breed software.
Extremely gifted people have often more one or two exceptional talents, they excel at almost anything and have a broad interest and a generic approach. A math professor might say it would be a waste not to develop the math talent and many other experts will say exactly the same regarding their field of expertise. To have a talent doesn't mean so much once you so many. Someone has no responsibility to develop one, it has to be someones own desire and choice. The beauty of Interaction Design / User Experience Design is it requires to design and visualise user interfaces while also understanding user needs, business needs and technologies.
This profession has artistic traits as well as the nerdy traits. Having studied user experience design options are plenty: scientific research, business or art. User Experience Designers /Interaction mostly work in multidiciplinary teams, a great athmosphere to develop social skills as well. Starting your own company also helps to secure you have enough room to broaden your horizon and being surrounded by likeminded people.
I have done different studies and got my master in interaction design with a A+ GPA. Before I studied I thought I had no artistic talent. Because I had grown up with the expectations of others that I had to do something with my talents I had studied many different studies which didn't had my passion. The idea of discovering my passion the eye opener for me.
I am a PC and I am made of stolen ideas only mutated in a bad way. Apple may wished they thought of this cool I am a PC and I am a Mac commercial, too bad they don't have our patent on it...
In older days working with processes was more easy, later threads came, and then truning to processes agin. Every model works best under certain conditions, conditions change so do designs (even when it doesn't sound too much of an innovation). In the end the results count.
Design models are nice, but getting designs implemented right so they live up needed target result is something else. Google has done a nice job and so does Firefox. Microsoft should learn from this.
As long as Internet Explorer is not performing well there's so much room for others to gain marketshare. For the user to have something to choose from is a good thing.
New posibilities mean change, debate and responsibility to use them for the good. I guess often new possibilities defy established norms and cultures.
Embryo selection can be used for good. I would draw the line where the quality of life the baby would be at stake. For example a inheritable disease which means the newly born would have to deal with unbearable pain for the rest of his life. I think there is enough medical expertise to define some norms of quality of life.
I am from the Netherlands. The culture of the Netherlands is very progressive, also regarding to abortion, euthanasia, drugs and homosexual marriages.
The perfect gift from Microsoft to give to Bill Gates would be lifetime support for Windows XP, including the exclusive service packs 4 and higher, custom built for Bill Gates alone. And a DVD with some highlights of Microsoft, titled:"Developers, Developers, Developers" which includes the famous commercial for windows 1.0 starring Steve Balmer.
I fine retirement gift would be the latest Apple hardware and a million of Apple shares. "You will be assimilated, resistance is futile."
"No promises (seriously), but interesting work will be brought to the attention of the project manager I'm working with."
Does your manager even know about this post on Slashdot? This must be at the least a very unusual way for DARPA to acquire information. I have doubts about the seriousness of your post.
If you read a little further it says a very liberate women friendly thing:
Men are genetically evolving, they get talent for things like washing, ironing and cooking dinner. However men fall short in those thing compared to women, who have ages of genetic advantage. In 2008 this will be considered proof of intelligent design.
and also:
In 2008 oil will do 121 dollar a barrel and the 2,34 dollar will be the same as 1 euro. The euro will be a coin of a seemingly united europe. In 2020 the chinese culture has become dominant and all woman have to do all the domestic chores again, while man will go out for hunting down the last living animals and insects.
How to get on mars if these kind of projects are in hibernation? With a U.S. government debt expanding by about $1.4 billion a day how much ambitions NASA can sustain to achieve?
Epistax: "Can I have an integrated flash player that WORKS please? [...] arg please don't say contribute, I haven't the time to do anything but work and flame on slashdot"
If you don't have the time to contribute, how important is that integrated flash player for you? Contribution doesn't neccesary mean it will cost you time, contributing money (even a small sum) can be a way too. Or you could send Adobe a polite email, asking them to add support for your platform. Adobe is increasingly paying more attention to linux. A friendly reminder of lots of people helps
Epistax: "Gnash is utter crap"
There are people on projects like Gnash, GPLFlash player, etc who tried or still trying to solve your problem. It's not easy to build an open source flash player. It takes a lot of effort from people with very busy lifes who make the time to contribute code. If all open source developers had your attitude, we all wouldn't even have something like a amd64 open source distribution. So please don't say open source x or y is utter crap, but you don't have time to contribute.
Guys who think intelligent design is a sience just lack biological designed intelligence. Best way to fight it is to brainwash little kids with a sciencebased evolution theory. I am sure such an approach will lead to better presidents.
Yeah and they also are very much into designer bugs. Because every software will eventually have bugs, it's best to design them first instead of creating them unintentionally.