what really counts is who is doing the research and producing the health-improving drugs and diagnostic/treatment systems of tomorrow
On this we can agree. Check out the list of nobel prize winners in medicine at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/. You will find it is about 70% Americans (who I might add comprise about 5% of the world's population). And that 70% is in the last 25 years -- I didnt' go back farther because the discussion is about America in decline and so only recent data is relevent. So the research to which you refer is still, today, predominantly done in America by Americans.
Unfortunately, I do believe you are correct regarding the future of health care innovations, because once the health care "reform" goes through the research advantage will abate. When government beaurocrats start squeezing medical providers, there will be little if anything left for research. Frankly I'm amazed other countries aren't doing their level best to torpedo the US health care bill, since they have been beneficiaries of the research as well. Mark my words... should US health care reform go through, the whole world will suffer.
... quality of life in a healthy economy depends on being able to produce useful products and provide useful services. You don't get points in the long run if all you do is "manage" things and provide "financial services" and other secondary details.
Hmmm. Methinks you exagerrate a bit. Here is a list off the top of my head:
World class: Passenger jets, Large construction equipment, Medical devices (CT, MRI, Ultrasound, Lab automation), Pharmaceuticals, Weapon systems (military jets, missiles, missile defense systems), Satellites, Semiconductors, Networking gear
Sure, there are things no longer made in the US that were in the past such as consumer electronics (TVs, stereos, DVD players), but the list is actually fairly short, and mostly populated by lower cost (lower value added) products.
Oh, and your dismissive attitude regarding the US military reminds me of a favorite movie quote (some parts redacted; [] inserted by me for readability):
Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You?...[We] have more responsibility here than you could possibly fathom.... you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what [we] know.... And that [our] existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. [We] know deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you don't want [us] on that wall, you need [us] on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. [We] have neither the time nor the inclination to explain [ourselves] to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom [we] provide, then question the manner in which [we] provide it. [We] prefer you said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, [we] suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand to post. Either way, [we] don't give a damn what you think...
People were practically begging for the doom and gloom scenario.
You've got that right. Especially when there is money to be made, or power to be grabbed/transfered/co-opted. For a great example of this, see Man-made Global Warming (MGW).
Over the years I've seen a number of these panics and I have learned to first consider who benefits from the mitigation. If they are the same ones who are screaming the loudest I become very suspicious. As far as MGW goes, the anti-capitalists and anti-Americans are quite prominant in the cast of doomsayers. Just something I observed. Did anybody else notice that the key "remediation" that came out of Copenhagen was for the "West" to agree to transfer untold billions to the developing nations?
As regards Y2K, the consultant houses were very busy publishing papers predicting doom, unless of course we did the "smart" thing and hired them (at inflated rates due to the severity and time-critical aspect of the problem) to fix it. Now, I'm not saying Y2K was a myth. There were clearly issues that needed to be addressed. I was working as a developer in a fairly large medical device company at the time. We did a thorough code audit and found and fixed a number of problems -- most of which would have merely displayed funny dates to the user. But, if the problem were truly as massive and far-reaching as the shrillsters were claiming, there is *no way* we would have been so successful in cleaning it all up. Not possible. And so the problem, in reality, was significantly less serious than we were led to believe. And much wealth changed hands.
Actually, the way we ran our projects in a previous company, we put together a matrix. The 3 columns were Optimize, Constrain, Accept. The 3 rows were Product Quality (encompassing features, product performance, product robustness), Schedule and Cost. We put an 'X' in each column and row. For example, if we wanted the best possible product quality (ie, do not give in on any requirements), and we wanted to do it as soon as possible at whatever the cost, the matrix would have been: Constrain Product Quality, Optimize Schedule, Accept Costs. Discussing this matrix early in the project led to some spirited meetings. Once we had agreed on this matrix it was used to drive decisions throughout the project. Naturally there was a tendency to change the matrix as the project progresses, and the schedule slips or costs spiraled out of control. But at least we did it consciously and then altered our decision-making moving forward.
What this matrix says is you can only *optimize* one thing. Note that optimization is distinctly different from constraining. Usually our projects tended to optimize product quality, we were constrained by cost (team size) and we accepted schedule. Then, when the schedule got out of control we optimized schedule and accepted product quality (dropping features usually, or shipping bugs;-) ). Sometimes we would add people to the project (accepting cost) in an attempt to optimize the schedule, while holding the line (constaining) on product quality.
Further, engineers tend to hold a particular mind-set that disdains ambiguity and compromise.
While I might somewhat agree with the notion that engineers disdain ambiguity, I completely disagree with the statement that engineers hate compromise. Im my mind, engineering is the art of compromise, and that is what separates us from "scientists". We crave efficiency, which in turn *requires* compromises. We constantly make tradeoffs between costs, quality and schedule, with the goal of meeting requirements most optimally. Ask any engineer who has designed a product and they will tell you that they could have made it (choose 1): better, sooner, cheaper. Instead, compromises were made along the way to meet some criteria in all 3 of those measures.
First, I said nothing about standards. Our systems used standards. The problem was the homegrown, non-standard systems.
Second, as regards your assumption about how easy it would be to bang out a script to automate the nightly activity, you do not have enough information to make that statement. Now, I am the first one to automate any task if it is possible. As it happens, each nightly episode had unique twists that required some human intervention. For example, their home-grown system had, imagine this, human data entry errors. One thing I would need to do, for example, was check the meta-data for the images and make sure it matched the actual images, reconciling the differences if it didn't, before importing.
Anyhow, if you work in medical information integration services I am sure you have run into your share of home-grown, non-standard systems that needed to be accomodated.
I developed products in this space for a number of years. One big problem we always encountered was the in-house proprietary systems. Time and again we would hear "we'll buy your system as long as it can interface with this shiny, homegrown monstrosity that we developed". Of course the person most responsible for the purchasing decision (at least from the technical end) was also usually the manager who was responsible for creating (or at least maintaining) the inhouse monstrosity. To throw it out is to admit a giant mistake, to potentially cut staff (and hence reduce power) and so instead they try to make vendors jump through hoops. Our natural response was to wrap our products with integration services, which breeds a support nightmare (no two customers have the same thing) and is also very labor intensive, and hence expensive, making it very hard to justify for the projected "savings".
As an example, I once spent a year (mostly on my own time each night at home) logging in remotely to a hospital system, running migration scripts to move image data from an inhouse system into our system. Each morning I would tell the customer's technician to load a new batch of disks, then I would kick off the migration each night. And mind you, this is ONE customer at ONE hospital. And of course first I had to write the migration scripts... another sunk cost.
That's not to hard is it? Sure doesn't feel like lock-in to me
It gets pretty cumbersome if you have 1000s of files... exporting them one at a time. Hence the lock-in. Sure, if you have a smattering of files it's easy, but it gets exponentially more difficult as your data expands. Perhaps if Google provided a bulk export (save folder as... ).
After I get their machine the way they want it, with all the security patches and applications installed, I image it with Acronis TrueImage. Then I explain that if/when they get in trouble I will restore this image. Usually I image their corrupted machine before restoring so we can pull off any documents or pictures they might want to save (TrueImage can mount any image as a drive). While this doesn't prevent them from messing up their machines, it does minimize my support time in bringing them back online. And it has the added benefit of allowing me to easily expand or replace their hard drive should the need arise.
Actually I said what I meant. Your post was questioning the consistency of being pro-capital punishment and anti-abortion, which is common among people who vote Republican. Likewise, I was questioning the consistency of being anti-capital punishment and pro-abortion, which is common among people who vote Democrat. Both of these combinations reflect people who are inconsistent in their "values".
Anyone who chooses a Republican who supports capital punishment over a Democrat merely because of the Democrat's support for abortion needs to seriously rethink his or her values.
I agree, and of course at the same time anyone who chooses a Democrat who opposes capital punishment over a Republican merely because of the Republican's opposition to abortion needs to seriously rethink his or her values.
After all, they are the advertising kings and now they may have to pay royalties to Apple for the right to embed ads in their own Android OS. How embarrassing for them.
If the web were standardized... then it wouldn't matter which browser you used.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Standardizing the internet has absolutely *nothing* to do with this. The UI menu items, toolbar icons, and options available by default all matter tremendously, especially to novices. For example, f the browser does not have an icon bar displayed, many (most?) will be incapable of figuring out how to turn it on. They will rely on friends. If everybody has a different UI this becomes exponentially more difficult for them. As the designated nerd in my extended family I have a real appreciation for what confuses and stymies novice computer users. "Click on the House to get to your home page" is what they remember. If there is no "house" they are lost.
And no, I do not work for Microsoft. Nor have I ever. Nor do I own their stock.
Because that requires an internet connection. I know internet access is common, but can we really assume these days that *everybody* has it, and that it is correctly configured and connected right out of the box? Most home routers are administered via a web page, requiring a browser. Imagine if the ftp session fails to connect. Now what?
Customer talking to ISP tech support: I get an error when I select Opera as my browser ISP tech: Hmmm. What is the error? Customer: Something about "connection closed by remote host" ISP tech: How about if you select a different browser? Customer: I don't want to select a different one. I want Opera ISP tech: Well, we can change it back later. Please select Firefox Customer: OK... "connection closed by remote host" ISP tech: OK, well now we are stuck. You have no browser (thanks EU) so you can't connect to your router to check its settings. We'll have to send a technician to your home. There will be a $100 service charge. Is two weeks from next Wednesday between the hours of 8AM and 5PM convenient for you?
In order to select another browser, users must be running IE.
Are you kidding me? They will be running IE for a grand total of 30 seconds, rendering a local web page, until they choose their prefered browser. Maybe this will help. Don't think of it as IE. Instead, think of it as an HTML rendering engine. Give me a break. Maybe we should make MS write the ballot screen in assembly language so they can't push their development tools down our throats. Or better yet, make them install a virtual machine running Linux, and then have the ballot application (written in Java of course) running inside the Linux VM.
And from the article:
The problem is, though, that IE being tied with Windows and the ballot screen will be implemented as a web page via Internet Explorer. And this means that the process of being presented with and choosing an alternative browser by consumers will be extremely cumbersome and worrisome to many consumers insofar as they necessarily will be faced with a number of warnings, in particular. I'm sure most everyone is familiar with the rather dramatic, at least to many people, warnings which they receive when they download content from the Internet and such warnings would be received in the context of the operation of the ballot screen that Microsoft has proposed. So that rather than a really user-friendly, seamlessly operating ballot screen which is designed to present not some strange stuff that might come from the Internet, from some unknown source, but a very limited number of known products, specific browsers which have been concluded by the European Commission should be included on the ballot screen. But nonetheless, despite that's the only thing presented by the ballot screen, consumers will be presented with these rather worrisome warnings.
Here is the fallacy in Groklaw's argument. People who have a preferred browser will not be scared off by that "strange stuff that might come from the internet". They would only have a prefered browser if they knew something about computers and browsers, and so it would not frighten them. Sure, I *suppose* that people who know nothing about computers *might* be hesitant to switch browsers since they have no way of knowing which one to select. But those folks would not change no matter which browser they were running. So, they would never even get to the "scary stuff".
I think the only way to truly satisfy Groklaw (other than euthanizing Microsoft) would be to have the browser selection be random at startup. Then everyone would be on an equal footing. The novice computer users would end up with whatever browser was selected. Of course when they try to exchange tips with their other novice friends they won't be able to be cause they will all be running different browsers. This will make it much harder for the novice to become more proficient. And knowledgable users would very likely be forced to change browsers every time they logged onto a new machine. We would all be annoyed of course, but isn't that the ultimate goal of the "fairness" crowd?
During those years it was a very small group of developers. The need for revision control enters when the size of the system gets large or the size of the group developing it gets large. Healthcare reform clearly meets both of those criteria, as does things like the cap-and-trade legislation being proposed.
No, some things are complex. To make laws is a highly complex issue,...
A very good point. And I hasten to point out that without a version control system, it would be virtually impossible for a large group to craft such a complex thing as the linux kernel. Now, since making laws is a collaborative exercise often resulting in highly complex legislation (like health care reform), then it stands to reason that the only way to achieve its goals without lots of "bugs" (ie unintended consequences, resource leaks, missing features, etc) would be to use some form of version control with incremental, easily diffed and peer-reviewed changes. The reviews would of course be documented so the public could see the reasoning behind the various components of the laws, and the debates, pro and con, that went into them.
Unfortunately this is not how politics work. The so-called "debate" is actually more like horse-trading. I'll vote to include ammendment X if you vote to allow ammendment Y. Or we'll throw in ammendment Z to get the votes of this particular block. Sadly, openness, peer-reviewing and indeed rational thought are anathema to the political process. Instead, this is a process (at least in the US) that relies upon bizarre procedures and rules, bartering and extortion, featuring such tricks as filibustering (http://www.yuricareport.com/Law%20&%20Legal/Senate%20Rules%20on%20Filibuster.html) or procedural loopholes like reconciliation (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/us/politics/02hulse.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all). Small wonder we end up with so many unintended consequences.
How about steering-wheel mounted Nav system controls? We have them for radios, and they help people maintain their attention on the road when changing stations or volume. We have them for cruise control. A well-designed steering-wheel mounted Nav interface could provide tactile and voice feedback so it could be operated without looking down, or leaning forward to reach the touchscreen.
Where did I make the blanket statement that FOSS is no good? The topic was why people stopped using FOSS. I gave my reason. None of the reasons offered by other posters on this thread were indictments of all FOSS, and neither was mine. People have complained about usability, functionality, and stability as reasons why they switched. I mentioned security *in one instance* as a reason why I abandoned *one particular* FOSS application. There are others that I still use on a daily basis.
With that said, I'll take your bait. If you believe that FOSS is somehow more secure "because we can see the source" you are burying your head in the sand. There is nothing inherently more secure about FOSS. Developers make mistakes... all developers, not just closed source developers. The argument about there being "more eyes" on the FOSS source does not hold water. First, I can counter-argue that having access to the source also makes FOSS less secure, since the black hatters can find exploits more easily. Second, just because there *can* be more eyes, how many people really spend the necessary time scrutinizing source looking for security holes? I did it because I was hacked. Sure, once a particular FOSS application finds widespread (and potentially mission critical) adoption the code may be vetted more carefully, but for the vast majority of FOSS projects there is only a small group of developers familiar with the code. Now, in the end I think that the security benefits of source visibility balance out with and perhaps even exceed the potential detriments. But it's certainly not a slam dunk that FOSS is more secure.
As regards your observation that I did not disclose the FOSS application that tripped me up, you are correct. I do not want to propagate the knowledge of this hole on such a widely read forum.
Actually, (mea culpa) I did not. However I just went to their site and found that the most recent version (dated October, 2008) fixed a "security vulnerability". The release prior to that fixed a different "security vulnerability". I don't know if either of these addressed the hole that cost me a day of system recoveries. Frankly, the closed source application I have been using for the past 2 years (which was also free, by the way) has served me well and so I have moved on.
First, it was not a bug... it was a design flaw that was spread throughout the whole source tree. The code was awful, beyond repair. If it were a simple bug I would have just fixed it.
Second, you conveniently ignore the fact that I was hacked through this hole. So, that means the breach is known and actively being exploited.
Sure, the new application I chose *may* have a security hole as well, but the one I dropped *did* have a hole (and a big one I might add). Which would you choose given that knowledge? No, my logic is completely sound. It is yours that is suspect, perhaps influenced by ideology.
The last time I dropped a FOSS application was because it had a security hole you could drive a truck through. I learned the hard way by being hacked. Suspecting this application, I spent a few hours crawling through the source and found it severely compromised. Fixing it would have taken way more time than it was worth given the readily available closed source alternatives.
Slashdot Mirror
On this we can agree. Check out the list of nobel prize winners in medicine at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/. You will find it is about 70% Americans (who I might add comprise about 5% of the world's population). And that 70% is in the last 25 years -- I didnt' go back farther because the discussion is about America in decline and so only recent data is relevent. So the research to which you refer is still, today, predominantly done in America by Americans.
... should US health care reform go through, the whole world will suffer.
Unfortunately, I do believe you are correct regarding the future of health care innovations, because once the health care "reform" goes through the research advantage will abate. When government beaurocrats start squeezing medical providers, there will be little if anything left for research. Frankly I'm amazed other countries aren't doing their level best to torpedo the US health care bill, since they have been beneficiaries of the research as well. Mark my words
China is the number 1 polluter (and the gap is widening, not shrinking). http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_top_10_polluting_countries_in_the_world
Hmmm. Methinks you exagerrate a bit. Here is a list off the top of my head:
...[We] have more responsibility here than you could possibly fathom. ... you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what [we] know. ... And that [our] existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. [We] know deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you don't want [us] on that wall, you need [us] on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. [We] have neither the time nor the inclination to explain [ourselves] to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom [we] provide, then question the manner in which [we] provide it. [We] prefer you said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, [we] suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand to post. Either way, [we] don't give a damn what you think ...
World class: Passenger jets, Large construction equipment, Medical devices (CT, MRI, Ultrasound, Lab automation), Pharmaceuticals, Weapon systems (military jets, missiles, missile defense systems), Satellites, Semiconductors, Networking gear
Competitive: Automobiles, Computers, Cell phones, furniture
Sure, there are things no longer made in the US that were in the past such as consumer electronics (TVs, stereos, DVD players), but the list is actually fairly short, and mostly populated by lower cost (lower value added) products.
Oh, and your dismissive attitude regarding the US military reminds me of a favorite movie quote (some parts redacted; [] inserted by me for readability):
Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You?
from A Few Good Men [1992]
You've got that right. Especially when there is money to be made, or power to be grabbed/transfered/co-opted. For a great example of this, see Man-made Global Warming (MGW).
Over the years I've seen a number of these panics and I have learned to first consider who benefits from the mitigation. If they are the same ones who are screaming the loudest I become very suspicious. As far as MGW goes, the anti-capitalists and anti-Americans are quite prominant in the cast of doomsayers. Just something I observed. Did anybody else notice that the key "remediation" that came out of Copenhagen was for the "West" to agree to transfer untold billions to the developing nations?
As regards Y2K, the consultant houses were very busy publishing papers predicting doom, unless of course we did the "smart" thing and hired them (at inflated rates due to the severity and time-critical aspect of the problem) to fix it. Now, I'm not saying Y2K was a myth. There were clearly issues that needed to be addressed. I was working as a developer in a fairly large medical device company at the time. We did a thorough code audit and found and fixed a number of problems -- most of which would have merely displayed funny dates to the user. But, if the problem were truly as massive and far-reaching as the shrillsters were claiming, there is *no way* we would have been so successful in cleaning it all up. Not possible. And so the problem, in reality, was significantly less serious than we were led to believe. And much wealth changed hands.
Actually, the way we ran our projects in a previous company, we put together a matrix. The 3 columns were Optimize, Constrain, Accept. The 3 rows were Product Quality (encompassing features, product performance, product robustness), Schedule and Cost. We put an 'X' in each column and row. For example, if we wanted the best possible product quality (ie, do not give in on any requirements), and we wanted to do it as soon as possible at whatever the cost, the matrix would have been: Constrain Product Quality, Optimize Schedule, Accept Costs. Discussing this matrix early in the project led to some spirited meetings. Once we had agreed on this matrix it was used to drive decisions throughout the project. Naturally there was a tendency to change the matrix as the project progresses, and the schedule slips or costs spiraled out of control. But at least we did it consciously and then altered our decision-making moving forward.
;-) ). Sometimes we would add people to the project (accepting cost) in an attempt to optimize the schedule, while holding the line (constaining) on product quality.
What this matrix says is you can only *optimize* one thing. Note that optimization is distinctly different from constraining. Usually our projects tended to optimize product quality, we were constrained by cost (team size) and we accepted schedule. Then, when the schedule got out of control we optimized schedule and accepted product quality (dropping features usually, or shipping bugs
While I might somewhat agree with the notion that engineers disdain ambiguity, I completely disagree with the statement that engineers hate compromise. Im my mind, engineering is the art of compromise, and that is what separates us from "scientists". We crave efficiency, which in turn *requires* compromises. We constantly make tradeoffs between costs, quality and schedule, with the goal of meeting requirements most optimally. Ask any engineer who has designed a product and they will tell you that they could have made it (choose 1): better, sooner, cheaper. Instead, compromises were made along the way to meet some criteria in all 3 of those measures.
And you'd be dead wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_&_Melinda_Gates_Foundation
First, I said nothing about standards. Our systems used standards. The problem was the homegrown, non-standard systems.
Second, as regards your assumption about how easy it would be to bang out a script to automate the nightly activity, you do not have enough information to make that statement. Now, I am the first one to automate any task if it is possible. As it happens, each nightly episode had unique twists that required some human intervention. For example, their home-grown system had, imagine this, human data entry errors. One thing I would need to do, for example, was check the meta-data for the images and make sure it matched the actual images, reconciling the differences if it didn't, before importing.
Anyhow, if you work in medical information integration services I am sure you have run into your share of home-grown, non-standard systems that needed to be accomodated.
I developed products in this space for a number of years. One big problem we always encountered was the in-house proprietary systems. Time and again we would hear "we'll buy your system as long as it can interface with this shiny, homegrown monstrosity that we developed". Of course the person most responsible for the purchasing decision (at least from the technical end) was also usually the manager who was responsible for creating (or at least maintaining) the inhouse monstrosity. To throw it out is to admit a giant mistake, to potentially cut staff (and hence reduce power) and so instead they try to make vendors jump through hoops. Our natural response was to wrap our products with integration services, which breeds a support nightmare (no two customers have the same thing) and is also very labor intensive, and hence expensive, making it very hard to justify for the projected "savings". As an example, I once spent a year (mostly on my own time each night at home) logging in remotely to a hospital system, running migration scripts to move image data from an inhouse system into our system. Each morning I would tell the customer's technician to load a new batch of disks, then I would kick off the migration each night. And mind you, this is ONE customer at ONE hospital. And of course first I had to write the migration scripts ... another sunk cost.
It gets pretty cumbersome if you have 1000s of files ... exporting them one at a time. Hence the lock-in. Sure, if you have a smattering of files it's easy, but it gets exponentially more difficult as your data expands. Perhaps if Google provided a bulk export (save folder as ... ).
After I get their machine the way they want it, with all the security patches and applications installed, I image it with Acronis TrueImage. Then I explain that if/when they get in trouble I will restore this image. Usually I image their corrupted machine before restoring so we can pull off any documents or pictures they might want to save (TrueImage can mount any image as a drive). While this doesn't prevent them from messing up their machines, it does minimize my support time in bringing them back online. And it has the added benefit of allowing me to easily expand or replace their hard drive should the need arise.
Actually I said what I meant. Your post was questioning the consistency of being pro-capital punishment and anti-abortion, which is common among people who vote Republican. Likewise, I was questioning the consistency of being anti-capital punishment and pro-abortion, which is common among people who vote Democrat. Both of these combinations reflect people who are inconsistent in their "values".
I agree, and of course at the same time anyone who chooses a Democrat who opposes capital punishment over a Republican merely because of the Republican's opposition to abortion needs to seriously rethink his or her values.
It's all a matter of perspective.
After all, they are the advertising kings and now they may have to pay royalties to Apple for the right to embed ads in their own Android OS. How embarrassing for them.
I wonder how a browser gets "concluded"? Perhaps a small filing fee (ahem, bribe) is in order?
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Standardizing the internet has absolutely *nothing* to do with this. The UI menu items, toolbar icons, and options available by default all matter tremendously, especially to novices. For example, f the browser does not have an icon bar displayed, many (most?) will be incapable of figuring out how to turn it on. They will rely on friends. If everybody has a different UI this becomes exponentially more difficult for them. As the designated nerd in my extended family I have a real appreciation for what confuses and stymies novice computer users. "Click on the House to get to your home page" is what they remember. If there is no "house" they are lost.
And no, I do not work for Microsoft. Nor have I ever. Nor do I own their stock.
Because that requires an internet connection. I know internet access is common, but can we really assume these days that *everybody* has it, and that it is correctly configured and connected right out of the box? Most home routers are administered via a web page, requiring a browser. Imagine if the ftp session fails to connect. Now what?
... "connection closed by remote host"
Customer talking to ISP tech support: I get an error when I select Opera as my browser
ISP tech: Hmmm. What is the error?
Customer: Something about "connection closed by remote host"
ISP tech: How about if you select a different browser?
Customer: I don't want to select a different one. I want Opera
ISP tech: Well, we can change it back later. Please select Firefox
Customer: OK
ISP tech: OK, well now we are stuck. You have no browser (thanks EU) so you can't connect to your router to check its settings. We'll have to send a technician to your home. There will be a $100 service charge. Is two weeks from next Wednesday between the hours of 8AM and 5PM convenient for you?
Are you kidding me? They will be running IE for a grand total of 30 seconds, rendering a local web page, until they choose their prefered browser. Maybe this will help. Don't think of it as IE. Instead, think of it as an HTML rendering engine. Give me a break. Maybe we should make MS write the ballot screen in assembly language so they can't push their development tools down our throats. Or better yet, make them install a virtual machine running Linux, and then have the ballot application (written in Java of course) running inside the Linux VM.
And from the article:
Here is the fallacy in Groklaw's argument. People who have a preferred browser will not be scared off by that "strange stuff that might come from the internet". They would only have a prefered browser if they knew something about computers and browsers, and so it would not frighten them. Sure, I *suppose* that people who know nothing about computers *might* be hesitant to switch browsers since they have no way of knowing which one to select. But those folks would not change no matter which browser they were running. So, they would never even get to the "scary stuff".
I think the only way to truly satisfy Groklaw (other than euthanizing Microsoft) would be to have the browser selection be random at startup. Then everyone would be on an equal footing. The novice computer users would end up with whatever browser was selected. Of course when they try to exchange tips with their other novice friends they won't be able to be cause they will all be running different browsers. This will make it much harder for the novice to become more proficient. And knowledgable users would very likely be forced to change browsers every time they logged onto a new machine. We would all be annoyed of course, but isn't that the ultimate goal of the "fairness" crowd?
During those years it was a very small group of developers. The need for revision control enters when the size of the system gets large or the size of the group developing it gets large. Healthcare reform clearly meets both of those criteria, as does things like the cap-and-trade legislation being proposed.
A very good point. And I hasten to point out that without a version control system, it would be virtually impossible for a large group to craft such a complex thing as the linux kernel. Now, since making laws is a collaborative exercise often resulting in highly complex legislation (like health care reform), then it stands to reason that the only way to achieve its goals without lots of "bugs" (ie unintended consequences, resource leaks, missing features, etc) would be to use some form of version control with incremental, easily diffed and peer-reviewed changes. The reviews would of course be documented so the public could see the reasoning behind the various components of the laws, and the debates, pro and con, that went into them.
Unfortunately this is not how politics work. The so-called "debate" is actually more like horse-trading. I'll vote to include ammendment X if you vote to allow ammendment Y. Or we'll throw in ammendment Z to get the votes of this particular block. Sadly, openness, peer-reviewing and indeed rational thought are anathema to the political process. Instead, this is a process (at least in the US) that relies upon bizarre procedures and rules, bartering and extortion, featuring such tricks as filibustering (http://www.yuricareport.com/Law%20&%20Legal/Senate%20Rules%20on%20Filibuster.html) or procedural loopholes like reconciliation (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/us/politics/02hulse.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all). Small wonder we end up with so many unintended consequences.
How about steering-wheel mounted Nav system controls? We have them for radios, and they help people maintain their attention on the road when changing stations or volume. We have them for cruise control. A well-designed steering-wheel mounted Nav interface could provide tactile and voice feedback so it could be operated without looking down, or leaning forward to reach the touchscreen.
Austin Police Want Identities of Online Libelous Posters
There, fixed that for ya.
Where did I make the blanket statement that FOSS is no good? The topic was why people stopped using FOSS. I gave my reason. None of the reasons offered by other posters on this thread were indictments of all FOSS, and neither was mine. People have complained about usability, functionality, and stability as reasons why they switched. I mentioned security *in one instance* as a reason why I abandoned *one particular* FOSS application. There are others that I still use on a daily basis.
... all developers, not just closed source developers. The argument about there being "more eyes" on the FOSS source does not hold water. First, I can counter-argue that having access to the source also makes FOSS less secure, since the black hatters can find exploits more easily. Second, just because there *can* be more eyes, how many people really spend the necessary time scrutinizing source looking for security holes? I did it because I was hacked. Sure, once a particular FOSS application finds widespread (and potentially mission critical) adoption the code may be vetted more carefully, but for the vast majority of FOSS projects there is only a small group of developers familiar with the code. Now, in the end I think that the security benefits of source visibility balance out with and perhaps even exceed the potential detriments. But it's certainly not a slam dunk that FOSS is more secure.
With that said, I'll take your bait. If you believe that FOSS is somehow more secure "because we can see the source" you are burying your head in the sand. There is nothing inherently more secure about FOSS. Developers make mistakes
As regards your observation that I did not disclose the FOSS application that tripped me up, you are correct. I do not want to propagate the knowledge of this hole on such a widely read forum.
Actually, (mea culpa) I did not. However I just went to their site and found that the most recent version (dated October, 2008) fixed a "security vulnerability". The release prior to that fixed a different "security vulnerability". I don't know if either of these addressed the hole that cost me a day of system recoveries. Frankly, the closed source application I have been using for the past 2 years (which was also free, by the way) has served me well and so I have moved on.
First, it was not a bug ... it was a design flaw that was spread throughout the whole source tree. The code was awful, beyond repair. If it were a simple bug I would have just fixed it.
Second, you conveniently ignore the fact that I was hacked through this hole. So, that means the breach is known and actively being exploited.
Sure, the new application I chose *may* have a security hole as well, but the one I dropped *did* have a hole (and a big one I might add). Which would you choose given that knowledge? No, my logic is completely sound. It is yours that is suspect, perhaps influenced by ideology.
The last time I dropped a FOSS application was because it had a security hole you could drive a truck through. I learned the hard way by being hacked. Suspecting this application, I spent a few hours crawling through the source and found it severely compromised. Fixing it would have taken way more time than it was worth given the readily available closed source alternatives.