If software which does this sort of sleezy tactic put as a clear, easily obvious disclaimer "You are indirectly paying for this by allowing us free reign over your PC", then I'd wager that about 5 people on the planet Earth would actually install it. Instead, however, companies that do this sort of tactic either sneak it in entirely unintended, or they hide the details 40,000 words deep into a EULA which they know that no one reads, all the while promoting their "free" software. Why stop at redirecting the browser though? I mean surely there's some worthwhile nuggets of information on that harddrive somewhere that could be sold to the highest bidder. All's fair in the land of free software, right? (Why say just free though? Using this "anything goes" justification, anyone who believes that they are providing a more valuable service than they are charging can go nuts)
This sort of activity is atrocious, and I don't see how these people aren't facing the same punishment as the Kevin Mitnicks and Melissa virus writers are. Without any doubt there is a serious need for either a technical solution (one could say that it exists by way of Java : Sandbox every application to ensure it has no rights outside of its little world. The.NET Framework supposedly offers this but I wouldn't trust it until its evaluated and proven) or a legal solution. It's obvious that a "Dirtier-than-thou" cat fight is taking place with every sleezy vendor out slimeballing the next.
Hrmmm, well from you conclusion (the 10fps comment) I take it that you've never played an FPS.:-) No matter how many times that people claim that the eye "can only see XYZ", for those of us who play, we can tell you without any doubt whatsoever that there is a huge difference between 30 and 60fps, and still a noticable difference between 60 and 100. Anyways, that's besides the point.
The way most graphics APIs work is that there are two work areas : The front buffer and the back buffer. Now the drawing is always occuring on the backbuffer, and once the app is done drawing a scene it calls Flip(). In some APIs with just two buffers (the back and the surface), and with v-sync on, Flip is synchronous : It waits until the next vsync to do the flip, and during this time it can neither write on the foreground nor the background. Say for the first flip our 59fps renderer doesn't make it quite in time, so the first flip is wasted, but then on the second it gets the image rendered JUST after the flip, but then it calls Flip() and is synchronously sitting there doing nothing for the frame. At the vsync the frame flips, and the renderer starts again, but once again it JUST misses the v-sync, so once it called Flip() again it is waiting almost an entire 1/60th of a second just to be able to do a flip. This isn't something that I'm inventing, but is a well known artifact of v-syncing with 2 buffers (and it's why many people make multiple back buffers, though that doesn't work well for FPS' which can't have that latency between rendering and vision). The rendering can't "catch up" because every v-sync puts it back at zero again, so if every v-sync is happening every 0.0166 seconds, and you're taking 0.0169 to render every frame, then you'll be waiting 0.0332 for every frame to be rendered. Hence you're locked at 1/2 the refresh time.
Actually it's not. Most hardcore gamers play with v-sync disabled, which means that if your card can render 400 FPS and your monitor is refreshing at 100Hz, well then each quarter of the screen as it's drawing will be the prior frame. The usefulness* of this is an entirely different matter, but a lot of people do play with vsync disabled.
*-People play with vsync off because if you run at a refresh rate that is slightly faster than your video card, then you'll often get a framerate of 1/2 your refresh rate. i.e. If you have your monitor set at 60Hz, and your card can render 59 FPS, then it JUST misses each vsync and has to wait for the whole next flip, artificially limiting it to 30fps. In reality most games now have buffering to get around this, but you get the idea.
Is there really much visual difference between 700 fps and 135 fps? I'm not really sure if the human eye can make the distinction. They're sure pretty- looking numbers, but do the results show for it?
Quake 3 just happens to be a benchmark (and an old one at that) whose numbers are relative, but not necessarily realistic : Imagine if they benchmarked harddrives by always saying "The IBM 75GXP can load 40,000 10KB hello.c files / second", to which everyone follows that up by commenting that they only need to load 1 hello.c file, etc. In other words, for a more demanding task like the new Doom, Quake 3 with complex mods like Urban Terror, or much more complex games like Operation Flashpoint, 135fps in the stock Q3 equals ~15 fps in a complex outdoor scene in OpFlash. And as has been recapped many times in the past: We are just touching the surface of realistic environments (i.e. try to model nature in a dynamic fashion and the best boards put out single digits FPS, if that).
Wow, I'd forgotten about the Bitboys...that brings back memorys of comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.video (or something like that), and how every product release was coupled with an announcement by the BitBoys that they were almost done something that was 6x faster. It became quite the running joke.
Actually some time back I submitted a story to Slashdot postulating that spelling in general is declining at a rapid rate because we've become so tolerant of poor spelling (and spelling is by example so it propagates. Indeed, one of the most misspelled words these days is ridiculous, which by the network effect is now most commonly spelled as "rediculous"). I wish they posted it because I'm curious what others thought on the topic: Does poor spelling breed poor spelling? It is my belief that it certainly does.
You're preaching just as much as Joel ever does, so I don't really understand why you're accusing him of a superiority complex. If you are bothered that Joel has a platform, realize that it is the result of many brilliantly insightful articles that he has written (that's my opinion, anyways. Especially concering UI matters where it is eye opening and humbling).
However, I think everyone here is taking what Joel is saying GROSSLY out of proportion : There are two poles in software rewriting -> Those who approach every issue with a "we have to rewrite this piece of crap" (these programmers are common and have cost companies billions in cost overruns. "Hey Jim I noticed on that report that it's cutting off the interest rate at 5 characters : Do you think you could increase that to 6?". Then, six days later Jim replies "Oh man, I looked at that code and it's horrible! I'm going to develop a mega new reporting engine in C# that'll use an XML subsystem". Three years later the six character interest rate still isn't there. Again this is common because many programmers do not have checks and balances, and it's much more heroic and personal to rewrite the whole thing and lay a grand claim to fame than to just do a quick fix isn't it? On the other end of the pole are those who treat all code as sacrosanct : From what I've read Joel is not one of these people. Exactly as he stated (which many people jumped on as hypocrisy where there is none): He is an advocate of refactoring, which as a philosophy is entirely unlike rewriting.
Let me put it another way: Every now and then I watch one of those HGTV shows where they remodel a home, and sometime I am stunned because in the end they've replaced virtually the entire house, so naturally my question is "Well why didn't they just bulldoze the original house and start from scratch?", but obviously there were benefits to going on the existing infrastructure. This fundamental holds significantly more true in software engineering (hehe, I use that term just to bother the PEs out there) because as a discipline it is far more "artistic" and far less defined than home construction. Why, then, are so many people so willing to rebuild from scratch with no proof of improvement? I can't make comments on your specific project, but in the grand tradition of program rewrites, you'll complete it and find that now you can handle 210,000 connections, so you'll just have to rewrite it again...
I am entirely likely to be wrong, however the last time that this whole GPL discussion broke out it was resolved that separated functionality, whether as a compile time linked library, a dynamic load library, etc, does not remove the requirement that using code be GPLd. Indeed, as far as I heard there were special exceptions to the Linux libraries to allow commercial software to work on it, however if a module was a library, or a DLL in the Windows world, and it was not a part of the core OS, then it is contravening the GPL for non-GPL code to utilize it in any way.
Change always improves productivity for the short term : i.e. You fell into the rut of a certain work pattern, and when something jarred you out of that rut (ex. Internet access forcing you to change the daily site visiting rituals) you are invigorated and over the short term see improvements in your productivity. This has been detailed in many productivity books which discuss a specific example of a company that tested which lighting was best for productivity, and they found that whether they lowered, increased, or re-established a set amount of light that productivity improved whenever change occurred. In other words : It has nothing to do with the distraction of the internet, and everything to do with you being forced to changed habits for the short term.
People have had the ability to be distracted since long before the Internet came around, so this again seems like a technical solution to a people problem as others have termed it: You will NEVER get more productivity from technical solutions (apart from just the temporary improvement of change), but rather you will just move the slacking to different places. Far before the internet there were people who spent 90% of their work hours doing anything but work related activities.
You don't get it. What we are being deprived of are the improvements to our code, which is all we are really asking for in return for the use of our code.
Apparently you don't get it. Say that there's a great compression utility called gnucompress, so I grab gnucompress.* and add it to my project : Now I find a couple of quirks with gnucompress.* that I fix up, and I contribute them to the community. Now I build my giant, 400,000 line application and put it on the market : Technically this is a gross violation of the GPL, because to use ANY GPLd code, ALL my code (including MY code that is not an addition or improvement to GPLd code) must be GPLd. Again, don't say "don't use it!", because the simple fact is that I don't use GPLd code (I like retaining the right to do what I'd like with my own creations), however there are a lot of people that seem rather misguided about why the GPL is called a virus.
A virus is defined as a bit of code that autonomously finds a host for itself so that when that host is executed it can come to life and wreak havoc or self-replicate. So, by definition, GPL is not a virus.
Sounds more like you're describing a trojan. Biologically (since we're discussing the validity of the metaphor) a virus is a non-living thing that `co-opts' its host to replicate it : It cannot replicate itself. If I stick a GPLd gnu.c file in my project then I am co-opted into GPLing all other code in that project. No I don't HAVE to use the GPLd code, nor does a heroine addict have to share a needle, but the end result is the same.
If you are a programmer and agree with the GPL, you have been granted full permission to leverage any GPL'd code in your application provided you share the source of the result. If you do not agree with the GPL, take a hike -- don't use GPL code in yours.
And here is where the virus metaphor comes into play : You are bound to not only share the modifications of the source, but also the entire project which it is linked into. Note: I don't, nor have I ever, use GPLd source. I personally have no attachment to or against the GPL, however seeing the same ignorant me-too bandwagon GPL promoting rhetoric just gets tiring.
Bah, whatever. My whole point is that BSD (and the many variants) developers are selfless, whereas GPL advocates are mostly moral crusaders imposing a vision (see Richard Stallman). A single.c file covered by the GPL is a virus if added to a project (yes, voluntarily, or because a moral crusader employee snuck it in) because it insists that all other files in your project, or that use its features in a binary fashion, ALSO be GPLd : That is a virus. I'm not the first to use the term virus, and I hardly think I'm the last.
The stealing code comment is just pathetic. Yes every day I'm deviously scouring through BSD code laughing at how I'm taking advantage of them...oh wait : They are giving away that code. They WANT it to be used in whatever fashion you want.
It isn't FUD whatsoever : To use GPLd code you might apply the GPL license to your own code as well. That is a viral license, and just because you might not like the term viral doesn't mean it isn't so. Again, to each his own: And to some they think that's a great idea, but then there are people who seem offended when someone points out the reality so they cry FUD incorrectly.
They want to make sure that their idea will be used to benefit others, not hidden away in someone's proprietary software to fatten someone else's wallet. That would be absurd.
If someone incorporates your code, in no way do they make what you've actually created disappear or lesser (it doesn't matter how many people incorporate zlib in proprietary programs, you can still grab it from zlib.org), but instead the GPL is saying "here's what I've done....but now you have to give me what you've done as well.". It ISN'T protecting the original work because there is nothing anybody can do to degrade the original work. Instead it's claiming ownership over derived works as well. The real FUD is the perpetual claims of GPLers that somehow they would be deprived of their code is someone else used it in a commercial app.
Most of those projects don't plan on trying to make money. A vast majority of those projects are by people like you and me who have an itch to scratch. If someone else finds it useful, then great.
That explains the BSD license (which is a funny name because the BSD license really isn't so much of a license at all, but rather a lack thereof) more than it explains the GPL license. The BSD license is saying "Here you go world : Some source. If you find it useful then great". The GPL license is saying "Here you go world : Some source. To use it you must sign onto the Borg Collective though.". It is not a misnomer to call the GPL a virus. I'm not trying to start a flame war or to troll, but truly the BSD license is the "selfless" license, and the GPL license is asking for something in return (which is compliance). To each his own I suppose.
Re:Because online polls are completely meaningless
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IBM 120GXP Revisited
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And that's the problem with anecdotal evidence : The only drives I've ever seen fail was a WD, and it was replaced by a 75GXP which is going strong well over a year later (BTW: One of my primary reasons for going with the 75GXP was how very quiet it is), and a Quantum Bigfoot. Drives fail, indeed we hear that the industry standard is between 1-2% of drives failing being the norm. Consider that there are millions upon millions of drives being shipped yearly and you can see that there will be quite a number of failed drives (and because almost no one properly backs up their system, generally people are quite irrate about their drive failing). IBM claims that the GXP failure rates are the same as the industry norm, and barring actual metrics/statistics to the contrary I am prone to believing them.
A good parallel with this is cars : You can name any car make on the planet and you can find BrandSucks.com enthusiasts who are SURE that 100% of the cars made by that brand are the spawn of satan and are rustbuckets ready to shoot bolts at passer-bys, yet the silent majority quietly enjoys that particular car. That's the problem with problems: Only the negatively affected generally speak out (i.e. When's the last time you saw a "Guy keeps using 75GXP that is running as speedily and as quietly as the day he bought it" story on Slashdot?). Again, I'm not saying that there ISN'T a problem, but unless someone can get a major vendor like Merisel or Dell to come out and say "Boy, we shipped 500,000 machines and X were defective", then anecdotes, even en mass, carry little weight.
Few other manufacturers name a series of drives after a single technology/model series like IBM does, and few drives have the gross sales of the 75GXP series (well, I'll admit that that is totally anecdotal:-) It just seemed that everyone I knew bought a 75GXP). However, in the few times that a manufacturer did name a series of drives the same thing I DID hear the same sort of grumblings : I recall them about both the BigFoot and the Fireball.
Here in Ontario (and I believe in other juristicions as well) there is a move afoot in the Software Engineering realm.
However, I find your example flawed - No one is trying to append PEO or "Professional Engineer" on their title, but rather it is the job or task of "Software Engineering", which by my dictionary means "To plan, manage, and put through by skillful acts or contrivance; maneuver, software" : Is that not what most software developers are doing? Engineering means skillful building, and all apologies, but a professional engineering membership card means very little about the task being performed. If the value of their trade is limited by the hoarding of a word (in this case "engineer" in all forms), then that is just sad.
I take it, then, that you scanned through the summary at the bottom and then posted based on that?
It's humorous because the rest of the article was basically saying exactly the opposite: That many customers are thieves (thieves of convenience in many cases, in a world where a lot of people have a misguided notion about if stealing software is stealing), so you have to build in mechanisms to prevent them from stealing. The whole article detailed the fact that you HAVE to put in comprehensive checks and security.
Because online polls are completely meaningless
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IBM 120GXP Revisited
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Seriously, though, online polls are completely meaningless. They are swayed by rigging and mass canvasing, and that's ignoring the basic tenent that only the motivated (or bored) bother voting in the first place.
Having said that, I find this whole debate intriguing. Firstly there is the fact that the 75GXP was a very big seller (performance and value packed into one), so the industry standard failure rates indicate that with normal failure rates there will still be more people with failed drives. Anecdotally I can say that myself, and several other people I know, have had zero problems with our 75GXP, but following standard Slashdot-esque thought processes I should extrapolate that out and say that therefore no one has every had a problem, and therefore the drive is perfect. I have heard stories about people who had to "replace it X times!", but in almost all cases you'll find that they grossly inproperly installed the drive with no venting space on both sides (and this is a case with drives from any manufacturer. I had a Maxtor die and opened the case to find that the OEM had sandwiched it between two other drives).
I saw an interview with one of the plaintiffs against IBM, and I'd swear I saw them subtly shift gears from saying that the 75GXP had a higher failure rate (I would guess that that they can't find numbers to back that up, and no numbers determined by a Slashdot polling are not sufficient to convince anyone but the converted), to saying that instead this is a lawsuit expressing outrage about any failures, and it is really a bellwether against all hard drive makers. Uh huh. Now there's this article that is basically thrown off by standard marketing and reliability metrics: The drive IS made for desktop use, and desktop use is normally about 8 hours a day of infrequent use, versus 100% usage 24 hours a day for some server drives. Perhaps they simply realize that the latter will naturally have a higher failure rate so they built that into the server drive prices, but they don't guarantee that for desktops? The article makes the contention that it is a usage heat issue, but that seems a bit silly as the drive will reach maximum temperature minutes after going to 100% usage (i.e. It's not still creeping upwards after 8 hours).
Which part of the article are you talking about? This whole issue (and the article that you're commenting on if I'm interpreting correctly) is about gross, overwhelming piracy, and truly most (>50%) of people will commit petty theft when it comes to software, usually justifying it in their mind in some abstract way (ex. "Well I would pay if only they included an amazon tip jar!").
A real software engineer has to go through the same things as a "real" engineer. They have customers that want to do X. They develop a way for X to happen and then they have people implement their solution.
Personally I have always termed myself "Software Developer", however I do have to question the scope of what you are designated as engineering : I a developer is tasked with solving a problem for an HR person (everyone who a developer develops for is a customer) who needs to do X, and the developer maps out how they're going to do it, and with themselves and others they design and implement a solution, is that "engineering"? Or does "Engineering" require some set metric of scope to be true engineering? i.e. Does it have to be a customer with a net yearly income >$5 billion? I'm not being facetious, but really I would say that what you define as "Software engineering" is what about 99% of developers out there are doing: VERY seldomly is there a spec that details anything more detailed than telling an architect "I'd like a house for my 5 person family".
I think it is the opposite way around, which is that once you possess the adequate qualifications, you can complete the PE tests, and once you become a PE you can call yourself an Engineer, or professional engineer.
However, legally there are, as far as I am aware, restrictions in Ontario that only Engineers (which intrinsically means PEs) can practice "engineering", and of course "engineering" is virtually anything where there is the application of design principals. As there is a move afoot to create certified "Software Engineers", I will not be surprized to see attempts to require PE status to practice software development professionally.
It's incredibly sad how few people respect an Engineer
What's sadder is when a group of people try to monopolize a long existing basic word in the English language, using it as a lever to strong-arm government into letting them dominate particular fields. Technically in Ontario no one can do anything that could be described as "engineering" (which is a vastly wider definition than most people presume. Note that it doesn't have to involve the public's safety) without being a member of the PEO syndicate : Of course they never try to enforce these rules because they'd be slammed to the ground and lose the monopoly mighty quickly. The PEO is now trying to get expand their grip to "Software Engineering" to encourage and enforce that only PEOs can develop software, and it'll be interesting to see how that develops.
If designated "Engineers" (i.e. syndicate members) demonstrated a clear superiority in software development skills, but for you to berate some "community college" student, who may have been programming since he was a kid and can program circles around you, because of a designation is just sad. Let the results prove themselves, and software development is a meritocracy where people are less able to acquire a degree and certification and then spend 40 years capitalizing on what they once knew.
If I implied that it was clear that the plaintiff is just and the contract should stand then I mis-stated, because that was not my intent: Indeed, I have no opinion on whether or not this is a fair contract or if it shoudl stand. Instead, what I was saying was clear was that there was some communications and one party took it as a contract and the other didn't (i.e. There isn't an issue of the veracity of the emails coming into play), versus an issue of whether or not email is a trusted form of communications.
Slashdot Mirror
If software which does this sort of sleezy tactic put as a clear, easily obvious disclaimer "You are indirectly paying for this by allowing us free reign over your PC", then I'd wager that about 5 people on the planet Earth would actually install it. Instead, however, companies that do this sort of tactic either sneak it in entirely unintended, or they hide the details 40,000 words deep into a EULA which they know that no one reads, all the while promoting their "free" software. Why stop at redirecting the browser though? I mean surely there's some worthwhile nuggets of information on that harddrive somewhere that could be sold to the highest bidder. All's fair in the land of free software, right? (Why say just free though? Using this "anything goes" justification, anyone who believes that they are providing a more valuable service than they are charging can go nuts)
.NET Framework supposedly offers this but I wouldn't trust it until its evaluated and proven) or a legal solution. It's obvious that a "Dirtier-than-thou" cat fight is taking place with every sleezy vendor out slimeballing the next.
This sort of activity is atrocious, and I don't see how these people aren't facing the same punishment as the Kevin Mitnicks and Melissa virus writers are. Without any doubt there is a serious need for either a technical solution (one could say that it exists by way of Java : Sandbox every application to ensure it has no rights outside of its little world. The
Hrmmm, well from you conclusion (the 10fps comment) I take it that you've never played an FPS. :-) No matter how many times that people claim that the eye "can only see XYZ", for those of us who play, we can tell you without any doubt whatsoever that there is a huge difference between 30 and 60fps, and still a noticable difference between 60 and 100. Anyways, that's besides the point.
The way most graphics APIs work is that there are two work areas : The front buffer and the back buffer. Now the drawing is always occuring on the backbuffer, and once the app is done drawing a scene it calls Flip(). In some APIs with just two buffers (the back and the surface), and with v-sync on, Flip is synchronous : It waits until the next vsync to do the flip, and during this time it can neither write on the foreground nor the background. Say for the first flip our 59fps renderer doesn't make it quite in time, so the first flip is wasted, but then on the second it gets the image rendered JUST after the flip, but then it calls Flip() and is synchronously sitting there doing nothing for the frame. At the vsync the frame flips, and the renderer starts again, but once again it JUST misses the v-sync, so once it called Flip() again it is waiting almost an entire 1/60th of a second just to be able to do a flip. This isn't something that I'm inventing, but is a well known artifact of v-syncing with 2 buffers (and it's why many people make multiple back buffers, though that doesn't work well for FPS' which can't have that latency between rendering and vision). The rendering can't "catch up" because every v-sync puts it back at zero again, so if every v-sync is happening every 0.0166 seconds, and you're taking 0.0169 to render every frame, then you'll be waiting 0.0332 for every frame to be rendered. Hence you're locked at 1/2 the refresh time.
Actually it's not. Most hardcore gamers play with v-sync disabled, which means that if your card can render 400 FPS and your monitor is refreshing at 100Hz, well then each quarter of the screen as it's drawing will be the prior frame. The usefulness* of this is an entirely different matter, but a lot of people do play with vsync disabled.
*-People play with vsync off because if you run at a refresh rate that is slightly faster than your video card, then you'll often get a framerate of 1/2 your refresh rate. i.e. If you have your monitor set at 60Hz, and your card can render 59 FPS, then it JUST misses each vsync and has to wait for the whole next flip, artificially limiting it to 30fps. In reality most games now have buffering to get around this, but you get the idea.
Is there really much visual difference between 700 fps and 135 fps? I'm not really sure if the human eye can make the distinction. They're sure pretty- looking numbers, but do the results show for it?
Quake 3 just happens to be a benchmark (and an old one at that) whose numbers are relative, but not necessarily realistic : Imagine if they benchmarked harddrives by always saying "The IBM 75GXP can load 40,000 10KB hello.c files / second", to which everyone follows that up by commenting that they only need to load 1 hello.c file, etc. In other words, for a more demanding task like the new Doom, Quake 3 with complex mods like Urban Terror, or much more complex games like Operation Flashpoint, 135fps in the stock Q3 equals ~15 fps in a complex outdoor scene in OpFlash. And as has been recapped many times in the past: We are just touching the surface of realistic environments (i.e. try to model nature in a dynamic fashion and the best boards put out single digits FPS, if that).
Wow, I'd forgotten about the Bitboys...that brings back memorys of comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.video (or something like that), and how every product release was coupled with an announcement by the BitBoys that they were almost done something that was 6x faster. It became quite the running joke.
Definitely. :-)
Actually some time back I submitted a story to Slashdot postulating that spelling in general is declining at a rapid rate because we've become so tolerant of poor spelling (and spelling is by example so it propagates. Indeed, one of the most misspelled words these days is ridiculous, which by the network effect is now most commonly spelled as "rediculous"). I wish they posted it because I'm curious what others thought on the topic: Does poor spelling breed poor spelling? It is my belief that it certainly does.
You're preaching just as much as Joel ever does, so I don't really understand why you're accusing him of a superiority complex. If you are bothered that Joel has a platform, realize that it is the result of many brilliantly insightful articles that he has written (that's my opinion, anyways. Especially concering UI matters where it is eye opening and humbling).
However, I think everyone here is taking what Joel is saying GROSSLY out of proportion : There are two poles in software rewriting -> Those who approach every issue with a "we have to rewrite this piece of crap" (these programmers are common and have cost companies billions in cost overruns. "Hey Jim I noticed on that report that it's cutting off the interest rate at 5 characters : Do you think you could increase that to 6?". Then, six days later Jim replies "Oh man, I looked at that code and it's horrible! I'm going to develop a mega new reporting engine in C# that'll use an XML subsystem". Three years later the six character interest rate still isn't there. Again this is common because many programmers do not have checks and balances, and it's much more heroic and personal to rewrite the whole thing and lay a grand claim to fame than to just do a quick fix isn't it? On the other end of the pole are those who treat all code as sacrosanct : From what I've read Joel is not one of these people. Exactly as he stated (which many people jumped on as hypocrisy where there is none): He is an advocate of refactoring, which as a philosophy is entirely unlike rewriting.
Let me put it another way: Every now and then I watch one of those HGTV shows where they remodel a home, and sometime I am stunned because in the end they've replaced virtually the entire house, so naturally my question is "Well why didn't they just bulldoze the original house and start from scratch?", but obviously there were benefits to going on the existing infrastructure. This fundamental holds significantly more true in software engineering (hehe, I use that term just to bother the PEs out there) because as a discipline it is far more "artistic" and far less defined than home construction. Why, then, are so many people so willing to rebuild from scratch with no proof of improvement? I can't make comments on your specific project, but in the grand tradition of program rewrites, you'll complete it and find that now you can handle 210,000 connections, so you'll just have to rewrite it again...
Thinking of it this way, the whole *point* of the convention was to get Sony's name on everybody's lips
What is this "Sony" company that you speak of? I don't believe I have ever heard of them...
I am entirely likely to be wrong, however the last time that this whole GPL discussion broke out it was resolved that separated functionality, whether as a compile time linked library, a dynamic load library, etc, does not remove the requirement that using code be GPLd. Indeed, as far as I heard there were special exceptions to the Linux libraries to allow commercial software to work on it, however if a module was a library, or a DLL in the Windows world, and it was not a part of the core OS, then it is contravening the GPL for non-GPL code to utilize it in any way.
Change always improves productivity for the short term : i.e. You fell into the rut of a certain work pattern, and when something jarred you out of that rut (ex. Internet access forcing you to change the daily site visiting rituals) you are invigorated and over the short term see improvements in your productivity. This has been detailed in many productivity books which discuss a specific example of a company that tested which lighting was best for productivity, and they found that whether they lowered, increased, or re-established a set amount of light that productivity improved whenever change occurred. In other words : It has nothing to do with the distraction of the internet, and everything to do with you being forced to changed habits for the short term. People have had the ability to be distracted since long before the Internet came around, so this again seems like a technical solution to a people problem as others have termed it: You will NEVER get more productivity from technical solutions (apart from just the temporary improvement of change), but rather you will just move the slacking to different places. Far before the internet there were people who spent 90% of their work hours doing anything but work related activities.
You don't get it. What we are being deprived of are the improvements to our code, which is all we are really asking for in return for the use of our code.
Apparently you don't get it. Say that there's a great compression utility called gnucompress, so I grab gnucompress.* and add it to my project : Now I find a couple of quirks with gnucompress.* that I fix up, and I contribute them to the community. Now I build my giant, 400,000 line application and put it on the market : Technically this is a gross violation of the GPL, because to use ANY GPLd code, ALL my code (including MY code that is not an addition or improvement to GPLd code) must be GPLd. Again, don't say "don't use it!", because the simple fact is that I don't use GPLd code (I like retaining the right to do what I'd like with my own creations), however there are a lot of people that seem rather misguided about why the GPL is called a virus.
Wow, we're debating a metaphor. Anyways...
A virus is defined as a bit of code that autonomously finds a host for itself so that when that host is executed it can come to life and wreak havoc or self-replicate. So, by definition, GPL is not a virus.
Sounds more like you're describing a trojan. Biologically (since we're discussing the validity of the metaphor) a virus is a non-living thing that `co-opts' its host to replicate it : It cannot replicate itself. If I stick a GPLd gnu.c file in my project then I am co-opted into GPLing all other code in that project. No I don't HAVE to use the GPLd code, nor does a heroine addict have to share a needle, but the end result is the same.
If you are a programmer and agree with the GPL, you have been granted full permission to leverage any GPL'd code in your application provided you share the source of the result. If you do not agree with the GPL, take a hike -- don't use GPL code in yours.
And here is where the virus metaphor comes into play : You are bound to not only share the modifications of the source, but also the entire project which it is linked into. Note: I don't, nor have I ever, use GPLd source. I personally have no attachment to or against the GPL, however seeing the same ignorant me-too bandwagon GPL promoting rhetoric just gets tiring.
Bah, whatever. My whole point is that BSD (and the many variants) developers are selfless, whereas GPL advocates are mostly moral crusaders imposing a vision (see Richard Stallman). A single .c file covered by the GPL is a virus if added to a project (yes, voluntarily, or because a moral crusader employee snuck it in) because it insists that all other files in your project, or that use its features in a binary fashion, ALSO be GPLd : That is a virus. I'm not the first to use the term virus, and I hardly think I'm the last.
The stealing code comment is just pathetic. Yes every day I'm deviously scouring through BSD code laughing at how I'm taking advantage of them...oh wait : They are giving away that code. They WANT it to be used in whatever fashion you want.
It isn't FUD whatsoever : To use GPLd code you might apply the GPL license to your own code as well. That is a viral license, and just because you might not like the term viral doesn't mean it isn't so. Again, to each his own: And to some they think that's a great idea, but then there are people who seem offended when someone points out the reality so they cry FUD incorrectly.
They want to make sure that their idea will be used to benefit others, not hidden away in someone's proprietary software to fatten someone else's wallet. That would be absurd.
If someone incorporates your code, in no way do they make what you've actually created disappear or lesser (it doesn't matter how many people incorporate zlib in proprietary programs, you can still grab it from zlib.org), but instead the GPL is saying "here's what I've done....but now you have to give me what you've done as well.". It ISN'T protecting the original work because there is nothing anybody can do to degrade the original work. Instead it's claiming ownership over derived works as well. The real FUD is the perpetual claims of GPLers that somehow they would be deprived of their code is someone else used it in a commercial app.
Most of those projects don't plan on trying to make money. A vast majority of those projects are by people like you and me who have an itch to scratch. If someone else finds it useful, then great.
That explains the BSD license (which is a funny name because the BSD license really isn't so much of a license at all, but rather a lack thereof) more than it explains the GPL license. The BSD license is saying "Here you go world : Some source. If you find it useful then great". The GPL license is saying "Here you go world : Some source. To use it you must sign onto the Borg Collective though.". It is not a misnomer to call the GPL a virus. I'm not trying to start a flame war or to troll, but truly the BSD license is the "selfless" license, and the GPL license is asking for something in return (which is compliance). To each his own I suppose.
And that's the problem with anecdotal evidence : The only drives I've ever seen fail was a WD, and it was replaced by a 75GXP which is going strong well over a year later (BTW: One of my primary reasons for going with the 75GXP was how very quiet it is), and a Quantum Bigfoot. Drives fail, indeed we hear that the industry standard is between 1-2% of drives failing being the norm. Consider that there are millions upon millions of drives being shipped yearly and you can see that there will be quite a number of failed drives (and because almost no one properly backs up their system, generally people are quite irrate about their drive failing). IBM claims that the GXP failure rates are the same as the industry norm, and barring actual metrics/statistics to the contrary I am prone to believing them.
A good parallel with this is cars : You can name any car make on the planet and you can find BrandSucks.com enthusiasts who are SURE that 100% of the cars made by that brand are the spawn of satan and are rustbuckets ready to shoot bolts at passer-bys, yet the silent majority quietly enjoys that particular car. That's the problem with problems: Only the negatively affected generally speak out (i.e. When's the last time you saw a "Guy keeps using 75GXP that is running as speedily and as quietly as the day he bought it" story on Slashdot?). Again, I'm not saying that there ISN'T a problem, but unless someone can get a major vendor like Merisel or Dell to come out and say "Boy, we shipped 500,000 machines and X were defective", then anecdotes, even en mass, carry little weight.
Few other manufacturers name a series of drives after a single technology/model series like IBM does, and few drives have the gross sales of the 75GXP series (well, I'll admit that that is totally anecdotal :-) It just seemed that everyone I knew bought a 75GXP). However, in the few times that a manufacturer did name a series of drives the same thing I DID hear the same sort of grumblings : I recall them about both the BigFoot and the Fireball.
Here in Ontario (and I believe in other juristicions as well) there is a move afoot in the Software Engineering realm.
However, I find your example flawed - No one is trying to append PEO or "Professional Engineer" on their title, but rather it is the job or task of "Software Engineering", which by my dictionary means "To plan, manage, and put through by skillful acts or contrivance; maneuver, software" : Is that not what most software developers are doing? Engineering means skillful building, and all apologies, but a professional engineering membership card means very little about the task being performed. If the value of their trade is limited by the hoarding of a word (in this case "engineer" in all forms), then that is just sad.
I take it, then, that you scanned through the summary at the bottom and then posted based on that?
It's humorous because the rest of the article was basically saying exactly the opposite: That many customers are thieves (thieves of convenience in many cases, in a world where a lot of people have a misguided notion about if stealing software is stealing), so you have to build in mechanisms to prevent them from stealing. The whole article detailed the fact that you HAVE to put in comprehensive checks and security.
Seriously, though, online polls are completely meaningless. They are swayed by rigging and mass canvasing, and that's ignoring the basic tenent that only the motivated (or bored) bother voting in the first place.
Having said that, I find this whole debate intriguing. Firstly there is the fact that the 75GXP was a very big seller (performance and value packed into one), so the industry standard failure rates indicate that with normal failure rates there will still be more people with failed drives. Anecdotally I can say that myself, and several other people I know, have had zero problems with our 75GXP, but following standard Slashdot-esque thought processes I should extrapolate that out and say that therefore no one has every had a problem, and therefore the drive is perfect. I have heard stories about people who had to "replace it X times!", but in almost all cases you'll find that they grossly inproperly installed the drive with no venting space on both sides (and this is a case with drives from any manufacturer. I had a Maxtor die and opened the case to find that the OEM had sandwiched it between two other drives).
I saw an interview with one of the plaintiffs against IBM, and I'd swear I saw them subtly shift gears from saying that the 75GXP had a higher failure rate (I would guess that that they can't find numbers to back that up, and no numbers determined by a Slashdot polling are not sufficient to convince anyone but the converted), to saying that instead this is a lawsuit expressing outrage about any failures, and it is really a bellwether against all hard drive makers. Uh huh. Now there's this article that is basically thrown off by standard marketing and reliability metrics: The drive IS made for desktop use, and desktop use is normally about 8 hours a day of infrequent use, versus 100% usage 24 hours a day for some server drives. Perhaps they simply realize that the latter will naturally have a higher failure rate so they built that into the server drive prices, but they don't guarantee that for desktops? The article makes the contention that it is a usage heat issue, but that seems a bit silly as the drive will reach maximum temperature minutes after going to 100% usage (i.e. It's not still creeping upwards after 8 hours).
Which part of the article are you talking about? This whole issue (and the article that you're commenting on if I'm interpreting correctly) is about gross, overwhelming piracy, and truly most (>50%) of people will commit petty theft when it comes to software, usually justifying it in their mind in some abstract way (ex. "Well I would pay if only they included an amazon tip jar!").
A real software engineer has to go through the same things as a "real" engineer. They have customers that want to do X. They develop a way for X to happen and then they have people implement their solution.
Personally I have always termed myself "Software Developer", however I do have to question the scope of what you are designated as engineering : I a developer is tasked with solving a problem for an HR person (everyone who a developer develops for is a customer) who needs to do X, and the developer maps out how they're going to do it, and with themselves and others they design and implement a solution, is that "engineering"? Or does "Engineering" require some set metric of scope to be true engineering? i.e. Does it have to be a customer with a net yearly income >$5 billion? I'm not being facetious, but really I would say that what you define as "Software engineering" is what about 99% of developers out there are doing: VERY seldomly is there a spec that details anything more detailed than telling an architect "I'd like a house for my 5 person family".
I think it is the opposite way around, which is that once you possess the adequate qualifications, you can complete the PE tests, and once you become a PE you can call yourself an Engineer, or professional engineer.
However, legally there are, as far as I am aware, restrictions in Ontario that only Engineers (which intrinsically means PEs) can practice "engineering", and of course "engineering" is virtually anything where there is the application of design principals. As there is a move afoot to create certified "Software Engineers", I will not be surprized to see attempts to require PE status to practice software development professionally.
It's incredibly sad how few people respect an Engineer
What's sadder is when a group of people try to monopolize a long existing basic word in the English language, using it as a lever to strong-arm government into letting them dominate particular fields. Technically in Ontario no one can do anything that could be described as "engineering" (which is a vastly wider definition than most people presume. Note that it doesn't have to involve the public's safety) without being a member of the PEO syndicate : Of course they never try to enforce these rules because they'd be slammed to the ground and lose the monopoly mighty quickly. The PEO is now trying to get expand their grip to "Software Engineering" to encourage and enforce that only PEOs can develop software, and it'll be interesting to see how that develops.
If designated "Engineers" (i.e. syndicate members) demonstrated a clear superiority in software development skills, but for you to berate some "community college" student, who may have been programming since he was a kid and can program circles around you, because of a designation is just sad. Let the results prove themselves, and software development is a meritocracy where people are less able to acquire a degree and certification and then spend 40 years capitalizing on what they once knew.
If I implied that it was clear that the plaintiff is just and the contract should stand then I mis-stated, because that was not my intent: Indeed, I have no opinion on whether or not this is a fair contract or if it shoudl stand. Instead, what I was saying was clear was that there was some communications and one party took it as a contract and the other didn't (i.e. There isn't an issue of the veracity of the emails coming into play), versus an issue of whether or not email is a trusted form of communications.