Unfortunately, I think most people are just not going to "get it." I had a discussion with a friend who is the true "but this isn't like the original show, so it sucks!" The most fascinating thing about of this series is the fact that the Cyclons are now human. The pilot ended up with some great philosophical (for the Slashdot crowd, this won't work because it requires thinking about other positions than your own, I know..) ideas and plot points:
-- Are the Cyclons more human that we are? Can they have all their emotions without being socially destructive? Or, are they less human because they are so reigned in? Do they have freewill? Can they have freewill and yet also be sleeper programmed? -- Is Baltar just psychologically unsound or did they plan a device in his head? We know that there are at least one other Cyclon on board, but I seriously suspect another. Are they the perpetrators or is Baltar unconsciously being controlled? -- How will Starbuck deal with having passed Zack? In theory, this should lead to her resignation, but we cannot afford to lose any valuable pilots. -- How with the X.O. handle his daemons now that his job isn't plush anymore?
This series has a lot more drama to it, which is probably why the "old crowd" doesn't care for it. I can say that the people I know who weren't raised on the old show really like this one.
Actually, what irritated me was a lot of independant music and video was released in RM and I couldn't convert it to MP3 or video so I could play it on other devices. There is a lot of good material that has been lost in the world all because of the feared evils of copying.
Beat me to it, AC. That they locked RM is the thing that irritated me the most about Real and why I have long since dumped them. Make no mistake at what they said: Consumers should be given a choice, not people. Consumers are required to buy something to be consumers, people do not. What's going on is that they want rights for their business to not be reduced, only people's rights; thus, a captured market with no recourse but to be dependant on the businesses. If we're going to live in a DMCA world, then Real should have its butt raided by the FBI.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of things in accounting that can be view from a cynic's position. In the end, accounting is a representation of the behavoir of a company. Like all representations, it is predicated from a certain point of view. If the book keeping is done honestly then while the money may make some areas look more pronounced, it should make other areas look less pronounced. If they are moving the money towards the final month I suspect that they were assuming some of the work would be completed, even though it hadn't been done yet, up front. Perhaps it might be the non-refundable portion of the contract or something; however, just because it is non-refundable it doesn't mean you can claim it as revenue. You have to do something to generate revenue and they are now suggesting that completion if this revenue is happening more in the final month. They are being more conscious of not stating revenue they haven't earned, for whatever reason.
In order to comply with its accountant's recommendations, the company in its restatement will shift revenue recognition for the firm's Linux services to more closely follow the exact date that service agreements begin. In effect, it moves some of the revenue previously recognized in the first month of the contract to the last month, and that appears to be it.
There is a basic concept in accounting that the revenue should be displayed on the books in the same period that it is earned. While this sounds like a simple thing, in practice it can be very difficult. Do you consider the revenue earned when you sign the contract? Do you consider it earned when you do work? Do you consider it earned when customer requests work? How do you handle it if the work continues over more than one accounting period? How do you handle it if they fail to pay for the work?
Sounds like me that they decided the booking for their system was out of kilter for one month and just adjusted the entries back by one. Unforunately, it is the ignorant masses that do not understand it; they caused the price drop. Personally, I would see this as a sign that they wanted a more strict book keeping, which on the face of it sounds like responcible accounting behavoir. Take basic accounting and you'll quickly realize there are many complex issues and multiple ways to be "right."
As I understand it, they already are. When the dot com crashed, a large number of people complained to congress because while they had to report millions in stock options to the IRS. When the value had gone to nothing, the IRS cared only about the initial value. They wanted their taxes on people who were tanked.
So.. With that logic, I would presume everyone should use the write-off method because we never have a clear idea how much bad debt we should deal with? Do you follow GAAP? The point of book keeping is not to have perfect books (we all recognize there are some hard decisions about how to a good job of keeping books in order), but to have a reasonably faithful representation of what is actually occurring in the business. By treating stocks as something other than compensation when it is used for compensation and is not written as an expense, one is being unfaithful about representing the purpose of the stock. This is really no different than using Bad Debt Expense to tie the costs of written-off accounts receivable with periodicity. Just because I don't know what the value will because does not forgo me from trying.
Very true. I was impressed European law that just because someone has something, it doesn't imply that it is immediately theirs to do with what they will. Personal information by default, if I remember correctly, is sharable only on an opt-in basis. That would be so nice here.
As a student and part of business school is learning about ethical/privacy concerns. I go to a private, Catholic university that's good about ethics and doesn't over do the religion, so they very good about posing ethical/moral decisions on students. Part of the studies is to recognize international/other nation's attitudes and expectations. On what I've seen, Europe is a far more private and "American" than the U.S. The U.S. business attitude is "ok, we have to comply, but how far can we push this?" Not Europe's, "hmm, is this good for our consumers?"
Despite what most people of science seem to state, science does operate on faith. Two assumptions are taken on faith:
First, that the universe is the same everywhere; thus, the physics on earth is representative of the universe. On a side note, this implies that though a deity may have started the ball rolling, no deity currently plays a large, active roll in the day to day events of the universe.
Second, that there were things in the past that seemed impossible to understand, but have since been determined as predictable; thus, things that seem to be unpredictable/unknowable at this time are still probably determinable even though we don't have the slightest clue how to do it, yet.
Scientific faith does not rule out God, only that He doesn't regularly play in our sandbox; therefore, science attempts no inclusion of a deity because deities are not predictable in the sense of an equation.
The second part is that one can only try to fit nature to theory. Nature doesn't come with a manual. So, one observes something, then one postulates a hypothesis, then one tests the hypothesis. Hypothesis that are readily repeatable and fit with observation become "law;" meaning, it's still a theory, but people do not despute it because no one has yet shown remarkable evidence to suggest that the theory has limits or is out right wrong.
The Standard Model is a theory and it has predictions that there are certain types of events that are not normally noticed. These predictions are being tested. It's no different than when Newton's laws were gospel and people began testing things and realized that Mercury's orbit just doesn't quite jive. They will either find something or not. If they do not, it will suggest the bounds where Standard Model can predict things. At some point, people will have to say that the Standard Model has reached its limit and turn to an alternate hypothesis and start the process anew.
Doesn't quite work that way. The reason why you have problems with noise is that speakers are intentionally designed to propogate sound. When sound waves hit your walls the walls resonate and pass along the sound. The refrigerater is quiet to the external world because the compression chamber is designed exactly so that the sound waves reflect and cancel in exacting positions inside the chamber. There is no excess accustic energy left to leave the chamber. This can only be done because the sound waves generated are exactly the wave length that matches the distance inside the chamber necessary to cancel. In other words, if you could "build a wall of it," it would only stop one exact frequency. What you really want is accustic foam that is designed to stop a wide frequency range of sound. This is commonly used in studios to prevent echos off the walls that give the "recorded in a box" sound effect.
Out of curiosity, is there a reason why peltier coolers haven't been more main stream? I even have a small cooler that uses one, but it seems the idea of making it into larger appliances is something not which of thought.
Just because people are not published does not mean they are wrong. There have been plenty of cases where people have been refused publication because of political views--the world revolving around the sun being one of them that comes to mind. What impressed me the report is they targeted the issue of why it appears there is such a discrepancy in the results, not that there was one. It appears we have a lack of understanding of how to cause the deuterium to bind in sufficient amounts to palladium. Even if Cold Fusion remains a simple curiosity, at a minimum we now know that not all catalytic bindings are the same. It makes me wonder if catalytic converts for cars could be made substantially better with these understandings.
Security does not belong in the database because it removes context of action. The correct level of security is to place it in between the database and the interface through a well-defined, simple interface that keeps the context of the action secured from the interface. By treating each element in the table as an object, the object is loaded with the security of the entity at the time of instantiation; thus, even if the interface is highjacked and the object is commanded to alter information, the user does not have permission to alter it even if under other scenarios the user might have the right to do so. In other words, a database can never know why something is being altered, and an interface can never been trusted to fully comply with security.
One of the things that has irf'ed me about PC's is a lack of long term storage. While CD's are said to be long-term, I can tell you from experience that I have several original discs that already started to have issues on being read. There are some certain small files that I would love to archive to paper. Does anyone know of any PC software that would could print dot codes and use a scanner to reencode them?
1) Doesn't matter. The source is open to everyone, so anyone is allowed to audit. The "more eyes looking at it" is a good thing, since only takes one person to find a hole and report it.
2) This one is a bit off base, since by definition the programmer who wrote the intrusive code is the one who introduced it to the system; thus, it is inhierent in any system that one does not trust the programmer. That is why companies have audits. The real question is why trust open source strangers?
Trust is often misunderstood. Trust does not mean infalliable or expected to perform. Trust comes from experience. From experience, I have seen how several Linux packages are treated. There have already been attempts to subvert Linux, they have been caught, and they have been fixed. Does that mean there are no back doors in Linux right now? Certainly not; however, I have seen how I can "trust" Microsoft to fix their products. Additionally, when I have seen MS source code (when debugging traps), the programming style is so poor that it boggles my mind that they are the dominate OS provider.
Simply put, Linux (in general) is vigilent. If there is questions about Linux, one has access to verify the code themself. It only takes one person to sound the alarm. There are a heck of a lot more people to sound the alarm and have a reason to do so. A private company has a conflict of interest. It is in their best interest to hide any defects and be as quiet as possible about such defects. The question is, given the performance of private companies, why should I trust them over something I can see that is transparent in process?
Name the company that sells an OS and an office suite at 80% profit margin? Name the company that could significantly cut prices across the board because it has 40+ BILLION in CASH in reserve, but doesn't? Name the company that is inducing a loss-leadership so that eventually it can make large profit margins. Capitalism is the best system in the world, but it is hardly perfect nor always thinks of the consumer. Make no mistake, Microsoft has demostrated a willingness to own markets at any cost, especially as the cost of consumers. After all, how many companies with superior products have been decimated so that we have been left with a lack of innovation for a decade? The definition of a viable system is that it must work in the long term. The short term consumer gain will come at a huge long term cost. It took over five years before browser innovation started again, for instance.
I, for one, do not welcome our attempted overlords.
For those who are following this thread, a few comments form the responses generated:
I should have stated, I presume, that the applications I have generated are for general consumption; thus, these rules are general rules for interfaces.
Some have argued for multiple representations, like in formulas. Math is conceptual and can be written in multiple ways, which requires a high-degree of spatial orientation in the first place. The design is necessary because of the definition of the problem. Additionally, I should have clarified that those who are experts in their field are generally not experts in computers. That is why it is the expert designer's job to handle the issue.
As a problem with those who write software, few understand that there is a difference between interface, interaction, and functionality. In Knowledge Management, data is defined as discreet facts or pieces. Data given purpose becomes information. The interface, if designed appropriately, gives the user an unambiguous representation of that information (again, data with purpose). The functionality of the software is to accomplish one or more goals. A well designed functionality is independant of interface. It is dependant on interaction. The interaction provided through the interface should provide purpose to the functionality (the parameters). The functionality should return the purpose of the state in which it is currently running.
For those people whom state that they hate it when the button is grayed out for no reason or do not want the system checking if the file actually exists have been bitten by this issue. I've called this the "either you can drive technology or the technology can drive you" issue. Programmers are generally "how" people. All they care is how something works or doesn't work; thus, if something isn't working, gray the button out. The contract between the purpose of the functionality was broken when the purpose of the grayed out button was not relayed back to the user. Additionally, when the interface decides whether or not the functionality can or cannot do something the contract is, again, broken. This interplay of purpose occurs in the natural world as tangible feedback. The steering wheel is grayed out in a car when the car when the car is off. Since this the only state in which the wheel can be immoble, we learn the issue once and move on. Software often provides multiple states; thus, it becomes confusing to determine exactly why the situation occurred.
I've been writing software for sometime now and I have gotten a lot of complements on the software I write. I follow three predominant rules when designing an interface. First, simplicity. People are used to a single data representation, like a sheet of paper. Place all related information on a single page. If editing needs to occur, allow the page to be edited. Do NOT have separate pages display and edit or multiple representations of the same information in different locations. While logically minded people can accept multiple views of the same data, most users do not have the spatial orientation abilities to be comfortable in navigating such a system. Users generally put up with it because they have no choice. Second, if a fault condition can be prevented before a user can commit the error, set the interface so that the fault cannot be committed in the first place. It is very annoying to hit a connect button only to be told that there are no connection settings. Either prevent the button from being used or pop up the method to connect. Either way, do not waste user time with things that don't work. Present the user things that do work or prevent the user from doing things that do not work. This places the burden on programmers to take responsibility of policing bad behavior; however, programmers loathe to do the work because being experts in the system they naturally avoid faults and it means more work for them that they do not perceive as a benefit. Users are not experts and should not need to be experts. They just want to get work done and rightfully expect the system to make intelligent guiding decisions since they've paid for the system to make them more productive. Finally, if a fault condition requires a modal intervention (which is very rare if you follow the previous rules), then all other fault conditions that can be possibly checked are also evaluated and tacked on to the error list. There is nothing worse than submitting something, getting an error, fixing it, submitting again, getting another error, fixing that, submitting again, getting another error...
The definition of vaporware is not that things indicate that they could not exist but that there is not evidence that it does exist. I only visited a few pages because it was under a slashdotting, but I did not see anything suggest the means to this mechanism. So, does it mean it is impossible? Certainly not, just as it is possible for Ashcroft to spontaneously start break dancing; however, they have to "prove" they are not vaporware.
Throw this in with the 1 terabyte removable drive promised a year ago and the Mr. Bubble Fusion desktop units--when it becomes available for purchase then figure out how it impacts your life.
Is it just me or are people just too damned concerned about things that "could be" than "are?"
Causing fusion is, in fact, not hard to do. Slash recently had such an article: College Freshman Builds Fusion Reactor. Unfortunately, it's getting the reaction to generate more energy than it consumes, is the problem. The bubbles may heat to 1 million degrees, but a few thousand atoms at a 1 million degrees will quickly lose its heat to the surrounding billions of atoms of matterial. This is why conventional reactors have been attempting to heat a large mass that is contained by magnets--the heat stays at those levels and hopefully enough heat can be tapped away to run some generators.
It doesn't make sense to "kill" bluetooth. The standard is there, although broken in some respects. Plenty of devices have started to use it. For it's purpose of low power use and simple connectivity, it has things going for it. Bluetooth's only real issue has been cost. When I can buy a bluetooth card for $220 or a lan card for $99, which do you think someone will invest in? However, consider the issue of the exploding WAN market. Everyone's battling over who makes 801.11b, g, and whatever new variant that comes along (dual channel, etc.) The single greatest problem with WAN is that you've got the idea of connectivity, but not the bandwidth or the standard for device connection for high bitrate media. I can buy a Wi-Fi DVD/Dixv/MP3 player, but I have to have the company's specific software to use it and I have to have the local network configured correctly. What would happen if you started with USB and added in your own wireless spec? You start with a device model that everyone has already agreed on and can instantly support plug-and-play device detection. They can by-pass the politics of getting an agreed upon standard networking protocal since it is not trying to tie into ethernet. They can just create a virtual networking device driver and route it over USB and we have 480 Mb wireless networking. Intel could easily become the dead center of media-centric, wireless conectivity.
It boils down to, "who do you think they are going for?" You? Nope. You're already copping an attitude of "why would you want it to look like XP?" Reality is that people want familiar and XP is familiar. Business wants to sell to profitable segements and people who cop an attitude and can install it themselves aren't profitable. Take Business 101 and Humility 101. Most people do not want to take the time to learn something new because most people do not have enough time in their lives to do the things that way to do, much less reinvent their way of working with a computer.
Having worked on Alphas (and VAXs for that matter) in my previous job for six years, I have to say good-bye to an old friend. It was, for me, an incredibly powerful platform that did so many data oriented tasks so easily. The multitasking performance was amazing. We, for the longest time, ran on a VAX that was the equivalent to about a 486-120 MHz machine that could handle thirty developers. At the same time, it could handle thirty clients running reports. In general, we didn't notice each other. The Alphas put that system to shame. I often had to remember that I was working with multi-gigbyte files and processing them in seconds, not hours like on a PC. But, I suspose we'll have to use the "future" of PC hardware until it eventually catches up to the past.. =)
Getting high performance out of a chip really isn't that difficult (I know I'm understating a lot of the real knowledge underneath); however, the trick is doing it reliably. An Intel or AMD processor must be able change from a wide variety of states (fixed to floating to OS commands) and be able to recover from any invalid state, so a lot of the chip is tied up in ensuring consistant operations. As I gather, they're just basically making an optimized floating point coprocessor (can you say 387? I knew you could) and I can bet that feeding it bad instructions would do bad things. This is why videocards are capable doing such tremendous amounts of calculations far and above CPU's--consistant types of instructions and the attitude "screw up and you lock up the video card, so don't do that."
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, I think most people are just not going to "get it." I had a discussion with a friend who is the true "but this isn't like the original show, so it sucks!" The most fascinating thing about of this series is the fact that the Cyclons are now human. The pilot ended up with some great philosophical (for the Slashdot crowd, this won't work because it requires thinking about other positions than your own, I know..) ideas and plot points:
-- Are the Cyclons more human that we are? Can they have all their emotions without being socially destructive? Or, are they less human because they are so reigned in? Do they have freewill? Can they have freewill and yet also be sleeper programmed?
-- Is Baltar just psychologically unsound or did they plan a device in his head? We know that there are at least one other Cyclon on board, but I seriously suspect another. Are they the perpetrators or is Baltar unconsciously being controlled?
-- How will Starbuck deal with having passed Zack? In theory, this should lead to her resignation, but we cannot afford to lose any valuable pilots.
-- How with the X.O. handle his daemons now that his job isn't plush anymore?
This series has a lot more drama to it, which is probably why the "old crowd" doesn't care for it. I can say that the people I know who weren't raised on the old show really like this one.
Actually, what irritated me was a lot of independant music and video was released in RM and I couldn't convert it to MP3 or video so I could play it on other devices. There is a lot of good material that has been lost in the world all because of the feared evils of copying.
Beat me to it, AC. That they locked RM is the thing that irritated me the most about Real and why I have long since dumped them. Make no mistake at what they said: Consumers should be given a choice, not people. Consumers are required to buy something to be consumers, people do not. What's going on is that they want rights for their business to not be reduced, only people's rights; thus, a captured market with no recourse but to be dependant on the businesses. If we're going to live in a DMCA world, then Real should have its butt raided by the FBI.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of things in accounting that can be view from a cynic's position. In the end, accounting is a representation of the behavoir of a company. Like all representations, it is predicated from a certain point of view. If the book keeping is done honestly then while the money may make some areas look more pronounced, it should make other areas look less pronounced. If they are moving the money towards the final month I suspect that they were assuming some of the work would be completed, even though it hadn't been done yet, up front. Perhaps it might be the non-refundable portion of the contract or something; however, just because it is non-refundable it doesn't mean you can claim it as revenue. You have to do something to generate revenue and they are now suggesting that completion if this revenue is happening more in the final month. They are being more conscious of not stating revenue they haven't earned, for whatever reason.
And, thank you for the complement.
Sounds like me that they decided the booking for their system was out of kilter for one month and just adjusted the entries back by one. Unforunately, it is the ignorant masses that do not understand it; they caused the price drop. Personally, I would see this as a sign that they wanted a more strict book keeping, which on the face of it sounds like responcible accounting behavoir. Take basic accounting and you'll quickly realize there are many complex issues and multiple ways to be "right."
My two cents,
As I understand it, they already are. When the dot com crashed, a large number of people complained to congress because while they had to report millions in stock options to the IRS. When the value had gone to nothing, the IRS cared only about the initial value. They wanted their taxes on people who were tanked.
So.. With that logic, I would presume everyone should use the write-off method because we never have a clear idea how much bad debt we should deal with? Do you follow GAAP? The point of book keeping is not to have perfect books (we all recognize there are some hard decisions about how to a good job of keeping books in order), but to have a reasonably faithful representation of what is actually occurring in the business. By treating stocks as something other than compensation when it is used for compensation and is not written as an expense, one is being unfaithful about representing the purpose of the stock. This is really no different than using Bad Debt Expense to tie the costs of written-off accounts receivable with periodicity. Just because I don't know what the value will because does not forgo me from trying.
Very true. I was impressed European law that just because someone has something, it doesn't imply that it is immediately theirs to do with what they will. Personal information by default, if I remember correctly, is sharable only on an opt-in basis. That would be so nice here.
As a student and part of business school is learning about ethical/privacy concerns. I go to a private, Catholic university that's good about ethics and doesn't over do the religion, so they very good about posing ethical/moral decisions on students. Part of the studies is to recognize international/other nation's attitudes and expectations. On what I've seen, Europe is a far more private and "American" than the U.S. The U.S. business attitude is "ok, we have to comply, but how far can we push this?" Not Europe's, "hmm, is this good for our consumers?"
Sad, really.
Despite what most people of science seem to state, science does operate on faith. Two assumptions are taken on faith:
First, that the universe is the same everywhere; thus, the physics on earth is representative of the universe. On a side note, this implies that though a deity may have started the ball rolling, no deity currently plays a large, active roll in the day to day events of the universe.
Second, that there were things in the past that seemed impossible to understand, but have since been determined as predictable; thus, things that seem to be unpredictable/unknowable at this time are still probably determinable even though we don't have the slightest clue how to do it, yet.
Scientific faith does not rule out God, only that He doesn't regularly play in our sandbox; therefore, science attempts no inclusion of a deity because deities are not predictable in the sense of an equation.
The second part is that one can only try to fit nature to theory. Nature doesn't come with a manual. So, one observes something, then one postulates a hypothesis, then one tests the hypothesis. Hypothesis that are readily repeatable and fit with observation become "law;" meaning, it's still a theory, but people do not despute it because no one has yet shown remarkable evidence to suggest that the theory has limits or is out right wrong.
The Standard Model is a theory and it has predictions that there are certain types of events that are not normally noticed. These predictions are being tested. It's no different than when Newton's laws were gospel and people began testing things and realized that Mercury's orbit just doesn't quite jive. They will either find something or not. If they do not, it will suggest the bounds where Standard Model can predict things. At some point, people will have to say that the Standard Model has reached its limit and turn to an alternate hypothesis and start the process anew.
Doesn't quite work that way. The reason why you have problems with noise is that speakers are intentionally designed to propogate sound. When sound waves hit your walls the walls resonate and pass along the sound. The refrigerater is quiet to the external world because the compression chamber is designed exactly so that the sound waves reflect and cancel in exacting positions inside the chamber. There is no excess accustic energy left to leave the chamber. This can only be done because the sound waves generated are exactly the wave length that matches the distance inside the chamber necessary to cancel. In other words, if you could "build a wall of it," it would only stop one exact frequency. What you really want is accustic foam that is designed to stop a wide frequency range of sound. This is commonly used in studios to prevent echos off the walls that give the "recorded in a box" sound effect.
Out of curiosity, is there a reason why peltier coolers haven't been more main stream? I even have a small cooler that uses one, but it seems the idea of making it into larger appliances is something not which of thought.
Just because people are not published does not mean they are wrong. There have been plenty of cases where people have been refused publication because of political views--the world revolving around the sun being one of them that comes to mind. What impressed me the report is they targeted the issue of why it appears there is such a discrepancy in the results, not that there was one. It appears we have a lack of understanding of how to cause the deuterium to bind in sufficient amounts to palladium. Even if Cold Fusion remains a simple curiosity, at a minimum we now know that not all catalytic bindings are the same. It makes me wonder if catalytic converts for cars could be made substantially better with these understandings.
Security does not belong in the database because it removes context of action. The correct level of security is to place it in between the database and the interface through a well-defined, simple interface that keeps the context of the action secured from the interface. By treating each element in the table as an object, the object is loaded with the security of the entity at the time of instantiation; thus, even if the interface is highjacked and the object is commanded to alter information, the user does not have permission to alter it even if under other scenarios the user might have the right to do so. In other words, a database can never know why something is being altered, and an interface can never been trusted to fully comply with security.
One of the things that has irf'ed me about PC's is a lack of long term storage. While CD's are said to be long-term, I can tell you from experience that I have several original discs that already started to have issues on being read. There are some certain small files that I would love to archive to paper. Does anyone know of any PC software that would could print dot codes and use a scanner to reencode them?
1) Doesn't matter. The source is open to everyone, so anyone is allowed to audit. The "more eyes looking at it" is a good thing, since only takes one person to find a hole and report it.
2) This one is a bit off base, since by definition the programmer who wrote the intrusive code is the one who introduced it to the system; thus, it is inhierent in any system that one does not trust the programmer. That is why companies have audits. The real question is why trust open source strangers?
Trust is often misunderstood. Trust does not mean infalliable or expected to perform. Trust comes from experience. From experience, I have seen how several Linux packages are treated. There have already been attempts to subvert Linux, they have been caught, and they have been fixed. Does that mean there are no back doors in Linux right now? Certainly not; however, I have seen how I can "trust" Microsoft to fix their products. Additionally, when I have seen MS source code (when debugging traps), the programming style is so poor that it boggles my mind that they are the dominate OS provider.
Simply put, Linux (in general) is vigilent. If there is questions about Linux, one has access to verify the code themself. It only takes one person to sound the alarm. There are a heck of a lot more people to sound the alarm and have a reason to do so. A private company has a conflict of interest. It is in their best interest to hide any defects and be as quiet as possible about such defects. The question is, given the performance of private companies, why should I trust them over something I can see that is transparent in process?
Name the company that sells an OS and an office suite at 80% profit margin? Name the company that could significantly cut prices across the board because it has 40+ BILLION in CASH in reserve, but doesn't? Name the company that is inducing a loss-leadership so that eventually it can make large profit margins. Capitalism is the best system in the world, but it is hardly perfect nor always thinks of the consumer. Make no mistake, Microsoft has demostrated a willingness to own markets at any cost, especially as the cost of consumers. After all, how many companies with superior products have been decimated so that we have been left with a lack of innovation for a decade? The definition of a viable system is that it must work in the long term. The short term consumer gain will come at a huge long term cost. It took over five years before browser innovation started again, for instance.
I, for one, do not welcome our attempted overlords.
For those who are following this thread, a few comments form the responses generated:
:)
I should have stated, I presume, that the applications I have generated are for general consumption; thus, these rules are general rules for interfaces.
Some have argued for multiple representations, like in formulas. Math is conceptual and can be written in multiple ways, which requires a high-degree of spatial orientation in the first place. The design is necessary because of the definition of the problem. Additionally, I should have clarified that those who are experts in their field are generally not experts in computers. That is why it is the expert designer's job to handle the issue.
As a problem with those who write software, few understand that there is a difference between interface, interaction, and functionality. In Knowledge Management, data is defined as discreet facts or pieces. Data given purpose becomes information. The interface, if designed appropriately, gives the user an unambiguous representation of that information (again, data with purpose). The functionality of the software is to accomplish one or more goals. A well designed functionality is independant of interface. It is dependant on interaction. The interaction provided through the interface should provide purpose to the functionality (the parameters). The functionality should return the purpose of the state in which it is currently running.
For those people whom state that they hate it when the button is grayed out for no reason or do not want the system checking if the file actually exists have been bitten by this issue. I've called this the "either you can drive technology or the technology can drive you" issue. Programmers are generally "how" people. All they care is how something works or doesn't work; thus, if something isn't working, gray the button out. The contract between the purpose of the functionality was broken when the purpose of the grayed out button was not relayed back to the user. Additionally, when the interface decides whether or not the functionality can or cannot do something the contract is, again, broken. This interplay of purpose occurs in the natural world as tangible feedback. The steering wheel is grayed out in a car when the car when the car is off. Since this the only state in which the wheel can be immoble, we learn the issue once and move on. Software often provides multiple states; thus, it becomes confusing to determine exactly why the situation occurred.
Oh, and I put some paragraph breaks in, too.
I've been writing software for sometime now and I have gotten a lot of complements on the software I write. I follow three predominant rules when designing an interface. First, simplicity. People are used to a single data representation, like a sheet of paper. Place all related information on a single page. If editing needs to occur, allow the page to be edited. Do NOT have separate pages display and edit or multiple representations of the same information in different locations. While logically minded people can accept multiple views of the same data, most users do not have the spatial orientation abilities to be comfortable in navigating such a system. Users generally put up with it because they have no choice. Second, if a fault condition can be prevented before a user can commit the error, set the interface so that the fault cannot be committed in the first place. It is very annoying to hit a connect button only to be told that there are no connection settings. Either prevent the button from being used or pop up the method to connect. Either way, do not waste user time with things that don't work. Present the user things that do work or prevent the user from doing things that do not work. This places the burden on programmers to take responsibility of policing bad behavior; however, programmers loathe to do the work because being experts in the system they naturally avoid faults and it means more work for them that they do not perceive as a benefit. Users are not experts and should not need to be experts. They just want to get work done and rightfully expect the system to make intelligent guiding decisions since they've paid for the system to make them more productive. Finally, if a fault condition requires a modal intervention (which is very rare if you follow the previous rules), then all other fault conditions that can be possibly checked are also evaluated and tacked on to the error list. There is nothing worse than submitting something, getting an error, fixing it, submitting again, getting another error, fixing that, submitting again, getting another error...
These three rules have served me well.
The definition of vaporware is not that things indicate that they could not exist but that there is not evidence that it does exist. I only visited a few pages because it was under a slashdotting, but I did not see anything suggest the means to this mechanism. So, does it mean it is impossible? Certainly not, just as it is possible for Ashcroft to spontaneously start break dancing; however, they have to "prove" they are not vaporware.
Throw this in with the 1 terabyte removable drive promised a year ago and the Mr. Bubble Fusion desktop units--when it becomes available for purchase then figure out how it impacts your life.
Is it just me or are people just too damned concerned about things that "could be" than "are?"
Causing fusion is, in fact, not hard to do. Slash recently had such an article: College Freshman Builds Fusion Reactor. Unfortunately, it's getting the reaction to generate more energy than it consumes, is the problem. The bubbles may heat to 1 million degrees, but a few thousand atoms at a 1 million degrees will quickly lose its heat to the surrounding billions of atoms of matterial. This is why conventional reactors have been attempting to heat a large mass that is contained by magnets--the heat stays at those levels and hopefully enough heat can be tapped away to run some generators.
It doesn't make sense to "kill" bluetooth. The standard is there, although broken in some respects. Plenty of devices have started to use it. For it's purpose of low power use and simple connectivity, it has things going for it. Bluetooth's only real issue has been cost. When I can buy a bluetooth card for $220 or a lan card for $99, which do you think someone will invest in? However, consider the issue of the exploding WAN market. Everyone's battling over who makes 801.11b, g, and whatever new variant that comes along (dual channel, etc.) The single greatest problem with WAN is that you've got the idea of connectivity, but not the bandwidth or the standard for device connection for high bitrate media. I can buy a Wi-Fi DVD/Dixv/MP3 player, but I have to have the company's specific software to use it and I have to have the local network configured correctly. What would happen if you started with USB and added in your own wireless spec? You start with a device model that everyone has already agreed on and can instantly support plug-and-play device detection. They can by-pass the politics of getting an agreed upon standard networking protocal since it is not trying to tie into ethernet. They can just create a virtual networking device driver and route it over USB and we have 480 Mb wireless networking. Intel could easily become the dead center of media-centric, wireless conectivity.
It boils down to, "who do you think they are going for?" You? Nope. You're already copping an attitude of "why would you want it to look like XP?" Reality is that people want familiar and XP is familiar. Business wants to sell to profitable segements and people who cop an attitude and can install it themselves aren't profitable. Take Business 101 and Humility 101. Most people do not want to take the time to learn something new because most people do not have enough time in their lives to do the things that way to do, much less reinvent their way of working with a computer.
Having worked on Alphas (and VAXs for that matter) in my previous job for six years, I have to say good-bye to an old friend. It was, for me, an incredibly powerful platform that did so many data oriented tasks so easily. The multitasking performance was amazing. We, for the longest time, ran on a VAX that was the equivalent to about a 486-120 MHz machine that could handle thirty developers. At the same time, it could handle thirty clients running reports. In general, we didn't notice each other. The Alphas put that system to shame. I often had to remember that I was working with multi-gigbyte files and processing them in seconds, not hours like on a PC. But, I suspose we'll have to use the "future" of PC hardware until it eventually catches up to the past.. =)
Getting high performance out of a chip really isn't that difficult (I know I'm understating a lot of the real knowledge underneath); however, the trick is doing it reliably. An Intel or AMD processor must be able change from a wide variety of states (fixed to floating to OS commands) and be able to recover from any invalid state, so a lot of the chip is tied up in ensuring consistant operations. As I gather, they're just basically making an optimized floating point coprocessor (can you say 387? I knew you could) and I can bet that feeding it bad instructions would do bad things. This is why videocards are capable doing such tremendous amounts of calculations far and above CPU's--consistant types of instructions and the attitude "screw up and you lock up the video card, so don't do that."