Since when do programmers get bonuses? Product Manager? - maybe. Developer of a free POS for a mobile device that will mostly be overlooked by the end-user? Not likely.
FTA: ".....Seidenberg: Yes. Verizon has put more fiber in from Boston to Washington than all the Western European countries combined. All. We have—if you look at smart phones—not us, Apple, Google—they have exploded this market in the US. Ask any European if they're not somewhat envious of the advancements of smartphone technology in the US. So it just seems to me this is just not even close....."
Google may be prepared to "exit" as in get kicked out, but they are not leaving China on their own. They are however stopping censorship - the real question here is how will China respond?
From a marketing standpoint, they can take the high-road here and look brilliant and doing no evil. They are also the only ones who can claim they don't censor and you will - at least in the short term - see their 35% market share (or whatever) shoot up - while also ratcheting up pubic opinion in the US.
After reading the posts here I felt compelled to respond to several points raised:
1. "Great software developers entering the field today aspire to work on pop culture technology like Facebook, Google, and CG animated film production. Who does that leave to work on hospital IT? Does hospital IT pay well enough to compete with the sexy IT jobs?"
Yes. It pays quite well and with federal dollars flowing there is a HUGE push to implement and integrate EMR technology. There are development gigs that pay more, but not a lot more (in either number of open positions or dollars).
2. "Non technology people dictating the technology sector. Obama does not have an ounce of knowledge about health care systems, yet thinks he knows everything that should be done. It's a farce." True - Obama doesn't know about health care systems - Nor does he need to. "He" is not dictating the "how" just the "what". That seems appropriate for the Federal Government. In terms of actual Federal input - it's pretty minimal - maybe even more minimal than desired. They are certainly driving the industry in a good way (towards integrated health records) - but have not even specified format or protocol - much less the "single repository" that so many are afraid of. The private sector - rightly or wrongly - has standardized on HL7 (v2 mostly from what I've seen - too bad really - v3 is XML while v2 is a bit arcane - pipe ("|") and carat ("^") delimited).
3. Deadline : Plain and simple, without a deadline the industry would easily take another 20 years to get fully automated.
4. "I bet this is another case of the leftovers crying about investing money in infrastructure that will save them money in the long run but they see it as an expense and fight it." Because of the stimulus package no one is fighting it. On the contrary - any given EMR is now reporting a six month backlog to integrate.
"...we seem to be witnessing the birth of a new hybrid stack — open source underneath, and proprietary on top. If, as many believe, mobile phones will become the main computing platform for most of the world, that could be a big problem for the health of the free software ecosystem...."
This has been going on for years and is one of the main drivers of OS. Many - not all - companies know the importance of contributing to source, making fixes public, and are even willing to give charitable contributions. If they can't *use* OS in their products - or can't modify OS for their own needs, then OS would become a "cute" offshoot of program development.
What we are really witnessing is a whole new generation of tech reporters who must now come to terms with what "open source" really is. It's a constant, tiring, education process.....
The more science is viewed with skepticism the better the science will be in my opinion.
*Science* doesn't care how much political capitol you have, doesn't care what your personal beliefs are, and doesn't care if a new discovery shakes you to your core. It also doesn't care what the general public believes and it doesn't care if it's not popular.
Ultimately the truth will prevail - even it means turning over 100's of years of *scientific* research. At some point the clue hammer strikes and at that point there is not turning back.
The dangers of mixing money, power, and politics with science is that message is perverted, skewed, slanted, and sometimes a flat-out lie. The lies do nothing to further science - only to further funding for research in what may or may not be "the right road".
Remember what they said in "Men in Black" - "1500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the centre of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know... tomorrow."
I found that hot chocolate (not too watered-down) in a white ceramic mug leaves a very rudimentary but easily discernible "Mandelbrot" set. At least the classic image (I have no way to zoom in to great detail on the side of my mug.). The set is left over from "chocolate bubbles".
Is it possible that the lines of the Mandelbrot set are simply outlines of colliding bubbles? The 3D version of this, while cool - would be significantly less impressive than the images from the article.....
If you live in a rich-media world - iPhone for example - where you never have "just text" you can't contemplate a world where "just text" will do.
There are several incarnations of this. Mac vs DOS, Windows vs Linux, GUI vs Command line, and now "Wave" vs eMail.
Those who use "just text" know it will work anywhere. Those who are immerse in rich-media will push the envelope of user experience.
Is one better than the other? I don't think so. Will one prevail over the other? Doubtful. Will you use Google Wave or some other social networking - most probable - if only to have a look. Should you get rid of your POP/IMAP/SMTP servers? I wouldn't (and wont').
"...An interesting thing to note is this: When a computer exists that is as intelligent as a stupid human, almost every job at and close to minimum wage vanishes..."
While it may seem "obvious" this is not correct. There has to be cost benefit.
I work in a medical lab - you'd *think* that it would be more cost effective to employ robots to handle cups of "body fluids" - and in some cases it is. But as of yet, we have a lot more people than robots, not because the robots aren't capable, but because they are just too damn expensive for the volume of cups we process.
A second follow up to your post is that "minimum wage" jobs are not the only ones targeted. In fact, again in our case, the more expensive a job is, the more likely that job is to be replaced by automation when the automation is available.
We have two labs - one which requires complex sample prep. This takes an educated person many steps. "Educated" = money and "many steps" = time and together equals "lots of money" - and has been the first area targeted for automation. The second lab does not require a 4-year degree, and the sample prep is about as difficult as data-entry and pouring from a cup to a tube. Here the economics are such that it's *better* to have hired help rather than robotics.
My final point: Robots break. When robots break everything halts. This is immensely expensive from both loss of productivity and the repair itself. By contrast our man-operated lab can always do "something" even if the electricity goes out or the computer network goes down. Humans are much more adaptable that way (though they do tend to bitch and moan more).
TCO On the desktop is significantly different than TCO on the server.
On the server you would (should) be less likely to have to worry about trojans, malware, viruses, etc. This is because the "server" is *typically* not used to read email, surf for porn, or buying shoes from some random fashion website. I'm sure there are examples of this...but in general....at least in the shops where I've worked, the servers saw very little face time (as in an operator at the keyboard). On the server side, both *unix and MS have hack issues as highlighted in other posted comments (probably the biggest threat due to the social engineering aspect of hacking). But actual server viruses are rare. Net-Worms are a concern (code-red) but then again there are worms and "script-kiddie kits" on both sides.
The desktop is a different story: virus, bugs, malware, etc is rampant - especially in the MS world (but still exists in the *unix including OSX). Of course the TCO of the desktop is just one measurement. Embedded document objects (Excel, visio, paint directly into word, powerpoint, etc) may be vital to your workflow. While OpenOffice is a great alternative, it's not a drop in replacement for all cases - and that might be an immeasurable sacrifice.
Unix on the server side / Windows on the desktop (my preference) leads to it's own share of interoperability issues. They can be resolved - but not if you don't have the knowledge - and knowledge is costly (and adds to TCO).
The link is funny. I had to go through "the way back machine" in order to find the pages... My companies logo is hysterical (much nicer today). I was really hoping to get some traction with other developers... but they respond to marketing just as much as the rest of public....and obviously marketing is not my forte.
Thanks for asking... It's initial incantation was simply to incorporate CGI exectution into the browser. The idea was to make Web Apps possible without being tethered to the Internet (when I wrote this I was still using dial up - wireless wasn't even in my vocabulary).
So no - it was not a web server in the sense that it would be able to serve pages remotely. (And therefore no security issue in that respect - though disk and program access is a security issue enough...)
Yes it used IE rendering. If I were to write it today it would probably be based on the Mozilla (Firefox) code base. At the time using the IE engine was a very quick way of getting a custom browser running in a very short timeframe. (Still is by the way)
While platforms like Firefox, silverlight, Iphone and even Facebook are moving in this direction, the OpenSource platforms should be thinking about "always on, always accessible" applications.
Rather than having to "update" or "install" - apps should just "be there". Whether they are "there" or not is immaterial to the user.
Developing an interface that has (essentially) an infinate number of apps available at one's fingertips is not trivial (how do you make everything accessible, without overwhelming the user - and keep them within three clicks away?). The web will be the backbone - but the browser will not be the interface - the OS itself will be the interface.
For what it's worth, I've been a software developer for 12 years and I have no expectations that any online data is private - whether it be by snooping, debugging, or automation. The only private information is that which is not provided.
If your "online persona" is "private" and you want to keep it that way, then continue to turn your back on social networking.
Having said that, most of my personal contacts are in the IT field AND are well connected. The stereotypically socially-awkward, cube loving, loner computer geek is hard to find these days.
If you are in a business that relies on word-of-mouth, business networking, etc, Internet Social Networking is a must. If you don't need contact with the outside world to run your business - then keep yourself safe.
Do you HAVE to give up anonymity in order to participate in social networking? That is kinda the point, isn't it?
I was the lead developer at the Rhode Island Secretary of state for several years. The administration I came in under was very pro-technology and allowed the IT department to explore Open Source, web services, REST APIs, RSS Feeds, etc. The later administration was very technology leary, felt that the IT department had too much power, and refused to provide real leadership. All the hard work that made the department a leader in technology and openness evaporated in period of months.
The Open Source technologies were done away with, the developers and system guys all left, and the IT department collapsed.
It is now all outsourced with no plans to expand their offerings, and have had to scale back on existing services.
Unless your developing new algorithms your not doing anything Computer Science related.
Programming is no exception (Yes I have a CS degree, yes I develop code daily - in my 12 year career I've only come close to doing anything truly CS related twice).
Applied Computer Science is not Computer Science - it's IT. IT is the umbrella that all things data-manipulation fall under - System Administration, Help Desk, Data Analysts, Database Administration, Application Developers, Computer Science, Web Development, Data Visualization, Telecommunications, etc, etc, etc).
Computer Science is a small niche that you find when trying to optimize storage, speed, or parallelism without increasing disk-space, memory, processor speed, or bandwidth.
Writing a "for" loop to iterate over a database cursor is a far cry from optimizing theoretical worst case O() (Big O) of some massively parallel search algorithm, or developing compression algorithms that double bandwidth of existing hardware.
Lets face reality. There are people who LOVE Perl, and those who tolerate it. Those who love traditional languages like C/C++/Java tend to hate Perl. Those who LOVE Perl tend to dislike C/C++/Java etc.
JavaScript and PHP (aside from being scripting languages) are very C like in their syntax.
That's why such a huge number PHP/Java developers jumped ship over to Ruby - Ruby gave all those Perl developers a new (and seemingly socially acceptable) outlet.
Back to the original story though.... MS will do to Ruby what MS has done to Java (J++), JavaScript (JScript), and HTML : Embrace, Distort, Split.
The game-plan is to recapture market share by luring developers to the Windows Platform and then perverting the language so that developers get frustrated trying to develop for two different standards (MS 'standard' vs the 'open' standard).
Ultimately this becomes a market-share vs purity contest and while (thankfully) the OS community has been able to challenge MS - MS almost always has the market-share force.
Slashdot Mirror
You clearly missed the point.
-CF
Since when do programmers get bonuses? Product Manager? - maybe. Developer of a free POS for a mobile device that will mostly be overlooked by the end-user? Not likely.
-CF
If you enter unlocked property you are trespassing.
If you enter locked property your breaking and entering.
If you enter a property with criminal intent, you are committing burglary and trespassing.
-CF
FTA: ".....Seidenberg: Yes. Verizon has put more fiber in from Boston to Washington than all the Western European countries combined. All. We have—if you look at smart phones—not us, Apple, Google—they have exploded this market in the US. Ask any European if they're not somewhat envious of the advancements of smartphone technology in the US. So it just seems to me this is just not even close....."
He talks both sides - wireless and wired.
-CF
Right - because the math genius can relate to the end user so well
</sarcasm>
Whether a you want a "math person" or an "art person" is almost as ridiculous a question as "which is the best language to program in?"
The answer is so problem specific that without the knowledge of what the goal is, any answer is speculative at best.
If you're building a system that is inherently math based (CAD systems are the easy example) then yeah - lots of math.
If you're building an app that shoves files around and loads databases - then math is practically unnecessary.
If you're building an GUI interface to a social network app - then math takes a back seat to aesthetics.
-CF
Google may be prepared to "exit" as in get kicked out, but they are not leaving China on their own. They are however stopping censorship - the real question here is how will China respond?
From a marketing standpoint, they can take the high-road here and look brilliant and doing no evil. They are also the only ones who can claim they don't censor and you will - at least in the short term - see their 35% market share (or whatever) shoot up - while also ratcheting up pubic opinion in the US.
-CF
After reading the posts here I felt compelled to respond to several points raised:
1. "Great software developers entering the field today aspire to work on pop culture technology like Facebook, Google, and CG animated film production. Who does that leave to work on hospital IT? Does hospital IT pay well enough to compete with the sexy IT jobs?"
Yes. It pays quite well and with federal dollars flowing there is a HUGE push to implement and integrate EMR technology. There are development gigs that pay more, but not a lot more (in either number of open positions or dollars).
2. "Non technology people dictating the technology sector. Obama does not have an ounce of knowledge about health care systems, yet thinks he knows everything that should be done. It's a farce."
True - Obama doesn't know about health care systems - Nor does he need to. "He" is not dictating the "how" just the "what". That seems appropriate for the Federal Government. In terms of actual Federal input - it's pretty minimal - maybe even more minimal than desired. They are certainly driving the industry in a good way (towards integrated health records) - but have not even specified format or protocol - much less the "single repository" that so many are afraid of. The private sector - rightly or wrongly - has standardized on HL7 (v2 mostly from what I've seen - too bad really - v3 is XML while v2 is a bit arcane - pipe ("|") and carat ("^") delimited).
3. Deadline : Plain and simple, without a deadline the industry would easily take another 20 years to get fully automated.
4. "I bet this is another case of the leftovers crying about investing money in infrastructure that will save them money in the long run but they see it as an expense and fight it."
Because of the stimulus package no one is fighting it. On the contrary - any given EMR is now reporting a six month backlog to integrate.
"...we seem to be witnessing the birth of a new hybrid stack — open source underneath, and proprietary on top. If, as many believe, mobile phones will become the main computing platform for most of the world, that could be a big problem for the health of the free software ecosystem...."
This has been going on for years and is one of the main drivers of OS. Many - not all - companies know the importance of contributing to source, making fixes public, and are even willing to give charitable contributions. If they can't *use* OS in their products - or can't modify OS for their own needs, then OS would become a "cute" offshoot of program development.
What we are really witnessing is a whole new generation of tech reporters who must now come to terms with what "open source" really is. It's a constant, tiring, education process.....
-CF
The more science is viewed with skepticism the better the science will be in my opinion.
*Science* doesn't care how much political capitol you have, doesn't care what your personal beliefs are, and doesn't care if a new discovery shakes you to your core. It also doesn't care what the general public believes and it doesn't care if it's not popular.
Ultimately the truth will prevail - even it means turning over 100's of years of *scientific* research. At some point the clue hammer strikes and at that point there is not turning back.
The dangers of mixing money, power, and politics with science is that message is perverted, skewed, slanted, and sometimes a flat-out lie. The lies do nothing to further science - only to further funding for research in what may or may not be "the right road".
Remember what they said in "Men in Black" - "1500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the centre of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know... tomorrow."
I found that hot chocolate (not too watered-down) in a white ceramic mug leaves a very rudimentary but easily discernible "Mandelbrot" set. At least the classic image (I have no way to zoom in to great detail on the side of my mug.). The set is left over from "chocolate bubbles".
Is it possible that the lines of the Mandelbrot set are simply outlines of colliding bubbles? The 3D version of this, while cool - would be significantly less impressive than the images from the article.....
-CF
If you live in a rich-media world - iPhone for example - where you never have "just text" you can't contemplate a world where "just text" will do.
There are several incarnations of this. Mac vs DOS, Windows vs Linux, GUI vs Command line, and now "Wave" vs eMail.
Those who use "just text" know it will work anywhere. Those who are immerse in rich-media will push the envelope of user experience.
Is one better than the other? I don't think so. Will one prevail over the other? Doubtful. Will you use Google Wave or some other social networking - most probable - if only to have a look. Should you get rid of your POP/IMAP/SMTP servers? I wouldn't (and wont').
-CF
My freshman year at CSU the CS department retired their Cyber Mainframe running NOS. We joked that it stood for "No OS".
You can find an emulator for the Cyber - even so it doesn't come with the OS (in this case it is truely "No OS"):
http://members.iinet.net.au/~tom-hunter/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_Cyber
-CF
The original Palm OS (and maybe even through today?) is an OS with a DB filesystem. Personally I found it a pain in the ass to program.
-CF
Who said you can't beat free?
"...An interesting thing to note is this: When a computer exists that is as intelligent as a stupid human, almost every job at and close to minimum wage vanishes..."
While it may seem "obvious" this is not correct. There has to be cost benefit.
I work in a medical lab - you'd *think* that it would be more cost effective to employ robots to handle cups of "body fluids" - and in some cases it is. But as of yet, we have a lot more people than robots, not because the robots aren't capable, but because they are just too damn expensive for the volume of cups we process.
A second follow up to your post is that "minimum wage" jobs are not the only ones targeted. In fact, again in our case, the more expensive a job is, the more likely that job is to be replaced by automation when the automation is available.
We have two labs - one which requires complex sample prep. This takes an educated person many steps. "Educated" = money and "many steps" = time and together equals "lots of money" - and has been the first area targeted for automation. The second lab does not require a 4-year degree, and the sample prep is about as difficult as data-entry and pouring from a cup to a tube. Here the economics are such that it's *better* to have hired help rather than robotics.
My final point:
Robots break. When robots break everything halts. This is immensely expensive from both loss of productivity and the repair itself. By contrast our man-operated lab can always do "something" even if the electricity goes out or the computer network goes down. Humans are much more adaptable that way (though they do tend to bitch and moan more).
-CF
TCO On the desktop is significantly different than TCO on the server.
On the server you would (should) be less likely to have to worry about trojans, malware, viruses, etc. This is because the "server" is *typically* not used to read email, surf for porn, or buying shoes from some random fashion website. I'm sure there are examples of this...but in general....at least in the shops where I've worked, the servers saw very little face time (as in an operator at the keyboard). On the server side, both *unix and MS have hack issues as highlighted in other posted comments (probably the biggest threat due to the social engineering aspect of hacking). But actual server viruses are rare. Net-Worms are a concern (code-red) but then again there are worms and "script-kiddie kits" on both sides.
The desktop is a different story: virus, bugs, malware, etc is rampant - especially in the MS world (but still exists in the *unix including OSX). Of course the TCO of the desktop is just one measurement. Embedded document objects (Excel, visio, paint directly into word, powerpoint, etc) may be vital to your workflow. While OpenOffice is a great alternative, it's not a drop in replacement for all cases - and that might be an immeasurable sacrifice.
Unix on the server side / Windows on the desktop (my preference) leads to it's own share of interoperability issues. They can be resolved - but not if you don't have the knowledge - and knowledge is costly (and adds to TCO).
-CF
No... But now there is proof of prior art LOL....
The link is funny. I had to go through "the way back machine" in order to find the pages... My companies logo is hysterical (much nicer today). I was really hoping to get some traction with other developers... but they respond to marketing just as much as the rest of public....and obviously marketing is not my forte.
-CF
Thanks for asking... It's initial incantation was simply to incorporate CGI exectution into the browser. The idea was to make Web Apps possible without being tethered to the Internet (when I wrote this I was still using dial up - wireless wasn't even in my vocabulary).
So no - it was not a web server in the sense that it would be able to serve pages remotely. (And therefore no security issue in that respect - though disk and program access is a security issue enough...)
Yes it used IE rendering. If I were to write it today it would probably be based on the Mozilla (Firefox) code base. At the time using the IE engine was a very quick way of getting a custom browser running in a very short timeframe. (Still is by the way)
-CF
The "Fishbowl" browser had an integrated web server.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010502014727/chronofish.com/FishBowl/
-CF
Not that anybody asked....
While platforms like Firefox, silverlight, Iphone and even Facebook are moving in this direction, the OpenSource platforms should be thinking about "always on, always accessible" applications.
Rather than having to "update" or "install" - apps should just "be there". Whether they are "there" or not is immaterial to the user.
Developing an interface that has (essentially) an infinate number of apps available at one's fingertips is not trivial (how do you make everything accessible, without overwhelming the user - and keep them within three clicks away?). The web will be the backbone - but the browser will not be the interface - the OS itself will be the interface.
-CF
For what it's worth, I've been a software developer for 12 years and I have no expectations that any online data is private - whether it be by snooping, debugging, or automation. The only private information is that which is not provided.
If your "online persona" is "private" and you want to keep it that way, then continue to turn your back on social networking.
Having said that, most of my personal contacts are in the IT field AND are well connected. The stereotypically socially-awkward, cube loving, loner computer geek is hard to find these days.
If you are in a business that relies on word-of-mouth, business networking, etc, Internet Social Networking is a must. If you don't need contact with the outside world to run your business - then keep yourself safe.
Do you HAVE to give up anonymity in order to participate in social networking? That is kinda the point, isn't it?
-CF
I was the lead developer at the Rhode Island Secretary of state for several years. The administration I came in under was very pro-technology and allowed the IT department to explore Open Source, web services, REST APIs, RSS Feeds, etc. The later administration was very technology leary, felt that the IT department had too much power, and refused to provide real leadership. All the hard work that made the department a leader in technology and openness evaporated in period of months.
The Open Source technologies were done away with, the developers and system guys all left, and the IT department collapsed.
It is now all outsourced with no plans to expand their offerings, and have had to scale back on existing services.
I loved it till I hated it.
-CF
Unless your developing new algorithms your not doing anything Computer Science related.
Programming is no exception (Yes I have a CS degree, yes I develop code daily - in my 12 year career I've only come close to doing anything truly CS related twice).
Applied Computer Science is not Computer Science - it's IT. IT is the umbrella that all things data-manipulation fall under - System Administration, Help Desk, Data Analysts, Database Administration, Application Developers, Computer Science, Web Development, Data Visualization, Telecommunications, etc, etc, etc).
Computer Science is a small niche that you find when trying to optimize storage, speed, or parallelism without increasing disk-space, memory, processor speed, or bandwidth.
Writing a "for" loop to iterate over a database cursor is a far cry from optimizing theoretical worst case O() (Big O) of some massively parallel search algorithm, or developing compression algorithms that double bandwidth of existing hardware.
-CF
Lets face reality. There are people who LOVE Perl, and those who tolerate it. Those who love traditional languages like C/C++/Java tend to hate Perl. Those who LOVE Perl tend to dislike C/C++/Java etc.
JavaScript and PHP (aside from being scripting languages) are very C like in their syntax.
That's why such a huge number PHP/Java developers jumped ship over to Ruby - Ruby gave all those Perl developers a new (and seemingly socially acceptable) outlet.
Back to the original story though.... MS will do to Ruby what MS has done to Java (J++), JavaScript (JScript), and HTML : Embrace, Distort, Split.
The game-plan is to recapture market share by luring developers to the Windows Platform and then perverting the language so that developers get frustrated trying to develop for two different standards (MS 'standard' vs the 'open' standard).
Ultimately this becomes a market-share vs purity contest and while (thankfully) the OS community has been able to challenge MS - MS almost always has the market-share force.
-CF
A miniature token ring.... That went over well for IBM...
-CF