I agree with the mods, but remember that copyright was developed in order to create markets where none might exist because creators had no good way to capitalize their creations. Copyright may be waaaaaay outdated, but it wasn't developed just on the off-chance that it would piss off a lot of Gen Xers a few hundred years later... though that might have been a good rationale for it, too.
Amen! How many of us have had coworkers or bosses who would follow us into the lavatory and try to continue a discussion while "on break"?
My response: there's a reason they call it a "break".
If this trend isn't stopped, then "Mr. Poopypants" (above) will in the future refer to a new clothing line consisting -- literally! -- of a series of tubes (marketed under a hip label like TSteve, no doubt).
I like the fact that Adblock is a choice and not a built-in feature. Maybe the suggestion was to make it a built-in option that could be turned on or off? Anyway, choice is usually good. A lot of people (myself included) don't like television ads, but they also don't like pay-per-view. Someone's gotta pay for content.
I wouldn't mind the lack of commercial-skip on my DVR remote, if Comcast hadn't used the rock-bottom bidder to make the thing. Yes, a commercial-skip button would be nice but the FF feature, if it worked half-way reasonably, would be an ok compromise. I'll just keep triangulating and convince myself that I'm still saving time...
There was a lot of hype during the run 'n' gun days about how free content would pay for itself, and not just through advertising. But it seems to me that advertising is the dominant model for paying for content. The donations model might work for some areas (a few FOSS projects), but the other models seem somewhat utopian. Does anyone have any data on other models to pay for content -- i.e., how well are subscription services faring, etc.?
I'm planning to develop a "no banners" banner for my site, when I overcome my procrastination...
I figured I'd check out the source behind the source and visit the DARPA web site. I got curious and decided to check out their latest budget estimate. What a peach! The "overview" looks like mainframe printout, which of course spills onto a second page (where you'd find the total DARPA budget of $3.3 Billion for FY07. The details that follow (interrupted by a couple of marketing pages on the theme "ExpectMore.gov") make it pretty difficult to connect the dots -- and of course these are just the unclassified dots. Starting from the top budget line on bureaucratic formatted stationery, the details break down the line items, but the detail lines themselves are all found on separate pages, with text explanation in between. I guess they could have made it harder to interpret, but it would take some creative thinking to do so.
My situation is not very close to your examples, but since shame is a major factor, I'll discuss it, to see what you think.
My wife was an unwed mother. Maybe no one here recalls, but in the 1980s, shame was a popular public policy response to single motherhood. Before the discussion tilts to what people think of out-of-wedlock births, let me just say that my wife and I see both sides of that, and we're certainly not "pro single parenthood". That seems to be one of the popular "liberal" responses to "conservative" shame. Trust me; it's not that simple.
My point is simply that shame in this context is not particularly useful and certainly not simple. Consider just for a second the impact that shame has on the children of single parents. Believe me, it can be devastating. I don't think that's the effect the "pro shame" crowd has in mind, but it's real, and I doubt that this is the only issue where that's true. Consider the wife and kids of the drunken pisser discussed elsewhere in this thread.
I do sympathize, but I think shame has to have limits. I also believe that a lot of shame-mongers would not want the cameras turned on their own personal demons. I've never managed to finish the The Scarlet Letter (four separate attempts), but I'm sure it's relevant here.
Maybe you can have the cake and eat it at the same time if you pre-blame others for anything that might (and probably will) go wrong in the future. I think this is just a preemptive PR strike by a company that has always been savvier about marketing than about technology, because that's where the money is.
Thx to all four replies for my own mini Ask Slashdot. I didn't know what those technical descriptions meant. And thx for not assuming I was trolling; I was truly unenlightened.
Before you post on Slashdot....shouldn't you verify that you.....read TFA?
Yes, everyone with a perspective different from yours is an uninformed troll. If only we would all have the same interpretation of the TFA as you, the world would be so much better. How arrogant can you get? I read TFA, but I was commenting about the extended discussion about a different aspect of both TFA and the/. thread. In fact, I think it's pretty clear that I was commenting more about the literature discussion than I was about TFA.
OLPC is an educational tool to be distributed through a local educational system. It will be used in conjuction with teachers in classroom activities.
So, by definition, the existing local educational systems are experts on teaching kids how to read? How well have they done so far? Oh, the only thing holding back the incredibly talented teachers and the equally gifted kids (not to mention the selfless bureaucratic heroes in these places) is access to technology? And it's a laptop design because it won't be taken out of the classroom? I see... I guess I didn't read TFA, at least not the one in your head.
Again, I have not indicated in my post(s) that I think OLPC is a bad idea. I'm questioning the logic of focussing on which specific content to install on it, rather than more fundamental questions like whether the machines will even be used in ways that OLPC anticipates. The coke bottle from The Gods Must Be Crazy comes to mind. And, before you rip me a new one for naivete about conditions in the undeveloped world, no, I don't assume that the entire developing world looks like that or even that the Kalahari (IIRC) looks like that. But I do assume that people from radically different cultures will interpret our ubiquitous objects (like PCs) quite differently from the way we interpret them. I assume that the way they interpret them will be heavily influenced by how they are introduced to them and how they are trained to use them. Lastly, from my experience with bureaucracy here in the bastion of capitalism, I assume that the way they are actually trained, on the ground, so to speak, will differ from the vision of how they "ought" to be trained, as designed "in the lab", so to speak. Imagine the children's game of Telephone, but the "caller" is Nicholas Negroponte and the receiver is a 5-year old in some remote jungle. In between are various operatives from OLPC, bureaucrats along the distribution chain (about which I've commented elsewhere), bureaucrats along the educational management chain, and of course, the local teachers. Why would we assume that the vision so eloquently expressed by Negroponte would reach its destination ungarbled?
I still think this is an exciting and promising venture, but I remain skeptical about utopian implementation predictions.
This argument is kind of like the other typical slashdotter OLPC canard
Nowhere in my post(s) have I indicated that I don't think this cannot work. Again, I was mainly commenting that other factors are more important than which piece of great literature inspired little Johnny (or Janey) Middleclass on his incredibly significant intellectual journey here in DevelopedWorld.
The developing world is not all alike. There are levels and levels, with different needs. OLPC is aimed at some and not others. But most people have never been "there" (be it Vietnam or Kenya), and just have a cartoon vision of what it's like. That would be like, uhm, projecting from inexperience.
Really? I never would have guessed that. Thanks for enlightening me. No, I've never been to those places, but your implication that you have greater insight than I do is a bit arrogant. Because I, too, read, I'm aware that lots of experts have, in fact been to those places, etc. I'm pretty sure I was also aware that "those places" encompass a range of environments. Nowhere in my post(s) have I indicated that I thought they were homogeneous. In fact, nowhere in my post(s) have I indicated anything whatsoever about their similarities or differences, period.
An abundance of (interesting) reading material is a pretty fundamental tool in developing literacy.
I agree; but I didn't learn to read just by sitting next to a pile of books. People read to me, etc. Note that I didn't claim putting books on the machine was a bad idea. I'm just questioning whether it's sufficient and also pointing out that the discussion of which specific literature might be best, regardless of whether it shows how erudite other posters might have been as wunderkinds.
TFA indicates that the UI is language-free.
TFA was also not written by anyone with experience teaching children in developing countries how to read. I'm not one of those, either. I'm just suggesting that consultation with those types of experts seems more important than, again, debating which specific sophisticated literature was most important to which specific child genius here in the developed world. Also, language-free doesn't mean culture-free. That doesn't mean it won't work, just that such basic considerations might be key determinants in the success of the concept. I'll bet you don't have any trouble mapping objects on your Windows screen to "objects" of your intellectual domain. I don't really know which of them is too tightly bound to developed-economy culture to be meaningful to an illiterate child in Libya, but it wouldn't surprise me if some meaningful fraction of them don't find the icons "intuitive".
I posted this comment mostly because I saw the thread running into the realm of "well, when I was 2 months old, I read...", which has little to do with the prospects for educating the developing economies, as a public policy proposition. I'm sure 20 years from now, some superstar rags-to-riches success story will in fact be profiled as having been inspired in his/her journey to the top of the Fortune Global 1000 by reading Ayn Rand on his hand-cranked PC. But the masses won't be educated simply by putting books on the machine (again, something that I think seems like a pretty good idea, but not a sufficient one in and of itself).
Related response to the next criticism of my OP...
From TFA: "One way that costs are being kept down is to deliver the units en-masse to governments for delivery along the same channel as they currently use for textbooks, keeping the OLPC out of the distribution business. 'If we were selling this laptop through normal consumer channels, it would be more like a $250 laptop.'"
My guess is that the implicit $150 "savings" in distribution cost -- which is a cost shift (to developing economies) and not a cost savings -- is based on distribution costs in developed economies. I would expect distribution costs to be higher in developing economies, simply because, by definition, they don't have the infrastructure comparable to developed economies. (Yes, that's why we call them "developed"!)
Of course, if the purchasing governments simply distribute the units without regard to politics or greed, maybe they'll have lower costs, but it seems more likely that the costs that OLPC has shifted to the governments of developing economies will be shifted downstream, one way or another. "Yes, we have laptops for everyone, but you must come to Tripoli to pick them up."
and before we worry about delivery method... shouldn't someone verify that the target user can... read? Literacy rates in the target countries are probably not what they are in the developed economies. Before worrying about distributing text books, OLPC hopefully will figure out how to overcome the possible problem that the user can't understand anything but the picture on the screen. And if the pictures on the screen resemble a "desktop", would that have any meaning to a typical user?
According to TFA: "In general, the XO uses what Bletsas calls 'Extreme Suspend,' going to sleep after two seconds of inactivity, but waking up within 300 milliseconds of an action."
When I'm reading something online, I don't scroll more frequently than two seconds. I would probably find something else to do if I had to keep jogging the touch pad to keep the display active. Maybe I'm misinterpreting this?
I agree with the mod-ups, but I still have some serious issues with your analogy:
When an architect goes to design a building, the requirements are fixed before he starts.... Sometimes that requires back-and-forth between the client and the architect to get everything clear, but it all happens before major design work begins.
IANAA, but that just doesn't sound accurate, especially when dealing with bigger projects. I think the architect (in reality, a team of architects) usually spends a great deal of time and effort working with the client to define and revise requirements. How else could it get done? The client has no expertise but knows he wants a great big building. He knows he wants things like a big atrium or skylights or modular offices or... The [good] architect knows a lot about not only what features are possible but what they cost and good ways to arrange them (like the things you mentioned) But, the requirements definition process needs a lot of interplay between the architect and the client -- and I think your analogy more or less supports this, so I don't think we're in much of a disagreement. I just think you oversimplified your analogy because we'd all like things to be linear. I think meaningful architecture probably always requires back-and-forth between the client and the architect to get everything clear, and that is an essential part of "major design work", at least in terms of value-added.
If the client can't decide what he wants, the architect just goes "Fine, call me when you decide what you want.".
Well, in my experience, any professional (from architect to plumber) who takes this attitude rather than soliciting input and guiding the client, usually doesn't get that call later. I know they never get that call from me.
There isn't a single standard floor-plan for a single-family 3-bedroom house
Actually, there are tons of cookie-cutter floorplans for single-family 3-bedroom homes, which is part of what has driven the rise of large-scale home builders in the U.S. It's no longer a cottage industry (sorry, intentional), and in fact the widespread availability of standard plans is a positive factor imho (lowers cost). However, I think the single-family 3-bedroom home is the analogy for the "easy" development project, not for the hard ones. For example, a client who wants an intranet that has discussion forums, shared links, maybe a few other similar features... can choose from a ton of off-the-shelf content management systems ("portals", or whatever the hell anyone wants to call them... still lots of cookie-cutter systems available). Yes, I know that the client might also want features not available in the off-the-shelf systems, but that's like the home buyer who wants a marble kitchen island and an oversize master bath suite... and the analogy moves more toward the big project. We just don't hear about the easy IT projects, because they're, well, easy.
You're still dead-on balls accurate about the way IT requirements change after design.
Also, what percentage of employees in general lie? If it's 50%, then bosses are more honest than their reports. There are survey/statistical techniques for addressing whether or not people lie about a specific issue/question. Unfortunately, I forget the details, but it's clear this study doesn't even consider them. One technique involve asking pairs of questions where the average response for one of the questions is well-known and stable, like, "are you right-handed?". Assuming that the known answer is uncorrelated with the question of interest allows for an estimate of the question to which people might not want to answer truthfully, like, "have you stopped beating your spouse?". Ok, not quite, but that's the gist.
I've butchered the illustration, of course, but FSU isn't paying me the big bucks.
Acting as an advocate for the people who worked for me didn't seem to help them or me much. As a middle manager, you can try to be a good boss, but if the management above you doesn't do the same, it can backfire. My boss's boss eventually forced me out of the company after a very successful two years as leader of the development group. I was pretty proud of those two years, especially since I had never managed a development team (I came from the marketing/strategy side). My reward for succeeding in a difficult situation was a modest settlement package. My boss's boss wasted $40 million over a few years (typical dot-com story; product worked but nobody wanted to buy it), and of course got promoted when the business was "merged" back into the parent company. AFAIK, the people who worked for me liked me well enough as a boss, but they certainly weren't in any position to help me when I became the bullseye. They all did fine, because our projects were delivered on time and within budget (ok, not quite typical dot-com?). I don't think I'll be able to do it, but I understand why some people "manage up".
I vote you get Word of the Day credit for "defalcation". Most definitions specify that it relates to misuse or embezzlement of money or funds, however, so I'm not sure it's quite the right term in this context. Still, Word of the Day props to you!
the only way the machines can put votes where malicious programs want (IF they're infected) is if someone votes
Well, I know diddly squat about the details of the machines, but would they not have or connect to a database in some fashion? If so, how would a vote be the only way to trigger a fraudulent action? Even if there's no database involved, why couldn't a clock trigger a fraudulent action? I'm no computer expert, but don't most of them have clocks?
simply to have the voting machine print human- and machine-readable ballots
This is essentially what reasonable (non-Florida) balloting looked like before "e-voting". Except that the voter was part of the "voting machine" and filled in little circles. Those are machine-readable, and there's no need to compare the machine readable ballot to the human-readable ballot, because they are the same ballot.
As I've said before, e-voting is a bad solution to a problem that didn't really exist.
IIRC, a small but non-negligible percentage of comrades in the old Soviet Union would leave ballots blank, as that was the only feasible protest in one-candidate elections. It would make the news every now and then because someone would win by only 90% or something like that, which was considered a "defeat" in some sense.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with the mods, but remember that copyright was developed in order to create markets where none might exist because creators had no good way to capitalize their creations. Copyright may be waaaaaay outdated, but it wasn't developed just on the off-chance that it would piss off a lot of Gen Xers a few hundred years later ... though that might have been a good rationale for it, too.
Fix copyright; don't ignore it.
Dont you know anything about the internet?
I believe you meant "the interwebs".
Amen! How many of us have had coworkers or bosses who would follow us into the lavatory and try to continue a discussion while "on break"?
My response: there's a reason they call it a "break".
If this trend isn't stopped, then "Mr. Poopypants" (above) will in the future refer to a new clothing line consisting -- literally! -- of a series of tubes (marketed under a hip label like TSteve, no doubt).
I've had several dogs, and not one of them ever surfaced from 1,000 m just because they were sick or dying.
I like the fact that Adblock is a choice and not a built-in feature. Maybe the suggestion was to make it a built-in option that could be turned on or off? Anyway, choice is usually good. A lot of people (myself included) don't like television ads, but they also don't like pay-per-view. Someone's gotta pay for content.
...
...
I wouldn't mind the lack of commercial-skip on my DVR remote, if Comcast hadn't used the rock-bottom bidder to make the thing. Yes, a commercial-skip button would be nice but the FF feature, if it worked half-way reasonably , would be an ok compromise. I'll just keep triangulating and convince myself that I'm still saving time
There was a lot of hype during the run 'n' gun days about how free content would pay for itself, and not just through advertising. But it seems to me that advertising is the dominant model for paying for content. The donations model might work for some areas (a few FOSS projects), but the other models seem somewhat utopian. Does anyone have any data on other models to pay for content -- i.e., how well are subscription services faring, etc.?
I'm planning to develop a "no banners" banner for my site, when I overcome my procrastination
I figured I'd check out the source behind the source and visit the DARPA web site. I got curious and decided to check out their latest budget estimate. What a peach! The "overview" looks like mainframe printout, which of course spills onto a second page (where you'd find the total DARPA budget of $3.3 Billion for FY07. The details that follow (interrupted by a couple of marketing pages on the theme "ExpectMore.gov") make it pretty difficult to connect the dots -- and of course these are just the unclassified dots. Starting from the top budget line on bureaucratic formatted stationery, the details break down the line items, but the detail lines themselves are all found on separate pages, with text explanation in between. I guess they could have made it harder to interpret, but it would take some creative thinking to do so.
go looking for 'category 12233242' to find 'academic humor'.
Isn't this recursive?
My situation is not very close to your examples, but since shame is a major factor, I'll discuss it, to see what you think.
My wife was an unwed mother. Maybe no one here recalls, but in the 1980s, shame was a popular public policy response to single motherhood. Before the discussion tilts to what people think of out-of-wedlock births, let me just say that my wife and I see both sides of that, and we're certainly not "pro single parenthood". That seems to be one of the popular "liberal" responses to "conservative" shame. Trust me; it's not that simple.
My point is simply that shame in this context is not particularly useful and certainly not simple. Consider just for a second the impact that shame has on the children of single parents. Believe me, it can be devastating. I don't think that's the effect the "pro shame" crowd has in mind, but it's real, and I doubt that this is the only issue where that's true. Consider the wife and kids of the drunken pisser discussed elsewhere in this thread.
I do sympathize, but I think shame has to have limits. I also believe that a lot of shame-mongers would not want the cameras turned on their own personal demons. I've never managed to finish the The Scarlet Letter (four separate attempts), but I'm sure it's relevant here.
Maybe you can have the cake and eat it at the same time if you pre-blame others for anything that might (and probably will) go wrong in the future. I think this is just a preemptive PR strike by a company that has always been savvier about marketing than about technology, because that's where the money is.
Thx to all four replies for my own mini Ask Slashdot. I didn't know what those technical descriptions meant. And thx for not assuming I was trolling; I was truly unenlightened.
Before you post on Slashdot....shouldn't you verify that you.....read TFA?
/. thread. In fact, I think it's pretty clear that I was commenting more about the literature discussion than I was about TFA.
... I guess I didn't read TFA, at least not the one in your head.
Yes, everyone with a perspective different from yours is an uninformed troll. If only we would all have the same interpretation of the TFA as you, the world would be so much better. How arrogant can you get? I read TFA, but I was commenting about the extended discussion about a different aspect of both TFA and the
OLPC is an educational tool to be distributed through a local educational system. It will be used in conjuction with teachers in classroom activities.
So, by definition, the existing local educational systems are experts on teaching kids how to read? How well have they done so far? Oh, the only thing holding back the incredibly talented teachers and the equally gifted kids (not to mention the selfless bureaucratic heroes in these places) is access to technology? And it's a laptop design because it won't be taken out of the classroom? I see
Again, I have not indicated in my post(s) that I think OLPC is a bad idea. I'm questioning the logic of focussing on which specific content to install on it, rather than more fundamental questions like whether the machines will even be used in ways that OLPC anticipates. The coke bottle from The Gods Must Be Crazy comes to mind. And, before you rip me a new one for naivete about conditions in the undeveloped world, no, I don't assume that the entire developing world looks like that or even that the Kalahari (IIRC) looks like that. But I do assume that people from radically different cultures will interpret our ubiquitous objects (like PCs) quite differently from the way we interpret them. I assume that the way they interpret them will be heavily influenced by how they are introduced to them and how they are trained to use them. Lastly, from my experience with bureaucracy here in the bastion of capitalism, I assume that the way they are actually trained, on the ground, so to speak, will differ from the vision of how they "ought" to be trained, as designed "in the lab", so to speak. Imagine the children's game of Telephone, but the "caller" is Nicholas Negroponte and the receiver is a 5-year old in some remote jungle. In between are various operatives from OLPC, bureaucrats along the distribution chain (about which I've commented elsewhere), bureaucrats along the educational management chain, and of course, the local teachers. Why would we assume that the vision so eloquently expressed by Negroponte would reach its destination ungarbled?
I still think this is an exciting and promising venture, but I remain skeptical about utopian implementation predictions.
This argument is kind of like the other typical slashdotter OLPC canard
Nowhere in my post(s) have I indicated that I don't think this cannot work. Again, I was mainly commenting that other factors are more important than which piece of great literature inspired little Johnny (or Janey) Middleclass on his incredibly significant intellectual journey here in DevelopedWorld.
The developing world is not all alike. There are levels and levels, with different needs. OLPC is aimed at some and not others. But most people have never been "there" (be it Vietnam or Kenya), and just have a cartoon vision of what it's like. That would be like, uhm, projecting from inexperience.
Really? I never would have guessed that. Thanks for enlightening me. No, I've never been to those places, but your implication that you have greater insight than I do is a bit arrogant. Because I, too, read, I'm aware that lots of experts have, in fact been to those places, etc. I'm pretty sure I was also aware that "those places" encompass a range of environments. Nowhere in my post(s) have I indicated that I thought they were homogeneous. In fact, nowhere in my post(s) have I indicated anything whatsoever about their similarities or differences, period.
An abundance of (interesting) reading material is a pretty fundamental tool in developing literacy.
...", which has little to do with the prospects for educating the developing economies, as a public policy proposition. I'm sure 20 years from now, some superstar rags-to-riches success story will in fact be profiled as having been inspired in his/her journey to the top of the Fortune Global 1000 by reading Ayn Rand on his hand-cranked PC. But the masses won't be educated simply by putting books on the machine (again, something that I think seems like a pretty good idea, but not a sufficient one in and of itself).
...
I agree; but I didn't learn to read just by sitting next to a pile of books. People read to me, etc. Note that I didn't claim putting books on the machine was a bad idea. I'm just questioning whether it's sufficient and also pointing out that the discussion of which specific literature might be best, regardless of whether it shows how erudite other posters might have been as wunderkinds.
TFA indicates that the UI is language-free.
TFA was also not written by anyone with experience teaching children in developing countries how to read. I'm not one of those, either. I'm just suggesting that consultation with those types of experts seems more important than, again, debating which specific sophisticated literature was most important to which specific child genius here in the developed world. Also, language-free doesn't mean culture-free. That doesn't mean it won't work, just that such basic considerations might be key determinants in the success of the concept. I'll bet you don't have any trouble mapping objects on your Windows screen to "objects" of your intellectual domain. I don't really know which of them is too tightly bound to developed-economy culture to be meaningful to an illiterate child in Libya, but it wouldn't surprise me if some meaningful fraction of them don't find the icons "intuitive".
I posted this comment mostly because I saw the thread running into the realm of "well, when I was 2 months old, I read
Related response to the next criticism of my OP
From TFA: "One way that costs are being kept down is to deliver the units en-masse to governments for delivery along the same channel as they currently use for textbooks, keeping the OLPC out of the distribution business. 'If we were selling this laptop through normal consumer channels, it would be more like a $250 laptop.'"
My guess is that the implicit $150 "savings" in distribution cost -- which is a cost shift (to developing economies) and not a cost savings -- is based on distribution costs in developed economies. I would expect distribution costs to be higher in developing economies, simply because, by definition, they don't have the infrastructure comparable to developed economies. (Yes, that's why we call them "developed"!)
Of course, if the purchasing governments simply distribute the units without regard to politics or greed, maybe they'll have lower costs, but it seems more likely that the costs that OLPC has shifted to the governments of developing economies will be shifted downstream, one way or another. "Yes, we have laptops for everyone, but you must come to Tripoli to pick them up."
and before we worry about delivery method ... shouldn't someone verify that the target user can ... read? Literacy rates in the target countries are probably not what they are in the developed economies. Before worrying about distributing text books, OLPC hopefully will figure out how to overcome the possible problem that the user can't understand anything but the picture on the screen. And if the pictures on the screen resemble a "desktop", would that have any meaning to a typical user?
According to TFA: "In general, the XO uses what Bletsas calls 'Extreme Suspend,' going to sleep after two seconds of inactivity, but waking up within 300 milliseconds of an action."
When I'm reading something online, I don't scroll more frequently than two seconds. I would probably find something else to do if I had to keep jogging the touch pad to keep the display active. Maybe I'm misinterpreting this?
... for a Darwin award, some time in the future.
I agree with the mod-ups, but I still have some serious issues with your analogy:
... Sometimes that requires back-and-forth between the client and the architect to get everything clear, but it all happens before major design work begins.
... The [good] architect knows a lot about not only what features are possible but what they cost and good ways to arrange them (like the things you mentioned) But, the requirements definition process needs a lot of interplay between the architect and the client -- and I think your analogy more or less supports this, so I don't think we're in much of a disagreement. I just think you oversimplified your analogy because we'd all like things to be linear. I think meaningful architecture probably always requires back-and-forth between the client and the architect to get everything clear, and that is an essential part of "major design work", at least in terms of value-added.
... can choose from a ton of off-the-shelf content management systems ("portals", or whatever the hell anyone wants to call them ... still lots of cookie-cutter systems available). Yes, I know that the client might also want features not available in the off-the-shelf systems, but that's like the home buyer who wants a marble kitchen island and an oversize master bath suite ... and the analogy moves more toward the big project. We just don't hear about the easy IT projects, because they're, well, easy.
When an architect goes to design a building, the requirements are fixed before he starts.
IANAA, but that just doesn't sound accurate, especially when dealing with bigger projects. I think the architect (in reality, a team of architects) usually spends a great deal of time and effort working with the client to define and revise requirements. How else could it get done? The client has no expertise but knows he wants a great big building. He knows he wants things like a big atrium or skylights or modular offices or
If the client can't decide what he wants, the architect just goes "Fine, call me when you decide what you want.".
Well, in my experience, any professional (from architect to plumber) who takes this attitude rather than soliciting input and guiding the client, usually doesn't get that call later. I know they never get that call from me.
There isn't a single standard floor-plan for a single-family 3-bedroom house
Actually, there are tons of cookie-cutter floorplans for single-family 3-bedroom homes, which is part of what has driven the rise of large-scale home builders in the U.S. It's no longer a cottage industry (sorry, intentional), and in fact the widespread availability of standard plans is a positive factor imho (lowers cost). However, I think the single-family 3-bedroom home is the analogy for the "easy" development project, not for the hard ones. For example, a client who wants an intranet that has discussion forums, shared links, maybe a few other similar features
You're still dead-on balls accurate about the way IT requirements change after design.
Also, what percentage of employees in general lie? If it's 50%, then bosses are more honest than their reports. There are survey/statistical techniques for addressing whether or not people lie about a specific issue/question. Unfortunately, I forget the details, but it's clear this study doesn't even consider them. One technique involve asking pairs of questions where the average response for one of the questions is well-known and stable, like, "are you right-handed?". Assuming that the known answer is uncorrelated with the question of interest allows for an estimate of the question to which people might not want to answer truthfully, like, "have you stopped beating your spouse?". Ok, not quite, but that's the gist.
I've butchered the illustration, of course, but FSU isn't paying me the big bucks.
Mod parent up.
Acting as an advocate for the people who worked for me didn't seem to help them or me much. As a middle manager, you can try to be a good boss, but if the management above you doesn't do the same, it can backfire. My boss's boss eventually forced me out of the company after a very successful two years as leader of the development group. I was pretty proud of those two years, especially since I had never managed a development team (I came from the marketing/strategy side). My reward for succeeding in a difficult situation was a modest settlement package. My boss's boss wasted $40 million over a few years (typical dot-com story; product worked but nobody wanted to buy it), and of course got promoted when the business was "merged" back into the parent company. AFAIK, the people who worked for me liked me well enough as a boss, but they certainly weren't in any position to help me when I became the bullseye. They all did fine, because our projects were delivered on time and within budget (ok, not quite typical dot-com?). I don't think I'll be able to do it, but I understand why some people "manage up".
I'm confused. Does this mean the other 60% are lying about being assholes?
I vote you get Word of the Day credit for "defalcation". Most definitions specify that it relates to misuse or embezzlement of money or funds, however, so I'm not sure it's quite the right term in this context. Still, Word of the Day props to you!
the only way the machines can put votes where malicious programs want (IF they're infected) is if someone votes
Well, I know diddly squat about the details of the machines, but would they not have or connect to a database in some fashion? If so, how would a vote be the only way to trigger a fraudulent action? Even if there's no database involved, why couldn't a clock trigger a fraudulent action? I'm no computer expert, but don't most of them have clocks?
simply to have the voting machine print human- and machine-readable ballots
This is essentially what reasonable (non-Florida) balloting looked like before "e-voting". Except that the voter was part of the "voting machine" and filled in little circles. Those are machine-readable, and there's no need to compare the machine readable ballot to the human-readable ballot, because they are the same ballot.
As I've said before, e-voting is a bad solution to a problem that didn't really exist.
IIRC, a small but non-negligible percentage of comrades in the old Soviet Union would leave ballots blank, as that was the only feasible protest in one-candidate elections. It would make the news every now and then because someone would win by only 90% or something like that, which was considered a "defeat" in some sense.