In the case of typical government operations, much of the work for both IT and non-IT staff is taking vague laws/procedures/guidelines from higher up the chain of command and turning it into specifics, such as written processes, specific actions, and/or code, in a fractal kind of way. There is a fairly high degree of subjective judgement and politics that goes into this.
It's essentially a chain of command and people are responsible for their link in the chain. How is software going to do that? How do you punish or demote software that doesn't do it's job or makes poor decisions or interpretations of law?
Punish the software vendor? That just moves the blame ray to different humans, NOT eliminate the humans.
That being said, in the "pre-web" days, I had tools that let me mostly focus on the "business rules" issues instead of UI and low-level technical details*. The web stack ruined all that. I find the web stack device-specific-picky and unnecessarily complicated for typical and common GUI/CRUD idioms, as I have ranted about on/. before in my "go vector" diatribes.
THAT aspect CAN be cleaned up with better standards and tools, and that's probably the low-hanging fruit of making gov't more efficient, RATHER THAN trying to automate the office politics of the chain of command through screwy AI or whatnot.
One may argue that higher level tools could bypass programming and let end-users create their own automation. But that's been promised for 40-odd years with very limited success. It's not likely to happen because amateurs don't know how to make maintainable software, and maintenance is usually the bottleneck, not original creation. Newbies make poorly-factored spaghetti code or its equivalent that some poor schmuck has to dissect later when something needs changing or fixing.
* Except for maybe "DLL hell", which mostly fell on the support staff. But my server-side-formatting plan won't result in the return of DLL hell.
No, MS just won that fight due to a combination of having the non-exclusive DOS deal with IBM, the leverage of bundling, patience, careful pricing, and luck. DR-DOS produced a DOS competitor (arguably technically superior), GUI companies tried to be what Windows is but failed for various reasons, and Lotus and WordPerfect charged too much and failed to work together. MS out-maneuvered them all. Gates is a business genius in terms of strategy and timing. He is known to be avid poker player, and it showed in his work dealings.
Agreed (assuming the outsourced labor is any good). My point is that the same technologies that can save an owner labor costs can also put them out of business, or at least shrink them.
While the traditional papers could adopt to a more "modern" work-flow and structure, typically startups leverage the Internet and connectivity quicker than the established players. It's hard to change your business practices overnight.
Prediction: right when they get their outsourced IT working smoothly, those newspapers will be wiped out by Internet competition that uses a combination of volunteers and part-time work-from-home reporting staff doing "gigs" keying into off-the-shelf CMS's.
Not really. Math can be made to match ANY universe (at least a wide variety). The trick is finding a symbolic abstraction that matches this particular universe to chop out all the side distractions, somewhat like the Cartesian coordinate system being a subset of all possible coordinate systems.
Or music notation assuming a 12-tone equi-spaced octave. This is because a general purpose notation that considers all known tone systems would be far more complicated in order to be more general-purpose. Making presumptions and limiting the rule set usually allows us to slice out complexity.
Perhaps another way of saying this is that we need an API-like library built on top of a general purpose programming language that fits the rules of just our universe (as we currently understand it) even if the general purpose language itself is not that way.
For good or bad, executives and marketers "care" about fads; and things like helpful shading and visually-distinct hyperlinks have been falling by the wayside (at least for "main" site pages). Earth is run Ferengi's, not Vulcans. Form over function; get used to it.
Explicitness is usually a good thing, as any documentation writer will eventually learn.
True, there are little "tag" markers now, but that stands out even less than a tinted background, at least to my eyeballs (agreeing it may be subjective). It doesn't change the spirit of my original point, only the details, which I did get wrong.
I'm not sure it's related, but I noticed over the years that Google's topic-sensitive ads grow less and less prominent compared to regular search results such that it's harder to tell the difference.
The placement and color of ads has grown closer to the regular results, such as the fading of the background color of the ads to almost white. I have interpreted this as increasing corporate slimeballery on Google's part, but welcome alternative interpretations.
And isn't this an accessibility issue, per ADA "Section 508"? I know our org's sites always get penalized for having allegedly insufficient contrast to distinguish context. Does Google have bigger lawyers than us, or have they just been lucky?
Microsoft indeed failed to capitalize on the Internet and mobile computing. But, they remain big mostly by taking away territory from IBM, who stumbled in their key market by focusing on short-term profits at the expense of customer goodwill. Business infrastructure is still a big market. MS is the New IBM.
Note that MS is also not known for their customer goodwill, but they sucked less than IBM because MS out of habit kept a medium-term approach to planning. That's always been in MS's DNA. For example, they stuck with Windows in the late 1980's even though it was buggy, sold poorly, and had insufficient software written for it. The wait finally paid off when Windows 3.1 proved "good enough".
They know it's more profitable to screw customers slowly and gradually rather than all at once. It's roughly comparable to how most successful viruses don't kill or overly cripple their hosts, because doing so reduces the chance of the virus spreading. The virus is better off with a semi-healthy host trodding around spreading the virus itself. IBM decided to be AIDS, with MS being herpes. You are more likely to buy new or expanded products and services from a vendor who partially screws you than one who totally screws you.
Slashdot Mirror
and her political opponent is Hak Facebok
But she has to save money for the Google logo lawsuit.
Sorry, but Gold Std. is a bad idea.
Indeed, wrong font, for one.
A 45 year-old conspiracy? The Apollo Moon Studio Basement houses the Secret Inflation Saucer.
In the case of typical government operations, much of the work for both IT and non-IT staff is taking vague laws/procedures/guidelines from higher up the chain of command and turning it into specifics, such as written processes, specific actions, and/or code, in a fractal kind of way. There is a fairly high degree of subjective judgement and politics that goes into this.
It's essentially a chain of command and people are responsible for their link in the chain. How is software going to do that? How do you punish or demote software that doesn't do it's job or makes poor decisions or interpretations of law?
Punish the software vendor? That just moves the blame ray to different humans, NOT eliminate the humans.
That being said, in the "pre-web" days, I had tools that let me mostly focus on the "business rules" issues instead of UI and low-level technical details*. The web stack ruined all that. I find the web stack device-specific-picky and unnecessarily complicated for typical and common GUI/CRUD idioms, as I have ranted about on /. before in my "go vector" diatribes.
THAT aspect CAN be cleaned up with better standards and tools, and that's probably the low-hanging fruit of making gov't more efficient, RATHER THAN trying to automate the office politics of the chain of command through screwy AI or whatnot.
One may argue that higher level tools could bypass programming and let end-users create their own automation. But that's been promised for 40-odd years with very limited success. It's not likely to happen because amateurs don't know how to make maintainable software, and maintenance is usually the bottleneck, not original creation. Newbies make poorly-factored spaghetti code or its equivalent that some poor schmuck has to dissect later when something needs changing or fixing.
* Except for maybe "DLL hell", which mostly fell on the support staff. But my server-side-formatting plan won't result in the return of DLL hell.
Ironically, they removed that slogan from their website recently.
Because it's Congress and they can investigate anything for the sheer hell of it.
Get the popcorn; it's political theater folks!
Inflation? Inflation is too low. They should be printing money right now.
Yeah, that's Google's job!
Okay, you are probably right, but the Americans with Disabilities Act extends similar requirements to private businesses I believe.
No, MS just won that fight due to a combination of having the non-exclusive DOS deal with IBM, the leverage of bundling, patience, careful pricing, and luck. DR-DOS produced a DOS competitor (arguably technically superior), GUI companies tried to be what Windows is but failed for various reasons, and Lotus and WordPerfect charged too much and failed to work together. MS out-maneuvered them all. Gates is a business genius in terms of strategy and timing. He is known to be avid poker player, and it showed in his work dealings.
Should be "by Ferengi's". Sorry. Mondays are impervious to proofreading.
Agreed (assuming the outsourced labor is any good). My point is that the same technologies that can save an owner labor costs can also put them out of business, or at least shrink them.
While the traditional papers could adopt to a more "modern" work-flow and structure, typically startups leverage the Internet and connectivity quicker than the established players. It's hard to change your business practices overnight.
Analog click-bait and spam, how quaint.
Prediction: right when they get their outsourced IT working smoothly, those newspapers will be wiped out by Internet competition that uses a combination of volunteers and part-time work-from-home reporting staff doing "gigs" keying into off-the-shelf CMS's.
Not really. Math can be made to match ANY universe (at least a wide variety). The trick is finding a symbolic abstraction that matches this particular universe to chop out all the side distractions, somewhat like the Cartesian coordinate system being a subset of all possible coordinate systems.
Or music notation assuming a 12-tone equi-spaced octave. This is because a general purpose notation that considers all known tone systems would be far more complicated in order to be more general-purpose. Making presumptions and limiting the rule set usually allows us to slice out complexity.
Perhaps another way of saying this is that we need an API-like library built on top of a general purpose programming language that fits the rules of just our universe (as we currently understand it) even if the general purpose language itself is not that way.
The language is made of cat emoticons, some semi-transparent.
For good or bad, executives and marketers "care" about fads; and things like helpful shading and visually-distinct hyperlinks have been falling by the wayside (at least for "main" site pages). Earth is run Ferengi's, not Vulcans. Form over function; get used to it.
Explicitness is usually a good thing, as any documentation writer will eventually learn.
True, there are little "tag" markers now, but that stands out even less than a tinted background, at least to my eyeballs (agreeing it may be subjective). It doesn't change the spirit of my original point, only the details, which I did get wrong.
Please elaborate in terms of this specific case.
I rest my case.
I'm not sure it's related, but I noticed over the years that Google's topic-sensitive ads grow less and less prominent compared to regular search results such that it's harder to tell the difference.
The placement and color of ads has grown closer to the regular results, such as the fading of the background color of the ads to almost white. I have interpreted this as increasing corporate slimeballery on Google's part, but welcome alternative interpretations.
And isn't this an accessibility issue, per ADA "Section 508"? I know our org's sites always get penalized for having allegedly insufficient contrast to distinguish context. Does Google have bigger lawyers than us, or have they just been lucky?
Microsoft indeed failed to capitalize on the Internet and mobile computing. But, they remain big mostly by taking away territory from IBM, who stumbled in their key market by focusing on short-term profits at the expense of customer goodwill. Business infrastructure is still a big market. MS is the New IBM.
Note that MS is also not known for their customer goodwill, but they sucked less than IBM because MS out of habit kept a medium-term approach to planning. That's always been in MS's DNA. For example, they stuck with Windows in the late 1980's even though it was buggy, sold poorly, and had insufficient software written for it. The wait finally paid off when Windows 3.1 proved "good enough".
They know it's more profitable to screw customers slowly and gradually rather than all at once. It's roughly comparable to how most successful viruses don't kill or overly cripple their hosts, because doing so reduces the chance of the virus spreading. The virus is better off with a semi-healthy host trodding around spreading the virus itself. IBM decided to be AIDS, with MS being herpes. You are more likely to buy new or expanded products and services from a vendor who partially screws you than one who totally screws you.
Our choices indeed stink, and I live in a well-populated area.
4Mbps is just fine as long as it's reliable, not throttled, and doesn't cost a fortune to get these features.
In short, other issues eclipse max speed in the current market.
Let's make a deal with the telecoms: you can keep 4Mbps as the standard as long as you do 4Mbps right.