Even without wanting to move to a non-tech area or become management, understanding the business side of things gives insight into how/why decisions get made. It can also allow you to make calls as to which features you will implement when faced with a limited budget or other item not related to the technology. I have found it allows me to make better decisions based on pragmatic reasons and fight the fights that are really important, rather than wasting time on something that is technically not overly important but to a business person is apparently critical.
Take care to not let the business-think take over your mind though, you may wake screaming from the cognitive dissonance that seems to be a requirement for senior business people to operate.
I definitely agree with this comment but I think that the bill being proposed is something that should be expanded far beyond patents. Allowing judges to force the plaintiffs to pay for an unsuccessful suit against the defendants in all cases would help limit spurious legal cases. If groups like RIAA had to pay when they lost the case against someone, it would go a long way to reduce these legal manoeuvres against people who cannot afford it.
During her Oceanography degree, my wife came up with a great analogy for ideas like this (she loves baking too, hence the subject of the analogy:):
Imagine you were baking a cake and added too much salt. You decide to fix this by adding more flour to balance it out. This means you need to add more egg and liquid to balance out the flour. Unfortunately you are out of eggs so you need to find a substitute. Your substitute throws the flavour off so you need to add more to fix that. Now you realize your container is too small so you have to find a new container to hold this....
It becomes a constant fight of trying to fix the imbalance created when you throw a complex biological system out of whack. The above post lists some possible consequences but there are more we have not thought of. Fixing a symptom does not cure the disease.
This is a complaint I have heard a lot in my programming career. In my own experience, most coders I have worked with are focused on functionality and simplicity; getting as much information out there in as straightforward a manner as possible. Often, this means "ugly" to non-CS people. Personally, I find Wikipedia easy to read and easy to navigate. Sure, it may not have graphics popping out everywhere or things dancing across the screen but when I hit WP, all I want is information.
Now, could it be better? Possibly. It is easy enough to create a new skin for it and give it some zip but I doubt the team would ever make it a default. WP is meant to be accessed on any device, through any type of connection (although it does have some issues in that department).
If I want lots of useless clutter, I will go to any number of large news organizations' websites.
My kids are 10 and 7 so they are in that range where the Internet is more than just pbskids or other sites. All I have and all I will ever have is Adblock which removes most of the annoying ads or things that could come onto the screen by accident. However, this is as much for the parents as it is for the kids.
Our take on this is that we need to teach our kids how to use the Internet safely and effectively. We cannot police them 24/7 and even if we tried, it would only serve as incentive to break through and see what is out there (prohibition makes things taboo and therefore irresistible to a curious mind). As they get older we help them understand the more complex aspects of humanity but just getting a good foundation has let them learn how to discern what they see for themselves. They have seen disturbing items on news sites which they have asked us about and have actively avoided afterwards because they just cannot deal with it right now (try teaching a 7 year old about suicide bombers or why people hate other people and you will see what I mean). We have also taught them to not believe the first thing they see and to try to verify from unrelated sources anything they read or see.
We are raising our kids to be adults; preventing them from being able to access the world and then tossing them into it when they turn 18 (or whatever age in your country) is not helpful for anyone.
Ahh yes, that brings back memories. I remember getting the monthly issue of Byte magazine and typing in the BASIC game that was in the magazine on that membrane keyboard. After playing the game and tweaking the code, it was off to the cassette tape backup.
There was something very satisfying about holding down the play/FF keys to hear the data segments stream by until you got to the end of a program then starting to record.
I do remember long programs almost making my fingers bleed from that membrane keyboard though. At least it could take pop being spilled on it (well...in theory, the edges were not sealed).
The study shows protection for people who drink too much, are overweight or have hemochromatosis (too much iron). Basically, anyone at a high risk of liver disease. Otherwise it doesn't seem to do much of anything.
I think XForms is a technology that is long overdue. The blending of form and presentation, along with a lack of reusability in web forms is something that should have been solved long ago. HTML just does not make a good UI for complex applications.
That all being said, there is absolutely no incentive for Microsoft to support this or any of the other useful W3C standards in IE. In fact, it is in their best interest not to. Until IE supports this, only 3rd party plugins can let web designers utilize this technology. Unfortunately, many companies refuse to allow the installation of plugins that are not blessed by MSFT or are not ubiquitous (e.g. Acrobat Reader) This means that web applications must wallow in the dark ages, or use MSFT backend that plugs into IE specific hooks on the browser, basically giving MSFT end-to-end.
As a Canadian, I have to agree with Cringley, we were all laughing during the election of 2000 and still laugh at the e-voting system. We had an election call, a campaign and a vote faster than the count of 2000.
The one problem with his suggestion, as I understand it, is that the states are responsible for the design of the ballot in the USA. In Canada, the ballot design is dictated by Elections Canada (a non-partisan government agency) Every poll must have the same design for the ballot. The design is all candidates on a single piece of paper that folds 3 times. The candidates names are alphabetical and in white on a solid black background. The vote is marked in a white circle next to the name.
I guess to have a Canadian style ballot would probably require a constitutional change in the USA, with the states giving up some control over the elections.
Actually, for blind or illiterate voters, the polling officer is allowed to go back and read the candidates to the person if the person requests it. In addition to the officer, one independent observer on that poll goes back to ensure the officer is honest. The voter can then tell the officer who to vote for.
An explosion of this magnitude (over 2.5 kilotonnes of TNT) did explode in a city back in 1917. Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada was devestated by an explosion of a munitions ship on its way to Europe. The explosion killed almost 2000 people, injured over 9000 and rattled dishes about 300 km away.
The explosion was so large, it was actually studied by Oppenheimer and his crew as a model of how to deliver the atomic bomb. From this, they determined that damaged is greatly enhanced when the bomb is exploded above ground.
If you want to find out more, just go here.
The argument that SCO has outlined states that the GPL contravenes the copyright law by making software very free. I won't try and figure out how something can be too free in a nation that purports to be the most free nation on Earth.
As I understand it, if I create a copyrightable work, I can impose any restrictions on the use of that work. If you want to use that work, you must comply. If I choose to release a work under the GPL, that is my choice. I am complying with the law in that I have imposed restrictions on the use of my work (or lack of restrictions). You as a consumer must comply with those restrictions. I am not forcing you to do so. If you cannot comply, you cannot use it, pure and simple.
Can someone explain to me how this is not constitutional?
The mail program works well, as does the newsreader. The browser displays just about every page out there quite nicely. Multiple user support is good and it is quite easy to lock it down/configure it as needed, a very important feature for a family application (at least for some).
Re:Wonder if they used this?
on
SCO's Plan Examined
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
OK, I am confused. This chart seems to indicate that there is a direct link from Unix to Xenix to Minix to Linux. Now, based on Linus Torvalds own writing, the original codebase had no Minix in it. The only relation to Unix was in its look and feel. He wrote Linux because he thought Minix sucked. I am trying to figure out how they rationalized this one out! BTW, a history of Linux can be found here.
Another Pratchett Collaboration?
on
Ask Neil Gaiman
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
Good day,
Good Omens was one of the funniest books in the fantasy genre I have ever read. The blend of your wonderful gothic images with the bizarre twist that Pratchett can put on mundane things was amazing. Have you ever thought of writing another book together, assuming you can find more time when you are both awake?
Re:Direction for Java
on
Java vs .NET
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Someone earlier stated this fact that many CS programs do not actually teach you to program beyond a first year course on programming. I was taught I in my first year, but in order to finish my degree I had to learn LISP, Prolog, Smalltalk, C++, Perl, Awk, shell scripting, assembler and a host of other languages I can't even remember now. None of these were taught, they were all assumed. When you solved the problem and got something wrong or didn't do it as well as possible, the marker gave you pointers on how to use the language more appropriately.
What my degree did teach me was how to analyse a problem and not always go with the obvious solution. I have never met a self-taught person who has done an order analysis of an algorithm or searched for an optimal mechanism to implement beyond the obvious.
I am not saying that a self-taught person cannot be as capable or moreso that a university experienced person. What I am saying is that on balance, the number of very poor self-taught people far outweighs the number of very good self-taught people.
I have been waiting for this day to happen since the bubblr burst. When I started my CS degree, most of us were there because we loved computers. We spent all our free time (what little there was) teaching ourselves everything we could. By the end of my degree, most of the people entering the program could barely use a DOS prompt, let alone know what Unix was.
I hope that employers start getting the hint as well. It was very disheartening to see people who took a 1-year program to learn computers getting senior developers and architect jobs.
At my office, I have told our headhunters that unless someone has a CS degree and several years experience, we do not want to see them. I may get flamed for being prejudiced against self-taught people, but I have seen far more self-taught people who think they are a lot better than they are than people who actually have an apptitude.
I had thought that EULA's were deemed illegal, but companies still used them because consumers didn't know any better. Can anyone shed some light on this, doesn't really matter the jurisdiction (one ruling in a country is enough for a precedent).
Good day,
He writes mainly near-future sci-fi, taking theories of today and turning them into technologies of tomorrow. He also examines some wonderful philosophical questions, such as what would happen if aliens came to Earth and claimed there is a god (Calculating God), or an examination of the human soul (Factoring Humanity).
He is also a Canadian author, basing many of his books in Canada. It is always nice to see something from here and so wonderfully written.
The question of being bias comes down to a matter of timing. If Judge Jackson made these statements before or during the trial, or made statements to the effect of 'I felt all along...', then there is a strong case that he was biased.
If, however, these opinions as expressed were formed as a result of the case, then what is the difference between these opinions and the judgement he rendered as a result of the arguments presented?
I do agree that the tone of the comments is a bit more flamboyent than one would expect from a jurist, but it helps to show why he gave the sentence he did. These statements alone do not show a prejudice on the part of Jackson.
In addition to being the highest rated country in the UN for several years straight, we also have much stronger personal protections than people seem to have in the US. The ability for American corporations to monitor almost every aspect of an employee, including private life issues, is disturbing. We have also just gone through a round of tax cuts, giving much better rates (not quite US level of income tax, yet) Our cap gains taxes are now comparible if not lower than US levels as well.
One thing that some people find unusual about Canada is the rights and recognition granted to immigrants coming into the country. Canada does not believe in the US style 'melting pot' but in a 'cultural mosaic' where everyone retains their own identity. It can make for rather interesting political issues.
I agree with this in part. A tour of the Disney studios revealed that the individual cells are drawn by artists, they are no longer coloured by hand. They scan in the drawings then paint them in the computer. The computer then joins the cells together to form the entire picture.
My problem with Disney is that the overall animation quality has suffered lately. The last film they made with animation quality in line with the classics was 'Beauty and the Beast', IMHO. When 'Hercules' came out, I was shocked at how poor the animation was. It was very blocky, lots of straight, simple lines and appearing to come out of some animation factory. This movie seems to be drawn by the same group of artists. I can only hope that Disney puts a stop to this team before they draw again. I miss the rich, extremely detailed animation of old.
There is still a lot of Win9x on corporate desktops (hell...there's still lots of Win3.1 out there:) I think a more accurate test would have a mix of Win9x and WinNT.
It looks like the hardware for the server will be the same as the original test. Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't one of the problems the fact that some of the hardware was not fully supported on Linux but well supported on NT? A test using completely compatible hardware for both seems to be the proper thing to use.
Slashdot Mirror
Even without wanting to move to a non-tech area or become management, understanding the business side of things gives insight into how/why decisions get made. It can also allow you to make calls as to which features you will implement when faced with a limited budget or other item not related to the technology. I have found it allows me to make better decisions based on pragmatic reasons and fight the fights that are really important, rather than wasting time on something that is technically not overly important but to a business person is apparently critical.
Take care to not let the business-think take over your mind though, you may wake screaming from the cognitive dissonance that seems to be a requirement for senior business people to operate.
I definitely agree with this comment but I think that the bill being proposed is something that should be expanded far beyond patents. Allowing judges to force the plaintiffs to pay for an unsuccessful suit against the defendants in all cases would help limit spurious legal cases. If groups like RIAA had to pay when they lost the case against someone, it would go a long way to reduce these legal manoeuvres against people who cannot afford it.
During her Oceanography degree, my wife came up with a great analogy for ideas like this (she loves baking too, hence the subject of the analogy :):
Imagine you were baking a cake and added too much salt. You decide to fix this by adding more flour to balance it out. This means you need to add more egg and liquid to balance out the flour. Unfortunately you are out of eggs so you need to find a substitute. Your substitute throws the flavour off so you need to add more to fix that. Now you realize your container is too small so you have to find a new container to hold this....
It becomes a constant fight of trying to fix the imbalance created when you throw a complex biological system out of whack. The above post lists some possible consequences but there are more we have not thought of. Fixing a symptom does not cure the disease.
This is a complaint I have heard a lot in my programming career. In my own experience, most coders I have worked with are focused on functionality and simplicity; getting as much information out there in as straightforward a manner as possible. Often, this means "ugly" to non-CS people. Personally, I find Wikipedia easy to read and easy to navigate. Sure, it may not have graphics popping out everywhere or things dancing across the screen but when I hit WP, all I want is information.
Now, could it be better? Possibly. It is easy enough to create a new skin for it and give it some zip but I doubt the team would ever make it a default. WP is meant to be accessed on any device, through any type of connection (although it does have some issues in that department).
If I want lots of useless clutter, I will go to any number of large news organizations' websites.
My kids are 10 and 7 so they are in that range where the Internet is more than just pbskids or other sites. All I have and all I will ever have is Adblock which removes most of the annoying ads or things that could come onto the screen by accident. However, this is as much for the parents as it is for the kids.
Our take on this is that we need to teach our kids how to use the Internet safely and effectively. We cannot police them 24/7 and even if we tried, it would only serve as incentive to break through and see what is out there (prohibition makes things taboo and therefore irresistible to a curious mind). As they get older we help them understand the more complex aspects of humanity but just getting a good foundation has let them learn how to discern what they see for themselves. They have seen disturbing items on news sites which they have asked us about and have actively avoided afterwards because they just cannot deal with it right now (try teaching a 7 year old about suicide bombers or why people hate other people and you will see what I mean). We have also taught them to not believe the first thing they see and to try to verify from unrelated sources anything they read or see.
We are raising our kids to be adults; preventing them from being able to access the world and then tossing them into it when they turn 18 (or whatever age in your country) is not helpful for anyone.
Ahh yes, that brings back memories. I remember getting the monthly issue of Byte magazine and typing in the BASIC game that was in the magazine on that membrane keyboard. After playing the game and tweaking the code, it was off to the cassette tape backup.
There was something very satisfying about holding down the play/FF keys to hear the data segments stream by until you got to the end of a program then starting to record.
I do remember long programs almost making my fingers bleed from that membrane keyboard though. At least it could take pop being spilled on it (well...in theory, the edges were not sealed).
The study shows protection for people who drink too much, are overweight or have hemochromatosis (too much iron). Basically, anyone at a high risk of liver disease. Otherwise it doesn't seem to do much of anything.
I think XForms is a technology that is long overdue. The blending of form and presentation, along with a lack of reusability in web forms is something that should have been solved long ago. HTML just does not make a good UI for complex applications.
That all being said, there is absolutely no incentive for Microsoft to support this or any of the other useful W3C standards in IE. In fact, it is in their best interest not to. Until IE supports this, only 3rd party plugins can let web designers utilize this technology. Unfortunately, many companies refuse to allow the installation of plugins that are not blessed by MSFT or are not ubiquitous (e.g. Acrobat Reader) This means that web applications must wallow in the dark ages, or use MSFT backend that plugs into IE specific hooks on the browser, basically giving MSFT end-to-end.
As a Canadian, I have to agree with Cringley, we were all laughing during the election of 2000 and still laugh at the e-voting system. We had an election call, a campaign and a vote faster than the count of 2000.
The one problem with his suggestion, as I understand it, is that the states are responsible for the design of the ballot in the USA. In Canada, the ballot design is dictated by Elections Canada (a non-partisan government agency) Every poll must have the same design for the ballot. The design is all candidates on a single piece of paper that folds 3 times. The candidates names are alphabetical and in white on a solid black background. The vote is marked in a white circle next to the name.
I guess to have a Canadian style ballot would probably require a constitutional change in the USA, with the states giving up some control over the elections.
Actually, for blind or illiterate voters, the polling officer is allowed to go back and read the candidates to the person if the person requests it. In addition to the officer, one independent observer on that poll goes back to ensure the officer is honest. The voter can then tell the officer who to vote for.
An explosion of this magnitude (over 2.5 kilotonnes of TNT) did explode in a city back in 1917. Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada was devestated by an explosion of a munitions ship on its way to Europe. The explosion killed almost 2000 people, injured over 9000 and rattled dishes about 300 km away. The explosion was so large, it was actually studied by Oppenheimer and his crew as a model of how to deliver the atomic bomb. From this, they determined that damaged is greatly enhanced when the bomb is exploded above ground. If you want to find out more, just go here.
The argument that SCO has outlined states that the GPL contravenes the copyright law by making software very free. I won't try and figure out how something can be too free in a nation that purports to be the most free nation on Earth.
As I understand it, if I create a copyrightable work, I can impose any restrictions on the use of that work. If you want to use that work, you must comply. If I choose to release a work under the GPL, that is my choice. I am complying with the law in that I have imposed restrictions on the use of my work (or lack of restrictions). You as a consumer must comply with those restrictions. I am not forcing you to do so. If you cannot comply, you cannot use it, pure and simple.
Can someone explain to me how this is not constitutional?
I see someone beat me to suggesting Mozilla :)
The mail program works well, as does the newsreader. The browser displays just about every page out there quite nicely. Multiple user support is good and it is quite easy to lock it down/configure it as needed, a very important feature for a family application (at least for some).
OK, I am confused. This chart seems to indicate that there is a direct link from Unix to Xenix to Minix to Linux. Now, based on Linus Torvalds own writing, the original codebase had no Minix in it. The only relation to Unix was in its look and feel. He wrote Linux because he thought Minix sucked. I am trying to figure out how they rationalized this one out! BTW, a history of Linux can be found here.
Good day,
Good Omens was one of the funniest books in the fantasy genre I have ever read. The blend of your wonderful gothic images with the bizarre twist that Pratchett can put on mundane things was amazing. Have you ever thought of writing another book together, assuming you can find more time when you are both awake?
Someone earlier stated this fact that many CS programs do not actually teach you to program beyond a first year course on programming. I was taught I in my first year, but in order to finish my degree I had to learn LISP, Prolog, Smalltalk, C++, Perl, Awk, shell scripting, assembler and a host of other languages I can't even remember now. None of these were taught, they were all assumed. When you solved the problem and got something wrong or didn't do it as well as possible, the marker gave you pointers on how to use the language more appropriately.
What my degree did teach me was how to analyse a problem and not always go with the obvious solution. I have never met a self-taught person who has done an order analysis of an algorithm or searched for an optimal mechanism to implement beyond the obvious.
I am not saying that a self-taught person cannot be as capable or moreso that a university experienced person. What I am saying is that on balance, the number of very poor self-taught people far outweighs the number of very good self-taught people.
I have been waiting for this day to happen since the bubblr burst. When I started my CS degree, most of us were there because we loved computers. We spent all our free time (what little there was) teaching ourselves everything we could. By the end of my degree, most of the people entering the program could barely use a DOS prompt, let alone know what Unix was.
I hope that employers start getting the hint as well. It was very disheartening to see people who took a 1-year program to learn computers getting senior developers and architect jobs.
At my office, I have told our headhunters that unless someone has a CS degree and several years experience, we do not want to see them. I may get flamed for being prejudiced against self-taught people, but I have seen far more self-taught people who think they are a lot better than they are than people who actually have an apptitude.
I had thought that EULA's were deemed illegal, but companies still used them because consumers didn't know any better. Can anyone shed some light on this, doesn't really matter the jurisdiction (one ruling in a country is enough for a precedent).
Good day, He writes mainly near-future sci-fi, taking theories of today and turning them into technologies of tomorrow. He also examines some wonderful philosophical questions, such as what would happen if aliens came to Earth and claimed there is a god (Calculating God), or an examination of the human soul (Factoring Humanity). He is also a Canadian author, basing many of his books in Canada. It is always nice to see something from here and so wonderfully written.
The question of being bias comes down to a matter of timing. If Judge Jackson made these statements before or during the trial, or made statements to the effect of 'I felt all along ...', then there is a strong case that he was biased.
If, however, these opinions as expressed were formed as a result of the case, then what is the difference between these opinions and the judgement he rendered as a result of the arguments presented?
I do agree that the tone of the comments is a bit more flamboyent than one would expect from a jurist, but it helps to show why he gave the sentence he did. These statements alone do not show a prejudice on the part of Jackson.
In addition to being the highest rated country in the UN for several years straight, we also have much stronger personal protections than people seem to have in the US. The ability for American corporations to monitor almost every aspect of an employee, including private life issues, is disturbing. We have also just gone through a round of tax cuts, giving much better rates (not quite US level of income tax, yet) Our cap gains taxes are now comparible if not lower than US levels as well.
One thing that some people find unusual about Canada is the rights and recognition granted to immigrants coming into the country. Canada does not believe in the US style 'melting pot' but in a 'cultural mosaic' where everyone retains their own identity. It can make for rather interesting political issues.
I agree with this in part. A tour of the Disney studios revealed that the individual cells are drawn by artists, they are no longer coloured by hand. They scan in the drawings then paint them in the computer. The computer then joins the cells together to form the entire picture.
My problem with Disney is that the overall animation quality has suffered lately. The last film they made with animation quality in line with the classics was 'Beauty and the Beast', IMHO. When 'Hercules' came out, I was shocked at how poor the animation was. It was very blocky, lots of straight, simple lines and appearing to come out of some animation factory. This movie seems to be drawn by the same group of artists. I can only hope that Disney puts a stop to this team before they draw again. I miss the rich, extremely detailed animation of old.
There is still a lot of Win9x on corporate desktops (hell...there's still lots of Win3.1 out there :) I think a more accurate test would have a mix of Win9x and WinNT.
It looks like the hardware for the server will be the same as the original test. Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't one of the problems the fact that some of the hardware was not fully supported on Linux but well supported on NT? A test using completely compatible hardware for both seems to be the proper thing to use.