Technology makes it easier to do certain things, but those things could always have been done in the past. The U.S. Constitution has never had an explicit right to privacy, and has always had freedom of speech (at least since it was ratified). There might be lots more data moving through your ISP, but plenty of your data still moves through the U.S. postal service, FedEx, UPS, etc., in plain old non-technology ways.
If it's too expensive to deploy the services, then perhaps people will do without the services?
The traffic will only increase dramatically if people continue to use the services that demand the traffic, and pay for the bandwidth they need to do it.
And by that I mean: if you think of the vast majority of people as idiots, then the vast majority of customers for consumer electronics and computing are idiots, and therefore, to be successful, the products must be designed for idiots.
Plus everyone is an idiot about something. I really have no interest in the science of household cleaning supplies. I just want things to be clean.
If you design your product for the interested elite, you'd better hope they are willing to pay an exorbitant price, otherwise your business model is not going to work.
I think satellite radio is doing its part to kill the traditional music industry as well. Radio music has sucked for a long time, necessitating the use of CD collections if I wanted a decent listening experience Guess what? I now have lots of commercial-free stations available on satellite radio, many of which are sufficiently specialized to provide just the music I want. I don't listen to particular music over and over, I like to hear a variety from a selected genre or sub-genre, only once in a while liking something enough to buy it.
One evening just this week I heard two tracks that I really liked. After much research I found them (a couple of reasonably rare imports on Amazon), and decided I didn't really want them that much anyway. There will be new tracks on the radio tomorrow, and I'll like them too.
The more choices we have, the less we'll use each choice and the more we'll gravitate towards the most convenient ones. Another example: once the cable companies get their act together and have a truly comprehensive library of HD movies available on demand, Netflix and Blockbuster can kiss their business goodbye as well.
No joke -- all of the clean-air legislation has started to clear out decades worth of accumulated crud (aerosols) in the atmosphere. That results in more sunlight hitting the surface and intensifies the greenhouse effect. In fact, air pollution caused by the industrial processes that release greenhouse gases may have been limiting the warming impact of those greenhouse gases for a long time. Now that the air is getting clearer, the impact of those greenhouse gases may be exacerbated. This effect is also regional since different parts of the world have differing clean air standards.
Here's the original article on this subject, from June 2006:
...most definitely not Google, and certainly not the Constitution of the United States of America.
Corporations are not on a moral crusade to change the values of the world. They exist to create financial value for their shareholders. They do not exist to impose the values of their country of origin on every culture with which they want to do business.
If the people of India don't like the rules of their government, it's their responsibility to change them, India being a democracy. It's not Google's responsibility. Now if there are totalitarian regimes out there whose rules are simply too far from the international norm and whose people have no say in changing them, in those cases the "Do No Evil" mantra comes into play a bit more and the moral imperatives are much clearer. If Google were to start doing business in North Korea (work with me here), then it's worth harping on them for it.
The world needs a lot more software than can be produced by the 2% or 5% that you believe would qualify as actually belonging in the industry. Let's be fair, there is elite technical work and there is everyday technical work.
This is the free market in action. It would be great if every piece of software were lovingly designed and coded, crafted like a piece of art, from a philosophical standpoint. But the world doesn't run on art -- it runs mostly on "everyday good enough crap." So if the world needs "good enough crap," it's going to be filled with people who can do good enough crap, and a minority who are better. Nobody is going to pay twice as much for their DVD player because only a bunch of NASA PhDs were qualified to write the firmware.
How much of that 2-5% elite would put up with the typical non-technical BS that surrounds nearly any software project? Arguments about whether it should be Microsoft Bob or Microsoft Phil, subpar project planning, loose requirements analysis, marketing, making sure someone is there to say "yes, sir" to the Client Big Man all the time?
I would take it further and say that only 2-5% of ANYONE is qualified to do what many of us would consider to be excellent work, whether it's marketing, art, commerce, executive management, or what-have-you. Technical fields probably have a higher percentage of qualified people because of the raw intelligence required to master the subject.
I would also say that most of the people who are passionate about Linux do not want to do everyday crap, and so there is not a lot of everyday crap available.
Yes, the magazine actually came out three weeks ago. "Design first" at the level of detail required for this type of testing to work (complete pseudocode) is pretty much never going to happen with a major software system. Perhaps with small critical algorithms, yes, or where the risk/reward of that level of design is warranted. Most software is not going to qualify.
These types of algorithmic testing tools are useful for small, truly critical functionality that has to work perfectly. It's not cost effective to try to model typical complex software in a manner that supports testing as described in the article. Most programming is not about designing the next great single algorithm, it's about integrating data, interacting with users, and providing all the logic to handle the myriad special cases that make up user requirements. Rarely is such a testing tool going to cover all the possibilities without a gargantuan effort to model the software -- which effort will most likely not be able to keep up with the actual development anyway.
These tools won't be widely accepted until they can automatically read source code and create a software's model without programmer input.
Slashdot Mirror
Technology makes it easier to do certain things, but those things could always have been done in the past. The U.S. Constitution has never had an explicit right to privacy, and has always had freedom of speech (at least since it was ratified). There might be lots more data moving through your ISP, but plenty of your data still moves through the U.S. postal service, FedEx, UPS, etc., in plain old non-technology ways.
If it's too expensive to deploy the services, then perhaps people will do without the services?
The traffic will only increase dramatically if people continue to use the services that demand the traffic, and pay for the bandwidth they need to do it.
I've been waiting on this for a long time.
You can be a big fish in a small pond, but only until the small pond gets sucked into a huge gaping hole.
...I already know what that's like.
And by that I mean: if you think of the vast majority of people as idiots, then the vast majority of customers for consumer electronics and computing are idiots, and therefore, to be successful, the products must be designed for idiots.
Plus everyone is an idiot about something. I really have no interest in the science of household cleaning supplies. I just want things to be clean.
If you design your product for the interested elite, you'd better hope they are willing to pay an exorbitant price, otherwise your business model is not going to work.
The D40X isn't marketed to photographers. It and the D40 are marketed to "normal" people who want the benefits of a DSLR.
If you're a photographer, get a D80, D200, or D2 series.
I think satellite radio is doing its part to kill the traditional music industry as well. Radio music has sucked for a long time, necessitating the use of CD collections if I wanted a decent listening experience Guess what? I now have lots of commercial-free stations available on satellite radio, many of which are sufficiently specialized to provide just the music I want. I don't listen to particular music over and over, I like to hear a variety from a selected genre or sub-genre, only once in a while liking something enough to buy it.
One evening just this week I heard two tracks that I really liked. After much research I found them (a couple of reasonably rare imports on Amazon), and decided I didn't really want them that much anyway. There will be new tracks on the radio tomorrow, and I'll like them too.
The more choices we have, the less we'll use each choice and the more we'll gravitate towards the most convenient ones. Another example: once the cable companies get their act together and have a truly comprehensive library of HD movies available on demand, Netflix and Blockbuster can kiss their business goodbye as well.
No joke -- all of the clean-air legislation has started to clear out decades worth of accumulated crud (aerosols) in the atmosphere. That results in more sunlight hitting the surface and intensifies the greenhouse effect. In fact, air pollution caused by the industrial processes that release greenhouse gases may have been limiting the warming impact of those greenhouse gases for a long time. Now that the air is getting clearer, the impact of those greenhouse gases may be exacerbated. This effect is also regional since different parts of the world have differing clean air standards.
n nEmanuelEos06.pdf
Here's the original article on this subject, from June 2006:
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/Ma
...most definitely not Google, and certainly not the Constitution of the United States of America.
Corporations are not on a moral crusade to change the values of the world. They exist to create financial value for their shareholders. They do not exist to impose the values of their country of origin on every culture with which they want to do business.
If the people of India don't like the rules of their government, it's their responsibility to change them, India being a democracy. It's not Google's responsibility. Now if there are totalitarian regimes out there whose rules are simply too far from the international norm and whose people have no say in changing them, in those cases the "Do No Evil" mantra comes into play a bit more and the moral imperatives are much clearer. If Google were to start doing business in North Korea (work with me here), then it's worth harping on them for it.
The world needs a lot more software than can be produced by the 2% or 5% that you believe would qualify as actually belonging in the industry. Let's be fair, there is elite technical work and there is everyday technical work.
This is the free market in action. It would be great if every piece of software were lovingly designed and coded, crafted like a piece of art, from a philosophical standpoint. But the world doesn't run on art -- it runs mostly on "everyday good enough crap." So if the world needs "good enough crap," it's going to be filled with people who can do good enough crap, and a minority who are better. Nobody is going to pay twice as much for their DVD player because only a bunch of NASA PhDs were qualified to write the firmware.
How much of that 2-5% elite would put up with the typical non-technical BS that surrounds nearly any software project? Arguments about whether it should be Microsoft Bob or Microsoft Phil, subpar project planning, loose requirements analysis, marketing, making sure someone is there to say "yes, sir" to the Client Big Man all the time?
I would take it further and say that only 2-5% of ANYONE is qualified to do what many of us would consider to be excellent work, whether it's marketing, art, commerce, executive management, or what-have-you. Technical fields probably have a higher percentage of qualified people because of the raw intelligence required to master the subject.
I would also say that most of the people who are passionate about Linux do not want to do everyday crap, and so there is not a lot of everyday crap available.
Homeland Security Spam!
Yes, the magazine actually came out three weeks ago. "Design first" at the level of detail required for this type of testing to work (complete pseudocode) is pretty much never going to happen with a major software system. Perhaps with small critical algorithms, yes, or where the risk/reward of that level of design is warranted. Most software is not going to qualify.
These types of algorithmic testing tools are useful for small, truly critical functionality that has to work perfectly. It's not cost effective to try to model typical complex software in a manner that supports testing as described in the article. Most programming is not about designing the next great single algorithm, it's about integrating data, interacting with users, and providing all the logic to handle the myriad special cases that make up user requirements. Rarely is such a testing tool going to cover all the possibilities without a gargantuan effort to model the software -- which effort will most likely not be able to keep up with the actual development anyway. These tools won't be widely accepted until they can automatically read source code and create a software's model without programmer input.