Most of the problems the author descibes are true for a lot of closed source software too. Only the realy big companies sometimes have the right focus. I think the problems are inherent to programmers in general, either their education or psyche. Just search google for the "internet hall of shame of user interfaces" and similar sites.
The biggest difference I see is the religious stance some people take. Refusing to use anything closed source, therefore severly reducing their options to learn how to do things differently/better/etc. Most have never used an Apple, and not used windows since '95.
The only other thing that seems lacking is easy acces for closed source vendors to Linux/Open/FreeBSD. What I mean here is a consistent platform, where there are constant API's for all hardware/software. (clipboard, desktop background, printer, modem, webcam, installer, consistent location configuration files, etc.)
Your comment is only valid in a linear process. You always have some measuring error, if only the size of an atom. in a linear process this is no big problem as small measuring errors only give a small deviation in the result. In non-linear processes a small variation can have a large difference in the result. This behaviour described by chaos theory mathematics. The most famous example is the weather, were a butterfly flapping it's wings in the Amazone could theoretically cause a violent storm in Brittain. This mathematician in the first Jurassic parc film also tries to explain it, using drops flowing down from a hand.
I think Linux is ready for corporate use - locked down desktop/w wordprocessor/speadsheet/etc. - but for now I see the senior IT staff choosing MS as the safe way out, they'll never get blamed for choosing it, they might if a Linux adoption failed.
Hmmm, even my favorite editor WordPerfect does not have this (version 9) You either need to use the formula editor, or insert the overline character everytime you want an overbar. There are macro's around to do that of course, so it would be like Ctrl-Alt-O or something like that, but natively it does not do this in an easy way.
I use WordPerfect for this kind of thing, it does everything you list. (which Word does not AFAIK) Never used Framemaker myself so I can not compare. I do use Pagemaker, and compared to WP WP is a much more powerfull word processor, excelling in exactly the kind of things you mention, and Pagemaker is more geared towards page layout, but with less sophistication as far as references/TOC/numbering/sub-documents/etc. go, and WP rocks with Equations (in clasic WP5-8 mode), it's on par with LaTeX there, only WYSIWYG.
The problem was that MS used it's OS monopoly to prevent OEM's to bundle anything else with the system. It has forbidden the likes of IBM/Dell/etc to bundle free non-MS software like quicktime/real. So without these illegal practices you would have gotten even more free software with your new PC.
I will check Firebird, that you for pointing that out.
I have no PostgrSQL experience (as it does not run on Windows) I can only comment on Oracle, MS SQL Server, dBase(5 for DOS, so old) Access and Paradox. All of these are more expensive as even a comercial license for MySQL, and Oracle, MS-SQL and dBase are much more difficilt to set-up and use, while Access and Paradox, lacked a couple of options we needed, like replication (AFAIK) and overall robustness and scalability.
We did bundle MySQL with one of our client-server applications, and paid the commercial licence for those install's. The only thing MySQL did not provide and we build ourselves was a Windows installer Merge Module. This would allow our customers to install both out application and MySQL by pressing 'OK', 'I accept', 'Client' or 'Server', 'Finish'. My mom could succesfully install both client and server of our software, that used MySQL as DB.
As my comment on programming skills, I had collegues use MySQL by only giving them the installer, and "SQL in 10 minutes", anf they were up and running in minutes.
One of the things I liked most about MySQL is it's documentation. Compared to Oracle, that I use at my current employer, it excells.
Oh, in closing, another bonus for MySQL was that it did ran on linux, so that we could also offer solutions on linux. (and we did, it was only that most of our users were windows only shops) We chose PHP/Apache for the same reason over ASP/ISS (and it's good interaction with MySQL)
A few points in defence of Europe 1) Every time the europeans start talking about creating a stand-alone supra-national army the USA leans very heavily on them in NATO, to keep control in the Pentagon. 2) Because the Pentagon has control Europe can do very little on it's own. Only the most powerfull national armies have some separate capabilies. 3) Europe is a large economical power, but militairy purchases happen at national level and therefore in relatively small quantities, this makes these purchases much more expensive, both initial cost and esp. maintenance. But with the history of war in europe neighbouring countries do not trust eachother enough to say: France does only airforce, brittain only navy and germany only army tanks. Economic and monitairy union has only been acieved 3 years ago, and that's only the first step, and brittain has not even joined yet.
The fact that EU is not one entity and therefore everything has to be done by consensus does make the EU much more indecicive, but also more interested and experienced in trying to find a compromise.
It's one of the reasons I use SuSE, my router/firewall does not have a monitor;-) I could maybe use webmin, but then I need a webbrowser and GUI at the point I'm connecting from. Complete remote admin in a nice consistent UI, and I only need ssh or putty.
At my former employer we used MySQL for 2 reasons: It's free and it runs on Windows. If I'm right MySQL is currently the only DB that does both. Oh, and it had the added advantage that it could be used by people with virually no programming skills.
At my last employer we had an embedded linux 2.4 system (the SSV TRM/816) that had 4 Mb rom and 16 Mb RAM of wich we used 4 as a ramdrive. We even had a graphical user interface with STL (iirc). It reminded me what a powerfull system 486DX4-100 already is. My mailserver/firewall/router is a 486DX-33/8Mb running 2.2 The company's server was a P100/32Mb running qmail/CVS/MySQL/Samba/Webadmin on a 20 Gb harddisk the bios didn't understand. This was the main server for a software shop of about 17 deveopers. We had custom applications for calendar/appointment/projectmanagement/billing/CRM/etc all running on the MySQL.
I was unaware of these, I think they maybe never showed here in the Netherlands. I like those books because they have a very descriptive content and much subtlety, much in the same way as Tolkien. Homeros does a lot in metephores. And for the translation... my own of course;-) (yes I did study greek and have read the Illias and part of the Odyssea in it's original greek)
I think an adaption of some of the oldest book we have might be interesting, Like Homeros' Illias and Odyssee. Those are stories that are still compelling after 3500 years.
In the Special Edition DVD's Peter Jackson explains he concentrates the whole cinema-version on Frodo, because he has no time to tell the whole story and build all characters in dept. He tries to create more dept to the characters in the Special 4DVD editions, but even those do not come close to the characters as developed in Tolkiens writing. A lot is left untold, to keep the whole story comprehensible to an audience that has not read the books. If you crave more dept, I indeed suggest that you read the books and watch the Special Edition. I have read them about 15 times, and keep understanding the characters better.
I would love to see this list corrected for inflation, as it is now it's highly slanted towards more recent movies. Therefore I was much surprised to see "Gone with the Wind" on nr. 60, it might be number one in an inflation corrected list.
Adriaan Renting
P.S. I was watching the show on the BBC and was amazed that they switched to the BBC studio every 2 items, geez, you must have a lot of commercials in the USA! The BBC had none, so had to fill in the spaces. I was glad I can recieve the BBC here in the Netherlands. Congratulations to PJ, and hopefully more nice movies will come of this.
I currently drive a SAAB 900 from 1991, with 330k km ~ 206k Miles, and had a 1986 and 1981 model before that. I buy these car's at about 200k, drive them for 3-4 years, and as long as they have regular maintenance (oil, cooling fluid) they just keep on going. The reson I buy a new one is if the current one starts rusting. B.t.w. if someone in the north of the Netherlands needs a SAAB cheaply, I recomend the guy I bought mine from: www.vdlaansaabspecialist.nl
In the rest of the World: million: 6 zeroes milliard: 9 zeroes billion: 12 billiard: 15 trillion: 18 trilliard: 21 quadrillion: 24 quintillion: 30 hexillion or sexillion: 36 septillion: 42 octillion: 48 nonillion: 54 decillion: 60 undecillion: 66 duodecillion: 72 A duodecillion is about as big as you get, roughly being the number of particles in the galaxy. You could keep on counting if you liked, the system is a derivative of roman numerals (with some greek for flavour). In the 17th century the French decided to get rid of all the "iard"'s and have steps of 3 zeroes instead of 6 between the "ion"'s. The USA adopted this system. The Brittish kept the original system, and in 1948 the French reverted to the "iard" system, this leaving the USA as the only country ussing a different system, giving rise to much misunderstanding and potential problems like space probes hitting Mars.
The one thing that is a real performance problem on my K6-II 380/192 MB is McAffee Virus Scan. It's a real performance killer, while AVG that I use right now is not. Either it's got some nasty K6 specific bug, or I don't know, it even seems to be faster on my 486-100/36 Mb than on the K6.
Adriaan Renting.
On a side note, everything except windows XP runs fine on my HP Brio P200/64 MB, Windows XP won't even install. With NT or 2000, you should not try to use more than one program though. (I use it for testing my own programs, kuddo's to Norton Ghost)
I agree, but how else? - say a 100 euro penalty on every X sold? That would only make its software a little more expensive. - 10% of revenue, same thing. Currently MS can ask pretty much whatever it wants, any penalty will result in just a little higher prices for the concerned MS products, some kind of "EU-tax".
The only thing I can think of that would realy hurt MS would be a temporary ban on selling, including having to revoke and replace all current installations, until they play nice, or something like that. Nevertheless some punishment is better as what has happened in te USA until now.
Adriaan Renting.
Re:Language/tools are secondary
on
How C# Was Made
·
· Score: 1
A lot of theory about how to create good software and manage the software developement process properly is already quite old. A book like "The mythical man month" by Frederick P. Brooks is from the seventies and contains concepts true but foreign to most managers today. I have experience at several companies in software developement and I see 2 main problems: 1) programmers without a proper background, self-educated or otherwise, that have some mastery of a certain language but no education or skills in developent and management. These are they pleople that have only 2 answers to the question: "When should one use UML", either "Always" or "what's UML". 2) Managers of a software developement process, without insight into the fact that software developement is a very unusual kind of process where most normal management techniques do not work.
Some books: "The mythical man month" - Frederick P. Brooks "Principles of Software engineering management" - Tom Gilb "Object-Oriented and Classical Software Engineering" - Stephen R. Schach Please note that I am no expert in this field, I have only just started discovering Software Engineering myself about 2 years ago, but it has given me a much clearer view on how to develop software properly and manage it properly. It has realy worked for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the problems the author descibes are true for a lot of closed source software too. Only the realy big companies sometimes have the right focus.
I think the problems are inherent to programmers in general, either their education or psyche. Just search google for the "internet hall of shame of user interfaces" and similar sites.
The biggest difference I see is the religious stance some people take. Refusing to use anything closed source, therefore severly reducing their options to learn how to do things differently/better/etc.
Most have never used an Apple, and not used windows since '95.
The only other thing that seems lacking is easy acces for closed source vendors to Linux/Open/FreeBSD. What I mean here is a consistent platform, where there are constant API's for all hardware/software.
(clipboard, desktop background, printer, modem, webcam, installer, consistent location configuration files, etc.)
Your comment is only valid in a linear process. You always have some measuring error, if only the size of an atom. in a linear process this is no big problem as small measuring errors only give a small deviation in the result. In non-linear processes a small variation can have a large difference in the result. This behaviour described by chaos theory mathematics.
The most famous example is the weather, were a butterfly flapping it's wings in the Amazone could theoretically cause a violent storm in Brittain. This mathematician in the first Jurassic parc film also tries to explain it, using drops flowing down from a hand.
I think balls in a bin are a chaotic process.
We use IBM with MS exclusively at work (750 people)
I am going to try to bring IBM's linux offerings to their attention.
I use other apps for e-mail calendar, so I only need the browser
I think Linux is ready for corporate use - locked down desktop /w wordprocessor/speadsheet/etc. - but for now I see the senior IT staff choosing MS as the safe way out, they'll never get blamed for choosing it, they might if a Linux adoption failed.
Hmmm, even my favorite editor WordPerfect does not have this (version 9) You either need to use the formula editor, or insert the overline character everytime you want an overbar. There are macro's around to do that of course, so it would be like Ctrl-Alt-O or something like that, but natively it does not do this in an easy way.
I use WordPerfect for this kind of thing, it does everything you list. (which Word does not AFAIK)
Never used Framemaker myself so I can not compare. I do use Pagemaker, and compared to WP WP is a much more powerfull word processor, excelling in exactly the kind of things you mention, and Pagemaker is more geared towards page layout, but with less sophistication as far as references/TOC/numbering/sub-documents/etc. go, and WP rocks with Equations (in clasic WP5-8 mode), it's on par with LaTeX there, only WYSIWYG.
The problem was that MS used it's OS monopoly to prevent OEM's to bundle anything else with the system. It has forbidden the likes of IBM/Dell/etc to bundle free non-MS software like quicktime/real.
So without these illegal practices you would have gotten even more free software with your new PC.
I will check Firebird, that you for pointing that out.
I have no PostgrSQL experience (as it does not run on Windows) I can only comment on Oracle, MS SQL Server, dBase(5 for DOS, so old) Access and Paradox.
All of these are more expensive as even a comercial license for MySQL, and Oracle, MS-SQL and dBase are much more difficilt to set-up and use, while Access and Paradox, lacked a couple of options we needed, like replication (AFAIK) and overall robustness and scalability.
We did bundle MySQL with one of our client-server applications, and paid the commercial licence for those install's. The only thing MySQL did not provide and we build ourselves was a Windows installer Merge Module.
This would allow our customers to install both out application and MySQL by pressing 'OK', 'I accept', 'Client' or 'Server', 'Finish'. My mom could succesfully install both client and server of our software, that used MySQL as DB.
As my comment on programming skills, I had collegues use MySQL by only giving them the installer, and "SQL in 10 minutes", anf they were up and running in minutes.
One of the things I liked most about MySQL is it's documentation. Compared to Oracle, that I use at my current employer, it excells.
Oh, in closing, another bonus for MySQL was that it did ran on linux, so that we could also offer solutions on linux. (and we did, it was only that most of our users were windows only shops) We chose PHP/Apache for the same reason over ASP/ISS (and it's good interaction with MySQL)
A few points in defence of Europe
1) Every time the europeans start talking about creating a stand-alone supra-national army the USA leans very heavily on them in NATO, to keep control in the Pentagon.
2) Because the Pentagon has control Europe can do very little on it's own. Only the most powerfull national armies have some separate capabilies.
3) Europe is a large economical power, but militairy purchases happen at national level and therefore in relatively small quantities, this makes these purchases much more expensive, both initial cost and esp. maintenance. But with the history of war in europe neighbouring countries do not trust eachother enough to say: France does only airforce, brittain only navy and germany only army tanks. Economic and monitairy union has only been acieved 3 years ago, and that's only the first step, and brittain has not even joined yet.
The fact that EU is not one entity and therefore everything has to be done by consensus does make the EU much more indecicive, but also more interested and experienced in trying to find a compromise.
I could say a lot more but I'll stop here.
One word: precedent
Either it will make MS more reluctant do bundle things, or if they continue current practice will give other competitors grounds to fight that.
I can't wait for 9.1! I'm really excited to get on an integrated 2.6 and KDE 3.2 distro.
;-)
Same thing here, I bought 7.3, and am now waiting on the SuSE 2.6+KDE3.2 AMD64 version to go SuSE+Athlon64 for my desktop
It's one of the reasons I use SuSE, my router/firewall does not have a monitor ;-)
I could maybe use webmin, but then I need a webbrowser and GUI at the point I'm connecting from.
Complete remote admin in a nice consistent UI, and I only need ssh or putty.
At my former employer we used MySQL for 2 reasons:
It's free and it runs on Windows.
If I'm right MySQL is currently the only DB that does both.
Oh, and it had the added advantage that it could be used by people with virually no programming skills.
At my former employer we used MySQL for two reasons:
It's free and it runs on windows.
IIRC if you need tht your only option is MySQL.
At my last employer we had an embedded linux 2.4 system (the SSV TRM/816) that had 4 Mb rom and 16 Mb RAM of wich we used 4 as a ramdrive. We even had a graphical user interface with STL (iirc). It reminded me what a powerfull system 486DX4-100 already is.M /etc all running on the MySQL.
My mailserver/firewall/router is a 486DX-33/8Mb running 2.2
The company's server was a P100/32Mb running qmail/CVS/MySQL/Samba/Webadmin on a 20 Gb harddisk the bios didn't understand. This was the main server for a software shop of about 17 deveopers. We had custom applications for calendar/appointment/projectmanagement/billing/CR
Linux is awesome as it can be usefull without X.
Adriaan Renting
I was unaware of these, I think they maybe never showed here in the Netherlands. I like those books because they have a very descriptive content and much subtlety, much in the same way as Tolkien. Homeros does a lot in metephores. And for the translation... my own of course ;-)
(yes I did study greek and have read the Illias and part of the Odyssea in it's original greek)
Thans\k you for the reaction
I think an adaption of some of the oldest book we have might be interesting, Like Homeros' Illias and Odyssee. Those are stories that are still compelling after 3500 years.
Adriaan Renting.
In the Special Edition DVD's Peter Jackson explains he concentrates the whole cinema-version on Frodo, because he has no time to tell the whole story and build all characters in dept. He tries to create more dept to the characters in the Special 4DVD editions, but even those do not come close to the characters as developed in Tolkiens writing.
A lot is left untold, to keep the whole story comprehensible to an audience that has not read the books. If you crave more dept, I indeed suggest that you read the books and watch the Special Edition. I have read them about 15 times, and keep understanding the characters better.
Adriaan Renting.
I would love to see this list corrected for inflation,
as it is now it's highly slanted towards more recent movies.
Therefore I was much surprised to see "Gone with the Wind" on nr. 60,
it might be number one in an inflation corrected list.
Adriaan Renting
P.S. I was watching the show on the BBC and was amazed that they switched to the BBC studio every 2 items, geez, you must have a lot of commercials in the USA! The BBC had none, so had to fill in the spaces. I was glad I can recieve the BBC here in the Netherlands.
Congratulations to PJ, and hopefully more nice movies will come of this.
I currently drive a SAAB 900 from 1991, with 330k km ~ 206k Miles, and had a 1986 and 1981 model before that. I buy these car's at about 200k, drive them for 3-4 years, and as long as they have regular maintenance (oil, cooling fluid) they just keep on going.
The reson I buy a new one is if the current one starts rusting.
B.t.w. if someone in the north of the Netherlands needs a SAAB cheaply, I recomend the guy I bought mine from: www.vdlaansaabspecialist.nl
In the rest of the World:
million: 6 zeroes
milliard: 9 zeroes
billion: 12
billiard: 15
trillion: 18
trilliard: 21
quadrillion: 24
quintillion: 30
hexillion or sexillion: 36
septillion: 42
octillion: 48
nonillion: 54
decillion: 60
undecillion: 66
duodecillion: 72
A duodecillion is about as big as you get, roughly being the number of particles in the galaxy. You could keep on counting if you liked, the system is a derivative of roman numerals (with some greek for flavour).
In the 17th century the French decided to get rid of all the "iard"'s and have steps of 3 zeroes instead of 6 between the "ion"'s. The USA adopted this system.
The Brittish kept the original system, and in 1948 the French reverted to the "iard" system, this leaving the USA as the only country ussing a different system, giving rise to much misunderstanding and potential problems like space probes hitting Mars.
Adriaan Renting.
The one thing that is a real performance problem on my K6-II 380/192 MB is McAffee Virus Scan. It's a real performance killer, while AVG that I use right now is not. Either it's got some nasty K6 specific bug, or I don't know, it even seems to be faster on my 486-100/36 Mb than on the K6.
Adriaan Renting.
On a side note, everything except windows XP runs fine on my HP Brio P200/64 MB, Windows XP won't even install. With NT or 2000, you should not try to use more than one program though. (I use it for testing my own programs, kuddo's to Norton Ghost)
I agree, but how else?
- say a 100 euro penalty on every X sold? That would only make its software a little more expensive.
- 10% of revenue, same thing.
Currently MS can ask pretty much whatever it wants, any penalty will result in just a little higher prices for the concerned MS products, some kind of "EU-tax".
The only thing I can think of that would realy hurt MS would be a temporary ban on selling, including having to revoke and replace all current installations, until they play nice, or something like that.
Nevertheless some punishment is better as what has happened in te USA until now.
Adriaan Renting.
A lot of theory about how to create good software and manage the software developement process properly is already quite old.
A book like "The mythical man month" by Frederick P. Brooks is from the seventies and contains concepts true but foreign to most managers today. I have experience at several companies in software developement and I see 2 main problems:
1) programmers without a proper background, self-educated or otherwise, that have some mastery of a certain language but no education or skills in developent and management. These are they pleople that have only 2 answers to the question: "When should one use UML", either "Always" or "what's UML".
2) Managers of a software developement process, without insight into the fact that software developement is a very unusual kind of process where most normal management techniques do not work.
Some books:
"The mythical man month" - Frederick P. Brooks
"Principles of Software engineering management" - Tom Gilb
"Object-Oriented and Classical Software Engineering" - Stephen R. Schach
Please note that I am no expert in this field, I have only just started discovering Software Engineering myself about 2 years ago, but it has given me a much clearer view on how to develop software properly and manage it properly. It has realy worked for me.