As much as I'd like to believe that it's because they are good people doing good things, why are they putting money into this, and how long can we expect them to keep doing so?
Both the iPad and Chrome netbooks intentionally omitted a file system, yet the MS slides treat the omission as if it were a weakness. Having one creates all sorts of security, reliability, and administration problems. Old-world corporate MS is really getting bogged down in details and legacy (must support Silverlight, Sharepoint, etc.) and missing the vision.
Excellent explanation. Commercial sector after sector (airlines charging for baggage and whatnot) have discovered the magic of 'unbundling', which is often nothing more than making an experience so confusing that they end up nickel and diming you to death, and telcos want to do it here too.
The article was less about the nomination and more about another article, quote: "According to this article..." . If./ is going to post something on such a widely reported item, it should at least a report that gives a first hand account.
I'm in medical software development and we desperately want a good 3D browser solution. Not sure if this one will fill the bill though in terms of all of the other facets to software tools like standardization, reliability, stability, etc.
I actually develop software for radiation oncology. I had mixed feelings when I read the article - it heavily stressed the errors and briefly mentioned that RO saves many lives. Our group is a little more advanced than most, and we have extra checks (such as doing a dry run for every patient: irradiating a sensor matrix before the actual patient). I agree with the article that errors need to be discussed, and in fact our head of research is trying to convince the RO community that we should follow the airlines model (where lives are also on the line) of studying errors, determining root causes, and improving process to avoid them.
There is always tension in our industry between having the latest techniques available and having reliable treatment procedures, and it's tough to draw the line. Please don't condemn the field as a whole, but instead push for an environment where if someone makes a mistake, it is handled in a way that improves the system. Most of the professionals in this field have 10+ years of college and great aspirations of saving lives, but they're all human. If they are crucified for making a single error, then a culture of covering up will become more entrenched. If you think that mistakes should never happen, then I'd like take away your backspace key.
Agreed. People switch between computers at home, work, and public workstations and don't have a universal login to make it 'just work' anywhere. It also definitely suffers from the "if everyone would just use OUR system it would be easy" problem. Try coming up with your own solution and run through setup scenarios for different users (including your mother) and you'll find that there are too many steps. Even just doing authentication is tough to make simple (relies on contacting some central authority).
Nice article highlighting the fragility of reputation. The author goes on to screw it up by saying:
"The Obama administration's new head of policy at EPA, Lisa Heinzerling, is an advocate of turning precaution into standard policy."
Government should absolutely prepare for events that _might_ happen (that's what the DoD is all about). Ex-VP Cheney pushed "The One Percent Doctrine," for threats to the US, but somehow only wanted it to apply to military threats. More at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/opinion/09friedman.html
Seconded again. It seems like new energy technologies are announced at around one per week, and they invariably use "could", "might", "hope" and other terms for "it is not proven but we want more money for research". Everyone is hoping for a silver bullet, but continuation of these articles just breeds cynicism.
We need a Slashdot tag for these, something like "hopeful".
I would trust them more if representatives from organizations like the ACLU were included in their discussions to ensure that the rights of the people were defended. If the representatives had a non-disclosure agreement, then this would allow them to maintain secrecy. If they refuse such representatives, then they are disregarding the people's rights.
De-dup also means some unexpected behavior. Want to copy a 5 GB file? Done in less than a second.
Over-write a section of a dup'ed file with new content? Suddenly you're using more disk space, or could even get a "disk full" message even though you were just replacing data, but not increasing it's size in an obvious way.
Trying to make space on a drive by deleting lots of big files that happen to be dup'ed? No effect.
That's absolutely right on several levels. Kids are perfectly capable of learning to touch type at a younger age. We got a program for our kids when they were 8-9. High school is a busy enough time with other stuff. Also, even if you only learn to touch type at 5 words per minute, when/if you do need to use a keyboard, you will at least use the proper technique and get faster with practice.
Yes, surprised that they would make the same mistake twice, as an earlier MS search engine (a few years ago) was observed returning 14 search results for 'Linux' (with the first being 'How to migrate from Linux to MS'), while the same search on Google would yield hundreds of thousands.
A search engine will not be successful if it is not trusted, and if people catch it misleading them on something they know, then they will not trust it for most other searches. MS should have learned this. Google's "Don't be evil" doctrine is as much a business requirement as anything - they are maintaining relationships with millions of people and if they are perceived as evil then business will go down the crapper fast.
Agreed. They have a lofty goal, but I did not see any reason to expect that they will attain it. This is vaporware. Pivotal phrase: "... we're exploring rapid recharge,..." but they don't mention having even a prototype using a single battery with which they can recharge it quickly.
I agree strongly that "You will have to know tech either way".
When you say:... always having to keep myself up-to-date...
it strongly implies that you are not as thrilled with tech as you used to be, so take this into account.
Going into management means that you are still technical, but dealing with issues at a higher level. For example, instead of coding a search algorithm you are deciding that the program needs search functionality.
As a programmer over 50 I can say with some authority that that mental quickness and memory for detail diminishes, but judgment improves. I think that you are leaning towards management anyway, and I suggest that you do go into it to capitalize on your changing brain.
You're working a 60 hour week? Simple solution - Come work for us. We'll only work you 11 hours per day, and that will give you an extra hour to work out!
NASA's responsibility is not formatting the data so much as making it available. It should be available at least as images so that others have access to the raw data. Beyond that, OCR'ed to simple text to facilitate search by others. Whatever OCR fails to reliably interpret should be fed to reCAPTCHA.
"money is that it lets you do exactly that" is very well put.
I would like to add that in these types of deals the only rules are the ones you make. When eloan was bought, the sellers sold 1/2 the company as a compromise to mitigate their risk. You should also figure out what is important to you in terms of product development and marketing and propose them as terms of the contract.
Slashdot Mirror
As much as I'd like to believe that it's because they are good people doing good things, why are they putting money into this, and how long can we expect them to keep doing so?
Both the iPad and Chrome netbooks intentionally omitted a file system, yet the MS slides treat the omission as if it were a weakness. Having one creates all sorts of security, reliability, and administration problems. Old-world corporate MS is really getting bogged down in details and legacy (must support Silverlight, Sharepoint, etc.) and missing the vision.
Excellent explanation. Commercial sector after sector (airlines charging for baggage and whatnot) have discovered the magic of 'unbundling', which is often nothing more than making an experience so confusing that they end up nickel and diming you to death, and telcos want to do it here too.
Agreed. And to pile on -
The article was less about the nomination and more about another article, quote: "According to this article ..." . If ./ is going to post something on such a widely reported item, it should at least a report that gives a first hand account.
I'm in medical software development and we desperately want a good 3D browser solution. Not sure if this one will fill the bill though in terms of all of the other facets to software tools like standardization, reliability, stability, etc.
I actually develop software for radiation oncology. I had mixed feelings when I read the article - it heavily stressed the errors and briefly mentioned that RO saves many lives. Our group is a little more advanced than most, and we have extra checks (such as doing a dry run for every patient: irradiating a sensor matrix before the actual patient). I agree with the article that errors need to be discussed, and in fact our head of research is trying to convince the RO community that we should follow the airlines model (where lives are also on the line) of studying errors, determining root causes, and improving process to avoid them.
There is always tension in our industry between having the latest techniques available and having reliable treatment procedures, and it's tough to draw the line. Please don't condemn the field as a whole, but instead push for an environment where if someone makes a mistake, it is handled in a way that improves the system. Most of the professionals in this field have 10+ years of college and great aspirations of saving lives, but they're all human. If they are crucified for making a single error, then a culture of covering up will become more entrenched. If you think that mistakes should never happen, then I'd like take away your backspace key.
Agreed. People switch between computers at home, work, and public workstations and don't have a universal login to make it 'just work' anywhere. It also definitely suffers from the "if everyone would just use OUR system it would be easy" problem. Try coming up with your own solution and run through setup scenarios for different users (including your mother) and you'll find that there are too many steps. Even just doing authentication is tough to make simple (relies on contacting some central authority).
Hmmm... Looks like the tiny URL problem all over again. We need tiny IP! :)
Nice article highlighting the fragility of reputation. The author goes on to screw it up by saying:
"The Obama administration's new head of policy at EPA, Lisa Heinzerling, is an advocate of turning precaution into standard policy."
Government should absolutely prepare for events that _might_ happen (that's what the DoD is all about). Ex-VP Cheney pushed "The One Percent Doctrine," for threats to the US, but somehow only wanted it to apply to military threats. More at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/opinion/09friedman.html
Seconded again. It seems like new energy technologies are announced at around one per week, and they invariably use "could", "might", "hope" and other terms for "it is not proven but we want more money for research". Everyone is hoping for a silver bullet, but continuation of these articles just breeds cynicism.
We need a Slashdot tag for these, something like "hopeful".
I would trust them more if representatives from organizations like the ACLU were included in their discussions to ensure that the rights of the people were defended. If the representatives had a non-disclosure agreement, then this would allow them to maintain secrecy. If they refuse such representatives, then they are disregarding the people's rights.
Very well put.
De-dup also means some unexpected behavior. Want to copy a 5 GB file? Done in less than a second.
Over-write a section of a dup'ed file with new content? Suddenly you're using more disk space, or could even get a "disk full" message even though you were just replacing data, but not increasing it's size in an obvious way.
Trying to make space on a drive by deleting lots of big files that happen to be dup'ed? No effect.
That's absolutely right on several levels. Kids are perfectly capable of learning to touch type at a younger age. We got a program for our kids when they were 8-9. High school is a busy enough time with other stuff. Also, even if you only learn to touch type at 5 words per minute, when/if you do need to use a keyboard, you will at least use the proper technique and get faster with practice.
But if we wait until everyone is absolutely sure, then it may be too late.
Yes, surprised that they would make the same mistake twice, as an earlier MS search engine (a few years ago) was observed returning 14 search results for 'Linux' (with the first being 'How to migrate from Linux to MS'), while the same search on Google would yield hundreds of thousands.
A search engine will not be successful if it is not trusted, and if people catch it misleading them on something they know, then they will not trust it for most other searches. MS should have learned this. Google's "Don't be evil" doctrine is as much a business requirement as anything - they are maintaining relationships with millions of people and if they are perceived as evil then business will go down the crapper fast.
Agreed. They have a lofty goal, but I did not see any reason to expect that they will attain it. This is vaporware. Pivotal phrase: "... we're exploring rapid recharge, ..." but they don't mention having even a prototype using a single battery with which they can recharge it quickly.
Because requiring Silverlight (and therefore Windows) severely dilutes the notion that Gate's action is altruistic. The content is only kinda free.
They should call it skulk ...
I agree strongly that "You will have to know tech either way".
When you say: ... always having to keep myself up-to-date ...
it strongly implies that you are not as thrilled with tech as you
used to be, so take this into account.
Going into management means that you are still technical, but dealing
with issues at a higher level. For example, instead of coding a search algorithm
you are deciding that the program needs search functionality.
As a programmer over 50 I can say with some authority that that mental
quickness and memory for detail diminishes, but judgment improves. I think that
you are leaning towards management anyway, and I suggest that you do go into
it to capitalize on your changing brain.
You're working a 60 hour week? Simple solution - Come work for us. We'll only work you 11 hours per day, and that will give you an extra hour to work out!
NASA's responsibility is not formatting the data so much as making it available. It should be available at least as images so that others have access to the raw data. Beyond that, OCR'ed to simple text to facilitate search by others. Whatever OCR fails to reliably interpret should be fed to reCAPTCHA.
Great weekly pictures. Thanks for the link.
The author ignores the convenience of voice mail by the sender. I think that voice mail etiquette will evolve to use only shorter messages.
"money is that it lets you do exactly that" is very well put.
I would like to add that in these types of deals the only rules are the ones you make. When eloan was bought, the sellers sold 1/2 the company as a compromise to mitigate their risk. You should also figure out what is important to you in terms of product development and marketing and propose them as terms of the contract.