The Law of Standards
The Law of Standards
Quote:
"Whenever a major organization develops a new system as an official standard for X, the primary result is the widespread adoption of some simpler system as a de facto standard for X."
[print version] Commodore 64 reincarnated on a chip | CNET News.com
[print version] Commodore 64 reincarnated on a chip | CNET News.com
YAMHILL, Ore.--There is a story behind every electronic gadget sold on the QVC shopping channel. This one leads to a ramshackle farmhouse in rural Oregon, which is the home and circuit design lab of Jeri Ellsworth, a 30-year-old high school dropout and self-taught computer chip designer.
c.a. steinkuehler - MMOG research
c.a. steinkuehler - MMOG research
A couple of interesting papers from Constance Steinkuehler related to learning in MMOG (Massively Multiplayers Online Gaming).
Also worth to have a look at:
MUVEES, the Multi-User Virtual Environment Experiential Simulator
Check Point's optimistic pessimist | Newsmakers | CNET News.com
Check Point's optimistic pessimist | Newsmakers | CNET News.com:
"Yeah, and they got a pretty complicated system.
To catch somebody committing an electronic crime, you need to do it within a very, very short amount of time. If you take two years to investigate a computer crime, there's nothing left around. If you have a pretty complicated system, every small step you make can touch hundreds of places. It's not just one programmer, where you can get into the code and isolate a problem. When you've got hundreds of megabytes of code, there is likely to be lots of bugs, and that's what happened. "
[print version] JBoss eyes front-end technologies | CNET News.com
[print version] JBoss eyes front-end technologies | CNET News.com
JBoss is considering moving beyond middleware with a framework that will make it easier for companies to develop Web applications in Java.
Extract:
Labourey said one problem with the current Java frameworks is that they are too complicated, which can be a problem if a company only wants to create a simple Web application.
"If a company wants to create just five forms, it takes them four weeks to understand it," Labourey said. "Its very complex to do. ASP.NET is good; too bad it's not in the Java camp."
Article: Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities
Publications - Designing Online Communities to Enhance Participation: Bridging Theory and Practice
Beenen, Gerard, Ling, Kimberly, Wang, Xiaoqing, Chang, Klarissa, Frankowski, Dan, Resnick, Paul, and Robert E Kraut. "Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities". To appear in Proceedings of ACM CSCW 2004 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Chicago, IL. 2004.
This is a very interesting article about the dynamic of contribution in virtual communities.
Extracts:
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In Gnutella, two-thirds of users share no music files and ten percent provide 87% of all the music.
In open source development four percent of members account for 50 percent of answers on a user-to-user help site, and four percent of developers contribute 88% of new code and 66% of code fixes.
The collective effort model identifies conditions under which people will socially loaf less.
These include
(a) believing that their effort is important to the group’s performance,
(b) believing thattheir contributions to the group are identifiable,
and (c) liking the group they are working with, among others.
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XML over HTTP or SOAP?
XML over HTTP or SOAP?
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SOAP is to XML what EJB is to Java. A heavy handed, over applied behemoth. SOAP is usurping the "web service" definition. SOAP is supposed to make systems interoperable, but in *every* deployment, or contemplated deployment I have seen, where interoperability was crucial, SOAP had the effect of reducing interoperability.
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Indeed, SOAP, yet another overcomplicated monster generated by the "overcomplexifying maniacs" community operating in the discipline of Computer Sciences.
See also:
Where's the simplicity in Web services? by Martin LaMonica, CNET
News.com, October 5, 2004 Has Web services, the technology intended to simplify programming, gotten too complex? A vocal minority wants the more complicated protocols to give it a rest in favor of a simpler approach.
