Visionary just means they paid Gartner. The Cool vendor means they took 'em to a brothel as well.

Okay I'm joking. Still... the fact they were whoring out "pattern based stragegy" (you had to pay to use the term) not long ago leaves me wondering.

Thank you - it's nice to be appreciated :)

Okay - I think you have a point.

Either we were reading different messages, or we understand English in different ways. What I got from the post was: Microsoft hasn't changed the deal for Indies, it's trying to improve upon it to attract more developers and is very helpful all around.

I'm not a native English speaker so perhaps that's an issue.

Why? To keep score, ofcourse. That's why, when it was made mandatory to publish the salaries of the CEOs of semi-governmental institutions, the effect was to drive them up even farther instead of pushing them down.

Yes - if the state of said citizen made a point of it, *and* you travelled to a country where they have jurisdiction (Like the ABC-islands) or a country that wouldn't hesitate to extradite you for a second (Venezuela comes to mind).

We had a few cases of Dutch folks selling pot to tourists in The Netherlands (which was legal under the circumstances) and then getting arrested when crossing the border to Germany, for selling it to German nationals.

If you like liberty, stay in your country and obey its rulers, always. Welcome to the new world order.

I'm not surprised about the infant mortality rates. Our son was delivered in hospital. My wife nearly didn't get anesthetics because the doctor had to leave for the weekend. Also, after 17:00 'o clock the number of available medical staff dropped drastically. There were, fortunately, no complications right then but if she had had them at 17:10, the doctor would have already left.

Stuff like that (not enough people on call) was identified as a factor in the infant mortality in The Netherlands last year. I don't know how it translates to Australia but if they have a lot of people delivering in hospitals, this might be a factor there as well.

Well, the MTA is also about agreeing on limiting the distribution of a potential new plague. It would be pretty embarassing to have it end up in N. Korea through a chain of companies. This way, the signing party will be liable and Ron Fouchier won't get "renditioned" to Guantanamo for being a bio-terrorist if something goes wrong.

As for the seizing of property: if there was a clear need for the data and this lab was sitting on it, the Dutch government could have a chat with their own university council to get it released.

Yes, that's pretty much spot on.

As I said somewhere else in this thread:

"Ron Fouchier is the same guy that was burnt to the ground by the US government when he and his lab wanted to publish that dangerous virus recipe in Nature to inform everyone that the mutations could happen in nature by themselves. Is anyone really saying he should now suddenly send off his known-to-be-lethal virus sequence to all and sundry without even limiting his liability? That's incredibly hypocritical and also quite stupid.

You can't have it both ways, folks. It's either "let him share information" and publish in Nature and Science without having senators screaming he's a terrorist and they should nuke the Netherlands, or "let's not share the information" and have him sign MTA's with everyone to cover his ass."

Probably. Anyway, that's not the point here since they didn't patent anything. They're just asking people to sign a very standard MTA that limits their liability in case you decide to use the virus to bump off your neighbour, and gives them a cut of the stuff you develop with it. Everyone is free to re-sequence the DNA and avoid this clause. Except that Saudi-Arabia wasn't sharing any information, and the information sent to the Dutch lab wasn't sent legally in the first place, because S.Arabia wanted to prevent that information leaking too.

And another thing: Ron Fouchier is the same guy that was burnt to the ground by the US government when he and his lab wanted to publish that dangerous virus recipe in Nature to inform everyone that the mutations could happen in nature by themselves. Is anyone really saying he should now suddenly send off his known-to-be-lethal virus sequence to all and sundry without even limiting his liability? That's incredibly hypocritical and also quite stupid.

You can't have it both ways, folks. It's either "let him share information" and publish in Nature and Science without having senators screaming he's a terrorist and they should nuke the Netherlands, or "let's not share the information" and have him sign MTA's with everyone to cover his ass.

RTFA. They didn't patent it, they're not blocking anyone. The problem is with Saudi-Arabia, not with the Dutch lab. The article is borderline slander, but the summary is outright misleading.

From the article:
"Eleven months ago, Zaki told the Guardian, he was called in as a consultant on a mysterious case in his Jeddah hospital. Zaki tried to identify the virus, but the patient died less than twenty-four hours after he received the sample. Soon, a second case came his way, and Zaki mailed a sample to his friend, Fouchier. Zaki sent a notice in September 2012 to ProMED, a disease alert system run by the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Under pressure from the Saudi government, Zaki's hospital in Jeddah fired him when the ProMED notice was posted, and he moved to Cairo."

Note the timing: he was fired after the alert got out that there was a problem.

Without the Dutch lab, there would have been no sequence and NO ALERT because the Saudi govt. was trying to keep it quiet. That was at a time that patients were already dying outside Saudi Arabia too. The whistleblower who saw two dead patients and a potential disaster and took action, is fired. Note that if they sent the virus to *ANYONE ELSE* the virus could have been sequenced a dozen times over, easily - it's not that hard. The problem isn't with a Dutch lab that asks for payment in return for results and a cut of the potential profit. The problem is with the Saudi government that fires people who actually try to alert the world.

It's not patented... *sigh*

What the lab did was to sequence the genome and then (oooh evil) expect to get paid for that work if someone else wanted to use THEIR work to build something with that. That's the modus operandi of every other genetics lab in the world - they all analyze stuff and then provide results to paying customers.

The Dutch lab is not blocking anyone from sequencing the genome themselves - that's a problem with *Saudi-Arabia*, they didn't even want to send the virus out to anyone in the first place for fear it would reflect badly upon their country. If the Saudi's sent out the virus to the CDC and other labs, for instance, this issue wouldn't be an issue, now would it?

The article is completely and wildly off the mark, and the summary is confusing the issue even more, if that's even possible.

I think that's a fair summary.

In my previous project I was in charge as architect/information analyst and lead designer, supported (and not hindered) by a very competent project manager who never got in my way but just made sure everyone had what he needed. In my current project things are very different - to the detriment of all.

Yup.

All too often there are multiple "right ways" of going about things, like cooking. Or coding. It's not a problem if you boil your potatoes first, then peel them. Or if you peel, then boil. But if you have to reach a compromise and only peel half of them, the result is sub-optimal.

If you have to pass something on the road you can go around it to the left or the right. Taking the middle because you had to compromise seldom works out.

That's why more than one captain on a ship is a bad idea. Even two brilliant captains will have different approaches to things - all good! - but the combination is likely to be the worst of both worlds.

This table only deals with the situation where they all work on the same thing.

I recently had a crash project. If it didn't work out, the company would be forced to stop work until the project was completed. We were talking millions of dollars per day here, so the project was a tad urgent.

First, the other information analyst was removed. Then I did the requirements. While they were being completed. a testmanager came in and started writing testcases on the requirements. A programmer came in and did mock-ups. I corrected the mock-ups. A secondary team was set up to build the fallback solution - completely separate but we could use their input. Then another programmer was added to assist the first. They only talked to eachother. The file management solution was handled by someone else: he just gave us a place to store and receive files. No other interface between his project and ours, except the deadline.

Common thread: separation of concerns, public interfaces, minimal reliance of one class (programmers, testers, designer) on any other class. Worked very well - we finished right on time, tested and validated as well, in half the budget and time of the previous project. The previous project had used more people working on the same thing. That never really works out.

In my current project we have way too many people working on the same subject. Now I have to check with my co-workers whenever I want to edit documents. Argh. Every decision has to be a group decision. Arrrrggggghhhh. A very simple project has now turned into a two million euro monstrosity.

Interfaces and information hiding: a really good idea if you want to get stuff done. It works for organisations too: "need to know" and "call my secretary".

Overengineering is a common mistake in people who want to "do it right" and try to design resilience to every possible change. It never works, which is why Agile development emphasizes that building a "code inventory" is just running up a cost, not building an asset.

But not having a clue really doesn't help.