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Comment I'm curious about the methodology here (Score 1) 465

by Ellisande (#34928966) Attached to: Open Source More Expensive Says MS Report
I'm wondering about two things here. First - in cases where proprietary software is used, its generally the case that the company has to develope its own middle-ware product for intergration into their systems (or buy a boxed one), either way, its part of the cost of the product. Is that being used in this calculation, or is that considered a seperate "product"? For an open source solution, the better option is probably just to modify for the source to integrate the product, which would be more cost for the product itself, but you miss the middle-ware costs. Second - is this looking at only the "cost" or factoring in time as well? If you're having an integration problem (even if you are a big enough company to complain loud enough to get say, Microsoft, to implement a fix) you're certainly not going to get it over night, or next week. In smaller companies, this isn't an option at all. If you look at time waiting for Microsoft to probably never fix the problem, versus devloping and submitting an code change for an open source product, I'd bet the amount of time actually used is significantly less than the Microsoft turn-around. Sure its a higher development cost to the company, but it will save them many hours getting a fix to their workforce in a faster time frame.
Programming

Submission + - How Facebook Ships Code

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "yeegay has a very interesting article about how Facebook develops and releases software that he has gathered from talking with friends at the company. The two largest teams at Facebook are Engineering and Ops, with roughly 400-500 team members each, together making up about 50% of the company. All engineers go through 4 to 6 week “Boot Camp” training where they learn the Facebook system by fixing bugs. After boot camp, all engineers get access to live DB and any engineer can modify any part of Facebook's code base and check-in at-will so that engineers can modify specs mid-process, re-order work projects, and inject new feature ideas anytime. Then arguments about whether or not a feature idea is worth doing or not generally get resolved by spending a week implementing it and then testing it on a sample of users, e.g., 1% of Nevada users. "All changes are reviewed by at least one person, and the system is easy for anyone else to look at and review your code even if you don’t invite them to," writes yeegay. "It would take intentionally malicious behavior to get un-reviewed code in.” What is interesting for a compnay this size is that there is no official QA group at Facebook but almost every employee is dogfooding the product every day: many times a day and every employee is using a version of the site that includes all the changes that are next in line to go out. All employees are strongly encouraged to report any bugs they see and these are very quickly actioned upon. Facebook has about 60,000 servers with the smallest level comprising only 6 servers and there are nine levels for pushing out new code. For new code the ops team observes those 6 servers at level 1 to make sure that they are behaving correctly before rolling forward to the next level. If a release is causing any issues (e.g., throwing errors, etc.) then the push is halted, the engineer who committed the offending changeset is paged to fix the problem, and then the release starts over again at level 1."
Transportation

The Bus That Rides Above Traffic 371

Posted by CmdrTaco from the that's-not-gonna-work dept.
An anonymous reader writes "China is the new tech king. They're developing a new, two-lane bus system that travels over traffic below. It's claimed to cost 10% of a subway system and use 30% less energy than current bus technologies." This one has been boggling my brain. I can't see how this is a good idea or safe. But it sure is awesome.
Government

FBI Instructs Wikipedia To Drop FBI Seal 485

Posted by CmdrTaco from the teach-the-seal-tricks dept.
eldavojohn writes "The FBI got in contact with Wikipedia's San Francisco office to inform them they were violating the law in regards to 'unauthorized production' of this seal. The FBI quoted the law as saying, 'Whoever possesses any insignia... or any colorable imitation thereof... shall be fined... or imprisoned... or both.' Wikipedia refused to take the image down and stated that the FBI was misquoting the law. The FBI claims that this production of this image is 'particularly problematic, because it facilitates both deliberate and unwitting violations of restrictions by Wikipedia users.' Wikipedia's lawyer, Mike Godwin (please omit certain jokes), contacted the FBI and asserted, 'We are compelled as a matter of law and principle to deny your demand for removal of the FBI Seal from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons,' adding that the firm was 'prepared to argue our view in court.' Wikipedia appears to be holding their ground; we shall see if the FBI comes to their senses or proceeds with litigation."
It's funny. Laugh.

Tracking the Harm Games Do 118

Posted by Soulskill from the correlation-something-something-causation dept.
Every so often, video games are accused of causing all sorts of negative behavior in children, teens, and adults. These accusations are typically predicated on statistics that sound much more damning than they actually are. In that vein, gaming website Rock, Paper, Shotgun did their own tongue-in-cheek statistical analysis, complete with pretty charts and graphs. Quoting: "As part of my research I thought to compare the sales of each GTA game with what the divorce rate must have been when each came out. As you can see each new GTA game has been directly correlated with an increase in divorces. ... An often ignored statistic (and you have to ask why it’s being ignored by the games media, don’t you?) is the sheer volume of PC games being released. We’ve all noticed the British population is abandoning the church, turning instead toward shopping, DVDs and knife crime. But few have thought to check for a connection between PC sales and the numbers of people attending their local Church Of England church on a Sunday. When you look at the data there’s little doubt left that as the publishers continue to release more and more PC games each year, our nation’s faith is being increasingly eroded. And at what cost? If only a graph could tell us that."
Input Devices

BlindType — the Amazing Keyboard of the Future 125

Posted by kdawson from the do-what-i-mean dept.
kkleiner writes "BlindType has created a new touchscreen keyboard program of the same name that changes size, orientation, and position to match your wandering fingers as they type. BlindType also features some of the most impressive typing correction software I've ever seen. The result is a practical touchscreen interface that knows what you meant to type, even if you make mistakes. Lots of them. In fact, you can type without looking at the screen at all."
Image

Darth Vader Robs Long Island Bank 190

Posted by samzenpus from the I-find-our-lack-of-funds-disturbing dept.
Apparently the destruction of the second Death Star has stretched the Galactic Empire's coffers so thin that Lord Vader himself is robbing banks. From the article: "Impotent Rebel Alliance security forces tell Newsday (paywall) that Vader marched into a Chase bank in Setauket around 11:30 a.m. today. Brandishing a completely unnecessary handgun — as he had the power to choke the oxygen out every teller's throat — the fallen Jedi demanded cash."
Social Networks

Facebook User Satisfaction Is 'Abysmal' 289

Posted by kdawson from the users-aren't-their-customers dept.
adeelarshad82 writes "American Customer Satisfaction Index recently conducted a survey in which they found that even though Facebook is gaining popularity, they are doing a miserable job of keeping their users satisfied. According to the survey Facebook scored 64 out of 100 for customer satisfaction, which puts the website in line with the satisfaction rates for airlines and cable companies. The survey also includes other websites like YouTube and Wikipedia (which scored considerably higher) and MySpace, which came in slightly lower. (The survey did not include Twitter since many of its members access the site through third-party sites rather than Twitter.com.) The ACSI was founded at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, and is based on annual interviews with about 70,000 customers. The group has measured portals and search engines in the past, as well as news and information websites, but this is the first year the ACSI included social networking sites." UM professor Claes Fornell blogged: "Controversies over privacy issues, frequent changes to user interfaces, and increasing commercialization have positioned the big social networking sites at satisfaction levels well below other Web sites..."
Transportation

What the Google-ITA Deal Really Portends 77

Posted by kdawson from the this-price-just-for-you dept.
Much of the discussion about Google's bid to buy ITA Software, including here, has been limited by the lack of understanding all around about how airline search and reservations actually work now, and what it is exactly that ITA Software does. Travel expert Edward Hasbrouck wrote a detailed 3-part piece on his blog explaining the back story, what ITA Software does, and what it means for travelers. "...because CRS/GDS [Computerized Reservation Systems or Global Distribution Systems] companies are generally invisible in their intermediary role (and currently all owned by groups of private equity investors, so they need not report publicly on their finances or operations), few analysts outside the travel tech industry know how to interpret the implications of Google's decision to invest $700 million in this sector. Frankly, I'm not at all sure Google itself understands what ITA Software does (and doesn't) do, and what they are getting for their money. ... What will this deal mean for travelers? The short answer is that it is likely to be a bad thing for travelers ... because it is likely to exacerbate the trend toward personalized and less transparent pricing of airline tickets (and other travel services) and the de facto disappearance of key consumer protection principles embodied in the definition of a common carrier and the requirement for a published tariff applicable equally to all would-be customers complying with the same rules."
Google

Google Tests Multiple Account Login 122

Posted by CmdrTaco from the yes-have-some dept.
tekgoblin noted joyous rumors for anyone forced to use multiple Google accounts "Wouldn't it be great if you could log into all of your Google accounts at the same time if you have multiple? Well it seems that Google may be implementing a way to do this in the near future. Right now it can be done with scripts such as a Greasemonkey script, but that isn't as easy as Google doing it for us. The people over at Google Operating System have had users submit a screenshot of what looks like a beta test for multiple account login. It appears that it will be available for Calendar, Code, Docs, Gmail, Reader, and Sites for the test but surely it will be across all Google apps when it's released."
NASA

Sonic Skydive's Real Aim Is To Help Astronauts Survive 140

Posted by timothy from the recoup-the-training-costs-at-least dept.
mattnyc99 writes "Earlier this year came reports that Felix Baumgartner (the daredevil who flew across the English Channel) would be attempting to jump from a balloon at least 120,000 feet altitude, break the sound barrier, and live. Now comes a big investigative story from Esquire's issue on achieving the impossible, which details the former NASA team dedicated to making sure Baumgartner's Stratos project will instruct the future safety of manned space flight (including Jonathan Clark, the husband of an astronaut who died in the Columbia disaster). From the article (which also includes pics and video shot by the amateur space photographer we've discussed here before): 'that's also precisely what makes Stratos great. It's more like Mercury than the shuttle: They're taking risks, making things up as they go along. But they're also doing important work, potentially groundbreaking work. They're doing what NASA no longer has the balls to do. Hell, he'd do it for free. He is doing it for free. Stratos only picks up his travel expenses. Clark looks at his friend, shrugs. "This is new space."'"
Spam

Spammers Moving To Disposable Domains 147

Posted by timothy from the filling-up-our-landfills dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "Spammers and the botnet operators they're allied with are continuing to adapt their techniques to evade security technologies, and now are using what amount to disposable domains for their activities. A new report shows that the spammers are buying dozens of domains at a time and moving from one to another as often as several times a day to prevent shutdowns. New research shows that the amount of time that a spammer uses a given domain is basically a day or less. The company looked at 60 days worth of data from their customers and found that more than 70 percent of the domains used by spammers are active for a day or less."
Privacy

Privacy Flaws In Chatroulette Expose Users 101

Posted by CmdrTaco from the users-exposed-themselves-just-fine dept.
itwbennett writes "In a paper posted online this week, researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder and McGill University outline three different types of attacks that could be launched against Chatroulette users. While the new research doesn't expose any gaping privacy holes, it does show how the service could be misused by determined criminals. For example, the researchers were able to use IP-mapping services to get a general idea of users' location (a public Web site, called Chatroulettemap.com already does this). Then by searching Facebook using information obtained in chats and comparing pictures, researchers were able to identify chatters. 'Even in a city as big as Chicago, you can drill down and find the person you're actually talking to,' said Richard Han, an associate professor with the University of Colorado who co-authored the paper."
Image

Given Truth, the Misinformed Believe Lies More 961

Posted by samzenpus from the don't-let-the-truth-get-in-your-way dept.
SharpFang writes "In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that misinformed people, particularly political partisans, rarely changed their minds when exposed to corrected facts in news stories. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger."
Transportation

Toyota Sudden Acceleration Is Driver Error 930

Posted by kdawson from the fed-findings-fault-fat-feet dept.
phantomfive writes "The NHTSA has investigated data recorders from Toyota cars whose owners claimed to have crashed due to an accelerator error. They found that the throttles were wide open and the brakes weren't being pressed. The investigation looked at a sample of the cars, selected by the NHTSA." Jamie found this article with a superior headline at Balloon Juice.

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