ZeroBrane Lua IDE v1.00 released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pkulchenko/ZeroBraneStudio/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md <comment><USER2> Looking at it, it doesn't really makes sense that this project is so unpopular. It seems to be like liteIde for golang, where the size of the community who use that language is the main reason.

I probably should start a project in lua again, but I fear that will never find other contributors, because of the language choice. Very sad, lua doesn't deserve that.

<comment><USER3> I always wonder "what happened to Lua" because it was so hot on HN when I first started reading it. Now it is rare to see anything about it. A shame really that 'product' languages like Go or Swift seem to have sucked up the oxygen it relied on. Ruby has suffered similarly but less drastically from the big elbows in terms of the HN conversation over the same time period.

I suppose that as YC has matured, there's less chance of Reddit style "Let's build it in Common Lisp" naivete and language passion making it through the selection pipeline and more social pressure toward a sound engineering tool chain...there's more optimizing around getting into YC and that influences the conversation on HN. These days "...and we're building it in Lua" is more likely to hurt social standing than help outside the context of "a side project."

Such is the price of increased stakes I guess.

<comment><USER4> Here's a list of (some of) the things that have 'happened' to Lua:

Torch, scientific computing for LuaJIT: [http://torch.ch/](http://torch.ch/)

LuvIT, an event-loop driven Node-like: [https://luvit.io/](https://luvit.io/)

Love, a 2-d game engine: [https://love2d.org/](https://love2d.org/)

OpenResty: [http://openresty.org/](http://openresty.org/)

eLua: [http://www.eluaproject.net/](http://www.eluaproject.net/)

and on, and on, and on. There's never been a better time to use the language.

<comment><USER5> I only wish there was an AWS SDK - given Lua is used in the Nginx world widely, writing scripts in Lua rather than Python for DevOps makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really like ZeroBrane Studio. Congratulations to the team!

I use it to play around with Lua and MOAI[0]. I started using it for the debugger, but the other features made it my default editor for Lua.

If you don't know Lua, give it a try. It's a really well designed language, with all the feautures you _really_ need[1], and awesome performance.

[0] A multiplatform game development framework [1] Well, almost. I'd like to have immutable data structures, like Python's tuples

<comment><USER7> Tuples Lua is a good functional language for me.

[1] [http://lua-users.org/wiki/FunctionalTuples](http://lua- users.org/wiki/FunctionalTuples)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very nice! I was unaware that such a feature-rich editor for Lua existed. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER9> Here was my experience trying out ZeroBrane:

1) Install software on my Ubuntu machine

2) Play around with it for a while

3) Close it and go do something else

4) Discover that ZeroBrane has hijacked a ton of file type associations, so now any remotely text-file-ish file opens in ZeroBrane

5) Swear, go looking for way to remove those associations

6) Fail completely

Seriously, I have no idea where it squirreled away all its new file association settings, but after multiple attempts I have yet to find them all. So I still have to deal with certain file types trying to open in ZeroBrane that have nothing to do with Lua at all.

So, ZeroBrane devs: if your goal was to make me think "oh, I _hate_ that thing" every time I hear the word "ZeroBrane"... good news!

<comment><USER10> ZeroBrane Studio dev here: I don't have anything in the installer that changes any of the existing type associations. I do have a plugin that registers file extensions on Windows, but it requires explicit user action. This is how the Linux installer script looks like: [https://gist.github.com/pkulchenko/3574e47ba1ad89501f91](https://gist.github.com/pkulchenko/3574e47ba1ad89501f91) and I welcome suggestions on how to improve it.

The only extension based code I have in the IDE is from the project tree where you can launch the application linked to a particular file, but the IDE doesn't change any of the associations.

I'm not sure what happened in your case and will be happy to investigate (my email is in github profile).

Update: I did further investigation and it turned out that in the .desktop file it's associated with MimeType=text/plain;application/lua, so it could get associated with text files. I've pushed a change to limit that to only Lua files. My apologies for the inconvenience.</comment></comment>


Mininet: A virtual network on your laptop - <AUTHOR> http://mininet.org/

<comment><USER2> I believe anyone who did a fair amount of network development in the kernel sooner or later arrives at the idea of a virtual networking framework with switches, hubs and configurable links in between. Half of those will make an attempt to implement it, because it _is_ a fun project, but only few will move beyond tinkering to having something functional. However getting something like this into a shippable production state is a genuinely remarkable achievement :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Mininet is a virtual test bed designed for running software defined network experiments via OpenFlow controllers. GENI on the other hand, aims to be a physical test bed spanning the nation connected to a separate backbone for researchers to run their SDN experiments [1].

[1] [http://www.geni.net/](http://www.geni.net/)

</comment><comment><USER4> It resembles this project: [http://www.netkit.org/](http://www.netkit.org/)

</comment><comment><USER5> This sounds very interesting, does anyone mind explaining the differences between it and VDE though (I'm betting I'm missing how this solution works or its purpose)?

</comment><comment><USER6> does it do the same thing as this: [http://www.nrl.navy.mil/itd/ncs/products/core](http://www.nrl.navy.mil/itd/ncs/products/core)</comment>


Ted Williams's Strike Zone - <AUTHOR> http://tedwilliams.com/_data/hzone.htm <comment><USER2> Warren Buffett has a picture of this in his office. He often uses it to explain how he invests.

[https://omaha.com/money/buffett/warren-buffett-waits-for- a-f...](https://omaha.com/money/buffett/warren-buffett-waits-for-a-fat-pitch- before-taking-a-swing-and-making-an- acquisition/article_40026e55-60c2-54b6-95c5-bbee134d1696.html)

[https://seekingalpha.com/article/4157066-science-of- investin...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4157066-science-of-investing- invest-within-your-circle-of-competence-to-crush-just-like-buffett)

<comment><USER3> "Science of investing." Warren Buffett is rich because he bought companies and removed redundancies / restructured management, therefore making companies more profitable at the cost of decreased diversity of ownership of businesses. It's a similar tack as globalism, where "stuff" gets slightly cheaper while jobs are shipped away.

<comment><USER4> If he did restructure the companies he bought, he would definitely not be alone in that. I'd always heard (though I haven't looked it up) that he tried not to fiddle with the management of companies, since good management was one of the reasons he'd bought them. In any case, no other investor who sweeps out existing management and removes redundancy is the most successful investor in history, so Buffett must at least be doing something else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd been using a baseball metaphor for my own change in strategy recently.

I don't think I'm meant to hit home runs. I don't mean just that the luck hasn't struck. It's more that I don't feel particularly connected to the mainstream and where they are headed, am sort of unreasonable about how I think the world should work in a way that makes me the opposite of a heat seeking missile, don't love scalable acts like creating a business that can scale on top of cookie-cutter jobs or on top of advertising or virality.

And sure, maybe I'll get lucky, and I'll get to that. But I decided to stop going up to the plate trying to hit a home run.

When I had venture capital, I thought I was Barry Bonds. But now that I don't, I realized I'm Tony Gwynn.

I go up to the plate trying to hit a single. If I have a runner on base, I try to move them over.

For my intention, a single is a business that will generate $10k in profit, has the potential to continue for several years, and can be completely run by other people, leaving me with time to go up to the plate again.

What I found last year is that I have enough time/energy to attempt about six singles and that I connected on three of them. And it feels similar this year.

You can score a lot of runners just by hitting singles and I think there's a better chance that will happen for me than when I was trying to hit home runs.

The driving force for me though was wanting different optimizations. It's depressing to strike out year after year. And so hitting singles has a lot more positive reinforcement. And then two, I wanted to make more money, which has happened because these singles pay off immediately.

Last, there is always the possibility of an inside the park homerun. Maybe I'll hit a line drive to the outfield, the fielder will kick the ball, lose track of it, chase it down, overthrow third, and I'll come running home.

<comment><USER6> Ichiro made a career out of singles even though he was more than capable of knocking it out. You're in good company.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. One thing I like about both Gwynn and Ichiro is that they were technicians. A single is analyzable in a way that you can nearly feel like you can understand it.

A home run, especially a Venture-backed home run, is a mystery with a lot of luck that defies logic or analysis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wild to see this on HN. I'm a huge baseball nut and Ted Williams was my father's hero so naturally I learned a lot about him as a kid.

I believe this image is from his book _The Science of Hitting_.

Williams has a fairly fascinating biography and I'd encourage people to browse his story a bit. A few interesting things about him:

\- He served in both World War II and the Korean War. During the latter, he crash landed his plane after it took heavy fire.

\- He was an amazing angler and at times held tarpon or bonefish records. I believe he's also in the fishing hall of fame.

\- He was actually a terrible baseball manager. Most people attribute this to giving no attention to pitchers and not being able to handle that his players simply weren't as gifted or as disciplined as him.

\- He was the last player to have a batting average > .400 for a full season [1] but amazingly did not win the Most Valuable Player award that year. It went to Joe DiMaggio.

[1] For those who don't follow baseball, this is calculated as (hits / at bats) and generally the modern-day leaders vary between .330 and .375 (see [https://www.baseball- reference.com/leaders/batting_avg_top_t...](https://www.baseball- reference.com/leaders/batting_avg_top_ten.shtml)).

<comment><USER8> And regarding his military service, he lost three years of his prime to World War II, and another two-ish years to Korea. He put up 11 WAR in the years before and after WW II. Had he kept that pace from '43-'45 and put up decent years in '52 & '53 he'd be in the argument for greatest of all time.

His career WAR was about 130. Ruth's was about 168. It's entirely possible he would have reached 168 had he not lost those years.

<comment><USER7> Well put. My dad would say (pre-WAR) that it cost him at least 100-150 home runs, likely putting him ahead of Willie Mays and behind only Ruth and Aaron (among pre-steroid era players).

<comment><USER9> > _(among pre-steroid era players)._

I find this unfair to Barry Bonds.

Yes, he was an asshole. Yes, he took steroids. But this idea that he suddenly became good (or that steroids make anyone "good" in baseball) goes too far. It certainly allowed him to stretch his career out, but as a guy who grew up cheering for Bonds since he was a young man playing for the Pirates, who wouldn't want that?

My point here is to have a look at some of his career in earnest. He was _always_ a fantastic ball player (led the league in OPS from 1990-1994). His 28-year-old campaign in 1993 was one for the ages, long before the steroid controversies. But his record-setting seasons are video game level. He was intentionally walked 120 times in 2004!

[https://www.baseball- reference.com/players/b/bondsba01.shtml](https://www.baseball- reference.com/players/b/bondsba01.shtml)

There is no way he should be left out of greatest-ever conversations.

<comment><USER8> I don't think anyone has ever argued steroids made Bonds good (IMHO he was already a first ballot HOFer). It's pretty well understood that they aid in recovery. Bonds' most transcendent stretch came when most ballplayer's production is falling off or completely disappearing.

He put up 47 WAR during his age 37-41 seasons. That's unheard of. Given those seasons coincide with when he was using the cream and the clear, it's fair to call into question some of his counting numbers.

Being charitable, let's say he would have put up 23 WAR during those seasons[0]. That would leave him about 140 career WAR and around 660 HRs. That's solid Mays territory.

He would still be in the conversation for best ever. Mays certainly is. So it comes down to how you value those steroid seasons. Some folks want to throw it all out. Some folks (HOF voters) want to subtract points. Some folks think it didn't matter. We can never know. Just like we can never know how Ruth would have done in an integrated league.

[0] Given what we know about aging curves this is unlikely. But Bonds was a special athlete and it's not totally unheard of for players that age to have really good seasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A shame the resolution is so low. Zooming in, the numbers are illegible.

I found a higher-resolution version[1] on a Deadspin article[2].

[1] [https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker- media/image/upload/19e2qerif7...](https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker- media/image/upload/19e2qerif7ffcjpg.jpg)

[2] [https://deadspin.com/the-beautiful-infographics-of-ted- willi...](https://deadspin.com/the-beautiful-infographics-of-ted-williamss- the-scienc-1511889371)

<comment><USER11> Ok, we'll change to that latter article from [http://tedwilliams.com/_data/hzone.htm](http://tedwilliams.com/_data/hzone.htm). Thanks!

Edit: ok, changed back from [https://deadspin.com/the-beautiful-infographics- of-ted-willi...](https://deadspin.com/the-beautiful-infographics-of-ted- williamss-the-scienc-1511889371)

<comment><USER12> Agreed that you probably want to change it back. The original posted the quote alongside it which was his philosophy at hitting, which can be applied to life in general. And Warren Buffett explicitly called out that philosophy as his approach to investing (which is why this was posted).

The new link is just an article about infographics about baseball. Completely useless outside of baseball - mainly now just trivia about an athlete.

Original link, and a comment with the link to higher resolution is best option.

<comment><USER13> I like the baseball dataviz better than the "metaphorr for life" pablum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like this kind of technical technique break down in sports. It's interesting how you can break down a problem into a system like this and then focus on that system as a way to improve. It's similar to improving optimal outcomes in other systems, like driving more engagement in your app, improving uptime of your service, improving the speed at which your product flies off of shelves at the supermarket, improving your performance in a video game, or how optimal your shipping pipeline is from your manufacturing hub.

It's just a very neat thing to do, figure out what your problem is, whatever it may be, in a way that you explain a path to improving outcomes.

<comment><USER15> I find that it's almost impossible to appreciate and enjoy a sport until I start learning the technical pieces that determine decisions.

Football is full of all of these random plays that make no sense. Until you learn things about how clock management works. Then they become very tense and exciting.

The problem I have with baseball is that all of the minor strategic decisions are there, but you are talking about subtle changes that affect probability by a few percentage points. And that can take an entire series of games to see play out.

<comment><USER16> Soccer is similar in that there is a tremendous amount of "luck" involved. Only a couple of goals are scored in a typical match, so teams can play excellent soccer for 90 minutes and still lose because a ball broke the wrong way.

I think what's fun about that is that it mimics business (and life) much more. You have limited control over a few key factors, luck plays a large role, but if you play smart, you can see things break your way over a long period of time.

<comment><USER17> > but if you play smart, you can see things break your way over a long period > of time

Which brings to mind a great quip attributed to Gary Player (the multi Grand Slam winning golfer / peer to Palmer & Nicklaus) which goes,

"I've found that the harder I practice, the luckier I get."

And as anyone who knows golf knows, the game is rife with unknown unknowns and butterfly effect types of outcomes; but over time those nearly infinitesimal improvements move the deterministic needle in ways that change your score.

<comment><USER16> Love this quote. Thanks for sharing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I know my strike zone. When a project gets handed my way that I know is not suited to my strengths/job description and lines up particularly well with someone else's on the team, I communicate that to my manager. Unfortunately, my manager is batting 1.000 when it comes to ignoring me :). I don't even get a token "this is something I need you to improve in".

If I wasn't so busy or if every project wasn't "highest priority", it might not matter as much.

<comment><USER19> "Which of the other highest priority projects should I deprioritize to work on this"

or

"If you had to rank these 5 highest priority projects from 1-5, what would that list look like"?

Managers like this need to have it shown to them in black in white that you are at capacity. Once you push back, I suspect you will have better luck.

<comment><USER20> I take things one step further.

"My assessment of the priority is A, B, C. I only have time to work on A, B. I am going to let TPTB know that I am focused on these, and that C isn't getting my time. Let me know if you disagree with my prioritization, but otherwise, this is how I plan to manage the situation."

<comment><USER19> That's another great approach. In almost every case this has happened to me simply pointing out that you cannot have everything as top priority caused the manager to reassess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm surprised by the "The Slight Upswing is Best" graphic. I understand Cub- Scout-softball-playing-me isn't any example at all for what a professional- league baseball player should do, but I _always_ internalized swinging up and through the pitch, and I was the best batter in my league. Is (or was) there some explanation for why you would want to swing flat at a ball?

<comment><USER22> You'll notice in the bottom right of the graphic that it says "*exaggerated". Timing is important - the bat is not presented at a constant angle to the ball despite what the graphic implies! You could hit the ball 500 feet but on the wrong side of the foul pole, and you've accomplished nothing.

Modern baseball analytics places a very high value on the the "Three true outcomes" [1]. Batters are "optimizing" for the exit angle of the ball leaving the bat - we're in a juiced ball era (perhaps even a juiced batter era) and home runs are valued very highly. You'll notice that strikeouts are also setting records. Nobody seems to care as much about ground balls or line drives and that seems to be what a "flatter" swing gives you. If we were playing with the same baseball as Ted Williams played with, you'd have a lot more fly ball outs. I'm pretty sure that his "slight upswing" was actually very slight compared to current players.

[1] [https://www.baseball- reference.com/bullpen/Three_True_Outcom...](https://www.baseball- reference.com/bullpen/Three_True_Outcomes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> That's a great batter's point of view. Here's a pitcher's POV [0], a poster breaking down the different pitches. "Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing."

[0] [https://s3.amazonaws.com/my.llfiles.com/00120380/pitch- grips...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/my.llfiles.com/00120380/pitch-grips.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER24> Somewhat in the same vein, I can heartily recommend "Weaver on Strategy":

[https://tht.fangraphs.com/on-weaver-on- strategy/](https://tht.fangraphs.com/on-weaver-on-strategy/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Seems baseball and poker have more in common than I'd realised.

<comment><USER26> Baseball is probably the most intellectual of the sports. There's a lot of strategy in it. The fielders are reading the signs the catcher gives the pitcher too so they have some idea of what to expect. The game is ultimately about pitching more than anything else as opposed to softball, which is a superficially similar game but the game is much more about batting and fielding.

<comment><USER27> Fast-pitch softball is quite a bit closer to baseball than slow-pitch.

<comment><USER26> Fast pitch softball isn't a real thing. It's like a liger.

Deb: What are you drawing?

Napoleon Dynamite: A liger.

Deb: What's a liger?

Napoleon Dynamite: It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed... bred for its skills in magic.

<comment><USER28> You're not aware ligers are a real thing? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger)

<comment><USER26> There are people who believe in fast-pitch softball too. Doesn't mean they're right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Being that Ted Williams was the greatest batter of all time, for most other hitters the numbers would probably all be lower.

<comment> trey-jones Or he was the greatest batter of all time because of his dedication to these principles, and willingness to do the work to make them habit.

<comment><USER29> Not sure what you mean by starting with "or". Both statements may well be true.</comment></comment></comment>


A PC-based game console running Steam Linux is being planned by Valve for 2013. - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/5966860/gabe-newell-living-room-pcs-will-compete-with-next+gen-consoles

<comment><USER2> One reason why consoles from MS and Sony are bad is their obsessive DRM and the notion of turning a general purpose computer into a locked up appliance.

But there is another architectural reason which is generic - consolized games degrade the quality of gaming interfaces by making them overly minimalistic (since consoles don't use keyboards), and even developers who release crossplatform games for PC and consoles often save time by not distinguishing these interfaces, and when you run the game on PC it feels crippled interface wise. So I'd say for gaming in general, consoles are a big disservice.

We'll have to see how this will develop.</comment>


Google Shuts Down More Services, Open Sources Others - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/01/20/google-also-retires-needlebase-and-urchin-open-sources-google-sky-map/ <comment><USER2> Google Sky Map: [...] We will be open-sourcing Sky Map...

Whew! Sky Map is really, really cool, especially in the summer when my kids ask me "Dad, what is that star there?"</comment>


Avoiding detection of the use of AWS compromised credentials - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@gonfva/metadata-abuse-in-aws-d264274f5764 <comment><USER2> Great article, but it's behind the Medium paywall so I can't share it.</comment>


Show HN: Kyro – cryptocurrency tracker with news, prices, and research - <AUTHOR> https://kyro.com/ <comment><USER2> Wow. This is pretty nice. Replaces crypto reddit and cmc for me. Win!!

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice work</comment>


Designing Stereographic Lampshades - <AUTHOR> http://jasmcole.com/2014/11/01/stereographic-lampshades/ <comment><USER2> Nice writeup, looks really cool. A further step might be to 3D scan the installation location you're placing it in to generate a completely custom mesh that takes into account the unique geometry of the room - you could even include the furniture if you wanted to!

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting idea! Maybe you could do it 'live' using a transparent curved display as the shade and a Kinect or equivalent... One thing that also bugged me is the fact that an isotropic light source forms an unevenly-lit image, so maybe you'd want an anisotropic emitter too.

<comment><USER3> At this stage you've basically invented Illumiroom and you may as well just use a wide angle projector. You don't have full 360 coverage though so you'd need several projectors.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IllumiRoom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IllumiRoom)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What would be really cool is to project an image that reconstructs to normal only when reflected in a chromed cylinder used as the base of the lamp.

</comment><comment><USER5> In normal 3D modelling for animation this is called 'creating a reflection map'. A normal 3D package will just do it and in the environment you can have more than the one 2D flat shape (e.g. the floor/ceiling here). Plus you can accommodate a change in position of the light fixture.

In another discipline - maps - we are talking projections. Personally I would like a globe of the illuminated variety with a paper cylinder around it getting a Mercator projection on it.

Either way, the maths and software for this has been on the desktop for at least 25 years (render times were a while back then).

<comment><USER6> You won't get a proper global Mercator map through light projection (a so called geometric projection) from a sphere, the relation is purely mathematical.

A _central cylindrical projection_ is what you get when you put a light in the center of a sphere and project that on a cylinder

[http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjCyl/ProjCE...](http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjCyl/ProjCEA/projCEA.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User:Peter_Mercator/Draft_fo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User:Peter_Mercator/Draft_for_Mercator#Mercator:_the_rhumb_straightened)

You could get pretty close with Braun type stereographical for non-global uses with a fixed light source.

[http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/CartHow/HowBra...](http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/CartHow/HowBraunC/howBraunC.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I misread the title as "Designing Steganographic Lampshades". Now that'd be cool.

<comment><USER8> Ha! Dyslexics untie. After I re-read the title correctly I half wished this would be about projecting random dot stereograms on the ceiling / wall.

Dot stereograms might be hard as it would be difficult to get fine dots. But in principle it should be possible to project stereograms. That would be one perverse pun on 3D.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You could go full circle by mapping a tessellated tile-able projection like Peirce quincuncial back onto the spherical lampshade via the inverse stereographic projection.

[http://www.jasondavies.com/maps/peirce/](http://www.jasondavies.com/maps/peirce/)

[http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week229.html](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week229.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> To improve printability you can make a thin translucent shell and vary the thickness rather than having holes.

</comment><comment><USER10> That's great. Very nice idea. How did you do that 3d animation?

</comment><comment><USER11> Awesome post! I think the geometric pattern is my favorite.

(And a tiny nit-pick: Banksy didn't make the panda!)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right! I never knew, I've added a note in the post. To be fair, Banksy has caused a lot of stencil art in this city.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 6 hours later, has anyone printed it yet?

</comment><comment><USER13> So how would you print this onto a globe?

</comment><comment><USER14> Really enjoyed reading this. Great post.</comment>


Ask HN: Go back to school to start working for fintach, oil or pharma? - <AUTHOR> This is a follow-up to my previous question (Ask HN: How do I earn more as a developer? ) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19161489
A lot of responses mentioned job-hopping, and that's what I intend to do every 2-3 years.
However, some of the most upvoted comments where about "learning business" or working for money making sectors, like banking, oil or pharma.
I'm very open to that idea, and would love your feedback if you made that move. Do I need to go do an MBA, or a part-time masters or night-school? Are there online programs that you followed?
PS: School in France is pretty cheap and subsidised by the state, so besides time and effort it would end up with minimal financial cost. <comment><USER2> I just re-read your earlier thread. Lots of very interesting comments. I didn't notice what industry you are currently working in. If you are working for an IT vendor or consulting then you will pretty much earn whatever the market rate is for your skills in that industry.

As a front-end developer getting an MBA might simply move you onto a different track, but right from the starting point, competing with other MBA graduates.

If you are very serious about earning more, then the first step is to get a job with your current skills in an industry of your choice. Then once you are in a different industry learn everything about the business practices of that industry and seek promotion into business analyst role, from there you can move into more business roles which are better paid than the best of IT professionals. Once you are in that space doing a MBA part-time might help. But that depends on the business you work in.

Another way of getting into very well paid work is to switch to sales. The best sales people earn more than most of the management positions. But it does take a certain aptitude and lots of perseverance to become a good sales person.</comment>


Persistent L2ARC Might Be Coming to ZFS on Linux - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/02/zfs-on-linux-should-get-a-persistent-ssd-read-cache-feature-soon/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/pull/9582](https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/pull/9582)</comment>


Ask YC: where can I find a startup's contract for signing with an investor - <AUTHOR>

I could not fine one by googling, and wondered whether one of us have come across such sample contract. Thanks allot. <comment><USER2> <http://www.ycombinator.com/seriesaa.html>

[http://www.thestartuplawyer.com/startup-issues/7-legal- docum...](http://www.thestartuplawyer.com/startup-issues/7-legal-documents- for-your-tech-startup)

<http://www.entrepreneur.com/formnet/index.html>

[http://www.jasonnazar.com/2008/07/10/10-incredibly- awesome-d...](http://www.jasonnazar.com/2008/07/10/10-incredibly-awesome- documents)

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's an angel term sheet from Basil Peters. Lots of good stuff on his site. <http://www.angelblog.net/Venture_Term_Sheets.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> Check out <http://docstoc.com> \- they probably have several.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. quite useful.</comment></comment>


Ask HN- Compensation for first hire? - <AUTHOR>

I run a digital publishing business that has grown nicely over the past few years, revenue is about $300,000 this year and has grown nicely each of the past few years. I am also employed full time and have a limited amount of time to dedicate to my business. However, I do not want to give my job up, as I have a lot of upside coming up in the next few years.
I have identified someone that I would like to hire/partner with as something similar to a co-founder. I have worked with him in the past and know that he will bring great value to the company, he is a true executer.
I know what he makes currently and that wonder what would be the best mix of compensation, equity, profit sharing and vesting to offer.
Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> I think you should decide whether you want to hire or whether you want to partner. If you just want to hire put a competitive package on the table.

If you want to partner talk to him about what it would take to get and keep him highly motivated and driven.

Vesting should be over several years so you won't lose half your company if it doesn't work out in a short period of time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any idea what a typical vesting schedule would be for bringing on a partner a few years in?

<comment><USER2> 4 years is pretty common and what I used.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I appreciate the help.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


FlowSense: A Natural Language Interface for Visual Data Exploration - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.00681 <comment><USER2> Cool, stuff like this would be helpful for non technical team members to dip their toes into BI & Data Analysis.

Github repo for those interested.

\- [https://github.com/yubowenok/flowsense](https://github.com/yubowenok/flowsense)

\- [https://visflow.org/flowsense/](https://visflow.org/flowsense/)</comment>


ShowHN: My Weekend Project VStream - Your personal Streaming Server - <AUTHOR> http://vstream.me/

<comment><USER2> While I like the idea of simplifying a streaming webserver installation for people, I feel like there's a lot of work yet to be done. Firstly, the design on your demo site is not really the greatest if you have a large library. You need a way to filter (check listjs.com) and fix the Series->Overview height problem (add a fixed height + vertical scrollbar in CSS). Lastly, there should really be a couple quick lines on your homepage explaining what this is to the average joe. "Vstream is a php framework for managing MP4's." What? Clear that up, move it to the left, move the latest news to the right, add a video introduction and tutorial, and you're almost there.

Keep it up. LL

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's the best feedback yet. I've been looking for a "search tool" as well, I'll check out listjs

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's a simple project- but I enjoyed building it. Check out a demo server at www.ha-kn.com

</comment><comment><USER3> Page is down already?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's working for me?

</comment><comment><USER4> awesome project gonna mess with it now aka bump</comment>


SaaS industry trends amid the pandemic 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://www.byteant.com/blog/top-saas-industry-trends-affecting-the-future-amid-covid-19/ <comment><AUTHOR> Learn the rising SaaS startup trends and the changes SaaS companies make to their strategies due to the Covid-19.</comment>


Six Degrees of Francis Bacon - <AUTHOR> https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2015/october/francis-bacon-launch.html <comment><USER2> A further step in this direction would be a git-style dependency graph of influential books, showing how authors were inspired by each other to "fork" and improve ideas.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And a video tour here [http://www.sixdegreesoffrancisbacon.com/](http://www.sixdegreesoffrancisbacon.com/)

Prediction: the next big thing in fan wikis will be a similar 6º of, say, Frodo Baggins.

<comment><USER3> "St. Elsewhere is the Kevin Bacon of TV shows" [1]

[1] [http://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/19892/what-is- the-...](http://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/19892/what-is-the-biggest- crossover-universe-in-tv)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm actually a little shocked that they don't at all mention Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon in this, which surely must have been at least in part the inspiration for it. (The Oracle of Bacon - [http://oracleofbacon.org/](http://oracleofbacon.org/) \- still cheerfully works after, oh, a decade and a half or so.)

<comment><USER5> And to go further the inspiration for Bacon Number is the Erdős Number: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s_number)

And a fun combination of them is the Erdős–Bacon number (Carl Sagan with 6, Natalie Portman with 7).

<comment><AUTHOR> Then, finally (for now), you have Erdos-Bacon-Sabbath numbers ([http://timeblimp.com/?page_id=195](http://timeblimp.com/?page_id=195))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would be kind of neat to extend semantic search and social graphing to older works - really neat to see how different minds' work interweaves throughout history.</comment>


Turn your photo into a Lego mosaic - <AUTHOR> http://www.buzzfeed.com/joestanco/brickify-yourself

<comment><AUTHOR> Slides from a talk I did about the project:

[http://slides.com/joestanco/html5-live-code-nyc-lego- mosaics](http://slides.com/joestanco/html5-live-code-nyc-lego-mosaics)

Brickify is on Github and is available as a Bower component:

[https://github.com/joestanco/brickify](https://github.com/joestanco/brickify)</comment>


CSS3 loading spinners without images - <AUTHOR> http://kilianvalkhof.com/2010/css-xhtml/css3-loading-spinners-without-images/ <comment><USER2> I might have a really lame computer, but that thing really freezes up my browser

<comment><USER3> Takes up some 4% of one core on my Core2 Duo Mac Mini with Safari. Which is entirely too much.

As I understand it this is a mis-appropriation of CSS3 and HTML. What really should be used for animating graphics is the HTML5 Canvas. After all the purpose here is resource generation, and not altering the presentation of a document.

<comment><USER4> I'd argue that you really should use an animated SVG for this, which is well supported in WebKit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Serious question: why use this instead of an animated GIF?

<comment><USER6> Faster to load: no separate http request.

Graphics is sub-pixel anti-aliased. GIFs are not.

<comment><USER7> anti-aliased: that just made me test something, and yep, it also scales with zooming the page, which _completely_ eclipses using GIFs to do things this can do. Hooray non-pixellation!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Besides from the fact that it is only Firefox and Webkit specific for now and the apparent crashes that some of you have noted here, I was actually kind of surprised at how well this (visually) turned out.

</comment><comment><USER9> It looked all mozilla and webkit specific.

<comment><USER10> And this is a surprise?

IE8 doesn't support much CSS3 right now. <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/cc351024(VS.85).aspx>

<comment><USER11> I exist too!

<http://www.opera.com/></comment></comment></comment>


What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages - <AUTHOR> https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/future-of-organizations-and-work/what-the-future-of-work-will-mean-for-jobs-skills-and-wages <comment><AUTHOR> Only for completing the post: "Robotics will eliminate up to 800 million jobs in 2030"</comment>


Silicon Valley is right to be worried about a Trump presidency - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business/21710008-silicon-valley-right-be-worried-about-trump-presidency-it-helped-get-him <comment><AUTHOR> Paul Graham was very much in support of increasing immigration. But Peter Thiel - by supporting Trump - is signalling against it.

Does a Trump presidency discourage immigrants from coming to USA to work & start businesses?</comment>


You and Your Research - <AUTHOR> http://www.chris-lott.org/misc/kaiser.html <comment><USER2> A familiar friend - always worth re-reading.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=229067>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=852405>

<http://searchyc.com/you+and+your+research+hamming>

<comment><USER3> And for all the pg-lovers out there... <http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ah, Hamming. Definitely a role model for anyone who wants to get out there and accomplish things. This is probably old hat to folks here, since it was mentioned in one of pg's essays, but I remain fond of this part:

 _I went over and said, "Do you mind if I join you?" They can't say no, so I started eating with them for a while. And I started asking, "What are the important problems of your field?" And after a week or so, "What important problems are you working on?" And after some more time I came in one day and said, "If what you are doing is not important, and if you don't think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?" I wasn't welcomed after that; I had to find somebody else to eat with!_

This quote has taunted me from the back of my head off and on for years now, but I don't listen to it as often as I should.

<comment><USER5> I agree with you completely.

This whole weekend (including Halloween!) I have been stressing about a paper I need to write on a topic I am not remotely interested in. This reminded me that I need to both relax about the unimportant stuff and make sure that when I am done I look for the most valuable next step.

Truly, an excellent quote, and an excellent article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Funny - there was a whole stack of these lying in the 3rd floor lounge of Stanford's CS building last week. I just happened to pick one up, It's the first time i've read it, and here it pops up on Hacker News!</comment>


What about those funny shaped cars? [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7H396OOGZw <comment><USER2> There really is an amazing cross-over between cars and airplanes in the 1930s, to the extent that General Motors bought an airline! (Disclaimer, I work for GM, but I did not work for GM in the 1930s)

Both airplanes and cars were very new, and they shared many design features and goals.

Where did it all go wrong? For one small example, consider the weight penalty/bounty. These number are illustrative, not exact or proportional.

Imagine that saving 1 gram of weight on an airplane would be worth 1 dollar over the lifetime of the airplane. In that case you would have a bounty of 1 dollar per gram; your engineers could spend that dollar to "add lightness" to the airplane. The purchase price would go up, but the lifetime cost of ownership would go down.

For an automobile, the bounty might be 0.05 dollar per gram. Automobiles are getting lighter nowadays, but very slowly.

So, if you try to make a car with the same structural components as an airplane, you may be paying a penalty of up to 0.95 dollars per gram relatively speaking!

In other words, you're paying just as much for your flying car as you would have for an airplane, and now you have a vehicle that is bad at both being a car and being an airplane.

This entirely leaves aside safety equipment and many other questions.

\---

One other thing to note is that many of the "streamlined" cars shown are actually aerodynamic disasters due to small trim pieces/headlights/etc; but they never actually got fast enough for it to really matter.

<comment><USER3> I think the idea that there were shared design goals, was their fatal mistake. You illustrate several of these, thank you.

The speed difference is another - streamlining mattered not at all for a car at the speeds they were generally going at that time.

Further, a plane is always headed into the wind; cars are pinned to the road by friction and most often have cross-winds. There were tragic car rollover problems throughout the 30's because of this misconception/failure to recognize utterly different design goals.

Generally the only thing in common was, a factory making chassis and shells. Other than the manufacturing technology, there was almost complete mismatch of design goals.

<comment><USER4> Prime movers and fuels also.

Both the automobile and airplane ... took off ... atvirtually the same moment, once petroleum-based fuels and reciprocating, Otto-cycle engines existed. Power-to-weight matters _more_ for aircraft, but it's a critical problem for both, along with range (fuel capacity) and reliability.

Body design and aerodynamics aren't the only issue. Though also a bigger problem for aircraft.

Materials (duraluminium), controls, aerodynamic theory, infrastructure (airports, navigation, traffic control, safety standards, incident investigations, etc.), are other key elements.

Then came gas turbines. Auto engineers tried to apply them but they weren't a good fit.

<comment><USER3> Controls, maybe not so much? The road-impulse and 16ft lane limits of the auto, apply to a plane not at all.

And so many pod-car designers didn't address controls at all. They just took a Ford chassis and made a new (wood!) frame and skin.

Further, the auto price-point means the fancy materials were a no-go for a production car anyway.

As for traffic control, safety, navigation - different as night and day. Good call.

<comment><USER4> For controls: development, and especially, standardization.

For aircraft, there's the matteer of movement in three dimensions, with speed, yaw, pitch, and roll controls, as well as communication, navigation, and cabin environment controls. Autos have only two dimensions of freedom and less complex requirements generally, but orders of magnitude more operators with orders of magnitude less training and oversight. Addressing user-base scale is its own complex problem.[1]

To be clear, my list of key elements wasn't asserting _equivalence_ between land vs. air craft, but adding them to fuels and engines as crucial enabling technologies.

________________________________

Notes:

1\. Arguably, much of the increase in computer processing capacity has gone in to enabling ever less-skilled populations to make effective use of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This style of design, prioritising aerodynamics highly, hasn't been popular in cars for a long time, but it is popular in one niche type of vehicle: velomobiles, which are recumbent tricycles with a full fairing (shell). When you're doing all the pedalling, there's a little more incentive to optimise its aerodynamics than when you're merely paying for the fuel.

I've had an unfaired recumbent tricycle (a Greenspeed GT3) for over five years and they're great, especially for long-distance travel and touring (I've gone on solo multi-week trips a few times, e.g. St Louis to Philadelphia in America and through parts of Victoria and South Australia in Australia). I'm currently planning and intend soon to start designing a velomobile and trailer that I'd like to build from scratch next year. (These plans are subject to complete change, of course.) It's an interesting domain where a casual person with no particularly relevant training can actually get going and produce quite decent results at comparatively low cost. (I mean less than a few thousand dollars.) There's lots of interesting and useful information on the internet, though most of it is from 2005–2012, which is a common era for interesting things happening on the internet, and you'll find lots of broken links, and it'll probably help a bit if you're Dutch.

</comment><comment><USER6> 2 things about this.

1\. Those designs may have just been ahead of their time, and now that retro- future is back in fashion, I could see those swept designs being wildly popular. I would love to own a vehicle that looks like a 1940's-1950's view of the future.

2\. I am glad that people like Matthew Bird exist in the world.

<comment><USER7> Re: #1, I would love a modern car that looks like a 1937 Packard 120C: [https://i.imgur.com/i6HxWbm.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/i6HxWbm.jpg)

This is just wishful thinking, but electric cars might be the way forward in making that happen. Customizable top shell, standardized bottom skate. Design and order your own.

<comment><USER8> Body-work is heavy regulated. E.g. location and size of bumpers, certain lights not allowed on movable body-work, etc. A lot of the "top shell" also has structural elements under other regulations.

Lots of older-gen designs would not be certifyably street legal if released today.

<comment><USER9> That's true. Morgan does make some new vehicles with a classic look though.

[https://i.imgur.com/5sc1Baz.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/5sc1Baz.jpg)

[https://i.imgur.com/FVlIX2V.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/FVlIX2V.jpg)

[https://i.imgur.com/eEalrSe.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/eEalrSe.jpg)

<comment><USER10> i believe Morgan falls under the exemptions for small-volume carmakers. Toyota couldn't get away with that design on the next-gen Camry for example, but as long as you're only making a few cars you can do some more adventurous things with the design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if there will be a resurgence of the "large scooter" mini cars from the end of the talk -- but using the new battery and motor tech that the lime- type scooters use.

<comment><USER12> As long as states keep regulating "smaller than a car but doesn't fit into any existing category vehicles" the same way they regulate motorcycles (all the insurance licensing and registration stuff you have to put up with for a car possibly plus some) there will be little to no space for them in the market because the people who can afford them will mostly just buy similar price used cars instead because those will deliver better utility, comfort and safety at the same price point. If you want people to try something new at scale you gotta make it worth their while and barring some yet unforeseen technological breakthrough that applies to sub-car sized vehicles but not cars I don't see any way of doing that besides easing regulation on smaller than car vehicles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nobody has mentioned Matthew Bird's voice, yet. Isn't it just fantastic? This is exactly the tone of voice that I could listen to all day.</comment>


The way government does tech is outdated and risky - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/21/the-way-government-does-tech-is-outdated-and-risky/ <comment><USER2> Federal Gov employee here. Can't speak for a project with this scope, but the procurement middlemen get into everything, far for the worse.

Two years ago our team wanted to buy a small cluster (~300 cores, ~$50K). We talked directly to two good vendors (good recommendations from university partners) and came up with a fine machine and 2 bids for it. Sent recommendations to procurement.

Procurement put it out for bid, and a fly-by-night company undercut the bid by $10K... by noticing that procurement had not specified details of service level (that were in the bids we'd gotten and forwarded). Procurement, once it goes there, is a true black box. No communication, no understanding.

Five months later, we were basically delivered 2 pallets of unassembled parts and no instructions. Believe me, we spent 3-4x as much in labor as the $10K savings to get it working, and it's been plagued with issues that would have been under the onsite service warranties for the better companies.

The biggest irony is: I firmly believe that procurement acts this way not because the government is fundamentally incompetent, but because the Public, and thus Congress, BELIEVES we are incompetent, so puts so many levels of "check" bureaucracy in place that the people who know what they want can't participate directly in getting it.

<comment><USER3> Procurement rules are more to guard against corruption and cronyism than incompetence.

Without them, you could reward your friends with fat government contracts, regardless of what's in the public's interest.

<comment><USER4> The irony is that they don't really do that. It's common in both procurement and hiring in the federal government to see bizarrely-specific requirements whose fairly transparent intention is to limit the potential bidder or applicant pool to a single company or individual.

<comment><USER5> * Must have a company name which SHA-1 hashes to e8b06511aa36381fc2306eb6f8181204585c5453.

Hey, there's a theoretically infinite number of company names which meet this requirement...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That diagram for the "waterfall" approach that they yanked from Wikipedia is a complete straw-man representation. It's nonsense.

Here is the actual, original source for the Waterfall approach, first published in 1970:

[http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/files/orig...](http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/files/original_waterfall_paper_winston_royce.pdf)

If people would just bother to scroll past the first couple of pages, they will notice that the approach _already includes_ some iteration cycles between steps.

In other words, this whole "agile vs. waterfall" debate which has wasted countless hours of human effort is based on a _complete misunderstanding_ of what "waterfall" is in the first place. No one ever seriously proposed a model without iteration. It simply never existed in the first place!

<comment><USER7> _" What often happens when you have these big requirements up front, is the people who are specifying the product are afraid of not getting all their ideas in, so they overscope the project. And then the development team is on the hook for delivering everything, not just the essential elements."_

Isn't this the essence of the critique, though? Its not the lack of iteration, but the logic of the spec-formation.

To put this another way, you are right that it has nothing to do with the waterfall model per se. But it has everything to do with accepting the same set of behavioural assumptions. Namely, that the people who spec the model have perfect foresight regarding the spec itself.

What needs to be accepted is "incomplete spec". The problem with this is then the hold-up problem. you get held to ransom to fill in the incompletions. So what is really needed is a capability to execute this more in-house. This would prevent the re-negotiation of the economics (the hold up), because the project manager would just execute properly, directing resources (already paid for) through fiat rather by then re-negotiating vs a modified spec.

One problem with this is accountability. There would need to be more accountability, because execution of the incomplete spec will not be the same as farming responsibility for the spec out to a third party vendor.

 _Project managers need to get used to the idea of working intensely with a development team rather than asking for a specific thing and then walking away_

<comment><USER8> Here here!

It would be lovely if vendors would bid based on their experience, and be compensated for it, at a time and materials basis. The more experience and better you prove to be, the higher we're willing to pay for a better outcome, sooner.

Except that world is rife with bait and switch. And writing the code that delivers the spec is just a small part of the picture. Companies are terrible at specifying the non-functionals, delivery process expectations, operational requirements, supportability requirements, etc. When they do get it right, the costs go up, because many places quote without any concept of these things.

The sad reality is that the people who get asked to quote for these things in the software world are generally clueless about the actual domain, out of touch, and wildly wrong most of the time. And the people that specify these things are often barely any better. And lets face it, software developers are also terrible at quoting times to do a task, though that can be mitigated with a lot of experience of that task and the code base to do it on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For the MIT alums out there, I remember a 6.170 exam that had the question: "When is it appropriate to use the waterfall model of development?"

The answer was any time you are developing software for the government! The professor specifically mentioned it in lecture once, so that alone was enough for full credit on the question (other reasonable answers were fine too).

Later I TA'ed the class twice and made sure to eliminate these pure lecture- attendance-check questions.

<comment><USER10> Interesting fact - the original design of "waterfall" isn't what we perceive as "waterfall" today: [http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/files/orig...](http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/files/original_waterfall_paper_winston_royce.pdf)

My theory - agile/iterative development rarely gets sold because we continue to believe we aren't susceptible to planning fallacy.

<comment><USER11> What do you perceive as waterfall? That's exactly the way we learned it in school...

<comment><USER12> Much of our industry believes Waterfall means a single-pass development process. Dr. Royce explicitly said to do it twice. (It was a military officer who later took the process and made it into a single pass.)

If you learned it as a two-pass process, then you learned it correctly.

<comment><USER13> This is simply historically incorrect. Waterfall means a single pass by definition.

Royce described the pre-existing state of the art - the single-pass model (Waterfall) - and suggested a modification to a 2-pass model. (This can be seen as a precursor to Boehm's n-pass Spiral model.)

To suggest that the single-pass model was invented later as a corruption of Royce's paper is nonsense. Virtually all software was developed this way both before and after the paper.

What is odd is that the earliest and most commonly cited reference to the Waterfall methodology is a paper that explicitly says that it doesn't work. Let this be a lesson on not burying the lede.

<comment><USER12> In the version of the paper linked earlier in the forum, I take the following to mean two passes: build a model and then use lessons learned to build the final product. But it's a matter of interpretation and semantics. My own interpretation is contradicted further down in my comment by someone from that era (see the Larman paper linked). C'est la vie, I'm sticking with my interpretation. I think we can agree that Royce did not mean our modern "Agile" approach.

"If the computer program in question is being developed for the first time, arrange matters so that the version finally delivered to the customer for operational deployment is actually the second version insofar as critical design/operations areas are concerned."

At least 2 methodologies existed before Royce's paper as described in this paper: Waterfall and "iterative and incremental".([http://www.craiglarman.com/wiki/downloads/misc/history-of- it...](http://www.craiglarman.com/wiki/downloads/misc/history-of-iterative- larman-and-basili-ieee-computer.pdf))

Note that, in the section referencing DoD-Std-2167, the author of the DoD standard does state explicitly that he understood Waterfall to be one-pass. Certainly he implicitly promoted it as such.

<comment><USER13> The mistake I believe you're making is in assuming that because most people reference Royce's paper for a description of Waterfall, that means that the definition of Waterfall is whatever the main subject of that paper is. This does not follow.

The paper describes a number (more than 2) of possible models. The main subject of the paper is probably the "2-pass waterfall" diagram in Figure 7. However, when people refer to this paper in the context of the Waterfall model, they mean Figure 2. The Waterfall model is called the Waterfall model because Figure 2 looks like a waterfall, with the water never flowing uphill.

Figure 7, however, was largely ignored. (Though Brooks later recapitulated it as "Build one to throw away; you will, anyhow". I don't know whether it was influential in the development of the Spiral model or not, though it seems like a logical progression.) As far as I know this model never even got a name attached to it. Its influence pales in comparison to Figure 2, which was the first and best published reference to a design process that almost everybody accepted as "ideal" at the time.

Note that when Brooks tells the story in _The Mythical Man-Month_ about making the mistake of getting a large group of mediocre engineers to write specifications instead of giving the job to a small group of elite engineers because he didn't want the larger group just sitting on their thumbs for a year, this was all happening in the mid 60s. Here's another contemporary quote:

 _The most deadly thing in software is the concept, which almost universally seems to be followed, that you are going to specify what you are going to do, and then do it. And that is where most of our troubles come from. The projects that are called successful, have met their specifications. But those specifications were based upon the designers' ignorance before they started the job._ —Doug Ross, 1968

Winston Royce did _not_ invent the Waterfall model in 1970, he was just describing the already-dominant paradigm as a prelude to proposing something different. The model had been around forever, Royce provided a convenient diagram (Figure 2!) in the course of trying to critique (or even replace) it, and the name "Waterfall" got attached later.

> _Note that, in the section referencing DoD-Std-2167, the author of the DoD > standard does state explicitly that he understood Waterfall to be one-pass._

Of course he did, and he understood it correctly. The thing he didn't understand was that it was a _terrible_ idea.

Had he (properly) read Royce's paper, he would have seen that it actually advocated a slightly better (but still pretty terrible) idea, but that idea was not and is not the Waterfall model. The Waterfall model is the one in Figure 2 that looks like a waterfall. Hence the name.

> _My own interpretation is contradicted further down in my comment by someone > from that era (see the Larman paper linked). C 'est la vie, I'm sticking > with my interpretation._

Um, OK then.

Thanks for the link though, it was really interesting.

<comment><USER14> Note: in the 20th anniversary 2nd edition of _The Mythical Man Month_ ([http://www.amazon.com/The-Mythical-Man-Month-Engineering- Ann...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Mythical-Man-Month-Engineering- Anniversary/dp/0201835959/)), in one of the new chapters, Brook's backs off of his original "Build one to throw away" advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This isn't going to change until there is a thought process shift for leaders on both the government and contractor side. I worked on a project that fought tooth and nail to create a project using an agile development process and it was one of the best projects I worked on for the government. It was killed due to politics, but the feedback, functionality, UX, and collaboration up to that point were great. Everything else I did was waterfall and we always has the same cycle.

      while (true) {
        // Contractor working for a year
        Government: This isn't what we wanted!
        Contractor: We met all of the requirements... See all of the boxes are checked.
        Government: Well we want to change 1,2...n things.
        Contractor: Okay, Let's do a follow on contract.
        Government: Okay, Here is the money; Go.
      }

<comment><USER16> Sounds a bit like the contract I sent to India a few months ago.

One of my requirements was that it was able to send text messages.

What I got, was a ticked box, and an application that could also send text messages to 1 number. No, a number I could choose. One number as in, one cell phone.

And it wasn't even my own cell phone

<comment><USER15> On their end they are probably saying "Mission Accomplished." I'm laughing because of the situation, but that is just terrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Has anyone noted that the government perhaps just shouldn't be in this kind of business to begin with?

Any market based solution website has to be very agile and responsive [edit: to succeed at it's goal] but the government can't be super responsive and in many ways _shouldn 't_ be super responsive. The state spends all of our money and enforces mandatory decisions concerning our lives. The state _shouldn 't_ have the agile qualities needed to produce the beautifully _flexible_ websites created by the private sector.

In general, I'd claim the state should certainly be smaller but that it shouldn't be less bureaucratic, shouldn't be more like a corporation. Civil service is boring and bureaucratic _by design_ , specifically it was created to combat the "spoils system" that plagued the early American state [1] (though the prize of modern state eclipse what Tammany Hall etc could have imagined). Modern corporations are agile by having a command structure which lets them quickly maximize profits - which is great if we believe the market system benefits everyone when operating properly. But states with the ability to trample the fences of ordinary market shouldn't not be also given the ability to move quickly and agilely to do this. Corporations have no internal limits to their "greed" but we citizens of democratic market capitalism are assuming that's OK, indeed desirable, as long as the corporation face the strong _external_ limit of markets and individual choice.

The current fashion for what could be called "state-enforced private consumption" is sold as giving us the best of all possible worlds but in reality gives us the worst (IE. the reality is the wealth of this society is indeed being vacuum-out by a kind of private-public rent seeker limited by neither the traditional bounds of the democratic state or traditional bounds of the market).

Note: I'm not a conservative rooting against Obamacare. It seems like it was a terrible approach for achieving affordable healthcare but I still would prefer it succeeded that failed because, well, I and many friends need it.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system)

<comment><USER18> > Any market based solution website has to very agile and responsive

This is provably false by visiting any number of old, large company websites, esp in healthcare or banking. In addition the government isn't in this kind of business, it outsources almost everything to "free market" companies, who extract as much margin as they and their lobbyists can get away with.

Complexity has much more to do with size of and number of evolved entities than whether they are profit motivated or not.

<comment><USER19> Large companies in well established industries sometimes operate with near monopoly power and are only threatened when the entire industry undergoes a long term, permanent change. Most people don't consider such a situation a functioning, healthy market. Healthcare and banking are two great examples of industries whose dynamics tend to result in a small number of powerful entities calling the shots, the former due to legal reasons and the latter due to economies of scale.

<comment><USER20> Bad software development processes are everywhere. I've seen more than one successful companies that aren't massive corporations futz around and produce garbage. I've also seen highly effective government organizations produce some awesome product.

<comment><USER14> While I wouldn't call it "awesome" (bit too clunky for that), the Medicare.gov site that CGI Federal is responsible for (don't know if they built it or the recent Plan D shopping and enrollment part) is pretty good, very solid and gets the job done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The US (and rest of world) should take a leaf out of the UK's recent initiative: GDS (Government Digital Services)

[http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/](http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/)

Aside from creating [https://www.gov.uk/](https://www.gov.uk/) which laid down a lot of principles on how to fulfil a government contract (as well as the foundations of what goverment websites should look like and how they should be developed), GDS is also looking at the problem of procurement.

The GDS team essentially are wrestling back from the big contractors the major contracts, breaking the work down into a large number of bitesize contracts and then farming them out to a wide variety of smaller vendors.

So instead of finding a Fujitsu/Siemens JV team, or an IBM Professional Services team, operating a £50m project, the plan is to offer 100 x £250k projects to a large number of smaller suppliers instead. Each project having a clearer purpose that is more able to be fulfilled.

Of course there are obvious overheads in managing so many projects, and of course some of these projects will fail. But... overall the savings will be such that the overheads are cheap, and the failed projects will only have a smaller impact on a major programme initiative than a failure would today.

<comment><USER22> _This week a UK parliamentary watchdog described a failed National Health Service patient IT programme – the cost of which has spiralled to £9.8bn – as "one of the worst and most expensive contracting fiascos in the history of the public sector". Earlier this month the Department for Work and Pensions admitted that it had written off £34m of IT costs, incurred in an attempt to overhaul how social security benefits are paid. A week earlier Co-operative Bank said it had written off the £148m cost of a new IT system that would no longer be implemented._

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/794bbb56-1f8e-11e3-8861-00144feab7...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/794bbb56-1f8e-11e3-8861-00144feab7de.html#axzz2iUmqtKr9)

<comment><USER8> All outsourced.

GDS is trying to in-source a lot of work that should be controlled by a central publishing and transaction design group, and contracting out the relatively boring task of following their rules. Good idea, as long as their architecture/design/program management review boards are well staffed and motivated.

I don't think they will stop these large failures. And many of these large failures do have clear up-front requirements that cannot be changed. Iterative waterfall is not so terrible.

<comment><USER14> Funny thing is, as far as we can tell this is how that project was done, minus the contract size sorts of splits. The government didn't hire a integrator, HHS's CMS took on that responsibility including integration testing.

Of course the minor fly in the ointment is that CMS didn't even vaguely have the expertise to pull this off; the Pentagon can do this for medium sizes weapons projects (which are a rather different field), but no one else in the US government has been said to have it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would also add that the project had too many cooks in the kitchen, by some accounts. I have heard there were upwards of 50 distinct companies subcontracting on this project.

I work on projects that are probably on par in terms of complexity. We typically only involve a handful of firms. And even then, coordinating them all is a challenge. I can't fathom making the process work with 50+ firms.

Maybe that number was hyperbole. I don't know. But if it's true, I shudder at the thought.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, and that's one of the reasons I'm a bit wary of this "open-source is magic" mantra, that's putting a lot of cooks in the burning kitchen. Open- source means community management, public relations with opiniatred people, Linus-grade emails, and if you have really a big participation but no strong leader, it ends up like GNU hurd (is it dead yet ?).

It's all about organization, and trying to have just enough people to get the work done and nobody more, and the right people, and this has nothing to do with open or closed source.

<comment><USER25> GNU Hurd died because Linux appeared, folks like RedHat combined the GNU userspace with the Linux kernel.

It was a massive success -- everyone put in the part they did well -- kernel + userland + distribution = WIN.

<comment><USER26> > folks like RedHat combined the GNU userspace with the Linux kernel

Once Linux was good enough, RMS himself set Hurd aside, put the Linux kernel into the GNU project that he started, and (almost literally) declared mission accomplished. It wasn't folks like RedHat (that only came years later), the developers of Hurd were the first to kill it.

But then, since Hurd has quite an interesting architecture, people keep developing it, like dozens of OSs out there that'll never get anywhere, but are fine with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's not just the US government that has crazy, weird, inefficient technology. I'd be surprised if every government wasn't like this. The biggest IT failure in the world was the UK's attempt at healthcare computing that cost 12Bn GBP and didn't deliver a functioning system.

I work as a contractor for the Australian government. I personally know of multiple project failures in the 10s of millions of AUD range and a few in the hundreds of millions. These stories don't even make the news.

I've worked at small companies, research institutes, universities and now in government. I've not worked big corporate but have heard that it is similar, although more efficient than government. Size means you get less feedback on what is really useful.

Government fundamentally lacks feedback on what really matters. In the US the department of health cannot be driven out of business by another department that does what is important 10% better. In private industry that discipline and feedback makes things work.

If you build a widget X and it isn't something that people want you go under. That doesn't happen in government. If you build a donkey but it's the donkey they paid for it could be in service for 20 years.

It's hard to see how to make it all better. Perhaps trying to keep components small and having multiple groups build them and select the best might help. Then at least 2+ groups would have to compete to build a better system.

<comment><USER28> I kind of like the idea of every government function has two independent providers that compete for funding, and citizens could choose which provider to use.

I'm sure that system would blow up in some other way, however.

<comment><USER29> > I kind of like the idea of every government function has two independent > providers that compete for funding

This is what the current government contractor system looks like.

> and citizens could choose which provider to use.

And how would we receive these choices? Balloting is a government function... Should we ask Diebold?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> ex-cgi contractor here and I am not surprised. they did the Massachusetts health care system that cost over millions of dollars and didn't deliver on the first day. The government had to shell out even more to keep it running bcoz Gov. Patrick didn't want that to fail on his watch.

The way they work is purely in water-fall project management mode. Project managers are gods and spend insane amount of time on ms-office calculating hours per each task that are 2 years out. then they bring CGI indian sub-par programmers on L1 to save on costs. Technology is least of their concerns since its about shipping code. Also blame shouldn't be just on CGI, the government is at fault as well. Simple request for information would take about 4 biz days to get it. everything is slow and the Gov IT staff has no clue on how to scale. Anyway, when I heard CGI won this project, I knew it would fail.

</comment><comment><USER31> If this is the software that's developed for millions of public users, imagine the software developed for in-house use, where the users are too few and too unsavvy to see how the software could be better (this is the case with most businesses, not just government)...this applies to basic information processing and to software interfaces for our sophisticated weapon systems.

And even the software for info systems can have dangerous consequences. Does anyone remember the underwear bomber, who almost brought down a plane and caused a nice surge of invasive security measures afterwards? His own father exposed him, but the State Dept's visa system failed to find the terrorist because someone misspelled his name when entering it into the system

[http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/08/terror.suspect.visa/i...](http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/08/terror.suspect.visa/index.html)

Think about it...the State Dept has been dealing with foreign terrorists well before 9/11, whose names are easily misspelled by Westerners...there's not even a consistent way to spell Osama bin Laden, depending on you interpret he phonetics. And yet no one thought that a fuzzy spellcheck would be useful, apparently. And a whole bunch of people almost died because of it (and the security apparatus greatly increased)

<comment><USER32> Software for in-house use might be fine.

Bureaucracy reduces efficiency.

The more organizationally significant the software the worse risk there is.

Processes and procedures are the ways institutions manage risk.

So the more significant the software is the less efficient the production of it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've had federal employees tell me with a straight face that waterfall development is the only model that works, and that is why 'all of the tech companies use it'. These people have often gone and gotten certifications for stuff like six sigma and CMMI. They will never change their tune. You basically have to wait for all of them to retire. The average government tech worker is so different from the commercial tech worker that they may as well be a different industry all together.

<comment><USER25> I once worked for a very successful software company with a customer base that included government (IT installations), academic (college courses lab work, hardware research), financial (banks), and industry (computer hardware manufacturers).

We built a platform, and had a consulting wing that built custom "apps" on top of it.

We did Waterfall and CMMI. Waterfall was most intense for the consulting projects. I remember being assigned to build feature 188.8.131.52 in the spec.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The problem is not necessarily Waterfall, it's people's unimaginative approach to it. I've done plenty of projects for clients that wanted a Waterfall methodology, and I did it by writing the documentation and the prototyping code at the same time. In other words, Agile fits inside Waterfall. The requirements gathering phase in Waterfall projects is so incredibly long that you can definitely afford to make a prototype or 5. And you win huge points with your client when you're done with the requirements phase and get to say that development will take "only two months".

You have to treat prototyping as part of the requirements gather process. Then, when requirements phase is done, you have to treat "development" as really "testing". Because, for the types of clients that are going to insist on a Waterfall project, the final testing is really only a cursory user acceptance testing and they really don't have the skills necessary to determine if you've met their requirements or not.

<comment><USER35> With the government, depending on how "involved" your customer is in the contract, they might have a shitfit if they find out you are doing this. As another poster in this section noted, there are plenty of government and quasi-government[1] employees who seriously believe that you can't start writing code until you have defined all your requirements and prepared a design to meet those requirements.

[1] People who work for companies like MITRE that are basically privatized extensions of the government.

<comment><USER34> You are right, which is why I don't actually do government contracts anymore. It's just too easy to end up working for a complete, abject moron.

<comment><USER34> I should say, this is also why I don't work for Fortune 500 companies anymore, and also why I don't do work for fly-by-night, no-technical-cofounder startups, either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's interesting that the UK seems to be getting around this by doing stuff in-house. So now we have the open government license ([http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government- licen...](http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government- licence/version/2/)) and government websites that take pull requests for content.

<comment><USER37> It's the only way that works. You can contract out parts of your implementation, but you need a certain level of in-house technical expertise just to not get taken for a ride by your contractors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Does anyone else find it ironic that Obama's campaign was a picture of web execution but in his administration it's the opposite?

<comment><USER39> The health care site involves a web application with high number of business rules and data structures.

The campaign's site is fluff.

<comment><USER40> The campaign's site was also _static_ (see [http://kylerush.net/blog/meet-the- obama-campaigns-250-millio...](http://kylerush.net/blog/meet-the-obama- campaigns-250-million-fundraising-platform/))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Have a look at what's happening in the UK:

[https://www.gov.uk/transformation](https://www.gov.uk/transformation) (fully responsive design pages together with new service backends delivered with Agile / Scrum)

and the teams doing it: [http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/](http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/) (they are hiring more than a dozen people in the moment)

</comment><comment><USER42> This is not a bad article. The reporter manages to cover a complex subject in an easy-to-understand way. I liked it.

I will point out, however, that there's a huge assumption lurking in there that wasn't explicitly stated: _somebody on the government side has to know what they want and be willing to take the heat if they get it wrong_. _This_ is the reason so many agencies prefer waterfall -- there's enough obfuscation and paperwork involved that when somebody complains, and in high-risk projects there'll always be complainers, nobody is really at fault. The coder guys can point back to the designer guys. The designer guys can point back to the requirements guys. You'd think that the requirements guys, the guys at the front of the waterfall, would catch all the blame, and they do. But they just write bug tickets because some aspect of the process wasn't followed well enough.

You can spend hours or days trying to figure out what went wrong and not know anything more than you did before you started. Which is exactly why the system has evolved the way it has.

I hear a lot more government projects are going to be Agile. Here's wishing them luck. If done correctly, Agile will 'debug' the organizational problems that lead to this bad performance over and over again. If they just sprinkle a little Agile nomenclature on top of things, it won't do anything at all.

</comment><comment><USER29> So, for everyone who feels that they have anything resembling a better solution, I'd suggest that you go and actually try implementing it at a smaller scale first. Start with your homeowners' association, your neighborhood, or your nearest town. You'll have relatively few people to convince, more access to decision makers and funding sources, and less capable contractors gaming your system.

Get that down, and then get several neighboring communities--again, HOAs, neighborhoods, or towns--and get them to adopt your ideas as well. With that amount of variation, you've got a strong base from which you can convince a major city, or a county, to adopt your ideas: after all, many of their constituents are already on it and can endorse it.

This isn't meaningfully different from founding a startup taking on governments as clients.

</comment><comment><USER43> The most important part of this article is paragraph two, for without the exclusivity present in the government procurement process, it's unlikely we'd have a lack of innovation in regard to development practice.

I've led or worked on tech contracts and grants for ED, HHS, NSF, CDC, and others. Several people have pointed out some important points that are not getting enough attention in my opinion:

by @mcone: "The procurement rules were designed for that, yes. But in real world scenarios, those rules effectively do exactly the opposite. Since there are so many hoops for potential vendors to jump through, only the most established players get to bid on most contracts. And in my experience corruption and cronyism is still alive and well in federal IT contracting."

It's true, incest between government and industry is rampant and has led to wide spread cronyism despite the system's best efforts to limit the effects. People that once worked for company X, now serve on the proposal review panels when company X competes for work. No, they don't receive direct compensation and thus there is no immediate conflict of interest, but the reality is humans are drawn to (or don't want to disappoint) the people they know (former colleagues) and thus pick their old companies. In addition, they know there is a chance they may once again return to said company (so there is long term conflict of interest potential).

Another point that hasn't been discussed is how the government's procurement process provides next to no incentive for companies to efficiently produce good products. If our industry loves the DRY concept, everything about the gov procurement process points to a !DRY (or do repeat yourself). We built and rebuilt the same database for offices of the government that shared a building with one another. But because everyone is in a silo, they don't collaborate well and don't realize that they could pool their needs to develop more universal products. (And on the industry side, as long as gov continues to work this way, they don't even have an incentive to re-use their work or propose innovative, generalizable solutions.)

And for those of you that might say, 'but can't you win a gov contract by bidding lower by working off of existing work?' The truth is price has very little to do with who gets selected for a gov contract.

</comment><comment><USER44> Maybe US should look to the number of successful websites launched in European governments and public sectors. There were obviously a lot of failures along the way, but that is what you learn from. And if US can skip some failures, thats maybe a few billions not lost. Worth looking into.

</comment><comment><USER45> I have respect for people who are doing waterfall and admit to it. In my personal sphere I see far too many people talking agile all day while actually running waterfall projects. It seems like people think agile means "waterfall, but skip most of the upfront planning".

</comment><comment><USER46> the DoD does not know what it wants ahead of time; they are in a tight feedback loop with contractors.

</comment><comment><USER47> actual problem: government is incompetent at leadership because it is saturated with politicians whose main skill is only convincing you they are competent leaders. no leadership skills actually required.

if government were competent stuff like capitalist economy and privatising public services would always be bad (provably - actual proof, not just overwhelming evidence - but there is overwhelming evidence too).

leaders intuit things like agile and don't label them - instead of picking it up from a book and implementing it badly because they don't understand first principles.

</comment><comment><USER48> Coming from a 6+ year stint in a defense contracting, I can safely say that the issue with this approach happens well before the testing. The problem more often than not occurs at the requirements level.

<comment><USER14> Bingo. The government, which took the role of integrator, kept making requirements changes, right through the week before launch. They also did integration testing ... and of course ignored that that failed hard.

I can't see _any_ way CGI Federal et. al. could have won.

<comment><USER26> > The government ... kept making requirements changes

So, just like every client every developer ever had?

<comment><USER14> If they were all that bad we'd _never_ get anything done.

In drafting the above I removed some thoughts about CGI Federal pushing back, since that struck me as something that probably wouldn't work in this context. But I for one have pushed back on clueless customers before, saying the usual "this change will cost time, money and/or quality".

Or, heck, I'll bet CGI did some push back, but there's no reason to believe the inexperienced bureaucrats and political appointees in HHS and CMS would have listened to them. We've been reliably told they were told it was going to hell, and there's that one fed who switching in March to "I hope it won't be a Third World experience" which I take as a sign he saw trouble on the horizon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> " _A tank is a tank is a tank, pretty much, plus or minus a few bells and whistles. "_

Geeze, such amazing ignorance. If you're vaguely interested in this sort of thing, and want to learn all the process and engineering reasons the Abrams M-1 became the _King of the Killing Zone_ , get a copy of the book by that name: [http://www.amazon.com/King-Killing-Zone-Orr- Kelly/dp/0393026...](http://www.amazon.com/King-Killing-Zone-Orr- Kelly/dp/0393026485/)

Written by someone who initially expected to castigate it due to early (mis)reported teething problems (e.g. the whole "it throws tracks (more than other tanks)" was due to a proving ground's faulty tension meter), he got completely sold on the tank which has since totally proven its worth.

Lots of fun stuff, from their modeling everything with strong constraints like weight (i.e. what bridges can it cross), e.g. they didn't want to provide a heavy M2 .50 BMG but the tankers demanded it. To the successful development team's leader, a grizzled Chrysler car exec who drove them crazy with "that doesn't look good" sorts of complaints.

Which often turned out to be a boon (ignoring that weapons should look good so their users feel good about them, which the M-1 delivers on). Said it was too high in an ugly way, so they figured out how to shave a foot off, which is very important for the European theater (not so good for deserts). Didn't like how the armor skirts didn't extend all the way to the back. So they gave in (I'm sure the modeling said it was only a minor net loss) ... and found that made a critial difference in keeping cruft thrown up by the tracks out of its turbine engine.

Very much an iterative process, in a domain where you truly "bend metal" to get things done.

So take the author's words with a big grain of salt, she's woefully ignorant of a huge domain in which we've been building for a very long time the world's most sophisticated artifacts, and learning how to, and how not to do it ... with stakes no less than national survival. Digital computers used for IT are a very recent development as these things go.

</comment><comment><USER49> I don't know why websites can't run on magic and fairies. The rest of the government does.

</comment><comment><USER50> Oh really, ya think?</comment>


Michael Schumacher out of coma and released from hospital - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/16/sport/motorsport/michael-schumacher-condition/

<comment><USER2> Finally!</comment>