Week 3 Readings

Garrels

Last week, one of the readings on Moore's Law stated that software developed at a much slower rate than hardware. This article makes it easy to see why -- rather than fitting more transistors on a chip, a whole computing language has to be written and it has to actually be usable. The average user doesn't have to understand how the CPU and RAM and etc work, but they have to be able to navigate the software.

"When programmers can read, distribute and change code, the code will mature... This software will be more flexible and of a better quality than software that has been developed using the conventional channels, because more people have tested it in more different conditions than the closed software developer ever can."

This reminds me of some ideas we talked about in the Understanding Information class. Like how large numbers of people anonymously "tagging" things on the internet can actually create a better organizational structure than one person/company trying to do the work. More testers = more data.

Maybe I will download OpenOffice.

Mac OS X

Wow, I really cannot get through this first one. Lot of jargon I don't understand. I am trusting that if this technical stuff is important,we will discuss it in class, so I am skipping to the "Why" section to read the discussion of different operating systems. I've always used Windows, myself, so I am curious to see how this guy thinks it compares. His attitude seems to be "it's fine for people who don't care." Right on. Maybe I should care? Will I need to care for this profession?

The wikipedia article notes that Mac has switched from PowerPC to Intel processors. I wonder what factors were at play in that decision?

Thurott

We can see here how the process for Microsoft software is very different from Linux. Instead of constant testing and fluid development there's a much more structured system of consumer feedback and corporate response.

Interesting, too, that they say the next version of Windows is scheduled for three years from the release of Vista. Again, very structured. There seem to be cycles both in Mac and Microsoft software where they will release an operating system that's very different from the previous one, then the next few releases are subtle improvements on the it, and then another dramatic change followed by more less-dramatic upgrades. As one commenter notes, it may be best to change systems right when there is a more dramatic change (like from xp to vista) because you will learn how to be comfortable with it early: "Put in the time now to at least learn the technology and be prepared to roll out Windows 7 or else you're still going to be running an 8 year old operating system in 2010."