Group: Contributors
Posts: 7,919
Joined: Sat 17th Feb 2007, 12:55am
From: My name it means nothing. My age it means less. The country I come from is called the Mid-West.
Member No.: 981
Releasing a dozen pieces of a hundred-piece puzzle doesn't count. (GNU has been trying to implement Cocoa for years, since when it was still "OpenStep," but Apple doesn't seem very interested in helping...)
This actually gets at the heart of the whole "Free" versus "Open Source" battle. The Free Software folks want the entire system to be free for ideological reasons, while Open Source folks just think it's a better methodology to use to build software in certain cases, and are willing to mix and match open-source components with closed-source components in their products as is convenient or profitable. Cooper seems to be strongly affiliated with the latter camp, being involved with the Open Source Initiative.
Wiki[pm]edia has always been about "free content" and "free culture"; the Open Source approach would be akin to Bomis starting Wikipedia so they could package it up as one free part of an otherwise all-rights-reserved "Bomis Encyclopedia of Boobs."
"Open source" buzzwords and posturing aside, the Diva's experience and technical chops seem perfectly acceptable for the job.
Yes, I believe she can accomplish what has already been achieved with much, much less. Somebody should be asking about the positions of Program Director: BLPs; Editorial Standards; Public Safety and Accountability; etc. These are probably positions commanding salaries of $40,000 - $60,000 and require minimum additional infrastructure. Many positions on less than a Director level are also needed paying less and possibly even telecommuting. $10,000,000 could buy 150 positions on these levels and still pay the Divas, old and new.
I don't know who that is, only that I clicked on it expecting to see D. B.
That D.B. actually never had a middle initial (the press gave it to him). He signed himself "Dan Cooper". But could have been "Dan(ese) Cooper" . Nah, she's not old enough.
Group: Regulars
Posts: 1,693
Joined: Sat 6th Dec 2008, 6:08am
Member No.: 9,267
Just as an aside, I have to guess she is damned grateful her father did not own a Morris Mini.
Either she would have gone through life as Mini Cooper ... or perhaps even Issigonis Cooper (which, all the same does have a kind of elegant Pre-Raphaelite ring to it that would match her titian looks).
That D.B. actually never had a middle initial (the press gave it to him). He signed himself "Dan Cooper". But could have been "Dan(ese) Cooper" . Nah, she's not old enough.
Okay, but did the press give him an Italian sports-car?
Hmm... She has a degree in French Literature, but that doesn't preclude her from having some talent for managing a technology operation. However, this statement about how "learning a language helped form the neural pathways that eventually helped her learn programming" is some of the worst and most obvious bullshit we've seen from a WMF executive yet, other than Jimbo himself - and that's really saying something.
"Neural pathways," my ass. You learn programming because someone hands you a computer and a task that requires it, and you have sufficient confidence in your brain-power to give it a shot. The point is, she shouldn't feel compelled to make excuses for her degree in French Literature. Rather, she should take every possible opportunity to expound on the relative merits of Voltaire and Rabelais, and how they're more readable than the execrable Marcel Proust, whom I've never been able to tolerate in unsummarized form.
Rather, she should take every possible opportunity to expound on the relative merits of Voltaire and Rabelais, and how they're more readable than the execrable Marcel Proust, whom I've never been able to tolerate.
Can't read any more French than I find on wine bottles, but a big part of the problem with Proust is supposedly accountable to the execr(et)able translations. There is however a recent one that actually made it possible for me to get past the first few hundred pages with some of my faculties intact.
Proust, Marcel (1913–1927), In Search of Lost Time, Christopher Prendergast (general editor), Penguin Books, London, UK, 2002, 6 volumes:
The Way by Swann's (1913), Lydia Davis (trans.)
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (1919), James Grieve (trans.)
The Guermantes Way (1920–1921), Mark Treharne (trans.)
Sodom and Gomorrah (1921–1922), John Sturrock (trans.)
The Prisoner (1923), Carol Clark (trans.) & The Fugitive (1925), Peter Collier (trans.)
Group: Regulars
Posts: 1,332
Joined: Fri 15th Jan 2010, 11:08pm
From: Erewhon
Member No.: 16,621
Editing Madeleine_(cake) (T-H-L-K-D): No sooner had I clicked on the 'save page' button than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An annoying humming sound had invaded my head, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the meaning of the subject I was editing had become indifferent to me, but my opinion now paramount, and others illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which indigestion has of filling me with a bloated feeling; or rather this gaseous sensation was not in me it was me.
Group: Regulars
Posts: 734
Joined: Mon 27th Mar 2006, 3:54pm
Member No.: 82
QUOTE(Zoloft @ Wed 23rd February 2011, 4:44am)
Editing Madeleine_(cake) (T-H-L-K-D): No sooner had I clicked on the 'save page' button than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An annoying humming sound had invaded my head, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the meaning of the subject I was editing had become indifferent to me, but my opinion now paramount, and others illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which indigestion has of filling me with a bloated feeling; or rather this gaseous sensation was not in me it was me.
This seems very droll but I think I'm missing the point. Is this a parody of Proust's style?
Group: Regulars
Posts: 3,270
Joined: Sun 22nd Jun 2008, 4:41am
From: EN61bw
Member No.: 6,696
I think part of it is that the two main reasons he left Wikimedia have been abated: he would no longer have to report directly to Erik, nor would he have to do the CTO's job, which he never wanted to do in the first place.
Group: Regulars
Posts: 1,332
Joined: Fri 15th Jan 2010, 11:08pm
From: Erewhon
Member No.: 16,621
QUOTE(It's the blimp, Frank @ Mon 7th March 2011, 8:16pm)
QUOTE(Zoloft @ Wed 23rd February 2011, 4:44am)
Editing Madeleine_(cake) (T-H-L-K-D): No sooner had I clicked on the 'save page' button than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An annoying humming sound had invaded my head, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the meaning of the subject I was editing had become indifferent to me, but my opinion now paramount, and others illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which indigestion has of filling me with a bloated feeling; or rather this gaseous sensation was not in me it was me.
This seems very droll but I think I'm missing the point. Is this a parody of Proust's style?
Group: Moderators
Posts: 11,814
Joined: Sat 17th Jun 2006, 7:47pm
From: Dreamland
Member No.: 275
QUOTE(Alison @ Mon 7th March 2011, 10:04pm)
QUOTE
Maybe a little bit of both?
... or a little bit of neither? Let's be fair ...
No, let's be unfair!
I actually agree with Ms. Martin about why Brion Vibber would be willing to return, given that he'll be reporting to Danese Cooper and not Erik Moeller... but Mr. Kohs has actually made an interesting point here, as he often does. Sometimes the WMF management reminds me of kids let loose in a candy store (when they're not reminding me of Lord of the Flies, at least). They have lots of money, no appreciable oversight, no definable performance metrics other than just their ability to keep the websites online... it sounds like loads of fun for an IT person, and a helluva lot better for a dev/DBA than the average corporate IT shop, consulting firm, or software VAR.
That's not to say there wouldn't be some downside - in particular, the guilty-conscience thing could cause lack of sleep, what with knowing you were participating in a corrupt, socially-irresponsible fake-charity operation. But as it turns out, some people aren't really affected by that silly "conscience" stuff at all, so maybe Brion is one of the lucky ones.
Group: Regulars
Posts: 3,270
Joined: Sun 22nd Jun 2008, 4:41am
From: EN61bw
Member No.: 6,696
QUOTE(Somey @ Tue 8th March 2011, 1:24am)
That's not to say there wouldn't be some downside - in particular, the guilty-conscience thing could cause lack of sleep, what with knowing you were participating in a corrupt, socially-irresponsible fake-charity operation. But as it turns out, some people aren't really affected by that silly "conscience" stuff at all, so maybe Brion is one of the lucky ones.
From Brion's point of view, he's getting paid to hack on software that he'd be hacking on anyway even if he weren't being paid. The lack of meaningful performance-based management is just bonus for him, and with Danese doing the annoying "beg for money for servers" aspect of the job he can relax and get paid to play.
There was never any chance that Danese could replace Brion; her experience is on an entirely different platform and there was no chance in hell that WMF would pony up the development dollars to recode MediaWiki for the J2EE universe that Danese is from (even though doing so would likely yield them substantial performance gains). Brion is certainly one of the world's top PHP hackers, but PHP is starting to lose its twinkle (the space PHP inhabits is very faddish, and PHP is so 2004), and the clever hacks he's developed that keep Wikimedia's data farm from exploding in a BFBVFS are simply not useful in most other environments, where either (a) the hit rate simply isn't high enough to need them (nearly everyone else) or (b) they're not remotely enough to get the job done (Facebook; Google). Brion's the king of a fairly large, but rather isolated lake, and outside of that lake he's just another peasant.
Open Source Diva named CTO
Sat 30th January 2010, 4:26pm
(GNU has been trying to 
. 
Nah, she's not old enough.
