• (cs) in reply to Jason Roelofs

    Anonymous:
    Isn't Step 1 to building a competing project not to use the competitor's proprietary technology (VB6 and thus Windows only)?
    LOL.  That was pretty much my first thought in reading this, too.

    Well, that, and how astonishing it is that sooo many would-be start-up founders are soooo clueless about the technology they dive into.  I'm reminded of this by the occasional recruiter hiring for such an effort, but I'm somehow amazed anew every time...

  • dave (unregistered) in reply to Not so sure about this

    >Wait a minute - MS has been trying to debug Office for - what, 20 years now?

    >and they're still at it. Why would anyone think they, or any army of programmers

    >could do it a mere six months?

     

    You just need 1/40th of the number of Office programmers that MS has, and you

    can do it in 1/40th of the time.  It's a well-known law of programming.

     

  • Not so sure about this (unregistered) in reply to dave
    Anonymous:

    >Wait a minute - MS has been trying to debug Office for - what, 20 years now?

    >and they're still at it. Why would anyone think they, or any army of programmers

    >could do it a mere six months?

    You just need 1/40th of the number of Office programmers that MS has, and you

    can do it in 1/40th of the time.  It's a well-known law of programming.

    Ah yes: nine women and a month do a baby make.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Not so sure about this
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    >Wait a minute - MS has been trying to debug Office for - what, 20 years now?

    >and they're still at it. Why would anyone think they, or any army of programmers

    >could do it a mere six months?

    You just need 1/40th of the number of Office programmers that MS has, and you

    can do it in 1/40th of the time.  It's a well-known law of programming.

    Ah yes: nine women and a month do a baby make.

    Wouldn't that be more like 1/9 a woman and a month do a baby make? 

  • Artemus Harper (unregistered) in reply to GoatCheez

    Maybe Anoymous ment Javascript?

     No... that can't be it either since Google I think has something like that in the works... hrm...

     Ah... QBasic I think would be worse.

  • XMLord (unregistered) in reply to WIldpeaks

    I'm just waiting for the part where they put a big Word control (Is that the real VB name? Ehh.. who cares...) in the middle of the window.

    Actually, now that I think of it, I have heard a lot of people saying that Avant is the best browser ever, so who needs explorer...

  • Umbongo (unregistered)

    This is Groove Networks and Ray Ozzie, right?

  • PseudoNoise (unregistered)

    The logic makes sense in the business universe, observe: 

    Recalling his days as a Digital PDP-11 programmer, he knew that he could write financial software that would support fifty users, perform great, and run in 256-bytes of memory. ... And with the latest hardware available, their application could easily scale to support twenty million users using one, maybe two servers.


    He knows he can support 50 users per 256 bytes of memory.  Each user needs 5.12 bytes.  Twenty million users should only need 102 MBytes.

    I guess he threw in the second server for redundancy.  Everybody in the business world knows that diminishing returns and economies of scale cancel each other out, so the above is perfectly logical.

    CAPTCHA: creative
     

  • BA (unregistered) in reply to musigenesis
    musigenesis:
    Anonymous:

    For all those who are quick to bash VB (including myself), I was surprized to read the following comment from Linus Torvalds:

    "...For example, I personally believe that Visual Basic did more for programming than Object-Oriented Languages did. Yet people laugh at VB and say it’s a bad language, and they’ve been talking about OO languages for decades.

    And no, Visual Basic wasn’t a great language, but I think the easy DB interfaces in VB were fundmantally more important than object orientation is, for example..."

    This is from an article posted on slash: http://sztywny.titaniumhosting.com/2006/07/23/stiff-asks-great-programmers-answers/ 

    I find it funny that VB is so often referred to as not being an object-oriented language.  In fact, since version 4 VB has supported the Encapsulation and Polymorphism aspects of the OO Holy Trinity.  Before .NET, VB did not support True Inheritance, but as we used to say at a previous job, "Inheritance is a great way of ensuring that the bad decisions you make at the start of a project stay with you forever." 

    Object-Oriented Polymorphism is not function/operator overloading. Although people have warped the meaning of polymorphism to the point where we must distinguish between OO and non-OO polymorphism, they are not the same.

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymorphism_in_object-oriented_programming

    OO Polymorphism requires Inheritance and virtualisation. If you don't have those, you can't have polymorphism.
     

  • (cs) in reply to GoatCheez
    GoatCheez:

    Anonymous:
    Well, it could have been worse... They could have tried to do it in Java!

    Ever hear of OpenOffice? 

    You mean the OpenOffice(.org) that is written in C++?
     

  • dsfgsddsfgsdfgdsffg (unregistered) in reply to smbell

    Although OpenOffice has a Java API, it is not written in Java.

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    One thing led to another and Virtudyne was born. Its goal was modest: become the next Microsoft Office killer. The Founder hired his long-time colleague as the Chief Information Officer and together, they would create The Plan. It was simple: develop an internet/intranet based Office/Collaboration system that would deliver "90% of functionality that 90% of [Microsoft Office] users use."

    Let me guess the ending: the "system" turns out to be Skynet?  (Virtudyne being a thinly-disguised Cyberdyne Systems, of course.)

     

     

  • (cs) in reply to smbell
    smbell:
    GoatCheez:

    Anonymous:
    Well, it could have been worse... They could have tried to do it in Java!

    Ever hear of OpenOffice? 

    You mean the OpenOffice(.org) that is written in C++?

    foot in my mouth yet again.... soab... I just assumed it was written in java because it was 1. xplat, 2. required JRE (doesn't actually require i just found out, it's only needed for certain things.... ), and 3. is slow as shit. 

  • The Captain Answers (unregistered)

    Wow! VB, aye?  I got it!  They'll use VB as the codebase behind the servers; all two of them.  Everyone using those web browser thingies will simply surf to this Office-killer (using IE only?) and not even know it's booty back-end is VB!  Absolutely brillant.

    CAPTCHA = quality.  Quality, indeed.

  • Shadowman (unregistered) in reply to GoatCheez
    GoatCheez:
    smbell:
    GoatCheez:

    Anonymous:
    Well, it could have been worse... They could have tried to do it in Java!

    Ever hear of OpenOffice? 

    You mean the OpenOffice(.org) that is written in C++?

    foot in my mouth yet again.... soab... I just assumed it was written in java because it was 1. xplat, 2. required JRE (doesn't actually require i just found out, it's only needed for certain things.... ), and 3. is slow as shit. 

    You could have also thrown in that it's mainly supported by Sun Microsystems as well -- watch out for all-Java future versions perhaps?

  • Who wants to know (unregistered) in reply to anonymous
    Anonymous:
    djork:
    Anonymous:

    Isn't Step 1 to building a competing project not to use the competitor's proprietary technology (VB6 and thus Windows only)?

    Interestingly, the EULA for Visual Studio (and other development tools from MS) explicitly forbids making word processors, spreadsheets, or presentation applications (among other Office components). I can't wait for the rest of this series :)

     That depends on what version of VS you've paid for.

     I KNOW it was in the professional version.  I never had any smaller version.  I believe it was in the enterprise ALSO! 

    Steve

  • LongTimeListener (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    In fact, not only did he find a DBA at the SIG, he found one that proclaimed to be one of the greatest DBA in the world.

     Reminds me of one of my favourite quotes:"The older I get, the more I listen to people who don't say much..."

     When I go to work at new companies these days I like to position myself near the quietest people. They are almost invariably the only ones with any clue...

  • (cs)

    Alex Papadimoulis:
    It was simple: develop an internet/intranet based Office/Collaboration system that would deliver "90% of functionality that 90% of [Microsoft Office] users use.

    I never heard of the 90/90 rule before for any application, specially not a generic tool like Office, that is the real WTF. There's no was you van find a subset of Office functions as large as 90% that 90% of all users uses. The 80/20 rule is what is more common, 80% of all users uses 20% of the same functions. However, throwing away the other 80% functionality will not make 80% of your user happy, since what remains is seldom enough functionality to make a useful application. See Joels article for more of this: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html

     

  • (cs) in reply to BA

    OO Polymorphism requires Inheritance and virtualisation. If you don't have those, you can't have polymorphism.

    Actually, no. Inheritance is only require to the extent that in a true OO system, all classes derive from Object.  Virtualisation is purely an implementation detail.

    The essence of OO polymorphism was implemented quite literally by the Win32 window message pump, where an object (hWnd) would receive an message (Msg) and some associated data (LParam, WParam).   In a true OO system, window.Open(FULLSCREEN) and file.Open("readme.txt") are examples of polymorphism even those neither inheritance nor virtualiation are in use there, because they show, as stated in the very article you cite "the ability of objects belonging to different types to respond to method calls of methods of the same name, each one according to an appropriate type-specific behaviour. "

  • (cs) in reply to pjsson

    The 80/20 rule is what is more common, 80% of all users uses 20% of the same functions.

    side note -- Ever notice that whenever someone cites a statistic like this, the two numbers always add up to 100%, even though they are percentages of different things, and are therefore independent of each other.  To me, this greatly calls into doubt the credibility of such a statistic (i.e., it was clearly made up on the spot)

  • (cs) in reply to Who wants to know

    Steve:
    I KNOW it was in the professional version.  I never had any smaller version.  I believe it was in the enterprise ALSO!

    Random EMPHASIS is really AWESOME and helps get YOUR point across!

  • Rich (unregistered) in reply to JamesCurran
    JamesCurran:

    The 80/20 rule is what is more common, 80% of all users uses 20% of the same functions.

    side note -- Ever notice that whenever someone cites a statistic like this, the two numbers always add up to 100%, even though they are percentages of different things, and are therefore independent of each other.  To me, this greatly calls into doubt the credibility of such a statistic (i.e., it was clearly made up on the spot)

    I'm 55% sure that only 45% of statistics are made up.

    Rich

  • Anon Coward (unregistered) in reply to pjsson
    pjsson:

    Alex Papadimoulis:
    It was simple: develop an internet/intranet based Office/Collaboration system that would deliver "90% of functionality that 90% of [Microsoft Office] users use.

    I never heard of the 90/90 rule before for any application, specially not a generic tool like Office, that is the real WTF. There's no was you van find a subset of Office functions as large as 90% that 90% of all users uses. The 80/20 rule is what is more common, 80% of all users uses 20% of the same functions. However, throwing away the other 80% functionality will not make 80% of your user happy, since what remains is seldom enough functionality to make a useful application. See Joels article for more of this: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html

     

     

    I think people might be taking the 80/20 rule a bit far.  From about.com:

    "In 1906, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country, observing that twenty percent of the people owned eighty percent of the wealth.  In the late 1940s, Dr. Joseph M. Juran inaccurately attributed the 80/20 Rule to Pareto, calling it Pareto's Principle."

    Has anyone shown that it holds true for software users/functionality?

  • MrT (unregistered) in reply to LongTimeListener
    Anonymous:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    In fact, not only did he find a DBA at the SIG, he found one that proclaimed to be one of the greatest DBA in the world.

     Reminds me of one of my favourite quotes:"The older I get, the more I listen to people who don't say much..."

     When I go to work at new companies these days I like to position myself near the quietest people. They are almost invariably the only ones with any clue...

     You want to come work at our place, not only are the quiet ones quiet because nobody talks to them, they are quiet because they know nothing and keep their heads down so they get paid and don't get asked to do much.

     We use Business BASIC AND VB6 in this place. 

     captcha. genius

  • (cs) in reply to djork
    djork:
    Anonymous:

    Isn't Step 1 to building a competing project not to use the competitor's proprietary technology (VB6 and thus Windows only)?

    Interestingly, the EULA for Visual Studio (and other development tools from MS) explicitly forbids making word processors, spreadsheets, or presentation applications (among other Office components). I can't wait for the rest of this series :)


    That's got to be new.  I'm one of the few people in the world who actually reads EULAs (not that I need to often, I just look for the label that says "GPL" or "BSD" or the like), and neither MSVC++ 1 nor MSVC++ 6 had anything about word processors in them.  They did have a very intersting warranty clause saying that the program would function "substantially in accordance with the documentation", though.

  • (cs) in reply to merreborn
    merreborn:

    their application could easily scale to support twenty million users using one, maybe two servers

    Then, there's  the opposite end of the spectrum -- the guys over at LindenLabs (Second Life) can only support 30 users per server.


    Well, yeah, but your average word processor isn't doing realtime physics simulation -- I hope :-)
  • Anon Coward (unregistered) in reply to pjsson
    pjsson:

    Alex Papadimoulis:
    It was simple: develop an internet/intranet based Office/Collaboration system that would deliver "90% of functionality that 90% of [Microsoft Office] users use.

    I never heard of the 90/90 rule before for any application, specially not a generic tool like Office, that is the real WTF. There's no was you van find a subset of Office functions as large as 90% that 90% of all users uses. The 80/20 rule is what is more common, 80% of all users uses 20% of the same functions. However, throwing away the other 80% functionality will not make 80% of your user happy, since what remains is seldom enough functionality to make a useful application. See Joels article for more of this: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html

    I just read the article.  And noticed the tendancy in this and other threads towards bashing Java, and anything that isn't .Net or SQLServer.  So here's my response:

    Wouldn't it be interesting if we had an all-purpose client which took care of interacting with the operating system - disk access, communications, windowing, etc. (Eclipse) and we could download modules (plug-ins) as needed.  So I might start off by downloading a basic text editor.  Now I want to add a footnote capability - so I download a more advanced text editor.  Next I want a word counting capability - not your regular word counter - suppose I want to count all instances of a particular word because I'm a writer and I have a tendancy to overuse some words - so I download a premium word counter that allows me to do that.  And so on.  Each plug-in can come from a different vendor - they will play nicely together because they conform to standard interfaces....  And since all of this will be written in a modern language, instead of one which allows for direct manipulation of memory, the whole arrangement should be more secure.  The plug-in code will be written in an OS-neutral language so that the plug-in vendors don't care what the client is running as an OS.

    This is the idea behind Java.  We are not there yet - but we are getting there.

    I'll also bet this is also what Ray Ozzie is going to do at Microsoft.  The difference will be that the code will be a closely held secret so that Microsoft and its partners are the only plug-in providers.  And at that point, the marketing wizards in Redmond will proclaim that they had invented all of this and I suppose many contributors here will proclaim that the greatest thing since sliced bread.

    Captcha: java

  • (cs) in reply to musigenesis
    musigenesis:
    Anonymous:

    Second WTF VB 6

    Oh, you think VB 3 would have been a better choice?
     


    I've always favored VB 1, but that's probably because I got a copy for free.  It's great for one-off applications that are mostly user interface.
  • (cs) in reply to Anon Coward
    Anonymous:
    pjsson:

    Alex Papadimoulis:
    It was simple: develop an internet/intranet based Office/Collaboration system that would deliver "90% of functionality that 90% of [Microsoft Office] users use.

    I never heard of the 90/90 rule before for any application, specially not a generic tool like Office, that is the real WTF. There's no was you van find a subset of Office functions as large as 90% that 90% of all users uses. The 80/20 rule is what is more common, 80% of all users uses 20% of the same functions. However, throwing away the other 80% functionality will not make 80% of your user happy, since what remains is seldom enough functionality to make a useful application. See Joels article for more of this: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html

    I just read the article.  And noticed the tendancy in this and other threads towards bashing Java, and anything that isn't .Net or SQLServer.  So here's my response:

    Wouldn't it be interesting if we had an all-purpose client which took care of interacting with the operating system - disk access, communications, windowing, etc. (Eclipse) and we could download modules (plug-ins) as needed. 

    It's called "Emacs".

  • (cs) in reply to lankester
    lankester:

    He convinced The Founder that, with a handful of programmers helping him, he could develop a client/server Microsoft Office Killer using Visual Basic 6. And with the latest hardware available, their application could easily scale to support twenty million users using one, maybe two servers. And best of all, it would all take only six months to create.

    If I were The Founder, I would ask for a prototype from the CIO before investing the big bucks.  

  • (cs)

    Step 1: Founding

    Step 2: Development

    Step 3: ???

    Step 4: Profit!

     

  • (cs) in reply to Carnildo
    Carnildo:
    musigenesis:
    Anonymous:

    Second WTF VB 6

    Oh, you think VB 3 would have been a better choice?
     


    I've always favored VB 1, but that's probably because I got a copy for free.  It's great for one-off applications that are mostly user interface.

    Hey I used to use VB5 Custom Control Creation Edition! (ie. it was free and I was too poor to buy the full version).
     

  • (cs)

    Why would this need a sequel (pardon the pun) to tell how it turns out?

  • Scoldog (unregistered) in reply to Martin

    Isn't Step 1 to building a competing project not to use the competitor's proprietary technology (VB6 and thus Windows only)?

     

    Step 1, the name.

     

    Dilbert, I want you to take the lead on this project! 

  • (cs) in reply to pjsson
    pjsson:
    Man oh  man!  Joel is planning to write a lot of articles, up to10 billion, from the number of zeroes in that article number.  I wonder if he is hiring scribblers?

     

  • Geoff (unregistered) in reply to codewolf
    Anonymous:

    I cringe as I hear the screaching brakes of the colliding trains.

     

    Your hearing must be much better than mine. :)

    Based on what I've read so far I doubt that they even saw the other train coming or if they did the conversation went something like this:

    Q: What's that????

    A: Don't worry, it's just the tunnel exi <splat> 

    It sort of reminds me of that old joke - what was the last thing on the bug's mind when he hit the windscreen? ... (As they say in the maths books "The solution is left as an exercise for the reader" )

  • (cs) in reply to pjsson
    pjsson:

    Alex Papadimoulis:
    It was simple: develop an internet/intranet based Office/Collaboration system that would deliver "90% of functionality that 90% of [Microsoft Office] users use.

    I never heard of the 90/90 rule before for any application, specially not a generic tool like Office, that is the real WTF. There's no was you van find a subset of Office functions as large as 90% that 90% of all users uses. The 80/20 rule is what is more common, 80% of all users uses 20% of the same functions. However, throwing away the other 80% functionality will not make 80% of your user happy, since what remains is seldom enough functionality to make a useful application. See Joels article for more of this: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html

     

    I'd wager the reasoning was 90% of that 20%. In that case, though, who would want to buy a system that only did 90% of what they need every day? 

  • (cs) in reply to GoatCheez
    GoatCheez:

    <sarcasm>Just like I'm creating the next Halo/Doom/Quake/UT killer in javascript... And because I'm using javascript, I won't have to worry about browser compatibility since all browsers support javascript...</sarcasm>

    NextGen Web 2.0 !

  • another Steve (unregistered) in reply to Saladin

    I'd just like to say on behalf of all the other Steves that many of us are able to type without CAPITALIZING words for EMPHASIS.

  • Olddog (unregistered)

    Ten bucks says, in the next installment, they revert back to VB(5?) because of some "problem" with VB6. The DBA begins to have issues with the development team, and a division in the ranks start to appear. The CIO, under pressure from the Founder, is compelled to make decisions that reveal he's in way over his head.

    The rank and file can sense his weakness and chaos ensues. The DBA senses the authority vacuum and steps into the arena with his "Save-The-Battle" plan to bring the project back on track. But the CIO secretly brings in another DBA and plots a new course of strategy - Overseas Outsourcing.

    The Founder gets wind of this competition and finds it entertaining to play both ends against the middle. A scandal erupts when a junior programmer is caught embedding fallacious comments within the code that suggest the Founder has fostered a deal with off-shore investors to "sellout the product as soon as it becomes viable".

    The CIO and the DBA are forced to meet over terms at an undisclosed coffee house after hours. At the same time, a surprise security audit of the server farm ( both servers ) by the local Fire Marshall reveals an electrical fire-code violation that threatens to shutdown the system immediately.

    A young unknown IT intern intervenes, convincing the local Fire Marshall to allow her to make a tape backup before the system is forcibly shutdown. Inexplicably, smoke is seen rolling slowly from the bottom of the server farm. The Fire Marshall and his team rush to quell any possibility of fire. The news media is by now "Live with on site video".  The servers are fried with an onslaught of water.

    Only the Fire Marshall and a long-time friend, the lovely News-Five anchor woman, know of the tape backup... and of the young unknown IT intern. The DBA and CIO stand quietly sucking coffee behind the police tape as the enviromental response team unloads volumes of foam to prevent any leakage of un-forseen contaminates.

    Overhead a privately contracted helicopter parlays for position among the growing arrival of federal, state, local authorities. On the ground, a neighborhood pet finds interest with a page of text, carried off by floating foam on it's way to the gutter.

  • DKO (unregistered) in reply to JamesCurran

    Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of all people know that.

  • Cheong (unregistered) in reply to djork
    djork:
    Anonymous:

    Isn't Step 1 to building a competing project not to use the competitor's proprietary technology (VB6 and thus Windows only)?

    Interestingly, the EULA for Visual Studio (and other development tools from MS) explicitly forbids making word processors, spreadsheets, or presentation applications (among other Office components). I can't wait for the rest of this series :)

    I didn't know that before... but you're right. The statement is on section 1.2 of Eula of VB6... But I guess most people doesn't read Eula before installing softwares...

     
    Captcha: wtf
     

  • lcllam (unregistered) in reply to rmr

    Nah... make a form, and insert a tab control and put the Word, PowerPoint and Excel activeXs one each tab and you're done.

  • (cs)

    Alex Papadimoulis:
    an internet/intranet based Office/Collaboration system that would deliver "90% of functionality that 90% of [Microsoft Office] users use...

    ...already exists (interestingly enough). It's called AbiWord, takes up 20Mb on the HDD, reads and writes a good number of word processor file formats (even Palm Doc!) and does exactly what most Word users need, no more, no less. And to top it all, it's open source. Did it kill MS Word? Of course not...

  • seebs (unregistered)

    So, uhm.

     

    Anyone figured out what program this is, yet?    

  • (cs) in reply to Who wants to know
    Anonymous:
    djork:
    Anonymous:

    Isn't Step 1 to building a competing project not to use the competitor's proprietary technology (VB6 and thus Windows only)?

    Interestingly, the EULA for Visual Studio (and other development tools from MS) explicitly forbids making word processors, spreadsheets, or presentation applications (among other Office components). I can't wait for the rest of this series :)

     SHOOT!  You stole half my thunder!  I was going to say the SAME thing!  VB, however, is a LOUSY and WORTHLESS language to write an good editor in though!  It DOES come with tools to ADD prebuilt functionality but M/S FORBIDS its use to compete, and it is NOT generally as good as M/S word! 

    And 20,000,000????  With VB????  FORGET IT!  On 2 servers?  What were they smoking?

     BESIDES, who uses a competitors proprietary interpretive technology to compete against that competitors NATIVE technology?  Just THAT spells DISASTER!

     Steve

    Am I the ONLY one getting the IMPRESSION of that Steve is TRYING to sell me SOMETHING? Like a MARKETEER?

  • DK_Dog (unregistered) in reply to MrT
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    In fact, not only did he find a DBA at the SIG, he found one that proclaimed to be one of the greatest DBA in the world.

     Reminds me of one of my favourite quotes:"The older I get, the more I listen to people who don't say much..."

     When I go to work at new companies these days I like to position myself near the quietest people. They are almost invariably the only ones with any clue...

     You want to come work at our place, not only are the quiet ones quiet because nobody talks to them, they are quiet because they know nothing and keep their heads down so they get paid and don't get asked to do much.

     We use Business BASIC AND VB6 in this place. 

     captcha. genius

     I have the most perfect example sitting just in front of me... But next month he will 'not' speak with my empty chair... ;-)

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Xepol

    Xepol:
    Why would this need a sequel (pardon the pun) to tell how it turns out?

    Because the funder has egiptian art.

    He can move all the dev's to a paradise isolated island, and give then a movil phone to use ONLY when a working product is finished.

    Or maybe the description of the monstruosity, or photos of the face the first tests with real users, etc. Please, some imagination!
  • (cs) in reply to JamesCurran
    JamesCurran:

    The 80/20 rule is what is more common, 80% of all users uses 20% of the same functions.

    side note -- Ever notice that whenever someone cites a statistic like this, the two numbers always add up to 100%, even though they are percentages of different things, and are therefore independent of each other.  To me, this greatly calls into doubt the credibility of such a statistic (i.e., it was clearly made up on the spot)

    I think it's always possible to find those two numbers. Let's say you have 5 entities with an attribute x; the set of values of x is, say, {12, 5, 21, 13, 4}.

    By ordering the set, we get {4,5,12,13,21} ; by making subsets (containing the n largest numbers) {{21}, {13,21}, {12,13,21}, {5,12,13,21}, {4,5,12,13,21}}, we see:

    20% own 38%

    40% own 60% (lucky me ;-)

    60% own 84%

    80% own 93% 

    so at some point, those two numbers will (nearly) add up to 100. In my example it's 40/60; if x was equally distributed, it would be 50/50
     

  • (cs) in reply to GoatCheez

    BTW, there are Office suites that are really written in Java;

    most notably, the online office suites from FlySuite and ThinkFree.
     

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