Vista was the new Windows ME, and Windows 7 is the new XP. Think about it... ME was the first of a new platform that re-did major portions of the UI (Like Vista), that had a lot of problems and got a bad rap (like Vista). Then they had some time to clean it up and refine their new platform and come out with an OS that people actually liked (Like Windows 7). There's a lot of parallels here that I've seen before.
What do you think will Chrome OS enable that the current OSes cannot? The point is that not everything needs internet access and hence doesn't need to be used in a browser. Not to mention that HTML/JS/AJAX/CSS is one of the worst development platforms ever in terms of developer effort requirement to make things working.
I tend to agree... the whole thing feels a lot like a solution looking for a problem. If internet everything and html/js/ajax/css were the best development platform for desktop apps, people would already be doing it, since it's not exactly new tech.
According to this wiki entry, Apple has roughly 10.7% of the market share of smartphones, while Symbian has 47%, Blackberry has 19.5%, Windows Mobile has 12.4%, and hell, even linux has almost 9%. So to say that the iPhone is is the single most popular is a bit of a stretch (even with the qualifier 'for personal use').
Arguing ease of development shouldn't really be a factor, because all they're really doing it saving a picture and sending it... it can't be that hard with any of the APIs (ridiculously easy with Win Mobile, for example) . But I think arguing that there's no market for potential users could be a bad argument.
The difference is in windows, you can look around if you don't know where it is. Hand over a fresh install of windows and tell the user to adjust their resolution. It might take a while the first time, but they'll dig through the right folder/menu/tab eventually. Now fire up a command window and tell them to do the same, and they'll have no idea where to even start looking.
I'm guessing everyone going 'omg she's stupid!' has never heard a college/uni promise to find you a job after you graduate.
They actually make the PROMISE of employment? I've never heard one. They all say "we have resources to help you find a job" and "X% of our graduates get a job within 6 months of graduation", but I've NEVER heard a guarantee of a job. Of course, those numbers are misleading too since many schools will list you as getting a job after graduation if you have to work at McDonalds just to pay the bills.
We do similar activities at my place of work. Schedule a whole day or two as 'Meeting days', required for the entire development team. Actually block off the calendar, and you can't get called into other meetings. It works remarkably well.
Many of us also worked from home on those days, or at least forwarded our phone straight to voicemail. Some weeks, I get more done in one of those days than the rest of the week combined.
the math was so hairy that Bob Boyer and I really had to go over each line of code in order to make sure it was correct. I don't think either of us would have been able to do it on our own
Is there a reason you couldn't work out the algorithm and design first, and then code different parts independently, and just review the other's work? As long as it matched the design and algorithm you developed, you should be good. And reviewing will be easier since you're familiar with the design, and you can unit test parts of the code separately. I do completely agree with your statment about the hardworking student just doing all the work. He wants to get an F just to screw with the other lazy person, but we all know that he cares too much let it happen.
Back to the OP: The only thing I ever figured out from 'pair programming' was how to burn time while we switched off coding the design we came up with together. Let the teams come up with a design together, but let them code it independently. If they have questions, they have the same design and can help each other out and be a resource for the other. Much more valuable if you ask me.
Microsoft themselves actually have a presentation describing their process of designing and refining the Ribbon, by Jenson Harris ('Group Porgam Manager of the Office UX Team'). They talk a little bit about the user feedback stats and how they made some decisions regarding the ribbon... it's an interesting video if you have some time and are interested in that sort of thing.
Your last part I think is one of the most important. Making sure at least two Full-time employees (not contractors, not interns) know the code is extremely important in making sure that someone can answer questions should one leave/be out sick/etc.
You also ensure that any assumptions you made about other parts of the system or other libraries are indeed correct, and you ensure code is using best practices for both performance and language standards.
The key to code reviews is making sure it's a quick iterative diff of a few files, and not a room full of engineers looking at 50 files on an overhead projector. Our workplace recently instituted a new policy of 'every task/commit must have a code review' (it's actually a property of the task in our code management tool so it's easy to query), and it's helped us catch a lot of bugs before test ever sees it. A 5 minute fix from a code review is a lot better than finding it in test: spending 2 hours trying to dig through the logs to find the bad code, fixing it, and rebuilding everything so test can continue. Not to mention the code is a lot cleaner and a lot more optimized with a few people looking at it.
I know I've posted this before, but MS actually has a presentation about why they made the decisions they did with the Ribbon, and it was persented at MIX last year. They talk about all the usability and UI research that they did on Office 2003 that caused them to develop the ribbon for 2007, and then they spend some time talking about how they came up with the idea and worked out the details of the ribbon.
It's an interesting presentation if you work on UI design and have some time, or are curious as to why the hell they went to the ribbon.
Bad examples:
FX - Owned by Fox
USA - owned by NBC/Universal
TNT and TBS - Owned by Turner Broadcasting/Time Warner
These channels certainly have the cash behind them if they need to take a risk on a new show (and for some of these, I have to believe the station is taking a loss in order to gain market share for other shows), although I suppose the same could be said for Comedy Central (part of Viacom). The problem is getting the show approved and getting a budget to do it from the higher ups...
That's giving a lot of credit to an organization that thinks fish should be called sea kittens...with a cute website in their campaign of terror as well!
Although they do have a point with this line:
When your name can also be used as a verb that means driving a hook through your head, it's time for a serious image makeover.
health care, the economy, energy, torture, "the terrorists", North Korea, Putin, Russia, global warming, the housing crisis, Israel/Palestinian, New Orleans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Melamine, Salmonella, Gitmo, domestic spying, illegal immigration, crumbling infra-structure, and a host of other issues I'd rather just forget about.
The problem of course being that television affects many millions of Americans every day, while torture and Putin don't really affect anything that happens in a normal day for those same people.
Unfortunately, by making these noises, they basically ensure that no business will hire between now and the the point in which those rules go into effect. After all, Why would I hire someone now when I can wait a month and get a nice tax break to go with it.
The worst part is that this means companies are less hiring right now, which means more people unemployed, cutting back, spending less, and slipping further into debt, which ultimately leads back around to lower sales and companies not hiring as much.... it's quite the vicious circle.
Slashdot Mirror
Vista was the new Windows ME, and Windows 7 is the new XP. Think about it... ME was the first of a new platform that re-did major portions of the UI (Like Vista), that had a lot of problems and got a bad rap (like Vista). Then they had some time to clean it up and refine their new platform and come out with an OS that people actually liked (Like Windows 7). There's a lot of parallels here that I've seen before.
I nominate you for Slashdot Editor.
He'd still be better than kdawson :)
That makes sense. Thanks
Without knowing a whole lot about dvd encryption: why couldn't you do a bit-for-bit copy of a DVD? That way you don't have to break CSS.
One word: kdawson
What do you think will Chrome OS enable that the current OSes cannot? The point is that not everything needs internet access and hence doesn't need to be used in a browser. Not to mention that HTML/JS/AJAX/CSS is one of the worst development platforms ever in terms of developer effort requirement to make things working.
I tend to agree... the whole thing feels a lot like a solution looking for a problem. If internet everything and html/js/ajax/css were the best development platform for desktop apps, people would already be doing it, since it's not exactly new tech.
According to this wiki entry, Apple has roughly 10.7% of the market share of smartphones, while Symbian has 47%, Blackberry has 19.5%, Windows Mobile has 12.4%, and hell, even linux has almost 9%. So to say that the iPhone is is the single most popular is a bit of a stretch (even with the qualifier 'for personal use').
Arguing ease of development shouldn't really be a factor, because all they're really doing it saving a picture and sending it... it can't be that hard with any of the APIs (ridiculously easy with Win Mobile, for example) . But I think arguing that there's no market for potential users could be a bad argument.
The difference is in windows, you can look around if you don't know where it is. Hand over a fresh install of windows and tell the user to adjust their resolution. It might take a while the first time, but they'll dig through the right folder/menu/tab eventually. Now fire up a command window and tell them to do the same, and they'll have no idea where to even start looking.
I'm guessing everyone going 'omg she's stupid!' has never heard a college/uni promise to find you a job after you graduate.
They actually make the PROMISE of employment? I've never heard one. They all say "we have resources to help you find a job" and "X% of our graduates get a job within 6 months of graduation", but I've NEVER heard a guarantee of a job. Of course, those numbers are misleading too since many schools will list you as getting a job after graduation if you have to work at McDonalds just to pay the bills.
people seem to think that computer run on magic or something, so they have no clue what we do.
I always thought it ran on the smoke held in by all those little parts! At least, that's what comes out of the parts when it stops working...
We do similar activities at my place of work. Schedule a whole day or two as 'Meeting days', required for the entire development team. Actually block off the calendar, and you can't get called into other meetings. It works remarkably well.
Many of us also worked from home on those days, or at least forwarded our phone straight to voicemail. Some weeks, I get more done in one of those days than the rest of the week combined.
the math was so hairy that Bob Boyer and I really had to go over each line of code in order to make sure it was correct. I don't think either of us would have been able to do it on our own
Is there a reason you couldn't work out the algorithm and design first, and then code different parts independently, and just review the other's work? As long as it matched the design and algorithm you developed, you should be good. And reviewing will be easier since you're familiar with the design, and you can unit test parts of the code separately. I do completely agree with your statment about the hardworking student just doing all the work. He wants to get an F just to screw with the other lazy person, but we all know that he cares too much let it happen.
Back to the OP: The only thing I ever figured out from 'pair programming' was how to burn time while we switched off coding the design we came up with together. Let the teams come up with a design together, but let them code it independently. If they have questions, they have the same design and can help each other out and be a resource for the other. Much more valuable if you ask me.
Microsoft themselves actually have a presentation describing their process of designing and refining the Ribbon, by Jenson Harris ('Group Porgam Manager of the Office UX Team'). They talk a little bit about the user feedback stats and how they made some decisions regarding the ribbon... it's an interesting video if you have some time and are interested in that sort of thing.
Microsoft's (technically unsupported) ISO mounting tool: VirtualCD
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/620/xp_small_free_way_to_use_and_mount_images_iso_files_without_burning_them/
(Sprint != GSM) == No SIM card
Woah... did you guys here that giant whooshing sound?
Your last part I think is one of the most important. Making sure at least two Full-time employees (not contractors, not interns) know the code is extremely important in making sure that someone can answer questions should one leave/be out sick/etc. You also ensure that any assumptions you made about other parts of the system or other libraries are indeed correct, and you ensure code is using best practices for both performance and language standards. The key to code reviews is making sure it's a quick iterative diff of a few files, and not a room full of engineers looking at 50 files on an overhead projector. Our workplace recently instituted a new policy of 'every task/commit must have a code review' (it's actually a property of the task in our code management tool so it's easy to query), and it's helped us catch a lot of bugs before test ever sees it. A 5 minute fix from a code review is a lot better than finding it in test: spending 2 hours trying to dig through the logs to find the bad code, fixing it, and rebuilding everything so test can continue. Not to mention the code is a lot cleaner and a lot more optimized with a few people looking at it.
I know I've posted this before, but MS actually has a presentation about why they made the decisions they did with the Ribbon, and it was persented at MIX last year. They talk about all the usability and UI research that they did on Office 2003 that caused them to develop the ribbon for 2007, and then they spend some time talking about how they came up with the idea and worked out the details of the ribbon.
It's an interesting presentation if you work on UI design and have some time, or are curious as to why the hell they went to the ribbon.
Your equation is just one example of the more general one:
Explosives + (Anything) = Good Times
a) The dotcom boom and b) some external factors that I'm uncertain of
The rise of the internet made is easy for anyone to become a stock trader and opened access for a lot more people to get into the market directly.
Bad examples:
FX - Owned by Fox
USA - owned by NBC/Universal
TNT and TBS - Owned by Turner Broadcasting/Time Warner
These channels certainly have the cash behind them if they need to take a risk on a new show (and for some of these, I have to believe the station is taking a loss in order to gain market share for other shows), although I suppose the same could be said for Comedy Central (part of Viacom). The problem is getting the show approved and getting a budget to do it from the higher ups...
Although they do have a point with this line:
When your name can also be used as a verb that means driving a hook through your head, it's time for a serious image makeover.
health care, the economy, energy, torture, "the terrorists", North Korea, Putin, Russia, global warming, the housing crisis, Israel/Palestinian, New Orleans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Melamine, Salmonella, Gitmo, domestic spying, illegal immigration, crumbling infra-structure, and a host of other issues I'd rather just forget about.
The problem of course being that television affects many millions of Americans every day, while torture and Putin don't really affect anything that happens in a normal day for those same people.
With a user ID of 1444615 and that being the only post... I seriously doubt they're joking, which is a sad fact in itself.
Unfortunately, by making these noises, they basically ensure that no business will hire between now and the the point in which those rules go into effect. After all, Why would I hire someone now when I can wait a month and get a nice tax break to go with it.
The worst part is that this means companies are less hiring right now, which means more people unemployed, cutting back, spending less, and slipping further into debt, which ultimately leads back around to lower sales and companies not hiring as much.... it's quite the vicious circle.