There has been a lot of discussion about closed source projects having dedicated QA departments and the relative merits of that.
The problem is most software companies don't do QA right.
It's fundamentally against the quarter by quarter business mindset that dominates most companies. QA doesn't produce anything. QA usually pushes back release dates. QA can be almost as resource intensive as engineering.
QA only pays off in the long term as a reputation for quality outside of the company, and then only if they are given the resources they need.
If:
Your only willing to hire cheap staff to punch away at the GUI
If: QA doesn't have a say on whether bugs are fixed before release
If:
QA doesn't have at least 80% of the product knowledge of the engineers
than a large QA team suffers immense diminishing returns and will likely cost more than they save over the long term.
Unfortunately most companies feel that throwing more cheap bodies at the issue will increase their quality (hint...it won't). At that point the OSS route of lots of eyes is way better.
Yeah but you know how it is. Some pointy haired moron decided this was a great idea and that was that. Now everyone from support people on up need to gather evidence (while appearing wholly behind the plan) that the plan was stupid so it won't happen any more.
I hate having to support policy I really don't agree with, but sometimes that's the way it goes.
Why does everyone assume aliens will have superior technology? Besides it being a better movie of course.
Technology is driven by environmental, cultural and economic factors. We have nuclear fission but we know next to nothing about our own bodies because as a culture, our drive and economic backing usually comes only as a result of war or threat of war.
It's not unreasonable to assume that other species might have different cultural goal or biological imperatives driving their advancement.
It terms of interstellar travel, yeah we have no clue, but think how fast we could figure it out if we knew our sun was going to die in 150 years for example?
The intention is probably to leverage Adobe AIR http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air/ (Adobe Labs), but it's basically a webapps on the desktop + sync to online DB. It's in development now.
I imagine you will use the AIR app most of the time (so you aren't limited by bandwidth and such and also makes your machine handle the processing requirements) then sync to your online source so it's available elsewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
There has been a lot of discussion about closed source projects having dedicated QA departments and the relative merits of that.
The problem is most software companies don't do QA right.
It's fundamentally against the quarter by quarter business mindset that dominates most companies. QA doesn't produce anything. QA usually pushes back release dates. QA can be almost as resource intensive as engineering.
QA only pays off in the long term as a reputation for quality outside of the company, and then only if they are given the resources they need.
If: Your only willing to hire cheap staff to punch away at the GUI
If: QA doesn't have a say on whether bugs are fixed before release
If: QA doesn't have at least 80% of the product knowledge of the engineers
than a large QA team suffers immense diminishing returns and will likely cost more than they save over the long term.
Unfortunately most companies feel that throwing more cheap bodies at the issue will increase their quality (hint...it won't). At that point the OSS route of lots of eyes is way better.
Yeah but you know how it is. Some pointy haired moron decided this was a great idea and that was that. Now everyone from support people on up need to gather evidence (while appearing wholly behind the plan) that the plan was stupid so it won't happen any more. I hate having to support policy I really don't agree with, but sometimes that's the way it goes.
even lawyers band together pro bono to help strangers fight you and your cause. I mean seriously. Seriously.
I often whisper that to my gf.
Kidding of course.
Why does everyone assume aliens will have superior technology? Besides it being a better movie of course. Technology is driven by environmental, cultural and economic factors. We have nuclear fission but we know next to nothing about our own bodies because as a culture, our drive and economic backing usually comes only as a result of war or threat of war. It's not unreasonable to assume that other species might have different cultural goal or biological imperatives driving their advancement. It terms of interstellar travel, yeah we have no clue, but think how fast we could figure it out if we knew our sun was going to die in 150 years for example?
The intention is probably to leverage Adobe AIR http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air/ (Adobe Labs), but it's basically a webapps on the desktop + sync to online DB. It's in development now. I imagine you will use the AIR app most of the time (so you aren't limited by bandwidth and such and also makes your machine handle the processing requirements) then sync to your online source so it's available elsewhere.