In my experience, tacking IE7 support onto a modern web site adds up to 15% to the total cost.
I usually estimate it at around 20%, but that assumes minimal javascript and an experienced webdev crew. (Anyone who's been in the business for a while hates IE to the extent they know how kick its ass sideways. If you're hiring kids out of college, on the other hand, it could easily double your costs.)
IIRC, they posted their metrics and half their users were on Macs. I wouldn't worry too hard about IE in their situation either.
The issue is Android's permission system is all technical wonkery and doesn't map well onto actual human use cases.
For example, you could have a perfectly legit app which needs Internet access (why not?), and address book access (for sharing functions), but you still have no idea if they could/would sell upload your contacts and sell them to spammers. Not to mention all Android apps ask you for these permissions, even Google's apps.
Android permissions is what you get when you ask computer scientists to solve what is essentially a legal and 'trust' problem that requires some human judgement. This is a very difficult problem to solve, but "users don't understand permissions" is not really the problem.
If you're lucky, they are employees of OtherCorp. It's incredibly common for outsourcing firms to sub-subcontract stuff. Or hire a bunch of temps because they're only staffed for their baseline.
(And once you have 2 layers of PMs between you and the developers, and it takes 48 hours to roundtrip a simple question, you are truely doomed.)
They'll either shrug their shoulders and build your death car or they simply will assume that maybe you have a very good reason for asking for a death car and it's not their job to question it.
I'm laughing with you, but I've worked with some Eastern European guys who will rip up your spec and then spend 45 minutes telling you are stupid for even wanting such a thing. (And likewise, there's plenty of in-house developers with the "I don't care, I just do what they tell me" blue-collar attitude.)
In addition to very explicit specs and deadlines/milestones, the biggest issue I've seen is that companies assumes they can outsource the entire effort, and grossly underestimate the amount of internal management support required. In most cases, you'll need to match their management structure almost one-to-one; e.g. if the outsourcers have two PMs and an account rep, you will three people on your side in various roles (e.g. PM, business analyst, management sponsor). And once you've added in the needed management overhead, sometimes the cost savings is actually very minimal.
This however has nothing to do with this case, as Pystar was not simply reselling the CD the software came on, they were installing it.
Actually, they weren't even directly "installing" it, they were using a disk duplication machine. (This might seem irrelevant from a technical standpoint, but it's an extra, unauthorized copy.)
GIMP isn't a commercial product, you know. Why does something that's non-commercial need marketing?
You have a six-digit ID, so you might remember the days when GIMP was considered the flagship open source desktop program. Slashdot was full of stories where someone showed their buddy the GIMP and they immediately cast-away their Windows chains and switched to Linux. The GTK toolkit was spun-off of GIMP, as it was considered such an advanced program.
OK, except it had an offensive name and a bizarre UI, and doesn't really matter that much anymore. But at one time GIMP was considered a very important marketing point by Linux advocates.
Not the processor speed, but the iPad 1 is crippled due to having only 256MB RAM. A lot of apps are very crashy, and some new apps aren't supported at all. (But at least the web browser is reasonably stable after the most recent update.) iPad 2 has 512MB and dual-core, but otherwise there's not a huge difference from the first one.
Somewhat. Just like the Wii, "Atari was a fad"... a lot of casual players decided video games weren't cool anymore and went back to buying records or whatever.
It should be noted that C64 software sales were a fraction of console sales. (Probably not a surprise to anyone who owned one.) So, while gaming may have continued on, from the developer's perspective it was not at all as lucrative.
The video game crash in the 1980s wasn't so much an issue with the games themselves, but bad demand forecasting which lead to massive unsold inventories.
Without going into all the historical details, with modern "Just In Time" inventory systems and tight vendor control over the retail shelf space, that kind of crash would be impossible in this day.
The original NES, the first major standard ever created, thrived on making games that were cheap, painfully difficult
NES games were modelled on the arcade experience, where the games were designed to be endorphin-fueled quarter-suckers. Ultimate success was having a crowd gather around as you mastered the game, publicly acknowledging your superiority.
Game developer eventually figured out this approach doesn't work when the customer was sitting home alone in their basement. There was no great penalty for failure, nor reward for success beyond personal satisfaction. So modern games usually are not very much of a skills test, and (as the article noted) more of an interactive movie where the player is 'rewarded' with plot-points and virtual trophies.
Zilog's Z80 branding referred to the fact it was an enhanced clone of the Intel 8080.
But mostly people thought adding "80" to stuff sounded super futuristic in the 1970s. You'd see on all sorts of random electronics, and there was a semi-famous disco studio called "Sound-80".
And the OP is correct, "Trash-80" was definitely a term of endearment among the owners.
Those HP palmtops were interesting machines. At one job, a Finance Director would carry one around and whip it out if he wanted to do some quick calculations using the built-in Lotus 123. I think they may have been largely forgotten because this was about the time when 'everyone' started using Windows & Excel.
On occasion, someone takes this stuff at face value and installs Lotus Domino on the iSeries running their main assembly line. That's when the chuckles really begin.
When OS X came out, Apple was concerned developers wouldn't adopt Objective-C. So they created a custom fork of Java which allowed the use of native controls. Since then they've given up on that idea and the next version of OS X will use standard Oracle Java.
Borland, WordPerfect, Lotus and Novell all failed because they did one, maybe two things: they based their business model off the success of another company (Microsoft) which then subsequently ate their lunch
And why would you assume IBM would have been any more friendly than Microsoft?
IBM was extremely hostile to PC-based networking and database products at the time. In their mind, 'networking' was AS/400 and mainframe technology. They would have loved to been in the position to crush the life out of Novell using every anti-trust trick in the book.
These companies weren't run by idiots - they made a devil's bargin with Gates to avoid the worse fate of an IBM-dominated PC industry.
Most hollywood scripts have multiple authors, so Spinrad probably isn't the only person with 'moral rights' to the story. CBS probably doesn't even know the actual legal status of the script, and would have to rack up the lawyer hours to find out. There always could be some Harlan Ellison-type character waiting around to sue them. File this under CYA.
The St. Paul Pioneer Press went this way last year. Unsurprisingly, participation in the comments has dropped to near zero.
From a site perspective, that could be seen a seen as a good thing. The average mainstream reader has little desire to read through 400 comments, most of which could be categorized as 'troll' or 'flamebait'.
(Maybe I'm just cynical, but many sites added these comment sections just to punch up their "engagement" numbers, not because they actually wanted to engage with their readers. So you get a small subset of people generating page views arguing with each other, with nobody else listening.)
Anonymous commenting works a little better on Slashdot, but only because it's an older technical audience, and most readers learned on Usenet/BBSs to wear their flameproof undies.
Slashdot Mirror
In my experience, tacking IE7 support onto a modern web site adds up to 15% to the total cost.
I usually estimate it at around 20%, but that assumes minimal javascript and an experienced webdev crew. (Anyone who's been in the business for a while hates IE to the extent they know how kick its ass sideways. If you're hiring kids out of college, on the other hand, it could easily double your costs.)
IIRC, they posted their metrics and half their users were on Macs. I wouldn't worry too hard about IE in their situation either.
Post your contact info :)
Hey, I remember your garbage collector from Nibble magazine! Sorry, but I think pirated your utility.
The issue is Android's permission system is all technical wonkery and doesn't map well onto actual human use cases.
For example, you could have a perfectly legit app which needs Internet access (why not?), and address book access (for sharing functions), but you still have no idea if they could/would sell upload your contacts and sell them to spammers. Not to mention all Android apps ask you for these permissions, even Google's apps.
Android permissions is what you get when you ask computer scientists to solve what is essentially a legal and 'trust' problem that requires some human judgement. This is a very difficult problem to solve, but "users don't understand permissions" is not really the problem.
They are employees of OtherCorp
If you're lucky, they are employees of OtherCorp. It's incredibly common for outsourcing firms to sub-subcontract stuff. Or hire a bunch of temps because they're only staffed for their baseline.
(And once you have 2 layers of PMs between you and the developers, and it takes 48 hours to roundtrip a simple question, you are truely doomed.)
They'll either shrug their shoulders and build your death car or they simply will assume that maybe you have a very good reason for asking for a death car and it's not their job to question it.
I'm laughing with you, but I've worked with some Eastern European guys who will rip up your spec and then spend 45 minutes telling you are stupid for even wanting such a thing. (And likewise, there's plenty of in-house developers with the "I don't care, I just do what they tell me" blue-collar attitude.)
In addition to very explicit specs and deadlines/milestones, the biggest issue I've seen is that companies assumes they can outsource the entire effort, and grossly underestimate the amount of internal management support required. In most cases, you'll need to match their management structure almost one-to-one; e.g. if the outsourcers have two PMs and an account rep, you will three people on your side in various roles (e.g. PM, business analyst, management sponsor). And once you've added in the needed management overhead, sometimes the cost savings is actually very minimal.
This however has nothing to do with this case, as Pystar was not simply reselling the CD the software came on, they were installing it.
Actually, they weren't even directly "installing" it, they were using a disk duplication machine. (This might seem irrelevant from a technical standpoint, but it's an extra, unauthorized copy.)
You have a six-digit ID, so you might remember the days when GIMP was considered the flagship open source desktop program. Slashdot was full of stories where someone showed their buddy the GIMP and they immediately cast-away their Windows chains and switched to Linux. The GTK toolkit was spun-off of GIMP, as it was considered such an advanced program.
OK, except it had an offensive name and a bizarre UI, and doesn't really matter that much anymore. But at one time GIMP was considered a very important marketing point by Linux advocates.
Not the processor speed, but the iPad 1 is crippled due to having only 256MB RAM. A lot of apps are very crashy, and some new apps aren't supported at all. (But at least the web browser is reasonably stable after the most recent update.) iPad 2 has 512MB and dual-core, but otherwise there's not a huge difference from the first one.
Post should have been modded +5 Funny just for the nostalgia trip hardware rundown
Somewhat. Just like the Wii, "Atari was a fad" ... a lot of casual players decided video games weren't cool anymore and went back to buying records or whatever.
It should be noted that C64 software sales were a fraction of console sales. (Probably not a surprise to anyone who owned one.) So, while gaming may have continued on, from the developer's perspective it was not at all as lucrative.
The video game crash in the 1980s wasn't so much an issue with the games themselves, but bad demand forecasting which lead to massive unsold inventories.
Without going into all the historical details, with modern "Just In Time" inventory systems and tight vendor control over the retail shelf space, that kind of crash would be impossible in this day.
NES games were modelled on the arcade experience, where the games were designed to be endorphin-fueled quarter-suckers. Ultimate success was having a crowd gather around as you mastered the game, publicly acknowledging your superiority.
Game developer eventually figured out this approach doesn't work when the customer was sitting home alone in their basement. There was no great penalty for failure, nor reward for success beyond personal satisfaction. So modern games usually are not very much of a skills test, and (as the article noted) more of an interactive movie where the player is 'rewarded' with plot-points and virtual trophies.
Don't worry about the CPU and spend your money on a big SSD & lots of RAM.
perhaps one of these?
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1083
Zilog's Z80 branding referred to the fact it was an enhanced clone of the Intel 8080.
But mostly people thought adding "80" to stuff sounded super futuristic in the 1970s. You'd see on all sorts of random electronics, and there was a semi-famous disco studio called "Sound-80".
And the OP is correct, "Trash-80" was definitely a term of endearment among the owners.
Those HP palmtops were interesting machines. At one job, a Finance Director would carry one around and whip it out if he wanted to do some quick calculations using the built-in Lotus 123. I think they may have been largely forgotten because this was about the time when 'everyone' started using Windows & Excel.
On occasion, someone takes this stuff at face value and installs Lotus Domino on the iSeries running their main assembly line. That's when the chuckles really begin.
Actually, Apple sent me a free copy of OpenStep 4.2 to ensure that my cube was Y2K compliant.
> Why IS that anyway?
When OS X came out, Apple was concerned developers wouldn't adopt Objective-C. So they created a custom fork of Java which allowed the use of native controls. Since then they've given up on that idea and the next version of OS X will use standard Oracle Java.
Borland, WordPerfect, Lotus and Novell all failed because they did one, maybe two things: they based their business model off the success of another company (Microsoft) which then subsequently ate their lunch
And why would you assume IBM would have been any more friendly than Microsoft?
IBM was extremely hostile to PC-based networking and database products at the time. In their mind, 'networking' was AS/400 and mainframe technology. They would have loved to been in the position to crush the life out of Novell using every anti-trust trick in the book.
These companies weren't run by idiots - they made a devil's bargin with Gates to avoid the worse fate of an IBM-dominated PC industry.
Some small towns still had a Sears Catalog Store up until just a few years ago. (I think they mainly sold appliances.)
Most hollywood scripts have multiple authors, so Spinrad probably isn't the only person with 'moral rights' to the story. CBS probably doesn't even know the actual legal status of the script, and would have to rack up the lawyer hours to find out. There always could be some Harlan Ellison-type character waiting around to sue them. File this under CYA.
The St. Paul Pioneer Press went this way last year. Unsurprisingly, participation in the comments has dropped to near zero.
From a site perspective, that could be seen a seen as a good thing. The average mainstream reader has little desire to read through 400 comments, most of which could be categorized as 'troll' or 'flamebait'.
(Maybe I'm just cynical, but many sites added these comment sections just to punch up their "engagement" numbers, not because they actually wanted to engage with their readers. So you get a small subset of people generating page views arguing with each other, with nobody else listening.)
Anonymous commenting works a little better on Slashdot, but only because it's an older technical audience, and most readers learned on Usenet/BBSs to wear their flameproof undies.
> Yes, and as an example, how about Microsoft's amazing J++!
This was actually catching on before Sun sued Microsoft and killed it.
(Then it was pretty much reinvented as C#, which took over the MS world pretty quickly.)