What I find fascinating is the idea of a guy spending years and years researching a subject and writing a long, detailed article describing his research only to have it edited down to nothing.
I am, of course, referring to Ford Prefect's article on the Earth edited down to 2 words: Mostly harmless. Presumably because it wasn't notable enough.
I once did a back of the envelope calculation and determined that the amount of energy we receive that is contributing to global warming alone is more than all the energy we use. This is clearly the way of the future, but there are challenges. To my mind the biggest ones are storage and transport of energy. If I live in Japan, solar collectors in Africa aren't going to help me because I can't get the energy. Obviously there are solutions, but we still have to research and develop them. Storage is another problem. We can't increase production of wind or solar power on demand, nor can we count on a certain continuous power generation. It's spotty with unpredictable peaks and valleys. So we need to store the power we generate. Large scale energy storage is also something that we haven't developed to a sufficient degree.
The problem is that we are investing a huge amount of money in development of non-renewable energy and only a fraction in renewable energy. Mainly this is because non-renewable energy gives a short term return. Eventually as resources like oil shrink we will naturally invest more and more in renewable energy (and in fact we are seeing this already). But we can accelerate the process if we want.
Which made me think, "Is Guantanamo Bay closed yet?". And Wikipedia tells me "No", with US Secretary of Defence Gates saying, "“The prospects for closing Guantanamo as best I can tell are very, very low given very broad opposition to doing that here in the Congress.”
I'm not an American, so I suppose I could be forgiven for just assuming it was closed. But I wonder about Americans in general. Do Americans in general understand how much of the communication they get from politicians is simply advertising (or, slightly less politely, propaganda). Perhaps I'm mistaken in the idea that one of the "Yes we can"s was referring to closing Guantanamo Bay, but I don't think so.
The thing is, is it *really* more plausible that the to-be-elected Obama had *any* idea how to close Guantanamo bay as it is to believe that the people you see in an ad are *really* the people that they portray. I don't mean to single out Obama since lack of sincerity is hardly a fault exclusive to the Democratic party let alone US politics. But the number of people who believe in Obama curing all ills almost to the point of declaring him a messiah, puts this matter in sharp relief for me.
The only way the pension funds work is if you're in the middle-to-upper class (>$250,000/year income) and can contribute easily a good $1000/month into your own managed investment funds. Then you should be able to cash in when you're 60 and live comfortably if off course you're investments paid off over time and you're not committing large funds in bubble's and crashes.
No offence, but this is insane. First $250,000/year is *middle*-to-upper class??? Even in the rich US $250,000 is past the 98th percentile for salary. Anyone who thinks this is a reasonable salary for middle class people has completely lost touch with reality, IMHO.
Second, you say $1000 per month investment. On $250,000 per year income? That's over $20,000 per month pre-tax income. Maybe you left out a zero??? If not, this is the *definition* of not being able to save. Somehow you've got it into your head that you need well over $100k per year (after taxes!) to live comfortably (more than 3 times the median in the US).
There is a *much* easier way to plan for your retirement. Just scale back your insane lifestyle. Seriously, you don't need anything like that kind of money to be comfortable. Hell, I live in a more expensive country than you do and manage to spend less than $10K per year. I'm quite comfortable. I have a (small) place to live, food, clothes, and friends. I'm not really sure what else I *need*. And even with my meagre salary I can easily save $1000 per month for retirement. My life is *sustainable* even if I can only manage to get a return on investment matching inflation. Unlinking your happiness with your paycheck will probably lead to even more benefits.
Of interest to me is where the demand is. I live in Japan and I've started to see Galaxy Tabs everywhere (there are even 3 here in the school staff room as I speak). I've yet to see anyone with an iPad. I suspect this is because Docomo and AU are *really* pushing Android (and working very hard at establishing "Android" as a viable brank) and Softbank is the only telecom vendor pushing iOS devices. And while iPods are quite popular here, it doesn't seem to be translating to iPad success. I suspect this is because (at least from my point of view) the place people are going for tablets is the telecoms (they see it as a portable internet device rather than a general computing device).
Granted, I live out in the boonies. Popularity of such things is often different in the big cities. Still, I find it very interesting. I suspect that the dynamics here are very different than in the US. Apple has to be very careful not to concentrate on the US and end up with what is essentially a niche market compared to the rest of the world.
More importantly, if the shit really hits the fan you won't survive alone. There is a reason humans live in groups. It seems romantic to image yourself as a solitary heroic figure polishing off wave after wave on oncoming zombie hordes. But actually, you will have a much easier time if you give the weapons a rest and make friends instead. When the end of civilization comes, you're going to want someone watching your back. Preferably a lot of someones. Now is the time to get involved in your community, meet your neighbours and forge relationships that will endure through the collapse of modern society.
That and it might get you laid, which is always good.
For what it's worth, out here in the inaka (Japanese for "boonies") shelves are all stocked up as normal. My friend from the nearest large city was amazed to see all the toilet paper on the shelves. Why there is a difference, I can't fathom.
But the thing is, *everyone* no matter where they live should have an emergency food store. I call mine the "pantry". Actually, it *is* the pantry. It's got noodles and flour and dried seaweed and canned beans and... well lots of stuff. And I use it every day, but at any one time I've got enough food in there to last at least a week if not more. I also have enough water stored for at least 3 or 4 days. No matter where you live you should have this. Then when there is a disaster and the shelves are empty it's no big deal.
Some areas have subsided a bit. I saw a picture on TV of a dock that is now underwater because the land had subsided. But it isn't very much (less than a meter). The water left on the land had just pooled there. It will evaporate over time.
I ride a bicycle for my main form of transport. I don't own any motorized vehicle (hell, I don't even have a driver's license in this country...)
Like you say, $4K will make a down payment for a motorcycle. You've got insurance and gas to pay for as well. Although I've seen bicycles that cost as much as $13K, a $4K bike is a ridiculously good bike. And it only costs what you'd have to pay for a down payment on a motorcycle, or car. And maintenance costs are negligible.
I live next to where I work. I almost never have to go more than 100K return trip in any day (and that's rare). I don't go more than 40K more than once or twice a week. But 40K is an hour and a half of exercise for a moderately fit person. Good cyclists go considerably faster. So it's taking you a bit longer than taking a car, but you are getting 90 minutes of exercise in the bargain. Avoiding the cost of a gym more than pays for the bike over the lifetime of the bike.
Now, personally, I wouldn't buy a $4K bike. Even a $2K bike is ridiculously good. But it hardly matters. Compared to most motorized vehicles, bikes are practically free.
Just had the typical image of a software team that doesn't actually know all of the requirements of the software until after it gets shipped off to QA/Beta test. Then a whole raft of "bugs" come back indicating what the requirements should actually be. But because they are labelled as "bugs", there is an implied expectation that the software already should work that way. The priorities are then set by the QA team rather than the design team and the release is delayed until the QA team gets the requirements it wants fulfilled.
Yes, there are better ways to do software development...
The thing is that bugs are not really different than new functionality. The only real difference is expectation. With a bug, somebody (somewhere) expected the software to already work in a certain way, and it doesn't. With new functionality, there is no expectation that it already works that way.
My own personal opinion is that all work should be organised the same way. It should be ordered by priority and tackled with the top priority issue first (whether or not you already expect the software to work that way). The whole idea that you will stop adding critical new work until you have some arbitrary amount of "I thought this already worked" stuff left is kind of strange.
Similarly, there is always a lack of functionality in a piece of software. There may be an expectation that it works in a certain way, but that is not a reason in and of itself to delay a release. You release when the software does what you need it to do for that release. The expectation is mostly irrelevant. So, for instance, a user may say, "Oh, I thought that was supposed to work/not crash/etc. But it doesn't matter because I don't need it". That's totally OK. But if the user says, "I need it to do X, and it doesn't", it is irrelevant if they originally expected it to work. They still can't do what they need to do.
From a development process, bugs are useful because they point to a breakdown in process. Why is there an expectation that the software does something, when in fact it doesn't do it? But confusing this with release planning is rather stupid IMHO.
I'm not sure if you've seen Hidden Fortress, but it has a completely different plot. While it is widely reported that Star Wars is based of Hidden Fortress, the only real similarity is that the story is told from the perspective of two outsiders who have a relatively inconsequential part in the movie. In Hidden Fortress it was the two bandits; in Star Wars it was the two droids. In both cases these central, but not pivotal characters allow the viewer to share the experience since they can identify with the outside characters who are watching, but don't really understand what's going on. It also provides an opportunity for comic relief. The technique is a good one and it is used well in Star Wars.
The thing is, apart from this interesting concept, Hidden Fortress is not actually a very good movie IMHO. If you thought Star Wars was a snooze fest then I can only imagine that Hidden Fortress might put you into a coma.
The very equipment you need to verify your findings usually happens to be the same equipment you need to make applications. And its not like the first time out of the gate you are going think of the best idea to build the equipment you need. It takes lots of iterations and refining to build up the technology. There are usually a lot of competing ideas of how to do things, etc, etc. But if you don't even know that the theory is valid, why would you invest huge amounts effort finding lots of different ways to exploit the idea? Lots of stuff in science doesn't pan out. That's valuable too, but not terribly good if you had 1000 independent teams all finding separate ways to discover that, no it just doesn't work like that.
My guess is that water is needed to break down the materials. Some of the plastics might break down from sunlight, though. If you are using them a lot outdoors, then I think they will break down. If you are storing them in your closet, or wearing them around the office, I bet that they don't.
I chew through shoes at a fairly fast rate. But I usually walk about 10 km every day in them. For a shoe similar to the ones in the photo, it usually takes only 6 months before they have enough holes in them that I have to chuck them. For that kind of use they would be ideal. My office shoes are perfectly intact after 4 years, but I only wear them indoors. I would guess these shoes would perform similarly.
This is a really good point. However, as someone else pointed out, the study seems to be talking about piracy in Japan affecting Japanese sales.
For me this is an even easier "duh". Japanese anime DVDs are ridiculously expensive. A single DVD (which might only hold 2 22 minute episodes) can be as much as $70 US. Nobody is buying these to watch them. They are buying them to have them. Downloading and burning a disk is *not* the same thing.
I once saw a an interview with Karl Lagerfeld . He was asked if knockoffs of his fashion designs affect his sales. He said his customers would never buy an imitation and that those who buy an imitation could never afford the real thing. He was completely unconcerned with knockoffs.
Recently a new Anime was just released called "Houkago Pureadisu" (After school Pleiades). It was released online. It is sponsored by Subaru and the main character's name is Subaru. While not a very good anime, I wonder if this kind of thing will become more common. I think it makes sense to use product placement to generate ad revenue and then distribute for free (without commercials). Well, nothing is stopping you from putting some ads on a download page as well. Again, it won't even make a dent in sales to people who simply have to have the authentic disc (which are the only people buying anime in Japan today).
I actually don't think this is a cash grab per se. I think it's more like the studio heads *really believe* that people with camcorders sneaking into theatres and putting the resultant video up for download is destroying their business. Imagine a technology that essentially prevents filming *and* is viewed as a plus by the consumer. I pretty much guarantee that's the initial thought they had...
It shows various statistics relating to the cost of goods in a country and the average salaries. Note that while there are some developing countries on this list, none of the *really* poor countries are on here. You can see that many of these countries have very low Consumer Price Indeces. If we factor in rent (see the Consumer Price + Rent column) we can see that goods plus rent for India is only 20% of the baseline (New York City). Sounds, great doesn't it? But when we compare that to the average salary (Local Purchase Power), we see that Indians can still only buy 44% of the baseline.
The thing to take away from this is that in countries like India, most of the wealth is concentrated with the wealthy. So while on average people can afford 44% of what someone in NYC can afford, poor people in India are really, really screwed even though their costs are 1/5 of what you might expect.
But it gets worse. We look at "rent" and "local purchase power", but the fact of the matter is rent for the average person in the world gives a hell of a lot less than rent for your average New York City dweller. There are lots and lots and lots of people without electricity. Not to mention running water. Not to mention sewage. So, maybe your rent is is much lower, but then so is what you get.
No access to clean water. No access to medicine. No access to education. You can't save money because your banks don't do savings ac
They say they will offer a development version, but give no details. The stock versions will be locked down for "protecting our users' interests".
I wonder who they think their users are? If they mean users of the handsets, in what universe is locking down the phone in their best interest. I suspect they mean the carriers.
The other thing that interests me is the idea of an unlocked version being available (presumably at a higher price). At least they understand that freedom is a value-add:-P Honestly, I'm willing to pay a premium for the freedom to run whatever software I want on the device I own, but I'm disgusted that I have to.
Just a data point, but I have run an XP team with sustained rates (only one year, unfortunately) of 180 lines of production code per person per day. We were working pair programming, so it was 360 lines of production code and 360 lines of test code per pair per day. This was working 40 hour weeks (and being rather militant about not working overtime). We were also doing a huge amount of refactoring all the time. This was just how much the code base expanded every day. I had stats on how many lines were touched, but I can't actually remember them. Interestingly enough, our code expansion rate was increasing slowly, but steadily and I was never sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. I do remember being rather amazed at how fast we chewed through feature requests, though.
Of course lines of code is an arbitrary and misleading measurement, but I really believe based on my experience that working silly hours is completely unnecessary. I personally like XP as long as I have the right kind of team, but I'm sure other productive methods exist.
I'm guessing that you are using "die hard zealot" as a pejorative. There are a couple of things that I don't get:
1) Why do you care what I prefer to run? 2) How do you not understand the value of being able to compile my own drivers?
Look, there is obvious value in having more performance in a piece of software. But that's not the only value. I keep my computers for a very long time. I use them for things that other people don't anticipate. The last thing I need is to try to upgrade the kernel and find out that half of my hardware doesn't work any more because the vendor thinks they are too old. Or maybe the newest driver has functionality removed because the vendor decides it's anti-competitive with their latest offering.
So there is value in being able to choose how I'm going to use my hardware, for how long I'm going to use it, with what software I'm going to use it, etc, etc.
You are right. It's about being free to do what I want with the hardware I purchased. Sometimes a non-free driver provides everything that I need and the vendor has a good track record. I would consider using it, but if there is a free software alternative I will tend to choose it. Free software projects get "paid" by use. If the software is popular, then there are many more money making opportunities. More money means more development. Since I value my freedom, I will choose to support those projects, even at the cost of some functionality/performance.
Is that really zealotry???? But the thing is, because there are vendors who understand my values I usually don't have to choose functionality over freedom. Other vendors may or may not have better performance, but even if they do it's usually not a show stopper for me. If they want to sell me their products they have to understand my values. Surely that's just common sense, right? Surely I don't have to buy from a vendor that doesn't meet my needs.
The funny thing is, I look over your message and think; even if Linux is better for some stuff, this guy seems intent on sticking to Windows. And it is so important to him that he feels the need to ridicule people who choose differently. What's up with that?
Not to mention that clueful workers will realize the failures and lose confidence in management. "How can they not see how utterly horrible that was?", they will say and start working on their resume.
Although a bit off topic, the choice of Buddhism is maybe not the best one here. I am not an expert, but as far as I can tell there is no dogma in Buddhism. There are teachings, but you are free to interpret, accept or not accept any of them. There are even very prominent monks who do no believe in reincarnation. Whether or not you believe the teachings is not important in calling yourself a Buddhist. The teachings are merely meant to help you be aware of your situation (as far as I can tell, anyway). However you achieve that awareness is up to you. As such it is a rather strange religion. In fact, I think one could easily be Buddhist and not religious at the same time...
This is really untrue. There are many ways to get from point X to point Y. Some are faster (and hence cost less) than others. Very frequently writing tests (whether unit tests or acceptance tests) will lead to faster development than not writing tests. This is because you can wade into hard to understand code without worrying so much about breaking things. You can be less careful about replacing code that doesn't make sense any more. You can maintain a smaller, easier to understand codebase with less duplication of functionality. The result is that your average coding throughput is higher (even if occasionally your instantaneous productivity might be lower). When measured over a few months, I can definitely write new code with tests faster than I can write new code without tests.
However, taking a large legacy application and putting it under sufficient tests to improve your throughput is likely to cost time and money in the short to medium term. It may not be feasible for the business case that they have.
The better question to ask yourself is, "Why am I still working here?"
If I were working on that team, I would walk up to the owner and tell him straight out, "You hired me for my ability and experience in software development. It's my job to give you the most customer satisfying functionality for the money. You've seen my credentials. You've seen me work. Stop second guessing me and let me get on with my job." But my employers have historically hired me because of my experience in these kinds of areas.
Asking, "How do I prove to management that X practice is a good idea?" is precisely the wrong thing to be doing. Do you *know* the practice is good? Do you have experience implementing the practice? Do you know when it is appropriate and when it isn't? Do you know how to implement the practice in the particular circumstance you are in? If not, who on your team does? If nobody, who will pay for your learning experience in the probable case that it takes time to get things right?
I'm not telling you that you shouldn't be doing these things. But if the guy paying you is unsure of your ability to pull it off and you have no prior experience, I highly recommend relocating to a job where you can get the experience.
The year of linux was 1993. At least for me. I bought a PC (the first I owned) without windows. I downloaded the MCC distro from work onto floppies and installed it. I never looked back. When Linux came along it finally filled in that missing piece where I could have a completely free system. I could do what I wanted with it and modify it any way I liked. These days, with proprietary software getting slipped in here and there, it's getting harder to do that. From that perspective, the year of Linux may already be far away.
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What I find fascinating is the idea of a guy spending years and years researching a subject and writing a long, detailed article describing his research only to have it edited down to nothing.
I am, of course, referring to Ford Prefect's article on the Earth edited down to 2 words: Mostly harmless. Presumably because it wasn't notable enough.
Talk about prescient....
I once did a back of the envelope calculation and determined that the amount of energy we receive that is contributing to global warming alone is more than all the energy we use. This is clearly the way of the future, but there are challenges. To my mind the biggest ones are storage and transport of energy. If I live in Japan, solar collectors in Africa aren't going to help me because I can't get the energy. Obviously there are solutions, but we still have to research and develop them. Storage is another problem. We can't increase production of wind or solar power on demand, nor can we count on a certain continuous power generation. It's spotty with unpredictable peaks and valleys. So we need to store the power we generate. Large scale energy storage is also something that we haven't developed to a sufficient degree.
The problem is that we are investing a huge amount of money in development of non-renewable energy and only a fraction in renewable energy. Mainly this is because non-renewable energy gives a short term return. Eventually as resources like oil shrink we will naturally invest more and more in renewable energy (and in fact we are seeing this already). But we can accelerate the process if we want.
No, we can't. Not really.
Which made me think, "Is Guantanamo Bay closed yet?". And Wikipedia tells me "No", with US Secretary of Defence Gates saying, "“The prospects for closing Guantanamo as best I can tell are very, very low given very broad opposition to doing that here in the Congress.”
I'm not an American, so I suppose I could be forgiven for just assuming it was closed. But I wonder about Americans in general. Do Americans in general understand how much of the communication they get from politicians is simply advertising (or, slightly less politely, propaganda). Perhaps I'm mistaken in the idea that one of the "Yes we can"s was referring to closing Guantanamo Bay, but I don't think so.
The thing is, is it *really* more plausible that the to-be-elected Obama had *any* idea how to close Guantanamo bay as it is to believe that the people you see in an ad are *really* the people that they portray. I don't mean to single out Obama since lack of sincerity is hardly a fault exclusive to the Democratic party let alone US politics. But the number of people who believe in Obama curing all ills almost to the point of declaring him a messiah, puts this matter in sharp relief for me.
The only way the pension funds work is if you're in the middle-to-upper class (>$250,000/year income) and can contribute easily a good $1000/month into your own managed investment funds. Then you should be able to cash in when you're 60 and live comfortably if off course you're investments paid off over time and you're not committing large funds in bubble's and crashes.
No offence, but this is insane. First $250,000/year is *middle*-to-upper class??? Even in the rich US $250,000 is past the 98th percentile for salary. Anyone who thinks this is a reasonable salary for middle class people has completely lost touch with reality, IMHO.
Second, you say $1000 per month investment. On $250,000 per year income? That's over $20,000 per month pre-tax income. Maybe you left out a zero??? If not, this is the *definition* of not being able to save. Somehow you've got it into your head that you need well over $100k per year (after taxes!) to live comfortably (more than 3 times the median in the US).
There is a *much* easier way to plan for your retirement. Just scale back your insane lifestyle. Seriously, you don't need anything like that kind of money to be comfortable. Hell, I live in a more expensive country than you do and manage to spend less than $10K per year. I'm quite comfortable. I have a (small) place to live, food, clothes, and friends. I'm not really sure what else I *need*. And even with my meagre salary I can easily save $1000 per month for retirement. My life is *sustainable* even if I can only manage to get a return on investment matching inflation. Unlinking your happiness with your paycheck will probably lead to even more benefits.
Of interest to me is where the demand is. I live in Japan and I've started to see Galaxy Tabs everywhere (there are even 3 here in the school staff room as I speak). I've yet to see anyone with an iPad. I suspect this is because Docomo and AU are *really* pushing Android (and working very hard at establishing "Android" as a viable brank) and Softbank is the only telecom vendor pushing iOS devices. And while iPods are quite popular here, it doesn't seem to be translating to iPad success. I suspect this is because (at least from my point of view) the place people are going for tablets is the telecoms (they see it as a portable internet device rather than a general computing device).
Granted, I live out in the boonies. Popularity of such things is often different in the big cities. Still, I find it very interesting. I suspect that the dynamics here are very different than in the US. Apple has to be very careful not to concentrate on the US and end up with what is essentially a niche market compared to the rest of the world.
More importantly, if the shit really hits the fan you won't survive alone. There is a reason humans live in groups. It seems romantic to image yourself as a solitary heroic figure polishing off wave after wave on oncoming zombie hordes. But actually, you will have a much easier time if you give the weapons a rest and make friends instead. When the end of civilization comes, you're going to want someone watching your back. Preferably a lot of someones. Now is the time to get involved in your community, meet your neighbours and forge relationships that will endure through the collapse of modern society.
That and it might get you laid, which is always good.
For what it's worth, out here in the inaka (Japanese for "boonies") shelves are all stocked up as normal. My friend from the nearest large city was amazed to see all the toilet paper on the shelves. Why there is a difference, I can't fathom.
But the thing is, *everyone* no matter where they live should have an emergency food store. I call mine the "pantry". Actually, it *is* the pantry. It's got noodles and flour and dried seaweed and canned beans and ... well lots of stuff. And I use it every day, but at any one time I've got enough food in there to last at least a week if not more. I also have enough water stored for at least 3 or 4 days. No matter where you live you should have this. Then when there is a disaster and the shelves are empty it's no big deal.
Some areas have subsided a bit. I saw a picture on TV of a dock that is now underwater because the land had subsided. But it isn't very much (less than a meter). The water left on the land had just pooled there. It will evaporate over time.
I ride a bicycle for my main form of transport. I don't own any motorized vehicle (hell, I don't even have a driver's license in this country...)
Like you say, $4K will make a down payment for a motorcycle. You've got insurance and gas to pay for as well. Although I've seen bicycles that cost as much as $13K, a $4K bike is a ridiculously good bike. And it only costs what you'd have to pay for a down payment on a motorcycle, or car. And maintenance costs are negligible.
I live next to where I work. I almost never have to go more than 100K return trip in any day (and that's rare). I don't go more than 40K more than once or twice a week. But 40K is an hour and a half of exercise for a moderately fit person. Good cyclists go considerably faster. So it's taking you a bit longer than taking a car, but you are getting 90 minutes of exercise in the bargain. Avoiding the cost of a gym more than pays for the bike over the lifetime of the bike.
Now, personally, I wouldn't buy a $4K bike. Even a $2K bike is ridiculously good. But it hardly matters. Compared to most motorized vehicles, bikes are practically free.
I'm bad today, replying to my own post.
Just had the typical image of a software team that doesn't actually know all of the requirements of the software until after it gets shipped off to QA/Beta test. Then a whole raft of "bugs" come back indicating what the requirements should actually be. But because they are labelled as "bugs", there is an implied expectation that the software already should work that way. The priorities are then set by the QA team rather than the design team and the release is delayed until the QA team gets the requirements it wants fulfilled.
Yes, there are better ways to do software development...
The thing is that bugs are not really different than new functionality. The only real difference is expectation. With a bug, somebody (somewhere) expected the software to already work in a certain way, and it doesn't. With new functionality, there is no expectation that it already works that way.
My own personal opinion is that all work should be organised the same way. It should be ordered by priority and tackled with the top priority issue first (whether or not you already expect the software to work that way). The whole idea that you will stop adding critical new work until you have some arbitrary amount of "I thought this already worked" stuff left is kind of strange.
Similarly, there is always a lack of functionality in a piece of software. There may be an expectation that it works in a certain way, but that is not a reason in and of itself to delay a release. You release when the software does what you need it to do for that release. The expectation is mostly irrelevant. So, for instance, a user may say, "Oh, I thought that was supposed to work/not crash/etc. But it doesn't matter because I don't need it". That's totally OK. But if the user says, "I need it to do X, and it doesn't", it is irrelevant if they originally expected it to work. They still can't do what they need to do.
From a development process, bugs are useful because they point to a breakdown in process. Why is there an expectation that the software does something, when in fact it doesn't do it? But confusing this with release planning is rather stupid IMHO.
I'm not sure if you've seen Hidden Fortress, but it has a completely different plot. While it is widely reported that Star Wars is based of Hidden Fortress, the only real similarity is that the story is told from the perspective of two outsiders who have a relatively inconsequential part in the movie. In Hidden Fortress it was the two bandits; in Star Wars it was the two droids. In both cases these central, but not pivotal characters allow the viewer to share the experience since they can identify with the outside characters who are watching, but don't really understand what's going on. It also provides an opportunity for comic relief. The technique is a good one and it is used well in Star Wars.
The thing is, apart from this interesting concept, Hidden Fortress is not actually a very good movie IMHO. If you thought Star Wars was a snooze fest then I can only imagine that Hidden Fortress might put you into a coma.
The very equipment you need to verify your findings usually happens to be the same equipment you need to make applications. And its not like the first time out of the gate you are going think of the best idea to build the equipment you need. It takes lots of iterations and refining to build up the technology. There are usually a lot of competing ideas of how to do things, etc, etc. But if you don't even know that the theory is valid, why would you invest huge amounts effort finding lots of different ways to exploit the idea? Lots of stuff in science doesn't pan out. That's valuable too, but not terribly good if you had 1000 independent teams all finding separate ways to discover that, no it just doesn't work like that.
My guess is that water is needed to break down the materials. Some of the plastics might break down from sunlight, though. If you are using them a lot outdoors, then I think they will break down. If you are storing them in your closet, or wearing them around the office, I bet that they don't.
I chew through shoes at a fairly fast rate. But I usually walk about 10 km every day in them. For a shoe similar to the ones in the photo, it usually takes only 6 months before they have enough holes in them that I have to chuck them. For that kind of use they would be ideal. My office shoes are perfectly intact after 4 years, but I only wear them indoors. I would guess these shoes would perform similarly.
This is a really good point. However, as someone else pointed out, the study seems to be talking about piracy in Japan affecting Japanese sales.
For me this is an even easier "duh". Japanese anime DVDs are ridiculously expensive. A single DVD (which might only hold 2 22 minute episodes) can be as much as $70 US. Nobody is buying these to watch them. They are buying them to have them. Downloading and burning a disk is *not* the same thing.
I once saw a an interview with Karl Lagerfeld . He was asked if knockoffs of his fashion designs affect his sales. He said his customers would never buy an imitation and that those who buy an imitation could never afford the real thing. He was completely unconcerned with knockoffs.
Recently a new Anime was just released called "Houkago Pureadisu" (After school Pleiades). It was released online. It is sponsored by Subaru and the main character's name is Subaru. While not a very good anime, I wonder if this kind of thing will become more common. I think it makes sense to use product placement to generate ad revenue and then distribute for free (without commercials). Well, nothing is stopping you from putting some ads on a download page as well. Again, it won't even make a dent in sales to people who simply have to have the authentic disc (which are the only people buying anime in Japan today).
I actually don't think this is a cash grab per se. I think it's more like the studio heads *really believe* that people with camcorders sneaking into theatres and putting the resultant video up for download is destroying their business. Imagine a technology that essentially prevents filming *and* is viewed as a plus by the consumer. I pretty much guarantee that's the initial thought they had...
This will help you: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.jsp
It shows various statistics relating to the cost of goods in a country and the average salaries. Note that while there are some developing countries on this list, none of the *really* poor countries are on here. You can see that many of these countries have very low Consumer Price Indeces. If we factor in rent (see the Consumer Price + Rent column) we can see that goods plus rent for India is only 20% of the baseline (New York City). Sounds, great doesn't it? But when we compare that to the average salary (Local Purchase Power), we see that Indians can still only buy 44% of the baseline.
The thing to take away from this is that in countries like India, most of the wealth is concentrated with the wealthy. So while on average people can afford 44% of what someone in NYC can afford, poor people in India are really, really screwed even though their costs are 1/5 of what you might expect.
But it gets worse. We look at "rent" and "local purchase power", but the fact of the matter is rent for the average person in the world gives a hell of a lot less than rent for your average New York City dweller. There are lots and lots and lots of people without electricity. Not to mention running water. Not to mention sewage. So, maybe your rent is is much lower, but then so is what you get.
No access to clean water. No access to medicine. No access to education. You can't save money because your banks don't do savings ac
They say they will offer a development version, but give no details. The stock versions will be locked down for "protecting our users' interests".
I wonder who they think their users are? If they mean users of the handsets, in what universe is locking down the phone in their best interest. I suspect they mean the carriers.
The other thing that interests me is the idea of an unlocked version being available (presumably at a higher price). At least they understand that freedom is a value-add :-P Honestly, I'm willing to pay a premium for the freedom to run whatever software I want on the device I own, but I'm disgusted that I have to.
Just a data point, but I have run an XP team with sustained rates (only one year, unfortunately) of 180 lines of production code per person per day. We were working pair programming, so it was 360 lines of production code and 360 lines of test code per pair per day. This was working 40 hour weeks (and being rather militant about not working overtime). We were also doing a huge amount of refactoring all the time. This was just how much the code base expanded every day. I had stats on how many lines were touched, but I can't actually remember them. Interestingly enough, our code expansion rate was increasing slowly, but steadily and I was never sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. I do remember being rather amazed at how fast we chewed through feature requests, though.
Of course lines of code is an arbitrary and misleading measurement, but I really believe based on my experience that working silly hours is completely unnecessary. I personally like XP as long as I have the right kind of team, but I'm sure other productive methods exist.
I'm guessing that you are using "die hard zealot" as a pejorative. There are a couple of things that I don't get:
1) Why do you care what I prefer to run?
2) How do you not understand the value of being able to compile my own drivers?
Look, there is obvious value in having more performance in a piece of software. But that's not the only value. I keep my computers for a very long time. I use them for things that other people don't anticipate. The last thing I need is to try to upgrade the kernel and find out that half of my hardware doesn't work any more because the vendor thinks they are too old. Or maybe the newest driver has functionality removed because the vendor decides it's anti-competitive with their latest offering.
So there is value in being able to choose how I'm going to use my hardware, for how long I'm going to use it, with what software I'm going to use it, etc, etc.
You are right. It's about being free to do what I want with the hardware I purchased. Sometimes a non-free driver provides everything that I need and the vendor has a good track record. I would consider using it, but if there is a free software alternative I will tend to choose it. Free software projects get "paid" by use. If the software is popular, then there are many more money making opportunities. More money means more development. Since I value my freedom, I will choose to support those projects, even at the cost of some functionality/performance.
Is that really zealotry???? But the thing is, because there are vendors who understand my values I usually don't have to choose functionality over freedom. Other vendors may or may not have better performance, but even if they do it's usually not a show stopper for me. If they want to sell me their products they have to understand my values. Surely that's just common sense, right? Surely I don't have to buy from a vendor that doesn't meet my needs.
The funny thing is, I look over your message and think; even if Linux is better for some stuff, this guy seems intent on sticking to Windows. And it is so important to him that he feels the need to ridicule people who choose differently. What's up with that?
Not to mention that clueful workers will realize the failures and lose confidence in management. "How can they not see how utterly horrible that was?", they will say and start working on their resume.
Although a bit off topic, the choice of Buddhism is maybe not the best one here. I am not an expert, but as far as I can tell there is no dogma in Buddhism. There are teachings, but you are free to interpret, accept or not accept any of them. There are even very prominent monks who do no believe in reincarnation. Whether or not you believe the teachings is not important in calling yourself a Buddhist. The teachings are merely meant to help you be aware of your situation (as far as I can tell, anyway). However you achieve that awareness is up to you. As such it is a rather strange religion. In fact, I think one could easily be Buddhist and not religious at the same time...
This is really untrue. There are many ways to get from point X to point Y. Some are faster (and hence cost less) than others. Very frequently writing tests (whether unit tests or acceptance tests) will lead to faster development than not writing tests. This is because you can wade into hard to understand code without worrying so much about breaking things. You can be less careful about replacing code that doesn't make sense any more. You can maintain a smaller, easier to understand codebase with less duplication of functionality. The result is that your average coding throughput is higher (even if occasionally your instantaneous productivity might be lower). When measured over a few months, I can definitely write new code with tests faster than I can write new code without tests.
However, taking a large legacy application and putting it under sufficient tests to improve your throughput is likely to cost time and money in the short to medium term. It may not be feasible for the business case that they have.
The better question to ask yourself is, "Why am I still working here?"
If I were working on that team, I would walk up to the owner and tell him straight out, "You hired me for my ability and experience in software development. It's my job to give you the most customer satisfying functionality for the money. You've seen my credentials. You've seen me work. Stop second guessing me and let me get on with my job." But my employers have historically hired me because of my experience in these kinds of areas.
Asking, "How do I prove to management that X practice is a good idea?" is precisely the wrong thing to be doing. Do you *know* the practice is good? Do you have experience implementing the practice? Do you know when it is appropriate and when it isn't? Do you know how to implement the practice in the particular circumstance you are in? If not, who on your team does? If nobody, who will pay for your learning experience in the probable case that it takes time to get things right?
I'm not telling you that you shouldn't be doing these things. But if the guy paying you is unsure of your ability to pull it off and you have no prior experience, I highly recommend relocating to a job where you can get the experience.
The year of linux was 1993. At least for me. I bought a PC (the first I owned) without windows. I downloaded the MCC distro from work onto floppies and installed it. I never looked back. When Linux came along it finally filled in that missing piece where I could have a completely free system. I could do what I wanted with it and modify it any way I liked. These days, with proprietary software getting slipped in here and there, it's getting harder to do that. From that perspective, the year of Linux may already be far away.