They wouldn't fix them because the potential knock-on effects from changing the code-base at a late point in the development cycle massively outweigh any potential benefit that the business places on the fix.
In reality list of new features combined with bug fixes is handed to the business. The business decide how much they want to pay for development and when they want their next release to be. The developer pool size is known, and therefore the man-hours available is also known. Estimates on time taken per feature/bug are supplied by development to the business, and the business then prioritises exactly what they want in the new release. The reality of the matter is that the business will ALWAYS choose the new features that are going to make or save them millions over fixing the small bugs that they understand and know how to work around.
There's no sneakily fixing those bugs on the side either. All code changes have to be checked in against deliverable items previously agreed in the business scope. Business deliverables are the priority, and off-scope changes introduce unmanaged development risk into the project. It's just the reality of the situation.
How very black and white of you. So the large Investment Bank shouldn't ever put its new trading system in place, which has the potential to make them hundreds of millions of dollars, because of a couple of small, esoteric display bugs in the GUI?
The real world is all about risk/benefit analysis. The only places that ship guaranteed bug-free code are those where human life is directly affected by the output of that code. For anything other than trivially simple systems the cost/benefit analysis will rule out formal code proof in anything but the most necessary of circumstances.
I believe the CSA have been developing the CanadFinger for just this purpose. Any time something like this sticks you can robotically prod it from the safety of your nice warm Mission Control.
Note - The above post is humorous in content, and does not intend to violate patents past or present on the "Design and Implementation of Remote Digit Activation Devices"
The pathways that electrons flow through are pretty 'crazy ass' already. In fact, modern chips are already 'multi-layer' and so are already 3D. One of the biggest problems with stacking processing layers on a chip is that of heat removal. Each time you add an extra layer to the sandwich you make it a little harder to extract the heat from those internal layers.
There have been some interesting research projects carried out using Sierpinski cubes as the chip fabrication layout, and using the channels in the cubes as heat pipes.
Why not? If this works it sounds like Moore's law would continue, and would give whatever company that deployed it first a performance advantage.
Because first they're going to get a bunch of their theoreticians to work the math on the problem to make sure it's viable. Then they're going to get a bunch of their VLSI modellers to run virtual simulations on the clock modification to refine exactly how great the potential efficiency gain would be. If that turns out OK then they'd produce some simple mock-ups of the new clock architecture to make sure that it functions correctly in hardware. Then they'd go about the expensive and time-consuming process of redesigning the current chip architectures to include the new style clock. Then they'd produce an initial fabrication of the chip to run through extensive hardware testing (and on the inevitable failure they'd hop two steps back and try again.) Once they were happy with the design they'd scale up to full production and roll it out.
Everybody in the microprocessor design world remembers this all too well.
The fact is that people who scream about "special interests" seem not to consider that in a representative democracy like ours, EVERYONE is a "special interest."
Paraphrasing Orwell, "Everyone is a special interest. It's just that some are more special than others." Unfortunately for the man on the street, how special you are seems to equate directly with how much cash you have to throw at lobbyists.
Speaking as someone who's been through a couple of visa processes I can honestly say that I wasn't overly bothered with the wait times. I'm completely aware of the need for border security and consider the wait times, the queues, the forms and procedures to be almost a 'rite of passage.' It's an unpleasant procedure that's for sure (I'd go so far as to describe the whole experience as soul destroyingly frustrating) but I'd rather it be there than not.
The two biggest issues that I have with the whole process were the employees, who were hands down the most unhelpful and unpleasant people I've ever had the misfortune to deal with, and the error rate (at the time of issue of my Green Card somewhere in the order of 40% were issued with a mistake on them. Come on people! There are only four pieces of identifying information present on the card! How can 40% of the cards issued have a mistake in one of those? And let's not even talk about the nine month process you have to go through to get an error corrected...)
As far as mailman on Debian is concerned a person who has RTFM-ed should have encountered the cut-n-paste example in the/usr/share/doc/mailman which is sufficient to get an install running. If for whatever reason this one has been skipped the same blurb is available in the Mailman FAQ.
And how much effort would it have taken to have courteously replied with that exact piece of information instead of a snub?
Re:Would that also mean they had fillings?
on
Stone Age Dentists
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· Score: 1
would that suggestion that they filled the hole with clay, resin, or some other material capable of hardening?
Teeth filled with Amber - the ultimate in Stone Age 'bling.'
His answer should have been "We're not allowing Skype because we're an investment bank, and the S.E.C. says that we're not allowed to use any form of communication that isn't logged and audited."
Not really. They just have a lot of shareholders that they'd like to keep happy, and talk like this generally helps to keep the stock price moving upward.
Anyway, they won't get slapped with an anti-trust suit for just creating a new search engine, let alone talking about creating a new search engine. What would be anti-trust worthy would be integrating the search engine in with their new operating system. We won't see if that's the case until later this year, and I suspect that even Microsoft aren't arrogant/stupid enough to try that one.
It's not at all analogous. It's like saying "an extremely bad piece of Java code can cause the sandbox instance it's running in to quit. All the other sandboxes keep going just fine."
I've never once seen a piece of Java code running on an approved JVM do anything approaching the travesty of Win* being taken out by a piece of code.
I was an 'early adopter' of HD, purchasing a 57" HD set four years ago. I primarily watch DVD movies on my set, which look very nice at 480p upscaled. In order to watch broadcast HD content I'd have had to spend an extra $10 a month with DirecTV to get their measly content, and close to $1000 at the time for the HD-TiVo (there's no way I'm going back to sitting through commercials.) I'm not into sports, so Football and Baseball aren't really selling me on the whole HD concept, and I just can't see the point in paying that extra cash just to get extra pixels in the latest sit-com or reality show .
Of course I'd love to be able to watch HD-DVD when it comes out, but since my $3000 set only has Component Video inputs for HD and therefore I'm just a thieving pirate waiting to rip off the media megacorporations, I won't be allowed to.
You did everything professionally, it's the company that is acting immature.
The company isn't 'acting immature', they're acting to limit their security liability. This is Standard Operating Procedure in pretty much every large organization I've worked for, especially if you're high enough up the corporate ziggurat to be privy to confidential information or sensitive software/data.
Take the money, enjoy your two weeks paid vacation, and don't sweat it. It's not personal, it's business!
Slashdot Mirror
They wouldn't fix them because the potential knock-on effects from changing the code-base at a late point in the development cycle massively outweigh any potential benefit that the business places on the fix.
In reality list of new features combined with bug fixes is handed to the business. The business decide how much they want to pay for development and when they want their next release to be. The developer pool size is known, and therefore the man-hours available is also known. Estimates on time taken per feature/bug are supplied by development to the business, and the business then prioritises exactly what they want in the new release. The reality of the matter is that the business will ALWAYS choose the new features that are going to make or save them millions over fixing the small bugs that they understand and know how to work around.
There's no sneakily fixing those bugs on the side either. All code changes have to be checked in against deliverable items previously agreed in the business scope. Business deliverables are the priority, and off-scope changes introduce unmanaged development risk into the project. It's just the reality of the situation.
How very black and white of you. So the large Investment Bank shouldn't ever put its new trading system in place, which has the potential to make them hundreds of millions of dollars, because of a couple of small, esoteric display bugs in the GUI?
The real world is all about risk/benefit analysis. The only places that ship guaranteed bug-free code are those where human life is directly affected by the output of that code. For anything other than trivially simple systems the cost/benefit analysis will rule out formal code proof in anything but the most necessary of circumstances.
..Cristopher Lloyd as Dr. Emmett Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy.
Gosling claims Java is close to an open source model...
Just like I'm close to being thin and sexually irresistable. Trust me, sometimes being close just doesn't cut it.
That's because all the best American programmers refuse to work without a pay-check. Capitalism at work, Ladies and Gentlemen! ;-)
Note for the humor impaired - it's a joke, OK?
I have a feeling that 7mbps is a tad overkill for instant messanging.
It all depends on how much Caffeine you've consumed, my friend.
I believe the CSA have been developing the CanadFinger for just this purpose. Any time something like this sticks you can robotically prod it from the safety of your nice warm Mission Control.
Note - The above post is humorous in content, and does not intend to violate patents past or present on the "Design and Implementation of Remote Digit Activation Devices"
That'll teach me to preview more carefully in the future!
Sci-Fi Weapons to Join US Arsenal
U.S. Considers Anti-Satellite Laser
Search, and ye shall find! :-)
Sci-Fi Weapons to Join US Arsenal
U.S. Considers Anti-Satellite Laser
World domination here we come...
And then they'll find out that the patent for it is so tightly secured that noone can use it...
Nah, that's when they bring in the bunny-suited lawyers to prove that they were the ones that invented the technology all along.
:-)
The pathways that electrons flow through are pretty 'crazy ass' already. In fact, modern chips are already 'multi-layer' and so are already 3D. One of the biggest problems with stacking processing layers on a chip is that of heat removal. Each time you add an extra layer to the sandwich you make it a little harder to extract the heat from those internal layers.
There have been some interesting research projects carried out using Sierpinski cubes as the chip fabrication layout, and using the channels in the cubes as heat pipes.
Why not? If this works it sounds like Moore's law would continue, and would give whatever company that deployed it first a performance advantage.
Because first they're going to get a bunch of their theoreticians to work the math on the problem to make sure it's viable. Then they're going to get a bunch of their VLSI modellers to run virtual simulations on the clock modification to refine exactly how great the potential efficiency gain would be. If that turns out OK then they'd produce some simple mock-ups of the new clock architecture to make sure that it functions correctly in hardware. Then they'd go about the expensive and time-consuming process of redesigning the current chip architectures to include the new style clock. Then they'd produce an initial fabrication of the chip to run through extensive hardware testing (and on the inevitable failure they'd hop two steps back and try again.) Once they were happy with the design they'd scale up to full production and roll it out.
Everybody in the microprocessor design world remembers this all too well.
So now explain why Jabba was big in Episode I, small in Episode IV, and then big in Episode VI.
I'm going to go with the Atkins diet followed by middle-age spread.
The fact is that people who scream about "special interests" seem not to consider that in a representative democracy like ours, EVERYONE is a "special interest."
Paraphrasing Orwell, "Everyone is a special interest. It's just that some are more special than others." Unfortunately for the man on the street, how special you are seems to equate directly with how much cash you have to throw at lobbyists.
Speaking as someone who's been through a couple of visa processes I can honestly say that I wasn't overly bothered with the wait times. I'm completely aware of the need for border security and consider the wait times, the queues, the forms and procedures to be almost a 'rite of passage.' It's an unpleasant procedure that's for sure (I'd go so far as to describe the whole experience as soul destroyingly frustrating) but I'd rather it be there than not.
The two biggest issues that I have with the whole process were the employees, who were hands down the most unhelpful and unpleasant people I've ever had the misfortune to deal with, and the error rate (at the time of issue of my Green Card somewhere in the order of 40% were issued with a mistake on them. Come on people! There are only four pieces of identifying information present on the card! How can 40% of the cards issued have a mistake in one of those? And let's not even talk about the nine month process you have to go through to get an error corrected...)
As far as mailman on Debian is concerned a person who has RTFM-ed should have encountered the cut-n-paste example in the /usr/share/doc/mailman which is sufficient to get an install running. If for whatever reason this one has been skipped the same blurb is available in the Mailman FAQ.
And how much effort would it have taken to have courteously replied with that exact piece of information instead of a snub?
would that suggestion that they filled the hole with clay, resin, or some other material capable of hardening?
Teeth filled with Amber - the ultimate in Stone Age 'bling.'
His answer should have been "We're not allowing Skype because we're an investment bank, and the S.E.C. says that we're not allowed to use any form of communication that isn't logged and audited."
I'm not!
Not really. They just have a lot of shareholders that they'd like to keep happy, and talk like this generally helps to keep the stock price moving upward.
Anyway, they won't get slapped with an anti-trust suit for just creating a new search engine, let alone talking about creating a new search engine. What would be anti-trust worthy would be integrating the search engine in with their new operating system. We won't see if that's the case until later this year, and I suspect that even Microsoft aren't arrogant/stupid enough to try that one.
To take it up the ass, more or less.
And enjoy it, too.
That's completely untrue and grossly unfair to the RIAA. The fact of the matter is that they really couldn't give a crap if you enjoy it or not!
...I look forward to reading it again in a couple of days when it's duped!
:-)
Hey, I kid, I kid!
It's not at all analogous. It's like saying "an extremely bad piece of Java code can cause the sandbox instance it's running in to quit. All the other sandboxes keep going just fine."
I've never once seen a piece of Java code running on an approved JVM do anything approaching the travesty of Win* being taken out by a piece of code.
I was an 'early adopter' of HD, purchasing a 57" HD set four years ago. I primarily watch DVD movies on my set, which look very nice at 480p upscaled. In order to watch broadcast HD content I'd have had to spend an extra $10 a month with DirecTV to get their measly content, and close to $1000 at the time for the HD-TiVo (there's no way I'm going back to sitting through commercials.) I'm not into sports, so Football and Baseball aren't really selling me on the whole HD concept, and I just can't see the point in paying that extra cash just to get extra pixels in the latest sit-com or reality show .
Of course I'd love to be able to watch HD-DVD when it comes out, but since my $3000 set only has Component Video inputs for HD and therefore I'm just a thieving pirate waiting to rip off the media megacorporations, I won't be allowed to.
*sigh*
You did everything professionally, it's the company that is acting immature.
The company isn't 'acting immature', they're acting to limit their security liability. This is Standard Operating Procedure in pretty much every large organization I've worked for, especially if you're high enough up the corporate ziggurat to be privy to confidential information or sensitive software/data.
Take the money, enjoy your two weeks paid vacation, and don't sweat it. It's not personal, it's business!