instead it's tailored for everybody which means include the features that are important so the user doesn't have to figure it out.
"tailored for everybody" is logically identical to "tailored for nobody".
Perhaps what you're missing is that people aren't objecting to the inclusion of the functionality. They're objecting to the manner in which is was incorporated. If this Pocket stuff had been shipped as an add-on, nobody would be complaining.
They replaced their own version of Pocket with this popular adding. No damage done.
Getting a payday is the only explanation for this that makes any sense to me. As to "no damage done" -- I would say "little damage done". However, it's yet another little annoyance in the flood of annoyances over the past few years.
It used to be that I could install Firefox and spend 10 minutes or so installing the extensions that I wanted. Then I was good to go.
Now I install firefox and have to spend at least a half hour going installing more extensions than ever, half of which are to undo the damage Mozilla has done to the browser, as well as having to go through the about:config to disable all of the various tracking "services" and fix the things that I can't find extensions to fix.
This is just the next drip of water in the water torture that Firefox has become.
I could even tolerate all of that if it weren't for the straight-up hostility and disregard for users that Firefox appears to have developed.
It's just sad to see them go down the drain like this. It's like losing an old friend.
Yes, because monetization is inherently antagonistic to users. That should be no surprise. If the problem is money, then perhaps Mozilla would want to consider a less painful and more honest form of monetization: start charging for the browser.
But the main problem with Pocket isn't the monetization. It's that Mozilla is selling out the privacy of its users. Adding insult to injury, it's selling to a commercial, third party company with a blatantly awful privacy policy.
To bring things back around to the topic, though, this is not the problem with the idea of integrating VR. That problem (which Pocket shares) is that Mozilla is intent on spending their purportedly limited resources on adding features of limited value instead of fixing the numerous problems that have been introduced into Firefox over the last several years.
I wouldn't care about whether or not Firefox has VR support in it if there wasn't so much stuff in Firefox that needs to be fixed. Come on, Mozilla, please make the browser work well before you shovel more features into it.
Perhaps Mozilla should consider putting some of the time, money, and effort they're spending on crap like this into fixing all the stuff they've broken in Firefox.
SourceForge hasn't been a reasonable place to host a project for years now, and it hasn't been getting any better. I wouldn't touch SF with a ten foot pole, either to host my projects or to download other projects.
I had already determined that I'm not upgrading from 7 to 10 (although if I still had a Win 8 machine, I'd certainly upgrade from that). For me, Windows 10 doesn't offer even a single compelling reason to bother with it -- while it makes some things (such as the start menu and search) worse.
But when looking over the list of things that 10 deprecates, I am getting tempted to call 10 a downgrade.
At least Hot Topic owning ThinkGeek was amusing. GameStop owning them is disgusting, and ensures that I won't be purchasing anything from ThinkGeek anymore.
Actually their acceptable ads (which you can turn off with a single checkbox and they even offer the option on first install) is exactly what I've been saying for years should be the only ads allowed due to security concerns,
I disagree. The "acceptable ads" rules that Adblock Plus uses allow the very thing that I object to the most about online ads: the tracking. So their "acceptable ads" are completely unacceptable to me.
Until ads stop spying on me, I will block every single one of them that I can.
is reformed in the House bill, which does away with it over six months and instead gives phone companies the responsibility of maintaining phone records that the government can search." Obama criticized the Senate for not acting on that legislation, saying they have necessitated a renewal of the Patriot Act provisions.
What nonsense. Moving the storage task to the phone companies does absolutely nothing to make the collection less nasty. Enacting the "reform" is, at best, no different than just renewing the Patriot Act as it is. But that's "at best". In reality, it's even worse, as requiring the telecoms to keep this data guarantees that the telecoms will use that data -- so the end result is an expansion of the the amount of spying that is being inflicted on us.
(registration requires bi-annual smog checks for all gas cars already).
No, it doesn't. It is required for all gas cars that live in the greater Portland and Medford metropolitan areas, but is not required anywhere else in the state.
Maybe 20 years ago... New toll systems have few manned toll booths and don't require traffic to slow or stop.
Yes, but that's in exchange for the massive privacy invasion that results from using toll transponders and/or license plate readers. I don't see that as an improvement at all. It's just the opposite.
Toll roads are the purest of evils. We need much less of them, not much more. A better solution is to fund road maintenance out of the general fund. Everyone benefits greatly from well-maintained roads, after all, even if they never drive at all.
But you know, development isn't about making developers 100% happy. It's about product.
Of course I know (and agree) with this. However, when (as has been my experience) agile actively makes developers unhappy in addition to reducing productivity, the product will inevitably suffer.
My experience (both as a PM and developer) has been that Agile projects tend to take longer to produce a worse product.
If the developers have no measurable yardstick to judge their progress, or middle management collects a bunch of meaningless metrics which don't help the development process... you're doing it wrong.
True, but all of that has little to do with Agile specifically.
None of those are failings of waterfall at all. There is nothing about waterfall that requires you to make ironclad decisions at the very start, and there is nothing that prevents you from adapting the course of development as the project proceeds.
In other words, you aren't describing waterfall in your comment. Yes, I'm invoking the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, since that is usually what is invoked when Agile is criticized.
The real truth is that all methodologies can be done well or poorly, including waterfall and agile. The difference that I've seen in practice is that it's incredibly hard to implement Agile correctly (such that I've never seen it done), but implementing waterfall correctly is not a huge chore.
I'll split down the middle of this. In the agile shops I've worked in, there has been a consistent strong aversion to producing documentation that is actually useful: design specs, etc. However, there has also been a consistent trend to dramatically increase the amount of worthless documentation: documenting the process itself (encouraged by tools like Version One).
And when you begin a large software development effort with 50 other developers???
I agree with your underlying point, that if the team consists of just one or two developers, then process becomes less important (but still important). However, if the team consists of 50 developers, that's a serious problem all by itself, no matter what process is in use.
Serious developers don't care about the process and don't want it in their way
This can't be overstated. A great process is a process that is nearly invisible to developers, allowing us to get on with the development with minimal friction. Agile presents a great deal of friction. It is a process apparently designed to please middle management at the expense of developers.
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How many times have you used Notepad/Wordpad instead of Word?
Many times every single day. Word blows chunks, and I avoid using it to the greatest extent possible.
instead it's tailored for everybody which means include the features that are important so the user doesn't have to figure it out.
"tailored for everybody" is logically identical to "tailored for nobody".
Perhaps what you're missing is that people aren't objecting to the inclusion of the functionality. They're objecting to the manner in which is was incorporated. If this Pocket stuff had been shipped as an add-on, nobody would be complaining.
they did it based on popularity (which you can see on the add-in site).
The reason that I think they did it for money rather than popularity is because the put it in the core application rather than as an add-on.
They replaced their own version of Pocket with this popular adding. No damage done.
Getting a payday is the only explanation for this that makes any sense to me. As to "no damage done" -- I would say "little damage done". However, it's yet another little annoyance in the flood of annoyances over the past few years.
It used to be that I could install Firefox and spend 10 minutes or so installing the extensions that I wanted. Then I was good to go.
Now I install firefox and have to spend at least a half hour going installing more extensions than ever, half of which are to undo the damage Mozilla has done to the browser, as well as having to go through the about:config to disable all of the various tracking "services" and fix the things that I can't find extensions to fix.
This is just the next drip of water in the water torture that Firefox has become.
I could even tolerate all of that if it weren't for the straight-up hostility and disregard for users that Firefox appears to have developed.
It's just sad to see them go down the drain like this. It's like losing an old friend.
Yes, because monetization is inherently antagonistic to users. That should be no surprise. If the problem is money, then perhaps Mozilla would want to consider a less painful and more honest form of monetization: start charging for the browser.
But the main problem with Pocket isn't the monetization. It's that Mozilla is selling out the privacy of its users. Adding insult to injury, it's selling to a commercial, third party company with a blatantly awful privacy policy.
To bring things back around to the topic, though, this is not the problem with the idea of integrating VR. That problem (which Pocket shares) is that Mozilla is intent on spending their purportedly limited resources on adding features of limited value instead of fixing the numerous problems that have been introduced into Firefox over the last several years.
Yes, it's possible. There are numerous forks of Firefox around that don't suck.
I wouldn't care about whether or not Firefox has VR support in it if there wasn't so much stuff in Firefox that needs to be fixed. Come on, Mozilla, please make the browser work well before you shovel more features into it.
Perhaps Mozilla should consider putting some of the time, money, and effort they're spending on crap like this into fixing all the stuff they've broken in Firefox.
SF is still a reasonable place to host a project
SourceForge hasn't been a reasonable place to host a project for years now, and it hasn't been getting any better. I wouldn't touch SF with a ten foot pole, either to host my projects or to download other projects.
Which is a shame. I remember when SF was great.
I had already determined that I'm not upgrading from 7 to 10 (although if I still had a Win 8 machine, I'd certainly upgrade from that). For me, Windows 10 doesn't offer even a single compelling reason to bother with it -- while it makes some things (such as the start menu and search) worse.
But when looking over the list of things that 10 deprecates, I am getting tempted to call 10 a downgrade.
At least Hot Topic owning ThinkGeek was amusing. GameStop owning them is disgusting, and ensures that I won't be purchasing anything from ThinkGeek anymore.
I can't even remember the last time an advertisement online compelled me in favor of buying anything.
Not only have I never bought anything through online ads, I try to avoid purchasing products that I see advertised through online ads.
Seriously, the advertising model on the internet is very screwed up at a times.
I agree, if by "at times" you mean "nearly all the time."
Then wait and see how much of the internet survives, since most of them will have put "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS" signs and left.
Which, on the whole, would be an improvement.
OK, that's a difference. But it's a meaningless difference.
Actually their acceptable ads (which you can turn off with a single checkbox and they even offer the option on first install) is exactly what I've been saying for years should be the only ads allowed due to security concerns,
I disagree. The "acceptable ads" rules that Adblock Plus uses allow the very thing that I object to the most about online ads: the tracking. So their "acceptable ads" are completely unacceptable to me.
Until ads stop spying on me, I will block every single one of them that I can.
is reformed in the House bill, which does away with it over six months and instead gives phone companies the responsibility of maintaining phone records that the government can search." Obama criticized the Senate for not acting on that legislation, saying they have necessitated a renewal of the Patriot Act provisions.
What nonsense. Moving the storage task to the phone companies does absolutely nothing to make the collection less nasty. Enacting the "reform" is, at best, no different than just renewing the Patriot Act as it is. But that's "at best". In reality, it's even worse, as requiring the telecoms to keep this data guarantees that the telecoms will use that data -- so the end result is an expansion of the the amount of spying that is being inflicted on us.
(registration requires bi-annual smog checks for all gas cars already).
No, it doesn't. It is required for all gas cars that live in the greater Portland and Medford metropolitan areas, but is not required anywhere else in the state.
Maybe 20 years ago... New toll systems have few manned toll booths and don't require traffic to slow or stop.
Yes, but that's in exchange for the massive privacy invasion that results from using toll transponders and/or license plate readers. I don't see that as an improvement at all. It's just the opposite.
Good god, no.
Toll roads are the purest of evils. We need much less of them, not much more. A better solution is to fund road maintenance out of the general fund. Everyone benefits greatly from well-maintained roads, after all, even if they never drive at all.
But you know, development isn't about making developers 100% happy. It's about product.
Of course I know (and agree) with this. However, when (as has been my experience) agile actively makes developers unhappy in addition to reducing productivity, the product will inevitably suffer.
My experience (both as a PM and developer) has been that Agile projects tend to take longer to produce a worse product.
If the developers have no measurable yardstick to judge their progress, or middle management collects a bunch of meaningless metrics which don't help the development process ... you're doing it wrong.
True, but all of that has little to do with Agile specifically.
None of those are failings of waterfall at all. There is nothing about waterfall that requires you to make ironclad decisions at the very start, and there is nothing that prevents you from adapting the course of development as the project proceeds.
In other words, you aren't describing waterfall in your comment. Yes, I'm invoking the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, since that is usually what is invoked when Agile is criticized.
The real truth is that all methodologies can be done well or poorly, including waterfall and agile. The difference that I've seen in practice is that it's incredibly hard to implement Agile correctly (such that I've never seen it done), but implementing waterfall correctly is not a huge chore.
I'll split down the middle of this. In the agile shops I've worked in, there has been a consistent strong aversion to producing documentation that is actually useful: design specs, etc. However, there has also been a consistent trend to dramatically increase the amount of worthless documentation: documenting the process itself (encouraged by tools like Version One).
And when you begin a large software development effort with 50 other developers???
I agree with your underlying point, that if the team consists of just one or two developers, then process becomes less important (but still important). However, if the team consists of 50 developers, that's a serious problem all by itself, no matter what process is in use.
Serious developers don't care about the process and don't want it in their way
This can't be overstated. A great process is a process that is nearly invisible to developers, allowing us to get on with the development with minimal friction. Agile presents a great deal of friction. It is a process apparently designed to please middle management at the expense of developers.