The argument that saying "username or password is incorrect" is silly because hackers can just try to create accounts to discover usernames only applies to systems that allow the general public to create accounts.
That said, the amount of added security by using that phrasing is trivial under the best of circumstance, so I pretty much agree that it's a meaningless "best practice".
The issue of replaceable batteries has nothing to do with manufacturing costs or wanting people to replace phones.
The technical argument makes no sense to me. It's all about cost and marketing. My current phone has a replaceable battery, has all the whiz-bang features, and is about a millimeter thicker than the thinnest phone on the market. If it were impossible to do, then my phone would not exist.
The only argument that seems to hold water is manufacturing costs and planned obsolescence.
I never said Agile means you do less testing, although an awful lot of Agile practitioners seem to think that automated testing can replace or reduce the need for other sorts of testing, which isn't true at all.
You and I have been in the industry for roughly the same amount of time. I haven't done a study on this, so this is merely my own subjective perception. I don't know how to answer the "why do you think" question without simply restating my premise. I first noticed the overall decline in software quality about 15 years ago, but the pace of it has picked up over the past 5 or so. By "quality" I mean overall reliability, performance, and the number of nontrivial bugs.
Software has never been perfect. I'm not claiming there was some kind of golden age where software was generally awesome. I'm claiming that it's been getting worse.
With Windows 10 Microsoft wants everyone to adopt an even more frequent update cycle
Which is insane. Releases are disruptive, so Microsoft is saying that they want everyone to be disrupted even more.
that branch obviously won't get the benefit of updated features and technology
That sounds like a desirable thing, not a downside. Part of the problem with rapid releases is that new features and technology come out far too often.
I don't need to figure it out. They already exist. They're just getting fewer over time. Manufacturers aren't omitting replaceable batteries because there's a technical need to do so, they're omitting them because it reduces manufacturing costs and encourages replacing perfectly good phones.
Replacing the damned battery shouldn't be something considered a "repair". It's only the greed and asshole nature of phone manufacturers than make it that way.
This is true, but the two aren't completely disconnected.
Rapid release cycles and Agile development methods go hand in hand, and in my observations and experience, nothing has accelerated the decline in software quality as much as Agile development methods.
We need to get rid of Agile, and when Agile is gone, rapid release will necessarily go as a side-effect.
Although there are many things that are contributing to the ongoing decline in software quality, I think "rapid release" and similar Agile-inspired release cycles have done more to speed up the problem than any other single factor.
My point is about that last mile. With brick and mortar, a separate car trip is made for each item sold (more or less). With delivery, a whole mess of items are sent to the homes in one truck trip.
It seems clear that for the "last mile", the total miles driven if everyone is picking the goods up form the store is larger than the total miles driven if a truck picks them all up in one go.
As I said, I don't know how this works out environment-wise, but on the face of it, it doesn't seem obvious to me that one is worse than the other.
HP is (was?) notorious for that sort of thing. I remember, a couple decades ago, receiving a small cable from them packaged in a 3'x3' box. My first thought was that they accidentally shipped me an empty box. My second thought was that the people working in their shipping department must truly hate their jobs.
This can be true, depending on where the package is being routed through. Usually, though, I can see what city the package is in and whether it's currently moving or is sitting in a distribution center.
It could very well be that I'm lucky and the system works better in my area than yours.
I know, but that also seems crazy. Keep those items behind the counter or in a locked case. In fact, lots of stores in my area keep those items in a locked case even though they have that sort of packaging anyway.
They already do some stuff like "if you choose slow shipping, you get some coupon for a later order."
Which I'd totally take advantage of if the future credit could be used on any purchase I make. But they tend to be limited to specific categories, and are never categories that I actually buy products in.
I tell Amazon to use USPS whenever that's an option (and it usually is). That resolves all such issues for me, as there's a USPS package lockbox on my street.
Also, package tracking is much better with USPS, and they've yet to mess up a delivery.
Meh. I have a policy of never clicking on shortened URLs, myself, but I'm not about to tell websites not to use them. But they're the same as not having a link at all to me.
I'm actually curious about the environmental impact of that. I suspect it's not as clear-cut as you state.
Most people in the US drive, so when they're going to the store to buy something, they're still burning gas to do it. Also, people often don't make all of their purchases in one trip.
So, what's the difference between the environmental impact of buying a bunch of things from physical stores when you've made a separate trip for many of them, vs having them delivered to you where a whole bunch of deliveries are being made from the same truck (often coming from the same warehouse), thus using less fuel per-item?
I honestly don't know how that shakes out, but it doesn't seem obvious to me that there's necessarily a larger environmental hit from delivery services.
It always deeply irritates me when a box (sometimes radically oversized) is used to ship something that could easily have just been put into an envelope instead. I'm very happy to hear that Amazon is addressing this. I hope it catches on with others as well.
From TFS:
negotiating with manufacturers to make smaller packaging specifically for online sales, not store shelves
This is also really welcome! Product packaging designed for store shelves has also bothered me for a very long time (whether I get them from a physical store or not). With so many things, I end up tossing out a greater mass in worthless packaging than the item itself has. It's insane. It's even more insane when the reason for the overpackaging (marketing from the shelf) is completely missing.
I'm speaking about my personal tastes here. I don't claim to be representative of the general public.
I've been using a Pebble for years now, and find it very nearly indispensable. Since Pebble but the dust, though, I've been keeping an eye out for what to replace it with when it dies.
I can't find anything that meets my needs. The existing mart watches all suffer from the same flaw -- they're trying to be, essentially, "smartphones on a watch". In order to do that, they have to make serious sacrifices: they cost an arm and a leg, they have abysmal battery life, and they're much too large.
So currently, it looks like when my watch dies, I'll not be replacing it at all. The wearables market is simple not producing anything that actually meets my needs.
User replaceable batteries in the same form factor would result in smaller batteries because of the additional shielding, casing, latches, connectors, wires.
I'm very skeptical of this argument. My current phone has a 2600mAh replaceable battery (you can also get ones with higher capacity), is extremely thin (I believe that you can get a phone that is a millimeter thinner, but that's it), and has no additional shielding, latches, or wires, and the removable back panel is very thin. You're correct, there is the connector, although it's soldered directly onto the circuit board (so no wires) is thinner than the battery, and takes up very little space.
These arguments just don't square with what phone manufacturers have already done and successfully marketed. The only remaining argument that makes any sense at all is a desire to reduce production costs -- which is understandable, but personally I'd be willing to pay an extra $10 or $20 for this. It's a very, very valuable thing.
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The argument that saying "username or password is incorrect" is silly because hackers can just try to create accounts to discover usernames only applies to systems that allow the general public to create accounts.
That said, the amount of added security by using that phrasing is trivial under the best of circumstance, so I pretty much agree that it's a meaningless "best practice".
So we're both expressing opinions. Fair enough. :)
The issue of replaceable batteries has nothing to do with manufacturing costs or wanting people to replace phones.
The technical argument makes no sense to me. It's all about cost and marketing. My current phone has a replaceable battery, has all the whiz-bang features, and is about a millimeter thicker than the thinnest phone on the market. If it were impossible to do, then my phone would not exist.
The only argument that seems to hold water is manufacturing costs and planned obsolescence.
I never said Agile means you do less testing, although an awful lot of Agile practitioners seem to think that automated testing can replace or reduce the need for other sorts of testing, which isn't true at all.
You and I have been in the industry for roughly the same amount of time. I haven't done a study on this, so this is merely my own subjective perception. I don't know how to answer the "why do you think" question without simply restating my premise. I first noticed the overall decline in software quality about 15 years ago, but the pace of it has picked up over the past 5 or so. By "quality" I mean overall reliability, performance, and the number of nontrivial bugs.
Software has never been perfect. I'm not claiming there was some kind of golden age where software was generally awesome. I'm claiming that it's been getting worse.
With Windows 10 Microsoft wants everyone to adopt an even more frequent update cycle
Which is insane. Releases are disruptive, so Microsoft is saying that they want everyone to be disrupted even more.
that branch obviously won't get the benefit of updated features and technology
That sounds like a desirable thing, not a downside. Part of the problem with rapid releases is that new features and technology come out far too often.
doesn't Duck Duck Go just use Google?
No, DDG uses a bunch of different search engines (including Google), but seems to rely mostly on Bing.
I don't need to figure it out. They already exist. They're just getting fewer over time. Manufacturers aren't omitting replaceable batteries because there's a technical need to do so, they're omitting them because it reduces manufacturing costs and encourages replacing perfectly good phones.
Come on, we want the government to be small enough to be drowned in the bathtub.
Who's this "we"? I'm certainly not in that group, nor is at least half of the nation.
Replacing the damned battery shouldn't be something considered a "repair". It's only the greed and asshole nature of phone manufacturers than make it that way.
This is true, but the two aren't completely disconnected.
Rapid release cycles and Agile development methods go hand in hand, and in my observations and experience, nothing has accelerated the decline in software quality as much as Agile development methods.
We need to get rid of Agile, and when Agile is gone, rapid release will necessarily go as a side-effect.
I agree -- this fad about giving releases names instead of version numbers is a serious pain in the ass.
Although there are many things that are contributing to the ongoing decline in software quality, I think "rapid release" and similar Agile-inspired release cycles have done more to speed up the problem than any other single factor.
Ditch it.
My point is about that last mile. With brick and mortar, a separate car trip is made for each item sold (more or less). With delivery, a whole mess of items are sent to the homes in one truck trip.
It seems clear that for the "last mile", the total miles driven if everyone is picking the goods up form the store is larger than the total miles driven if a truck picks them all up in one go.
As I said, I don't know how this works out environment-wise, but on the face of it, it doesn't seem obvious to me that one is worse than the other.
HP is (was?) notorious for that sort of thing. I remember, a couple decades ago, receiving a small cable from them packaged in a 3'x3' box. My first thought was that they accidentally shipped me an empty box. My second thought was that the people working in their shipping department must truly hate their jobs.
This can be true, depending on where the package is being routed through. Usually, though, I can see what city the package is in and whether it's currently moving or is sitting in a distribution center.
It could very well be that I'm lucky and the system works better in my area than yours.
Whether or not that's true depends entirely on the particular battery chemistry.
I know, but that also seems crazy. Keep those items behind the counter or in a locked case. In fact, lots of stores in my area keep those items in a locked case even though they have that sort of packaging anyway.
They already do some stuff like "if you choose slow shipping, you get some coupon for a later order."
Which I'd totally take advantage of if the future credit could be used on any purchase I make. But they tend to be limited to specific categories, and are never categories that I actually buy products in.
I tell Amazon to use USPS whenever that's an option (and it usually is). That resolves all such issues for me, as there's a USPS package lockbox on my street.
Also, package tracking is much better with USPS, and they've yet to mess up a delivery.
Meh. I have a policy of never clicking on shortened URLs, myself, but I'm not about to tell websites not to use them. But they're the same as not having a link at all to me.
I'm actually curious about the environmental impact of that. I suspect it's not as clear-cut as you state.
Most people in the US drive, so when they're going to the store to buy something, they're still burning gas to do it. Also, people often don't make all of their purchases in one trip.
So, what's the difference between the environmental impact of buying a bunch of things from physical stores when you've made a separate trip for many of them, vs having them delivered to you where a whole bunch of deliveries are being made from the same truck (often coming from the same warehouse), thus using less fuel per-item?
I honestly don't know how that shakes out, but it doesn't seem obvious to me that there's necessarily a larger environmental hit from delivery services.
It always deeply irritates me when a box (sometimes radically oversized) is used to ship something that could easily have just been put into an envelope instead. I'm very happy to hear that Amazon is addressing this. I hope it catches on with others as well.
From TFS:
This is also really welcome! Product packaging designed for store shelves has also bothered me for a very long time (whether I get them from a physical store or not). With so many things, I end up tossing out a greater mass in worthless packaging than the item itself has. It's insane. It's even more insane when the reason for the overpackaging (marketing from the shelf) is completely missing.
I'm speaking about my personal tastes here. I don't claim to be representative of the general public.
I've been using a Pebble for years now, and find it very nearly indispensable. Since Pebble but the dust, though, I've been keeping an eye out for what to replace it with when it dies.
I can't find anything that meets my needs. The existing mart watches all suffer from the same flaw -- they're trying to be, essentially, "smartphones on a watch". In order to do that, they have to make serious sacrifices: they cost an arm and a leg, they have abysmal battery life, and they're much too large.
So currently, it looks like when my watch dies, I'll not be replacing it at all. The wearables market is simple not producing anything that actually meets my needs.
User replaceable batteries in the same form factor would result in smaller batteries because of the additional shielding, casing, latches, connectors, wires.
I'm very skeptical of this argument. My current phone has a 2600mAh replaceable battery (you can also get ones with higher capacity), is extremely thin (I believe that you can get a phone that is a millimeter thinner, but that's it), and has no additional shielding, latches, or wires, and the removable back panel is very thin. You're correct, there is the connector, although it's soldered directly onto the circuit board (so no wires) is thinner than the battery, and takes up very little space.
These arguments just don't square with what phone manufacturers have already done and successfully marketed. The only remaining argument that makes any sense at all is a desire to reduce production costs -- which is understandable, but personally I'd be willing to pay an extra $10 or $20 for this. It's a very, very valuable thing.