At the time of writing this, there are over 1500 comments. I am not going to read them all, nor expect mine to stand out from among the crowd. However, it seems to me that the biggest reason why the US still "clings" to imperial units is because they can. When it comes to markets, they are BIG--even with the recession. When you are the only 800 lbs gorilla in the room and everyone wants to play with you, there are a lot of things you can get away with not doing. As the status of being the only 800 lbs gorilla that everyone wants to play with changes (whether the gorilla goes on a diet, or other gorillas get just as large or larger, or the number of smaller gorillas proliferate to such a degree that the big one is no longer needed, or whatever), then you MIGHT see some changes to metric. Until then, don't count on it, simply because it does not have to do so.
Where I am presently, we use pods/quads--similar to four cubicles that open up into shared middle space in which is a nice round table. We each have semi-privacy as everyone works in their corner of the pod/quad. We are close enough together that we can share ideas very easily, and have enough privacy that we can withdraw from the others when needed. All it takes is a quick roll of the chair. The centre table also makes it a convenient place for lunching together, code reviews, design brainstorming....
It might not be for everyone but it works for us.
Additionally, when populating the pods, we try to mix the new programmers into a pod with the seasoned programmers. It helps them learn faster as help (if necessary) is right there, and they can learn a lot just by listening in to the design conversations.
For what it is worth (especially this late in the game) the quality and type of comments added to the code is a combination of several factors.
1. Number of expected eyes. The more people that I expect to see it, the better the comments need to be. 2. Length of development time. The longer the code takes to write, the better the comments need to be. For some of my personal/hobby projects that have lasted for months or years, I was lucky to find 20 minutes a day to work on it. Adding comments to the code was absolutely necessary so that I could get stuff done. 3. Code complexity. The trickier the code, or the more modules/files that impact the code, the better the comments have to be. 4. Prep-work time. The longer it took me to figure out what I needed to do (and why), the better the comments need to be.
Re-reading through this, the longer I expect the code to be around, the better I expect it to be written and commented. I don't want to waste time trying figure out both the intent AND what the code is actually doing. Nor do I want others go through that as well. The better the comments in the code, the faster someone else can get up to speed on the code I have written, which means that it costs the company I work for less $$$ down the road.
When writing comments, I try to include...the 'why' where applicable, and what it is supposed to do, and on the complex code I state
1. The INTENT.
2. The 'WHY' where applicable.
3. Expected state information at various locations for more complex code.
Readability is a must. If it is not readable, then from my position it is flat out wrong. If it is not readable, you (or someone else) can not know if it is right.
If your family is like mine, they will not learn unless the cost of not learning it becomes too inconvenient. As it stands, you are probably bearing the brunt of the inconvenience. Spread it around. Each time you have to do the same things to fix their problems, charge them more, and let them know it. What you charge does not necessarily have to be $$$. Let them clean your place, yard, cook meals for you, fix something, baby sit,.... but get something out of it. You are giving up your time to fix the same mistakes of theirs time and again. This is time that you could be improving YOUR life.
This is getting late in the posting, so I don't expect many people to read this but...
20 years of developing software has taught me that good enough is good enough. What is good enough for one project, is overkill for another, and nowhere near good enough for yet another. As a software developer, I see my job as turning code into $$$. Good enough means that you have to perform a mental cost-benefit analysis on what you develop.
But what is good enough? That is the variable. Sure, there are twits out there who try to argue that there is exactly one level of "good enough" for ALL projects. Clearly for the products that you cite, 50% is not good enough. But for some things, if something works only half the time, it could (does not translate to will) still be useful enough to be put to use.
Over time, user demands, and competition will push the "good enough" bar higher.
VMWare is neat and has its uses. As a developer, I've found it quite useful for OS development and testing. In the data centre it too can have its uses, but it is also has its limitations. That's one of the reasons why our IT department is exploring the Trigence solution--application virtualization. It gives them better performancee, easier migration of apps to newer OS versions and lower costs (hardware and fewer OS images to maintain).
Don't get your knickers in a bunch just yet over the price difference. What we have here amounts to a single data point in time.
Perhaps a better question to ask first is "How has the price of software in Euros changed over the last couple of years?"
Why ask this? You are converting prices back to US dollars. The value of the US dollar as compared to Euros has been declining for the last couple of years.
IF the price has been relatively steady (I don't know if this is the case), and people are comfortable paying this price, there is less incentive for US companies to lower the price of their software in Europe. If the Euros are converted into US dollars, they would be keeping more $$$. It's their software, they can charge what they choose.
This only addresses part of your question. Since one US dollar has been worth less than one Euro (at least for the last five years), the price at any point in that period (assuming a relatively constant Euro price of software), would still be higher.
There is probably some holes in my reasoning, but I am sure smarter souls will be more than happy to correct me.
I am going nitpick on one thing you wrote...
"The first job of any operating system has to be stability."
The implicit assumption is that Vista is an OS, or at the very least is seen (or should be seen) by Microsoft as an OS. However, it is most evident that they do not see it that way. It is a product. It is a product that acts like an OS. Product first. OS second. That is their mindset. From their perspective, that is all it is--a product.
That being said, go right ahead and discuss if you so desire what should and should not go into an OS. It is a valuable discussion and can potentially lead to better OS'es. But please keep in mind that all Vista is (or any other Windows release), is a product--one that is made by Microsoft for the sole purpose of making someone $$$.
With regards to being a huge energy saver, let's go one step further....
What if it could be easily and cheaply applied to the windows of your house? Particularly during the summer months where I'm from in Canada, if it (or something similar) could reduce the amount of sun entering through the windows, that could be another opportunity to reduce the electric bill when the air conditioner is operating.
It happens to reminds me of a trip I took to Lebanon a couple years ago. Very seldom would anyone get back the correct change after purchasing an item. The change would usually be the price after they had "rounded" the price up (never down) to the nearest equivalent dime or quarter. The "rounded" portions would be pocketed at the end of the day. This form of corruption was everywhere.
We once decided to calculate how much a single grocery store would skim from their customers using this method. 1000 skims a day @ 10 cents each makes $100 (US) a day. Over the course of a year, $36,500. And that was a conservative estimate.
Way back in the day of high school (about 10 yrs ago), I once had the misfortune to write a checkers program in C on the school's ICON computers. For some bizarre reason, whenever the routine set_tracker() was called for the third time and only the third time, the cursor would disappear from view. The cursor was being used not only to select the piece, but also to identify whose turn it was, so this was a problem. It was still being tracked, but it could not be seen. I never could figure what caused it, but the work-around was simple--call set_tracker() four times at the very beginning of the program. It worked "perfectly" after that.
One of the ancient Greeks (?Eristothenes?) had a simple method for calculating the circumference of the earth. It was noticed that on a particular day of the year, the bottom of a well was not in shadow, or was it a post had no shadow. In other words, the sun was directly overhead. A town around 500 miles to the north of that well/post had a pole that cast a shadow on the same day at the same time. By measuring the height of the pole, the length of the the cast shadow, and the distance between the two towns, he came up with an amazingly accurate (for the times and equipment used) estimate of the circumference of the earth.
The distance between the towns gave him the arc-length. The pole and shadow measurments gave him the angle. Together they formed a wedge of a circle, and it was simple to determine the circumference of the earth (the whole circle).
How about them olives? Simple tools. Anyone with armed basic geometry can do it.
It seems to me, that one of the main reasons why the "users" rights were upheld in this case was that a reproduction of the painting was not made. The contents were literally moved from the poster to canvas, leaving a blank piece of paper behind.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it is my understanding that one of the things the FCC is responsible is the division/management of the EM spectrum in the States. Digital broadcast should require less bandwidth than the analog transmissions. Thus, should the switch to digital occur, the way the EM spectrum is divided will likely change. That, I think is a state interest.
Ok, so this is a little off topic, but here is a true story about the legal uses of a slim-jim. About a year ago, I was visiting the folks back in my (small) home town. One day I was walking down the main street where a little up ahead of me was a police officer who had locked himself out of his cruiser. So, he brought aside a couple of passing teenagers and asked if they had happened to have a slim-jim on them as he was locked out of his car. Immediately, one of them pulls the slim-jim out of his pants and opens up the cop's car. True story.
"... makes only one billionth of a gram a year at a cost of $80 million.
At that rate, it would take one million years and $80 quadrillion (80,000 trillion) to produce one gram."
Seems to me it would take a thousand times longer than 1 million years to produce 1 gram. And yet, they were able to get the price right. You would think that a "reputable" news source would do some sort proof reading.
Any mistakes in the above post are my own. I am not reputable.
Slashdot Mirror
At the time of writing this, there are over 1500 comments. I am not going to read them all, nor expect mine to stand out from among the crowd. However, it seems to me that the biggest reason why the US still "clings" to imperial units is because they can. When it comes to markets, they are BIG--even with the recession. When you are the only 800 lbs gorilla in the room and everyone wants to play with you, there are a lot of things you can get away with not doing. As the status of being the only 800 lbs gorilla that everyone wants to play with changes (whether the gorilla goes on a diet, or other gorillas get just as large or larger, or the number of smaller gorillas proliferate to such a degree that the big one is no longer needed, or whatever), then you MIGHT see some changes to metric. Until then, don't count on it, simply because it does not have to do so.
Where I am presently, we use pods/quads--similar to four cubicles that open up into shared middle space in which is a nice round table. We each have semi-privacy as everyone works in their corner of the pod/quad. We are close enough together that we can share ideas very easily, and have enough privacy that we can withdraw from the others when needed. All it takes is a quick roll of the chair. The centre table also makes it a convenient place for lunching together, code reviews, design brainstorming....
It might not be for everyone but it works for us.
Additionally, when populating the pods, we try to mix the new programmers into a pod with the seasoned programmers. It helps them learn faster as help (if necessary) is right there, and they can learn a lot just by listening in to the design conversations.
For what it is worth (especially this late in the game) the quality and type of comments added to the code is a combination of several factors.
1. Number of expected eyes. The more people that I expect to see it, the better the comments need to be.
2. Length of development time. The longer the code takes to write, the better the comments need to be. For some of my personal/hobby projects that have lasted for months or years, I was lucky to find 20 minutes a day to work on it. Adding comments to the code was absolutely necessary so that I could get stuff done.
3. Code complexity. The trickier the code, or the more modules/files that impact the code, the better the comments have to be.
4. Prep-work time. The longer it took me to figure out what I needed to do (and why), the better the comments need to be.
Re-reading through this, the longer I expect the code to be around, the better I expect it to be written and commented. I don't want to waste time trying figure out both the intent AND what the code is actually doing. Nor do I want others go through that as well. The better the comments in the code, the faster someone else can get up to speed on the code I have written, which means that it costs the company I work for less $$$ down the road.
When writing comments, I try to include ...the 'why' where applicable, and what it is supposed to do, and on the complex code I state
1. The INTENT.
2. The 'WHY' where applicable.
3. Expected state information at various locations for more complex code.
Readability is a must. If it is not readable, then from my position it is flat out wrong. If it is not readable, you (or someone else) can not know if it is right.
If your family is like mine, they will not learn unless the cost of not learning it becomes too inconvenient. As it stands, you are probably bearing the brunt of the inconvenience. Spread it around. Each time you have to do the same things to fix their problems, charge them more, and let them know it. What you charge does not necessarily have to be $$$. Let them clean your place, yard, cook meals for you, fix something, baby sit, .... but get something out of it. You are giving up your time to fix the same mistakes of theirs time and again. This is time that you could be improving YOUR life.
This is getting late in the posting, so I don't expect many people to read this but ...
20 years of developing software has taught me that good enough is good enough. What is good enough for one project, is overkill for another, and nowhere near good enough for yet another. As a software developer, I see my job as turning code into $$$. Good enough means that you have to perform a mental cost-benefit analysis on what you develop.
But what is good enough? That is the variable. Sure, there are twits out there who try to argue that there is exactly one level of "good enough" for ALL projects. Clearly for the products that you cite, 50% is not good enough. But for some things, if something works only half the time, it could (does not translate to will) still be useful enough to be put to use.
Over time, user demands, and competition will push the "good enough" bar higher.
... assembler programmers to be atheists?
VMWare is neat and has its uses. As a developer, I've found it quite useful for OS development and testing. In the data centre it too can have its uses, but it is also has its limitations. That's one of the reasons why our IT department is exploring the Trigence solution--application virtualization. It gives them better performancee, easier migration of apps to newer OS versions and lower costs (hardware and fewer OS images to maintain).
Don't get your knickers in a bunch just yet over the price difference. What we have here amounts to a single data point in time.
Perhaps a better question to ask first is "How has the price of software in Euros changed over the last couple of years?"
Why ask this? You are converting prices back to US dollars. The value of the US dollar as compared to Euros has been declining for the last couple of years.
IF the price has been relatively steady (I don't know if this is the case), and people are comfortable paying this price, there is less incentive for US companies to lower the price of their software in Europe. If the Euros are converted into US dollars, they would be keeping more $$$. It's their software, they can charge what they choose.
This only addresses part of your question. Since one US dollar has been worth less than one Euro (at least for the last five years), the price at any point in that period (assuming a relatively constant Euro price of software), would still be higher.
There is probably some holes in my reasoning, but I am sure smarter souls will be more than happy to correct me.
A sword fighting 20th century engineer travelling around in 13th century Poland--what's not to like?
It's a light and fun read.
I am going nitpick on one thing you wrote ...
"The first job of any operating system has to be stability."
The implicit assumption is that Vista is an OS, or at the very least is seen (or should be seen) by Microsoft as an OS. However, it is most evident that they do not see it that way. It is a product. It is a product that acts like an OS. Product first. OS second. That is their mindset. From their perspective, that is all it is--a product.
That being said, go right ahead and discuss if you so desire what should and should not go into an OS. It is a valuable discussion and can potentially lead to better OS'es. But please keep in mind that all Vista is (or any other Windows release), is a product--one that is made by Microsoft for the sole purpose of making someone $$$.
iaamoac
With regards to being a huge energy saver, let's go one step further....
What if it could be easily and cheaply applied to the windows of your house? Particularly during the summer months where I'm from in Canada, if it (or something similar) could reduce the amount of sun entering through the windows, that could be another opportunity to reduce the electric bill when the air conditioner is operating.
No. You're prediction will be partly right. It's going to be the same shit, but a different fan.
... corruption.
It happens to reminds me of a trip I took to Lebanon a couple years ago. Very seldom would anyone get back the correct change after purchasing an item. The change would usually be the price after they had "rounded" the price up (never down) to the nearest equivalent dime or quarter. The "rounded" portions would be pocketed at the end of the day. This form of corruption was everywhere.
We once decided to calculate how much a single grocery store would skim from their customers using this method. 1000 skims a day @ 10 cents each makes $100 (US) a day. Over the course of a year, $36,500. And that was a conservative estimate.
iaamoac
Iaamoac
What is the relevance?
One of the listed long-shot alternatives was Toronto--Canada eh!
Iaamoac
How long? The same length of time it takes for a politician to say nothing of substance. A very long time.
2. ...the rapid expansion phase at the beginning was someone trying to overclock the universe?
3. ...the big crunch comes when MS figures out how to write software for the univsersal computer?
4. ... the CPU manufacturers are right around the corner to making a computer more powerful than universe.
5. ...all the weird stuff at the quantum scale is caused by dereferencing a NULL pointer.
Iaamoac
The distance between the towns gave him the arc-length. The pole and shadow measurments gave him the angle. Together they formed a wedge of a circle, and it was simple to determine the circumference of the earth (the whole circle).
How about them olives? Simple tools. Anyone with armed basic geometry can do it.
Iaamoac
Iaamoac
Iaamoac
Ok, so this is a little off topic, but here is a true story about the legal uses of a slim-jim. About a year ago, I was visiting the folks back in my (small) home town. One day I was walking down the main street where a little up ahead of me was a police officer who had locked himself out of his cruiser. So, he brought aside a couple of passing teenagers and asked if they had happened to have a slim-jim on them as he was locked out of his car. Immediately, one of them pulls the slim-jim out of his pants and opens up the cop's car. True story.
Iaamoac
Iaamoac
Iaamoac
"... makes only one billionth of a gram a year at a cost of $80 million.
At that rate, it would take one million years and $80 quadrillion (80,000 trillion) to produce one gram."
Seems to me it would take a thousand times longer than 1 million years to produce 1 gram. And yet, they were able to get the price right. You would think that a "reputable" news source would do some sort proof reading.
Any mistakes in the above post are my own. I am not reputable.
"Let's destroy the observatory so this will never happen again!" So spaketh Moe.