He wrote the famous memo that claimed 63,000 bugs in Windows 2000 gold. Evidently his discontempt for Microsoft's software practices has been boiling for some time. Hope he does well at Google.
Think about that one the next time you bash the testers and developers at Microsoft for the quality of the software. Bugs happen. Everyone makes mistakes. Someone made the decision to ship it with those bugs, and it wasn't the developers or testers.
Marketing has always been (and always will be, and always should be) "scummy". By definition, it is the practice of making people want things that they don't yet want. It is convincing someone that despite not needing your product before, they need it now.
What do you want them to do? Seriously, what should they do? Just blandly (and uninterestedly) present the bare facts and let you decide for yourself?
It just seems the WAY that they make people want things is getting worse. Maybe it is because I am getting ready to become a parent, and I am noticing all the ways they target kids. I know parents who drive around to different McDonalds to get their kids that one movie-tie-in-product that they don't have. Maybe that is just the parent's fault, but it just seems that the kids are the ones who are the consumers, the parents are just the vehicles. That scares me.
Yup. The company ran an infomercial for their biggest theme park while pimping their pop stars and promoting their films, and tried to use it as a ratings draw for their network.
Kind of like the new smash hit movie Robots. Which hasn't been released yet. But is called a "smash hit". And has a "making of/behind the scenes" special coming out on TV to make kids want to go see it and buy their crap.
It may sound niave of me, but when did all this marketing get so... scummy? Am I just more sensitive to it since I got older?
Re:QA != Testing (let's try one more time)
on
QA != Testing
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QA has nothing to do indirectly with the quality of software either IMHO.
I am betting one of two things:
1. You haven't seen it done well. 2. The effects of QA aren't always obvious.
I can give you a personal example. At a basic level, part of QA is making sure that you follow the processes that you say you are going to follow. Where I worked before, we said we were going to have a project plan for every release, even if it was a service pack release. It didn't have to be a massive one, as we might have for a full release, but it had to exist. This was to make sure that it didn't affect the schedules of other things that were going on. Well, as part of my QA duties I pointed out that we didn't have a project plan for a rather large service pack, and after discussing it with various managers, one was created.
Now I can see how you might say "big deal". But having that project plan probably saved a lot of hours of work for some people. If there is a project plan, it gets looked at, it gets updated, it gets watched, it gets a schedule made, and that schedule is worked in with the other schedules. Without all that, it would have been one of those "in our spare time" releases that always seemed to lead to trouble for everyone. Eventually, it would have become a hot issue and impacted all the other projects.
Not really an obvious or glamorous example, I know. But it definitely affected the quality of our products. Quality isn't just lack of bugs, it is meeting schedules and feature lists.
But this is also why I don't think that QA is necessary for every project or every company. Some just really don't require it. (and remember, I am not talking about testing here)
Hey! That remembers me when IBM tried to implement six sigma standards in marketing. They end up laying-off many workers and continue business as usual. I always wonders if this six sigma was not nothing else then the name of the team responsible to lay-off people.
Six Sigma is about reducing the number of defects. Maybe that is what these people were.
Re:QA != Testing (let's try one more time)
on
QA != Testing
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· Score: 1
Quality assurance is to make sure that the software is of good enough quality before release and testing does confirm the case.
Technicallyk, Quality Assurance has nothing to do directly with the quality of the software. It deals directly with the quality of the processes that go into making the software. Software doesn't pass Quality Assurance, the processes are what QA is concerned with.
It is about communication, not skills.
on
QA != Testing
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. I think that all biz people need to take a basic programming course, and all coders need to take a business class. The gulf of poor communication between the two camps is quite large without it.
I completely disagree. That is not the problem. The problem is that business people can't make their requirements clear, and developers need to be able to get out of their developer mindset.
In my 12 years in software testing and QA, I have found that for the most part developers think like developers and cannot seem to get out of that realm. When translating requirements, it leads to huge miscommunications. Likewise, whoever writes the requirements states them poorly. This leads to misinterpretations by developers and everyone else.
The business people should be able to state clearly what they need. Someone needs to be able to take those needs, translate them into good requirements, and developers need to be able to code to those requirements.
IMO, miscommunication causes many more problems than just coding errors.
..Slashdot editors could apply QA to the spelling in posted stories?
Perhaps if you read TFA, and understood what QA really is, you would know that your statement doesn't make any sense. Yeah, you were trying to be funny, but it is obvious now why this story is necessary.
The writer talks about separating QA from the Development group. In our organization, this was a large part of the problem. First, there was a tendency for the development group to "throw it over the fence" and expect QA to find problems that the engineers couldn't be bothered to look for.
The QA staff, on the other hand, rarely had engineers of a sufficient caliber that had the insights to search for and find the most insidious problems. Not only that, they (QA) occupied the no-man's land between business users and development, understanding neither area with any clarity.
This one has been in my craw for years (as evidenced by my use of the word "craw"). The industry has taken the term QA and changed the meaning. QA (or technically, SQA) has absolutely nothing to do with testing. Testing has nothing to do with SQA. Read the CMM model, testing isn't really even mentioned while SQA is an entire KPA on its own (at level 2) and is peppered throughout the other areas as well. (sorry, KPA is Key Process Area)
I want to say that I am not necessarily advocating one way over another. But I don't like it when terms are misused. Testing is testing, QA is QA. I am not going to why, except to say that QA applies to the entire development process and deals with adherence and improvement of process.
I just left a Fortune 25 company in an SQA role to go to a small company where I am the QA manager. That means testing manager. So I am not saying that the CMM is the solution to the world's software problems. But it has its place, and if you are going to use it, then use it as it was supposed to be used. Unfortunately, I am now part of the problem.
Testing is not part of QA at all
on
QA != Testing
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· Score: 1
Quality assurance is a process that runs through the entire project, testing is a component of that process.
To be technically accurate, testing is NOT a part of Quality Assurance at all. In the strict CMM model, they have nothing to do with each other. SQA (Software Quality Assurace) is all over the board, and I don't even think testing is mentioned much.
However, this is one of those things where the industry has misued a term, and it has stuck. I just left a company where I was the SQA leader, and I came to a small company where I am the QA manager. Needless to say, my roles are VASTLY different. But there is a reason I left the other company.:-)
And what percentage of your income have you given to charity?
Way to dodge the issue. (sigh)
When people can't seem to grasp simple logic, they attack. Oh well, this is Slashdot.
I have probably given a higher percentage of my net worth to charity than Bill Gates. But my net worth is probably in the red, so that isn't too hard to do. What you don't get is that he could give away 90% of his net worth and still live extremely comfortably. I couldn't give away 25% of my net worth and survive.
Yes, he started a charitable foundation that does a lot of good. Nobody doubts that. But giving away millions of dollars is not a sacrifice for him. Period.
But he's given enough of what he stole to decent charities that I say let him be crowned or sainted or venerated by the sort of people who do that sort of thing. As long as he keeps giving to charities, I just don't care.
He has given a lot to charity. But to be honest, percentage-wise it is not that much. $1 million to Bill Gates is like $4 to me. (I have calculated it) You can say he has donated a lot of money, but it was no great sacrifice.
If it needs to be done next tuesday and won't be worth a penny on wednesday, you'll do lots of things that aren't "The Right Way". You'll use MS Access, Visual Basic, bailing wire, and duct tape if you have to. And if you've got a good boss you'll know the situation and understand how "Right" you should do it, because he'll tell you.
MacGuyver (sp?) has built many useful things escaping from drug dealers, and none of them would pass the scrutiny of a good QA dept. MacGuyver (sp?) has built many useful things escaping from drug dealers, and none of them would pass the scrutiny of a good QA dept.
Depends. The QA department should be operating under the same set of release criteria, and if the most important thing is time to market then they should be testing under a much less strict set of criteria. One of the most ineffective QA people I have worked with was a guy who used to work for the military. He was absolutely meticulous and thorough, to a fault. The problem was, we weren't developing things that had to be tested to that level of detail. He had to work 3x as much as anyone else to get the same work done, and couldn't argue a point unless it was to the death. Nobody wanted to work with him, and he was completely ineffective. He was testing simple software like it was life-or-death.
we are too comfortable with our 8mpg SUV's out 2500+sq foot houses and our 300 channel cable tv telling how scary it is outside and we should stay in where it is safe.
I couldn't agree more. I think a major problem is that this country is too big. It is too big to comprehend for most people. We don't ever have to leave our comfort zone. Many people rarely leave their state, let alone their country. They don't see the rest of the world, and rely on TV to feed them their information. Or they just don't receive any information at all.
We have been taught to just care about ourselves. Therefore, if something doesn't greatly affect us, it is not worth our time to worry about it, let alone do anything about it. We are a sound-bite, fast-food nation. We are more concerned about who is dating who in Hollywood than what our government is doing. The things you point out (SUV, big houses, TV) are all bad, but they wouldn't be if we balanced it with an ounce of intelligence about the outside world. These will not be our downfall, it will be our ignorance, apathy, hubris, and general disdain for those who are not from the US. It isn't about what we have - it is about what we don't have.
However a good rule of thumb is that if you cant understand the EULA, dont agree to it. I mean would you sign somthing you didn't understand?
Wait till you buy a house. Getting through all the paperwork takes about an hour, and that is just if you have someone summarize it and you sign it. If there was anything I was curious about, I skimmed through it - but to read everything (and understand it all) might take days.
I saw these last night, and this is about the biggest spoiler you can possibly see for the movie. Almost every scene is pictured, along with a description of each scene.
Correction: the spoiler would be actually seeing the movie.
I think that seeing the screenshots gave me enough of a taste to know that I don't need to see it. I can't possibly imagine how Lucas can redeem the series. Even if Jar Jar dies a horrible death, it won't make up for the fact that he not only created that character, but brought him back in the next movie. EPI got my theatre dollars, EPII only got my rental dollars (thank god for the ability to scan during DVD playback). I don't even know if EPIII will be worth renting, but I sure won't be going to the theater to see it.
I actually kind of liked the comic-book-style story that I got from viewing the screenshots. Better than the awful dialogue, grandiose panning shots, and general hubris that has become
synonymous with Lucas' work.
Have you actually used on Demand? You only get what Comcast decides to store; you don't get to choose what programs you can time-shift. and, of course, you're not "storing" anything -- you're getting whatever programs are held centrally.
The "VCR-style" buttons are a joke -- there's a 4-5 second delay between your remote control button press and the response (good luck trying to stop a program at a given location!).
Of course, usability is irrelevant - if they can push out competitors because of their market share, they win. Then when technology catches up, they will be able to leverage it.
Think "fiber" connections. People always wonder how we could possibly use such a huge pipe, just like we used to wonder how we could POSSIBLY fill a 100MB hard drive. In general, people don't think far enough ahead. The internet isn't about just email and web-pages anymore.
I'd better finish filing out my patent application for "Is" before MS finds out. It's pretty brilliant, if I do say so. "Is" compares two pointers and returns "true" if they contain the same value.
Except that your "Is" is nothing more than "IsNot IsNot", which is infringing on Microsoft's innovation. You lose.
Comedy 102.
Today's topic: Don't Make It Too Obvious.
Of course, since this is Slashdot, it should also be pointed out that the poster claimed to not be able to read the parent's post because it was encrypted in ROT-26, but ROT-26 was mentioned as the encryption method in, and only in, the post itself. Therefore, the person claiming to not be able to read it was lying!
What? n00b opinions are somehow considered invalid? n00bs, my friends, is exactly what Linux needs or it will die.
I continue to struggle with this, just in my own opinion. Linux does not need the n00b opinion. I think that dumbing down the Linux desktop will kill it. However, what it does need is more of a non-geek opinion. I want USB devices to "just work" under Linux out of the box, but I still seem to have problems with them. I am not a n00b, but I don't want to have to futz with EVERYTHING on my system. I want to be able to easily configure things, and still be able to get into the guts if I so choose. Configuring X comes to mind. I am glad that most distros have good hardware detection and I can configure my desktop resolution via the GUI. I think that true n00bs will still have a problem with that in any OS.
Enough of this "I want it simple enough my mother can use it" stuff. I don't want it that simple, it will kill the flexibility - only because I don't think it can be done right. Maybe I am wrong. Everyone points to Apple when touting simplicity, but there is a good reason that their stuff works so well - they control it all. Linux supports way too many "unknowns" to be able to do that. I don't want Linux to take over the desktop, I just want to be able to use it as the awesome tool that it is. Part of me selfishly wants it to stay small in terms of market share. It almost seems that the best things, not just in computing, are tainted when they hit the big-time. So far companies like Google have seemed to buck that trend, but time will tell.
Lol, go ask any retailer why they should care if their shrink is only 4%. They'll punch you in the mouth.
That 4% is an estimate, and if the RIAA is any indication of how they come up with these numbers, it is inflated. Not to mention that you can't just say "would you like to reduce that 4% loss?". The FIRST question that any retailer would ask is "How much will that reduction cost me?"
I wonder how much they have already spent on copy protection, and how much they have saved as a result of it.
Your opinions on music are not the only ones that matter (shocking!) The fact you feel like Maroon 5 is crap, Green Day is re-treaded, and Ray Charles' album is a publicity stunt doesn't change the fact that they are all really good artists, and really good albums. But it's your loss for not appreciating them.
Sorry dude, you were right up until the point where you said that it was a fact that they are all really good artists. That is your OPINION, even in regards to Ray Charles. I don't like Green Day or Maroon 5, but the FACT that they sell a lot of records or win a Grammy doesn't automatically mean that they are good. I think Ray Charles is awesome, but if someone doesn't like his music that is their opinion. I think that there is nothing that proves someone is good, you can only at best state that "most people think that artist X is good".
Microsoft's in an interesting position. They can't really take advantage of their OS they way they did to wipe out Netscape.
I wouldn't be surprised to see a web search added to the regular Windows search. Yes, I know they have a beta of desktop search too. I just don't think they'll be able to effectively pull it off.
I think that Google is really in the position of power here, because they SPANKED Microsoft on their own turf. I am talking about the desktop search tool. Microsoft is now coming out with their own version - on the OS that THEY created which has built-in searching capabilities!!! I find this very telling about Microsoft's abilities to "innovate". Why didn't they ever improve the search capabilities built into the OS? And animated dogs, at least to me, don't count as innovation.
Google is floating like a butterfly (pun intended) and stinging like a bee, whereas Microsoft is trying to figure out a way to fix the fight.
Slashdot Mirror
Think about that one the next time you bash the testers and developers at Microsoft for the quality of the software. Bugs happen. Everyone makes mistakes. Someone made the decision to ship it with those bugs, and it wasn't the developers or testers.
What do you want them to do? Seriously, what should they do? Just blandly (and uninterestedly) present the bare facts and let you decide for yourself?
It just seems the WAY that they make people want things is getting worse. Maybe it is because I am getting ready to become a parent, and I am noticing all the ways they target kids. I know parents who drive around to different McDonalds to get their kids that one movie-tie-in-product that they don't have. Maybe that is just the parent's fault, but it just seems that the kids are the ones who are the consumers, the parents are just the vehicles. That scares me.
Oh no?
Kind of like the new smash hit movie Robots. Which hasn't been released yet. But is called a "smash hit". And has a "making of/behind the scenes" special coming out on TV to make kids want to go see it and buy their crap.
It may sound niave of me, but when did all this marketing get so ... scummy? Am I just more sensitive to it since I got older?
I am betting one of two things:
1. You haven't seen it done well.
2. The effects of QA aren't always obvious.
I can give you a personal example. At a basic level, part of QA is making sure that you follow the processes that you say you are going to follow. Where I worked before, we said we were going to have a project plan for every release, even if it was a service pack release. It didn't have to be a massive one, as we might have for a full release, but it had to exist. This was to make sure that it didn't affect the schedules of other things that were going on. Well, as part of my QA duties I pointed out that we didn't have a project plan for a rather large service pack, and after discussing it with various managers, one was created.
Now I can see how you might say "big deal". But having that project plan probably saved a lot of hours of work for some people. If there is a project plan, it gets looked at, it gets updated, it gets watched, it gets a schedule made, and that schedule is worked in with the other schedules. Without all that, it would have been one of those "in our spare time" releases that always seemed to lead to trouble for everyone. Eventually, it would have become a hot issue and impacted all the other projects.
Not really an obvious or glamorous example, I know. But it definitely affected the quality of our products. Quality isn't just lack of bugs, it is meeting schedules and feature lists.
But this is also why I don't think that QA is necessary for every project or every company. Some just really don't require it. (and remember, I am not talking about testing here)
Six Sigma is about reducing the number of defects. Maybe that is what these people were.
Technicallyk, Quality Assurance has nothing to do directly with the quality of the software. It deals directly with the quality of the processes that go into making the software. Software doesn't pass Quality Assurance, the processes are what QA is concerned with.
I completely disagree. That is not the problem. The problem is that business people can't make their requirements clear, and developers need to be able to get out of their developer mindset.
In my 12 years in software testing and QA, I have found that for the most part developers think like developers and cannot seem to get out of that realm. When translating requirements, it leads to huge miscommunications. Likewise, whoever writes the requirements states them poorly. This leads to misinterpretations by developers and everyone else.
The business people should be able to state clearly what they need. Someone needs to be able to take those needs, translate them into good requirements, and developers need to be able to code to those requirements.
IMO, miscommunication causes many more problems than just coding errors.
Perhaps if you read TFA, and understood what QA really is, you would know that your statement doesn't make any sense. Yeah, you were trying to be funny, but it is obvious now why this story is necessary.
This one has been in my craw for years (as evidenced by my use of the word "craw"). The industry has taken the term QA and changed the meaning. QA (or technically, SQA) has absolutely nothing to do with testing. Testing has nothing to do with SQA. Read the CMM model, testing isn't really even mentioned while SQA is an entire KPA on its own (at level 2) and is peppered throughout the other areas as well. (sorry, KPA is Key Process Area)
I want to say that I am not necessarily advocating one way over another. But I don't like it when terms are misused. Testing is testing, QA is QA. I am not going to why, except to say that QA applies to the entire development process and deals with adherence and improvement of process.
I just left a Fortune 25 company in an SQA role to go to a small company where I am the QA manager. That means testing manager. So I am not saying that the CMM is the solution to the world's software problems. But it has its place, and if you are going to use it, then use it as it was supposed to be used. Unfortunately, I am now part of the problem.
To be technically accurate, testing is NOT a part of Quality Assurance at all. In the strict CMM model, they have nothing to do with each other. SQA (Software Quality Assurace) is all over the board, and I don't even think testing is mentioned much.
However, this is one of those things where the industry has misued a term, and it has stuck. I just left a company where I was the SQA leader, and I came to a small company where I am the QA manager. Needless to say, my roles are VASTLY different. But there is a reason I left the other company. :-)
Way to dodge the issue. (sigh)
When people can't seem to grasp simple logic, they attack. Oh well, this is Slashdot.
I have probably given a higher percentage of my net worth to charity than Bill Gates. But my net worth is probably in the red, so that isn't too hard to do. What you don't get is that he could give away 90% of his net worth and still live extremely comfortably. I couldn't give away 25% of my net worth and survive.
Yes, he started a charitable foundation that does a lot of good. Nobody doubts that. But giving away millions of dollars is not a sacrifice for him. Period.
He has given a lot to charity. But to be honest, percentage-wise it is not that much. $1 million to Bill Gates is like $4 to me. (I have calculated it) You can say he has donated a lot of money, but it was no great sacrifice.
Depends. The QA department should be operating under the same set of release criteria, and if the most important thing is time to market then they should be testing under a much less strict set of criteria. One of the most ineffective QA people I have worked with was a guy who used to work for the military. He was absolutely meticulous and thorough, to a fault. The problem was, we weren't developing things that had to be tested to that level of detail. He had to work 3x as much as anyone else to get the same work done, and couldn't argue a point unless it was to the death. Nobody wanted to work with him, and he was completely ineffective. He was testing simple software like it was life-or-death.
I couldn't agree more. I think a major problem is that this country is too big. It is too big to comprehend for most people. We don't ever have to leave our comfort zone. Many people rarely leave their state, let alone their country. They don't see the rest of the world, and rely on TV to feed them their information. Or they just don't receive any information at all.
We have been taught to just care about ourselves. Therefore, if something doesn't greatly affect us, it is not worth our time to worry about it, let alone do anything about it. We are a sound-bite, fast-food nation. We are more concerned about who is dating who in Hollywood than what our government is doing. The things you point out (SUV, big houses, TV) are all bad, but they wouldn't be if we balanced it with an ounce of intelligence about the outside world. These will not be our downfall, it will be our ignorance, apathy, hubris, and general disdain for those who are not from the US. It isn't about what we have - it is about what we don't have.
Wait till you buy a house. Getting through all the paperwork takes about an hour, and that is just if you have someone summarize it and you sign it. If there was anything I was curious about, I skimmed through it - but to read everything (and understand it all) might take days.
Correction: the spoiler would be actually seeing the movie.
I think that seeing the screenshots gave me enough of a taste to know that I don't need to see it. I can't possibly imagine how Lucas can redeem the series. Even if Jar Jar dies a horrible death, it won't make up for the fact that he not only created that character, but brought him back in the next movie. EPI got my theatre dollars, EPII only got my rental dollars (thank god for the ability to scan during DVD playback). I don't even know if EPIII will be worth renting, but I sure won't be going to the theater to see it.
I actually kind of liked the comic-book-style story that I got from viewing the screenshots. Better than the awful dialogue, grandiose panning shots, and general hubris that has become synonymous with Lucas' work.
Of course, usability is irrelevant - if they can push out competitors because of their market share, they win. Then when technology catches up, they will be able to leverage it.
Think "fiber" connections. People always wonder how we could possibly use such a huge pipe, just like we used to wonder how we could POSSIBLY fill a 100MB hard drive. In general, people don't think far enough ahead. The internet isn't about just email and web-pages anymore.
Except that your "Is" is nothing more than "IsNot IsNot", which is infringing on Microsoft's innovation. You lose.
What a missed opportunity at a Simpson's reference. Mmmm.... low hanging juicy fruit.
Of course, since this is Slashdot, it should also be pointed out that the poster claimed to not be able to read the parent's post because it was encrypted in ROT-26, but ROT-26 was mentioned as the encryption method in, and only in, the post itself. Therefore, the person claiming to not be able to read it was lying!
I continue to struggle with this, just in my own opinion. Linux does not need the n00b opinion. I think that dumbing down the Linux desktop will kill it. However, what it does need is more of a non-geek opinion. I want USB devices to "just work" under Linux out of the box, but I still seem to have problems with them. I am not a n00b, but I don't want to have to futz with EVERYTHING on my system. I want to be able to easily configure things, and still be able to get into the guts if I so choose. Configuring X comes to mind. I am glad that most distros have good hardware detection and I can configure my desktop resolution via the GUI. I think that true n00bs will still have a problem with that in any OS.
Enough of this "I want it simple enough my mother can use it" stuff. I don't want it that simple, it will kill the flexibility - only because I don't think it can be done right. Maybe I am wrong. Everyone points to Apple when touting simplicity, but there is a good reason that their stuff works so well - they control it all. Linux supports way too many "unknowns" to be able to do that. I don't want Linux to take over the desktop, I just want to be able to use it as the awesome tool that it is. Part of me selfishly wants it to stay small in terms of market share. It almost seems that the best things, not just in computing, are tainted when they hit the big-time. So far companies like Google have seemed to buck that trend, but time will tell.
That 4% is an estimate, and if the RIAA is any indication of how they come up with these numbers, it is inflated. Not to mention that you can't just say "would you like to reduce that 4% loss?". The FIRST question that any retailer would ask is "How much will that reduction cost me?"
I wonder how much they have already spent on copy protection, and how much they have saved as a result of it.
Sorry dude, you were right up until the point where you said that it was a fact that they are all really good artists. That is your OPINION, even in regards to Ray Charles. I don't like Green Day or Maroon 5, but the FACT that they sell a lot of records or win a Grammy doesn't automatically mean that they are good. I think Ray Charles is awesome, but if someone doesn't like his music that is their opinion. I think that there is nothing that proves someone is good, you can only at best state that "most people think that artist X is good".
I think that Google is really in the position of power here, because they SPANKED Microsoft on their own turf. I am talking about the desktop search tool. Microsoft is now coming out with their own version - on the OS that THEY created which has built-in searching capabilities!!! I find this very telling about Microsoft's abilities to "innovate". Why didn't they ever improve the search capabilities built into the OS? And animated dogs, at least to me, don't count as innovation.
Google is floating like a butterfly (pun intended) and stinging like a bee, whereas Microsoft is trying to figure out a way to fix the fight.