I've had similiar problems with it. It's also very difficult to get the balance of effort right. If you pair someone who has strong religious beliefs about the "right" way to do things with another who is more flexible, it ends up being more efficient to let the religious one "drive".
"The XP books make very clear that it's either all or nothing. They don't claim that pair programming by itself is always useful, they just claim that this whole set of techniques taken together is useful. If you're going to do all the other things XP says, XP says you should combine it with pair programming."
This is just good marketing. By making this "all or nothing" claim, XP has a built-in excuse that you are invoking here. Ever noticed that you hear the phrase "because you're not doing it right" more often with XP than with other approaches?
I find it amusing how everything is the patient's fault until real science is actually applied to the problem and then we often find that the old rules were just work-ethic quakery. Just a few years ago doctors claimed that gastric ulcers were caused by the patient's stressful lifestyle and until someone discovered the bacteria that actually caused it.
"When Word out did WordPerfect, it was through bundling it with OS, getting steep discounts on the price of OS to the OEM installers if they DONT install or sell WordPerfectb by throttling the revenue stream of WordPerfect by leveraging MSFT's monopoly in the OS space"
WordPerfect lost in the marketplace long before it was common to bundle applications with a computer. They lost because their product and their company (WordPerfect Corp - 2 owners ago) had a philosophy that was in conflict with the new trend in GUI based applications. They didn't even have a menu on DOS until very late in the game.
Their selling point was that WordPerfect was like a clean piece of paper with nothing on it. For those who did nothing but write documents in WordPerfect all day and could leverage the effort to learn the keyboard commands it was OK. With the shift from clerical work done by secretaries to clerical work performed by the rank and file, a quick learning curve was essential.
They also fought tooth-and-nail against their customers desire to have a Windows version of WordPerfect, and when it finally came out they insisted on using their old DOS printer drivers instead of using the standard Windows ones. I personally crashed it in the first 15 min of use.
Perhaps another difference is that in the old days the main goal was accomplishment, making something happen.
Today there is much more concern for using the latest hyped language, doing things the "right" way, using the "right" license etc. Rather boring compared to getting the lights blinking.
If you think every finite state machine is trivial just because you studied toy examples in school, you need a few more years of experience under your belt.
a long time before Google. It's usually an indication that the company is insecure about their own abilities and need some confirmation that they are better than everyone else.
If you don't care about the job and want to do a public service, bring a puzzle of your own and ask the interviewer to solve it. When they refuse or fail to solve it, they may be a bit more reluctant to do it in the future.
Well, the question is whether or not it's the whole point as you claim. Note that defensive patents if they are truly defensive aren't obtained to keep potential competitors out of the marketplace, but to prevent competitors from locking you out.
The point of my original post was to remind those who talk of defensive patents, that a lack of licensing fees doesn't imply that a patent is benign.
Sometimes when a patent doesn't directly yield revenue is when it is the most destructive to competition. Patents are often used to keep potential competitors out of the marketplace for the life of the patent.
"The logical conclusion of the European Commission is that Microsoft should not incorporate these security features in Vista."
Even if one were to conclude that this is fair, the problem is that European Commission won't be explicit about what can or cannot be included. If the commission wants to get into the requirements business they should at least accept the responsiblity that goes with it rather than effectively saying to MS "Go ahead and implement it and we'll sue you if we don't like it".
In my view it doesn't matter how complicated a technology is, it still needs to be tested. Companies that find the technology to complex to get right shouldn't be using it.
"I assume the firmware upgrade treadmill only exists because the market is so new, and the devices are so bleeding-edge."
I think the downside of the existence of flash memory is that embedded system companies are using it as a crutch instead of doing appropriate testing. Back in the days when a upgrade required a service visit to replace a PROM or EPROM (or possibly replace a board if the memory wasn't socketed) there were far fewer bugs.
"On the other hand, I think it's important to remember that it is not necessary to base an economy on credit, and it may well be better in the long run to move away from that model. It is precisely the availability of cheap credit, and the limited risks run by the big lenders, that leads to the situation where so many of the poor have to rely on taking credit they have little hope of honouring if things go wrong."
Keep in mind that credit was invented specifically to allow consumers to buy things right away that they would otherwise have to save up for. Industries realized that mass production wouldn't be economically feasible unless either wages significantly increased or some means for paying over time was invented. They didn't want to increase salaries so credit was born.
So transitioning to a non-credit would make for a very hard landing unless significant increases in wages were part of the plan.
If you are the primary developer, you can drive yourself, but it's difficult to drive volunteers because you don't have much leverage over them. So I think it's valid to say that it's more of a filtering process than a driving process at least when compared to conventional development.
I don't see how "personal desire" necessarily results in doing more than working for a paycheck. In the real world you have to work 40 hours a week (or more) to pay the bills. Most people can't add another 40 hours to work on an OSS project without getting burned out pretty quick. If you're married and have children, the situation is even more impractical.
The fact is that unless you started your own OSS project, you're probably going to be working to achieve someone else goal rather than your own to a certain extent anyway. It's also true that the fact you work for a paycheck doesn't mean you have no interest in the goals of the company. So in both cases, your compromising to a certain extent.
Project managers do a lot more than "review submitted code/content and decide whether it should be included in the production version of the product." They drive the process, not just filter it.
Sorry, but your bad argument has already been suggested and disproved. New Coke actually proves my point. A new version was produced despite the fact that people liked the old one fine. Of course, Coca-Cola has produced many coke variations since New Coke failed despite the fact that people liked the original fine.
BTY Coke Classic isn't the same formula as the original Coke (at least in the US). The original Coke used sugar, Coke Classic uses corn syrup.
"Well, do you necessarily go out and buy a new car of the same model every 2 years because the manufacturer developed a new one?"
Well, OSs aren't much like cars and the interval between XP and Vista is significantly longer than two years, but other than that, great analogy.
In any case, I wasn't expressing an opinion on whether people should upgrade to Vista, I just think doing it in order to "send a message" to MS that XP is fine is pointless and dumb.
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I've had similiar problems with it. It's also very difficult to get the balance of effort right. If you pair someone who has strong religious beliefs about the "right" way to do things with another who is more flexible, it ends up being more efficient to let the religious one "drive".
"The XP books make very clear that it's either all or nothing. They don't claim that pair programming by itself is always useful, they just claim that this whole set of techniques taken together is useful. If you're going to do all the other things XP says, XP says you should combine it with pair programming."
This is just good marketing. By making this "all or nothing" claim, XP has a built-in excuse that you are invoking here. Ever noticed that you hear the phrase "because you're not doing it right" more often with XP than with other approaches?
I find it amusing how everything is the patient's fault until real science is actually applied to the problem and then we often find that the old rules were just work-ethic quakery. Just a few years ago doctors claimed that gastric ulcers were caused by the patient's stressful lifestyle and until someone discovered the bacteria that actually caused it.
"When Word out did WordPerfect, it was through bundling it with OS, getting steep discounts on the price of OS to the OEM installers if they DONT install or sell WordPerfectb by throttling the revenue stream of WordPerfect by leveraging MSFT's monopoly in the OS space"
WordPerfect lost in the marketplace long before it was common to bundle applications with a computer. They lost because their product and their company (WordPerfect Corp - 2 owners ago) had a philosophy that was in conflict with the new trend in GUI based applications. They didn't even have a menu on DOS until very late in the game.
Their selling point was that WordPerfect was like a clean piece of paper with nothing on it. For those who did nothing but write documents in WordPerfect all day and could leverage the effort to learn the keyboard commands it was OK. With the shift from clerical work done by secretaries to clerical work performed by the rank and file, a quick learning curve was essential.
They also fought tooth-and-nail against their customers desire to have a Windows version of WordPerfect, and when it finally came out they insisted on using their old DOS printer drivers instead of using the standard Windows ones. I personally crashed it in the first 15 min of use.
Perhaps another difference is that in the old days the main goal was accomplishment, making something happen.
Today there is much more concern for using the latest hyped language, doing things the "right" way, using the "right" license etc. Rather boring compared to getting the lights blinking.
Sure, finite state machines with millions of states are trivial.
If you think every finite state machine is trivial just because you studied toy examples in school, you need a few more years of experience under your belt.
a long time before Google. It's usually an indication that the company is insecure about their own abilities and need some confirmation that they are better than everyone else.
If you don't care about the job and want to do a public service, bring a puzzle of your own and ask the interviewer to solve it. When they refuse or fail to solve it, they may be a bit more reluctant to do it in the future.
Well, the question is whether or not it's the whole point as you claim. Note that defensive patents if they are truly defensive aren't obtained to keep potential competitors out of the marketplace, but to prevent competitors from locking you out.
The point of my original post was to remind those who talk of defensive patents, that a lack of licensing fees doesn't imply that a patent is benign.
Sometimes when a patent doesn't directly yield revenue is when it is the most destructive to competition. Patents are often used to keep potential competitors out of the marketplace for the life of the patent.
"The logical conclusion of the European Commission is that Microsoft should not incorporate these security features in Vista."
Even if one were to conclude that this is fair, the problem is that European Commission won't be explicit about what can or cannot be included. If the commission wants to get into the requirements business they should at least accept the responsiblity that goes with it rather than effectively saying to MS "Go ahead and implement it and we'll sue you if we don't like it".
In my view it doesn't matter how complicated a technology is, it still needs to be tested. Companies that find the technology to complex to get right shouldn't be using it.
"I assume the firmware upgrade treadmill only exists because the market is so new, and the devices are so bleeding-edge."
I think the downside of the existence of flash memory is that embedded system companies are using it as a crutch instead of doing appropriate testing. Back in the days when a upgrade required a service visit to replace a PROM or EPROM (or possibly replace a board if the memory wasn't socketed) there were far fewer bugs.
"On the other hand, I think it's important to remember that it is not necessary to base an economy on credit, and it may well be better in the long run to move away from that model. It is precisely the availability of cheap credit, and the limited risks run by the big lenders, that leads to the situation where so many of the poor have to rely on taking credit they have little hope of honouring if things go wrong."
Keep in mind that credit was invented specifically to allow consumers to buy things right away that they would otherwise have to save up for. Industries realized that mass production wouldn't be economically feasible unless either wages significantly increased or some means for paying over time was invented. They didn't want to increase salaries so credit was born.
So transitioning to a non-credit would make for a very hard landing unless significant increases in wages were part of the plan.
When it comes to hiring people, companies always go for the low-hanging fruit even if the fruit is rotten.
Hiring people is always a crap-shoot but there's no shortage of people willing to sell you some snake oil that purports to lessen the risk.
"Maybe the guy who invented this industry will be able to come up with a new idea to revive its sales and move it forward. "
Steve Jobs hasn't invented any industry to my knowledge. Certainly not the home computer industry or the MP3 music player industry.
If you are the primary developer, you can drive yourself, but it's difficult to drive volunteers because you don't have much leverage over them. So I think it's valid to say that it's more of a filtering process than a driving process at least when compared to conventional development.
I don't see how "personal desire" necessarily results in doing more than working for a paycheck. In the real world you have to work 40 hours a week (or more) to pay the bills. Most people can't add another 40 hours to work on an OSS project without getting burned out pretty quick. If you're married and have children, the situation is even more impractical.
The fact is that unless you started your own OSS project, you're probably going to be working to achieve someone else goal rather than your own to a certain extent anyway. It's also true that the fact you work for a paycheck doesn't mean you have no interest in the goals of the company. So in both cases, your compromising to a certain extent.
If you work at a company where requirements and schedule are entrirely defined by the developers, I envy you.
Project managers do a lot more than "review submitted code/content and decide whether it should be included in the production version of the product." They drive the process, not just filter it.
"The fact that this can be done cheaply (both in terms of storage and validation) is a major advance."
The article didn't go into any detail, but I don't see why this tagging data would require a lot of storage in the first place.
Sorry, but your bad argument has already been suggested and disproved. New Coke actually proves my point. A new version was produced despite the fact that people liked the old one fine. Of course, Coca-Cola has produced many coke variations since New Coke failed despite the fact that people liked the original fine.
BTY Coke Classic isn't the same formula as the original Coke (at least in the US). The original Coke used sugar, Coke Classic uses corn syrup.
So what percentage of the movies you saw in the last year were non-commerical (i.e. you didn't have to pay to see them).
You don't care if there are any movies, but it upsets you to think that the movies that you don't care about might use DRM.
"Well, do you necessarily go out and buy a new car of the same model every 2 years because the manufacturer developed a new one?"
Well, OSs aren't much like cars and the interval between XP and Vista is significantly longer than two years, but other than that, great analogy.
In any case, I wasn't expressing an opinion on whether people should upgrade to Vista, I just think doing it in order to "send a message" to MS that XP is fine is pointless and dumb.