An end of net neutrality is the best outcome for big businesses. They no longer have to invest in new features and content and can milk their current offerings to the nth degree, same way phone and cable companies do it with their local or regional de facto monopolies.
Net neutrality is not an all or nothing, it needs to be service dependent. If a tweet or an email comes through a few seconds later might not matter much as long as it helps keeping video streams from dropping out. Loading a web page half a second slower is likely not that big of a deal as long as VoIP connections are stable. Making an email as important as a block of a video stream is neutral, but that neutrality does not help anyone. For startups the barrier of entry needs to be as low as it can be, otherwise it shuts the door on innovation.
....there are no accurate requirements or no requirements at all. If you don't tell devs exactly what to build they have a tough time estimating. Even when there are requirements, if there is nothing comparable done recently it is difficult.
Besides that an estimate implies that it is NOT accurate! Anyone who takes estimates as fact is a fool.
Municipal fiber is the fix here. I have no idea why that approach gets so much pushback. Countries like Sweden created their entire Internet infrastructure from municipal fiber networks that were then easy to interconnect. Waiting for big greedy corps to advance service is pointless. Their sole interest is in squeezing out of the existing wires as much as possible without spending anything.
There were rarely any alternatives than provider email. Some independent email providers charged big bucks. The time of "free" email service came only after download speeds increased and there was a market for advertisement.
I have no idea why Verizon picked the corpse of a company like AOL, probably the lowest bidder for the email business. What is more important, Verizon now offers less service in their Internet package and therefore should charge less. So far they refuse. Do we really need to write to Lowell McAdam to make this point? What's next, can only view pages but not submit form data because others do it better?
I went through the transition process and while it is not that difficult to do, they could have documented it better and it still was way too complicated. As annoying were the many crap emails AOL sent since then, but those died down after about a week. I don't know if AOL email service is any better than Verizon's. I use a desktop email client anyway. More features, more powerful, and void of advertising.
Ever thought that your workflow may need improvement? Besides that, this one change probably fixes the issue hundreds of other users had. You are not alone in the world and as far as software goes your lawn is public property.
There may be other reasons. Worked on a UI replacement project (not so much a redesign) because keeping UI tool kit A and have it be compatible with new browser versions would have cost 40,000$ in license fees. Switching to UI tool kit B cost 3,000$ in license fee and a month coding followed by a month testing. Feature wise nothing changed, the look and feel is a bit different. We basically ended up with the exact same product, but saved 37,000$ in license fees. The work of coding and testing was needed either way.
As for point 2: I rather go with a well designed mid 90s UI than most of the modern crap like material design. Hate it as a user.
Mozilla is a special bunch. I wanted to get more involved in their team as a volunteer, but folks like Asa Dotzler and other devs bent over backwards to respond with personal insults to diss my questions. At that point I did not even propose anything because I first needed to understand why features worked the way they did. If they spent as much effort on fixing the UI (essentially rolling it back to how it was in version 3) as they did on insulting me and others Firefox would have a much bigger market share. In all fairness, many other FOSS projects suffer from the same problem. The devs write the apps to satisfy their egos, not to grow user share. The changes are made solely because they found a new interest in the latest fad, not because it actually improves function or usability.
There are exceptions, most notably the folks at Moonchild Productions. I made a few suggestions in the past and they considered some and clearly explained the flaws in others. In a few cases we still disagreed, but I respect their position because they gave several reasons. Overall, they are the most pleasant bunch I ever interacted with in the FOSS world.
I found it to be the other way around. Most non-native speakers are better at grammar as many native speakers, at least in the US. I assume it is because they did not learn English grammar at a US school.
Hamburger, kebab (or kabob if your prefer), and above all the ribbon are the worst UI changes ever. Less wasted space? Can't spare the 20 px for a menu bar? These changes caused users to do more clicks to accomplish the same task as before. With the ribbon it even shape shifts on users and removes any optical reference. Ever tried to change the font properties while editing text inside a table in MSO with ribbon? Worst UX ever...and yet everyone apes this horrible design.
A well crafted and properly structured menu system with keyboard shortcuts is the fastest means to operate a UI.
Maybe documentation and training for the standard commands is missing? Maybe, but I doubt that is the case for sendmail....I know about it existence and I neither code nor use Linux regularly.
Because on a discussion board language is THE tool. If a poster cannot master the tool where else did she or he take shortcuts? Do I think less of a badly written post? Yes. Do I bother writing a comment about the linguistic flaws? No. My comment won't change that...and yes, I may come across as a hypocrite right now.;)
Alternative is to hire an analyst that comes up with ideas and suggestions. User feedback is free product analysis and studies have shown that only a third of people who have a reason to complain actually do. Anyone who goes through the trouble to seek involvement is interested in your app and hasn't dismissed it already. Taking that input not seriously is a huge mistake! Make the users happy, especially when they pay for your salary.
What do you do when there are no requirements or the requirements are one and a half vague bullet points? This is more and more the case. The solution here is to build something and iterate over it based on user feedback. That is difficult when dismissing user feedback.
At times it is also much easier to blame an inanimate object like the software for procedural or management failures. I come across this often, users do not operate the system properly, import bad data, have high turnover and no budget for training...and in the end it is the stupid software's fault that folks do not show up for work on time.
Often times devs don't care what QA or internal resources have to say. I doubt that having irate customers is the better option. Devs should do customer support duty at least once a month. Nothing straightens out a dev as a complaining customer does. It also helps with understanding how customers use the app.
In case of Apple, their design decisions are driven by creating a walled garden, an ecosystem that is under their control. The sole purpose is to steer user streams to more Apple products and services for the sake of getting the most return out of every sale. The motive here is corporate greed and not user experience.
Do you know how these added features end up in most software? There are one or two potential customers asking for it and the business has to make a decision: either tell them no and not make the sale or add the feature and collect a check. Guess what business tend to do in 99.999% of the time!
Use old coal mine shafts for power storage. Big tank at the top, big tank at the bottom, and a turbine between. Pump water back up when power consumption is low or there is excess of power. Most of the infrastructure is already in place at the mines plus skilled labor to operate such a plant.
Agreed! It all depends on how quickly the team can respond to failure. If a flaw is noticed by tests right away your can fix it and push a new build within minutes (any build should not take longer than 10 minutes!). CI also does not mean deploying it instantly to all users. The point of CI is to run your full set of tests on a regular basis rather than wait until a week before release date. You may be thinking of continuous deployment where any change that passed QA gets pushed to all users. That is also an option. Etsy deploys to production every 10 minutes, Amazon does it on average every 11 seconds. Key here is to detect and fix any issues quickly. If you one of the devs who think they ever only need to work on new features rather than fix bugs then neither CI nor CD is for you.
Sorry...posted as AC twice in this thread because/. can't keep a login active. Don't dismiss AC posts. I now logged in and a made up user name shows...does that make any difference? You still have no clue who I am.
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An end of net neutrality is the best outcome for big businesses. They no longer have to invest in new features and content and can milk their current offerings to the nth degree, same way phone and cable companies do it with their local or regional de facto monopolies. Net neutrality is not an all or nothing, it needs to be service dependent. If a tweet or an email comes through a few seconds later might not matter much as long as it helps keeping video streams from dropping out. Loading a web page half a second slower is likely not that big of a deal as long as VoIP connections are stable. Making an email as important as a block of a video stream is neutral, but that neutrality does not help anyone. For startups the barrier of entry needs to be as low as it can be, otherwise it shuts the door on innovation.
....there are no accurate requirements or no requirements at all. If you don't tell devs exactly what to build they have a tough time estimating. Even when there are requirements, if there is nothing comparable done recently it is difficult. Besides that an estimate implies that it is NOT accurate! Anyone who takes estimates as fact is a fool.
Municipal fiber is the fix here. I have no idea why that approach gets so much pushback. Countries like Sweden created their entire Internet infrastructure from municipal fiber networks that were then easy to interconnect. Waiting for big greedy corps to advance service is pointless. Their sole interest is in squeezing out of the existing wires as much as possible without spending anything.
Any carrier that offers unlimited 3G data for less than 20$/month per line.
Like everybody else my age.
There were rarely any alternatives than provider email. Some independent email providers charged big bucks. The time of "free" email service came only after download speeds increased and there was a market for advertisement.
Look at GMX. Use it as one email platform for 20 years now and never had any issues.
I have no idea why Verizon picked the corpse of a company like AOL, probably the lowest bidder for the email business. What is more important, Verizon now offers less service in their Internet package and therefore should charge less. So far they refuse. Do we really need to write to Lowell McAdam to make this point? What's next, can only view pages but not submit form data because others do it better? I went through the transition process and while it is not that difficult to do, they could have documented it better and it still was way too complicated. As annoying were the many crap emails AOL sent since then, but those died down after about a week. I don't know if AOL email service is any better than Verizon's. I use a desktop email client anyway. More features, more powerful, and void of advertising.
Ever thought that your workflow may need improvement? Besides that, this one change probably fixes the issue hundreds of other users had. You are not alone in the world and as far as software goes your lawn is public property.
Mobile apps are expected to have a new version at least once a month...otherwise the app is labeled abandonware.
There may be other reasons. Worked on a UI replacement project (not so much a redesign) because keeping UI tool kit A and have it be compatible with new browser versions would have cost 40,000$ in license fees. Switching to UI tool kit B cost 3,000$ in license fee and a month coding followed by a month testing. Feature wise nothing changed, the look and feel is a bit different. We basically ended up with the exact same product, but saved 37,000$ in license fees. The work of coding and testing was needed either way. As for point 2: I rather go with a well designed mid 90s UI than most of the modern crap like material design. Hate it as a user.
Mozilla is a special bunch. I wanted to get more involved in their team as a volunteer, but folks like Asa Dotzler and other devs bent over backwards to respond with personal insults to diss my questions. At that point I did not even propose anything because I first needed to understand why features worked the way they did. If they spent as much effort on fixing the UI (essentially rolling it back to how it was in version 3) as they did on insulting me and others Firefox would have a much bigger market share. In all fairness, many other FOSS projects suffer from the same problem. The devs write the apps to satisfy their egos, not to grow user share. The changes are made solely because they found a new interest in the latest fad, not because it actually improves function or usability. There are exceptions, most notably the folks at Moonchild Productions. I made a few suggestions in the past and they considered some and clearly explained the flaws in others. In a few cases we still disagreed, but I respect their position because they gave several reasons. Overall, they are the most pleasant bunch I ever interacted with in the FOSS world.
I found it to be the other way around. Most non-native speakers are better at grammar as many native speakers, at least in the US. I assume it is because they did not learn English grammar at a US school.
Hamburger, kebab (or kabob if your prefer), and above all the ribbon are the worst UI changes ever. Less wasted space? Can't spare the 20 px for a menu bar? These changes caused users to do more clicks to accomplish the same task as before. With the ribbon it even shape shifts on users and removes any optical reference. Ever tried to change the font properties while editing text inside a table in MSO with ribbon? Worst UX ever...and yet everyone apes this horrible design. A well crafted and properly structured menu system with keyboard shortcuts is the fastest means to operate a UI.
"Unnecessary bugs" - Are you suggesting that there are necessary bugs? "Unnecessary bugs" is like white mustang, free gift, or ATM machine.
Maybe documentation and training for the standard commands is missing? Maybe, but I doubt that is the case for sendmail....I know about it existence and I neither code nor use Linux regularly.
Because on a discussion board language is THE tool. If a poster cannot master the tool where else did she or he take shortcuts? Do I think less of a badly written post? Yes. Do I bother writing a comment about the linguistic flaws? No. My comment won't change that...and yes, I may come across as a hypocrite right now. ;)
Alternative is to hire an analyst that comes up with ideas and suggestions. User feedback is free product analysis and studies have shown that only a third of people who have a reason to complain actually do. Anyone who goes through the trouble to seek involvement is interested in your app and hasn't dismissed it already. Taking that input not seriously is a huge mistake! Make the users happy, especially when they pay for your salary.
What do you do when there are no requirements or the requirements are one and a half vague bullet points? This is more and more the case. The solution here is to build something and iterate over it based on user feedback. That is difficult when dismissing user feedback.
At times it is also much easier to blame an inanimate object like the software for procedural or management failures. I come across this often, users do not operate the system properly, import bad data, have high turnover and no budget for training...and in the end it is the stupid software's fault that folks do not show up for work on time.
Often times devs don't care what QA or internal resources have to say. I doubt that having irate customers is the better option. Devs should do customer support duty at least once a month. Nothing straightens out a dev as a complaining customer does. It also helps with understanding how customers use the app. In case of Apple, their design decisions are driven by creating a walled garden, an ecosystem that is under their control. The sole purpose is to steer user streams to more Apple products and services for the sake of getting the most return out of every sale. The motive here is corporate greed and not user experience.
Do you know how these added features end up in most software? There are one or two potential customers asking for it and the business has to make a decision: either tell them no and not make the sale or add the feature and collect a check. Guess what business tend to do in 99.999% of the time!
Use old coal mine shafts for power storage. Big tank at the top, big tank at the bottom, and a turbine between. Pump water back up when power consumption is low or there is excess of power. Most of the infrastructure is already in place at the mines plus skilled labor to operate such a plant.
Agreed! It all depends on how quickly the team can respond to failure. If a flaw is noticed by tests right away your can fix it and push a new build within minutes (any build should not take longer than 10 minutes!). CI also does not mean deploying it instantly to all users. The point of CI is to run your full set of tests on a regular basis rather than wait until a week before release date. You may be thinking of continuous deployment where any change that passed QA gets pushed to all users. That is also an option. Etsy deploys to production every 10 minutes, Amazon does it on average every 11 seconds. Key here is to detect and fix any issues quickly. If you one of the devs who think they ever only need to work on new features rather than fix bugs then neither CI nor CD is for you.
Sorry...posted as AC twice in this thread because /. can't keep a login active. Don't dismiss AC posts. I now logged in and a made up user name shows...does that make any difference? You still have no clue who I am.