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User: booch

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Comments · 1,274

  1. Re:Paver Stones on the Road to Single-Payer on Medical Costs Bankrupt Patients; It's the Computer's Fault · · Score: 1

    At least I have control over my elected officials. I have no control over the people running my insurance company.

    The whole idea of profiting from denying healthcare is abhorrent. The government-run programs at least remove most of that.

    But of course, this is just a red herring -- ObamaCare doesn't actually remove this function (or profits, except for profits over 20%) from the insurance companies.

  2. Re:A cynic's view on Medical Costs Bankrupt Patients; It's the Computer's Fault · · Score: 1

    George W Bush: started 2 wars on false pretenses

    While I agree that W and Cheney are war criminals (failing to treat POWs as required by the Geneva Conventions), I'm failing to come up with a 2nd war started on false pretenses. Iraq is obvious. But the other major war -- Afghanistan -- was in retaliation for harboring the 9/11 terrorists. I have no problem with having gone into that war. I actually had a problem with the war in Iraq getting in the way of eradicating the terrorists in Afghanistan. (Both of which lead the creation of more terrorists than we eliminated.)

    Can you please explain the 2nd war started on false pretenses?

  3. Re:Eh on Medical Costs Bankrupt Patients; It's the Computer's Fault · · Score: 1

    Generally speaking, the NHS is fantastic when anything life-threatening happens, but after care can be crap

    That's pretty much the situation in the private healthcare market in the USA as well. Doctors are good at immediate needs, but not so good at managing longer-term health issues. They typically just put you on medications for anything long term.

  4. Re:Real prices vs. fantasy prices on Elon Musk's 'Hyperloop': More Details Revealed · · Score: 1

    I'd bet they are good +/- 50% of the figures he is quoting. He did a pretty good job of coming up with a price on the Falcon 1/5 as well as the Tesla Roadster back when people like you were saying he was a nut case that didn't have a clue what he was doing with those vehicles.

    The Tesla Roadster was supposed to cost $80k, but ended up at about $110k. So about a 40% cost overrun on that.

  5. Re:very unfeasible on Elon Musk's 'Hyperloop': More Details Revealed · · Score: 1

    I suspect that they'd outlaw trains in this country before outlawing guns.

  6. Re:I-75....in California?!?!? on Elon Musk's 'Hyperloop': More Details Revealed · · Score: 1

    If only there was some kind of map that would show where highways go.

  7. Re:I-75? on Elon Musk's 'Hyperloop': More Details Revealed · · Score: 1

    BART ... transbay tube ... was the only direct link to the east bay after Loma Prieta because the Bay Bridge broke.

    Uh, the San Mateo bridge is a direct link to the East Bay. Maybe out of the way for many, but still useful for a lot of folks. The Dumbarton bridge is also a direct link, but even less useful for most.

  8. Re:I-75? on Elon Musk's 'Hyperloop': More Details Revealed · · Score: 1

    Nice one! Took me a second to realize that you were referring to the comment about the state with the most earthquakes.

  9. Re:Back up... Why would PBS write an app? on Why PBS Won't Do Android · · Score: 1

    Why would PBS write an app? Not trying to be snarky, I just have no idea why a producer of TV programming would make one. Is it for showing TV schedules?

    It's an app. You've got to write apps.

    It's a bypass. You've got to build bypasses!

  10. Re:Bush on Google Pressure Cookers and Backpacks: Get a Visit From the Feds · · Score: 1

    I've heard this argument before, and I'm willing to give it some credence.

    But what I don't understand is how it would help. The parties would still control the state houses, and they'd be even more likely to elect their cronies into the Senate than happens now. How does that help?

  11. Re:Bush on Google Pressure Cookers and Backpacks: Get a Visit From the Feds · · Score: 1

    If we hadn't had a standing army, would Japan have attacked?

    To have a better location for a base in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, for one. To gain more land, for another.

  12. Re:Unacceptable on Cab Hailing Service Uber Collected Just $9M of Fares During 15 Months In Boston · · Score: 1

    Alternate story title: Startup fails to take over 100% of market immediately

  13. Re:Divide and Conquer on Obama Praises Amazon At One of Its Controversial Warehouses · · Score: 1

    Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence.

    Besides, it doesn't make sense for the 1% to want to live in a 3rd World country. For one, if they wanted that, they could go do that now, and live even higher on the hog proportionate to their neighbors, while still extracting rent here in the US. I'm sure they want to increase their wealth, even potentially at the expense of others, but really, who doesn't.

    But your point that the other 99% haven't learned the lessons is pretty valid, as is the fact that those in power are helping the 1% at the expense of the 99%, whether intentionally or through incompetence.

  14. Re:The thing about repeating the past on Remember the Computer Science Past Or Be Condemned To Repeat It? · · Score: 1

    Parody? I think you've chosen the wrong side of Poe's law here.

  15. Re:Public resignation? on Google Engineer Wins NSA Award, Then Says NSA Should Be Abolished · · Score: 1

    One of the founding principles of the USA was that we would not punish the families of wrongdoers. (It's a part of Section 9, Article 1 -- no bill of attainder.)

    This is one of the principles that has been kept pretty well. The US government may have become much more tyrannical in other areas, but this is one thing they've not done much of. Any of it that has been done has been limited and very covert. I can't think of any significant cases.

    So I wouldn't worry too much about the US government punishing your family for something you've done. At least not yet.

  16. Re:Multi-Monitor Support in 2013?!? on Ask Slashdot: Hardware Accelerated Multi-Monitor Support In Linux? · · Score: 1

    You could pre-render the page, compress it, then store that to SD. That'd probably be significantly faster than storing the full bitmap to slow storage, even with the compress/decompress overhead.

  17. Re:Azure on Microsoft Has 1 Million Servers. So What? · · Score: 1

    Hmm, excellent analysis. I'm actually surprised that nobody else pointed that out.

  18. Re:wtf? on Microsoft Has 1 Million Servers. So What? · · Score: 1

    So does anyone on /. actually contribute to a conversation anymore?

    No wonder none of my coworkers come here anymore.

    Nobody comes here any more -- it's too crowded.

  19. Re:How much of that information is useful on Microsoft Has 1 Million Servers. So What? · · Score: 1

    Current estimates are that Google has about 2 million servers.

  20. Agile has answers on Ask Slashdot: Development Requirements Change But Deadlines Do Not? · · Score: 1

    Agile actually has some answers to these problems.

    I think the first problem you need to work on is code quality. Nothing should get released that has not been thoroughly tested. There should be no compromise on this. You're already seeing the consequences -- things don't work, developers get blamed, and nobody is happy.

    Next, realize that deadlines are bullshit -- especially in larger companies. I've found that arbitrary dates are chosen, and then they're treated like they've been set in stone. The Agile solution is for everything to be put in priority order. Always work on whatever is most important. Or put another way, work on whatever will provide the most business value. Management should be the final arbiters of what's most valuable/important. Once you start working this way (or even just realize that deadlines are made up), your stress level will go down significantly.

    Being Agile means being able to adapt to reality. (I think that's Agile's main reason for success -- it realizes such things like the fact that we're terrible at estimating and works with that reality.) Your reality seems to be that people want to re-prioritize frequently and get features turned around quickly. So change your process to something that can do that. Stop doing iteration planning, since you don't know what you'll need that far ahead of time. Instead, allow stories to be re-prioritized until the developers start on them. And consider doing continuous deployments.

    Alternatively, factor in the amount of extra work that gets added to every iteration, and leave that much extra time. This should actually already be factored in to your velocity, because velocity for iterations is defined by the amount of stories (or story points) completed within the iteration -- but only for stories that were discussed during the iteration planning. So for example, if you had 20 stories defined at planning, and 8 stories were added, but you only got 12 of the original stories and 5 of the added stories done by the original end of the iteration, then your velocity (what you can expect to accomplish each iteration) would be 12 stories.

    Another reality that Agile accepts is that you can either get everything you want when it's ready, or whatever is ready whenever you want. Most shops tend to go with fixed time periods, but a lot are starting to move to continuous deployment. If you go with fixed time periods, they need to be fixed. If something misses the deadline for this iteration, it has to wait until the next. If things were correctly prioritized and your iterations are short enough, this should not be too big of an issue. If you go with something like continuous deployment, people will get what they want quicker, but will have to deal with more uncertainty about when they'll get it.

    Of course, Agile can't solve every problem. If management is unwilling to prioritize things, or people are unwilling to deal with the reality of what can be accomplished in the given time, then you'll have to deal with those in the same way as in any situation. Which probably means learning to set expectations better, playing office politics, or finding another job.

  21. Re:what? on City-Sized Ice Shelf Breaks Free Of Antarctica · · Score: 1

    Yeah, obviously they should have said the "northern" part of Antarctica.

  22. Re:Text, but why? on Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Store Data In Hard Copy? · · Score: 1

    While it's true that paper will ignite up at 424.4F (218C) it starts to yellow and char starting down at 302F (150C).

    Wait, 424F? I thought it was 451F. I want my money back.

  23. Re:But where are the pay phones? on Motorola Is Listening · · Score: 1

    Easy, just use Google Maps to find the nearest pay phone.

    Oh....

  24. Re:Average programmers writing parallel code on Things That Scare the Bejeezus Out of Programmers · · Score: 1

    That computing problem would be scary in itself. But given that CAN and LIN buses are used in automobiles, it's really scary, because causing a system failure in a car could lead to loss of life.

  25. Re:One class, 16000 lines, on Things That Scare the Bejeezus Out of Programmers · · Score: 1

    I once had a PHP file that I inherited that was 6000 lines long. It had 0 functions in it -- everything was linear, with if statements testing for modes, sub-modes, and sub-sub-modes. Poor Eclipse couldn't parse that much code without any structure.

    Also, the "brilliant" programmer used a single MySQL table, using it as a key-value store for every type of data in the application.