I'm not saying that design documentation is not useful or needed, but it should be regarded as the first draft of the final product and not a bible. Instead of trying to pin point every detail down on the design phase, try to document the core functionality and the purpose of the system. Then in the implementation phase it's essential to have a product owner,or owners if it's a very large and complicated system, that understand the functionality and take responsibility of the use cases on both the buyers side and on the suppliers side. This way the details can be figured out while both the project teams and the customers understanding of the project increases.
We have implemented this typoe of procedure in several projects in the sofware company where we work and we have been very pleased with the results.
Skopje and Ouagadougou are the capitals of Macedonia and Burkina Faso
The Greeks actually insist that Macedonia should be called Skopje, since in their view Macedonia is the northern province of Greece (with Thessaloniki as the capital). To the Greeks it is a thouchy issue, since Alexander the Great was actually originally the king of Macedonia..
I'm sick and tired of the current trend of evaluating all human endeavors in economic terms. Free markets and capitalism are not the culmination of western culture and not the final purpose of the Enlightenment (which, as the inspiration for the French and the U.S. revolutions is the God father of the current western democracies). Who cares if open source software is pro-capitalistic or not. What is much more important is the fact that it is an manifestation of a much more important tradition of the Enlightenment - freedom of expression.
You're right: concept of an armed populace as a crime deterrant is not logically self-contradictory.
Using Europe and Japan as examples of places where there is much less crime, and as it happens much stricter gun laws and less guns than in the U.S. and the proposing that the solution to the U.S. crime problem is more guns is, well, atleast a little strange.
Social Security
Replace the fraudulent, bankrupt Social Security system with a private, voluntary system.
This is just the most silly thing I have ever heard. The people in need of social security are the ones that could never afford a private system and vice versa.
I'm sorry, but at least this guys views on crime are self-contradictory.
First he states that the crime rate in U.S. is much higher than in Europe or Japan and that "our children are even gunned down in their schools, often by other students" then his solution is more guns? I simply don't get it.
I'm in charge of setting up a new office for my company. I want to make the place as worker friendly as possible, comfortable enough that long hours don't seem like banishment to a beige hell.
How about creating an atmosphere where people don't feel obliged to stay in the office for more than an average of eight hours per day.
I can't say I'm an expert on american office culture, but I used to work for a large global consulting company which brought a group of american consultants into one specific project. The americans spent endless hours in the office, but in general didn't seem to be any more productive than their European coworkers who usually limited their working hours to eight or nine per day. The extra hours just seem to go to general surfing and "hanging around" not any productive work..
BTW. I would rather have USA allied with a civilized and democratic even if imperfect nation like Israel than with bunch medieval warlords like Arafat..
EU has not allied itself with Arafat, but gives foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority, which is in dire need of economic aid. EU has good relations with the state of Israel and e.g. grants Israel special status on trading issues. Quoting from the EU website:
The EU-Israel Association Agreement is the main agreement governing relations between Israel and the EU. It is much more than just a free trade agreement and enables ongoing dialogue and cooperation between Israel and the EU in a wide variety of fields.
There are some issues where the Israel and EU views differ, e.g. EU has protested current Israel practice of labelling products produced in the occupied territories as "made in Israel" but in general the foreign and trade relations are good with trade with EU consisting 40% of Israel's imports and 30% of exports.
In order to reach a sustainable solution in the ongoing Middle-East conflict foreign powers, in my view, should not try to ally themselves with either side but to try to look at the issues fairly and support the warring sides to reach a consensus based on the UN security council's resolutions.
How does having the UN approval sanction anything? The United Nations is a collection of crackpot third world dictatorships. The Sudan on the Human Rights Commission? I think not...
..After all, it can be argued that us Americans are having to do "clean up" jobs in the various parts of the world that your countries ruled and then abandoned when imperialism fell out of fashion.
Well, I'm ready to agree that UN is far from perfect institution, but it's still better than having the worlds only superpower unilateraly doing pretty much what it wants, especially so when the past record of USA military interventions is not so altruistic as you would like it to seem.
And when it comes to Sudan in the Human Rights Commission, it could also be argued that USA should not be there either, after all USA is one of the handfull of countries who have NOT ratified the convention on rigths of children... which makes your assesment on the human rights commission's members..hypocritical.
They had no problem with US supporting various wars that were beneficial to Europeans (ww2, cold war protection, Balkan crisis of the late 90s).
Nice to know that having good relations with the likes of Saddam is viewed more important than having good relations with USA.
I understand people might disagree about ways to remove/contain a dangerous dictator but to completely turn this issue into US hate-fest is something completely different.
Europeans do not have anything against legal, UN sanctioned military action, especially for humanitarian reasons. Europeans, however, do have something against unlawful, unilateral military action regardles if the party in question happens to be dictatorial Iraq under Saddams rule (First Gulf War) or a democratic state (slowly turning into a theocracy/police state) of US of A under Bush administration.
This maybe be true in some countries, but there are different views on this subject. Eg. in many European countries it's illegal for the employer to open and read employees (personal) emails. Electronic mail is viewed to fall under the same kind of privacy as conventional mail.
"This also has troublesome implications [for employers] monitoring of email and other forms of electronic communications."
This is probably the least troublesome aspect of this particular issue. Employers should not be allowed to track peoples personal communications in any way.
I think that the root of the problem is that many people who are not IT professionals are thought only how to use spreansheets (MS Excel) and word processors (MS Word) in college/university. Since their "toolkit" is so limited, they tend to do all possible tasks using those programs, even if they are not the best possible choices. I currently work in technology solutions branch one of the big consulting companies, and you can't belive what the business major managers use Excel here for.
So far I have seen Excell used for issue mangement, system requirement repository, time tracking, time estimation, code dependency tracking, system reference data and configuration data repository,... ..and in 99% of the cases the spreadsheets don't even use the SUM function.
2. News -- Nearly a joke at this point. I cringe at the thought of watching any TV news and do so at this point only when I don't have control of the remote. (Normally I still have control of my feet luckily and proceed to leave the room at that point.)
I'm not intentionally trying to start a Europe vs. USA rant here, but I have to say that when I have been in places where I can watch american channels, I have been really suprised on the poor the news generally seem to be in the major networks. Even CNN, which used to be a good news channel has turned to an infortainment channel. Fox network was absolutely horrific. The news anchors were horribly biased and e.g. made highly stupid and questionable jokes on several different UN officials including Hans Blix (who after all was just trying to do his job). Luckily there is a widely spread, english speeking alternative.
On the other hand, I really question the need for a swahili spell-checker at all. Pronunciation is so consistant that if you can say it, you can spell it.
I don't think that the only usefor a spell-checker is to "check" how a word is spelled if you don't know it, people also make mistakes when they type and it is nice to have a tool to spot those also.
You probably mean indo-european language family (French, English, German et cetera) not european languages. For example, Finnish and Estonian (which belong to the Fenno-Ugrian language family) have a pretty complex verb derivation rules.
Well, I think a generally good way to handle any budget (personal or governmental) is to try to spend as much (or less) as you receive money as income. Reducing income (= high tax breaks) while increasing spending is not very sustainable..
"Steve Balmer commented, that the fine imposed by the EU is completely unreasonble, considering that you can buy a president in the US with much less.".
If Europeans think Microsoft is unfair with their products, there is an easier solution that levying fines upon the company: stop buying the product.
..as many European governments and institutions have allready done (e.g. the city of Munich). However, changing the whole IT infrastructure of hundreds or thousands of companies, governmental institutions and organizations is not easily or quickly done.
On the other hand, if the Nation of Europe's government wins out with this fine then what Bill ought do is be be like John Galt and close down every European operation plus terminate all Microsoft exports to Europe.
..and this will never happen, since around 40% of Microsofts net revenues comes from Europe and Microsofts shareholders would probably not be very happy if that revenue would be lost. Furthermore, it would probably be a god send to all Microsofts competitors (Linux distros and Apple) since the revenue previously fattening MS's pockets would go to them.
On the other hand, if Microsoft is as unfair as the Europeans seem to think that they are then they should be able to fare just fine without Microsoft.
This is not an intentional troll, but I'm a bit surprised with the attitude expressed in several of the post on this subject mostly from people in the US. The view seems to be that EU has no right to fine Microsoft for violating the EU anti-monopoly laws, since MS is an american corporation. However, if MS wants to do business in EU (which it definately does, as expressed above) it has to play by the European rules. For example, the americans would probably be quite upset if a dutch company would start selling cannabis in the US and would state that the americans have no right to punish it for it's actions since it's not an american corporation.
The practice of medicine is an human endevour, and as such errors are bound to occur (just like there is no bug-free software) and things can go wrong even if the doctor does not make any obvious mistakes when treating the patient. Because of this having the compensation to the patients to be based on malpractice trials is a Bad Thing.
Because of this, few years back, the patience insurance in Finland was renowated in such way that patients can get compensated for malpractices and complications that occur during their care without any actual wrong doing by the doctor being proved.
Of course, if doctors do things intentionally wrong or are criminally neglicent, they can be held responsible in the courts, but this rarely happens.
I've wondered for a long time, if there is anything less useful in the world than all the eleventythousand personal homepages that everyone on the net seems to be doing. Millions of pages, where people want to share their hobbies and names of their family members..
Thus far I have found one (1) use for these pages: finding the email address for someone. Unfortunately, lately because of the spam pandemic, even that function is dissapearing since people don't want to out their email addresses to public internet.
Personally I think that when I have become interesting enough to have a personal homepage, someone else will do it for me:)
..but I do belive that either PJ or New Line though that it was impossible to make a movie that would have mass appeal without an romantic storyline in it.. In the books Arwen basically *does* nothing (e.g. the elf who rode Frodo to Rivendell was not Arwen in the book):) And I'm not complaining, the Arwen/Aragorn storyline was tastefully done and the solution of keeping it alive through TT was pretty successful. Atleast it was better than one of the considered options, in where Arwen and Aragorn met when Arwen came to Helms Deep along with the elf troops to fight Sarumans army.
Besides Eowyn, the only female character who has a "major" role in the movie is Galandriel
Why do you think Peter Jackson/New Line Cinema put more emphasis on the Aragorn/Arwen love story than Tolkien (in the book, story was only added as an appendix in the end of the ROTK)?
Slashdot Mirror
We have implemented this typoe of procedure in several projects in the sofware company where we work and we have been very pleased with the results.
The Greeks actually insist that Macedonia should be called Skopje, since in their view Macedonia is the northern province of Greece (with Thessaloniki as the capital). To the Greeks it is a thouchy issue, since Alexander the Great was actually originally the king of Macedonia..
I'm sick and tired of the current trend of evaluating all human endeavors in economic terms. Free markets and capitalism are not the culmination of western culture and not the final purpose of the Enlightenment (which, as the inspiration for the French and the U.S. revolutions is the God father of the current western democracies). Who cares if open source software is pro-capitalistic or not. What is much more important is the fact that it is an manifestation of a much more important tradition of the Enlightenment - freedom of expression.
Using Europe and Japan as examples of places where there is much less crime, and as it happens much stricter gun laws and less guns than in the U.S. and the proposing that the solution to the U.S. crime problem is more guns is, well, atleast a little strange.
Social Security Replace the fraudulent, bankrupt Social Security system with a private, voluntary system. This is just the most silly thing I have ever heard. The people in need of social security are the ones that could never afford a private system and vice versa.
First he states that the crime rate in U.S. is much higher than in Europe or Japan and that "our children are even gunned down in their schools, often by other students" then his solution is more guns? I simply don't get it.
How about creating an atmosphere where people don't feel obliged to stay in the office for more than an average of eight hours per day.
I can't say I'm an expert on american office culture, but I used to work for a large global consulting company which brought a group of american consultants into one specific project. The americans spent endless hours in the office, but in general didn't seem to be any more productive than their European coworkers who usually limited their working hours to eight or nine per day. The extra hours just seem to go to general surfing and "hanging around" not any productive work..
EU has not allied itself with Arafat, but gives foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority, which is in dire need of economic aid. EU has good relations with the state of Israel and e.g. grants Israel special status on trading issues. Quoting from the EU website:
There are some issues where the Israel and EU views differ, e.g. EU has protested current Israel practice of labelling products produced in the occupied territories as "made in Israel" but in general the foreign and trade relations are good with trade with EU consisting 40% of Israel's imports and 30% of exports.In order to reach a sustainable solution in the ongoing Middle-East conflict foreign powers, in my view, should not try to ally themselves with either side but to try to look at the issues fairly and support the warring sides to reach a consensus based on the UN security council's resolutions.
Well, I'm ready to agree that UN is far from perfect institution, but it's still better than having the worlds only superpower unilateraly doing pretty much what it wants, especially so when the past record of USA military interventions is not so altruistic as you would like it to seem. And when it comes to Sudan in the Human Rights Commission, it could also be argued that USA should not be there either, after all USA is one of the handfull of countries who have NOT ratified the convention on rigths of children... which makes your assesment on the human rights commission's members..hypocritical.
Europeans do not have anything against legal, UN sanctioned military action, especially for humanitarian reasons. Europeans, however, do have something against unlawful, unilateral military action regardles if the party in question happens to be dictatorial Iraq under Saddams rule (First Gulf War) or a democratic state (slowly turning into a theocracy/police state) of US of A under Bush administration.
This maybe be true in some countries, but there are different views on this subject. Eg. in many European countries it's illegal for the employer to open and read employees (personal) emails. Electronic mail is viewed to fall under the same kind of privacy as conventional mail.
This is probably the least troublesome aspect of this particular issue. Employers should not be allowed to track peoples personal communications in any way.
So far I have seen Excell used for issue mangement, system requirement repository, time tracking, time estimation, code dependency tracking, system reference data and configuration data repository, ...
..and in 99% of the cases the spreadsheets don't even use the SUM function.
I'm not intentionally trying to start a Europe vs. USA rant here, but I have to say that when I have been in places where I can watch american channels, I have been really suprised on the poor the news generally seem to be in the major networks. Even CNN, which used to be a good news channel has turned to an infortainment channel. Fox network was absolutely horrific. The news anchors were horribly biased and e.g. made highly stupid and questionable jokes on several different UN officials including Hans Blix (who after all was just trying to do his job). Luckily there is a widely spread, english speeking alternative.
I don't think that the only usefor a spell-checker is to "check" how a word is spelled if you don't know it, people also make mistakes when they type and it is nice to have a tool to spot those also.
Ok, so I'm nitpicking, so shoot me :)
Well, I think a generally good way to handle any budget (personal or governmental) is to try to spend as much (or less) as you receive money as income. Reducing income (= high tax breaks) while increasing spending is not very sustainable..
It goes to the EU budget to be used the European Comission and European parliament choses.
"Steve Balmer commented, that the fine imposed by the EU is completely unreasonble, considering that you can buy a president in the US with much less.".
On the other hand, if the Nation of Europe's government wins out with this fine then what Bill ought do is be be like John Galt and close down every European operation plus terminate all Microsoft exports to Europe.
On the other hand, if Microsoft is as unfair as the Europeans seem to think that they are then they should be able to fare just fine without Microsoft.
This is not an intentional troll, but I'm a bit surprised with the attitude expressed in several of the post on this subject mostly from people in the US. The view seems to be that EU has no right to fine Microsoft for violating the EU anti-monopoly laws, since MS is an american corporation. However, if MS wants to do business in EU (which it definately does, as expressed above) it has to play by the European rules. For example, the americans would probably be quite upset if a dutch company would start selling cannabis in the US and would state that the americans have no right to punish it for it's actions since it's not an american corporation.
Because of this, few years back, the patience insurance in Finland was renowated in such way that patients can get compensated for malpractices and complications that occur during their care without any actual wrong doing by the doctor being proved.
Of course, if doctors do things intentionally wrong or are criminally neglicent, they can be held responsible in the courts, but this rarely happens.
Thus far I have found one (1) use for these pages: finding the email address for someone. Unfortunately, lately because of the spam pandemic, even that function is dissapearing since people don't want to out their email addresses to public internet.
Personally I think that when I have become interesting enough to have a personal homepage, someone else will do it for me :)
Since when have we started to take advice in physics from economists? :)
Besides Eowyn, the only female character who has a "major" role in the movie is Galandriel
Why do you think Peter Jackson/New Line Cinema put more emphasis on the Aragorn/Arwen love story than Tolkien (in the book, story was only added as an appendix in the end of the ROTK)?