From long experience, I can say that there are two things to do which get products out on time:
1) Pare requirements to the absolute minimum. Decide which features are required, and which are nice to have. And forget about the latter. (The engineers will stick some of those in on their own, according to their passions).
2) Keep everyone working in parallel. Ferret out any situations where someone is waiting for something, and eliminate those. And you'll see that in many cases those "waiting" scenarios indicate more serious misunderstandings about who is doing what.
The number of flaws is interesting, I suppose, but even a Vista with no flaws could still suck. In manufacturing, quality is defined by how closely the product meets its design specifications. So you could have a product with "perfect quality" which nobody wants, if the design specs don't match what the market wants.
Maybe Vista's design specs included a slow OS that hogs system memory, intrusive DRM support, a lack of hardware drivers, etc. In that case, God help us if MS achieves a "flawless" release of it.
The devices had visible batteries and wires. During the day their cartoon LEDs were not visible; they only become visible in the dark. The devices were attached to bridges and public buildings. I think that could make a reasonable person suspicious. Not panicky, but suspicious enough for an untrained civilian to call it in, and suspicious enough for police to close a road or bridge until they could figure it out.
The simplest way to use "ajax" is to have the server send a chunk of HTML (a small table, or a paragraph, e.g.) to the browser, where the javascript just sticks it in the page where you want it. You don't need to use XML, JSON, or anything complicated. With the simplest approach, the user is essentially submitting a form inside your page and getting the result right back in the same place, with no parsing involved. I don't know why more people don't take this easy way out -- it substantially lowers the bar for getting started with ajax.
When you are falling out of an airplane, you known you are going to hit the ground eventually. It's inevitable. But whether you live or die depends on whether or not you use a parachute.
Similarly, just because climate change is inevitable, and humankind as a whole will probably eventually adapt, it doesn't mean that we wouldn't be well served to intervene and try to mitigate its effects.
One can try to argue that global warming (or cooling) isn't necessarily bad, and can point to scenarios where people might benefit from the change. But the key fact is that, over thousands of years, people have optimized for current conditions. People who like skiing live near snow, farmers live in areas where their crops grow well, buildings and towns are designed with certain conditions in mind, etc. So pretty much ANY change in the climate is bad, because it will mean that lots of people live in the wrong place or are doing the wrong things for a living. We'll have to spend a lot of resources adapting to the new realities, assuming we can even forecast their end point well.
It's not "warming", it's "instability", that is hard to dismiss.
Technically, even when bartering goods and services, you are legally required to report the imputed value of any compensation you receive as taxable income.
This is ridiculous of course -- but it brings to mind a general government strategy of control: if the government makes everything illegal, and enforce s the laws selectively, it in effect has the ability to do anything it wants to anyone it wants.
You're probably better off without a true meeting of the minds on who does what in exchange for what. If you give away a service, and others give away services, and the value of anything given away doesn't exceed to 10 or $11k annual value, and nothing is a clear payment for anything, it's hard to pin a tax on you.
Hmmm -- maybe the government has constructed a mechanism to encourange people to give assistance to eachother without necessarily getting something in return. Those clever IRS people really are doing the work of the lord.
I agree. For more incentive to reading this great book, note that the author is also the author of the classic Star Trek episode "The Trouble With Tribbles".
From his web site (http://www.gerrold.com/): David Gerrold started writing professionally in 1967. His first sale was "The Trouble with Tribbles" episode of Star Trek. Within five years, he had published seven novels, two books about television production, three anthologies, and a short story collection. He was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards six times in four years. Since 1967, he has published more than forty books. Several of his novels are considered classics, including The Man Who Folded Himself, When HARLIE Was One, and the four books in The War Against The Chtorr.
Has anyone ever tried setting up a programmer's union? My understanding is that a person trying to do so is protected by federal law against his employer firing him just for that reason; it would seem that someone trying to set up a union would be more layoff-immune (at least in the short run) than the average Joe or Josephine.
Slashdot Mirror
From long experience, I can say that there are two things to do which get products out on time: 1) Pare requirements to the absolute minimum. Decide which features are required, and which are nice to have. And forget about the latter. (The engineers will stick some of those in on their own, according to their passions). 2) Keep everyone working in parallel. Ferret out any situations where someone is waiting for something, and eliminate those. And you'll see that in many cases those "waiting" scenarios indicate more serious misunderstandings about who is doing what.
Given the mood of the country, any race in which a Republican wins should be considered suspect.
The number of flaws is interesting, I suppose, but even a Vista with no flaws could still suck. In manufacturing, quality is defined by how closely the product meets its design specifications. So you could have a product with "perfect quality" which nobody wants, if the design specs don't match what the market wants.
Maybe Vista's design specs included a slow OS that hogs system memory, intrusive DRM support, a lack of hardware drivers, etc. In that case, God help us if MS achieves a "flawless" release of it.
The devices had visible batteries and wires. During the day their cartoon LEDs were not visible; they only become visible in the dark. The devices were attached to bridges and public buildings. I think that could make a reasonable person suspicious. Not panicky, but suspicious enough for an untrained civilian to call it in, and suspicious enough for police to close a road or bridge until they could figure it out.
The simplest way to use "ajax" is to have the server send a chunk of HTML (a small table, or a paragraph, e.g.) to the browser, where the javascript just sticks it in the page where you want it. You don't need to use XML, JSON, or anything complicated. With the simplest approach, the user is essentially submitting a form inside your page and getting the result right back in the same place, with no parsing involved. I don't know why more people don't take this easy way out -- it substantially lowers the bar for getting started with ajax.
When you are falling out of an airplane, you known you are going to hit the ground eventually. It's inevitable. But whether you live or die depends on whether or not you use a parachute. Similarly, just because climate change is inevitable, and humankind as a whole will probably eventually adapt, it doesn't mean that we wouldn't be well served to intervene and try to mitigate its effects.
One can try to argue that global warming (or cooling) isn't necessarily bad, and can point to scenarios where people might benefit from the change. But the key fact is that, over thousands of years, people have optimized for current conditions. People who like skiing live near snow, farmers live in areas where their crops grow well, buildings and towns are designed with certain conditions in mind, etc. So pretty much ANY change in the climate is bad, because it will mean that lots of people live in the wrong place or are doing the wrong things for a living. We'll have to spend a lot of resources adapting to the new realities, assuming we can even forecast their end point well.
It's not "warming", it's "instability", that is hard to dismiss.
Technically, even when bartering goods and services, you are legally required to report the imputed value of any compensation you receive as taxable income. This is ridiculous of course -- but it brings to mind a general government strategy of control: if the government makes everything illegal, and enforce s the laws selectively, it in effect has the ability to do anything it wants to anyone it wants. You're probably better off without a true meeting of the minds on who does what in exchange for what. If you give away a service, and others give away services, and the value of anything given away doesn't exceed to 10 or $11k annual value, and nothing is a clear payment for anything, it's hard to pin a tax on you. Hmmm -- maybe the government has constructed a mechanism to encourange people to give assistance to eachother without necessarily getting something in return. Those clever IRS people really are doing the work of the lord.
I agree. For more incentive to reading this great book, note that the author is also the author of the classic Star Trek episode "The Trouble With Tribbles".
From his web site (http://www.gerrold.com/):
David Gerrold started writing professionally in 1967. His first sale was "The Trouble with Tribbles" episode of Star Trek. Within five years, he had published seven novels, two books about television production, three anthologies, and a short story collection. He was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards six times in four years. Since 1967, he has published more than forty books. Several of his novels are considered classics, including The Man Who Folded Himself, When HARLIE Was One, and the four books in The War Against The Chtorr.
etc..
I initiated a switch from AT&T Wireless to T-Mobile 7 days ago, and am still waiting for it to kick in.
Something like this has been available for years on the web at http://www.mockmywords.com/
Has anyone ever tried setting up a programmer's union? My understanding is that a person trying to do so is protected by federal law against his employer firing him just for that reason; it would seem that someone trying to set up a union would be more layoff-immune (at least in the short run) than the average Joe or Josephine.