Here is an iPhone user who hates the design. Not the design of the phone itself but of the service plan. It turns out that the iPhone sucks if you don't live in the U.S.
Good advice. Mod parent up. From a technology perspective, a Version Control System, Test Driven Development, and Continuous Integration can go a long way towards improving quality. If the OP is in a MSFT shop, then you are most probably stuck with VSS or TFS. VSS is file based so it is not very good for distributed development. You will need to enhance VSS with SoS if you have remote developers. TFS doesn't have that problem and also has support for TDD's unit testing. If the OP is willing to use OSS, then there are plenty of good options available. There is plenty of good advice here as to OSS VCS. There are various unit testing frameworks for Java,.NET, Ruby, PHP, C++, you name it. Also, check out Cruise Control for Continuous Integration.
Technology alone cannot solve quality issues, however. Changes in methodology, process, and even corporate culture may also be needed. Take a look at my site for more advice on that.
You're right. The value proposition that newspapers bring is the investigative reporting. That is why the online presence of a newspaper shouldn't be powered by wordpress.
Any newspaper that wants to get their online presence right just needs to study the NY Times. It's really all about the economics of distribution. Column inches in a paper is expensive. Disk space on a web server is cheap. Use the web site as a searchable archive for all content but run ads on the site to encourage users to subscribe to the print edition. Also give away banner ads as an incentive to companies to advertise in the print edition.
The same holds true for broadcast media and some companies such as NPR and CBS are finally boarding that clue train.
I certainly don't agree with point 2. Dictionaries holding entries of different types is not my idea of a good design. When you can't get around it, then may I suggest polymorphism?
Object creation can be fairly complicated, especially in highly OO systems. There are fairly well documented ways of dealing with the complexity of object creation; however, they all boil down to using the new command in a method separate from where the resulting object will get used. Over time, new functionality drives additional layerings and refactorings in the code. Pretty soon it's not so easy to make sure your news all have deletes. This is why garbage collection is so popular.
Not all OSS coders are that way. Put me to the test. Contribute to my project and see what I do with it. I'll bet that you will find it to be more along the lines of "thanks for the creative and the advice which I will get to work incorporating into the code" a lot more than "patches welcome."
What you are describing is what I call old school usability testing. The problem? Testing with just one person isn't statistically relevant. You have to test with large numbers of people in order to get any accuracy. This gets very expensive.
These kind of testers didn't pay for the software. So their tolerance is going to be a lot higher than paying customers.
The solution? Ship it. The support calls will be a much more accurate indicator on the quality of the end user experience. If you feel uncomfortable about any potential negative impact that a poorly designed application could have on the target market, then roll out the application in phases. Pick a test market and just sell it there. Roll it out to the full market once the quality of the end user experience on the test market has been assured. If you found this to be interesting or helpful, then check out this article which points out this and other similar techniques.
Retaliation only feeds the fire with Internet bullies. Typically, these types grew up with emotionally unavailable parents who are incapable of nurturing. Children want attention so punishment or scolding is better than being left alone. So, Internet bullies are just acting out in order to get attention. Paying them attention, even abuse, just rewards and reinforces the behavior. Quietly and consistently deleting them from the site gives them no reward, no emotional payoff, no juice. Eventually, they leave and bully somewhere else where they will get the attention that they crave.
Precisely. Mod parent up. The OP's site looks to be powered by phpBB3 which, I assume, has the ability for an administrator to do anything including deleting posts and accounts.
This was modded as insightful? You've got to be kidding. Yes, I'm sure that there are plenty of people on SL who are just looking for the 3D MMORPG version of phone sex. However, there are also plenty of people who are just sharing their non-perverted hobbies and interests in a 3D version of the web where you can text chat with the other surfers who are currently at the same page that you are at. I have blogged on this.
Coincidentally enough, I was in a bookstore yesterday looking at this book and considering whether or not to buy it. As someone interested in Web 2.0 (technology and economics), I thought that I might pick it up and give it a read. Also, the book was already discounted.
My impression after scanning the TOC and leafing through random pages was a sense of the author attempting to pander to that crowd who is interested in adding the Web 2.0 check mark to their business. It's kind of like a digital "keeping up with the Joneses," a "been there, done that, bought the tee shirt" attitude without any real sense of commitment to the basics behind the movement which is mainly an almost evangelical fervor for federated democracies that support collective intelligence and the long tail.
The so-called rationale behind this type of standardization of higher productivity for moved personnel makes absolutely no sense. If you allow everyone to use their preferred developer tool of choice, then you will achieve even higher productivity gains because no one will have to learn a new developer tool when they move. Why? Because I am going to take that tool with me with I move and continue to use it in the new environment.
With regards to standardizing language and framework, consider the following hypothetical situation. If project A uses framework B, then the developers can be twice as productive than if project A uses framework C. Developer D is moved to project A. Developer D is twice as productive on framework C as framework B. How many developers have to be working on project A for the benefits of developer D's continued productivity to be canceled out by the lower productivity of the entire team because they are using a ill fitted framework?
I agree. Microsoft's customers are typically big business which would have no hesitation in engaging Microsoft in expensive and protracted litigation were the Redmond company to abandon them with a backwards compatibility breaking OS the way that Apple did with OS X. I have blogged on this further.
I can see why the feature is so unpopular. I think that it is more important to see on a single queue what my next videos will be than to have a separate queue for each family member.
I congratulate netflix for saying no to non-strategic features.
I am certainly no expert in the BitTorrent protocol but it is my understanding that BitTorrent actually saves overall bandwidth because the BitTorrent client gets a part of a file from the closest copy (of which there are many) instead of the original copy (which could be much farther away, therefore saving hops).
Put another way, if everyone downloaded Hardy Heron using HTTP or FTP instead of BitTorrent, then the impact to the Internet would be much greater.
If my telecom bill was based on traffic usage, then I would keep a very small list of torrents running in the BitTorrent client. If everyone did that, then the effectiveness BitTorrent in reducing traffic would diminish and we would be back to a HTTP and FTP only world which would require the telecoms to add even more hardware in order for Internet latency to be tolerable.
Of course, people would also be billed for downloading Hardy Heron via HTTP or FTP also. So, the net affect would be fewer copies of Hardy Heron being downloaded. Billing individual subscribers for usage would reduce the wealth creation effect of the Internet.
It is certainly possible to write, in script form, anyone's name and not just your own. Why would a company accept any signed contract where one of their representatives didn't see the other party, to the contract, sign? Sure, hand writing analysis will reveal the forgery but who submits a signed contract to hand writing analysis before executing on their part of the contract? Considering the amount of identity fraud going on where the perpetrator submits a credit card application using your identity and "signs the application" to authorize, you would think that banks would get tired of losing money in this trick.
Least you digerati start smirking in smug superiority, an X.509 certificate is no better if the bad guys have gotten hold of your private key.
I see it more as the next generation on marketing research.
Release an episode with a "cliff hanger" ending.
Schedule a similar event in game.
Study the crowd to gauge their reaction.
Air follow on episode with most popular outcome.
Watch ratings increase.
It's not like the writers are going to relinquish all creative control. It's more like the series producers and the game designers have a more collaborative relationship.
I am posting this simply so that others can see a different view and judge for themselves.
I have used ANTLR for years (not version 3) and have had no trouble getting it to do what I want. I have not tried to get it to interpret COBOL code, however. I have even used ANTLR in.NET and found it to be easy, breezy.
Keep in mind that this is no drag-and-drop technology for light weights. You are really going to have to know your compiler and formal language theory and be willing to study some sample grammars. You should also be comfortable with BNF and prior experience with YACC is a plus.
Ditto. I am also a big fan of embedding mini-languages in bigger systems and of ANTLR for all the reasons you state plus a few more.
Three cheers to Terence Parr for this remarkable technology.
I have not taken the step to upgrade to version 3. I hear that the grammar specifications are significantly different. I have a question. Is it worth all the rewriting of grammar and migration of scripts to upgrade? Has anyone here used ANTLRWorks? I am really pleased with version 2.7.5 so it is hard to get motivated.
The poster equates Web 2.0 to "java, shockwave, and ads" and gets modded as insightful? Riiiiight.
Even if you were only focused on the technical aspects of Web 2.0, you would realize that these so-called Web 2.0 sites used AJAX and neither java nor shockwave. An even more relevant description of web 2.0 would include such terms as collective intelligence, user generated content, or the long tail.
Slashdot Mirror
Here is an iPhone user who hates the design. Not the design of the phone itself but of the service plan. It turns out that the iPhone sucks if you don't live in the U.S.
Good advice. Mod parent up. From a technology perspective, a Version Control System, Test Driven Development, and Continuous Integration can go a long way towards improving quality. If the OP is in a MSFT shop, then you are most probably stuck with VSS or TFS. VSS is file based so it is not very good for distributed development. You will need to enhance VSS with SoS if you have remote developers. TFS doesn't have that problem and also has support for TDD's unit testing. If the OP is willing to use OSS, then there are plenty of good options available. There is plenty of good advice here as to OSS VCS. There are various unit testing frameworks for Java, .NET, Ruby, PHP, C++, you name it. Also, check out Cruise Control for Continuous Integration.
Technology alone cannot solve quality issues, however. Changes in methodology, process, and even corporate culture may also be needed. Take a look at my site for more advice on that.
You're right. The value proposition that newspapers bring is the investigative reporting. That is why the online presence of a newspaper shouldn't be powered by wordpress.
Any newspaper that wants to get their online presence right just needs to study the NY Times. It's really all about the economics of distribution. Column inches in a paper is expensive. Disk space on a web server is cheap. Use the web site as a searchable archive for all content but run ads on the site to encourage users to subscribe to the print edition. Also give away banner ads as an incentive to companies to advertise in the print edition.
The same holds true for broadcast media and some companies such as NPR and CBS are finally boarding that clue train.
I certainly don't agree with point 2. Dictionaries holding entries of different types is not my idea of a good design. When you can't get around it, then may I suggest polymorphism?
make sure your news all have deletes
Object creation can be fairly complicated, especially in highly OO systems. There are fairly well documented ways of dealing with the complexity of object creation; however, they all boil down to using the new command in a method separate from where the resulting object will get used. Over time, new functionality drives additional layerings and refactorings in the code. Pretty soon it's not so easy to make sure your news all have deletes. This is why garbage collection is so popular.
Not all OSS coders are that way. Put me to the test. Contribute to my project and see what I do with it. I'll bet that you will find it to be more along the lines of "thanks for the creative and the advice which I will get to work incorporating into the code" a lot more than "patches welcome."
Sorry, it's just not that simple. Here's why.
The solution? Ship it. The support calls will be a much more accurate indicator on the quality of the end user experience. If you feel uncomfortable about any potential negative impact that a poorly designed application could have on the target market, then roll out the application in phases. Pick a test market and just sell it there. Roll it out to the full market once the quality of the end user experience on the test market has been assured. If you found this to be interesting or helpful, then check out this article which points out this and other similar techniques.
Retaliation only feeds the fire with Internet bullies. Typically, these types grew up with emotionally unavailable parents who are incapable of nurturing. Children want attention so punishment or scolding is better than being left alone. So, Internet bullies are just acting out in order to get attention. Paying them attention, even abuse, just rewards and reinforces the behavior. Quietly and consistently deleting them from the site gives them no reward, no emotional payoff, no juice. Eventually, they leave and bully somewhere else where they will get the attention that they crave.
Precisely. Mod parent up. The OP's site looks to be powered by phpBB3 which, I assume, has the ability for an administrator to do anything including deleting posts and accounts.
I agree. Curiously, I just blogged on this topic just last week.
This was modded as insightful? You've got to be kidding. Yes, I'm sure that there are plenty of people on SL who are just looking for the 3D MMORPG version of phone sex. However, there are also plenty of people who are just sharing their non-perverted hobbies and interests in a 3D version of the web where you can text chat with the other surfers who are currently at the same page that you are at. I have blogged on this.
Coincidentally enough, I was in a bookstore yesterday looking at this book and considering whether or not to buy it. As someone interested in Web 2.0 (technology and economics), I thought that I might pick it up and give it a read. Also, the book was already discounted.
My impression after scanning the TOC and leafing through random pages was a sense of the author attempting to pander to that crowd who is interested in adding the Web 2.0 check mark to their business. It's kind of like a digital "keeping up with the Joneses," a "been there, done that, bought the tee shirt" attitude without any real sense of commitment to the basics behind the movement which is mainly an almost evangelical fervor for federated democracies that support collective intelligence and the long tail.
The so-called rationale behind this type of standardization of higher productivity for moved personnel makes absolutely no sense. If you allow everyone to use their preferred developer tool of choice, then you will achieve even higher productivity gains because no one will have to learn a new developer tool when they move. Why? Because I am going to take that tool with me with I move and continue to use it in the new environment.
With regards to standardizing language and framework, consider the following hypothetical situation. If project A uses framework B, then the developers can be twice as productive than if project A uses framework C. Developer D is moved to project A. Developer D is twice as productive on framework C as framework B. How many developers have to be working on project A for the benefits of developer D's continued productivity to be canceled out by the lower productivity of the entire team because they are using a ill fitted framework?
I agree. Microsoft's customers are typically big business which would have no hesitation in engaging Microsoft in expensive and protracted litigation were the Redmond company to abandon them with a backwards compatibility breaking OS the way that Apple did with OS X. I have blogged on this further.
I liked the NY Times article better.
I have blogged on this.
I, too, was influenced by this visionary when I was in college.
I have taken the liberty of aggregating the syndication feeds of myself and my friends here. Check it out.
http://pipes.yahoo.com/ploneglenn/friends
This is using http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ which is an interesting syndicated content aggregater.
That reminds me. I would be interested in /.'s opinions on the http://www.opensearch.org/ project. Do you think that it will catch on? I ask because I am considering adding a support for this to the search engine part of my content publishing project.
I can see why the feature is so unpopular. I think that it is more important to see on a single queue what my next videos will be than to have a separate queue for each family member.
I congratulate netflix for saying no to non-strategic features.
Quite right. This page contains links to pages that may of interest.
I am certainly no expert in the BitTorrent protocol but it is my understanding that BitTorrent actually saves overall bandwidth because the BitTorrent client gets a part of a file from the closest copy (of which there are many) instead of the original copy (which could be much farther away, therefore saving hops).
Put another way, if everyone downloaded Hardy Heron using HTTP or FTP instead of BitTorrent, then the impact to the Internet would be much greater.
If my telecom bill was based on traffic usage, then I would keep a very small list of torrents running in the BitTorrent client. If everyone did that, then the effectiveness BitTorrent in reducing traffic would diminish and we would be back to a HTTP and FTP only world which would require the telecoms to add even more hardware in order for Internet latency to be tolerable.
Of course, people would also be billed for downloading Hardy Heron via HTTP or FTP also. So, the net affect would be fewer copies of Hardy Heron being downloaded. Billing individual subscribers for usage would reduce the wealth creation effect of the Internet.
It is certainly possible to write, in script form, anyone's name and not just your own. Why would a company accept any signed contract where one of their representatives didn't see the other party, to the contract, sign? Sure, hand writing analysis will reveal the forgery but who submits a signed contract to hand writing analysis before executing on their part of the contract? Considering the amount of identity fraud going on where the perpetrator submits a credit card application using your identity and "signs the application" to authorize, you would think that banks would get tired of losing money in this trick.
Least you digerati start smirking in smug superiority, an X.509 certificate is no better if the bad guys have gotten hold of your private key.
I see it more as the next generation on marketing research.
- Release an episode with a "cliff hanger" ending.
- Schedule a similar event in game.
- Study the crowd to gauge their reaction.
- Air follow on episode with most popular outcome.
- Watch ratings increase.
It's not like the writers are going to relinquish all creative control. It's more like the series producers and the game designers have a more collaborative relationship.I am posting this simply so that others can see a different view and judge for themselves.
I have used ANTLR for years (not version 3) and have had no trouble getting it to do what I want. I have not tried to get it to interpret COBOL code, however. I have even used ANTLR in .NET and found it to be easy, breezy.
Keep in mind that this is no drag-and-drop technology for light weights. You are really going to have to know your compiler and formal language theory and be willing to study some sample grammars. You should also be comfortable with BNF and prior experience with YACC is a plus.
Ditto. I am also a big fan of embedding mini-languages in bigger systems and of ANTLR for all the reasons you state plus a few more.
Three cheers to Terence Parr for this remarkable technology.
I have not taken the step to upgrade to version 3. I hear that the grammar specifications are significantly different. I have a question. Is it worth all the rewriting of grammar and migration of scripts to upgrade? Has anyone here used ANTLRWorks? I am really pleased with version 2.7.5 so it is hard to get motivated.
The poster equates Web 2.0 to "java, shockwave, and ads" and gets modded as insightful? Riiiiight.
Even if you were only focused on the technical aspects of Web 2.0, you would realize that these so-called Web 2.0 sites used AJAX and neither java nor shockwave. An even more relevant description of web 2.0 would include such terms as collective intelligence, user generated content, or the long tail.