Not all developers want to write perfect software. For example, the NSA wants to have good encryption for their communications. However, if they release a public crypto library, they would also like it to be breakable (by them.)
And the developer does by creating the best code they can to make it possible for the NSA to 'break' and not others?
Sure this could be done, Professional Engineers put their asses on the line when they approve designs and Programmers could be held to the same level.
To be fair, this already exists when a software publishing company certifies it's systems are compliant with various standards like PCI DSS, HIPAA, ISO 27001, SAS 70 etc.
This would also cause a massive drop in the number of available licensed programmers for any work that needs to be done, as well as having Programmers carrying liability insurance.
I don't know really. Usually projects comparable to the work of "professional engineers" you mention look for 'certified' developers in specific technologies and fields, I can't really imagine this making a significant change with regards to available people when it's unlikely the 'license' is going to be that much different from existing certification requirements.
I suspect though it will be a very profitable area of work for those giving the training and licensing.
Personally, I'd rather endorse the approval of working on the types of projects based on certifications a person holds after it's been 'approved' as a good certificate. This would avoid the stagnation that government have regarding developing new certifications and international standard bodies being far more capable in making 'universal' certifications that can be accepted in most countries.
They carry quite a small detector/notebook which will give them GPS direction to the address, camera, form-filling and printing ability and r/f detection capability, all packaged and forensically-approved so it can be used as court evidence
I'm genuinely curious about the r/f capability you have mentioned. Outside of the oscillator signal, which is not detectable on modern flat-screens? I guess they'd need to detect the digital signal a screen emits, but the antennas to pick that up would have to be rather clumsy, which makes me doubt the portability.
As an amateur radio operator (and I'm okay with being proven wrong - still learning of course;), I'm fairly skeptical that a decent portable device is feasible with current tech to read a digital screen's RF to determine live TV is being watched and to have enough evidence produced by this single function of the unit alone to prosecute someone over that information. This mainly because triangulation is a very messy science (hell, fox hunting can be quite a challenge for some of the most experienced in the field).
I also find it difficult to imagine TVLA would go to the extent of training more than a few people in the proper theory of radio and make them a licensed radio operator in order to make them a credible witness in court based off observations made by the unit.
I can imagine the other bits though of this device standing up in court though.
If you get caught
Skipping out on a TV license when you should have one is really no excuse IMO.
A lot of game manufacturers claim it's piracy when most of those "pirates" are actually just reloading their game that they originally purchased in the first place, but had to get a heck to work around the DRM that shouldn't have been there.
You realize if corporations left the Internet, most people wouldn't even have an Internet connection and a lot of peering exchanges would cease to exist that could lead to a potentially segregated Internet, right?
I use Three and travel a lot in the UK. I haven't noticed any notable coverage problems outside of losing my signals inside tunnels when on trains on my Google Nexus S.
Slashdot's backend does actually support unicode, they just stripped the non-US characters since sppamers were working around various filters through it. In other words, it's not broken, it's a feature!
Second, if the goal is to get users to use it, as with KDE in general, and, in this case, Amarok in particular, then someone on the development team *must* keep in touch with the feelings of users. In this case, I've seen many people bitching over the new GUI in 2.0 and, from what I saw, the new GUI wasn't tested for user feedback. That's a prime example of what I'm talking about. It's a project with a goal of gaining users, but the crew totally ignored the needs of the users. It is common sense that a major GUI change will create a major reaction with users, so it's important to release what you can ahead of time to see how people feel about it compared to the old GUI. I have watched discussions over Amarok, and have seen very few positive comments when it hit 2.0.
The absurd thing is that users could revert to the 1.x UI in Amarok, which makes this argument rather silly. It isn't that hard to look in preferences either.
I know it's a pain to maintain two GUIs, but they probably should have given serious consideration to doing that - or to reverting.
Which is the absurd thing, they are maintain more than two UIs for different preferences! Yet, there is still bitching.
3) It sounds like your plugin is either for use within an organization or that it has a price on it - in which case one major measure of user satisfaction is if they keep buying it.
It was a free closed source plugin for doing recordings and emulating a call center options menu, capable of forwarding it to other Skype users.
It was moderated into oblivion by angry Apple users because there was no OS X version and wrote stupid reviews like "no mac version", even though it clearly showed there was no mac version at the top of the page (this was before Skype's major redesign of the plugins site). But, that wasn't the source of what made me feel stress in the community, it was the people demanding some advanced corporate functionality in the plugin that was way out of my 'target audience' and constant demoralizing messages with vague statements as to the problem.
This is one reason why Facebook, a company run by developers, while being used by many people, ranks as low, in customer satisfaction as public utilities and monopolies and other companies that people hate. The only reason they have the market is there's no real alternative.
I don't think it helps that the majority of Facebook users can't express what they want properly. I remember when they were testing that new UI and asking for user feedback, a lot of users just couldn't give anything constructive - I don't think polling the community works that well as you suggested earlier. Especially when the majority of people who will be on the site, as you said, will likely be those who are unhappy with the product (although Facebook is probably a special case in this matter since they are a website).
But the sad truth is that developers, when left to their own means, without someone saying, "Do this and that," do what developers like and think is cool, and then they often try to push the result on users, saying, it's better than what was there.
With regards to smaller projects, did you consider that the developer's audience might not the user who is bitching? I have worked on projects in the past that involved users trying to turn the project in a direction that had no relevance to the direction of what the application was intended to be.
Yes, someone can commission a developer, but there's the flip side: If you're a developer, and people bitch about your software, and bitch a lot, then maybe it's time to listen *IF* you want people to use it.
In my experience, people bitch regardless. Once you have reached a large amount of users, you no longer have the ability to discern if something upsets the majority of your user base or not. Also, it comes to a point where nothing you do will prevent the bitching, listening to that bitching will also get you down and can cause nervous breakdowns.
Meanwhile, if people are willing to pay to get something done, the developer is not going to care about how he uses that free time as much since he's been compensated and it at least helps separate where there is interest in more.
Or you can ignore what users say and continue to slide into obscurity and wonder why your program hasn't become a standard for people, like Firefox or VLC or Audacity and why the mindshare is small compared to everything else.
Man, I think I would have had a nervous break down if I tried to make a big effort in listening to user suggestions and complaints for a Skype plugin (proprietary) I wrote some years back and that is likely considerably less input than what Amarok developers get.
Or you can ignore what users say and continue to slide into obscurity and wonder why your program hasn't become a standard for people, like Firefox or VLC or Audacity and why the mindshare is small compared to everything else.
As a developer, my ego was never big enough think of "becoming a standard for people".
Perhaps the solution should be that users commision a developer to do something instead of complaining they can't get a developer to commit to writing them a feature for free.
Slashdot Mirror
And the developer does by creating the best code they can to make it possible for the NSA to 'break' and not others?
I think your example is flawed.
To be fair, this already exists when a software publishing company certifies it's systems are compliant with various standards like PCI DSS, HIPAA, ISO 27001, SAS 70 etc.
I don't know really. Usually projects comparable to the work of "professional engineers" you mention look for 'certified' developers in specific technologies and fields, I can't really imagine this making a significant change with regards to available people when it's unlikely the 'license' is going to be that much different from existing certification requirements.
I suspect though it will be a very profitable area of work for those giving the training and licensing.
Personally, I'd rather endorse the approval of working on the types of projects based on certifications a person holds after it's been 'approved' as a good certificate. This would avoid the stagnation that government have regarding developing new certifications and international standard bodies being far more capable in making 'universal' certifications that can be accepted in most countries.
I'm genuinely curious about the r/f capability you have mentioned. Outside of the oscillator signal, which is not detectable on modern flat-screens? I guess they'd need to detect the digital signal a screen emits, but the antennas to pick that up would have to be rather clumsy, which makes me doubt the portability.
As an amateur radio operator (and I'm okay with being proven wrong - still learning of course ;), I'm fairly skeptical that a decent portable device is feasible with current tech to read a digital screen's RF to determine live TV is being watched and to have enough evidence produced by this single function of the unit alone to prosecute someone over that information. This mainly because triangulation is a very messy science (hell, fox hunting can be quite a challenge for some of the most experienced in the field).
I also find it difficult to imagine TVLA would go to the extent of training more than a few people in the proper theory of radio and make them a licensed radio operator in order to make them a credible witness in court based off observations made by the unit.
I can imagine the other bits though of this device standing up in court though.
Skipping out on a TV license when you should have one is really no excuse IMO.
I've actually peaked inside one of those vans before, it was empty. No equipment.
I hear Minecraft is one of the worst games for modding because each update requires huge refactoring of all the work performed originally.
Can I see the source where you got this from?
Those aren't sins, dude.
You realize if corporations left the Internet, most people wouldn't even have an Internet connection and a lot of peering exchanges would cease to exist that could lead to a potentially segregated Internet, right?
I suspect one of the reasons why they aren't doing it is because it's actually difficult to implement properly.
Genuine question now: How would you implement a system to block people viewing your side if the person was blocking the google adverts on your site?
Lots of websites use project wonderful actually... So you're wrong about the pay per view.
Type "about:config" in Firefox's addressbar, edit the 'image.animation_mode' field and set it to 'none'.
I travel a lot in the UK and I cannot reproduce your problems, why does it work for me?
Genuine question - Which opensource projects did Apple contribute to in the last year?
You visiting a website is 100% opt in.
I use Three and travel a lot in the UK. I haven't noticed any notable coverage problems outside of losing my signals inside tunnels when on trains on my Google Nexus S.
How do you specify 'pay me XXX before index' in robots.txt again?
Slashdot's backend does actually support unicode, they just stripped the non-US characters since sppamers were working around various filters through it. In other words, it's not broken, it's a feature!
I need around 20GB RAM just for linking one of the programs I compile.
Could you give us a ratio for "extremely popular" macbooks against everything else?
Look in preferences.
The absurd thing is that users could revert to the 1.x UI in Amarok, which makes this argument rather silly. It isn't that hard to look in preferences either.
Which is the absurd thing, they are maintain more than two UIs for different preferences! Yet, there is still bitching.
It was a free closed source plugin for doing recordings and emulating a call center options menu, capable of forwarding it to other Skype users.
It was moderated into oblivion by angry Apple users because there was no OS X version and wrote stupid reviews like "no mac version", even though it clearly showed there was no mac version at the top of the page (this was before Skype's major redesign of the plugins site). But, that wasn't the source of what made me feel stress in the community, it was the people demanding some advanced corporate functionality in the plugin that was way out of my 'target audience' and constant demoralizing messages with vague statements as to the problem.
I don't think it helps that the majority of Facebook users can't express what they want properly. I remember when they were testing that new UI and asking for user feedback, a lot of users just couldn't give anything constructive - I don't think polling the community works that well as you suggested earlier. Especially when the majority of people who will be on the site, as you said, will likely be those who are unhappy with the product (although Facebook is probably a special case in this matter since they are a website).
With regards to smaller projects, did you consider that the developer's audience might not the user who is bitching? I have worked on projects in the past that involved users trying to turn the project in a direction that had no relevance to the direction of what the application was intended to be.
In my experience, people bitch regardless. Once you have reached a large amount of users, you no longer have the ability to discern if something upsets the majority of your user base or not. Also, it comes to a point where nothing you do will prevent the bitching, listening to that bitching will also get you down and can cause nervous breakdowns.
Meanwhile, if people are willing to pay to get something done, the developer is not going to care about how he uses that free time as much since he's been compensated and it at least helps separate where there is interest in more.
Man, I think I would have had a nervous break down if I tried to make a big effort in listening to user suggestions and complaints for a Skype plugin (proprietary) I wrote some years back and that is likely considerably less input than what Amarok developers get.
As a developer, my ego was never big enough think of "becoming a standard for people".
Could you write a spell checker first?
Perhaps the solution should be that users commision a developer to do something instead of complaining they can't get a developer to commit to writing them a feature for free.
I don't understand, what prevented you from changing the UI to something acceptable?