The problem with comments is that the code is Dynamic, the comments are Static.
Someone can write code and write beautiful, fully descriptive comments, which are valid for about one iteration of the project. Then the same or other developers will come along and change code to match new expectation and functional requirements, and NOBODY ever updates the comments after the fact.
Also, comments can be pretty useless. I tire of seeing comments and summaries on classes which basically paraphrase the name of the method or function call like:/// This method returns true when a connection is established void bool IsConnectionEstablished() {...}
I mean the above summary is a waste of everybody' time and not worth the bytes it consumes in the source code.
Code should be self evident and any software developer worth their salt should be capable of being able to follow a logic path through the software given it was written with any amount of competence.
The problem today is there are TOO MANY wannabe software developers that see code development as a way to make a quick easy buck but lack the fundamental skill levels to be a talented software developer. This is why there exists Agile process and software patterns, unit testing and gobs of "value added" frameworks, etc. It's because you can no longer have teams of talented software developers working on a project, you have a bunch of code monkeys that punch in code. Therefore you required external influence to ensure a project comes together efficiently and is maintainable in the long run.
The problem is when these code monkeys are told they must document their code is when the whole system breaks down. Poorly written comments, wrong information, rapidly changing feature requirements that do not match code commentary.
I abhor ANY system or process that adds overhead to the software development process. Unit testing fails because if your code changes, you must change your unit tests. CODE IS NEVER STATIC. Google touches 60% of their entire codebase every 6 months because they are constantly optimizing and improving it. I have NEVER seen a system where code is written once and then becomes a static reusable module. The problem is that MOST teams using Unit Testing end up turning off the unit tests after some period of time because they become unsustainable, whatever motivation brought unit testing into the team environment is lost when deadlines are exceeded. Few managers realize that Unit Testing adds 20 - 30% or more overhead to software but plan development as if Unit Testing takes no effort. The software changes, but nobody wants to invest the time to ensure unit testing is updated to match the new requirements of the system.
Same with code comments. A team might become motivated to add commentary to a project, all developers diligently add comments and summaries, and then when deadlines approach that is all thrown out the window because nobody will ever maintain comments AFTER they are written.
Don't get me wrong. There are cases when a quick comment prior to a block of code can mean the difference between wasting an hour of intense forensic code analysis. I use comments whenever the code does something slightly unexpected or purpose not easily understood. Its a hint rather then a full blown documentation of the feature, but in general globing up comments into code is one of the most useless waste of times and potentially damaging initiatives a code team could ever embark on.
I would love a system that can be self-testing and self-documenting. Microsoft is working on a solution called "code contracts" which allows you to define the requirements of a functional block in code, which will then ensure the safe usage of the block with the code entering and exiting the solution. Because code contracts ARE CODE, any changes to the requirement of the code requires changes to the code contracts that are tightly coupled to that functional block. Because you describe the purpose of the
If you are doing something to become a target of investigation, then yes, leave your cellphone at home.
However a very large percentage of people generally can go about their day without being accosted by lawyers, cops, and surveillance in general.
Bottom line is you have to be living some kind of "lifestyle" to warrant surveillance or investigation. Obviously volunteering with wikiLeaks is one of those lifestyle choices that would involve the general annoyances associated with criminal investigation.
The better advice would be stop volunteering for wikiLeaks and enjoy your cellphone wherever you are.
I find it ridiculous when people operate on the fringe of the law and assume they are entitled to anonymity and privacy and then offer advice that doesn't apply to the rest of us.
Here is a scenario where if a self-driving car can pass 100% of the time, then I would deem it safe to get into.
Driving on a mountain road around a sharp corner where there is a steep cliff on the right side. Auto-car is passed on the left by some *sshole "manual" driver, but then the *sshat driver cuts in short because of oncoming traffic at the last second. Robo-driver identifies there is suddenly a car intruding into its safe-T-zone (TM) and does what its programming tells it to do, avoid hitting other vehicles. So the self-driving wonder swerves right to avoid the other car and zooms off the cliff.
A human driver would recognize that hitting the other car in this instance is the safer solution then to go careening off the steep cliff.
I agree that a self-driving car can work, and 99% of the time will perform adequately to protect its occupants from disaster. But since we have not mastered true AI yet, all self-driven cars will be built with flaws in their logic that will fail catastrophically. "Avoid hitting all cars", for instance, is not a good enough directive to ensure the safety of the occupants in 100% of all situations.
Someone mentioned that the deaths caused by self-driven cars would be far less then manual drivers, but then I would disagree that any technology introduced on the highways would be adequate to allow any fatality, especially in scenarios where a human driver may have been able to avoid death.
Basically what I am waiting for is the inevitable 100 car pile up with massive fatalities that WILL occur at some point in time where investigation will identify that a self-driven car, or cars, was the cause of it. Any company involved in programming or manufacturing that self-driven car will be sued out of existence and the "love affair" everyone seems to have about auto-driving cars will end quickly.
I am amazed at how delusional governments are into so quickly allowing this technology on the roads, sounds to me like there is some massive lobbying going on to short-cut the necessary amount of time to test auto-driven cars under all senarios, not just ones in controlled and predictable setups like we have seen. 5 years ago robo-cars could not drive around a dirt track, now they are quickly being allowed on our highways. That just is irresponsible.
Luddites obviously don't want a PC anymore, and I don't disagree with them. When a tablet or smartphone gives them all the functionality they required, such as the ability to tweet, change their Facebook status, and play Angry Birds, then there is no reason for the average consumer to require a PC today. So all those claiming the PC is dead, long live the phone/tablet, your voices have been heard a million-fold.
PC (or Mac) is still a very much required product for content CREATORS, you know, those people that make Facebook, Twitter and Angry Birds. You can't make apps on the iPad or iPhone, you can't make apps on an Android phone or tablet, and can't create app on a Windows Phone.
I think the PC market IS being rebooted, in the form factor of a hybrid tablet. While Luddites will need nothing more then a Windows RT tablet, the rest of us that develop and create content could easily see the old PC shoebox form factor being replaced by a Windows Pro tablet. Honestly the spec's of the Surface Pro exceed what I use for work to develop on and I am sure that there will emerge a new generation of Pro tablets with i7's and all kinds of fast multi-core CPU's and gobs or RAM that will essentially replace shoebox and laptop computers. As much as Apple has laughed at a tablet/PC hybrid, I think Apple is very scared of a market of competitive devices where content can both be consumed AND generated. A device that allows "enterprise" to easily gravitate towards a new tablet form factor running Windows is Apple's biggest nightmare, and its about to come true in a few months.
So, I won't rule Dell and HP out of the game yet, but if those companies are not ready to release a Windows 8 Tablet (both Luddite loving and Geek loving variants). then you should rule them out for being willfully stupid to recognize and adapt to market trends.
For me, a PC is anything that can be used to develop content on. While the average consumer needs nothing more then a device that beeps when it receives a tweet and some sadistic joke of an on-screen keyboard, there is still a large and strong market of people needing a product that can MAKE content.
I think if people truly had a choice over their sexual orientation most homosexuals would opt to not be part of a category vilified and marginalized by ignorant halfwits such as yourself. Considering they have to put up with dumb asses such as yourself I am more inclined to believe its a biological imperative rather then simply a choice about continuing to do something they just got horny about as a teen.
You don't understand homosexuality, that is obvious, most likely you are fearful and obsessed by it, but don't come off sounding like the rest of the world is simply not as enlightened with your reason for its existence and then hide behind anonymity.
This victory for Apple legitimatizes Jobs original reaction that Google ripped off iOS and that they should be destroyed. This is just a first salvo in a war against Android that will ultimately lead to an Apple vs Google epic lawsuit that will probably change and destroy the mobile device industry.
In 5 years Apple is going to make Microsoft look like canonized saint when it comes to anti-competitive practices.
....so does every iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android out there. But its only bad because Microsoft is doing it because we know Apple and Google do no evil...snicker.
Samsung is one of the few companies willing to tackle Apple on in terms of style. While I agree that Samsung blatantly ripped off Apple with their first Galaxy phone, they have pretty much branched away from Apple's designs and started setting trends for the "rest" of the Android market.
So, get over it. Apple is a trendsetter and people will follow those trends in their product and design. Its absolutely retarded for Apple to produce a hit product and then expect the rest of the world to not match it's design trends. Design trends have been a staple of the retail marketplace for hundreds of years. Its the reason why all cars look the same in a given generation, its the reason why all homes look the same in a given generation. Its the reason why movies look the same in a given generation, its the reason why music sounds the same in a given generation. You make something that everyone else likes, other people will match and expand on that design.
Everybody is ripping off everyone else. Apple should be flattered and even have their ego inflated to epic proportions given the fact that everybody wants to copy their designs and bring their own flavor to it. If Apple wasn't a paranoid little prick, worried about losing their market share to the sheer weight of potential of their competition, they would enjoy the fact they are defining a generation of mobile devices. They are at the top of the food chain but are too busy trying to piss on everyone else to enjoy it.
Apple needs to get over it and I hope the Apple vs Samsung trial rules in Samsung's favor just to smack down the smug, little biatch that Apple has become, worried about stupid people that might confuse one set of rounded rectangles for another while at the same time rising to the most profitable company in history. I mean how insecure do you have to be to have 600 BILLION in market capital and still feel inclined to crap out petty irrelevant lawsuits.
Stop trying to find excuses and scapegoats about why people are fat and start realizing we live in a society of instant gratification where the food we eat has long evolved past what is necessary to sustain life and instead is focused on trying to deliver a product that is addictive in an effort to make obscene amounts of profit.
"Food" today is engineered to taste better and deliver less nutritional value. Even "fruits and vegetables" are designed to be sweeter and deliver less nutrition. Our society is fixated on "great tasting food" which is only designed to create an addiction to carbs and fat independent of any basic instinct to eat solely to sustain life.
The reason why society is fat is because there is too many quick and easy options for great tasting food that is cheap. People get "hungry" which is nothing more then their blood sugar dropping after being artificially elevated from their last high carb sugar and starch laden meal and so feel inclined to eat another meal under the impression they need to eat. The cycle continues over and over again before people realizing they are eating thousands of excess calories their body simply does not need.
Combine that with the fact that we live in a society where people drive everywhere and most people's jobs are to sit on their asses for 8 - 10 hours a day, then go home and sit on their asses for another 4 hours in front of a television before laying down for another 8 hours, and you can see WHY people are obese.
Its not f*cking rocket science. People are fat because our society has become lazy and glutenous, and I am not above reproach. I've fought being overweight for most of my adult life and its due to a constant struggle between career and lifestyle and the constant deluge of instant food gratification available all around me. Sometimes I win, sometimes I loose, but I know EXACTLY why I gain weight and know what I need to do to lose it.
So, stop trying to find blame in something that people can say "See I am fat not because I shove McDonald's down my gullet 8 times a week and barely move 80% of the day, I'm fat because my parents gave me antibiotics".
The biggest reason why people are obese is because they do not take responsibility for their own lives and try to find blame everywhere else. I know it can be hard, but stop sucking back Big Mac's and get up and walk around a few times a week and marvel at how easily the weight can be lost. The problem is trying to establish a lifestyle focus on health in amidst a constant bombardment of cheap and easy outs.
Funny though that "REAL LIFE" is always more crisper then the content on TV's, regardless of what bullshit math you use. Obviously the human eye is capable if discerning more detail then what pixels on a screen can resolve. You might not be able to distinguish two pixels on the screen, but your eyes are more then capable of knowing there is a disconnect between what is supposed to be a continuous line joining those two pixels.
I think there is room for improvement in screen resolutions however my objections are that most content providers are barely delivering acceptable 720p content.
Maybe cable companies might finally get FULL HD content to display on our Ultra HD TV's.
Another reason why cable companies need to be destroyed, because they don't even know how to provide state of the art, but feel inclined to comment on what the new standards should be.
About the only thing UltraHD is going to introduce is a new optical disk format because broadband and content providers are incapable of creating and delivering UltraHD content without massive compression and inferior audio.
How much "news" about Mario and Zelda do you really need from a magazine? I don't think there was one issue printed that didn't have Mario or Link in it. I mean my nephew showed me an issue I thought it was one of my old copies, but it was brand new issue and showed another history of Super Mario Bros which they usually print about 2 or 3 times a year. I think the only other magazines that are entirely self promoting are Martha Stewart Living and Oprah.
They are probably shutting it down due to the fact the core demographic of people still playing Nintendo can barely read or have enough allowance to afford a magazine in any format, or maybe there just isn't anything more you can say that you haven't said a thousand times already about Mario. It must be hard to write for a magazine when the content is so limited and vapid.
Repeat your statement after finding out HOW MUCH ENERGY we actually need, you know, getting educated.
The US needs at least 30 TWh (that trillions of watts of power). That is one country in the whole world, and NOT Australia with only 40 or so million people living on a sun soaked rock.
I can't stand granola crunchers that just say "use organic" or "use solar" or "use the wind" without understanding exactly how much is required.
If it was technically feasible AND cost effective AND could produce the power we need including scaling to meet the power we need in the future, then I am sure there would be solar thermal plants and wind mills, and puppies on treadmills all over the place. But the simple fact of the matter is that as a "green" energy, Nuclear power is the only one capable of delivering the amount of power required on the scale that is required for a cost that can be afforded to society..
I am tired of Green platitudes that have no basis in common sense or understanding of the economy of what is being proposed. Do a little more research then finding a link about green house gas emissions and just assuming something with "zero" gas emissions is the solution we all need but somehow are just stupidly ignoring,
How can this be a violation of someone's privacy when the entire point of getting a licence plate is to register and identify your car as belonging to you.
It's the reason they exist, so when you break the law driving your vehicle, the cops can figure out who to arrest or write the ticket for.
Sure, it might suck for a cop to drive down the road and tag all the people that have committed a crime and then charge them accordingly. Sorry if you feel your right and privacy to COMMIT CRIME is in violation here.
What are people bitter about, getting caught?
Yes, there are going to be regulations and yes I am sure there will be a cop out there that will abuse this power at some point in time. But its why we have courts and laws and the right to challenge any charge or conviction against you.
I am tired of people that feel they are entitled to privacy outside their home. You are in a public venue the moment you step out of your front door and so technology identifying you is no different then a neighbor or friend or co-worker noticing you parked suspiciously outside another neighbor's house boning his wife. If you don't want to be caught don't do the crime, or at least use a little common sense when committing it (like take a bus or ride your bike) and simply accept responsibility when caught.
I see what you want an OS that just has content on it, view able, navigable, searchable, accessible, all irrelevant of the actual storage mechanism. Whether its stores on a local disk or in the "cloud" somewhere it just available like any other file or content on your OS.
Its a great idea, and historically Microsoft did offer features that blurred the line between local content and "local network" content, offering network files that included an "offline" mode for cached storage when the network resources are not available.
So it should be a natural extension for Cloud content to be accessible to the OS in the same way as any other file or content.
The problem is the Luddites rule the world now. Cloud is this new concept that is not really new, or even that clever. I mean, its a glorified FTP protocol allowing for "off-site" access of network content. Hardly a big stretch for people already in IT or development to understand.
Because of the "newness" of the Cloud, Luddites are wary and fearsome of it. Everyone on Slashdot ranting about cloud services fall into this Luddite category, afraid to embrace technology because of an inherent belief it is set to destroy us or obliterate our human rights. They might used it begrudgingly, but they won't enjoy it, never! And it absolutely has to be accessible through a rectangle with rounded corners ( or in the case of Windows 8, a regular plain ol' rectangle). I call them "Luddite Portals" because it allows those to access technology in a safe and familiar way and they can delete them at will if it gets too scary.
If Microsoft integrated cloud content as ubiquitous as local content storage, all Hell would break loose. There would be riots in the streets because people would not know what content is theirs and what content might be accessible to "The Man". Governances like the European Union would have to spend years wasting what precious little money Europe has left to try and smack down Microsoft for offering an improvement to the Windows experience. Old men in robes carrying gavels will hash out ridiculous laws because they can't comprehend this brave new world of blended files systems.
Simply put integrating cloud content into normal OS content would destabilize the world's economy, cripple governments, and bring us to the brink of total anarchy.
So, you will have to wait a few more years for the Luddites to catch up to the reality that Cloud is just another kind of hard drive and eventually your vision of a Utopia of a fully blended file systems will come to pass.
Unless Apple does it first and then its all puppies and unicorns and epic glorious reach-arounds.
Just headed over thinking I would do my part as a Canadian to pick something that might be relevant in a few years, but its just a collection of EVERY finance app available on all platforms, I mean, they could have weened it down to maybe the top 10 apps, instead of a huge collection of crapware.
But you just know in spite of being offered a choice (which is a change from the usual Canadian government of picking "innovation" for us), Canada is notorious for seeing the successful products and services used everywhere else in the world and then offering it to Canadians with significantly less features and a pale imitation of the one the world uses, you know, like Netflix.
Moses did come down from the mountain caring some curiously rounded corner rectangular tablets after chatting with God. Moses was the first one to steal this idea.
Bottom line is, there is no such thing as web "standards". Even among those browsers that are supposed to champion web standards, they do things differently.
I love it how everyone believes that the lack of web standards is due to Microsoft, but I think Microsoft is the only honest web browser developer out there.
Rather then trying to make a browser that adheres to a myth, and thus never fully achieve a zen like state of 100% standard feng shui, Microsoft has seen that the standards have severly limited the web moving forward. This is largely because while most web browsers are striving to establish standards set 5 - 10 years ago, Microsoft has always wanted to create a web for tomorrow. Case in point that while W3 was trying to envision a standard for a web full of static images and links way back in its infancy, Microsoft was trying to bring interactive components and multimedia support to the web using Active X. In fact the whole reason why we ended up with Java and Flash and Silverlight and Active X and all the other fucking wonderful interactive technologies on the web was because the fucking web standards committee took too fucking long figuring out what "static" Web 1.0 standards should be at a time when people demanded fully interactive Web 2.0 websites.
Add to that the recent fragmentation of the web experience between desktop, tablet and mobile devices. You think "one" standard is going to fit nicely against all these device types? Now add cloud services, rich media, and the "apps" phenom and I think people are stretching the capabilities of what a committee can achieve towards creating a "standard".
The effort to "ratify" a standard ensures that web technologies are NEVER be state of the art. By the time some committee sends up some red smoke signals indicating a new web standard has been established, society has already moved on to the latest and greatest device which introduces new ways for interactivity and expressiveness that the current standard cannot achieve.
So, fuck the standards!
Focus on providing the best web experience possible. If your web developer is worth their salt in skill then they are already building multiple websites for various browsers and devices because they have already accepted the fact that a world where there is only one set of "standards" to build a website from is a concept coming from fucking retarded idealists.
Microsoft knows this and the other web browser makers need to pull their heads out of their asses and realize it to.
Amazon just hacked and slashed their Kindle line up prices and availability, most likely to dump stock due to pending new models. I assume that Barns and Noble is adjusting their prices accordingly.
It is obvious that content is king, whether its an app, music, photo, video, book, etc.
The problem is that when OS makers "dumb" down the OS to provide simply a collection of boxes, it seriously cripples the user experience.
When Apple first dumbed down the OS to be nothing but a grid of icons, I don't think they even realized that people would one day have 100's to 1000's of apps installed on a single device. They rallied that onslaught of consumption by eventually allowing users to group apps into collections, but even then people can have dozen's of screens of grouped collections making it virtually impossible to find anything unless you use the search screen.
Same problem with 1000's of music, video and movie files loaded on the same device, presenting a list of content simply isn't good enough to allow the user to easily browse and find content.
Its also a huge issue in the online content stores, there may be millions of available apps, music, books, or video, but unless you know the name of one, or see one in a top-ten list, or even have a vague notion of what you are looking for, nobody is going to scroll through 100's of screens of applications to find something relevant to install.
It's disappointing that nobody is addressing the problem of content clutter and overload in a new era of dumbed down OS; either they are ignorant of the issue of content clutter, or simply do not know how to address it. Presenting items as a grid of clutter, or a list of clutter is still a mediocre metaphor for arranging content. Of course since Luddites now rule the world of technology so offering any new metaphor will probably be met with open revolt.
Glad to see Microsoft is finally joining Apple and Google in a new era of mediocrity, Metro certainly does not address this issue.
What it means is that instead of a team of highly focused and specialized developers that are all skilled in specific areas of the project, you end up with jacks-of-all-trades that are mediocre in all areas.
"Transferring" knowledge, doing it properly, constitutes a significant amount of overhead simply to have another developer take over a task and do it poorly.
If you have already invested time and energy to investigate and work on a specific problem or feature in a product, why on earth should you hand it over to another developer during the next sprint? The only reason given is that if one developer becomes ill, or sick, goes on vacation, leaves the company, or dies, then the knowledge is contained by the team and so the project can continue on unencumbered by your demise. I mean, what a cold hearted process to assume you mean nothing to the company that your absence will not affect the outcome of a quality product? How is that motivational?
It should not take long for a good developer to ramp up in any given area of a product and I would claim it takes less time for a developer to become "specialized" in an area of a product, and results in better code, then the time wasted trying to spread and maintain the knowledge across the team during development on the off chance that someone might die unexpectedly.
I am not saying all developers should work in a fortress of solitude, never exposing their work until they are complete. Periodic updates (NOT DAILY) can go a long way to ensure that developers keep on track AND other developers are aware of what is going on and even become interested in other areas of the product, but in general the concept of Transfer of Knowledge is bullshit.
I hate daily stand ups because the reality is that most people really don't care what other developers are doing. Often these stand ups run long and get mired in details between specific people and all I keep thinking is that its taking time away from me completing my tasks, so its not a motivational tool, and what knowledge I am gaining will not help me in any way if I should need to take over an area of development. And believe me, I have taken over from other people in different areas of the code, and never found it detrimental to not be intimately aware of that area right away.
There is a quantity of overhead associated with Agile, and where I worked using it, it was upwards to 30 -40% of my time was invested in process NOT development.
So maybe Agile is better for non-software related projects that have generally less requirement for focus and skill in specific areas of a project, but for software Transfer of Knowledge is another myth and lie about Agile that needs to be squashed as a software development process.
The idea that you can mitigate the effects of changes to requirements by re-prioritizing features to meet a fixed deadline is a MYTH. I would claim it an epic lie.
You see, most companies have these people in a field called "Sales" and "Customers". People in "Sales" speak with "Customers". "Customers" ask for features, "Sales" promises those features, the product is often sold before the product is released and a release date gets fixed in the future. Code monkeys then have to add the features to the product, under stress and often under duress.
There is no concept of re-prioritization. "Sales" already promised N number of features in the product, the "Customer" already paid for (or will pay for) N number of features, so to pull out features to meet a deadline is simply unheard of in the cultures of "Sales" and "Customers".
The only projects I have seen succeed in an Agile environment are projects that the company does not care about. Side projects, pet projects, research projects, whatever. The only reasons why these projects can work in Agile is because they are 100% in the culture of developers. "Sales" often don't know these projects exists and so have no vested interest in trying to push them to "Customers", therefore there are no promises for features and therefore changes to requirements are rare.
The reality is that the moment a company ("Sales") knows about and cares about a product, its doomed.
Agile is a lie used to give project managers a false sense of purpose. A good project manager, regardless of whatever scheduling tool they use, will keep a project on course. Agile was invented for bad project managers and bad development teams to try and reduce the time spent on the eventual release of bad software.
Companies need to invest more in hiring good people rather then adopting bad project management processes.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with comments is that the code is Dynamic, the comments are Static.
Someone can write code and write beautiful, fully descriptive comments, which are valid for about one iteration of the project. Then the same or other developers will come along and change code to match new expectation and functional requirements, and NOBODY ever updates the comments after the fact.
Also, comments can be pretty useless. I tire of seeing comments and summaries on classes which basically paraphrase the name of the method or function call like: /// This method returns true when a connection is established
void bool IsConnectionEstablished() {...}
I mean the above summary is a waste of everybody' time and not worth the bytes it consumes in the source code.
Code should be self evident and any software developer worth their salt should be capable of being able to follow a logic path through the software given it was written with any amount of competence.
The problem today is there are TOO MANY wannabe software developers that see code development as a way to make a quick easy buck but lack the fundamental skill levels to be a talented software developer. This is why there exists Agile process and software patterns, unit testing and gobs of "value added" frameworks, etc. It's because you can no longer have teams of talented software developers working on a project, you have a bunch of code monkeys that punch in code. Therefore you required external influence to ensure a project comes together efficiently and is maintainable in the long run.
The problem is when these code monkeys are told they must document their code is when the whole system breaks down. Poorly written comments, wrong information, rapidly changing feature requirements that do not match code commentary.
I abhor ANY system or process that adds overhead to the software development process. Unit testing fails because if your code changes, you must change your unit tests. CODE IS NEVER STATIC. Google touches 60% of their entire codebase every 6 months because they are constantly optimizing and improving it. I have NEVER seen a system where code is written once and then becomes a static reusable module. The problem is that MOST teams using Unit Testing end up turning off the unit tests after some period of time because they become unsustainable, whatever motivation brought unit testing into the team environment is lost when deadlines are exceeded. Few managers realize that Unit Testing adds 20 - 30% or more overhead to software but plan development as if Unit Testing takes no effort. The software changes, but nobody wants to invest the time to ensure unit testing is updated to match the new requirements of the system.
Same with code comments. A team might become motivated to add commentary to a project, all developers diligently add comments and summaries, and then when deadlines approach that is all thrown out the window because nobody will ever maintain comments AFTER they are written.
Don't get me wrong. There are cases when a quick comment prior to a block of code can mean the difference between wasting an hour of intense forensic code analysis. I use comments whenever the code does something slightly unexpected or purpose not easily understood. Its a hint rather then a full blown documentation of the feature, but in general globing up comments into code is one of the most useless waste of times and potentially damaging initiatives a code team could ever embark on.
I would love a system that can be self-testing and self-documenting. Microsoft is working on a solution called "code contracts" which allows you to define the requirements of a functional block in code, which will then ensure the safe usage of the block with the code entering and exiting the solution. Because code contracts ARE CODE, any changes to the requirement of the code requires changes to the code contracts that are tightly coupled to that functional block. Because you describe the purpose of the
If you are doing something to become a target of investigation, then yes, leave your cellphone at home.
However a very large percentage of people generally can go about their day without being accosted by lawyers, cops, and surveillance in general.
Bottom line is you have to be living some kind of "lifestyle" to warrant surveillance or investigation. Obviously volunteering with wikiLeaks is one of those lifestyle choices that would involve the general annoyances associated with criminal investigation.
The better advice would be stop volunteering for wikiLeaks and enjoy your cellphone wherever you are.
I find it ridiculous when people operate on the fringe of the law and assume they are entitled to anonymity and privacy and then offer advice that doesn't apply to the rest of us.
Here is a scenario where if a self-driving car can pass 100% of the time, then I would deem it safe to get into.
Driving on a mountain road around a sharp corner where there is a steep cliff on the right side. Auto-car is passed on the left by some *sshole "manual" driver, but then the *sshat driver cuts in short because of oncoming traffic at the last second. Robo-driver identifies there is suddenly a car intruding into its safe-T-zone (TM) and does what its programming tells it to do, avoid hitting other vehicles. So the self-driving wonder swerves right to avoid the other car and zooms off the cliff.
A human driver would recognize that hitting the other car in this instance is the safer solution then to go careening off the steep cliff.
I agree that a self-driving car can work, and 99% of the time will perform adequately to protect its occupants from disaster. But since we have not mastered true AI yet, all self-driven cars will be built with flaws in their logic that will fail catastrophically. "Avoid hitting all cars", for instance, is not a good enough directive to ensure the safety of the occupants in 100% of all situations.
Someone mentioned that the deaths caused by self-driven cars would be far less then manual drivers, but then I would disagree that any technology introduced on the highways would be adequate to allow any fatality, especially in scenarios where a human driver may have been able to avoid death.
Basically what I am waiting for is the inevitable 100 car pile up with massive fatalities that WILL occur at some point in time where investigation will identify that a self-driven car, or cars, was the cause of it. Any company involved in programming or manufacturing that self-driven car will be sued out of existence and the "love affair" everyone seems to have about auto-driving cars will end quickly.
I am amazed at how delusional governments are into so quickly allowing this technology on the roads, sounds to me like there is some massive lobbying going on to short-cut the necessary amount of time to test auto-driven cars under all senarios, not just ones in controlled and predictable setups like we have seen. 5 years ago robo-cars could not drive around a dirt track, now they are quickly being allowed on our highways. That just is irresponsible.
Luddites obviously don't want a PC anymore, and I don't disagree with them. When a tablet or smartphone gives them all the functionality they required, such as the ability to tweet, change their Facebook status, and play Angry Birds, then there is no reason for the average consumer to require a PC today. So all those claiming the PC is dead, long live the phone/tablet, your voices have been heard a million-fold.
PC (or Mac) is still a very much required product for content CREATORS, you know, those people that make Facebook, Twitter and Angry Birds. You can't make apps on the iPad or iPhone, you can't make apps on an Android phone or tablet, and can't create app on a Windows Phone.
I think the PC market IS being rebooted, in the form factor of a hybrid tablet. While Luddites will need nothing more then a Windows RT tablet, the rest of us that develop and create content could easily see the old PC shoebox form factor being replaced by a Windows Pro tablet. Honestly the spec's of the Surface Pro exceed what I use for work to develop on and I am sure that there will emerge a new generation of Pro tablets with i7's and all kinds of fast multi-core CPU's and gobs or RAM that will essentially replace shoebox and laptop computers. As much as Apple has laughed at a tablet/PC hybrid, I think Apple is very scared of a market of competitive devices where content can both be consumed AND generated. A device that allows "enterprise" to easily gravitate towards a new tablet form factor running Windows is Apple's biggest nightmare, and its about to come true in a few months.
So, I won't rule Dell and HP out of the game yet, but if those companies are not ready to release a Windows 8 Tablet (both Luddite loving and Geek loving variants). then you should rule them out for being willfully stupid to recognize and adapt to market trends.
For me, a PC is anything that can be used to develop content on. While the average consumer needs nothing more then a device that beeps when it receives a tweet and some sadistic joke of an on-screen keyboard, there is still a large and strong market of people needing a product that can MAKE content.
I think if people truly had a choice over their sexual orientation most homosexuals would opt to not be part of a category vilified and marginalized by ignorant halfwits such as yourself. Considering they have to put up with dumb asses such as yourself I am more inclined to believe its a biological imperative rather then simply a choice about continuing to do something they just got horny about as a teen.
You don't understand homosexuality, that is obvious, most likely you are fearful and obsessed by it, but don't come off sounding like the rest of the world is simply not as enlightened with your reason for its existence and then hide behind anonymity.
This victory for Apple legitimatizes Jobs original reaction that Google ripped off iOS and that they should be destroyed. This is just a first salvo in a war against Android that will ultimately lead to an Apple vs Google epic lawsuit that will probably change and destroy the mobile device industry.
In 5 years Apple is going to make Microsoft look like canonized saint when it comes to anti-competitive practices.
....so does every iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android out there. But its only bad because Microsoft is doing it because we know Apple and Google do no evil...snicker.
Samsung is one of the few companies willing to tackle Apple on in terms of style. While I agree that Samsung blatantly ripped off Apple with their first Galaxy phone, they have pretty much branched away from Apple's designs and started setting trends for the "rest" of the Android market.
So, get over it. Apple is a trendsetter and people will follow those trends in their product and design. Its absolutely retarded for Apple to produce a hit product and then expect the rest of the world to not match it's design trends. Design trends have been a staple of the retail marketplace for hundreds of years. Its the reason why all cars look the same in a given generation, its the reason why all homes look the same in a given generation. Its the reason why movies look the same in a given generation, its the reason why music sounds the same in a given generation. You make something that everyone else likes, other people will match and expand on that design.
Everybody is ripping off everyone else. Apple should be flattered and even have their ego inflated to epic proportions given the fact that everybody wants to copy their designs and bring their own flavor to it. If Apple wasn't a paranoid little prick, worried about losing their market share to the sheer weight of potential of their competition, they would enjoy the fact they are defining a generation of mobile devices. They are at the top of the food chain but are too busy trying to piss on everyone else to enjoy it.
Apple needs to get over it and I hope the Apple vs Samsung trial rules in Samsung's favor just to smack down the smug, little biatch that Apple has become, worried about stupid people that might confuse one set of rounded rectangles for another while at the same time rising to the most profitable company in history. I mean how insecure do you have to be to have 600 BILLION in market capital and still feel inclined to crap out petty irrelevant lawsuits.
Stop trying to find excuses and scapegoats about why people are fat and start realizing we live in a society of instant gratification where the food we eat has long evolved past what is necessary to sustain life and instead is focused on trying to deliver a product that is addictive in an effort to make obscene amounts of profit.
"Food" today is engineered to taste better and deliver less nutritional value. Even "fruits and vegetables" are designed to be sweeter and deliver less nutrition. Our society is fixated on "great tasting food" which is only designed to create an addiction to carbs and fat independent of any basic instinct to eat solely to sustain life.
The reason why society is fat is because there is too many quick and easy options for great tasting food that is cheap. People get "hungry" which is nothing more then their blood sugar dropping after being artificially elevated from their last high carb sugar and starch laden meal and so feel inclined to eat another meal under the impression they need to eat. The cycle continues over and over again before people realizing they are eating thousands of excess calories their body simply does not need.
Combine that with the fact that we live in a society where people drive everywhere and most people's jobs are to sit on their asses for 8 - 10 hours a day, then go home and sit on their asses for another 4 hours in front of a television before laying down for another 8 hours, and you can see WHY people are obese.
Its not f*cking rocket science. People are fat because our society has become lazy and glutenous, and I am not above reproach. I've fought being overweight for most of my adult life and its due to a constant struggle between career and lifestyle and the constant deluge of instant food gratification available all around me. Sometimes I win, sometimes I loose, but I know EXACTLY why I gain weight and know what I need to do to lose it.
So, stop trying to find blame in something that people can say "See I am fat not because I shove McDonald's down my gullet 8 times a week and barely move 80% of the day, I'm fat because my parents gave me antibiotics".
The biggest reason why people are obese is because they do not take responsibility for their own lives and try to find blame everywhere else. I know it can be hard, but stop sucking back Big Mac's and get up and walk around a few times a week and marvel at how easily the weight can be lost. The problem is trying to establish a lifestyle focus on health in amidst a constant bombardment of cheap and easy outs.
Funny though that "REAL LIFE" is always more crisper then the content on TV's, regardless of what bullshit math you use. Obviously the human eye is capable if discerning more detail then what pixels on a screen can resolve. You might not be able to distinguish two pixels on the screen, but your eyes are more then capable of knowing there is a disconnect between what is supposed to be a continuous line joining those two pixels.
I think there is room for improvement in screen resolutions however my objections are that most content providers are barely delivering acceptable 720p content.
Maybe cable companies might finally get FULL HD content to display on our Ultra HD TV's.
Another reason why cable companies need to be destroyed, because they don't even know how to provide state of the art, but feel inclined to comment on what the new standards should be.
About the only thing UltraHD is going to introduce is a new optical disk format because broadband and content providers are incapable of creating and delivering UltraHD content without massive compression and inferior audio.
How much "news" about Mario and Zelda do you really need from a magazine? I don't think there was one issue printed that didn't have Mario or Link in it. I mean my nephew showed me an issue I thought it was one of my old copies, but it was brand new issue and showed another history of Super Mario Bros which they usually print about 2 or 3 times a year. I think the only other magazines that are entirely self promoting are Martha Stewart Living and Oprah.
They are probably shutting it down due to the fact the core demographic of people still playing Nintendo can barely read or have enough allowance to afford a magazine in any format, or maybe there just isn't anything more you can say that you haven't said a thousand times already about Mario. It must be hard to write for a magazine when the content is so limited and vapid.
Repeat your statement after finding out HOW MUCH ENERGY we actually need, you know, getting educated.
The US needs at least 30 TWh (that trillions of watts of power). That is one country in the whole world, and NOT Australia with only 40 or so million people living on a sun soaked rock.
I can't stand granola crunchers that just say "use organic" or "use solar" or "use the wind" without understanding exactly how much is required.
If it was technically feasible AND cost effective AND could produce the power we need including scaling to meet the power we need in the future, then I am sure there would be solar thermal plants and wind mills, and puppies on treadmills all over the place. But the simple fact of the matter is that as a "green" energy, Nuclear power is the only one capable of delivering the amount of power required on the scale that is required for a cost that can be afforded to society..
I am tired of Green platitudes that have no basis in common sense or understanding of the economy of what is being proposed. Do a little more research then finding a link about green house gas emissions and just assuming something with "zero" gas emissions is the solution we all need but somehow are just stupidly ignoring,
Yeah, because saying "I am taking some Maths Subjects" sounds like you are very educated opposed to those dumb colonists.
You haven't heard? North Korea has colonized Mars already, we thought they were just building nukes.
That's the ENTIRE point of a licence plate.
How can this be a violation of someone's privacy when the entire point of getting a licence plate is to register and identify your car as belonging to you.
It's the reason they exist, so when you break the law driving your vehicle, the cops can figure out who to arrest or write the ticket for.
Sure, it might suck for a cop to drive down the road and tag all the people that have committed a crime and then charge them accordingly. Sorry if you feel your right and privacy to COMMIT CRIME is in violation here.
What are people bitter about, getting caught?
Yes, there are going to be regulations and yes I am sure there will be a cop out there that will abuse this power at some point in time. But its why we have courts and laws and the right to challenge any charge or conviction against you.
I am tired of people that feel they are entitled to privacy outside their home. You are in a public venue the moment you step out of your front door and so technology identifying you is no different then a neighbor or friend or co-worker noticing you parked suspiciously outside another neighbor's house boning his wife. If you don't want to be caught don't do the crime, or at least use a little common sense when committing it (like take a bus or ride your bike) and simply accept responsibility when caught.
Baby steps. Patience padawan.
I see what you want an OS that just has content on it, view able, navigable, searchable, accessible, all irrelevant of the actual storage mechanism. Whether its stores on a local disk or in the "cloud" somewhere it just available like any other file or content on your OS.
Its a great idea, and historically Microsoft did offer features that blurred the line between local content and "local network" content, offering network files that included an "offline" mode for cached storage when the network resources are not available.
So it should be a natural extension for Cloud content to be accessible to the OS in the same way as any other file or content.
The problem is the Luddites rule the world now. Cloud is this new concept that is not really new, or even that clever. I mean, its a glorified FTP protocol allowing for "off-site" access of network content. Hardly a big stretch for people already in IT or development to understand.
Because of the "newness" of the Cloud, Luddites are wary and fearsome of it. Everyone on Slashdot ranting about cloud services fall into this Luddite category, afraid to embrace technology because of an inherent belief it is set to destroy us or obliterate our human rights. They might used it begrudgingly, but they won't enjoy it, never! And it absolutely has to be accessible through a rectangle with rounded corners ( or in the case of Windows 8, a regular plain ol' rectangle). I call them "Luddite Portals" because it allows those to access technology in a safe and familiar way and they can delete them at will if it gets too scary.
If Microsoft integrated cloud content as ubiquitous as local content storage, all Hell would break loose. There would be riots in the streets because people would not know what content is theirs and what content might be accessible to "The Man". Governances like the European Union would have to spend years wasting what precious little money Europe has left to try and smack down Microsoft for offering an improvement to the Windows experience. Old men in robes carrying gavels will hash out ridiculous laws because they can't comprehend this brave new world of blended files systems.
Simply put integrating cloud content into normal OS content would destabilize the world's economy, cripple governments, and bring us to the brink of total anarchy.
So, you will have to wait a few more years for the Luddites to catch up to the reality that Cloud is just another kind of hard drive and eventually your vision of a Utopia of a fully blended file systems will come to pass.
Unless Apple does it first and then its all puppies and unicorns and epic glorious reach-arounds.
Just headed over thinking I would do my part as a Canadian to pick something that might be relevant in a few years, but its just a collection of EVERY finance app available on all platforms, I mean, they could have weened it down to maybe the top 10 apps, instead of a huge collection of crapware.
But you just know in spite of being offered a choice (which is a change from the usual Canadian government of picking "innovation" for us), Canada is notorious for seeing the successful products and services used everywhere else in the world and then offering it to Canadians with significantly less features and a pale imitation of the one the world uses, you know, like Netflix.
Moses did come down from the mountain caring some curiously rounded corner rectangular tablets after chatting with God. Moses was the first one to steal this idea.
Bottom line is, there is no such thing as web "standards". Even among those browsers that are supposed to champion web standards, they do things differently.
I love it how everyone believes that the lack of web standards is due to Microsoft, but I think Microsoft is the only honest web browser developer out there.
Rather then trying to make a browser that adheres to a myth, and thus never fully achieve a zen like state of 100% standard feng shui, Microsoft has seen that the standards have severly limited the web moving forward. This is largely because while most web browsers are striving to establish standards set 5 - 10 years ago, Microsoft has always wanted to create a web for tomorrow. Case in point that while W3 was trying to envision a standard for a web full of static images and links way back in its infancy, Microsoft was trying to bring interactive components and multimedia support to the web using Active X. In fact the whole reason why we ended up with Java and Flash and Silverlight and Active X and all the other fucking wonderful interactive technologies on the web was because the fucking web standards committee took too fucking long figuring out what "static" Web 1.0 standards should be at a time when people demanded fully interactive Web 2.0 websites.
Add to that the recent fragmentation of the web experience between desktop, tablet and mobile devices. You think "one" standard is going to fit nicely against all these device types? Now add cloud services, rich media, and the "apps" phenom and I think people are stretching the capabilities of what a committee can achieve towards creating a "standard".
The effort to "ratify" a standard ensures that web technologies are NEVER be state of the art. By the time some committee sends up some red smoke signals indicating a new web standard has been established, society has already moved on to the latest and greatest device which introduces new ways for interactivity and expressiveness that the current standard cannot achieve.
So, fuck the standards!
Focus on providing the best web experience possible. If your web developer is worth their salt in skill then they are already building multiple websites for various browsers and devices because they have already accepted the fact that a world where there is only one set of "standards" to build a website from is a concept coming from fucking retarded idealists.
Microsoft knows this and the other web browser makers need to pull their heads out of their asses and realize it to.
Amazon just hacked and slashed their Kindle line up prices and availability, most likely to dump stock due to pending new models. I assume that Barns and Noble is adjusting their prices accordingly.
Nothing of interest here, please move along.
Yes, but think of all the carbons coal has given us over the years...
It is obvious that content is king, whether its an app, music, photo, video, book, etc.
The problem is that when OS makers "dumb" down the OS to provide simply a collection of boxes, it seriously cripples the user experience.
When Apple first dumbed down the OS to be nothing but a grid of icons, I don't think they even realized that people would one day have 100's to 1000's of apps installed on a single device. They rallied that onslaught of consumption by eventually allowing users to group apps into collections, but even then people can have dozen's of screens of grouped collections making it virtually impossible to find anything unless you use the search screen.
Same problem with 1000's of music, video and movie files loaded on the same device, presenting a list of content simply isn't good enough to allow the user to easily browse and find content.
Its also a huge issue in the online content stores, there may be millions of available apps, music, books, or video, but unless you know the name of one, or see one in a top-ten list, or even have a vague notion of what you are looking for, nobody is going to scroll through 100's of screens of applications to find something relevant to install.
It's disappointing that nobody is addressing the problem of content clutter and overload in a new era of dumbed down OS; either they are ignorant of the issue of content clutter, or simply do not know how to address it. Presenting items as a grid of clutter, or a list of clutter is still a mediocre metaphor for arranging content. Of course since Luddites now rule the world of technology so offering any new metaphor will probably be met with open revolt.
Glad to see Microsoft is finally joining Apple and Google in a new era of mediocrity, Metro certainly does not address this issue.
I hate that expression with a passion.
What it means is that instead of a team of highly focused and specialized developers that are all skilled in specific areas of the project, you end up with jacks-of-all-trades that are mediocre in all areas.
"Transferring" knowledge, doing it properly, constitutes a significant amount of overhead simply to have another developer take over a task and do it poorly.
If you have already invested time and energy to investigate and work on a specific problem or feature in a product, why on earth should you hand it over to another developer during the next sprint? The only reason given is that if one developer becomes ill, or sick, goes on vacation, leaves the company, or dies, then the knowledge is contained by the team and so the project can continue on unencumbered by your demise. I mean, what a cold hearted process to assume you mean nothing to the company that your absence will not affect the outcome of a quality product? How is that motivational?
It should not take long for a good developer to ramp up in any given area of a product and I would claim it takes less time for a developer to become "specialized" in an area of a product, and results in better code, then the time wasted trying to spread and maintain the knowledge across the team during development on the off chance that someone might die unexpectedly.
I am not saying all developers should work in a fortress of solitude, never exposing their work until they are complete. Periodic updates (NOT DAILY) can go a long way to ensure that developers keep on track AND other developers are aware of what is going on and even become interested in other areas of the product, but in general the concept of Transfer of Knowledge is bullshit.
I hate daily stand ups because the reality is that most people really don't care what other developers are doing. Often these stand ups run long and get mired in details between specific people and all I keep thinking is that its taking time away from me completing my tasks, so its not a motivational tool, and what knowledge I am gaining will not help me in any way if I should need to take over an area of development. And believe me, I have taken over from other people in different areas of the code, and never found it detrimental to not be intimately aware of that area right away.
There is a quantity of overhead associated with Agile, and where I worked using it, it was upwards to 30 -40% of my time was invested in process NOT development.
So maybe Agile is better for non-software related projects that have generally less requirement for focus and skill in specific areas of a project, but for software Transfer of Knowledge is another myth and lie about Agile that needs to be squashed as a software development process.
The idea that you can mitigate the effects of changes to requirements by re-prioritizing features to meet a fixed deadline is a MYTH. I would claim it an epic lie.
You see, most companies have these people in a field called "Sales" and "Customers". People in "Sales" speak with "Customers". "Customers" ask for features, "Sales" promises those features, the product is often sold before the product is released and a release date gets fixed in the future. Code monkeys then have to add the features to the product, under stress and often under duress.
There is no concept of re-prioritization. "Sales" already promised N number of features in the product, the "Customer" already paid for (or will pay for) N number of features, so to pull out features to meet a deadline is simply unheard of in the cultures of "Sales" and "Customers".
The only projects I have seen succeed in an Agile environment are projects that the company does not care about. Side projects, pet projects, research projects, whatever. The only reasons why these projects can work in Agile is because they are 100% in the culture of developers. "Sales" often don't know these projects exists and so have no vested interest in trying to push them to "Customers", therefore there are no promises for features and therefore changes to requirements are rare.
The reality is that the moment a company ("Sales") knows about and cares about a product, its doomed.
Agile is a lie used to give project managers a false sense of purpose. A good project manager, regardless of whatever scheduling tool they use, will keep a project on course. Agile was invented for bad project managers and bad development teams to try and reduce the time spent on the eventual release of bad software.
Companies need to invest more in hiring good people rather then adopting bad project management processes.