Agile is the interruptor the business side has always wanted: a leash for engineers.
But it gets much abused, resulting in needless rewrites, and scattered or stunted architectures - seen it at three tech-centric companies now.
"Refactor" is a banished term in Agileland. And you never really get to refactor, to design patterns or anything else, because you're too busy replacing hand-wired code to fit the latest redesign or business strategy change.
Tech management everywhere have lost their collective spines, caving in to "get it done cheaply and quickly" every time. Even when the resources are available to develop maintainable, well-thought-out code.
> You could just as well argue it increases privacy, since Amazon becomes a proxy service.
That only works if they don't add client-identifying proxy headers to each of your requests... e.g. HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR, REMOTE_ADDR.
Spying to steal secrets, and publishing secrets as a newspaper, are considered two entirely different actions by the law. One is protected by the First Amendment and SCOTUS case law, while the other is espionage.
I've seen 50-68% disapproval of Wikileaks - where'd you get this 80% figure? Perhaps you inverted a 20% *approval* rating? Not the same thing, if so.
As for NYT and other outlets disseminating the cables, that action was and is protected by Supreme Court precedent (see the Pentagon Papers case) under First Amendment doctrine.
Other than blood-thirsty right-wingers and the current DOJ, the most reaction I've seen to the cables is a collective *shrug*.
Not a big deal - they've just confirmed what we knew all along:
- That third world govts are corrupt
- That the U.S. gov't goes to bat for big scumbag corps
- That big scumbag corps will do anything to make money - like testing experimental drugs on African children, then using blackmail to worm their way out of trouble (I'm lookin' at *you*, Pfizer)
Apple can't obtain or act on search warrants. Apple can't charge or prosecute anyone for a crime.
Christ, is grammar flaming coming back? Sigh.. that's so 1990s, can't believe this got modded up.
Of course Apple is not a prosecuting agency (as the GP author no doubt understands), but you can be sure that state/county prosecutors are real tight with Apple's attorneys.
Apple have sworn out *many* complaints against bloggers and websites in the past, and will very likely continue to do so. That they don't "charge or prosecute" anyone doesn't discount the fact that they do in fact cause such actions to be taken on their behalf.
The lack of even the most basic knowledge of how our system of justice works is just appalling.
Historically, whenever a journalist has been jailed for not ratting out a source, the cops have pulled all their stuff right off their desks
I remember that movie! Where the cop break's the reporter's fingers one-by-one, til he tells him the source? "I make the laws in this town, mister." Friggin' awesome! 1938, right? Caught it on UHF when I was a teen.
There is no legal exemption just because you happen to work for a media outlet.
Maybe I've installed more apps w/background process than most Android users... the iPhone just doesn't allow background processes the way Android does. Android allows you to declare a background process, and it can spawn threads and basically keep running til the battery runs dry. The foreground, UI-attached process isn't allowed to hog the CPU - that's when you get the wait/kill dialog.
There's a kind of background update feature available on iPhone, but it doesn't run constantly the way some Android apps do. I'm not sure but think it's a kind of push notification, queuing updates until your mail or news or stock quote app is running again.
I suggest installing a task manager app on your HTC (search the Market for "task manager".) A decent one will list all apps with declared background processes... then you'll have a better idea of what I'm talking about.
I've been developing for Blackberry and Android for the last two years, and Java for the last 15. I've had access to nearly every Android and Blackberry phone available in the U.S., and often take them home for testing. I also own an iPod Touch.
Here's why iPhone is a better experience than Android: Single-tasking. The UI is responsive and smooth. That's because the currently-running app has most of the CPU and GPU available to it.
Not so with Android. Until Nexus One (and Droid, to an extent), pretty much all Android phones have been a rough experience.
Press a UI control, and you expect your $500 smartphone to respond right away, correct? With Android phones, sometimes you wait seconds for a response! Worst case, the infamous "Kill or Wait" dialog appears, where you're given the opportunity to kill the foreground app!! The one you're waiting on to respond to your last click.
That's not just lame, it's stupid. At the very least, Android should nice up the foreground app, so it can be responsive to the user, right?
As an Android developer, I *HATE* that my app is at the mercy of whatever shitty-assed code is running in a background process, hogging up the CPU with its poor efficiency.
Also, the Android and Blackberry platforms encourage the use of default UI components, which are quite basic in appearance and behavior. And with Android, the API has been a moving target, with whole classes deprecated, events and handlers moved around... very annoying. And don't let's not get into Blackberry, where nothing new has happened since I've been developing for it... e.g. the latest BB phones have accelerated graphics hardware, but where's the OpenGL ES Java bindings?? Nowhere to be found (until very recently.)
In the meantime, I very much enjoy games and apps on the iPod Touch, and make my calls from a Nexus One. Here's hoping the hardware catches up to Android's prodigious CPU needs sometime soon.
That's an apple-oranges comparison. The video shows a GE-Honda HF120 turbine, a 2,000 lb two-stage, two-compressor turbofan designed for the light jet market. A very different design from...
Commercial airline engines are rated from 14,000 (old-school Boeing 737) to over 100,000 (Boeing 777) pounds.
Aside from that, the difference in scale of a fine volcanic ash particle compared with a grain of sand determines the melt rate. Volcanic ash passing through a turbine is essentially a fluid, one that melts at around 1000 C. Aggregate sand (in the video) melt between 1500-1700 C.
Turbofan combustion chambers burn at between 1500-2000 C. Grains of sand are too thick to melt, given the airflow rate through an engine (250-1400 mph.)
So far nobody has died because of the nuclear industry's negligence.
Chernobyl killed 31, with another 4,000 cancer deaths expected. Maybe you meant the American nuclear industry?
The jist of the issue is true, however: the NRC has turned into a rubber-stamp machine, in favor of the industry. That's probably the only way that many of the aging power plants will get recertified (remember, few reactors have been built in the last 20 years.)
Some plants have serious issues, for example the fire safety problem at Indian Point.
The NRC waived their own requirement that the conduit connecting the control room with the reactors be able to withstand fire for one hour. Instead, they granted an exemption to Indian Point's operator, allowing a conduit rated at only 24 minutes.
What's the problem, you say? Burning through that conduit means meltdown.
I agree that there should be more research dollars spent on nuclear, but the NRC and the industry must play it straight. No risking lives.
That's not Google's tablet, that's a "Google Android Tablet" ("Google" as part of the OS name, not the physical tablet's branding.)
That's somebody else's tablet hardware running what looks like a seriously stock Android installation. (I mean, would Google go to all the trouble of designing a tablet with the same minimalist home screen as a mobile phone? Or a 600 MHz CPU when their phone sports a 1 GHz grinder?)
Here's a video for a "Smit MID-560" with a 5" *resistive* touch screen (rather than capacitive), speculated to be the hardware of this fakey "Google Android Tablet" that is not sold by Google.
The whole thing smells fishy: the indictment's first odd bit is its vagueness about what Duchak was up to, specifically. No details.
The second weird thing is that DOJ doesn't want him held - no bail mentioned (nor in any newstory that I've found), and the "will not seek detention" box is checked on the indictment form (pre-trial detention.)
Likewise, the indictment says "five days or less" for the trial duration. I once sat for a sexual assault trial, and despite being an open-and-shut case of guy-grabs-coworkers-boobs-in-front-of-witnesses, it lasted 4-1/2 days.
Three federal agents are listed, you can bet their affidavits spell out more of what he did... and they don't appear to be online. Further searching, looks like there's absolutely nothing within.gov that bears our Duchak's name.
Under other circumstances (and administrations), this might have been a highly-touted smackdown in the war against whatever. Not so here...
in some cases preparations have been classified as 'homeopathic' while still containing significant concentrations of active...ingredients
There are many homeopathic preparations that contain base material(s), by design.
still containing significant concentrations of active (and potentially harmful) ingredients
Is that pure conjecture, or do you have a cite? Neither of the links you provided mention anything like what you suggest, nor have I discovered any such claims in my readings on the subject.
...Zicam...
While Zicam contains some homeopathic ingredients, they themselves have never been associated with anosmia. Zicam also contains other "active ingredients" in far higher concentrations. Neither the FDA, the plaintiffs' lawyers, nor any research have determined what triggered anosmia in those victims, though there has been speculation that direct application of zinc to the olfactory bulb is the cause.
Haha, who's lacking in objectivity here? Plainly a false claim, if you've ever done any reading on the subject.
Don't start in on my motivations or beliefs either. I used to believe in (or at least, not disbelieve in) homeopathy.
Campaigners often claim they used to support what they now fight, for purely rhetorical benefit. Rhetoric is all you've presented thus far.
My gods, people here fight homeopathy like it's destroying the world! My ex, who has fully recovered from the effects of chronic Lyme disease due to homeopathic treatment, will thank you to educate yourself. And I say: go read articles that claim what you disbelieve. Look for the studies, read the work. You've so far presented no actual knowledge beyond popular criticism.
Homeopathy doesn't (generally) claim that the small amount of the substance creates the cure, but that it's the dilution itself of that substance that helps.
Go read the wikipedia link in my original post - you've just described one of two schools of thought about homeopathy.
don't try to claim that it "trigger[s] an immune response"
Oh I don't make that claim, that's made by European (mostly) pharmaceutical firms.
Ever gotten stung by a bee or an ant? How did your body respond to the pain, itching and swelling induced by the venom? What's that? Your body fought those symptoms off, and you recovered? (Assuming you're not of the rare type who die from insect venoms.)
Ever wondered if that same principle can be applied to conditions with similar symptoms? One homeopathic remedy uses dilute quantities of bee venom to, get this, reduce itching and swelling caused by autoimmune hives.
Additional uses are for the reduction of chronic pain and arthritic joint inflammation. There are also claims that it reduces the symptoms of multiple schlerosis. While I've not found a peer-reviewed study about the latter (yet), there are two American university who are studying the pain/inflammation angle.
Homeopathy is based on wild guesswork and superstition
Funny, it sounds like your knowledge of homeopathy is based on the same. Why don't you open your mind and do some reading beyond news stories which confirm your biases? It's plain you and others here have never researched homeopathy beyond what you already believe.
Bullshit! You have no idea what homeopathy is. Homeopathic preparations are NOT diluted due to legal issues, dilution is the whole. god. damn. point.
It's easy to attack a whole field by going after its weakest claim. That's what most homeopathy vs placebo studies have done, and it's what you're doing. And it's clear that most/.ers here have heard only that homeopathic remedies are preparations diluted beyond having actual base material, which is absolutely incorrect. Follow your own advice and *read* before flaming others for the same.
The split between lower and higher dilutions followed ideological lines. Those favoring low dilutions stressed pathology and a strong link to conventional medicine...
-before engaging your flamethrower. From my reads, there have been only a few studies analysing lower dilution prepartions, focusing on a couple of products, and far from conclusive with respect to the field.
Ever gotten vaccinated against the flu or smallpox? Same basic principle as homeopathy: introduce a small quantity of Something Bad^tm into the body, to trigger an immune response.
Slashdot Mirror
Disasters are rare-ish, but accidents are not. Robots for removing highly radioactive leaked water and other materials would be helpful.
...must be laughing right now over another narrow escape.
Agile is the interruptor the business side has always wanted: a leash for engineers.
But it gets much abused, resulting in needless rewrites, and scattered or stunted architectures - seen it at three tech-centric companies now.
"Refactor" is a banished term in Agileland. And you never really get to refactor, to design patterns or anything else, because you're too busy replacing hand-wired code to fit the latest redesign or business strategy change.
Tech management everywhere have lost their collective spines, caving in to "get it done cheaply and quickly" every time. Even when the resources are available to develop maintainable, well-thought-out code.
> You could just as well argue it increases privacy, since Amazon becomes a proxy service. That only works if they don't add client-identifying proxy headers to each of your requests... e.g. HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR, REMOTE_ADDR.
NYT is protected: see the Pentagon Papers case.
Spying to steal secrets, and publishing secrets as a newspaper, are considered two entirely different actions by the law. One is protected by the First Amendment and SCOTUS case law, while the other is espionage.
I've seen 50-68% disapproval of Wikileaks - where'd you get this 80% figure? Perhaps you inverted a 20% *approval* rating? Not the same thing, if so.
As for NYT and other outlets disseminating the cables, that action was and is protected by Supreme Court precedent (see the Pentagon Papers case) under First Amendment doctrine.
Other than blood-thirsty right-wingers and the current DOJ, the most reaction I've seen to the cables is a collective *shrug*.
Not a big deal - they've just confirmed what we knew all along:
- That third world govts are corrupt
- That the U.S. gov't goes to bat for big scumbag corps
- That big scumbag corps will do anything to make money - like testing experimental drugs on African children, then using blackmail to worm their way out of trouble (I'm lookin' at *you*, Pfizer)
Christ, is grammar flaming coming back? Sigh.. that's so 1990s, can't believe this got modded up.
Of course Apple is not a prosecuting agency (as the GP author no doubt understands), but you can be sure that state/county prosecutors are real tight with Apple's attorneys.
Apple have sworn out *many* complaints against bloggers and websites in the past, and will very likely continue to do so. That they don't "charge or prosecute" anyone doesn't discount the fact that they do in fact cause such actions to be taken on their behalf.
Nice pomposity there, newfag.
I remember that movie! Where the cop break's the reporter's fingers one-by-one, til he tells him the source? "I make the laws in this town, mister." Friggin' awesome! 1938, right? Caught it on UHF when I was a teen.
I know! Stupid reporters ain't got no rights, and it serves 'em right - who do they think they are, challenging the all-powerful gubbermint?!
Me too! Just for fun, let's burn the printing presses! Then we'll set fire to the Reichstag! (Psst! Pass me the bourbon)
Maybe I've installed more apps w/background process than most Android users... the iPhone just doesn't allow background processes the way Android does. Android allows you to declare a background process, and it can spawn threads and basically keep running til the battery runs dry. The foreground, UI-attached process isn't allowed to hog the CPU - that's when you get the wait/kill dialog.
There's a kind of background update feature available on iPhone, but it doesn't run constantly the way some Android apps do. I'm not sure but think it's a kind of push notification, queuing updates until your mail or news or stock quote app is running again.
I suggest installing a task manager app on your HTC (search the Market for "task manager".) A decent one will list all apps with declared background processes... then you'll have a better idea of what I'm talking about.
I've been developing for Blackberry and Android for the last two years, and Java for the last 15. I've had access to nearly every Android and Blackberry phone available in the U.S., and often take them home for testing. I also own an iPod Touch.
Here's why iPhone is a better experience than Android: Single-tasking. The UI is responsive and smooth. That's because the currently-running app has most of the CPU and GPU available to it.
Not so with Android. Until Nexus One (and Droid, to an extent), pretty much all Android phones have been a rough experience.
Press a UI control, and you expect your $500 smartphone to respond right away, correct? With Android phones, sometimes you wait seconds for a response! Worst case, the infamous "Kill or Wait" dialog appears, where you're given the opportunity to kill the foreground app!! The one you're waiting on to respond to your last click.
That's not just lame, it's stupid. At the very least, Android should nice up the foreground app, so it can be responsive to the user, right?
As an Android developer, I *HATE* that my app is at the mercy of whatever shitty-assed code is running in a background process, hogging up the CPU with its poor efficiency.
Also, the Android and Blackberry platforms encourage the use of default UI components, which are quite basic in appearance and behavior. And with Android, the API has been a moving target, with whole classes deprecated, events and handlers moved around ... very annoying. And don't let's not get into Blackberry, where nothing new has happened since I've been developing for it ... e.g. the latest BB phones have accelerated graphics hardware, but where's the OpenGL ES Java bindings?? Nowhere to be found (until very recently.)
In the meantime, I very much enjoy games and apps on the iPod Touch, and make my calls from a Nexus One. Here's hoping the hardware catches up to Android's prodigious CPU needs sometime soon.
That's an apple-oranges comparison. The video shows a GE-Honda HF120 turbine, a 2,000 lb two-stage, two-compressor turbofan designed for the light jet market. A very different design from...
Commercial airline engines are rated from 14,000 (old-school Boeing 737) to over 100,000 (Boeing 777) pounds.
Aside from that, the difference in scale of a fine volcanic ash particle compared with a grain of sand determines the melt rate. Volcanic ash passing through a turbine is essentially a fluid, one that melts at around 1000 C. Aggregate sand (in the video) melt between 1500-1700 C.
Turbofan combustion chambers burn at between 1500-2000 C. Grains of sand are too thick to melt, given the airflow rate through an engine (250-1400 mph.)
Chernobyl killed 31, with another 4,000 cancer deaths expected. Maybe you meant the American nuclear industry?
The jist of the issue is true, however: the NRC has turned into a rubber-stamp machine, in favor of the industry. That's probably the only way that many of the aging power plants will get recertified (remember, few reactors have been built in the last 20 years.)
Some plants have serious issues, for example the fire safety problem at Indian Point.
The NRC waived their own requirement that the conduit connecting the control room with the reactors be able to withstand fire for one hour. Instead, they granted an exemption to Indian Point's operator, allowing a conduit rated at only 24 minutes.
What's the problem, you say? Burning through that conduit means meltdown.
I agree that there should be more research dollars spent on nuclear, but the NRC and the industry must play it straight. No risking lives.
No virus can replicate *by itself*. They inject RNA into host cells, which reprograms them to produce more virii. Purely parasitic.
Excellent, this will be more fodder for the "electromagnetic harassment" nutters!
And let us not forget the corrolary to Moore's Law: "The bandwidth of telecoms doubles every fifty years."
That's not Google's tablet, that's a "Google Android Tablet" ("Google" as part of the OS name, not the physical tablet's branding.)
That's somebody else's tablet hardware running what looks like a seriously stock Android installation. (I mean, would Google go to all the trouble of designing a tablet with the same minimalist home screen as a mobile phone? Or a 600 MHz CPU when their phone sports a 1 GHz grinder?)
Waitasec, scam alert: here are some threads questioning whether this device actually even exists (commenters posting about unfulfilled orders for this very same "Google Android" tablet device.)
Here's a video for a "Smit MID-560" with a 5" *resistive* touch screen (rather than capacitive), speculated to be the hardware of this fakey "Google Android Tablet" that is not sold by Google.
Nice try buddy ... looks to be utterly bogus.
That plan cost us dearly, but never materialized. We shouldn't be paying for it again, but it sounds like we are about to, without a choice.
The whole thing smells fishy: the indictment's first odd bit is its vagueness about what Duchak was up to, specifically. No details.
The second weird thing is that DOJ doesn't want him held - no bail mentioned (nor in any newstory that I've found), and the "will not seek detention" box is checked on the indictment form (pre-trial detention.)
Likewise, the indictment says "five days or less" for the trial duration. I once sat for a sexual assault trial, and despite being an open-and-shut case of guy-grabs-coworkers-boobs-in-front-of-witnesses, it lasted 4-1/2 days.
Three federal agents are listed, you can bet their affidavits spell out more of what he did... and they don't appear to be online. Further searching, looks like there's absolutely nothing within .gov that bears our Duchak's name.
Under other circumstances (and administrations), this might have been a highly-touted smackdown in the war against whatever. Not so here...
But hey! There's a Douglas James Duchak listed in the whitepages ...
Let's see if he can fill us in...
There are many homeopathic preparations that contain base material(s), by design.
Is that pure conjecture, or do you have a cite? Neither of the links you provided mention anything like what you suggest, nor have I discovered any such claims in my readings on the subject.
While Zicam contains some homeopathic ingredients, they themselves have never been associated with anosmia. Zicam also contains other "active ingredients" in far higher concentrations. Neither the FDA, the plaintiffs' lawyers, nor any research have determined what triggered anosmia in those victims, though there has been speculation that direct application of zinc to the olfactory bulb is the cause.
I'll leave it at that, and that you've not yet presented any cites to prove your points.
Haha, who's lacking in objectivity here? Plainly a false claim, if you've ever done any reading on the subject.
Campaigners often claim they used to support what they now fight, for purely rhetorical benefit. Rhetoric is all you've presented thus far.
My gods, people here fight homeopathy like it's destroying the world! My ex, who has fully recovered from the effects of chronic Lyme disease due to homeopathic treatment, will thank you to educate yourself. And I say: go read articles that claim what you disbelieve. Look for the studies, read the work. You've so far presented no actual knowledge beyond popular criticism.
Go read the wikipedia link in my original post - you've just described one of two schools of thought about homeopathy.
Oh I don't make that claim, that's made by European (mostly) pharmaceutical firms.
Ever gotten stung by a bee or an ant? How did your body respond to the pain, itching and swelling induced by the venom? What's that? Your body fought those symptoms off, and you recovered? (Assuming you're not of the rare type who die from insect venoms.)
Ever wondered if that same principle can be applied to conditions with similar symptoms? One homeopathic remedy uses dilute quantities of bee venom to, get this, reduce itching and swelling caused by autoimmune hives.
Additional uses are for the reduction of chronic pain and arthritic joint inflammation. There are also claims that it reduces the symptoms of multiple schlerosis. While I've not found a peer-reviewed study about the latter (yet), there are two American university who are studying the pain/inflammation angle.
Funny, it sounds like your knowledge of homeopathy is based on the same. Why don't you open your mind and do some reading beyond news stories which confirm your biases? It's plain you and others here have never researched homeopathy beyond what you already believe.
You haven't looked yourself, have you? That's because your bias precludes looking any further.
There have been many random controlled studies of homeopathic remedis showing efficacy greater than placebo.
Reread my first paragraph.
No, there are a handful of vaccine types, and you described two. All types are currently in use.
And you have no idea how homeopathy works. There's a helluva lot more money behind vaccines, so it's no wonder that their PR prevails.
It's easy to attack a whole field by going after its weakest claim. That's what most homeopathy vs placebo studies have done, and it's what you're doing. And it's clear that most /.ers here have heard only that homeopathic remedies are preparations diluted beyond having actual base material, which is absolutely incorrect. Follow your own advice and *read* before flaming others for the same.
Less-dilute homeopathic preparations contain the base substance. Read this bit from your Wikipedia cite about low vs high dilutions of homeopathic preparations-
-before engaging your flamethrower. From my reads, there have been only a few studies analysing lower dilution prepartions, focusing on a couple of products, and far from conclusive with respect to the field.
Ever gotten vaccinated against the flu or smallpox? Same basic principle as homeopathy: introduce a small quantity of Something Bad^tm into the body, to trigger an immune response.