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Comment Re:Agile is good for some teams & projects, ho (Score 1) 332

There's nothing preventing you from running an agile project with a robust and complete design. Agility allows you to pivot if and when required.

The easiest way to think of agile projects is a series of really small waterfall-like mini-projects that deliver a working product at the end. As you complete each mini-project, your product comprises a larger set of features. When your feature set reaches MVP, you can release or continue iterating to complete more features, but you can feasibly release at the end of any mini-project.

All of the arguments I've seen around [Aa]gile have shown that both sides are unwilling to concede that they don't actually understand the others' points of view.

There is no project that can't benefit from the ideas agile project management introduces, and there's no rule that says you should throw away your working model to implement agile (although it is generally easier to start with a single team that does start from scratch).

ALL projects benefit from measuring the outcomes of small, incremental changes and continually finding and limiting waste.

Comment Re:If you pay people to do fuck-all... (Score 1) 1145

It's likely that they'd be consuming content that is generated by the willing, which would feed the money back to the system as only creative and scientific endeavour will have any value. Why are we even still talking about money? It's been a valuable tool, and will likely continue to be so for some time, but it's unlikely to remain the optimal solution in a fully-automated world.
Unix

PVS-Studio Analyzer Spots 40 Bugs In the FreeBSD Kernel 169

Andrey_Karpov writes: Svyatoslav Razmyslov from PVS-Studio Team published an article on the check of the FreeBSD kernel. PVS-Studio developers are known for analyzing various projects to show the abilities of their product, and do some advertisement, of course. Perhaps, this is one of the most acceptable and useful ways of promoting a proprietary application. They have already checked more than 200 projects and detected 9355 bugs. At least that's the number of bugs in the error base of their company.

So now it was FreeBSD kernel's turn. The source code was taken from GitHub 'master' branch. Svyatoslav states that PVS-Studio detected more than 1000 suspicious code fragments that are most likely bugs or inaccurate code. He described 40 of them in the article. The list of warnings was given to the FreeBSD developer team and they have already started editing the code.

A couple of words for programmers who are still not familiar with PVS-Studio. PVS-Studio is a tool for bug detection in the source code of programs, written in C, C++ and C#. It performs static code analysis and generates a report that helps a programmer find and fix the errors in the code. You can see a more detailed description of the tool on the company website and download a trial version.

Comment Bad Habits are Formed Early (Score 1) 306

I used book-learning to teach myself programming before I was ten. This had hugely negative impacts for my University degree over a decade later. Starting early will also expose 'natural talent' and make it easier to give them guidance and support (in the example that the child may never otherwise have access to computing facilities that would allow them to learn this, although that is becoming far less common).
Android

NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet Android Lollipop Update Performance Explored 57

MojoKid writes Last week, NVIDIA offered information regarding its Android Lollipop update for the SHIELD Tablet and also revealed a new game bundle for it. This week, NVIDIA gave members of the press early access to the Lollipop update and it will also be rolling out to the general public sometime later today. Some of the changes are subtle, but others are more significant and definitely give the tablet a different look and feel over the original Android KitKat release. Android Lollipop introduces a new "material design" that further flattens out the look of the OS. Google seems to have taken a more minimalist approach as everything from the keyboard to the settings menus have been cleaned up considerably. Many parts of the interface don't have any markings except for the absolute necessities. While the OS definitely feels more fluid and responsive, the default look isn't always better, depending on your personal view. The app tray for example has a plain, white background which looks kind of jarring if you've using a colorful background. And finding the proper touch points for things like a settings menu or clearing notifications isn't always clear. Performance-wise, NVIDIA's Shield Tablet showed significantly better performance on Lollipop for general compute tasks in benchmarks like Mobile XPRT but lagged behind Kit Kat in graphics performance slightly, which could be attributed to driver optimization.
Windows

What To Expect With Windows 9 545

snydeq writes: Two weeks before the its official unveiling, this article provides a roundup of what to expect and the open questions around Windows 9, given Build 9834 leaks and confirmations springing up all over the Web. The desktop's Start Menu, Metro apps running in resizable windows on the desktop, virtual desktops, Notification Center, and Storage Sense, are among the presumed features in store for Windows 9. Chief among the open questions are the fates of Internet Explorer, Cortana, and the Metro Start Screen. Changes to Windows 9 will provide an inkling of where Nadella will lead Microsoft in the years ahead. What's your litmus test on Windows 9?
Communications

Browser To Facilitate Text Browsing In Emergencies 40

Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "Programmers at Fast Company are developing the Cosmos browser to allow text browsing from Android phones when networks are buckling under the load of local disasters. A common phenomenon when disaster strikes is the overloading of cell and data networks by massively increased traffic. The Cosmos browser is intended to facilitate using SMS text messages, which often still get through in such circumstances. To quote one developer, "We want this to be a way for people to get information when they're in dire need of it." Sort of a Lynx comes to Android affair. The Smithsonian contemplates the possibilities, here."

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