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Comment Re:I choose MS SQL Server (Score 1) 320

No. Not really. Microsoft pushes the idea that you don't need to have any clue to use it's products. It helps enable this idea with better novice interfaces. This leads to the problem that you end up with barely trained monkeys having the appearance that they can us Microsoft products.

And they're selling a very popular OS that barely trained monkeys can manage.
And they're selling a very popular office suite that barely trained monkeys can use.
And so on.... the world runs on barely trained monkeys.

If you have a problem with that, take it up with the Creator who made a 1% patch to a chimp.

Comment Re:Renting private chargers (Score 1) 341

Well, private chargers are generally really slow and usually meant for overnight charging, it's rarely what you want to wait for if you are running out of juice. Here in Norway we already have several vendors that have set up paid fast charging points - not quite as fast as superchargers but 20-50 kW is overkill at home. And you'll still be paying for the same power, just not the premium but if you put any reasonable value on your time it's probably better anyway unless there's something you'd like to spend time on (eating, shopping, entertainment, whatever) nearby.

Comment Re:Self driving taxis will be a harder sell (Score 1) 451

That mean the person riding in the taxi won't be allowed to arbitrarily stop it

I really doubt a car without an "emergency stop" button will ever fly. And if by default won't let you open the doors then an override and/or an emergency hammer to break the glass, they're not going to make something where you get trapped in a fire. Maybe it won't go offroad or pull up the driveway for me, but street address to street address it should be "close enough" unless I got 30kg of luggage. Otherwise I can complain and maybe they can do a remote drive-by-wire or get half off / refund.

Comment Re:Necesary Censorship (Score 1) 216

Seriously. If more people had read Mein Kampf, a lot of shit would have been spared from us. Simply because more people would have noticed just what a lunatic that guy was. Personally, I'd make it mandatory lecture for every neo nazi just to show them what kind of fucked up megalomaniac they idolize.

Doesn't matter, he was the perfect talking head. He got people engaged, he got people enraged, he was speaking directly to a gravely wounded national pride. You might think the captain of the boat is a total idiot, but you're not going to stage a mutiny as long as he's on the course you want to be. Never underestimate the power of telling people what they want to hear.

Comment Re:Sigh (Score 1) 110

Actually that's exactly what this card is not, they've dropped FP64 performance and basically made a bigger, more badass gaming card. If there's any others who can use it, that's because they don't really need the compute features. This is like Intel's "Extreme Edition" CPUs, the performance/dollar is abysmal but it's not an Xeon. Neither is this a Tesla. This is for the "I can drop $3k on a gaming rig" market. I know people with more expensive hobbies than computers.

Comment Re:Sigh (Score 1) 110

So basically the card is overspecced for no sensible reason and you can't fill that amount of VRAM even at 8K with 8xFSAA (and when you do that, you get 9fps). Even SLI'ing 4 of those together won't get you 40fps at those res.

You do realize that 8K @ 12GB is the same as 4K (25% the pixels) @ 3GB? Are you claiming the GTX970/980 is equally overspecced at 4GB(-ish)? I don't think we have 8K monitors yet but make a triple UHD monitor setup and I think you'll make quad-Titan X sweat.

Comment Re:Nipples and terrorism? (Score 1) 134

So which is it? Is America really 'more restricted', or are we in fact freer?

It probably depends on the meaning of free, particularly "free to" and "free from". I'm free to wear my gold chain for a stroll in Somalia, but the odds of being free from crime is probably better at home. Recently we had a court case about a guy who was openly applauding the IS atrocities and calling them heroes and martyrs and true followers of Islam, but stopped just short of encouraging others to commit terrorism. On the one hand it would be silly to criminalize approval of illegal actions - it would make saying you approve of pot smoking criminal - on the other hand you can't get a more clearly told unsaid message if you tried. Or even directly through handpicked quotes, hiding behind the book to avoid saying it yourself. It's not some axiomatic rule set where one right always outranks the other, they brush up to each other and there's shades of gray were you can argue both ways. I even sometimes manage to disagree with myself depending on the starting point.

Comment Re:Paid vs Hobby (Score 1) 133

That depends on whether it's all fun and games. Like what you want to do is play ball, not be the groundskeeper. They can pay someone to do that. You don't want to scrub the toilet in the clubhouse. They can pay someone to do that. Same with FLOSS projects, you're there to write cool new features. Do you want to triage bugs? Write documentation? Test for regressions? Fix the build server? The fun parts will be done better, the not so fun parts is probably the other way around exactly because you're not paying anyone do to them.

Comment Re:You Can't Fix It (Score 1) 133

Either that or you are one who constantly feels things would have been done better if your bosses simply got out of your way. (...) This is why I don't feel you are speaking from experience. The fact is getting those Christmas sales are probably far more important than your viewpoints on perfection. And sometimes those deadlines are there for a reason. Developers are not tasked with creating some shining example of what perfect code can be, they are tasked with making a return on investment.

No, actually there's where I'd like the manager or business owner to get in the way and do his job of figuring out what's most important and if necessary make those hard calls between schedule, quality and cost. I've actually worked a lot with project and portfolio management tools and I know those warning lights start blinking but poor managers want to have their cake and eat it too. Like one project I was in once was supposed to last eight weeks, it got three weeks delayed due to a contract problem but the deadline didn't move an inch. Neither did the scope. Or the resources. Beneath the manager talk it was just "do eight weeks work in five", like we had three works of slack to begin with.

It's got nothing to do with perfection, it's to say it takes what it takes. If you give me a list of features and tell me you need all of them, the amount of work doesn't change just because you set a deadline. I can tell you - with some level of uncertainty - what's reasonable to expect in that amount of time. If those two don't add up, you need to solve that not just dump it on me. Or if that was my job I'd have to do it, I'm quite sure I know how but I don't want it. The problem is when you won't manage and just crack the whip then developers won't take the shit. That's when you get progress bars where the first 90% take 90% of the time and the last 10% forever. But it looked great until shit the fan because everyone fudged the numbers.

The problem when you won't manage is that you often end up with something not actually working but gets rolled into production anyway. To use the infamous car analogy, instead of cutting a few features like lane assistance and automatic windshield wipers you've only half finished the steering, engine, gearbox, transmission and all the other must-have items so you slap the fastest, ugliest hack you got on there and ship it. Yes, I am familiar with time to market but there's no good time to flop in the market. And then you blame the developers for shipping a buggy clusterfuck.

Honestly I feel your heart is in the right place, and your level of principles will produce far better products than those who care little for software quality. But your statements really don't reflect those of someone who has ever actually been in charge of large software projects.

If we're trading compliments, it sounds like you've actually got a clue about running software projects and that will produce far better products than those who want to polish their project all day long. But your statements really don't reflect those of someone who has ever actually been on the receiving end of crap management.

Comment Re:There might not be Proper English (Score 5, Insightful) 667

I would agree. And I think the notion of teaching "Proper English" is less about saying common usage is wrong than it is with trying to slow down the fragmentation of the language into dialects. If you can teach one set of rules for the language as being "correct" and make sure everyone understands it that way, then at least you have a common starting point for all the different dialects, and hopefully keep people ostensibly speaking the same language actually able to understand each other.

Comment Re:You Can't Fix It (Score 2) 133

A mentality of "it will be done when it's right" is almost as foolish as "it will be done on Thursday." Software will never be "right".

I don't think it's an unrealistic standard of perfection, the point is that it's done when the code does what it's supposed to do. It won't be done because the boss sets a deadline or marketing wants it or the bean counters want to hit the Christmas sales. Or even because the developer wants it to. They act like the code is in the chain of command, they tell the developer what to do and the developer tells the computer what to do so if they say Thursday it will be done.

Except the computer doesn't give a damn, isn't responsive to feedback and is entirely unhelpful in tracking down what the problem is, if you've ever thrown your hands in the air and exclaimed "WHY???????" you know what I'm talking about. This is particularly fun during fire fighting, where the answer is that I might find the bug 30 seconds or 3 days after we end this meaningless conversation because I have no basis for an estimate, much less a guarantee for when it'll work.

Yes, I know that for planning purposes you have to make some kind of educated guess but I can only estimate what I know needs to be done, not the "unknown unknowns" that can throw your estimates off by an order of magnitude or simply make it unfeasible. This is particularly - but not only - true when you're working with third party software and libraries. I say I have a worst-case estimate but really that's probably the 95th percentile, there's no hard limit where you can guarantee it'll work.

Comment Re:What can on-location software teams learn from (Score 1) 133

5) If the meeting ends exactly one hour after it starts, then it's a time filler. Finish the meeting when everything is accomplished, not when the time is up.

What kind of meetings do you go to? Most my meetings have more points on the agenda than we'll conclude on and the remaining discussions are tabled to the next meeting because some of the members have to attend other meetings, the room is booked for a new meeting or people need to leave for the day. Status meetings can be the exception when there's a fixed time slot set off every week and not much is happening, but rarely those where we plan the schedule and resources, discuss the architecture and design, solve implementation issues and so on. It always could be fine tuned further, the question is if it's good enough that we can move on or if we have to resume the discussion later.

Comment Re:Sounds like horseshit to me. (Score 2) 172

I don't think they "care" whether they're made in some deep volcanic process or in an industrial plant. They're still... DIAMONDS!

Frankly, I'd go out of my way to NOT buy "real" diamonds but find the manufactured ones, instead. I'll choose the ones not supporting murder, borderline slave labor, and multinational anti-competitive practices and price fixing.

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