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Comment they are worth it (Score 5, Insightful) 345

no

You often *have* to review a entry level programmer's work until it reaches an acceptable quality. I consider code reviews as a method of improving the programmer more so than the code. One an engineer is producing generally acceptable code it becomes safe enough to treat their code as a black box and wait for problems to be unearthed by testing. If you are shipping bugs your problem is testing, not code reviews. Finally, the cheapest way to do code reviews is for a manager to just scan submitted code from time to time and send out polite emails if they see something amiss. On the other hand getting five senior guys in a room to discuss the work of another senior engineer is a just going to result in unproductive, cranky engineers.

Comment it is worth it (Score 3, Interesting) 290

YouTube positions Google to try and be the next iTunes, to turn Android into the next iPhone and be the place where video and audio providers need to be to sell their content. I'm sure Google knows this and considering the economic realities of the day are looking at ways to move in on Apple. I mean really, why else would they be burning that much money folks. There has to be more of a plan when it comes to Google and media than to spend 5 billion waiting for bandwidth to become cheaper.

Comment fail early (Score 4, Insightful) 260

With our budgets the conservatism is understandable. At the same time when you are trying to make a new product there is also pressure to be the one that stands out. So the creative process demands that you try new things, preferably early on in the project. I think the real problem here (sorry to parade out an industry truism) is not failing quickly enough. If a new feature or mechanic becomes a *big deal* and is not allowed to fail when it starts to suck, the investment of money and ego may require it to ship. However, trying new things when you have time to take the risks, and are not overly committed to shipping them, is the thing that keeps us evolving.

Comment Re:Inaccurate wiimote description (Score 1) 187

Ok, look. The Wiimote has no idea what direction it is currently moving in. It only knows about *acceleration* in it's local space. So for example due to gravity, (a kind of acceleration) when you hold it still it knows exactly which way is down. But that is about it. Also the accelerometers are bloody cheap, so all they are really good for is triggering an event when you jerk the damn' thing.
Data Storage

Submission + - What film genres really benefit from HD? 1

thegirlorthecar.com writes: "I'm thinking your preference of either standard DVDs or HD formats really comes down to whether the kinds of video you like to watch benefit from being in HD. So I'm putting it to the test, and asking what genres of movies you watch, and whether you are, or would like to be buying HD?"
Slashdot.org

Submission + - Europeans taller than Americans

theolein writes: "The BBC has an article up on a recent study that concludes that Europeans are now on average taller than Americans from being shorter some 200 years ago. It seems that Americans have grown about 1 inch in that time, whereas Europeans are between 3 and 6 inches taller than they were 200 years ago. The study does not include Asian or Hispanic immigrants to the USA and makes no conclusions about why this is, but states that factors, such as dietry, social and economic factors may play a role in the results."
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows Animated Cursor Flaw

blindd0t writes: Security Focus has an article summarizing a flaw with how Windows deals with animated cursors, which allows for an attack through a maliciously crafted web page or email. Admittedly, this is not supposed to affect users running Vista with IE7 in protected mode; however, this does affect those running IE6 or IE7 with Windows XP Service Pack 2, which is presently the vast majority of users. Microsoft has a security advisory as well.
Portables

Submission + - Hands On: The $100 Laptop

Paul Stamatiou writes: "I got my hands on the second release of the $100 One Laptop per Child laptop and wrote a review complete with pictures. It runs a custom version of Fedora Core 6 complete with an Xulrunner-based browser and an impressive 7.5-inch LCD sporting a resolution of 1200×900 with the ability to go monochromatic in sunlight. Other hardware features include a VGA webcam, 802.11b/g wireless, 512MB flash storage, 128MB DDR266 system RAM and a 366MHz AMD Geode CPU."
Google

Submission + - Google censors user-generated content in Brazil

airshowfan writes: "Imagine that every time you wrote something on Blogger that the Chinese government disagreed with, China's courts could fine Google China and Google had to delete your post and give your IP address to the Chinese police. This is basically how Google runs Orkut, a social-networking site it owns, and by far the most widely-used social-networking site in Brazil, with over twice as many users as Facebook. Not only does Google get rid of any user-generated content on Orkut that Brazil's courts dislike, they have given the Brazilian police admin access, including the ability to censor content and to find your IP address. And this is despite the fact that all of Orkut's data is hosted in the US!"
Programming

Submission + - Is computer science dead?

warm sushi writes: An academic at the British Computing Society asks Is computer science dead? Citing falling student enrolments, and improved technology, British academic Neil McBride claims that off-the-shelf solutions are removing much of the demand for high level development skills: "As commercial software products have matured, it no longer makes sense for organisations to develop software from scratch. Accounting packages, enterprise resource packages, customer relationship management systems are the order of the day: stable, well-proven and easily available." Is that quote laughable? Or has the software development industry stabilised to an off-the-self commodity?

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