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Comment Re:Oe noes! A compiler bug! (Score 1) 739

That argument is stronger. Your argument was, "If it wasn't there at the start...." which is irrelevant when speaking about proportion.

You substituted "100%" for "majority", which need only mean "50% plus some". Linux was released 23 years ago; ICC version 6 was released in 2002, 12 years ago. That's 11 years before ICC version 6.0 for Linux and 12 years with it; I don't have numbers for pre-6.0, but assume earlier releases came at chronologically earlier points in time. Given its rapid development in that period, the earliest likely release was 2000 or so; but 2002 is the earliest release I have data for.

There have been no other credible compilers for Linux throughout the majority of its existence

Except the Intel C compiler, which is inappropriate for other reasons stated (i.e. it's shitty for non-Intel architectures). Still, given the argument--a GCC bug on x86/x86-64--and the twelve years of potential tuning for icc to support high-performance situations (i.e. embedded architecture, where 16% speed-up matters), broad compiler support is reasonable. It's not like LLVM just becoming useful last year and triggering a scramble to rebase onto CLANG.

2002 was the year of Gnome 2.0, of Linux entering the 2.5 development cycle (2.4 was state-of-the-art), of SuSE 8.0, of single-core CPUs and no AMD64. It was a long time ago, a different age, when journaling file systems were hip and new and Hans Reiser hadn't murdered Nina yet.

Comment Re:Link to claim form? (Score 1) 66

Why does TFA not mention we should maybe consider a little personal responsibility, eh? What is this, you let hackers take your identity? Maybe you should have refused to provide Sony with any information that would allow them to take out loans in your name!

Oh, you have an address, and a credit card number? No social security number? Well, I guess you can spend credit card money; and the owner can chargeback the money, freeze the card, and get a new one.

Sony wants your SSN, bank account details, and DOB? Dude fuck them. Go get Wii.

The banks gave people a loan without your Driver's ID, SSN, etc? Just with your name and address? Dude, I can put an address into city services and get the names of the residents and their property tax payment dates and amounts, and any bill due. Tell the judge the bank is retarded for not getting actual ID.

Comment Re:Code the way you want... (Score 2) 372

A true agile process has an incremental delivery schedule. Rather than building the full deliverable and delivering, it identifies milestones as deliverable product. For example: a waterfall process for building a car would intake requirements and output a car; an agile process would produce the platform for inspection by the customer, followed by the suspension system, the engine, the drive train, interior, and so on, in some useful order.

For a software product, this involves delivering partial functionality to the customer, who then examines it or even integrates it with his workflow. If there are issues, the functionality can be cheaply reworked; building on top of broken functionality could incur major rework when an issue is encountered, so this process actually reduces work.

Agile is not Rapid Application Development. RAD has consistently been shown to be a large joke. Agile software project management accomplishes what RAD could not.

You assume that meetings are the only way to convey requirements instead of working closely with the subject matter experts in a more collaborative manner.

If you can handle two afternoons' worth of reading, I will direct you here (technical) and here (soft skills). These cover stakeholder management, which is "working with people". Part of that is working with SMEs.

If you want to argue from an actual competent stance, you'll need to bother reading the (horrifically dry) PMBOK, fifth edition, particularly chapters 5 (scope management) and 10 (communications management). I found chapter 9 (human resource management) fascinating as well; chapter 11 (risk management) is a favorite of mine. Much of the content may sound like gibberish out of full context; reading the book from start to finish is like that, too, because they forward-reference things in the beginning (integration management immediately starts talking about the requirements traceability matrix, IIRC, which is 4 chapters later).

The short of it is: there are many ways to get information out of people. Meetings are a good method, and arranging good meetings is a skill. Meetings have three isolate purposes: to share information, to develop alternatives, and to make decisions. Never perform more than one in the same meeting; you will make horrific decisions.

To put this into perspective: We've worked closely with SMEs here, and done things wrong. Sometimes, meetings occur without the SMEs, and decisions are made contrary to what the SME recommended; others, the tech workers (network engineers, programmers, etc.) were consulted separately, and then excluded from decisionary meetings. The result is often people making decision and dropping impossible, poorly defined, or useless shit on you. Then you implement it, and they tell you it's wrong.

By the by, one of the most important features of a good meeting is it's short.

Comment Re: Code the way you want... (Score 1) 372

Each claim increases your insurance premium. If I can get all your neighbors in on it, your area becomes a "high-risk area" and you get to pay $1000 extra for insurance. A difference of 2 miles for me made my car insurance jump from $90/mo to $324/mo once.

Comment Re: Code the way you want... (Score 1) 372

Consultants extract money from the "job creators" and return it to the economy. Even if they did no work at all, that extraction justifies their existence.

I'm coming to your house and breaking your windows. Then you can return some money to the economy. The glazier will be happy.

Comment Re:Code the way you want... (Score 1) 372

I never hire independent consultants. They don't understand the use of project management, and just hack things together as quickly as possible. This is, of course, compounded by management wanting to not give proper budget to work with consultants properly so that they have time to write not-shit-code.

Getting the programming consultant into meetings is the only way to get good quality work out of them. Throwing a requirements list at people doesn't help as much as folks think; you discuss that with the consultant, but you also bring them into the meetings with the primary stakeholders. That way they get to see what's going on, hear about the features needed, the use cases, and, in agile models, get feedback on each incremental deliverable. This allows the programmer to raise questions about what exactly is being asked of him, instead of just getting shoved in a room with a spec and then told him he didn't do it right--when there's 100 ways to implement what's on the spec and only 2 are apparently acceptable.

Comment Re:The golden question.. (Score 1) 60

William Strunk covered this in 1914. You're never supposed to put quotes around words like that, as it puts on airs to show the audience that you're using some vulgar slang, but we're all better than that.

Quotes are used when referencing a term. We call this "using quotes". If you otherwise "use quotes" around "things" in your "sen-tance", you look like a "huge jackass" like Dr. Evil.

Comment Re:let me correct that for you. (Score 1) 619

Oh, you're connecting the need to work with the ability. Yeah, that's a bad assumption.

If you don't work, you live in a 244sqft apartment with 144sqft living space, the rest kitchen and bathroom. You can't buy anything good, and have to live on extremely strict finances. Luxury doesn't exist, and you probably won't have very good dating prospects; you don't have any money to go out to the bars, either.

In our current system, getting a job is a bad deal. If you have Social Security Disability Income, you can string that out forever at $676/mo. Once you get a job, that vanishes immediately; your wages are less $676/mo, because that's what you pay *every* *month* to have a job. If you get fired, you can't go back to SSDI. Same with unemployment (you lose it upon employment, and, If you're fired because you're a dickhead, you don't collect unemployment again).

Getting a job on welfare is risky, and discounts your monthly pay by the amount you were gaining on welfare. Rather than working 0 hours and getting $676, you are working 160 hours and getting $1,160. That makes a minimum wage job $3/hr, with the risk of getting no unemployment or SSDI if you get fired (you haven't worked in 8 months--do you still know how to not fuck off?).

With a UBI, you don't need to work. We don't need a minimum wage; if they don't pay you well, don't work. On the other hand, if you do work, you will always gain the full benefit of employment, and will never have your UBI taken away from you. Working is always a good deal, and gainful employment carries no risk. If you so decide, you could even live with just UBI, and provide volunteer time for the community--it won't gain you anything, but you won't be stuck inside, and you won't have to worry about your expenses because you don't necessarily need a job per se--but you have to be pretty hard core to take that deal.

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