Math isn't my strong suit apparently...

I originally said 1.5h, then looked at wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

saw the "17min" and changed it lol... apparently my memory is better than my maths...

Agile probably fails because it is the next Management Buzzword that somebody heard somewhere. Then try to use it, because it is the new best thing.

Like anything, it likely has it's place and time, probably mostly dependent on size and type of project being worked on. Having it misapplied because Management thinks it is a swell idea, then having people just try to make it work because they have to, well it might work, but if you are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole it may be difficult not to fail.

From what I have read, for small to medium sized project Agile can work quite well. However once you get to the large and gargantuan size projects it starts running into some fundamental problems. Sure you might be able to break it down into smaller projects, but that is not always reasonable or makes sense, or then you are adjusting requirements simply to fit your development process. Also those pieces need to be able to work together in a seamless and coordinated way, which requires some higher level planning...

Anyway when I hear about a very large system being done in an Agile manner, the first thing I think of is, enjoy that incomprehensible pile of garbage that is going to be the result unless you are very careful.

I think some like it for infinite job security, as you will just be constantly going back over and redoing and readjusting things for that application forever just to keep it limping along and running like some Quasimodo. Though in this example, perhaps Frankenstein might be a more apt analogy where you are trying to take a bunch of badly related pieces and building a single system out of it, zapping it with lightning and hoping for the best... The result? Fire and Mobs... Fire and Mobs...

To be fair, they took a 1200 page book and made a movie that was an hour and 20 minutes long. How much can you really expect.

If you added up all the LOTR books together it is about the same size, and they made 3 movies that were like 12h long if you look at the extended versions.

I liked the book, the movie of course was disappointing. However as some pointed out, there are plenty of worse movies out there. However the real analysis of "Worst Movie Ever" has to be some index of Movie Budget VS Movie Suckage as many of the really bad movies out there are very low budget as well so that really isn't a fair comparison either.

I know Waterworld was thought of as a big bust and had a budget of 172M (1995) to Battlefield's 73M (2000)...

Here is a list of the most expensive... though a larger list would be better for analysis, though I see a few on there that were not so great:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Seems the obvious answer is to genetically modify some bees to be extra hardy, and toxin resistant. The possible side effects might include increased intelligence, gargantuan size, and a taste for human flesh, but we have to save the bees somehow.

I for one welcome our new super bee overlords!

My poison was Trade Wars 2002! I played that a lot, every day, on BBS's when I was young. Probably 1st online addiction, I would get anxious/angry if I couldn't get on in time to get my turns in. This game basically forced my parents to get another phone line dedicated to my computer. Also kids never got this memory:

NO CARRIER!
"ARGH MOM GET OFF THE PHONE!"
"SORRY!"

I vaguely remember the name Usurper, so I probably played it, but TW2002 was so good!

OK, IMNAL... However we have all heard about:

A) The definition of insanity is performing the exact same action multiple times but expecting different results, and
B) The courts hold that if proven insane, they are not legally responsible for their actions.

I manage several enterprise applications. I have personally seen users, incorrectly doing something which makes a mess out of data, then attempting to fix it using the exact same method, then doing it again, and again, and again, etc...

Clearly if the user can't be held responsible because technically they are all insane, how can a developer be held accountable for some insane persons actions. Poppycock! If you start talking about the design and the requirements analysis, I will point out that users don't just start being insane when they start to use applications, that is their steady state of being. Requirements that are essentially mutually exclusive for example. A reasonable person would say that isn't rational. Anyway, at best we can care for them, and try to do our best to steer their drunken keyboard mashing into something that resembles productivity. However true responsibility for user actions? You must be a user (i.e. insane).

...or so we thought. The first alien selfie was a real kick in the junk.

First off, this topic reminded me of a funny YouTube video I saw recently, you'll have to look it up if interested as I can't link it. But it involved a Dad with a batman mask, in a van, with two kids in the back.

Kid1: (in a whiny voice) "The DVD player isn't working..."
BatDad: (in BatVoice) "When I was your age, all I had to amuse myself was looking out the windows"
Kid1: "That must of sucked...."

So one might argue, that the entertainment portion of windows in cars may have been eclipsed by media.

Having said that, there is a safety issue. While windows no doubt add structural weakness into any design, on the occurrence of an accident, it is easier for a first responder to locate victims, and also to remove them possibly through a broken window should doors be jammed shut.

That is basically what I said. However, this all started back in like 2002... 13 years ago, and no one has been compensated yet. Small comfort for those employees looking at what may happen should they decide to try and unionize.

Netcraft confirms that desktop applications are dead! Also Desktops. :)

Seriously this bunk is garbage. Perhaps for personal use, there may be some transition. I know I use some google docs as I don't want to bother buying a personal copy of office for hundreds of dollars for the amount I actually use it outside of work... Though I probably have used OpenOffice more.

In a corporate environment? Just no. This also happens to be where most of the usage is located. It is not even close, it is absurd. Ask a system admin about what happens when just one connection to a DB goes down, one specific and specialized application, or part of a network, or the internet... Now imagine if this happened to normal everyday office productivity software... Buhahahaha! Chaos.

There are certain things that may go a bit farther, shared documents over networks, or virturalized desktops to share specific software, but even that has limits. The last one usually to combat deployment issues and non-standard desktop configurations, however even then we have control over the resource.

MS started breaking WMC long before Vista came around. I used WMC a lot. I've had Vista. WMC has been falling apart for many years. Mostly because as you described for one reason or another they made the decision to value corporate interests over their consumers. I've been tinkering with WMP and WMC for years using codecs and the like to try and get things to work. The best I get is that most things work. However no matter what I do, there will be stuff that just isn't compatible. About the only reason I use it is my remote is "compatible" with WMC. Every now again again, when I hit that file that no matter what I do (and at this point whatever I do seems to fix one, then break another format), I just give up and use VLC, as it just works. I'm actually really surprised that someone hasn't come along and replaced WMC by now as it has been a pretty big gap for a long time. Hopefully MS pulling the plug on WMC would prompt someone to make something better that isn't purposefully broken...

That said:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2...

Walmart employees in Quebec, Canada tried to unionize. Walmart just closed up shop and went someplace else laying off everyone. Year later (10 actually), they lose in supreme court and are forced to pay damages. However no word on what those damages are, and I bet they are fighting that. Not to mention the fact they the folks don't get jobs back, or retroactively for the last decade. On top on that, the people who work at Walmart, aren't exactly going to be rolling in it either, many would have lost big in the meantime trying to make ends meet while waiting a decade for maybe some kind of court settlement. It is no wonder that employees are afraid to unionize. Unions have been getting busted or weaker for a long time now. Which if you think about it is crazy, when we start talking about the 1% and how the we have never had such wealth inequality before...

Uh, didn't Nokia already sell they Map division to Apple when Apple was having trouble with Apple Maps after they dropped Google Maps? Apple didn't just instantly map the entire world, they had to acquire all that data...

Perhaps they just bought a licence to the data, but I had thought that they had just bought it outright. That sounds more like Apple. It would have cost a couple billion, but then they have/had mad cash on hand anyway.

Ahhh, this reminds me of those decoder wheels!

It may be due to the fact that I don't drive an awful lot. It might be 13 years old, but I only have about 85k on it.

Perhaps if they extended the testing/registration period to 5 years... It just seems I am constantly taking it in to get tested. I've had it tested 7 times so far without any indication of any emissions issues, for a cost of over 400$.