Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Seriously? (Score 1) 121

TBH, I don't even get why the TFA author's idea was necessary. The US Constitution was built out of a long series of debates, compromises, and not a little effort towards future-proofing (and let's be honest, idiot-proofing). That, and they included mechanisms to modify it as needed.

Sure, the process was arduous and it involved a lot of potential inclusions that would quite frankly scare many folks today. That said, once finalized and ratified, it's in place and should be treated as the original document. If you (or anyone) want it changed, then use the mechanisms included to do just that. We've managed to do so for a couple of centuries now without violating the thing, so why get all creative about it now?

The complaints: It's too hard to get 66% of Congress and 75% of the States to agree to change it, so politically it's just easier to get SCOTUS to allow the Federal government to do what is desired by "reinterpreting" the meaning you want into what was already written.

It's primarily a complaint by those in favor of Big Government; though many in favor of Small Government have turned to it as well in order to try to roll back the Progressive movements of the last 100 years. So both sides are now guilty of it.

There's a balance to be struck between the two positions; though I do favor the Originalism position more and give more weight to it. There's a lot to be learned from history and Originalism forces you to look back at history, learn from it, and apply it to today. The "Living Document" position does not, and sets up the repetition of history as a result since they ignore history, ignore lessons learned from history, and just try to do their own thing.

Comment Re:No. (Score 2) 507

Because I'm being reponsible to the needs of the project, I end up being unable to do the tasks (stories) assigned during the development period (sprint). If I was irresponsible I would do just my parts in the sprint and tell all the competing needs to bugger off.

So the stories spill from one sprint to another. There's nothing wrong with that. That's part of the methodology of Agile, and also points that the project manager is not properly managing the project - whether not having enough people on the project to handle the work required for the sprint durations, or overloading the sprints in hopes of getting work done faster than they should, or the people involved in the project are not accurately breaking down stories into suitable chunks.

Comment Re:No. (Score 2) 507

I've got to agree with JohnFen. As a Program Manager, while Waterfall techniques could frequently end up with late or over budget, or both, projects, at the end of every project (I oversaw 5 multimillion dollar projects using Waterfall methods) we at least had a working application that met the original specifications. Now, after two similarly sized Agile projects, all I can say is it seems to be an excuse for developers to skip QA/QC procedures "because we're already into the next scrum" and end up with a mess that doesn't come close to matching the original specification at the end blaming changing requirements and "developmental issues" during the scrum process. I just turned down a contract that explicitly required Agile coding because I don't have any confidence that the end user will be satisfied with the results.

Having participated in both; I can see benefits either way. However, allowing the developers to do what you've said is a fault in the management of the project. QA/QC/QE is part of Agile. If need be, you just add tasks (stories) in Agile to do it and make sure they get done - if not, you're not managing the project correctly.

Agile itself is about being responsive to the needs of the project, and that includes all the QA/QC/QE stuff, as well as Security, Bugs, Changing Requirements, etc.

Now, if you're working in an organization that will enforce that the requirements will not change (do any such organizations exist?!!) then Waterfall is probably better than Agile.

Comment Re:well then it's a bad contract (Score 1) 329

Disney (they own ESPN) has always negotiated the contract such that if you want to purchase ESPN you must purchase ALL of ESPN's channels. Oh, and if you offer it on your base tier package then you must offer all of it on the base tier package. Don't like it? Fine no Disney/ABC/ESPN channels for you! And no Marvel or Star Wars titles. And no Muppets while we're at it. You want to tell your kid he can't watch Disney because YOU wouldn't pay for ESPN Classic?

Yes, it gives me a point on which to teach them about responsible use of finances and how they can't have everything in life.

Comment Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score 1) 489

Do tell me why, then, an Information Service was even defined if nothing was supposed to be classified under it.

Even the name ISP sort of gives it away: Information Service Provider

NetFlix and Hulu would be Information Services, aka Content Provider.

Generic ISPs are not Information Services, but Communications Services. They content of the communications just happens to be data instead of voice.

The problem is that the ISPs also have a Content-Provider side of the business - e.g. uVerse TV, Xfinity, Cable TV Services, Disney (since it's owned by one of the cable companies), and more. So there is an inherent conflict of interest.

Comment Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score 1) 489

HOAs are voluntary. They're nutty, but people voluntary enter into those agreements. This has nothing to do with Libertarianism except in that it's free people acting freely with one another. No one's forcing you to buy a home that's part of one. I wouldn't.

HOAs are not voluntary in most cases. In some states there is no requirement to disclose the HOA prior to closing either.

Yes, an HOA can be setup as voluntary; but most are not and are part of the Land Deed that goes with the property in a clause that cannot be removed from the Deed. Fees and Fines can be placed as liens against the property (usually granted to the HOA in the Deed).

My parent's, for instance, bought a house in OH. They didn't know there was an HOA at all until months later when someone from the HOA tried to collect dues. The majority of the people in the development did not want the HOA. They couldn't absolve it unless they got the local township to annex them; and the township didn't want to annex them.

When my wife & I bought our first home in SC, they was a voluntary HOA. We never joined since the rules of the HOA only applied if you were in the HOA; and there wasn't really any benefit to being part of it. It has since dissolved because of not enough members, meetings, etc.

When we were looking for a home in GA we came across a number of HOAs, including one that was "voluntary" - voluntary until an owner joined it, then it was no longer voluntary for them or any subsequent owners. They were actively trying to get all the homes to be no longer voluntary.

When we bought our second home in GA, there was no real HOA. There is an "HOA" but it's only got charge of the maintenance for the entrance; no rules, no attachment to the deed, etc.

Both in SC and in GA we had to look long and hard to find an HOA that was not restrictive. Most had dumb rules like "you cannot work on a car in your driveway except in emergency". The worst was one in SC that had a rule that anyone under 18 found on common property after 10 PM would be arrested for trespassing - they made the rule in response to a couple of minors and an adult vandalizing the pool house.

Ultimately, HOAs do not "increase or maintain value" for a home. They decrease it because of the rules and how hard it is to change them.

Comment Re:don't need to look it up (Score 1) 53

Actually the last machine I had with a turbo button was the DX4-100, if you turned off the turbo it ran at 66 MHz I think. It was totally pointless, no software assumed it ran at that speed. If they still had an XT/AT compatibility button that would actually have been useful, as it were I think it was just for marketing because people expected a "turbo" mode.

My Gateway 2000 P-75 (Pentium 75 MHz) had a "Turbo" button (http://www.vintagecomputer.net/browse_thread.cfm?id=433)

Comment Re:Sensors wrong (Score 1) 460

Isn't there a philosophical difference on whether the machine should watch the pilot (and override the pilot if the machine thinks the pilot is making a mistake) and the pilot watching the machine (and overriding the machine when the pilot thinks the machine is making a mistake) ?

Yes:

Boeing vs Airbus

US (individual) vs Europe (collective)

Comment Re:It's that damn cancer! (Score 1) 303

No, it gave 4 virtual desktops on the same machine, the same user, the same login session.

I'm familiar with the "power tool" that gave that, and it was buggy and caused XP to crash a lot. Yes, I used it, and it wasn't available for Win2k.

But at the same time,Terminal Services was available in XP which is how they enabled the multi-user mode for XP; no more than two of which could be RDP sessions, and they would log out each other and the local user. (Unlike in Windows Server where they can co-exist.)

Comment Re:If i can't work on my car (Score 1) 292

I've worked as a mechanical engineer and done metal part design. That doesn't really sound like a problem caused by computer aided drafting so much as just human laziness or incompetence.

Using *mechanical* design software like SolidWorks or ProE or Catia that stuff is pretty simple. AutoCAD, which I haven't used extensively but God knows I've tried and given up on it a few times, is basically just a shitty drawing program.* It's really old and well established though and it's locked in as the standard for civil engineering just because it's what everyone else uses, like MS Office or Photoshop (except those don't suck as much). Note I said civil engineering; designing mechanical parts in AutoCAD is really old school and dumb IMO. But SolidWorks and the others let you see your part in 3D, and assemble it together with other parts to see how they fit, and with plug-ins or separate software you can also model the stress and strain (bending, stretching, etc.) when it's put under weight at a given point. You can also do all those calculations by hand/in a separate math or modeling program just as you always could. And typically prototypes are manufactured and physically tested. AutoCAD's not supposed to replace the physical testing; it just replaces the pencil and paper. If people are skipping testing that's just good old corner cutting.

*It does have a lot of power user features and it may actually have the stuff I'm saying it lacks, just buried behind an impenetrable layer of hard-to-useness and suckiness. I haven't invested the time to become an AutoCAD expert because it's always been easier to just use something else.

I'm pretty sure AutoCAD can do all that stuff. I know it does the 3D stuff - the part I referenced was designed in a 3D model in AutoCAD. The problem is all the layering you have to do so see everything fitting together - updating every single diagram to show the new parts. Now, may be AutoCAD and others make that easier than I realize (I'm no expert at them); and I really don't know why they didn't figure out that the parts wouldn't fit (in this case, the one end of the piece made and the piece it attached to couldn't be physically accessed because other stuff interfered on one side but not the other, or at least the other wasn't as bad).

I wouldn't be surprised by a "shitty drawing" though as the one ME in charge was not liked very well by the technicians since this was not an abnormal thing - everything being in the drawing, but not necessarily being obvious how to do it, even when multiple detailed diagrams were provided. But that's a different thing entirely.

When talking about cars - I'm referring to things like you have to take off 10 parts that requires 8 hours of labor to do in order to change 1 part that takes only 30 minutes of labor; when providing a little more space could have enabled one to change that part in 30 minutes entirely without to disassemble a chunk of the vehicle to get to it.

Comment Re:If i can't work on my car (Score 1) 292

If I can't work on my car, I will not buy it. Same with my computer.

The problem is that people like you who want to work on their car are becoming more and more rare -- most people just want their car to be reliable and if it breaks, take it to the garage.

No, I think most would rather that someone they know could work on it, only the cars are so needlessly complex and require such special tools that most do not know how to work on them, so people take them to the shop because they don't know what else to do.

I would love to fix my own cars; and I do do some of the work myself. But even then, there are limits simply due to the computer being so integral to everything.

Sadly, even most shops now are useless as they just plug the computer in and do what it tells them. This has probably lead to the current issue with my 2005 Mazda3 which needs a major repair to stop it burning oil (a known issue on the 2.3 litre engine that seems to be related to ethanol content in the gasoline, and one which is not being owned up to by Mazda - seems one of the original OEM parts doesn't withstand ethanol very well, so you have to replace it with an after-market part); it probably could have been fixed early on with very little issue except the dealer just plugged in the OBDII to the computer which said everything was running fine, and kept going. Only after one big repair at another (non-Dealer that was still Mazda approved) shop was the oil burning uncovered.

No, it's a matter of technology creeping too far in and people feeling helpless about it as a result - that an design engineers who don't know who to design to actually make things easy to work on since they do everything in AutoCAD where its just a few clicks. I had a direct experience there where an engineer designed something in AutoCAD per their boss's requirements, the parts were made, and when the technicians when to put them on, it didn't work due to how all the parts fit together and would have broken due to fatigue at some point since it bent under the weight - this after many hours of design and review and much expense in building the parts; the technician and I went to the hardware store and spent $13 CAN and solved the problem in under an hour.

Comment Re:It's that damn cancer! (Score 1) 303

I can guarantee, Microsofts version of 'Open Source' , will differ quite vastly from what you or I consider as 'Open Source'. There business IS licensing models. It's certain, to a point, them being Open Source won't benefit you much at all.

Yes, just look at the analysis of the licenses surrounding the Open Source .NET projects MS is running. An Open Source Windows wouldn't likely be any different.

Slashdot Top Deals

Saliva causes cancer, but only if swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time. -- George Carlin

Working...