Comment Obligatory (Score 1) 145
Sorry, no one else killed their karma with this one, so I felt compelled to do so:
There was only one IP involved in the edits, apparently it was 127.0.0.1
Comment Re:But who's going to fly it? (Score 5, Funny) 465
"10,000! We could almost buy our own ship for that!" "Yeah, but who's going to fly it kid? You?"
Typical Management Response:
"You bet I could!, I'm not such a bad programmer myself!"
Comment Re:I agree. (Score 3, Interesting) 465
Or as Benjamin Franklin said, "Some people are penny-wise, but pound foolish." You try to save pennies and waste pounds/dollars instead.
The same can be true in programming, but usually the scenario describes development itself, i.e. premature optimization. If your team is experienced, the only reason for this would be people trying to do big things in small spaces.
I think it comes down to what you need, what you want and what you need to spec for your software to actually run.
If your willing to spend quite a bit of money on some really talented people, what you need as far as hardware (at least memory) can be reduced significantly.
What you want is to roll a successful project in xx months and bring it to market, so raising the hardware bar seems sensible.
Then we come down to what you can actually spec, as far as requirements for your clients who want to use your software. Microsoft ended up lowering the bar for Vista in order to appease Intel and HP
If your market is pure enterprise, go ahead and tell the programmers that 4GB/Newer dual core CPU is the minimum spec for your stuff. If your market is desktop users
I don't think there's a general rule or 'almost always' when contemplating this kind of thing.
Comment Re:Obligatory (Score 4, Funny) 164
Elvis has left the building
Elvis has left the building
And the other Elvis has left the building
There, fixed that for you.
Cheers!
Strat
Well, sort of
Submission + - Universe running out of time (telegraph.co.uk)
RenHoek writes: With heat death, the big crunch and quite a few other nasty ways in which the universe could see its demise, we can now add "running out of time" to the list. A team of scientists came up with a new theory that would solve the problem of the elusive dark energy that seems to be accelerating the expansion of the universe. They figure that the universe is not speeding up but we are, in relation to the outer regions of space, slowing down. Tests with the upcoming Large Hadron Collider will give more insight if we're going to end up frozen in time.
Submission + - Teens Kill Child While Busting Mortal Kombat Moves
theodp writes: "A teenage girl and her boyfriend have been charged with beating the girl's 7-year-old sister to death while imitating moves from Mortal Kombat. 'I was drunk,' said the boyfriend, explaining why he didn't heed the child's pleas to stop hitting her."
Submission + - Vista SP1: 48167 Days and 23 Hours Remaining (theregister.co.uk) 1
It's Worth the Wait! writes: "For those hoping that SP1 would speed Vista up, The Register has bad news. SP1 still hasn't fixed the file access problems and they have screenshots of Vista saying that copying 108 items totaling 168 MB will take 48167 days."
Submission + - The Epic Battle between Microsoft and Google 1
Hugh Pickens writes: "There is a long article in the NYTimes well worth reading called "Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft" about the business strategies both companies are pursuing and about the future of applications and where they will reside — on the web or on the desktop. Google President Eric Schmidt thinks that 90 percent of computing will eventually reside in the Web-based cloud and about 2,000 companies are signing up every day for Google Apps, simpler versions of the pricey programs that make up Microsoft's lucrative Office business. Microsoft faces a business quandary as they to try to link the Web to its desktop business — "software plus Internet services," in its formulation. Microsoft will embrace the Web, while striving to maintain the revenue and profits from its desktop software businesses, the corporate gold mine, a smart strategy for now that may not be sustainable. Google faces competition from Microsoft and from other Web-based productivity software being offered by start-ups but it is "unclear at this point whether Google will be able to capitalize on the trends that it's accelerating." David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School, says the Google model is to try to change all the rules. If Google succeeds, "a lot of the value that Microsoft provides today is potentially obsolete.""
Submission + - Goodbye from the STARTREK.COM Team 1
Curlsman writes: Goodbye from the STARTREK.COM Team
Sadly, we must report that CBS Interactive organization is being restructured, and the production team that brings you the STARTREK.COM site has been eliminated. Effective immediately.
We don't know the ultimate fate of this site, which has served millions of Star Trek fans for the last thirteen years.
If you have comments, please send them to editor @ startrek.com — we hope someone at CBS will read them.
Thank you for your loyal fandom over the years. It has been a pleasure to serve you.
http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/article/2316633.html
Is this site worth a write-in campaign?
Sadly, we must report that CBS Interactive organization is being restructured, and the production team that brings you the STARTREK.COM site has been eliminated. Effective immediately.
We don't know the ultimate fate of this site, which has served millions of Star Trek fans for the last thirteen years.
If you have comments, please send them to editor @ startrek.com — we hope someone at CBS will read them.
Thank you for your loyal fandom over the years. It has been a pleasure to serve you.
http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/article/2316633.html
Is this site worth a write-in campaign?
Submission + - Wikipedia COO was a Convicted Felon (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: The Register writes:
"For more than six months, beginning in January of this year, Wikipedia's million-dollar check book was balanced by a convicted felon. When Carolyn Bothwell Doran was hired as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Florida-based Wikimedia Foundation, she had a criminal record in three other states — Virginia, Maryland, and Texas — and she was still on parole for a DUI (driving under the influence of alcohol) hit and run that resulted in a fatality. Her record also included convictions for passing bad checks, theft, petty larceny, additional DUIs, and unlawfully wounding her boyfriend with a gun shot to the chest."
Submission + - Humans evolving 100 times faster than ever (reuters.com)
John Hawks writes: "A new genomics study in PNAS shows that humans have been evolving new adaptive genes during the past 10,000 years much faster than ever before. The study says that evolution has sped up because of population growth, making people adapt faster to new diseases, new diets, and social changes like cities. Oh, and I'm the lead author. I've been reading Slashdot for a long time, and let me just say that our study doesn't necessarily apply to trolls."
Submission + - Wikipedia Admins. Admit "Private" Checkuse (wikipedia.org) 1
wikinerdiest writes: This Wikipedia Administrative Board discussion tells it all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive114#.22Private.22_Checkuser_use . The admins. secretly and habitually arrange for their Checkuser tool to invade Users' privacy (via so-called "private" requests made to those with the invasive Checkuser status) via back channel email and IRC conversations. The regular Wikipedia users have no idea it's even happening so they can't even complain about a privacy abuse to the token Ombudsman set up on the official Checkuser request page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CHECKUSER which seems to be just a ruse for public reassurance that Checkuser use is a transparent process).
Submission + - Disturbing employment trends in IT (bmighty.com)
walterbyrd writes: "The message seems to be: get out of IT. "After watching some senior level programmers get laid off because they were 'too expensive' and watching these jobs go to offshore programmers for a fraction of the cost, I will not recommend anyone to this industry who wants to establish a comfortable life-long career. Go where you're watched out for and respected.""
Submission + - Are Cow farts sweeter with a Kangaroos stomach? (news.com.au)
ghostcorps writes: The Australian has an article discussing plans to modify cows stomachs to produce less/no methane."
From the article: "Thanks to special bacteria in their stomachs, kangaroo flatulence contains no methane and scientists want to transfer that bacteria to cattle and sheep who emit large quantities of the harmful gas.
''Not only would they not produce the methane, they would actually get something like 10 to 15 per cent more energy out of the feed they are eating,'' said Mr Klieve.
From the article: "Thanks to special bacteria in their stomachs, kangaroo flatulence contains no methane and scientists want to transfer that bacteria to cattle and sheep who emit large quantities of the harmful gas.
''Not only would they not produce the methane, they would actually get something like 10 to 15 per cent more energy out of the feed they are eating,'' said Mr Klieve.
Submission + - Old Software or Open Source? 7
Pakled writes: I teach a high school multimedia course. We were scheduled to get new software this year but due to several pointy haired bosses, no software was ordered. The software I have to teach is Flash 5, Dreamweaver 2000, Photoshop 7 and (god help me) Movie Maker. The question is: is it better to teach old commercial software or their open source counterparts (Komposer, Gimp, etc.)?
Is the steep learning curve and slightly less uniform design worth a little student frustration to teach them software written in the past 5 years?
Is the steep learning curve and slightly less uniform design worth a little student frustration to teach them software written in the past 5 years?
