Any insufficiently advanced magic is just technology.

All quantum computers are real, unless declared integer.

This is sadly true, and I've seen it a lot. When a developer is motivated by a deadline, other people's screw ups are just things that interfere with meeting that date. Any fixes will come out of the padding in the estimates, and once that padding is gone, so is the programmer's motivation to fix them. Those kinds of bugs then get quietly swept under the rug, or if they do get brought up in advance, people start arguing about who made them, who should fix them, who will test them, and in which future release will they go out to the customer.

In this particular example, the bug is egregious, and I'd expect the programmer to make the 5 minute effort to clarify the spec. The difference is that most programmers understand math well enough to catch a math error, but not every spec error is in their field of expertise. What if the mistake was in the calculation of tax, and the programmer doesn't understand the tax laws well enough to spot the error? That bug is going to sail right through every test, and the developers will deliver their perfect-to-spec-yet-still-buggy code.

The fact is that no set of specs are ever perfect, and the dangerous fallacy is in believing that they can be made perfect. And even if you can hone and polish them to a glistening perfection today, the problem domain the design is addressing will often change between the time the specs are written and the time the software is delivered.

Specs have several kinds of errors: errors of omission, conflicting requirements, and incorrect requirements. Design activities can identify conflicts, but often can't find the others.

The figures of "90% design, 5% code" is very much tied to physical world engineering, and is valid advice when you're creating an unchangeable physical thing like a car or a bottle-forming machine. But think about how much computers have evolved in the last 30 years - it shouldn't surprise you to learn that software development methodologies have evolved as well. Unlike hardware, software is infinitely flexible, and changes can be made cheaply and continuously throughout the life of a product. So instead of spending 90% of project time on Big Design Up Front, iterative or Agile project management methodologies and flexible design methodologies such as Test Driven Development leverage the facts that the world is constantly changing, software is infinitely flexible, its design is malleable, and having fully automated tests enables rapid changes and continuous deployment. By writing a test first, you ensure that requirement (as received) is being met. Understanding that coding is a design activity (and not a construction activity - construction happens when you click "build") is key. By applying good design principles, code can be refactored from a functioning solution to an elegant design, and this activity takes place iteratively during coding.

You're looking for someone who is incredibly good (able to offer a wide variety of programming languages, good enough to not create any bugs, anticipate them and/or find them very quickly), that is essentially someone who could pick and choose his job, but pay him like some intern.

Would you do it?

Oh well, at least they didn't pull an Apple and label it "The New Xbox(tm)".

Volkswagen is even worse about that. First they had the old air-cooled Beetle (except it was actually called the "Type 1"), then they had the "New Beetle" (from 1998 to 2011), and now they have the "Beetle" (from 2012 on). So now, to avoid confusion, I have to refer to my 1998 model as my "old New Beetle" and my friend with a 2013 model has to refer to it as a "2012 Beetle" because if he calls it simply "new" people will think it's the 1998-2011 version!

(And no matter what we call it, we'll still get asked "is the engine in the back?")

I'm talking about a hypothetical situation where somebody bought Portal but regrets their hypocrisy (re: DRM) now. In other words, a "you're usually not OK with it, but sometimes can't help yourself" thing.

If you're OK getting something like Portal, than you've... well, your anti-DRM ideas have their price in some sense. (I'm not trying to criticize here -- mine definitely have their own price -- but just be realistic.) And at that point it's the old joke about how now it's just a matter of haggling over price, as you've established that your attitude is "DRM decreases the value of something" instead of "I won't buy DRM at all." And at that point, who's to say that the console price isn't below the limit?

Or you bought a DRM'd thing during an irrational lapse of judgement.

The consumers (aka, the mindless bleating masses) may repurchase all of their games, but the customers, the ones who are able to make intelligent decisions instead of just blindly accepting everything their corporate overlords throw at them, would just hang on to their 360 consoles in order to play their 360 games, and only purchase new titles for this new system, if they decide they want it.

"Customers" would never have bought a 360 in the first place.

So what you're saying is that PC + DRM and other assorted lock-in = Xbox? I think you should direct your "fuck, you are stupid" comment towards those who actually decide to buy it...

Reading the above, I am *so* glad I live in a country with free healthcare for all.

Go ahead, rub it in.

I honestly can't see how anyone who can make a sane argument against that.

If you're the majority shareholder of a HMO organization that owns hundreds of hospitals and a US senator at the same time, you may still not be able to make a sane argument against it, but you're going to try like hell.

Nobody has shown that what Apple has done shouldn't be morally acceptable.

I know I'll regret responding to such an obvious troll, but...

1) When a company like Apple avoids/evades paying taxes, it hurts the free market by taking for themselves an advantage that other companies can or do not. Primarily, a company the size of Apple does this by using its tax advantage to press anti-competitive advantages by buying up other companies. If you or I wanted to buy a company that Apple also wanted to buy, and the company cost $1billion, Apple would basically be able to buy that company for $700million while we would have to pay the full $1billion. By using this advantage to destroy competition, there is greater consolidation and greater loss of competition. Pretty soon, it's not really a market at all, much less free.

If you believe a "free market" is a force for good, then what Apple is doing is bad.

2) By not contributing their share of taxes (the same share that other companies have to pay), Apple uses public assets without paying for them, forcing the shortfall onto the rest of us and their competitors. Bad for us, and bad for the free market.

3) Stealing is immoral. Even you would probably agree that taking something that you have not paid for is immoral. Apple uses a lot of common resources, from infrastructure to the legal system, at a much higher rate than most people (or companies) by not paying their share of the costs, those costs are shifted on to us. In the language of the American Right, Apple is "stealing from future generations".

4) Lying is immoral. Here's one of Apple's tax "avoidance" scams: They register a patent in the United States. This forces the United States government to use resources to protect Apple's patent rights. Then, Apple transfers the ownership of that patent to a company that does not exist in Ireland, which pays its fees to another company that does not exist in say, Holland (thus the famous "Dutch-Irish Sandwich"). Because the ownership of that patent is in the other country and removed further by paying license fees in the third country, Apple completely avoids any taxes at all. Yet, if an Apple patent is threatened, they sue in US court and the US government is called upon to protect Apple's patent. So, for the purposes of taxes, the patent is not American, but for the purposes of enforcement, the patent is American. I'm pretty sure you can see how this is immoral.

Further, I'm betting that Apple's claim that 2/3 of their profits come from outside the US and indeed outside the jurisdiction of any sovereign nation, Apple's lying. This is why they're going to settle this ASAP, because if the forensic accountants go to work on Apple's books, the penalties could be astronomical and Apple's already wounded share price would halve again.

5, 6 & 7: Corporations were given special status to protect investors and owners from direct liability, not to protect them from having to act in a moral way. You seem willing to absolve Apple from any moral responsibility for anything, yet you want them to be treated as a person for the purposes of political activities. So now the moral questions are directed at you, khallow.

Finally, if you believe that taxes are immoral on their face, I would remind you that the purpose of the American Revolution was not to achieve freedom from taxation, but rather from taxation without representation. You cannot make a persuasive argument that you are not represented. You may not like your representation, but that's the way our system was designed. If you don't like the American system, then we have a different discussion altogether.

They've been using 3D printed objects as patterns for investment casting of metal for over 20 years, since the advent of 3D printing. The problem is cast metals are often not the best solution for the end use of the part. For example, no cast metal is yet suitable for making molds or dies for high volume plastic injection molding, where it has to be extremely hard and shock resistant - P-type tool steel is the right material for molds, but I don't believe it can yet be precisely formed by casting.

However, an investment cast metal mold makes a great temporary mold or die if your production mold breaks. A company can print up and cast a mold and get their factory back on line within just a few days. The temporary mold may only last for a thousand parts, but that will often be enough to keep them on-line for the two months it takes to have a production mold made. If not, they print another and keep going.

As a matter of fact I never directly used Bitcoin.

Because you're not goofy.

Personally, I do all of my transactions in Darknet Credits, which is the new monetary system based on reputation and righteous deeds. I can't actually buy anything, but I'm in on the ground floor.

You've obviously not used Bitcoin a lot.

You could accurately say that everyone has obviously not used Bitcoin a lot.