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Comment: Re:Is this really news? (Score 1) 133

The SD card bootloop problem is well known and spread across a large number of devices. Take a look.

It is not any app causing the problem, it's Android itself. It's suspected that it happens either after a certain number of apps/files are moved or a certain amount of space is used by apps on the SD card.

Well, my N1 doesn't have an issue - either with stock Android or Cyogenmod7 - where I more heavily moved apps to the SD card than with Stock since stock wouldn't allow some apps to go to SD Card, while a lot more can with C7.

It's mostly likely due to something that the OEMs/Carriers did by allowing some critical piece of software to be moved to the SD card.

And the only "boot loop" issue I had was a memory allocation issue by the Activity Manager completely unrelated to whether or not the SD card was present.

Comment: Re:Is this really news? (Score 0) 133

Logic fail. Justin Bieber has millions of fans too. I guess that makes him a fantastic musician. Additionally, by the same logic, that makes Windows a superior desktop OS to any of the Linux distros.

lol, but Windows is prefered choice for Desktop.

Only b/c of legacy software.

Comment: Re: Have u thought about.. (Score 1) 522

"It's no different for the software industry."

Yes it is, there are two types of project in the world - those where the time for production is a fairly well known and those where it's not. When you've built a few houses you know roughly how many bricks your bricklayers can lay in a day, you know how long it takes to install the plumbing, these are tasks that you do many times and within a certain degree of tolerance are highly predictable in terms of time required.

You can't do that with software, because everything you write is new (and if it isn't, you're doing it wrong, why aren't you taking advantage of reusable components?) so you simply cannot predict ahead of time how long something will take with any reasonable degree of guarantee. The same is true for many research projects, the same is true for a lot of engineering projects. Projects in industries like these aren't like production lines where you have masses of historical data on identical or near identical tasks to go on - you know your factory can churn out 10,000 chocolate bars in a day on average, but you don't know that your team of software developers can definitely solve problem x in a day.

As much as I disagree with how managers estimate time for projects, you can very well do that with software. However, you need software developers that are professionals, and not about being artistic. People that will stick to team guidelines, coding styles, design guidelines, etc, and people with experience. The more experience you have the better you'll get at estimating your own time.

And yes, I've seen that even with myself. In the early phase of a brand new project it can be harder to estimate time correctly, but as some of the technology in the project matured, other phases became a lot easier. Following design guidelines have reduced bugs to very low levels - near zero across over 400 KSLOC, most things users complain about are not bugs but product maturity (e.g. I don't have infrastructure in place to support what they want yet) - i.e. it's not bugs, but new features to add. (Bugs being defined as defects in existing code, not missing features.)

Software developers that insist that it cannot be done are simply (i) inexperienced, or (ii) do not know what they are doing and need to not be doing software.

"When requirements change, you change the contract through a renegotiation. If they don't want to change the contract, you don't change what you provide. That's standard practice for contracting."

This shows a complete lack of experience on your behalf on dealing with clients. If you act like this you'll a) often be wasting more of your time and their time renegotiating contracts than you will just doing the changes because the changes rarely come in one big bulk lump, but normally come in at a trickle, and b) Your customers wont be your customers because forcing them to waste time with a contract renegotiation over say, roughly a days work is the quickest way to piss them off and show how inflexible you are. They'll go elsewhere.

No. It shows you know you have contracts work. You are bound to the contract you've signed. If you don't follow the contract and they have a problem, then you are on the hook for what is written in the contract. If they ask you for something that is not in the contract, then you can do it - but it won't be something they'd be able to hold you to.

In the end, your customer may complain at first; but when they get what they want they'll be happy. Make the contract renegotiation easy for them, and show them that the renegotiation is as much about them getting what they want and keeping them happy as it is ensuring that you are properly paid.

Yes, there is a line where you can say - well, the contract doesn't say that, but we'll do it any way. And that's a line you have to figure out how to walk. But you also cannot simply roll over and say "well, if the customer says it do it" - you won't be in business long if you do.

And, FYI, the Defense Industry operates on this very principle. The US Government puts out an RFP; contractors respond with their proposals; one of them wins, and then immediately renegotiates the proposal before any work is actually done. They seem to be doing very well.

And ultimately, if they don't want to do it - then they're not worth having as a customer either as it will impose undue risk on you and your own business.

There's also the fact that it's impossible to write down a perfectly solid spec, if they want something different and you try to demand they pay for a change request or you demand contract renegotiation they're just as likely to find a hole in the spec (and there will be holes, writing a hole-proof spec is more difficult and time consuming than writing 100% bug-free software) and use that to make your life difficult.

And there's a difference between clarifying a point in the contract and product specification versus adding new features. As I said, there's a balance to be drawn. And businesses in every industry walk that line.

Software is no different except too many software developers enter into contracts without experience in contracting and then roll-over when their client wants a change.

Comment: Re: Have u thought about.. (Score 1) 522

Why are programmers exempt from workmanship standards?

They're not. But they want to be artists or academics that are. It's the Software Engineer vs. Academic Programmer issue.

Colleges focus on Academic Programmers when the business place wants Software Engineers.
One has Workmanship Standards while the other does not.

Comment: Re: Have u thought about.. (Score 1) 522

But we're not talking about a house which is normally something you can quantify as taking x amount of time to a pretty reasonable degree if you've done it before, we're talking about software.

It's no different for the software industry.

I think just about every software contractor has clued into the fact that software requirements change much more rapidly and if I was on the hiring side of the equation I'd be loathe to take on a contractor that didn't want to be paid by the hour, day, or week, and instead wanted to be paid for the full job, as it would say to me that they didn't have the necessary experience to understand the way software is built and what can go wrong because both I and they would be exposed to far too much risk to be healthy.

When requirements change, you change the contract through a renegotiation. If they don't want to change the contract, you don't change what you provide. That's standard practice for contracting. All too often with software the developers do not renegotiate thinking it'll be easy to add, thus allowing feature creep that they are responsible for. A good contractor will be good at controlling the feature creep - this is extremely helpful by forcing contract renegotiations whenever a new feature is requested that was not in the original specification. Add in a contract renegotiation fee for each change, and they'll quickly get the picture that they can't keep changing things.

I had one colleage nearly a decade ago that worked on a project for another manager. She micromanaged things, and would tell him what to change. Our manager didn't really care, or pay much attention to it. She didn't really specify requirements, and in the end it would have been something like having an invisible elephant that you can see and has pink dots without any pink involved. He left the company. She later brought another contractor in and he told her that what she was asking was impossible and the code would have to be restarted from scratch (it was a mess due to her micromanagement). The project died.

Comment: Re: Have u thought about.. (Score 1) 522

Interesting that you're not prepared to guarantee your work. It would make me wary of contracting you as it places the onus on me to ensure that I've throughly tested your code rather than on you. Is this common practice? This entire discussion has either misused the term "contracting", or deliberately glossed over it (by which I don't mean to accuse you specifically, the whole thread has that problem).
When I work under salary, I get paid for projects (along with a certain amount of "keeping the lights on" shit-work, of course). I work unpaid OT if necessary, and cut out early when ahead of schedule. I generally expect (and get) a very flexible schedule so long as I get my tasks done.
When I work as a contractor (and yes, I do both), I get paid for my time. I'll give a good estimate of how long it will take me, but if we run over, you keep paying. Simple as that. Yes, that could potentially lead to abuses by unscrupulous programmers - And they wouldn't get any repeat work for pulling crap like that. Just part of the game: Find a few that work well with/for you, and make them happy enough to stick around.

That depends on the contract, of which there are several ways:

  1. Hourly
  2. By Project
  3. On retainer (typically for a certain amount of time)

If he contracted them "by project", then the contractor is on the hook for fulfilling all the contract requirements regardless of time; the contractor better hope they estimated it correctly as they're on the hook until the customer signs-off on it. This is essentially a "salaried" contract; but it is not working as a salaried employee.

If he contracted them "hourly", then it is more his issue than the contractors.

However, from the description it sounds like he does "by project" contracting; but there's not really enough information to say.

Comment: Re:Bad Google (Score 1) 414

by TemporalBeing (#43784245) Attached to: Google Drops XMPP Support

You don't get to decide when a word is pejorative to a group that's historically been targeted with it.

FYI - it was a word adopted by the homosexual community (circa 1960's and 1970's) to try to replace the term "queer", and to convey a certain message in the process. Over time, though, it has come to be a synonym for "queer" instead.

Just goes to show that one can call something anything they like, but the name will eventually mean the same thing as what was originally given it.

Comment: Re:Yeah... (Score 1) 1097

Yeah! It's like saying that 97% of priest believe in god anyway.

This just reveals your wooly thinking. TFA doesn't say "97% of scientists believe in AGW". It's 97% of scientific papers.

True.

i.e. 97% of the ways of examining the question scientifically resulted in a conclusion that AGW is real. Scientific method, not belief.

False.

97% of the papers may have used the same method, or various revisions thereof. There is nothing saying they all used different methodologies. All TFA says is that 97% of published papers and 97% of the surveyed researchers that work on them said AGW is man-made. It says nothing about the quality or validity of those papers, the credentials of the researchers, etc. For all we know, 97% of those researchers were ungrad-students doing research for a professor that required them to assume AGW was man-made.

No other conclusions can be drawn from it.

Comment: Re:Yeah... (Score 2, Informative) 1097

Except medicare versus private insurance.

You do realize medicare/medicaide is more expensive than private insurance, don't you? Sure, you may not pay for it up front when visiting the doctor or paying for your drugs, but you do pay for it in taxes, along with everyone else.

Comment: Re:BUYING SLASHDOT ACCOUNTS (Score 1) 1097

Conversely, discounting the majority of scientific finding because it does not match what a particular group wants does not mean they are right. It does however mean that they have to provide better models then the majority. Put another way, in science, the majority usually IS right, and there is a well established method for showing otherwise. Thus using majority opinion as an indicator of correctness, while not infallible, is generally pretty good. If nothing else the probability of 3% allowing political belief to influence their conclusions is greater then 97% doing so.

TFA is not talking about majority opinion. It's talking about the majority of published papers. The two are not necessarily the same thing. Also note that TFA surveyed 1200 authors of the paper to see how their views related to what they published, so it is no surprise the authors thought the same as what they published.

Comment: Re:BUYING SLASHDOT ACCOUNTS (Score 0, Flamebait) 1097

*Hiding* in semantics? Contradiction of your understanding of something by means of explicit definition and clarification is *hiding*?

97% of all published science bolsters a specific theory. How exactly are you missing the fact that this makes it the best and strongest proof?

From the very fact that it doesn't. It just means that 97% of papers are making the same assumption, and 3% are not.
It's either:
1. It's settled
2. There's an overwhelming majority wanting it to be settled a certain way and only publishing papers making that assumption.

#1 is only done through absolute proof that the assumption (that it is man-made) is accurate; otherwise it's #2. And there is by no means absolute proof that the assumption is accurate.

Comment: OIN? (Score 1) 60

by TemporalBeing (#43754657) Attached to: Patenting Open Source Software
I wasn't aware that OIN was patenting anything, rather that they were just a group that you could join and donate existing patents to or draw from in order to protect yourself when sued over patents - e.g. a patent pool for self defense. Members were required to not sue each other over any patents in the pool. Or did I miss something?

Comment: Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... (Score 1) 117

The day Steve Jobs stood in front of a room and introduced the Iphone EVERYONE knew this was a game changer. "Today we're going to introduce a new iPod, a phone, and world class web device" As he repeated that line the graphics on the screen merged and the room realized the leaks about three new products were instead one new device. It was a hell of a mis-direction. It wasn't "the mother of all demos" but it was a close second.

In that way, the iPhone was a lot like the iPod.

The original iPhone was an iPod Touch enhanced with the 3G network and a camera. My wife was looking at getting one but we didn't want the data network. My cousin (an Apple employee at the time) suggested the iPod Touch instead, and then use WiFi+Skype for calls. Now she's looking at an iPad to get the camera (for video calls); but she's been otherwise very happy with her iPod Touch.

Comment: Re:Aren't we the cylons? (Score 1) 272

by TemporalBeing (#43622693) Attached to: What Modern Militaries Can Learn From Battlestar Galactica

In Battlestar Galactica, the humans are facing the Cylons technologically superior force with advanced cyberweaponry. Doesn't that make us (the USA) the Cylons? Sure China is a threat, but I haven't heard of any damage from any Chinese 'attack.' I have, however, heard of Stuxnet, which had real economic, political and technological consequences.

I think our society mirrors the society of caprica prior the first cylon war. We might not have jump drives or VR that is as "real" but we are working on fixed wing drones that can kill without human intervention. Scary stuff. The UN is recommending a ban on autonomous drones with lethal weapons.

A ban that will never happen as long as the US or at least one other country on the Security Council think that autonomous drones with lethal capabilities are useful. (Hint: It only takes one Security Council member to veto nearly anything in the UN, especially where weapons are concerned.)

Comment: Re: what? (Score 5, Insightful) 272

by TemporalBeing (#43622635) Attached to: What Modern Militaries Can Learn From Battlestar Galactica

I would agree with you, but sometimes the sum of the pieces is greater than the total. I.e. you can test widget/process A for all manner of failures and B, C, D as well. But testing ALL of them for simultaneous failures simply isn't possible. And while I also agree that it won't 'stop' the military, it will significantly degrade it's effectiveness.

Even complete failured it trained of equipment is trained for. The military is taught not to rely on equipment to get the job done. Multiple failures are expected, and can easily happen in any combat situation.

My pants just went to high school in the Carlsbad Caverns!!!

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