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does not compute.
Why doens't it compute? If someone delivers a perfect specification you should be able to deliver software that meets it without any bugs and any flaws would rightly be a bug in the spec as opposed to the software itself. The problem is that most specs don't take into account edge cases or even worse they want you to interface with $DEVICE_OR_SOFTWARE which introduces a giant hole for the bugs to com in through.
I think this is a typical case where implementing Agile can lead to much better project management.
Sure that might be a good point, but how do you write up the contract for a situation like that? Unless there is an agreed upon endpoint for the project the customer can keep iterating indefinitely without paying anything additional. Going into the contract you need to know what the final product is so you can estimate your time and come up with a bid and you also need to know what the final product should look like so you know when the project is complete.
Once you add the need to stay connected, you have to control copying (Otherwise people could just burn DVDs or Torrent the game and apply a patch to unlock DLC content). You have to enforce updates (so everyone is on the same page with patches and content updates). You have to protect the console, otherwise why would a company like EA spend bazillions creating the best games for a platform that doesn't stop hacking or copying?
For games that are inherently multilayer that's all well and good but they already solved for that problem years ago with the install keys. Each game gets a unique key and you keep a database of the ones that have been issued already. If an unknown key shows up you ban it and if the same key connects from two different IP addresses you ban it as well. Diablo II and Starcraft used that system for years without much problem.
Also, the number of people that are running around and pirating the AAA games likely isn't enough to for amount of hassle that your customers are going through to just play a game. If I spend $60 for a game I should be able to just sit down, install it, and start playing with a minimal of fuss. If it's a single player game I should be able to pull out a laptop on an airplane and play the game. If the game is muli-player I either know what I'm getting into ahead of time when I buy the game or I just don't buy it.
First, one of the prized features of the Xbox platform is the Xbox Live services. You know, those services that match you up in games with friends and offers social and multimedia feature. YOU KNOW, the service that requires an internet connection.
This might be a fair point if we had a better idea of how many Xbox 360 owners never connect to the internet or are connected but only have the Silver accounts. There are a lot of people out there that only play single player games which means that most of the features that a Gold subscription account offers are completely useless.
Second, pick up ANY smartphone or tablet and realize these devices are constantly online. You may not need to be online to play, but the online services are there in the background making sure your Tweets and Facebook followers are aware of what you are up to and you are kept informed of the world.
True in the case of the smart phone but not so much in the case of the tablet even though the use case might be much smaller for those tablets that aren't online. However, not everyone has Twitter or Facebook running in the background all of the time or even wants people to know what they are doing. A lot of people don't care what their friends "Angry Birds" score is nor do they want to go out there and tell people about theirs. Also, there is a big jump from a smart phone or tablet that is online to a camera and microphone in your living room that is always online. There are major security implications that bear consideration. You can't put an attractive target like that in someones living room without hackers and other such folks wanting to crack it.
I know that in that RARE circumstance where there might be an internet outage or you take your Xbox One to the cottage and want to play some games on a rainy day might be a bummer if the game won't let you on because it can't phone home, but I doubt that will be an issue for most people out there.
Rare for some people, not so rare for others. But what's the point in buying an entertainment device if it can't entertain you when you actually want to be entertained. This is the whole reason that DVRs and time shifting shows became popular - the consumer of the entertainment wants to dictate when, where, and how they are entertained. The device itself should not be the one driving that decision.
This is a #firstworldproblem, those who are worrying if they will find food tomorrow have no time to worry about existential pain and philosophy.
I'm going to have to disagree with that one, depending upon who you talk to, one of the arguments why religion was developed was to explain to people why their lives sucked. Hunter-gather societies where you spend a fair amount time looking for food still gave rise to philosophical explanations for the big "Why?" question. Ultimately, the evidence seems to be that if you are alive long enough eventually you are going to ask yourself the question.
Maybe those creative professionals should contribute to the development of gimp by coding and contributing the features that they want? Every feature gimp has is a feature that someone decided they wanted and then wrote and shared. That is how it works. The graphic designers are just to lazy to do it themselves, instead they demand that you do it for them for free.
As the other have already said, that argument doesn't work when the target audience for an application are people that don't know how to write software. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if part of the reason why some of the software hasn't even been written into the Gimp is because the algorithms involved are extremely difficult and more often than not have patent protection.
In all honestly, the only way there is going to be a good competitor to Adobe is if someone with some fairly deep pockets comes along and sets up to specifically develop a competitor to Adobe since the code involved is hard and time consuming to write and test.
Such things are always handled much more efficiently by the private market. If we had single payer, every Tom, Dick, and Harry would be going to the doctor every time they got a sniffle and the bill would be Trillions. If you are successful and smart you will go to the doctor only when you need to, and you will be able to pay with cash you have earned previously. I maintain my own insurance and everyone else should do the same.
Is this opposed to the current system where everyone without insurance goes to the ER when they have a sniffle instead? Remember that ERs cannot deny service in the United States due to lack of insurance so tax dollars are paying for them now as it is. If people went to their primary care physician instead meaning better service at the ER when people really need the ER.
Exactly as I said but you seemed to want to argue against it. You argued that there was a population makeup where the outliers had a significant impact, but you cannot actually produce one.
You keep ignoring when I'm talking about standard deviation which leads me to believe that you don't know what it is or why it is important to this conversation. This also proves that there is no point in arguing with you. So fine, you win, I bow to your superior intellect and clearly doing the simple mean is the best way to approach this problem and the lack of raw data or standard deviation information clearly has no use.
It would take 7 packages each with 37 days extra (the largest extra delay observed) to explain the 3 days average extra shipping time..
First, I'm not saying that the vast majority of the packages where delivered on time as it is really hard to get a three day difference like that without a significant quantity of packages being delivered after the plain taped packages. Also, considering that the authors didn't mention that there were a number of packages arriving outside of that three day delivery window, I'm assuming that most of them arrived within that three day delivery window. Thus, the following would work to give you an average of 3.025 days:
1 Day - 5
2 Days - 42
3 Days - 12
4 Days - 20
37 Days - 1
However, that also gives a standard deviation of 3.933 days which implies that the outlier is having a significant impact upon the results. Removing that outlier (dropping it completely) gives us an average of 2.59 days and a standard deviation of 0.93 which is in line with what we would expect. Granted this would still clearly indicate that there is a discrepancy from the plain tape package.
You do know that outliers are samples that are far from the population, right? If there are 7 or more out of 80 or 89, then they are not far from the population. At that point they are representative of the population.
Yes, I know that and I believe that I just demonstrated why it is important to know the standard deviation when discussing this data as well.
At what point do you admit that you arent actually educated enough to have been equipped with the skills necessary to make reasonable arguments?
Likely around the same time that you admit that I might actually know what I'm talking about, although I if I mention the fact that I work with hidden Markov models will you at least give me the benefit of the doubt that I've had a couple math courses in my day?
Life, like beer, is merely borrowed. -- Don Reed