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Comment: I have found this chart to be helpful in the past (Score 1) 297

by nanotech (#43533173) Attached to: Overconfidence: Why You Suck At Making Development Time Estimates

http://coding.abel.nu/2012/06/programmer-time-translation-table/
4 hours is about the sweet spot.

In seriousness, there are many ways of improving estimates (reviewing past similar projects - you kept metrics right?), appropriate granularity of features and estimates of these features, confidence factors appropriate to the complexity/unknowns of the task (write a CRUD GUI screen? high confidence. Write a new algorithm to combine multiple videos into a 3-d pannable single video? Low confidence), etc. You need to be refining and grooming these estimates weekly as data changes, so at least you fail early.

Comment: Sorry, we're supposed to be mad? (Score 2) 164

by nanotech (#43522209) Attached to: Former Diplomat Slams Facebook For Inaction On Fake Pages

Mad because a government official cannot wield undue influence over the global, borderless Internet?

Facebook treats all their users like shit, no reason this guy should be special. I agree it sucks for him, but it sucks just as much for the 13 year old whose classmates put up pages mocking him. I don't think you want it to be otherwise. Ideally they would always "do the right thing" but at least they are consistent in ignoring their users and don't play favourites.

Comment: Please explain to me (Score 1) 276

by nanotech (#43213401) Attached to: Galaxy S 4 Dominates In Early Benchmark Testing

How does this translate to real-world user-visible improvements?

Does it scroll more fluidly?
Do apps run noticeably faster? (Were they slow to start with?)
Is there any software out there that takes advantage of it to do more?

Can't see anyone caring about this at all in the mainstream market (you know, the one where people buy 50M+ units).

Also, comparing against iPhone5 is misleading as Android code runs via a JVM and iPhone runs native.

(Not a fan of either, aiming for objectivity)

Comment: This is a false dichotomy (Score 5, Insightful) 663

I didn't bother to read the article obviously, but to compare opening weekend results directly with CAM downloads ignores many aspects. The most obvious to me is the people who did NOT go out to the theatre and who WILL NOT download the CAM, but who WILL wait two months for a high-quality free Blu-Ray rip to appear online. These are potentially lost sales for the theatres.

(Having said that, after going back to a theatre for the first time in a couple years specifically to see Avengers, I still believe the root of their problem does not lie with piracy, it lies with the appalling rudeness found in your average public gathering. For the same price, two months later, my living room is infinitely more comfortable and better equipped to show ME the movie in a manner I will enjoy and not be distracted by phones, screaming children, and poor sound).

Blackberry

+ - RIM to lay off 2000 employees->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Things continue to look bleak for RIM. The Canadian based handset maker announced today that it plans to slash 2000 jobs to help reduce costs and redouble its efforts to remain relevant in the smartphone market and make a dent in the burgeoning tablet market. Indeed, RIM explained that the job cuts, while regrettable and the company’s first in over a decade, are a “a prudent and necessary step for its long-term success.”"
Link to Original Source
Science

Antarctic's First Plane, Found In Ice 110

Posted by timothy
from the ice-tractor-cometh dept.
Arvisp writes "In 1912 Australian explorer Douglas Mawson planned to fly over the southern pole. His lost plane has now been found. The plane – the first off the Vickers production line in Britain – was built in 1911, only eight years after the Wright brothers executed the first powered flight. For the past three years, a team of Australian explorers has been engaged in a fruitless search for the aircraft, last seen in 1975. Then on Friday, a carpenter with the team, Mark Farrell, struck gold: wandering along the icy shore near the team's camp, he noticed large fragments of metal sitting among the rocks, just a few inches beneath the water."

Apple Orders 10 Million Tablets? 221

Posted by ScuttleMonkey
from the pricepoint-better-be-right dept.
Arvisp writes "According to a blog post by former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee, Apple plans to produce nearly 10 million tablets in the still-unannounced product's first year. If Lee's blog post is to be believed, Apple plans to sell nearly twice as many tablets as it did iPhones in the product's first year."
NASA

+ - NASA GISS finds new record warmest year 1

Submitted by SleptThroughClass
SleptThroughClass writes "NASA's GISS climate researchers have reexamined their temperature records and determined that the warmest recorded year in the USA was: 1938. The change was noticed by ClimateAudit and Pielke's blog. The change seems to not have been noticed by GISS, as there is no news release on their web site, so you have to look for the "U.S. Temperature" graph on this page or directly view the graph."
Networking

+ - SuprNova.org Transferred to The Pirate Bay->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Andrej Preston, ex-administrator of legendary BitTorrent SuprNova.org, has turned over the keys to The Pirate Bay.

"My deal with [The Pirate Bay] was that the role of SuprNova can't change much," he tells Slyck.com. "It needs to be community orientated, but I hope they make some updates the SuprNova was sooo missing. But what they will do, it's not my thing to decide anymore. But I know they will do [well] and will try to keep the community spirit running.""
Link to Original Source
The Internet

The Internet of Things - What is a Spime? 141

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the sounds-like-it-would-taste-sour dept.
CoolVibe writes "From the abstract in the talk: "World-renowned Science Fiction writer and futurist Bruce Sterling will outline his ideas for SPIMES, a form of ubiquitous computing that gives smarts and 'searchabiliity' to even the most mundane of physical products. Imagine losing your car keys and being able to search for them with Google Earth." It's a very interesting lecture given by Bruce Sterling about something we might see in the near future. The lecture can be viewed here on Google Video."
Math

+ - New theory suggests extra dimensions are time-like

Submitted by
everyplace
everyplace writes "Professor George Sparling proposes a new unified theory of mathematics, building upon the works of Cartan, Penrose and countless other philosophers and physicists. From the article: "...A fundamental question pondered since the time of Pythagoras, and still vexing scientists today: what is the nature of space and time? After analyzing different perspectives, Sparling offers an alternative idea: space-time may have six dimensions, with the extra two being time-like.""

The bug starts here.

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