Any zombie problem can be solved with the application of an overwhelming amount of technology. You can bet I'll be running some uber security cameras, motion sensor traps and the like.

The year 2038 problem will not cause the "appoxy-clipse". They said the same thing about the Y2K problem - and we developed and tested fixes that were put in place well before the millennium...and we're still here without the need to cobble together mutant PCs.

I would mod this up if I had the points.

Where humans are concerned, requirements are never trustworthy. Much better to provide a real collaborative environment, by placing the proto-system in the hands of users as early as possible, and throughout the project life-cycle.

The issue you're describing is the problem that old financial / business / PM practices bump up against the reality of what is really needed. What you're describing is the old (1980s) view that software is a finite thing that you build, wrap in plastic, and throw over the wall to end users. "Maintenance" is done by re-executing the project cycle from the beginning, and the people who built it to begin with are usually not the people charged with fixing or changing it in the future.

The reality is we're building long-lived systems for end users - both internal and external to the company - and their expectation is for it to be responsive to change. We do this horribly, if at all, and our customers think we're a bunch of idiots.

The real solution is for everyone in the company to be on the same sheet of music where systems are concerned. It is a cost of doing business that should not be halfway done. People who build systems need to be involved in the ongoing health and management of the changes to those systems over the long term. Furthermore, the company as a whole needs to agree on some architectural standards to allow this process to work effectively, so we're not reinventing the wheel every time we touch a system. I've seen people here and in the article saying "it's simple - focus on X (data, scrum, etc)", but that short term thinking is what got us into this mess in the first place. This is a holistic problem that needs holistic solutions.

Here is the text of the Agile Manifesto for your refreshment:

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

I don't see anything in there that defines all the processes and tools you've stated Agile requires to be done right - including Scrum itself. Agile is the verbalization of what good developers do on a daily basis. Scrum and all the other buzz word methodologies exist because rather than changing how the corporation funds and manages projects, we have to bastardize the agile concept to make it fit a broken system that was old in the 1980s. We're too busy trying to measure the short game to save pennies, we're losing sight of the long term success and health of the company.

If you've ever read the Agile Manifesto, you'll see it doesn't say anything about Scrum or other mechanisms that have glommed onto the original idea.

Agile is really verbalizing what good developers do naturally on a daily basis: iterate through their code/test cycles (avoiding big design up front as much as possible - KISS principle in action), communicate with people who will use their systems - including early and continuing access to the system in progress and feedback (collaboration), use mechanisms to automate and encapsulate documentation in code, and finally - a continuing engagement as requirements change over time, and through the life of the system. This is how I've worked throughout my career to great success.

That being said, while many projects are amenable to an agile approach, some projects are just too complex, or require very tight tolerances or integrations that can not change - requiring the detailed design to be finalized up front. From my own experience building systems for internal and external customers and machine to machine integrations - very few of my projects were so strictly defined - which allowed the opportunity to get to the bottom of what the customers really wanted and needed which often changed the requirements for the better.

Another problem is how corporations fund projects, which does not lend itself to flexibility; many project management processes assume a waterfall development life-cycle as a result, which ties the hands of developers to the detriment of the people who will use what is produced (poorly). Picking the right development lifecycle tool for the job is therefore imperative to the success of your project - one size does not fit all. Calling everything 'Agile' - even when it's not, is not agile development.

At my previous job, software was constantly being deployed to make things 'better.' But the question many of us in the trenches learned to ask was, 'better for whom?'

A simple case in point, a system was deployed to keep track of our time spent working on projects to avoid the finance team from having to collect and manage the various accounts and hours associated. Problem was, we ended up spending many hours trying to figure out what accounts our work was supposed to be applied to of the many different projects we were working, and using the interface to this tool became a time sink.

The key problem here is rather than creating a better solution for everyone, short sighted designs tend to merely shift the work from one team to another within a corporation. I don't know how they get away with it - but they do, and it impacts the performance of the company overall.

This case, and the size of the fine, should stand as a warning to all companies that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated and WILL NOT BE PROFITABLE unless you anticipate at least a 10% chance that you will get away with it.

----

You're missing the point. It's not the specific functionality of a given site; the key point can be found in this quote: " (There was) a mistaken belief on the part of students that they had absorbed the book by circulating tweets about its contents."

Social mechanisms can never be the sole means of understanding material, and should be the last resource used. In a classroom setting it would be as if the students milled about outside of the classroom without cracking the book, and then gleaned whatever they could from the useless ramblings of their equally uninformed classmates, and the passing comments of the professor as he made his way to his office. Of course they're going to do poorly on the tests. This concept really applies to anyone, whether in school or not, as we've seen during the last elections and the role of social media absent critical thinking.

I wouldn't indict cyberspace per se. eBooks are a great example of the value of the internet for students that shouldn't be discounted. It is really people. People trying to use tools inappropriately. People with the notion that they can gleam whatever knowledge they need from social media alone.

Revolutions are fraught with upheaval and change, but then incremental change based on what works wins out. The social media revolution is over. Let's find out what works and what doesn't, and get back to the fundamentals to avoid having a generation of more illiterate citizens.

I thought grouping people into 'nerd', 'jock', 'normal', and so on was gone with the 1990s. But it seems the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I loved the Big Bang Theory primarily because it exposed those oversimplified classifications for the fallacies they were. As much as Sheldon wanted to live by pure Vulcan logic, reality would bring him back down to earth; hubris meet nemesis. The inclusion of various scientists as regular guests also gave credence to the fact that these folks are people - not just some one-dimensional caricature of what a scientist should be (Stephen Hawking was the archetypal 'nerd' guest - who would break from those boundaries to Sheldon's dismay). An article on the subject of the science on the show can be found here.

People are the only thing mainstream - and people are more complicated than preconceived notions of what a nerd should be. If you think those silly classifications are exclusive (a jock can't be a nerd, or whatever other stupid classifications you are using to pigeonhole people), then you should reevaluate your own thought on the subject. The reality is everyone has different physical, mental, and social skills they develop over a lifetime. Everyone is thankfully different.

Whitebox systems are used extensively in cloud computing...so the fear that the manufacturers are simply going to stop building systems that form the backbone of the services provided to those billions of cell phone users is ludicrous.

Now are things evolving? Certainly - as systems become more efficient over time, the numbers required drops - this is planned on purpose to make running those data centers cost effective. Which also means that the evolution and development of CPUs and the technologies surrounding will also continue - and as long as there are people willing to pay - there will be manufacturers building them, and people writing software to take advantage of it.

That being said, does that mean you'll be able to go down to your local BestBuy - and pick up a fully integrated/built gaming rig? Maybe not at some point, but you'll certainly be able to find the parts to build your own. With E-Sports going gangbusters - there is still demand for tweaked gaming rigs.

Finally - when all those youngsters get old, they are not going to want to be squinting at a tiny little screen through their bifocals...which may move some of them back towards stand alone systems - perhaps in a bit of a different form, but the idea is the same - and someone will be building those systems for that market.

I have questions about the data in the report:

1. does this include small systems such as Raspberry PI et al?

2. does this consider people building machines from parts?

Personally, I think people who want or need access to more robust workstation systems for gaming, number crunching, etc, will be able to buy or build the systems they need, for the foreseeable furture because:

1. Business runs on white box systems - including the services behind all of those hand held devices at the other end of the network connection.

2. E-Sports is not just about consoles - and we're talking $billions there.

Your average person who could care less will be fine, and so will those of us who work in the field, play video games, or need to be able to number crunch. Will how people doe these things change? Certainly, but maybe for the better in some ways - particularly for people who may need one of those functions infrequently - they don't have to invest in expensive equipment to leverage cloud based resources through their phone. For the geeks remaining - we'll all be fine.

I think you missed the meaning of the GP.

You can turn them off. Completely. It's really that simple.

There are exactly zero websites I want to be able to "push" content to me. I thought we had gotten over that entire model when broadcast TV died? Why are we now revisiting a battle we won, in a medium that's essentially "pull" from the ground up?

You give people more credit for being 'smart' than they deserve. Mistakes do happen all the time. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor