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Comment Re:Measuring results (Score 1) 285

It's hard to argue with your logic. I've seen multiple cases of such talks happening and resulting in "happy estimations" and think it's all the matter of project management culture. This is very deep topic but it is possible to refer to two basic issues without going deep:

  • 1. YOU are specialist and if you're saying it takes X time, management should listen. One way I used to measure programmers efficency was estimation/correction ratio and it quite worked (After working with people for at least 2 months I usually knew if they over- or underestimate work)
  • 2. Uncertainty can be estimated and there are many methods to do this

I recommend the book Reinventing Project Management by Shenhar, Dvir if someone is interested (it describes approach models for various projects). I think it is important to acknowledge that not every organization wants to deal with delays, stress etc. - some are just what they are and are not willing to change.

Comment Re:XCP on steroids! (Score 2, Informative) 438

It's not that bad. I bought some time ago NDS Lite. After a while screen calibration started to malfunction (well known problem). As I was in "not supported country" Nintendo haven't even respond for any of my e-mails. After 6 month I was left with piece of junk with no way of fixing it. So - what's left Microsoft? Come on..

Comment Re:Other products developed while patent pending? (Score 1) 449

If you release a product, or even announce technical details, before you apply for a patent or a provisional, then your own invention now counts as prior art which will prevent you (or anyone else) from ever patenting it. If I start selling time machines today, and apply for the patent tomorrow, I'll get rejected as there is prior art (fortunately, in that case I can just refile the day before I started selling).(...)

Wait a sec... from what I see iPhone has been released 29 June 2007 and on the US Patent Office webpage I can see filled date April 11, 2008. Release date for iPhone touch is even earlier.

Does it mean, that Apple patent is invalid due to prior art thing?

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