Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re: Hello Wine (Score 2) 585

I've done native code on Windows in industrial safety and automation. You'd think that's an oxymoron, but it can be made sufficiently robust.

I've dealt with bugs in Microsoft's SDKs, and dealt with multiple generations of drawing APIs. Played WoW and other games on WINE on Gentoo. Watched the incessant scrolling of FIXMEs on the console.

I'd love it if I could get paid to hack on WINE...

Comment Re: The answer is SIMPLE (Score 2) 786

But if you really think about it, the Apollo Program was run very Agile-like. If it had been Waterfall, then Apollo 1 would have been destined for the moon. But instead, there were several 'flights' that never left Earth, several more that were unmanned and fully automated, then there were LEO flights designed for figuring out how the whole command module thing would work. Then they changed the whole schedule at the last minute because there was no LM's available to work on rendezvous maneuvers in LEO and instead sent Apollo 8 to the moon and back. And when they did land on the moon, they did it with a minimum load compared to what the requirements said, just as a kind of proof-of-concept. In between each flight, they talked to the users, made some changes based on the evolving needs, and then moved onto the next set of requirements. Okay, so they probably didn't have a scrum meeting everyday... but for such a hugely complex development effort, they understood the values of prototyping and iterative design, something that apparently is lost in most government contracts today.

Comment Re:USB? Excellent! (Score 1) 169

My chief complaint was that in the original announcement, they were only going to support wifi for networking, yet it was supposed to be useful for gaming and streaming video.

The problem is that wifi is terrible for both of those use cases. It's bad on its own for latency purposes, and then there's spectrum contention. I raised these points in response to their Kickstarter drive, and it looks like they turned around and added those features. If I'd known they would, I would have donated on the Kickstarter.

Comment USB? Excellent! (Score 2) 169

When their Kickstarter began, I sent them a message (along with many other folks, I'm sure) that it needed _some_ means of getting a wired internet connection and/or access to by-wire accessories. USB was one of the possibilities I offered.

Now devs for Ouya can turn around and leverage that USB port to allow the Ouya device to latch on to a PC's network connection. Excellent.

(Page doesn't seem to show if it's USB2 or 3. At this point, I sure hope it's USB 3...)

Comment Re:Sure but.. (Score 1) 596

Now how can we apply this to software. Well some precautions can be taken but they generally aren't very effective. It only takes one person out of billions to figure it out and share it. So you have to weigh the costs of implementing copy restrictions which includes the man-hours to develop that code and the inconvenience to paying customers. The shrinkage rate needs to be taken into consideration. Software shrinkage would be unsustainable if you actually lost product every time but you don't. There is opportunity costs but no costs associated with replacing the product.

I have three or four apps on my Android devices which implement DRM features. Some of them are 'phone home' features. Some of them are 'buy a crypto key to activate this app instance' features. You know what? That's fine. I like these apps enough that I'll pay for them. I also like Android's "broken" model enough that I'll stick with Android; Android's "broken" model let me root my phone, clean the ROM's crap out and integrate the Dalvik cache. I can't hope to explain how much this has improved the phone's performance for me.

Given the choice between something like Android and a feature phone, I'd probably go back to a feature phone. Thankfully, Google opened the barn door, and even if Android stops being produced, alternatives like Cyanogenmod and WebOS will take its place. Given the rate hardware's getting commoditized, we're not that far off from someone like BeagleBoards coming out with devices with CDMA, WiMax and GSM modems.

Slashdot Top Deals

Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work. -- John G. Pollard

Working...