So it's been more than 6 hours since this was posted. There must be a few clones of the Android version by now. Links, anyone?
The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application
151–160 of 165 posts
Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application
#152Fine. "6 hours maximum", says the author, for an app translated into English and Spanish that interfaces with a remote database and performs some user-initiated calculations, and also has a bunch of static pages. Before starting you must consult with at least a dozen people who know very little about Android and succinctly describe the capabilities of the smartphone and what sorts of applications are even possible. F…
Heh, I feel bad for any products you spearhead. Your definition of good quality is poor. I am a professional Android developer. Something like this wouldn't take more than a day. It's a piece of cake. What I suspect happened here is that the project was outsourced. These silly people tried to save money by hiring a foreigner to talk to another foreigner developer and get the app developed. To work on and a deliver a…
Oh my god, a good samaritan! I call that a slave... working in the US 'for about a couple weeks' and charge 300$. It makes out to... 3$ per hour? The art of underselling.
You should have contacted CAT directly and upsell them exposing their blatant mistake.
Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the governments defense, I think big corporations routinely overpay for web development and marketing expenses. Aanecdotally, a girl I know who works for a pharmaceutical company said they spent $60,000 on a three page web site. Then I sit in Starbucks and listen to some freelancer get reamed for charging $1,000 to build and manage some guy's website. One would think that the price discrepancies for the same produ…
> In the governments defense, I think big corporations routinely overpay for web development and marketing expenses. In the big corporations defense, they don't use tax dollars.
Yep - they use excess revenues from us, their customers, and don't even translate that into excess profits for us, their owners.
Instead they use excess costs to reward us, their executives and us, their contractors.
The difference between big business and big government are sometimes difficult for me to see.
Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application
#154Please get this off the front page:
1) $200K is for Android +iOS + BB apps
2) Source code is available
3) App works as advertised and does not Crash (installed)
4) Selling to big Gov. is expensive (not 10X but surely 2-3X)
5) The poster wildly underestimates the total project cost and puts in some arbitrary coding estimate
Linkbaity title + Misleading facts + Moral outrage at big Gov != HNews Frontpage
Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application
#155So it's been more than 6 hours since this was posted. There must be a few clones of the Android version by now. Links, anyone?
Six hours later: yeah, didn't think so.
Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not making any such claim. But I'm curious why you want to see me as making that claim. Why would you be interested in evidence that open source projects produce generally/consistently better software than proprietary projects for the same sort of problems? As for evidence that open source projects can (sometimes) produce "high quality" software, TCP/IP is the first example that comes to mind. Once upon a time, t…
It should be obvious why I think you're making such a claim - you said: "What's different now is that there is historical evidence that open source projects can produce higher quality software than proprietary ones." By using the word 'higher' you clearly indicate that you think that there is a quality advantage to open source software. If you don't think there's an advantage to open source development, then I don't…
You have made assumptions about what I meant with my original comment. Your assumptions are incorrect. Why not just ask me: "What do you mean by that?"
Here's what I meant. I believe there were naysayers in the 1980's and early 1990's (and maybe they are still around today) who argued open source would never work. I believe history has proved them wrong.
As you pointed out, open source, like proprietary, can produce good results or bad results. It can produce "high quality"[1] results. It can even produce "higher quality" results.
I believe the reasons why open source is as good a choice as proprietary are very simple and quite obvious: If the user of the software can read the code, then 1. it is easier to evaluate the author's skill and programming sensibilities and 2. it is easier to fix errors and make improvements (without having to pester a proprietary software vendor).
You were also hoping that I would make an argument that the results obtained are somehow related to whether a project is open or closed. As I said, I won't make that argument. And as such I won't look for evidence to support it. That's because I do not believe it.
You have set yourself up for disappointment. I played no part in it.
If you want to know what I believe in terms of how "high quality" or "higher quality" software is achieved, just ask me and I will tell you[2].
But please do not make assumptions about what I think.
All the best.
1. Quality is a subjective determination.
2. I should warn you it is nothing revolutionary. I will only state the obvious.
Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application
#157The problem with the government trying to do something is that anyone who's really really qualified will find the paperwork, compliance, and bidding procedures way too complicated for the sums of money involved. The Android app cost 106k btw. So looking at this guys hourly rate, it would take approximately 6 months of 40 hour weeks for him to cost that much to do the app. So if he: Learned out to submit the forms tha…
You seem to be arguing this as if this is reality. What you are stating is the justification. Its the theater. The story. The reality is that there are two ways to get people to give you money. 1. Make something people want. 2. Bribe people in government to give you enough money to cover cost of said bribe, plus handsome profit, plus possibly actually making something, and then have the government force those people…
I am stating what government contracting is like. I don't quite get the psudolibertarian point of your post, but I know personally that as I worked for a Georgia state agency doing federal contracting, nothing even CLOSE to a bribe was used anywhere. We couldn't even buy them lunch.
If you jump through a series of hoops and bid low enough, you WILL get government contracts. They're just expensive hoops.
Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application
#158This kind of nauseus bloat is a big factor why I'm trying to stay away from iOS and Android development. So many projects out there could be much more quickly, cheaply and freedomly (my word) done as a simple web app or even as pure static HTML website in some cases. So much foolishness, hype and hipstering going on.
I agree with this, although I'd go even further. If this app's sole purpose is to retrieve a couple of numbers (surface temperature and relative humidity) why do we need graphics? What purpose is achieved?
Given the extremely basic task at hand, as an end user my main concern is that it's fast (even over slow connections), reliable and simple. If it breaks I can fix it.
My preference would be to retrieve the numbers into a non-graphical console via a few keypunches. All I want is a couple of numbers and I'm done.
This could be done with a TCP client like netcat and a shell script that uses basic UNIX utilities. And I could teach an 11 year old how to do it.
If a "smart" phone OS does not allow something so simple by default, then to me it's not very useful. It's been dumbed down. "Smart" is the wrong word.
Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
It should be obvious why I think you're making such a claim - you said: "What's different now is that there is historical evidence that open source projects can produce higher quality software than proprietary ones." By using the word 'higher' you clearly indicate that you think that there is a quality advantage to open source software. If you don't think there's an advantage to open source development, then I don't…
You have made assumptions about what I meant with my original comment. Your assumptions are incorrect. Why not just ask me: "What do you mean by that?" Here's what I meant. I believe there were naysayers in the 1980's and early 1990's (and maybe they are still around today) who argued open source would never work. I believe history has proved them wrong. As you pointed out, open source, like proprietary, can produce…
So you don't think open source can produce higher quality software, and you don't have any evidence for anything.
Fair enough.
[edit - changed "produces" to "can produce"] - doesn't change my point.
Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have made assumptions about what I meant with my original comment. Your assumptions are incorrect. Why not just ask me: "What do you mean by that?" Here's what I meant. I believe there were naysayers in the 1980's and early 1990's (and maybe they are still around today) who argued open source would never work. I believe history has proved them wrong. As you pointed out, open source, like proprietary, can produce…
So you don't think open source can produce higher quality software, and you don't have any evidence for anything. Fair enough. [edit - changed "produces" to "can produce"] - doesn't change my point.
No. I explained what I meant and you still don't seem to get it. Read what I said about the naysayers again.
You asked for the historical evidence I mentioned and I gave you the example of the TCP/IP stack we're all using.
I shouldn't have to say it but "open source" does not produce software, developers produce software. They might be working on a closed project or they might be working on an open one. The open/closed status of the project does not determine the quality of the software. The developers do.
You appear to be making the same mistake as the naysayers did when they said open source would never work. They believed the closed/open status of a project was somehow tied to quality. They were wrong. (Developers working on) open source projects can produce high quality software just as well as (developers working on) proprietary ones can. You cited the example of KDE's webkit to indicate you agreed.
If this is still somehow confusing to you, then I'm afraid I cannot help you.