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Everything's broken and nobody's upset

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Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#351

Post by JoeAltmaier »

dpitkin wrote: post #350
luu wrote: post #35

The blurb on the sidebar proclaims Scott's MS experience. It's surprising to see someone with a Microsoft background making this complaint. MS spends more effort than any software company on testing, not only in just plain hiring lots of testers, but also on formal methods. They have some of the top formal methods people in the world doing research for them, and armies of people trying to put that research into pract…

I think I read this from HN but I use this as the best example of mission critical software, the Space Shuttle at NASA. The most important things the shuttle group does -- carefully planning the software in advance, writing no code until the design is complete, making no changes without supporting blueprints, keeping a completely accurate record of the code -- are not expensive. The process isn't even rocket science.…

But most engineering projects don't have hundreds of millions of moving parts. At that scale, standard practice becomes intractable.

The Space Shuttle went up the first time with a few K of core memory. The software effort was really pretty trivial compared with systems today.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#352

Post by tomflack »

prof_hobart wrote: post #271
tomflack wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently, a GSM Galaxy Nexus. Previously, an iPhone 4. Various oddball WebOS and the like phones scattered over the past few years.

If you're after something that does one job and does it well, is there a reason why you've chosen those phones over a very basic Nokia model (or something similar)?

Contact sync. Application selection.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#353

Post by mlvljr »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #337
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious as to whether you really believe more testing is the issue? Half the problems on that list are directly related to political/business decisions. Chrome's installer sucks because Google wants to make sure you can install it with non-admin rights. It breaks basic Windows guideilnes because.. fuck you that's why. Ask google. Their war to get Chrome on limited users desktops is a business decision. When you'r…

Wow, congratulations. I think that one post just about summed up everything I hate about modern software. It's actually gotten so bad now that I've found myself increasingly hacking together my own small apps and scripts to do some simple things that I want because it's often actually easier to build than figuring out how to use some of the software out there. It's actually an even better investment because I know my…

This philosophy could actually bring people together: imagine a "no sh*t utilities" software movement :)

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#354

Post by dpitkin »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #351
dpitkin wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I read this from HN but I use this as the best example of mission critical software, the Space Shuttle at NASA. The most important things the shuttle group does -- carefully planning the software in advance, writing no code until the design is complete, making no changes without supporting blueprints, keeping a completely accurate record of the code -- are not expensive. The process isn't even rocket science.…

But most engineering projects don't have hundreds of millions of moving parts. At that scale, standard practice becomes intractable. The Space Shuttle went up the first time with a few K of core memory. The software effort was really pretty trivial compared with systems today.

The article is from 1996 but even then they were far beyond a few K.

"Take the upgrade of the software to permit the shuttle to navigate with Global Positioning Satellites, a change that involves just 1.5% of the program, or 6,366 lines of code. The specs for that one change run 2,500 pages, a volume thicker than a phone book. The specs for the current program fill 30 volumes and run 40,000 pages."

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#355

Post by rwallace »

bobsy wrote: post #51

This stuff all bugs me. On my 4 year old Mac sometimes app's just won't start. They bounce once then exit. The only fix is to restart. No idea why. Been happening for years. In Firefox on Windows. I write a bad bit of JavaScript and the browser just freezes and there is nothing I can do apart from ctrl+alt+del. I really don't know why tab's aren't sand boxed to at least let you exit them. Photoshop has minor annoyanc…

> In Firefox on Windows. I write a bad bit of JavaScript and the browser just freezes and there is nothing I can do apart from ctrl+alt+del. I really don't know why tab's aren't sand boxed to at least let you exit them.

In Chrome they are, that's why I switched. Try it and see?

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#356

Post by chris_mahan »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #50
batista wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, the technology is incredibly complex and represents a huge transformation in the way we do things, but a customer doesn't and shouldn't need to understand that, and certainly shouldn't be offered the complexity as an excuse for it not working correctly. In some ideal world, where you can have things with MILLIONS of moving parts and TRILLIONS of states, designed by mere mortals and still have them be faultless…

My argument is not that consumer products should be perfect; it is that when consumers see deficiencies in them which could reasonably be fixed, they have every right to complain. In fact, they should complain because it will help make things better.

What makes things better is that they buy a competing product.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#357

Post by jpxxx »

tocomment wrote: post #68

I'm hitting the iPhoto problems he mentions pretty bad lately. Does anyone know what options I have? Is there an easy way to switch to just using the file system for photos? It seems like iPhoto is so interwoven into the OS.

Open iPhoto. Select all photos with Cmd-A. Drag them to a folder. The end!

To preserve separate "rolls": open finder. Navigate to Photos. Right-click your iPhoto Library and choose "show package contents". Find the Originals folder and drag it out. You're set.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#358

Post by nradov »

zdw wrote: post #349
nradov wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Synchronization in IBM Lotus Notes/Domino has worked quite well for 20+ years, so obviously sync is not fundamentally broken. More likely we've just failed to learn from history.

I'd love to know if the Notes sync method is documented somewhere. I don't doubt that there are some good implementations, but... Does it do offline sync with multiple users whose changes may have different priority? How about if time isn't set properly between multiple devices? How about a multi-way modify/delete/rename where two records are given identical keys on more than one system, then both systems are reconci…

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/ls-Domino_Re... http://www-12.lotus.com/ldd/doc/tools/c/8.5.2/api852ug.nsf/8...

Yes it does offline sync with multiple users. Changes aren't prioritized but you can configure what it does with conflicts (merge if possible, discard, or leave the conflict).

Time synchronization between multiple devices has been a solved problem for years. Not worth worrying about.

Creation of identical record keys — while theoretically possible — really never occurs in practice.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#359

Post by dev1n »

ganley wrote: post #89
TeMPOraL wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would seriously reconsider Kindle. It beats any kind of screen for reading, and beats any kind of paper materials in logistics. For me, personally, it's pure value; something I can't say about most of other electronics I own.

Definitely. Like the grandparent commenter, I don't use any technology that frustrates or annoys me, which means that I don't use a whole lot of technology. The Kindle, however, has been great and fairly frustration-free - definitely a net positive. Related aside: The world seems to be making it more and more difficult not to have a smart phone (or, almost equivalently, to have a dumb phone). This sucks.

Only problem with my Kindle is I forget the title of books I read. I don't see the title when I "close" the book (read: turn my kindle off).

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#360

Post by rwallace »

nodata wrote: post #47
Tichy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you could use Linux if you really care for open bug tracking...

That makes no sense. What if I find a generic hardware problem with my laptop? or a general problem with my apartment complex? If I have a problem on a Mac, I can report it. I will get no feedback, and maybe the problem will get fixed. If it does get fixed, I will get no information about if my bug report led to the fix: the feedback loop is missing - there is no incentive to report a bug.

Am I the only one who doesn't want to hear feedback when I report a bug?

Seriously, more often than not the feedback is an excuse why they aren't going to fix it. Look, if you aren't going to fix the bug then you aren't; so be it; your choice. But don't tell me your excuse. I don't want to hear it. It will just annoy me and tempt me to get into an argument and waste both our time. Just throw my bug report in the recycle bin and we can both get on with our lives.

(Mind you there has to be a feedback capability for the rarer occasions when the programmer needs to ask for clarification about how to reproduce the bug.)

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