marcusf

I've honestly tried hard to understand the other side, but no, I cannot. First of all, I don't see what gives you the moral prerogative to make that choice for a woman. Secondly, I don't believe it's a human being yet (we're not talking the 38th week here). If my mother had an abortion I would not be dead right now, I would have never existed at all. I would be a non-event. And I'm fine with that.

On the flip side, how about contraceptives? If removing a fetus after 4 weeks is murder, how about birth control pills? Or emergency contraception pills? Arguably, they kill as well?

It's always befuddled me that when it's a woman making a conscious choice about her body or when two men wants to marry the small government party see no issue with injecting themselves into peoples lives.

Also, it's slightly ironic to compare the american view on murder with a european view when you're the ones executing people.

For me, there's so much viscerally wrong in this comment I'm just flabbergasted. I wrote a long reply and erased it. I think I'd rather just leave you with a cultural observation.

Americans tend to mired in sexism to a much greater extent than for example Sweden, where I'm at. The above comment would simply not be made by a professional in Sweden. I guess we don't equate sexism and fun to the same extent some americans do, nor is the female body under the same bizarre governmental scrutiny (abortion, an issue, honestly?). That there's a link doesn't seem entirely implausible.

A beautiful thing. My father passed away about six years ago as well, far too young. But cancer doesn't really care, does it? This very much reminded me of him. Our final days were not as apt for stories but I'm sending him an extra thought today.

I think you're completely missing the point. If you're doing software that needs per-customer customization (typically enterprise), then at some point the vendor and customer will need to talk. A great salesperson will be there to help you through the entire process (though I admit a lot of them suck, mostly due to misaligned incentives). It's not about bad UX in a web form, it's about selling custom software requiring interaction.

It's an amusing post but if Cisco reads this: Please bite! After having spent hundreds of hours in WebEx conferences, I would kill to be able to use anything better (alas corporate mandates against it for conversations > 2 people). The key feature of WebEx seems to be the unique Shoe Filter, that makes everybody sound like they're mumbling muffled through their shoe, from several meters away.

I'm not belittling the complexity in what they do, but others do it better. And I would kill to be able to user others.

I hope it's OK that I go of track and rant a bit about Rands in general, instead of specifically this post. Because Rands reminds me so much of both Joel and Yegge, in a very specific way. All of their posts make sense, I agree with them and I like them. Most new insight is often just provoking enough that I find myself arguing with it for a few moments before buying it wholesale. Nothing that pushes me far away from my existing core of values and ideas. At the same time it's very well written and hard to dislike. The rands test, for example, I circulated to my managers the second I read it, much like the Joel test.

The last few days I've rewatched a bunch of my favorite West Wing episodes. In a sense, reading Rands reminds me of that. It's well written, I agree with it and I enjoy it and recommend it, even though it might not teach me anything new.

OP must've miscalculated, surely. 0.1 pageviews per machine per second is quite amusing though.

"We're really struggling here cap'n":)

One company that does this exceedingly well, me thinks, is Toca Boca. In a sense, they don't make iPad games, they make iPad toys. But kids respond to the toys, and enjoy them.

Slightly unrelated, their CEO has a good talk on the way to figuring out that they should make kids toys: http://vimeo.com/30743193

Well, what I can think of is that of course you need to sample at > 2*max frequency if you do uniform sampling to avoid aliasing (by Nyquist), but that's not the same as playback.

Yeah I get that I'm getting older. It's just, what's the point of having a stereo that gives perfect playback at 22 kHz if you can't hear it? I'm guessing there must be something since people buy gear like that, or is just a case of deranged audiophiles?

...of course I mean audible. Or spectral? Not aural, anyway. English is not my first language. Sorry.

I might sound/be stupid for asking, but what's the actual physical response from something at 22 kHz+? I have a hard time picking up a pure sine > 17 kHz. I doubt I'd get any aural response from anything at 22 kHz, so what's the deal?

This sort of reminds me of a DAM (Digital Asset Management system). I work in the media CMS industry, and most big news organisations carry one + usually some front end integration code. Seems like an obvious direction to take this (though it carries the pain of doing enterprise sales, of course).

I'm unsure if this is trolling or not or if I lost my sense of humor. Anyway, I can simply not buy that Windows 95 sucked or was a half way-house of old and new tech where Windows 98 was a major technical step forward in comparison. And of course, the author very conveniently forgot Windows 2000.

I am sincerely wishing that there were multiple upvotes to dish out. My little brother, at 16 and new to hacking, turns out Rails apps like nothing. It's part of the charm of a framework that is so easy to get started with. What's wrong with embracing that instead of trying to wear some sort of 'I do rails, thus I am the 1%'-badge?

This is one of those issues where I realize just the vastness of the cultural divide between the US and over here.

I live in Sweden, we've got lower unemployment, better average living conditions, free health care, all that jazz AND of course minimum wage. As often is with labour issues in Sweden, it's not dictated by law but by a voluntary agreement between unions and employer associations (called kollektivavtal, or the collective deal), but it is established in most all sectors. I know companies like McDonalds refused early on, but were forced to cave in due to strikes.

Of course a minimum wage will take away some jobs. Jobs that doesn't support your LIVING on those jobs. They suddenly become jobs for the sake of fueling companies, not jobs for the sake of sustaining yourself, which is sort of bizzarre. I'd rather we as a society pay for people to have a dignified life then force them to work three jobs to make ends meet. YMMV.

A complete aside, but the pushState/client side rendering implementation on the blog surprised and confused me massively. It seems like the wrong tool for a blog.

It should probably be noted that 'product' in this article only means physical products, eg the iPhone, iPad, MacBook etc.

It would be interesting to see how this relates to software. I might just have to buy the book.

It sounds like a fun place to be, and just reinforces that this industry seems to endlessly spin around in circles.

I mean, when you read this and compare it to what you hear of MSFT today (via Mini, for example), it's not far off to compare it with Google who seems to be shifting from this to something more disciplined with Larry as the CEO. Extrapolating to what might happen to Facebook isn't far off either.

I disagree. I've laid out my arguments best as I can, pointing to how we've measured and that we've seen improvements. In response to that, the commenter compares the post to scientology.

The hypothesis under discussion here isn't "these principles have value", it's "even though implementing these principles gave measurable value, they're still snake oil comparable to scientology".

Thanks, but I've seen Gregs talk and the book has been on my short list for a while. I whole heartedly agree with trying to bring some science to the table. However, in lieu of any research on the subject and given the tools at our disposal right now, we can only look at the metrics we have and draw conclusions from them.

Also, I disagree that Yegge discusses Google in particular. Sure, he blabbers on about how great Google is, but he dismisses agile methods outright. FWIW, the Googlers I know don't tell the same rosy picture about the place. What Google is seems to vary quite a bit with where you are and on what project.

Ok but I believe the burden of proof is on you. I'll claim that adhering to some principles has given us quantifiably better results, and that the time scale is long enough that any Hawthrone Effect would've worn out by now.

Also, "productivity hack" is not a label I'd use to describe e.g. automated testing. YMMV.

Yegge, as usual, is hyperbole and a half. Don't get me wrong, I like his writing. I liked it more when I was younger, but I still enjoy it.

I have to say though, after working the last 3.5 years in an organization that Yegge would categorize flatly in Bad Agile, first as a developer and now as a PM, that I disagree. Plainly, his hyperbole and name calling doesn't open up for a constructive debate but I'll give it a try.

We do iterations, retrospectives and kaizen, automated testing (yes, part of XP), user stories and more. A few people practice TDD or pair programming. Importantly, all of this is voluntary - after five years of experimenting with process, tools, methodology we've found a set of things that work for us and help us deliver software with high quality and on time. It just happens that the tools we use fit in the Agile and XP umbrella. And if we look back five years to the pre-agile days and start looking at delivery times, quality (in terms of defect rates, patch releases, …) and customer satisfaction, they've trended continuously upwards and in a big way.

I'm not sure what we're doing wrong and why, and I'd like to have that explained to me.

Hm. I don't understand. Could you elaborate why that is important here?

I counter-call bullshit on your last part. Every time I get on a flight these days half the plan sports an iPad. On the tube, iPads and Kindles are abound. Sales trajectories aren't pointing anywhere but up. I think they left the realm of "short lived 'experiment'" quite a while ago.

People tend to shove disruptive in wherever they can - I guess because it sounds cool. _Cannibalize_ might be better here?

Anyway, it's hard to argue Apple didn't cannibalize on its own iPod sales when it introduced the iPhone, and with some mild success. Not all companies seem willing to do that.

I guess what I'm saying is that if you just sed disrupt for cannibalize, the argument makes more sense.

Not sure why the headline was changed on this submission? Original says "possibly pictured".

Agreed that a VP of PM (or whatever title) should report directly to CEO, though having engineering report to CEO directly as well makes sense. As a PM, I've always felt that the tension between PM and engineering is a good thing. It leads to some healthy conflicts instead of hierarchical subservience.

Though marketing reporting into a PM organisation sounds like a fantastic idea... :-)

But then he couldn't talk about being a part of TechStars and using the phrase grinfucking.