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02 NOV 09
Thoughts On ...: The Death of Agile SAVE
PEOPLE
"That the message of the XP and Agile community was once "professional programming is about the programmers and customers stupid" was what gave the movement teeth, and ever since then, the community has been trying to soften that blow, include all the specialist roles from CEO to janitor so that no one feels left out, or that their political interests aren't being served. The resultant watered-down drivel has resulted in Agile becoming synonymous with 'good' moved 'development practices' into a footnote in some Agile systems (I talking to you Ken Schwaber and the Scrum folks)" Thoroughly agree.TAGS
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01 NOV 09
Warrick - Recover Your Lost Website SAVE
PEOPLE
Useful tool for sucking a lost website back out of the dark corners of internet. Worked well on my now defunct reevoo blog.TAGS
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09 OCT 09
The Future of Tourism in 2023 | GreenTraveller SAVE
PEOPLE
Sustainable development charity Forum for the Future has produced four possible futures for the UK outbound travel and tourism industry.TAGS
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24 SEP 09
jbrains.ca: The Four Elements of Simple Design SAVE
PEOPLE
"I claim that developing strong skills of detecting duplication, removing duplication, identifying naming problems, and fixing naming problems equates to learning everything ever written about object-oriented design." I could have written this. It's exactly how I coach programming skills.TAGS
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18 SEP 09
A personal computer for children of all ages. SAVE
PEOPLE
This is such a good paper from before I was born, but one bit caught me as really pertinent to the current debate: "One can imagine vending machines which will allow perusal of information... but will prevent file abstraction until the fee has been paid.... The ability to make copies easily will probably not debilitate existing markets... Most people are not interested in acting as a source or bootlegger; rather, they like to permute and play with what they own." (Oh, these current piracy debates are so much smaller than the vision presented here).TAGS
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27 AUG 09
Independent Film Company Responds To BERR Consultation | TorrentFreak SAVE
PEOPLE
Some horseplay with numbers in this article, but the key point, I think: "I reiterate the statement I made in my first contribution to this consultation, the majority of my audiences watch my films over the BitTorrent system, a system so revolutionarily brilliant that it means I, an independent film-maker, can distribute a film in full High Definition to hundreds of millions of viewers with absolutely no cost incurred to me, where normally global film distribution costs several tens of millions of pounds."TAGS
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29 JUL 09
How Microsoft Made PHP Suck Less on Windows | ITworld SAVE
PEOPLE
"Our goal is to get PHP running great on Windows. We want to contribute [to PHP], not fork it. This is not even a consideration. It's to go into the community — to participate, not drive-by code dumps." I was almost believing this, but I think we should start the countdown to Microsoft forking PHP. I'll check back in 12 months - how long will you give it? (Looks like they've already decided it should need Visual Studio to build on Windows).TAGS
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Not Lonely at All — Matt Mullenweg SAVE
PEOPLE
"It’s user freedom that the GPL was created to protect, just like the Bill of Rights was created to protect the people, not the President. The GPL introduces checks and balances into an incredibly imbalanced power dynamic, that between a developer and his/her product’s users." The way I like to look at it is that the GPL aims to give individual users the right to understand, dismantle and put back together any code installed on their machines. That's worth something - and it's a practical value that the other licences tend to ignore. In practice, it might fall short sometimes, but others shouldn't dismiss it so easily.TAGS
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The latest Flash vulnerability and monoculture SAVE
PEOPLE
"This highlights an unfortunate instance of monoculture -- nearly everyone on the internet uses Flash for nearly all the video they watch, so just about everyone in the world is using a binary module from a single vendor day in, day out." Another example of how the most efficient solution to a problem is often a flawed monoculture. More systems thinking needed in our economics.TAGS
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28 JUL 09
Cory Doctorow: Chris Anderson's Free adds much to The Long Tail, but falls short | Technology | guardian.co.uk SAVE
PEOPLE
"It is possible to be compassionate about those peoples' fortunes – just as it is possible to mourn the passing of mom-and-pop bookstores, the collapse of poetry as a viable commercial concern, the worldwide decline of radio serials, the waning of the knife-sharpening trade, and a million other bygone human activities – while still not apologising for the future."TAGS