rogersm

But the issue is not that this happens because this is software development. The reason is software is a job in which cost increase is linearly related to manpower. There are no silver bullets that can magically reduce the number of people needed.

Also increasing number of people makes things even worse as communication problems increase, but I think all agree on that.

But the main problem with the article is that milk is always the same: in a glass or in a tank car. Software is completely different: more functionality require more lines of code that increases people... and cost.

Commercial software (with a long tradition) is based on that idea. And Free software is based on the same idea, only that you renounce to that ownership right.

Good engineering requires good processes, good planning and good decisions, something almost no-one is discussing here.

Let's get real... there's a lot to improve in the american engineering.

Surprised how many people are talking about currency/government protection and so few people about engineering.

I was the one saying that productivity is going up in the last months.

I missed the productivity data in the report (I found only production output) and FT just took out the report from the web.

The question is not that the Spanish government did modify some figures, but if the modifications were in line with countries like Greece or like Germany.

Spaniard here (full disclaimer).

@carlos reasoning seems to be supported by the fact Spain's productivity is going up after all the low skilled workers in construction were sacked.

Some of the comments of the FT are highly interesting.

It's a clever way of suing your provider. Accenture was sued using the same strategy: http://blog.obiefernandez.com/content/2008/03/sap-sued-for-t... But Does Sky need to demonstrate EDS sales team was acting in bad faith?

These kind of sales processes are so long and complex that badly selling the solution does not imply bad faith. I'm completely sure that the sales team had not all the information of how things were going to be delivered and for sure they took some optimistic assumptions, but I'm sure they're not trying to swindle sky.

Just for laughs, I recommend this scribd presentation: http://www.scribd.com/doc/2304178/Confessions-of-an-Ex-Enter...

This is not the kind of chaos of terror the terrorist has on his mind. Otherwise they will be shutting down traffic light control systems.

Getting caught is a failure. A bomb exploding is a victory.

First of all I must say I don't believe in these kind of unpredictable systems: rarely doing this 'select randomly the process from a set of processes' works better than using the best process in the set.

But I don't think this applies:

  But terrorist organizations -- especially those employing 
  suicide bombers -- have very different goals and incentives 
  from those of smugglers, fare beaters and tax cheats. 
  Groups like Al Qaeda aim to cause widespread disruption and 
  terror by whatever means they can, even at great cost to 
  individual members. In particular, they are willing and 
  able to sacrifice -- martyr -- the very lives of their 
  solders in the service of that goal. The fate of any 
  individual terrorist is irrelevant as long as the loss 
  contributes to terror and disruption. 

So random screening works, not because that influences the behavior even of those who aren't checked, but because makes executing the attack more expensive to overcome the possibility of being detained in the random test.

Of course random screening is not as good as full screening, but from a realistic point of view is the only thing you can apply without shutting down world economy.

After all, the latest bomber was carrying 80 grams, less than three ounces.

System.system can be done in all languages.

The BBC article is much more interesting: Each bike travels 10,000 km a year, so they have to be sturdy (and expensive).

I completely agree with you, the financial guys make a lot of money. And because of that, the core business of GM should be financial and no automotive. So, let's make them sell the automotive part and buy Japanese, German and Korean cars. They know how to make cars.

Basically CS curriculums are woefully under-preparing students.