Tom DeMarco, the author of the popular book titled Controlling Software Projects: Management, Measurement and Estimation reflects on Software engineering nearly 3 decades later and now has a totally different view on the subject. The article “Software Engineering: An Idea whose time has come and gone?” is a interesting take on the subject based on practical experience. A must read for all those involved in Software development. You can find the article here.
Archive for General
More good news
The future of SaaS is getting brighter by the day. The following three news items are very encouraging and I hope will provide enough momemtum in diminishing the desktop and browser gap. The day of Linux, Windows, Solaris as the main platform is going to be history and the new platforms will be the browser and the desktop.
#TARGET=desktop
TARGET=browser
./configure –target=$TARGET ….
This is exactly what we need; a good competition to get the best out for the community. I hope more players join in the competition.
Scary SMS RTO service
Recently the RTO (Regional Transport Office) of India has unveiled a new and scary SMS service. With this service, you just need to send an SMS to 56006 along with the vehicle number (RTO XXXX-XX-XXXX ) and you get back an SMS with complete address of the vehicle owner. I fail to understand the value of this service. This is a great tool for stalkers though. Anybody can now just SMS my vehicle number and voila, they have my private details with them in seconds. I am not sure what the officials at RTO were thinking of as a use case for such a service? is it to enable somebody to pin down hit-and-run cases? isn’t it prudent to approach the police with the vehicle number instead of confronting the culprit at his residence. What else could be the RTO thinking with such a service? is this kind of service even legal? Hope somebody drives some sense into these guys, and fast.
Oracle buys Sun Microsystems
With this acquisition, can’t help wondering about the fate of open source products like Java , MySQL and Solaris? I do hope Oracle doesn’t kill any of these products, especially MySQL. Instead they should try to integrate MySQL into their business model. Also, Java on the client (JavaFX) might take a hit but Java on the server side might get bigger.
Mute button
Yesterday I had a long conversation on the mobile phone with one my friend while at the same time helping my child do her homework. Due to this multi tasking, my friend on the other side had problems maintaining the flow of the conversation. I realized that having a mute button on the mobile would have helped in this situations. This would have helped my friend continue crib without feeling I wasn’t paying attention. I found many other use cases for the mute button on the mobile:
- You are in a very noisy environment (traffic, bar etc..) and you dont want to pass the interference to the other side
- You want to privately consult somebody next to you before replying on the phone.
- You are taking a tele con on your mobile.
- Others…
I am not sure why most mobile phone dont have this feature. I sure will be very glad to have a mute button especially on one side of the phone to enable easy mute and unmute while talking.
