GVIrish

80 ms·

811.
by GVIrish 13y ago
This is an excellent analysis. Particularly the point about setting the go-live date long before the scope of the project was understood, not to mention the fact that there's no way they could have had an open bidding process AND meet
812.
by GVIrish 13y ago
This article is only touching on a small portion of why government IT is terrible. People like to blame contractors but I think a large part of the problem is that the federal employees who are responsible for these big projects are rarely
813.
by GVIrish 13y ago
Well, if someone doesn't want to pay for health insurance they should either have to pay out of pocket when they have to go to the emergency room, or not receive medical attention at all. Since we've collectively made the choice t
814.
by GVIrish 13y ago
Well I think when someone willfully writes books with scientific distortions and spin, that person is deserving of criticism. If you had a coworker who clearly knows better who purposefully writes bad code for job security, you wouldn&#x27
815.
by GVIrish 13y ago
You make a good point. A manager who would take Gladwell's advice of making the font more difficult to read would probably be the type of person who would've made many other ignorant decisions on his/her own. The problem is,
816.
by GVIrish 13y ago
The problem I have with best-seller pseudoscience is that it gets used by people to justify assinine decisions in the workplace and even worse, in public policy. In that respect, people like Gladwell can do real harm, rather than advancing
817.
by GVIrish 13y ago
Is your app for Android or iOS?
818.
by GVIrish 13y ago
One key difference with what you've done though, is that through a link on the bottom I can at least figure out what your product does and see a sample workflow. Some of these sign up landing pages have nothing in the way of explainin
819.
by GVIrish 13y ago
The government has given legal immunity to telecoms that collaborated with NSA spying in the past, I'm sure they'd extend that immunity to Apple if need be.
820.
by GVIrish 13y ago
I think that's definitely the case with free services. But I've even seen some paid services that pull this trick. Take Frank & Oak for instance. I've seen a lot of ads for them and I have some vague idea that it'
821.
by GVIrish 13y ago
This is a major pet peeve of mine with new web services. A lot of them are trying so hard to optimize the sign up that you can't even figure out what the service is and how it works without giving up your contact info. So instead of g
822.
by GVIrish 13y ago
That is exactly how criminal bullying succeeds whether it is organized crime moving into a neighborhood, or an authoritarian government rising to power. There are plenty of people along the way who can put their foot down and say "NO&q
823.
by GVIrish 13y ago
Let's say the President was not in the loop, and all of this stuff was a surprise to him. Why has he not taken any decisive action to fix the problem? He asked for the resignation of the head of the IRS after the political targeting s
824.
by GVIrish 13y ago
Obama is not solely responsible for everything that goes on in the USG, but in this case he bears enough responsibility that he can and should be held accountable. It doesn't matter where the pressure came from to make Obama go down th
825.
by GVIrish 13y ago
Industry numbers I've seen suggest that this is changing rapidly. I think what we're seeing is that Android is attracting a lot more high end smartphone customers and they are buying more apps. The gap is still big, but it is sh
826.
by GVIrish 13y ago
One of the huge pitfalls in the writing from scratch situation is that often times the original application didn't have adequate requirements. So the team sets about building the new version without a comprehensive and detailed unders
827.
by GVIrish 13y ago
I'd be curious to see what the opt-out rate on the new compose UI was. I like to adopt new UI improvements but that was one of the few that I immediately hated and switched back. I wonder if this feature was liked more or less than s
828.
by GVIrish 13y ago
What exactly does "power emailing" mean to you? Is it the ability to send a lot of short emails quickly? Is it the ability to email while seeing emails come in? From my perspective the new compose modal window removes power from
829.
by GVIrish 13y ago
Xbox didn't struggle for several years trying to achieve just 3% market share. I can guarantee you that if the Xbox only had 3% of the market today, Microsoft would've given up. Clearly the mobile market is far bigger than the ga
830.
by GVIrish 13y ago
As long as there is the insanely high profit motive with the drug war, there'll be a black market for firearms. Drug cartels are building freaking SUBMARINES to smuggle drugs for crying out loud. They absolutely would make their own f
831.
by GVIrish 13y ago
Well in the UK law-abiding citizens can't arm themselves so you'll never hear that story. The law in the UK even goes so far as to prohibit citizens from carrying an 'offensive weapon' without a good reason. So if you h
832.
by GVIrish 13y ago
I think armed citizens can be a tenuous curb on violence but that still wouldn't solve the roots of violence. A civilized society with low levels of poverty, good economic mobility, a good education system, a fair and effective judicia
833.
by GVIrish 13y ago
The Harvard study unequivocally does not say that gun control legislation causes the increased violence, nor does the linked blog post. The Harvard study is simply stating that murder rates are not appreciably affected by gun control legisl
834.
by GVIrish 13y ago
Just because things are not as bad as they are in Syria or Egypt, doesn't mean we should not be seriously troubled by the conduct of our government. We should not have to wait until citizens are getting murdered in the streets by our
835.
by GVIrish 13y ago
The US and friends may not be openly targeting and censoring political dissent yet, but clearly the first step is developing the capability. If they develop the capability in an environment without any meaningful oversight or accountabilit
836.
by GVIrish 13y ago
Eh I think it's a stretch to call the pilot and gunner in the Apache video war criminals. There were US personnel nearby, they thought they made a positive ID on guys with weapons and potentially and RPG in that group and they made a
837.
by GVIrish 13y ago
Number of people with Top Secret clearances I believe.
838.
by GVIrish 13y ago
I disagree, if you make clear how ineffective these surveillance measures are, the natural response for the powers that be is that they need MORE power. "See, if we were able to arrest anyone who spoke about terrorism online or by pho
839.
by GVIrish 13y ago
To be fair, I think most would-be terrorists are not terribly sophisticated. If they were very sophisticated we'd be seeing a lot more successful attacks against targets abroad. The current terrorist threat is overhyped to a large de
840.
by GVIrish 13y ago
I don't think it's textbook victim blaming at all. If a guy goes around tossing beers in peoples' faces in bars and occasionally catches a beat down, I don't think it would be victim blaming to state that, 'Hey, ma

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