Interesting Links for 29-01-2012
Jan. 29th, 2012 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- Have some awful, awful jokes
- New ideas sharpen focus for greener aircraft
- Why Newt Gingrich's ideas for a moon base are so awful.
- New drug may keep you sober no matter how much you've had to drink (if you're a rat)
- A fantastic answer to the question "Why are software development task estimations regularly off by a factor of 2-3?"
- 3Reich.us - for all your nazi collectible figures!
- Some interesting discussion in this article of how easy it would be to replace the head of RBS for less money
- Why Eating Fat Doesn't Make You Fat
- Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice
Tags:
- airplanes,
- alcohol,
- astronauts,
- banking,
- conservatives,
- development,
- diet,
- estimating,
- fat,
- funny,
- green,
- health,
- innovation,
- intelligence,
- iq,
- jokes,
- links,
- money,
- moon,
- nazi,
- pay,
- racism,
- rbs,
- software,
- space,
- technology,
- thefuture,
- toys,
- wages
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no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 01:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 01:59 pm (UTC)That this isn't so implies rather that we have an industry where the rewards for rose-coloured spectacle wearing are too great and the penalties for failure to deliver are nothing like big enough.
Unless the hiker is seriously suggesting that, say, erecting Olympic buildings is a task easier to specify and implement than modest software projects.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 02:17 pm (UTC)And I'd say that erecting Olympic buildings is a _lot_ easier to specify than a large software project. We know what buildings tend to look like, what their functions are, etc. and we can specify up front how many bedrooms, bathrooms, function spaces we're going to need. A software project where you can specify up front your exact requirements is not only mythological but impossible.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 04:36 pm (UTC)And don't forget that in software, you often have to invent your own tools and use different materials from "the last time "because, say, bricks, are now obsolete and you can't use any of your current spanners on these new-fangled weird shaped bolts. And anyway we do it all with Veclro now - hadn't you heard? No one supports bolts!
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 05:40 pm (UTC)There was an article I sent to you a while ago about how promoting internal people is a better option (and would arguably lead to less inflated salaries) then recruting a new CE at a bank every few years.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 05:52 pm (UTC)That said when it comes to burning fat and weightloss, training for a marathon works pretty effectively. Stepping up the mileage to 60+miles per week I have to eat constantly to fail to maintain my weight. Last year I ran the Paris marathon and I lost about half a stone despite trying very hard to eat as much food as I could including routinely stopping for chips on the way to a restaurant for dinner and stopping for chips again on the way back.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 05:54 pm (UTC)Marathons and suchlike tend to be largely on the flat, or supply maps ahead of time that tell you what the terrain is like don't they?
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 06:09 pm (UTC)Seabank marathon, was persuaded to run it the night before, didn't realise it was cross country with styles and 4ft grass to wade through. Said at the start to said friend 'probably 3:40-3:45ish', actually ran 3:50. He's not an experienced distance runner, replied 'probably a bit over 4h', actual time 6:12.
But knowing a lot of people who run regularly it's pretty common that experienced people can predict their finishing time to within a minute, watching the London marathon last year stood at the 13/22 mile point I could accurately predict when the people I was supporting would come round the bend to sub minute accuracy.
That said, if your predictive strategy was the enormously naive 'Pete can run 1 mile in 5:30, therefore he can run a marathon in 2:24' as listed in the article you'd do pretty badly although still much better than most software projects.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 07:54 pm (UTC)RBS made £1.2 billion in the first three quarters of last year. If Hester's leadership made a 1% difference to that, the investment in his salary paid out £12 million in return. Assuming that his job is actually reasonably important to making sure RBS does as well as possible, arguing about small percentages of that seems rather petty.
It's rather the equivalent of a small company demotivating its top programmer by refusing to buy him/her a new laptop.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 10:24 pm (UTC)Upsides: Possibly save £1mil.
Downsides: Tie up Hester, House of Commons, RBS board, and a bunch of lawyers for a month or so. (All of which costs money, including wasting some of the large salary we're paying Hester.) Demotivate and irritate the guy we're relying on to boost £billion profit company (who presumably has a quantifable impact on profits/losses - if the guy does nothing useful we shouldn't be paying him, y'know, anything at all). Potentially cause said guy to leave with no obvious replacement, dropping RBS share price in the toilet (downside in the billions).
Just doesn't seem an approach that's going to end up with the UK investment in RBS being worth more rather than less.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 10:33 pm (UTC)I just don't agree that because someone looks after amount of money X they should therefore be paid some percentage of X.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 02:41 pm (UTC)Whereas with software projects you don't get a map at all; that's a totally different proposition.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 01:24 pm (UTC)