“Agile” doesn’t mean that you release the first iteration, it’s just a methodology that emphasizes short iteration loops. You can definitely develop reliable real-time systems with Agile.
I would differentiate between iterative development and incremental development.
Incremental development is like panting a picture line by line like a printer where you add new pieces to the final result without affecting old pieces.
Iterative is where you do the big brush strokes first and then add more and more detail dependent on what to learn from each previous brush strokes. You can also stop at any time when you think that the final result is good enough.
If you are making a new type of system and don’t know what issues will come up and what customers will value (highly complex environment) iterative is the thing to do.
But if you have a very predictable environment and you are implementing a standard or a very well specified system (van be highly complicated yet not very complex), you might as will do incremental development.
Roughly speaking though as there is of course no perfect specification which is not the final implementation so there are always learnings so there is always some iterative parts of it.
A physicist who worked on radiation-tolerant electronics here. Apart from the short iteration loops, agile also means that the SW/HW requirements are not fully defined during the first iterations, because they may also evolve over time. But this cannot be applied to projects where radiation/fault tolerance is the top priority. Most of the time, the requirements are 100% defined ahead of time, leading to a waterfall-like or a mixed one, where the development is still agile but the requirements are never discussed again, except in negligible terms.
The motorized hood ornaments on Rolls Royce vehicles were a solution to the problem of people being injured by, or stealing the (Spirit of Ecstasy) ornaments.
> Today's Spirit of Ecstasy, from the 2003 Phantom model onward, stands at 3 inches (7.6 cm) and, for the safety of any person being accidentally hit, is mounted on a spring-loaded mechanism designed to retract instantly into the radiator shell if struck from any direction.
Presumably the motor runs once to extend it and then it locks into position (with some kind of mechanical catch that's calibrated to come loose if you hit anything), rather than being constantly running.
"[G]lobal" is doing a lot of work in this sentence if I'm reading it as intended; this seems to exclude international conflict and intra-national strife (which are very big issues).
Iran is already quite dependent on the PRoC as a trading partner; using RMB as their primary currency for these payments would further increase their 'counter-party risk'. That said, RMB exchange-rate manipulation may also be a significant factor in their decision.
To define victory, you'd need to know their political objectives, which neither side has declared or otherwise made clear. On the one hand, the USA was unable to completely restrain Iran's ability to wreak local havoc, but on the other, Iran had many of its assets damaged, and now seems completely unable to prevent foreign actors from using its airspace almost at-will. It seems like the situation has shifted, and the result is inconclusive.
161 countries are still in the Ottawa Treaty, including all European countries except the ones who withdrew. I have hard time seeing how this treaty would have much effect on wartime alliances.
But if that's the case, what are "all the force multipliers"? Chemical weapons? Biological weapons? What share of the GDP for defence?
It's nice that so many countries are signatories, but the countries which are currently involved in significant conflicts, have been, or are likely to be, are all non-signatories, have withdrawn, or are not abiding by their commitment. I'm not sure how much it matters that many non-warring countries are signatories to the convention, unless you think the Ottawa Treaty has actually prevented one or more conflicts (which I doubt).
I find some of the signatories laughable, as both sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict have used them (with Ukraine being a signatory), while countries like Palestine and Eritrea have committed egregious human rights violations (since assenting), so I don't trust any commitment of theirs.
With respect to chemical and biological weapons, I think the reason they're not widely used is that they're relatively ineffective, and inconvenient, so I don't think they're a force-multiplier at all. Russia & Syria's (likely) uses of chemical weapons seem like more of a (mostly ineffective) desperate gamble than a brilliant move, though they demonstrate the non-existent consequences to such violations of treaty obligations.
The main effect of the treaty is that personnel mine production and trade has dramatically decreased, thus making it harder for (small) non-signatories to deploy too.
International treaties tend to be always somewhat aspirational and are often violated and sparsely enforced. This does not mean they don't have any effect.
You can still get molds made in the USA, but they are indeed much more expensive than an equivalent one made in PRoC, and options/expertise are often more limited or specialized (depending on how you look at it). It is very difficult, but not impossible to make consumer products in the USA.
I’ve had them made and run in Canada (as well as the PRoC), and I’m speaking from experience. Getting molds made is not really something you'd do as an exercise, unless you've got a lot of time and money sitting around. A small mold might cost $20-30k in North America, or $5-10k in PRoC, and you need to run at least a few hundred parts (additional cost) to get any idea of the issues it might have.
Depends on the specific product, the mold maker, and the plastic injection facility. In general, it seems like North America is able to produce the regulated products (i.e. medical & military) at a high quality level, but with some limits as to the specific media (plastic types), colors, and tool designs, and at a high cost. PRoC has a wide spread of providers, and quality is not well-correlated with price, so it really depends on who you know, but you can get very good parts of all types at very appealing prices, but communication is terrible, delays are common, and quality can drop sharply from one run to another.
Overall, I've mostly given up on North American producers because I do pro-sumer products, and they're too expensive and inflexible for me, but we're also fairly low-volume, so it may just be that I don't haven't had access to the right providers.
Iran does not 'control the waters', it is denying access; this is an importance difference. Lacking control means that Iran cannot make use of many of its naval assets, which they have invested in.
From what I understand, the contracting firms don't like (reasonably-priced) buyouts because it allows clients to cherry-pick the best 'talent', and basically use the contractor as a 'farm team'.
yes, it's unfortunately common for employers to abuse their workers by keeping their pay and work conditions as awful as possible and using any means possible to prevent them from leaving to better conditions and pay
reply