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Short Takes: November 15, 2009


By SD Times Editorial Board
November 15, 2009 —  The minimum defines the value
Minimum market feature set. That defines the baseline to satisfy the needs of a project. The automotive industry uses this to create a base model of a car, and then provides a list of options that can be added on to customize the car and give it more capabilities. This is true for software development as well.

But a potential pitfall, according to Alex Adamopoulos of agile project management company Emergn, is that as iterative development facilitates change throughout the process, the thinking is that the project must be delivered “fully loaded.” But understanding the minimum market feature set, he said, actually defines the true business value of the project, and eliminates waste of both manpower and money to deliver the finished product.    — David Rubinstein

Ditch the OEM crud
Windows machines can run just fine if they are configured properly. My home machine still runs Windows XP, and I built the machine with solid components and no crud. It's about time that Microsoft has finally realized that OEM crud makes Windows stink.

The company has begun to sell crud-free machines at its retail stores. My Technologizer colleague Harry McCracken recently blogged about a trip to a Microsoft store where he saw a Hewlett-Packard Pavilion that had been customized by Microsoft. Microsoft removed the OEM crud and made it a better machine.

I'd go as far to say that Microsoft should require approval before major OEMs can configure PCs with junkware. The kid-glove treatment hasn't worked very effectively, and it's not as if OEMs are suddenly going to stop using Windows if Microsoft decides to raise the quality bar. The downside is that anti-trust regulators penalized Microsoft for abusing its OEM relationships, making this pragmatic step less likely to occur.    — David Worthington

A bad stretch
Oracle's annual conference is never the most exciting event of the year. While there are lavish parties and interesting people, the topics of various keynotes and talks tend to be rather... dry. So it was rather unfortunate that the final keynote of the conference, scheduled to be given by Larry Ellison on Wednesday afternoon at the show, was elongated by bridge traffic.

Even before Ellison had taken the stage, Oracle issued a press release stating that the governor himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, would be appearing with him as well. Of course, they issued this release before they'd heard that the governor was stuck behind a jack-knifed semi on the Richmond Bridge over San Francisco Bay. Thus, a hall full of 10,000 people had to sit and listen as first the CEO of Infosys, and then as Ellison himself, stretched out their presentations.

The word “somnolence” has new meaning to me, now.    — Alex Handy


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