For every 25 percent increase in problem complexity, there is a
100 percent increase in complexity of the software solution. That’s
not a condition to try to change (even though reducing complexity is
always a desirable thing to do); that’s just the way it is.
That’s Fact 21 in Robert L. Glass’s
Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering. He backs this up with
a published study from 1979.
… be sure to turn on ClearType. It makes a big difference
to legibility of text on LCDs (flat panels and laptop screens). And
it’s not turned on by default.
When I last rebuilt my hard drive, about a month ago, I installed
OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office. I wanted to see how
practical it would be to use it instead. Turns out, it’s pretty
practical. I’ve created files that I’ve sent to Microsoft users
without a hitch, and opened files they sent me. I even collaborated
on an RFI document with Microsoft Office users.
Okay, maybe that’s not the clearest question we’ve ever addressed. It
comes from one of the books we were assigned to read prior to this
retreat, Good
to Great by Jim Collins. (You might have heard of Collins’s last
book: Built
to Last.)
Robocopy is a Microsoft tool that I only recently discovered.
It’s a bit like rsync, but very Windows-specific. Really,
robocopy is a smarter xcopy. You use it mostly like xcopy,
but it recognizes when the source file is the same as the target
file, and skips copying it.
