Saturday, May 16, 2009
Hybrid car sales heat up
Hybrid car sales heat up: "Nearly 88,000 hybrid-electric vehicles were sold nationwide during 2004, making up 0.52 percent of the total U.S. light-vehicle market, reports J.D. Power and Associates, a marketing information and research firm based in Agoura Hills, Calif.
Industry experts expect hybrid sales to continue accelerating sharply in the next few years."
Industry experts expect hybrid sales to continue accelerating sharply in the next few years."
Hybrid Cars May Require Hundreds Of New Power Plants To Be Built, If Owners Charge Up During Peak Hours
Hybrid Cars May Require Hundreds Of New Power Plants To Be Built, If Owners Charge Up During Peak Hours: "A growing number of plug-in hybrid electric cars and trucks could require major new power generation resources or none at all— depending on when people recharge their automobiles."
The TV As An Energy Hog
The TV As An Energy Hog: "Well, that's what the headlines that caught my eye basically were saying. TV gluttony is confusing the environmental issues around energy consumption.
When I pondered why my LCD monitor would be more energy efficient than my old CRT monitor it didn't make sense the opposite would be true for TVs. With some digging around I learned LCDs are up to 66 percent more energy efficient than CRTs in the computer monitor world, so I expect that's true in the TV world -- when you compare like-sized TVs. And, to make the argument for LCDs even stronger, they produce less heat, meaning you don't need as much AC cooling."
http://www.nrdc.org/air/energy/energyeff/tv.pdf
When I pondered why my LCD monitor would be more energy efficient than my old CRT monitor it didn't make sense the opposite would be true for TVs. With some digging around I learned LCDs are up to 66 percent more energy efficient than CRTs in the computer monitor world, so I expect that's true in the TV world -- when you compare like-sized TVs. And, to make the argument for LCDs even stronger, they produce less heat, meaning you don't need as much AC cooling."
http://www.nrdc.org/air/energy/energyeff/tv.pdf
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Scrum and Supporting Your Existing Products | #2782 - Agile software development, patterns and practices for building Microsoft .NET applications.
Scrum and Supporting Your Existing Products | #2782 - Agile software development, patterns and practices for building Microsoft .NET applications.: "Paying the bug tax, sustaining team or not?
Obviously it depends on your exact situation but I’d always choose to spread bugs across all the teams over creating an SE team. If at all possible I’d try and add these to the backlog, prioritize them accordingly and give teams time to plan to fix them in the next sprint. This is less painful that dumping them on the team to be fixed immediately. Sometimes this is unavoidable, if for example you’ve committed to a particular service level agreement around fixing bugs.
The initial pain of doing this may be large but over time the bug tax will become predictable and teams will learnt to plan for it. In the long term there are other benefits as your feature teams will have a better understanding of customer pain points and better overall knowledge of the product code (a reduction in silos).
Another alternative, which just occurred to me but I’ve not seen tried. This would be to have each feature team run periodic SE sprints. Every N’th sprint would be devoted to SE work. This theoretically has some advantages over the two approaches especially if the SE sprints were staggered across teams so there was always at least one team working on SE. I’ve not tried this. If you have I’d like to hear from you."
Obviously it depends on your exact situation but I’d always choose to spread bugs across all the teams over creating an SE team. If at all possible I’d try and add these to the backlog, prioritize them accordingly and give teams time to plan to fix them in the next sprint. This is less painful that dumping them on the team to be fixed immediately. Sometimes this is unavoidable, if for example you’ve committed to a particular service level agreement around fixing bugs.
The initial pain of doing this may be large but over time the bug tax will become predictable and teams will learnt to plan for it. In the long term there are other benefits as your feature teams will have a better understanding of customer pain points and better overall knowledge of the product code (a reduction in silos).
Another alternative, which just occurred to me but I’ve not seen tried. This would be to have each feature team run periodic SE sprints. Every N’th sprint would be devoted to SE work. This theoretically has some advantages over the two approaches especially if the SE sprints were staggered across teams so there was always at least one team working on SE. I’ve not tried this. If you have I’d like to hear from you."
Managing Bugs with Scrum | #2782 - Agile software development, patterns and practices for building Microsoft .NET applications.
Managing Bugs with Scrum | #2782 - Agile software development, patterns and practices for building Microsoft .NET applications.: "
The bug tax
There’s actually another completely different reason for minimizing the number of active bugs… Tax.
Having a lot of active bugs means that you have to manage them, triage them, track open/closed and fixed rates. All this takes time and effort and adds no value to the product. Imagine if you only had seven bugs to track? Two relating to work in the current sprint, these are being worked on by the team. The remaining five are to be prioritized and worked on in the next sprint. With seven active bugs you don’t need long triage meetings and reports!
The tax of dealing with bugs is greatly reduced and you can spend more time working on features. I worked on a project a while back where we ended up with a large number of bugs kicking around. Eventually things came to a head and we got the number down to something mush more manageable and it was amazing how much time we saved by not having to track these bugs not to mention time spent working with buggy features."
The bug tax
There’s actually another completely different reason for minimizing the number of active bugs… Tax.
Having a lot of active bugs means that you have to manage them, triage them, track open/closed and fixed rates. All this takes time and effort and adds no value to the product. Imagine if you only had seven bugs to track? Two relating to work in the current sprint, these are being worked on by the team. The remaining five are to be prioritized and worked on in the next sprint. With seven active bugs you don’t need long triage meetings and reports!
The tax of dealing with bugs is greatly reduced and you can spend more time working on features. I worked on a project a while back where we ended up with a large number of bugs kicking around. Eventually things came to a head and we got the number down to something mush more manageable and it was amazing how much time we saved by not having to track these bugs not to mention time spent working with buggy features."
AP: Law to curb Oregon's greenhouse gas emissions passes House | RePower Oregon 2009
AP: Law to curb Oregon's greenhouse gas emissions passes House | RePower Oregon 2009: "AP: Law to curb Oregon's greenhouse gas emissions passes House
by Jeff Barnard
05/08/2009
GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- The Oregon House on Friday passed a piece of the governor's global warming legislative package designed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks over the next decade through new standards for fuel, tires and replacement parts.
The vote in Salem was 32-28.
Inspired by steps taken by California, the bill gives the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission authority to develop standards reducing the carbon footprint of gasoline and diesel fuel by 10 percent by the year 2020, set mileage standards for tires, and require large and medium-size trucks to be more aerodynamic.
It also would require repair shops to make sure tires are inflated for the best fuel mileage, make available replacement parts that help reduce carbon emissions, and prohibit trucks from wasting fuel by long-term idling.
The bill now goes to the Senate."
by Jeff Barnard
05/08/2009
GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- The Oregon House on Friday passed a piece of the governor's global warming legislative package designed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks over the next decade through new standards for fuel, tires and replacement parts.
The vote in Salem was 32-28.
Inspired by steps taken by California, the bill gives the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission authority to develop standards reducing the carbon footprint of gasoline and diesel fuel by 10 percent by the year 2020, set mileage standards for tires, and require large and medium-size trucks to be more aerodynamic.
It also would require repair shops to make sure tires are inflated for the best fuel mileage, make available replacement parts that help reduce carbon emissions, and prohibit trucks from wasting fuel by long-term idling.
The bill now goes to the Senate."
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