Really?! Is this why estimates for software cost and development time sooooo on the money?
113 karma · joined March 16, 2009
As far as lost revenue. When I drive a fuel efficient car that uses less gas, am I stealing? After all I am depriving the oil companies of revenues.
I saw a 8th grade textbook that explained how compute square roots by hand - but the algorithm was wrong. It only worked for examples in the book.
This is true of any engineering discipline throughout history (read Henry Petrowski for many examples). One example was the technology of building iron railroad bridges in UK in 1800s. As the railway network grew bridges were needed and UK did not have enough forests left, so bridges were constructed from cast iron. However, at the time the science of metal fatigue was not there, so many of the these bridges failed - killing people in the process.
Clearly the state of the art of iron bridge building was in a horrible state, yet bridges were built because people needed them.
Eventually the science caught up and bridges don't fail as much anymore..
"an approximate judgment or calculation, as of the value, amount, time, size, or weight of something."
??