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Mac OS X and Windows
Apple has at long last published official Windows 8 support - but only for 64 bit Windows and only if you are running OS X 10.8.3. A tad irritating if, as on my machine, Windows 8 installed itself as 32 bit and not 64 bit.
The small print is at Boot Camp 5: Frequently asked questions
Reading I Fear Our Mobile Group Being Forced To Follow Scrum crystallised in my mind what can go wrong when you treat Agile as a methodology. It describes a team successfully using kanban which is to potentially be required to use scrum — because that's becoming the company standard.
Making a team follow an agile methodology is exactly *not* Agile.
Agile is "Individuals and interactions" being valued more highly than processes. Imposing Scrum looks like valuing the process more than the team.
Agile is "self-organising teams" and letting "the team [reflect] on how to become more effective, then tune and adjust accordingly." Imposing conformity on a team that has already adjusted is a backwards step; you're asking a team that has optimised somewhat for the individuals in the team to de-optimise again.
This doesn't mean that you can't teach an agile team anything. The manifest starts with "We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it." A team that can't be corrected, or won't learn better ways, isn't agile. For that matter, a team that won't learn in any walk of life has started the downhill path to decline.
For what it's worth, I'm sure that a competent lean team that tries Scrum for a while will learn from it, even if they end up optimising back to something more fluid.
I've use two of the download managers currently on the market for OS X and they are both a lifesaver if you have a poor connection and want to download large files. Not only are they faster than a browser — they open multiple connections to the server which browser don't* — but they resume incomplete downloads so they cope much much better with poor and failing connections.
They are ... how can I put this ... very similar. You could think they were different skins of the same product. iGetter shows the fact that it's 10 years old (which is about how long it's been saving my bacon), Folx looks more modern. They have different approaches to nagging non-purchasers: Folx distinguishes their free/pro versions, and requires a key-press to start a download. iGetter makes you wait for an increasing time when you launch the program.
They're both downloadable for free trial or purchase.
| iGetter from Presenta Software | £18.27 |
| Folx from Eltima Software | £13.95 |
| Folx family pack | £27.95 |
* Because major browsers respect the internet standard which says client applications should not open more than 2 connections to a server.
The short answer: you left a light turned on somewhere in the world. Turn them all off and you're done.
The longer answer:
There are 2 easy ways to do this by mistake:
Turn off your machines with Right-Click — Terminate in the EC2 Management console.
If you're repeatedly spinning up test machines, don't forget to do this every-time you finish work.