This report on electricity generating costs presents the latest data available for a wide variety of fuels and technologies, including coal and gas (with and without carbon capture), nuclear, hydro, onshore and offshore wind, biomass, solar, wave and tidal as well as combined heat and power (CHP). It provides levelised costs of electricity (LCOE) per MWh for almost 200 plants, based on data covering 21 countries (including four major non-OECD countries), and several industrial companies and organisations.
“Whether you are in a startup or Fortune 500 company; are a developer, development manager, or CEO; use agile, lean, waterfall, or other methodology–if software and quality are important to you, you should read and pay attention to Watts’s reflections.” –Bill Ihrie, Former SVP & CTO, Intuit “You will enjoy this collection for its down to earth, accessible prose, its pragmatism, optimism, and, above all, Watts’s demonstration that software quality improvement is vitally important and very achievable.”
The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607-1814
This book explores the evolution of Americans' first way of war, to show how war waged again Indian noncombatant population and agricultural resources became the method early Americans' employed and, ultimately, defined their military heritage. The sanguinary story of the American conquest of the Indian peoples east of the Mississippi River helps demonstrate how early Americans embraced warfare shaped by extravagant violence and focused on conquest.
The Chronologers' Quest: The Search for the Age of the Earth
The history of geology and how we learned about the age of the Earth is a fascinating subject, but Jackson, a geologist at Trinity College, Dublin, is unable to explain and pass along his enthusiasm. Aficionados might appreciate the tour through attempts to arrive at the planet's age from ancient myths, the Bible, the salinity of the oceans, temperature readings, fossils, geology, biology, radiology and cosmology. Each chapter ends with a "close but no cigar" statement of why a given theory was a good idea at the time.
The decision to source software development to an overseas firm (offshoring) is looked at frequently in simple economic terms - it's cheaper, and skilled labor is easier to find. In practice, however, offshoring is fraught with difficulties. As well as the considerable challenge of controlling projects at a distance, there are differences in culture, language, business methods, politics, and many other issues to contend with. Nevertheless, as many firms have discovered, the benefits of getting it right are too great to ignore.