I'm not sure how far you're going in your thoughts here, but I know I care about the version and there are lots of occasions when the old code ain't fine.
Falling too far behind can turn into an even larger problem down the road when you need to update software A to resolve an issue but you can't because you're too far behind and there's no longer an upgrade path because they've done something major (like switched from MySQL to PostGreSQL) on the backend. Better yet, sometimes software A (which is already behind) depends on software B (or vice versa) which is maybe even further behind. Now you're really stuck.
I think it's important to not confuse stagnant with stable; there's a point where 'stable' can become it's own enemy. Positive gain from just staying up to date with your software might include lower-risk changes months or years from now when you are forced into a hurried, unplanned upgrade to address a security need or get a new feature that you desperately need to resolve some other issue and continue your work.
I had the same reaction when I was a kid and saw The Black Hole. I own it today, and I fully agree it really is a dark sci-fi movie; it's one of my favorites.
Honestly, I prefer it over Star Wars.
As an aside, did anyone else notice that in Tron 2, when Flynn's son first enters the virtual world, makes his way onto the 'command ship' and meets (I think) CLU for the first time that the command room looks exactly like the command room on the Cygnus from the Black Hole? The little pods sunken into the floor and the ledge going around the edge? Is it the same set? I always sort of wondered if that was a nod to the other movie.
I used to think this way, then grew up and realized that tools like IntelliJ and Eclipse are useful and have features that give me more insight into the code I'm working with and help me do my job more effectively. The tool is just a tool, and any tool will let you do things you're not supposed to do if there are not processes in place to prevent it. This is where the attitude of the business, coding conventions, code reviews, unit tests and other processes come into play.
Put more simply- if this were construction, I'd say it's not the hammer's fault the house was poorly built.
I know. I was actually just trying to put into words the ridiculous cartoon that was in my head.
You raise an interesting point. I think the scenario you describe is an ideal situation for something like that, and there's value in it because you're communicating information to another group. I agree that ritual for the sake of ritual is meaningless.
Maybe the difference is that, with a morning standup, you are essentially giving yourself a shift briefing on the work you just did the day before. That alone could make it meaningless. Maybe the value of the morning meeting is proportional to the communication dysfunction within your company?
Well, not unless every person in your morning company formation sequentially breaks ranks, runs to the front, does an about face and gives a personal status:
"Company! Yesterday, I did a lot of pushups! Then I low-crawled! Then I cleaned my weapon and did some more pushups! Today, I'm going to walk a lot! My impediments are the group of people across the wire trying to kill me! Hoooahh!!"
I'll veer off into the woods a bit. At my company, we recently switched to scrum and it gives clear visibility into who is adding all the extra, unnecessary work and scope creep that comes with people not quite doing what they are supposed to be doing. What I really like is that it also gives developers a tool to push back with when they are asked to switch contexts, re-prioritize what they are doing or take on new work via scope creep.
Team structure seems to play a larger part in things than I hear people talk about. Trying to find a balance between inexperienced and experienced developers is difficult, and we've pretty much always come up on the wrong side of it. One of the other fundamental imbalances I've seen (at least in our organisation) is that, within the context of a sprint, the developers are usually capable of doing everyone else's job- but the reverse is not true. I've seen this turn into situations where developers end up doing BA work, QA work and supporting production issues while trying to keep up with the development tasks that are on the board. Meanwhile, everyone else is just sort of sitting around, trying to look busy. In my opinion. this is a management failing more than anything, but it is still an imbalance.
This could just be how we apply (or misapply) things, but what I really wrestle with is the idea that ultimate accountability seems to rest with the developers, but others don't seem to be held to the same standard. Agile (I can only speak to scrum) seems to provide a framework that offers to give developers more power in exchange for more accountability- but none of the processes that give the developers what they really need to deliver on what is required seem to fall under that same framework. Scrum seems to declare things like figuring out specific requirements for what you're trying to develop outside it's scope. This means that when other areas of the business don't do what they are supposed to, the developers end up having to deal with it in some capacity. Since they are the ones on the hook, that usually means doing someone else's job. Developers are motivated by the sheer number of eyes focused on them, but where is the motivation for everyone else involved in the process? Even this book review seems to only talk about rewarding (or not) developers. There isn't mention of the other groups that feed the process.
I'd also go waaaay out on a limb and argue that misapplied agile seems to have the potential to kill vision within a company. By forcing people to spend the majority of their time thinking only about what they can deal with in terms of this (or the next) sprint, it seems long-term vision with respect to a product has the potential to get lost. In other words, if there isn't a cohesive vision of what you're trying to produce, you could be reduced to a team of developers who only have the ability to react to situations and stare at the technical debt you've accumulated by switching directions so many times. That's probably a bit melodramatic- maybe that potential exists regardless, but scrum makes it easy to see how that could happen.
Part of the reason may be that the back-end storage for that particular site is a legacy system and limiting users to ASCII characters ensures that the byte length of all entered characters is exactly the same. Otherwise, a user might be using a charset that provides for umlauts or something. In UTF-8, for example, the higher order characters could use 2, 3 or 4 bytes of storage.
Assuming you are on a website, your password could still pass form validation because the character length passes muster, but behind the scenes you are using more bytes than anticipated. This could cause the stored data to extend beyond the length of the column, causing the DB to truncate the stored password and therefore corrupt it.
'Apple is driven by someone who has some understanding of end-user needs, Linux is not.'
Linux _is_ driven by someone who has an understanding of end-user needs. The Linux end user just happens to be programmers and sysadmins. Why does something have to be reduced to the lowest common denominator to be considered a success?
To put it a bit differently (and paraphrase a famous quote), Linux is user friendly- it's just picky about who its friends are.
Then s/he could is no longer an author, but a lecturer. At that point, why not say that lecturers should lecture for free and make their money by selling books on the subject(s) they lecture about?
Leaning over and just talking to someone may not interrupt your workflow, but it will interrupt theirs. Certain people just sort of stop thinking for themselves in an environment like that, causing the productivity of everyone around them to drop dramatically.
An environment like that _can_ be productive, but it can really suck, too.
I got it! I got it! Here's my interpretation of his little... interpretation...
The internet is the olive tree. In the bubble, people thought the internet was going to solve everything- probably even cure cancer. Overall, techies saw it as a great equalizer, bringing 'peace' and 'equality' to the world. Still with me?
The Lexus is big business, big money and big investments, turning the internet into tv and basically ruining it while squabbling with one another over who gets to 'own' whatever part of things.
The Lexus colliding with the olive tree is the clash of ideals between how corporations think the internet should be run and, you know, the rest of us.
He sounds pretty pissed off and worn out to me. I can't say I blame him, though.
I think i may have misread your post, then. Sorry.
I was under the impression that you were using the example of catching an example to say that we were interfering with the laws of physics by catching the apple as it fell.
"So, as a scientific example: I can prove scientifically, that if an apple's stem breaks and it begins to fall from a tree branch that it will fall to the ground accelerating at 32/second/second etc. If, however, I catch the falling apple, then it would not have hit the ground. This doesn't make the science wrong, it just changes the conditions of the experiment to include my hand intercepting the apple before it hits the ground. In much the same way, God is not bound by the laws of physics he put in place for his creation."
The apple is still falling at a prescribed rate- it doesn't matter if you catch it 5 feet above the ground, 5 inches above the ground or if you let it go the entire distance. You are trying to say that intercepting a falling object before it reaches the ground is interfering with the laws of physics when, in truth, the 'laws of physics' aren't being violated in any way.
In that post, the author explicitly says he can make an informed decision because he knows that blagojevich cuts funding to education and that that is an important issue to him.
Here's the quote:
"Can I make an informed decision? I can when it comes to education: vote against him."
My point was that it's not really an informed decision. He may know Blagojevich will cut funding to education, but he doesn't know what Topinka will do with respect to education. There seems to be an implied relation that might not exist. Just because Blagojevich supports cutting education funding doesn't mean Topinka must support increasing it.
He's still missing half the equation and, therefore, guessing. It's a best guess, sure, but it's not as informed as one might think.
He does then go on to say that knowing about both sides is the best way to vote, which I agree with.
You can't make a meaningful decision unless you know the opinion of the other side. Saying that Blagojevich does cut funding for education doesn't mean that Topinka does not cut funding for education. Further, you know nothing about how they plan to implement the funding. It could make things worse. IIRC, at one point both candidates said they wanted to increase funding for education. The difference was in how they wanted to do it: Blagojevich wanted to do something with the lottery, Topinka wanted to build casinos in Chicago. Without knowing that part of things, you have essentially said you want to build a casino and bring gambling to downtown Chicago. You've unwittingly supported something you may not have supported had you known more.
Being smart gives you no advantage when voting unless you know something about the candidates. If you don't know anything about any of the candidates, you are reduced to guessing. In this case, the only information you have available to you is the candidates name, party and the position they are running for. You have nothing useful with which to draw a meaningful conclusion as to the best candidate.
In this particular situation, a stupid person who knows nothing about the candidates guesses just as well as a smart person who knows nothing about the candidates.
I'm not sure you understand what I'm saying, so I'll restate it.
I agree with you that someones true will might be 'to do whatever the fuck you want'.
However, this does not make the definition of 'Do What Thou Wilt' to be 'Do whatever the fuck you want'. If that were the case, then 'Do What Thou Wilt' would always mean 'Do whatever the fuck you want'. Not everyone has the same true will, so this cannot be true for all people. The terms are not always interchangeable, so equating them is wrong.
The relationship does not go both ways- you can't substitute one for the other. Thinking your true will is to 'do whatever the fuck you want' doesn't change the meaning of 'Do what thou wilt'.
'Do What Thou Wilt' does not mean 'Do whatever the fuck you want'; it means to follow your True Will. It means to figure out your true purpose and, no matter what, pursue (what some have called) your Great Work. 'Do What Thou Wilt' is about commitment, purpose and seeing things as they really are. It's not about mindless indulgence.
I agree that it's mostly the people using the technology as opposed to the technoogy itself. Sometimes the environments aren't very well thought out, though.
I always pay attention at ATMs and public terminals. I've noticed that 1) most people make absolutely no effort to hide their keystrokes and 2) most establishments make no effort to hide the little pad people use to enter their passwords or PIN. The absolute worst are those internet cafes that put people with their backs to a street-facing window so that anyone walking by can happen across private information. Further, the little 'ding' sounds that the ATMs make when you hit a button can help clue a listener in as to what the pin might be. When you hear someone type 'ding ding ding ding' in rapid succession, it's a pretty safe bet that they are typing the same number 4 times. If you somehow get their card and are guessing at their PIN number, that alone considerably reduces your pool. I don't think it's really _that_ big a deal, but I always thought they should remove the sounds from those things.
Sometimes how you type is is important as what you type. It sounds stupid but, If I'm in a public place, I ususally mistype my password on purpose. I do it in hopes that a combination of wrong keystrokes, backspace characters and fast typing will throw someone off who may be watching and listening to the click of keystrokes. Not that what I'm typing is ever that important anyway, but every bit of noise helps.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure how far you're going in your thoughts here, but I know I care about the version and there are lots of occasions when the old code ain't fine.
Falling too far behind can turn into an even larger problem down the road when you need to update software A to resolve an issue but you can't because you're too far behind and there's no longer an upgrade path because they've done something major (like switched from MySQL to PostGreSQL) on the backend. Better yet, sometimes software A (which is already behind) depends on software B (or vice versa) which is maybe even further behind. Now you're really stuck.
I think it's important to not confuse stagnant with stable; there's a point where 'stable' can become it's own enemy. Positive gain from just staying up to date with your software might include lower-risk changes months or years from now when you are forced into a hurried, unplanned upgrade to address a security need or get a new feature that you desperately need to resolve some other issue and continue your work.
I had the same reaction when I was a kid and saw The Black Hole. I own it today, and I fully agree it really is a dark sci-fi movie; it's one of my favorites.
Honestly, I prefer it over Star Wars.
As an aside, did anyone else notice that in Tron 2, when Flynn's son first enters the virtual world, makes his way onto the 'command ship' and meets (I think) CLU for the first time that the command room looks exactly like the command room on the Cygnus from the Black Hole? The little pods sunken into the floor and the ledge going around the edge? Is it the same set? I always sort of wondered if that was a nod to the other movie.
I used to think this way, then grew up and realized that tools like IntelliJ and Eclipse are useful and have features that give me more insight into the code I'm working with and help me do my job more effectively. The tool is just a tool, and any tool will let you do things you're not supposed to do if there are not processes in place to prevent it. This is where the attitude of the business, coding conventions, code reviews, unit tests and other processes come into play.
Put more simply- if this were construction, I'd say it's not the hammer's fault the house was poorly built.
I know. I was actually just trying to put into words the ridiculous cartoon that was in my head.
You raise an interesting point. I think the scenario you describe is an ideal situation for something like that, and there's value in it because you're communicating information to another group. I agree that ritual for the sake of ritual is meaningless.
Maybe the difference is that, with a morning standup, you are essentially giving yourself a shift briefing on the work you just did the day before. That alone could make it meaningless. Maybe the value of the morning meeting is proportional to the communication dysfunction within your company?
Not even close to the same thing.
Well, not unless every person in your morning company formation sequentially breaks ranks, runs to the front, does an about face and gives a personal status:
"Company! Yesterday, I did a lot of pushups! Then I low-crawled! Then I cleaned my weapon and did some more pushups! Today, I'm going to walk a lot! My impediments are the group of people across the wire trying to kill me! Hoooahh!!"
I agree with your sentiment.
I'll veer off into the woods a bit. At my company, we recently switched to scrum and it gives clear visibility into who is adding all the extra, unnecessary work and scope creep that comes with people not quite doing what they are supposed to be doing. What I really like is that it also gives developers a tool to push back with when they are asked to switch contexts, re-prioritize what they are doing or take on new work via scope creep.
Team structure seems to play a larger part in things than I hear people talk about. Trying to find a balance between inexperienced and experienced developers is difficult, and we've pretty much always come up on the wrong side of it. One of the other fundamental imbalances I've seen (at least in our organisation) is that, within the context of a sprint, the developers are usually capable of doing everyone else's job- but the reverse is not true. I've seen this turn into situations where developers end up doing BA work, QA work and supporting production issues while trying to keep up with the development tasks that are on the board. Meanwhile, everyone else is just sort of sitting around, trying to look busy. In my opinion. this is a management failing more than anything, but it is still an imbalance.
This could just be how we apply (or misapply) things, but what I really wrestle with is the idea that ultimate accountability seems to rest with the developers, but others don't seem to be held to the same standard. Agile (I can only speak to scrum) seems to provide a framework that offers to give developers more power in exchange for more accountability- but none of the processes that give the developers what they really need to deliver on what is required seem to fall under that same framework. Scrum seems to declare things like figuring out specific requirements for what you're trying to develop outside it's scope. This means that when other areas of the business don't do what they are supposed to, the developers end up having to deal with it in some capacity. Since they are the ones on the hook, that usually means doing someone else's job. Developers are motivated by the sheer number of eyes focused on them, but where is the motivation for everyone else involved in the process? Even this book review seems to only talk about rewarding (or not) developers. There isn't mention of the other groups that feed the process.
I'd also go waaaay out on a limb and argue that misapplied agile seems to have the potential to kill vision within a company. By forcing people to spend the majority of their time thinking only about what they can deal with in terms of this (or the next) sprint, it seems long-term vision with respect to a product has the potential to get lost. In other words, if there isn't a cohesive vision of what you're trying to produce, you could be reduced to a team of developers who only have the ability to react to situations and stare at the technical debt you've accumulated by switching directions so many times. That's probably a bit melodramatic- maybe that potential exists regardless, but scrum makes it easy to see how that could happen.
Ok, enough ranting.
Part of the reason may be that the back-end storage for that particular site is a legacy system and limiting users to ASCII characters ensures that the byte length of all entered characters is exactly the same. Otherwise, a user might be using a charset that provides for umlauts or something. In UTF-8, for example, the higher order characters could use 2, 3 or 4 bytes of storage.
Assuming you are on a website, your password could still pass form validation because the character length passes muster, but behind the scenes you are using more bytes than anticipated. This could cause the stored data to extend beyond the length of the column, causing the DB to truncate the stored password and therefore corrupt it.
This just sort of jumped out at me...
'Apple is driven by someone who has some understanding of end-user needs, Linux is not.'
Linux _is_ driven by someone who has an understanding of end-user needs. The Linux end user just happens to be programmers and sysadmins. Why does something have to be reduced to the lowest common denominator to be considered a success?
To put it a bit differently (and paraphrase a famous quote), Linux is user friendly- it's just picky about who its friends are.
Then s/he could is no longer an author, but a lecturer. At that point, why not say that lecturers should lecture for free and make their money by selling books on the subject(s) they lecture about?
Leaning over and just talking to someone may not interrupt your workflow, but it will interrupt theirs. Certain people just sort of stop thinking for themselves in an environment like that, causing the productivity of everyone around them to drop dramatically.
An environment like that _can_ be productive, but it can really suck, too.
Blade Runner.
Very nice.
Yeah- I didn't see any of those until after I had posted.
I'm actually interested in the book now, though, so I guess it all works out in the end
I got it! I got it! Here's my interpretation of his little... interpretation...
The internet is the olive tree. In the bubble, people thought the internet was going to solve everything- probably even cure cancer. Overall, techies saw it as a great equalizer, bringing 'peace' and 'equality' to the world. Still with me?
The Lexus is big business, big money and big investments, turning the internet into tv and basically ruining it while squabbling with one another over who gets to 'own' whatever part of things.
The Lexus colliding with the olive tree is the clash of ideals between how corporations think the internet should be run and, you know, the rest of us.
He sounds pretty pissed off and worn out to me. I can't say I blame him, though.
Of course, I didn't even read TFA.
I think i may have misread your post, then. Sorry.
I was under the impression that you were using the example of catching an example to say that we were interfering with the laws of physics by catching the apple as it fell.
"So, as a scientific example: I can prove scientifically, that if an apple's stem breaks and it begins to fall from a tree branch that it will fall to the ground accelerating at 32/second/second etc. If, however, I catch the falling apple, then it would not have hit the ground. This doesn't make the science wrong, it just changes the conditions of the experiment to include my hand intercepting the apple before it hits the ground. In much the same way, God is not bound by the laws of physics he put in place for his creation."
The apple is still falling at a prescribed rate- it doesn't matter if you catch it 5 feet above the ground, 5 inches above the ground or if you let it go the entire distance. You are trying to say that intercepting a falling object before it reaches the ground is interfering with the laws of physics when, in truth, the 'laws of physics' aren't being violated in any way.
No, I think I got it.
In that post, the author explicitly says he can make an informed decision because he knows that blagojevich cuts funding to education and that that is an important issue to him.
Here's the quote:
"Can I make an informed decision? I can when it comes to education: vote against him."
My point was that it's not really an informed decision. He may know Blagojevich will cut funding to education, but he doesn't know what Topinka will do with respect to education. There seems to be an implied relation that might not exist. Just because Blagojevich supports cutting education funding doesn't mean Topinka must support increasing it.
He's still missing half the equation and, therefore, guessing. It's a best guess, sure, but it's not as informed as one might think.
He does then go on to say that knowing about both sides is the best way to vote, which I agree with.
That's a good point- I agree with you.
It can still be a problem, though. As one of the other posters pointed out, sometimes you don't even have a party to work with.
I'm not sure this strategy is much better.
You can't make a meaningful decision unless you know the opinion of the other side. Saying that Blagojevich does cut funding for education doesn't mean that Topinka does not cut funding for education. Further, you know nothing about how they plan to implement the funding. It could make things worse. IIRC, at one point both candidates said they wanted to increase funding for education. The difference was in how they wanted to do it: Blagojevich wanted to do something with the lottery, Topinka wanted to build casinos in Chicago. Without knowing that part of things, you have essentially said you want to build a casino and bring gambling to downtown Chicago. You've unwittingly supported something you may not have supported had you known more.
I disagree.
Being smart gives you no advantage when voting unless you know something about the candidates. If you don't know anything about any of the candidates, you are reduced to guessing. In this case, the only information you have available to you is the candidates name, party and the position they are running for. You have nothing useful with which to draw a meaningful conclusion as to the best candidate.
In this particular situation, a stupid person who knows nothing about the candidates guesses just as well as a smart person who knows nothing about the candidates.
Because China can kick our asses.
China will be declared bad as soon as the powers that be think they've figured out a way to pummel them.
I'm not sure you understand what I'm saying, so I'll restate it.
I agree with you that someones true will might be 'to do whatever the fuck you want'.
However, this does not make the definition of 'Do What Thou Wilt' to be 'Do whatever the fuck you want'. If that were the case, then 'Do What Thou Wilt' would always mean 'Do whatever the fuck you want'. Not everyone has the same true will, so this cannot be true for all people. The terms are not always interchangeable, so equating them is wrong.
Nope- there is no equivalency here.
The relationship does not go both ways- you can't substitute one for the other. Thinking your true will is to 'do whatever the fuck you want' doesn't change the meaning of 'Do what thou wilt'.
Not really.
'Do What Thou Wilt' does not mean 'Do whatever the fuck you want'; it means to follow your True Will. It means to figure out your true purpose and, no matter what, pursue (what some have called) your Great Work. 'Do What Thou Wilt' is about commitment, purpose and seeing things as they really are. It's not about mindless indulgence.
I agree that it's mostly the people using the technology as opposed to the technoogy itself. Sometimes the environments aren't very well thought out, though.
I always pay attention at ATMs and public terminals. I've noticed that 1) most people make absolutely no effort to hide their keystrokes and 2) most establishments make no effort to hide the little pad people use to enter their passwords or PIN. The absolute worst are those internet cafes that put people with their backs to a street-facing window so that anyone walking by can happen across private information. Further, the little 'ding' sounds that the ATMs make when you hit a button can help clue a listener in as to what the pin might be. When you hear someone type 'ding ding ding ding' in rapid succession, it's a pretty safe bet that they are typing the same number 4 times. If you somehow get their card and are guessing at their PIN number, that alone considerably reduces your pool. I don't think it's really _that_ big a deal, but I always thought they should remove the sounds from those things.
Sometimes how you type is is important as what you type. It sounds stupid but, If I'm in a public place, I ususally mistype my password on purpose. I do it in hopes that a combination of wrong keystrokes, backspace characters and fast typing will throw someone off who may be watching and listening to the click of keystrokes. Not that what I'm typing is ever that important anyway, but every bit of noise helps.
You must not have a penis.
Sure I do. And your mom is quite fond of it.