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User: StarBar

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  1. This is good on The Simultaneous Rise and Decline of Battlefield · · Score: 1

    the bean counters will never understand how software is developed and I am not talking about inhibiting profitability but how to increase profitability. Instead they compare software development with factories and wants square blocks of 'workload' outlining a project and when that is not working they just add more blocks or extend overtime reducing profitability even more. They hate hearing that software development is an art or like a green house where some pots needs more water than other and some needs fertilizers and other just need a dark corner for a long time to develop loads of flowers. It makes me sad. I say we sack the bean counters!

  2. Re:Things are starting to turn around on OpenSSL Bug Allows Attackers To Read Memory In 64k Chunks · · Score: 1

    But unfortunately open source is not written by professionals, but ideologically driven amateurs and other random hobbyists.

    That's not a fair generalization. Though there are plenty of "ideologically driven amateurs" — especially in the Linux (compared to BSD) world — they are mostly found among the noisy advocates, rather than actual developers.

    Especially since a Dr Stephen Henson and the IETF member and security professional Robin Seggelmann submitted the bug, their CV:s are as professional as it gets. So please get real...

  3. I know what you mean on IT and Divorce? · · Score: 1

    Love the kid, respect his needs and put yourself second, as simple as that. But wounded egos makes the simple task complicated. Try to be honest to your kid and yourself about the reasons you feel the way you are and never go for the sympathy from your son, he is mad at both of you naturally because you are acting very strange to him.

    In my opinion computer jobs are the perfect escapes where you can have total control for a while in a time when things are totally screwed up and you have become a passanger in your life. You rather crush that bug than fix the needs of your family. In that sense you are right but the cause is not our jobs I think.

    On the bright side, you will now have the chance to get to know your son better. Nothing is more important.

    And when you think about it, if you hadn't been so tired from overtime you might not have created the bugs you have been working overtime to fix, and so forth. I am constantly trying to work less hours a day for that reason, the creative peak is 2-4 hours long + 2 hours of meetings and coffee drinking makes a total of six hours. Then go home avoiding the bugs you are about to create...

    Making careers in the US is probably based on loads of working hours and making quarterly reports. Hmmm..., poor you, no wonder that you need that christian fundamentalism over there to keep the families together...

    Let go! / Starbar

  4. Re:2 ears, 2 speakers on Why 7.1 Surround Sound is Overkill For Most Homes · · Score: 1
    No, we are Devo! D-E-V-O!

    For you youngsters who didn't recon the quote from the Devo hit and modded down this parent...*sigh*

  5. What will the phones cost? on Microsoft To Offer Free Wireless VoIP · · Score: 1

    Most of the cellular phones, and especially the high end ones, are sold with a big discount in exchange for a subscription period of 12 or 24 months. At least in Sweden. Who will discount Wi-Fi phones? I doubt that regular people will take the cost with the rather poor coverage of Wi-Fi currently. Also roaming between accesspoints needs to be solved before this is a real threat to cellular telephony. For fixed telephony it might be an alternative though, as is Skype. Sorry, but I doubt the success here, except for the hype ofcourse...

  6. Re:The women are WAY worse than us on Fear of Girls, a D&D Documentary · · Score: 1
    This all sounds like Barbarella movie has more of a message than seen at a first glance...

    The movie, yeahhh you probably already know, but anyways, is starring a young Jane Fonda runing around half nekkid throughout the galaxy conquering men in all positions with sex. Did she turn feminist after this movie.... ehhh or maybe it's ok with a sex based matriarchy??!

    Buy (or whatever) the movie, it's great projected at a wall when having a party! Schag me baby!! ;-)

  7. Emacs anyone...? on Blog Software Smackdown · · Score: 1

    Whats wrong with HTML editing in Emacs?? Who cares about databases and serverside scripts and such when reading about the blisters you have under your feet anyway, or whatever. Write something interesting and not spend time on howtodoit! It would be like polishing your car put don't afford to fill it with fuel.

  8. MUD RPG:s are great escapes on Coding and Roleplaying - Is There a Connection? · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I was during a year or two adicted to a certain LPMUD and spent like 2-3 hours every day/night in that RP world. It was a MUD biased towards RP rather than hack and slush. This sounds normal to any teenager not knowing the alternatives in life but I was 35 years old, a husband with two wonderful kids and a woman in the state of divorce and my own webcompany was going out of business. I was also a programmer with 15+ years experience.

    Did I see the crash comming? Yes. Did I do anything about it? No. Instead I spent time in the world of RP ending up as a wizard writing my own part of the world. That was mush easier than trying to work with the real world and make it work for me and the people around me. After the crash of my life I haven't spent anywhere near the amount of time in the world of MUD:s again.

    It's all about where you can get in control. For me it was clearily programming and RP in combination. Today I am a dormant mudoholic.

  9. Hmmm bandwidth eaters! on Windows Users Fear Korgo Virus · · Score: 1
    ....I just wonder when all the Windows update patches downloaded over internet will consume more bandwidth than all the spammers together... *scratch* ...what's the difference anyway?

    [Just a friday nights thought]

  10. The difference on Attacking WinZip AES Encryption · · Score: 4, Informative
    between a secure program and a less secure program has nothing todo with AES. It is all about the keys. Whenever you are using symetric encryption, like AES, you need to store the key somewhere accessible both when encrypting aswell as decrypting. A human brain for instance. However at 128 bit encryption it starts to be hard to remember binary keys, even for smart folks. Then you need a secure way to store the key in, like a smartcard or an USB dongle or fetching it using PKI from a central storage using asymetric encryption like RSA. The weak point will still be the key storage and transportation, not the AES part.

    However using weaker crypto algorithms like DES will invalidate any secure keystorage simply becuase it would be much more vulnerable to brute force attacks. Using AES simply moves the weak point to another link in the chain of security for WinZIP.

    A curiousity for an example is the book "Neuromancer" by William Gibson where the AI had to trick a human beeing to unlock the last link to its pal AI because it could not be cracked by computers. A 100% computer secured old fashioned iron key! :-) I just love that chapter.

  11. Re:Ohboy! Now you can have pretty pictures to ... on UML Fever · · Score: 1
    I agree with most of what you say and still I don't think one size fits all. As a pragmatist with 20+ years of programming experiences I have learned to respect development methods and I can see when I need to care to use them and when not to. Tools are a different story. A method can be as simple as a mindset shared in a group of programmers OR it could be something very complex for stifflegged multi-phased projects.

    For medium sized projects without dedicated designers I think a feedback system from code to design would be very helpful. It would prevent really bad things to happen when deadline pressure makes people to abandon the main road and going off-road for short term time benefits. I would use XP within the limits for each blackbox and UML to verify conformance.

    I never liked the idea to have machine generated code to start with. On the other hand assembler guys had the same doubts about the first compilers. Maybe the uml2code thingie only should generate test transactions for QA verifications. When a verification fails the programmer would have the choice to either fix the code or to update the definitions in the failing UML use case. In such scenario the generated code would only be a test harnesk not the actual code used for production. The interface how to apply the data for all the use cases would of course be written by the programmer but that could be as simple as generating user input and verifying the outcome against the test data, returning true or false.

    I would love to get a Unified Test Language expressed in XML as output from the uml2test and let it be input to the test harnesk. Let's scrap the code2uml part too and call it test2uml producing an XML patch for the XML description. Then the designer (mindset) could see what went wrong and weather it is ok to change the design for the failed use case, graphically! I think I might be onto something here! Or maybe just dreams...

  12. uml2code... on UML Fever · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Unified Modelling Language is exacatly that, a unified way to build system descriptions with. Before UML people battled themselfs blue in the face about weather clowds or elipses were to be preferred when drawing systems graphically. The big problem with UML & co is how to generate code *and* get code changes back to the design at the UML level. No, you don't want to redraw the design and regenerate the whole program structure just because you found a small design flaw. Much of this requires expensive method specific tools (ie Rational's) that will wall you in like a whale.

    What I would like to see instead is an Open Source command line tool uml2code that will generate source code or patches to an existing code base from an XML description. This would not work unless there is a reverse tool code2uml to analyze code changes, with necessary markup of cource, and generate a change to the XML description. There are some work done in the area but no tools that I know of. This aproach would give the benefits of a common XML interface between the GUI and the code generation and also the freedom to work with any normal set of compiler and tools on the output. Hmmm, just dreams though...

  13. Re:Here we go again! on SVG And The Free Desktop(s) · · Score: 1

    Well Flash sucks also because it is slow on low end machines, like a set top box. It uses a ray-trace algorithm that is performed for each frame produced, which is very CPU consuming. I hope that SVG animations will use a better technique than that.

  14. The programming paradigm needs to change on Why Programming Still Stinks · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I could write a very long post about this because I have given it a lot of thoughts over the years, but I'll keep it short(er). I have bitched a lot about why we need better software and *not* faster CPU:s. Does your word processor produce your documents faster these days using 2.6 GHz instead of a dazzling 90Mhz? Ohh, you still type at the same pace...?

    Writing stuff in C gives you speed and almost total freedom. Nowadays you can even write drivers entirely in C. Pascal and Ada tried to address quality issues by limit the freedom with declarations. OO languages like Simula, C++ and Java tries to address reuse. Interpreting languages like BASIC, Perl (semi) and shell scripts adresses the compile time issue. But who/what adresses the way we attack the problem?

    The common denominator for all languages needs to be adressed. The text file! Just think about it, how much time is spent just to format and handle the chunks of code that should carry out your creative solutions? More than you think including missing #includes, linker arguments, shared/private symbols, bugs related to text file scope (static globals) and lazyness not refering across text file boundaries properly when the project grows.

    Smalltalk tried to adress this by making everything OO in a super inheritence metaphore, but to me at least I just got confused because the base functionality is so huge. Maybe they are onto something but its far too complex to gain popularity and I don't think it has the simplicity needed to succeed. Many incremental compiler projects has been promissing I think but we haven't seen a real usable and working environment yet.

    I do think that with some slight adjustments to the C language removing the text file as scope and the #include CPP directive a base for a better and creative programming paradigm could start. Instead all globals (variables and functions) should be stored in a "scope tree" where the actual storage should be language idependent. Each level in the scope tree should require an API declaration. Each node could be idependently compiled and incrementally linked. Emacs would work directly on the scope tree. The system should be able import C projects and detach the code from the text file structure.

    This would give the programmers back some of the energy and creativeness wasted on dull tools and malfomed source code trees of today, without loosing the huge C base of sources out there and instead focusing on the language itself.

    I know this is just a dream I have had for a long time and maybe someone already started on a similar project somewhere?

  15. Management by blocking on MSN Search Blocking Results For XFree86? · · Score: 1

    Blocking and redirection is quite common. I have visited many customers and suppliers and amazingly there are fundamental differences in freedom between different labs. I remember visiting a major x86 silicon vendor which we worked with at the time, 2 years ago. In the lab I saw a lot of pro-Linux stuff like the penguin doll and posters with penguins crushing windows logos etc. However using some spare time between meetings trying to connect to slashdot trough their LAN I was blocked! All other sites tried were no problem. This added to my suspision that their Linux commitment was not 100% solid throughout the organisation. No wonder we have another supplier for the next generation of products!

  16. "Free" like in "butterfly" on Young Programmer, Stop Advocating Free Software! · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I still can't understand why people refer to the development of Open Software and Free Software like it is like giving it away for free. Almost all contributors are actually using a *lot* more Open and Free Software than they develop. Isn't that enough payback for the time spent?

    So they actually just release it (to be free - no strings attached), without dictating who or how it will be used as long as it remains free.
    Free is not an economic term it is a software ecological term.

    This is just my personal opinion though, but I think many people can agree on this view. Up, up and away....

  17. Re:License fees on Apple's iPod Chip Supports WMA? · · Score: 1
    Yeahh, you are right, there is a small royalty fee for AAC decoders, same for everybody. WMA has no public royalty price list that I know of. AAC is a part of MPEG-4 and I believe that QuickTime 6 also uses it. Apple->QuickTime->AAC makes sense. WMA does not. That might be a more accurate reason for not supporting WMA on the iPod?

    FYI, I use MacOS9, Win2K at home and Debian Linux at work (and at home sometimes).

  18. License fees on Apple's iPod Chip Supports WMA? · · Score: 5, Informative
    To decode WMA you will most probably pay an upfront fee which could be up to a six figure USD amount depending on how friendly the license owner might think you are. Software licenses are always negotiable and always depending on how eager you are to get it and how close to the next quarter you are. At least that is my first hand experience having both been a buyer and seller of licensed software.

    In addition there is also a royalty involved. For WMA this is true but for AAC you pay only an upfront fee ($15000) but no royalties. That might be a reason not to support WMA by default in the iPod!?

  19. Compatibility is a mindgame on Xbox 2 - The Price of Compatibility? · · Score: 1

    Sony is marketleading and has an impressive track record and is the only one that has backward compatibility. They didn't enter the console market first either. It must be the key to console gamers minds (and wallets) that they don't waste the old collection of games. The old console still sits around so why do you need to play the old game on the new console? Just switch the cables!

  20. Re:No chips from "the West" on Trojan Horse Caused A Siberian Explosion · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I've heard about this. My cousine used to work for DEC. Right after the dissolvment of the Sovjetunion they received a request for a quotation of "support and services" for a large number of VAX machines in Murmansk!

    And yes the designs were 'stolen', but at a very low level. They copied the silicon masks and even the original logotype on them! Although I think they could have designed superior chips themselves if they have had anything faster than Apple II:s at the universities. But they didn't because of the US emargo.

  21. Re:h/w vs s/w on How to Kill x86 and Thread-Level Parallelism · · Score: 1

    I agree on that idealistic view of it but software is much more complex than hardware and as a pragmatist I can tell that it will not happen that a completelly new architecture will take over the x86 domination in the current market. It's just too expensive. If just hardware guys could understand that too. They need to invent something that is 10 times better and 10 times cheaper to manufacture to stir the bowl. Not twice the performance to half the price becuase that will not be good enough.

  22. h/w vs s/w on How to Kill x86 and Thread-Level Parallelism · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is much like my day to day work. The h/w guys thinks they are gods and always blames us s/w guys not to utilize the smartness of their designs fast enough. s/w compatibility is what counts for general purpose systems, and it always will. You can cry the guts out of yourself about bad system design and segment hell etc etc and it will not help.

  23. Re:Stupid example on KISS · · Score: 1

    Another reason you can't find the old plain call-only phones anymore is that they need to keep up the volumes for the fancy features in order to get the lower price to make it attractive to the 5-10% of the users that actually wants it.

  24. XP worked for us on eXtreme Programming (XP) in OSS projects? · · Score: 2, Informative
    We've used an XP like paradigm for about three years developing a Linux based distribution that rides in a custom hardware. I was comming in late into the project that had no structure whatsoever and a hardware already designed and was just about to migrate to Linux from some in-house OS so the situation were chaotic to say the least. The company I work for were a startup at the time.

    The first thing I did were to picture the whole system as a group of functional boxes with interfaces. The next were to define the interface mechanism. Then I grabbed my nearest bosses and made them customers showing them a new release every two weeks. I distributed the tasks of implementing the functional boxes among the programmers in the group who I placed in the biggest room awailable facing each other. In the group we used nightly builds to always have the CVS build clean. My bosses were forced by us to prioritize among tasks and give us input for the next release. One day over a year later we could experience a decreased pressure and a product that we felt confident about. At that point we started to refactor all bits and pieces that were just implemented the easiest way as well as the build system. Now another two years down the line we have catched up and we have got rooms, some still with two programmers and we are increasingly using a traditional way of programming, with a spec phase, an implementation phase and a QA phase etc. We only kept some featured of XP that we like, nightly builds and refactoring.

    I think that XP has its cons and pros depending on the situation. We could never have delivered all these demos, prototypes and releases during the course of these three years without XP, simply because we had to attract customers and venture capital all along. We didn't use XP to the full extent either, no automatic testing and no true pair programming but that was only because we didn't have time to change ourselfs. If you sit on a fully financed military project for instance I doubt that XP will work for you. If you lack time or funding or simply needs to go extremelly fast to something that works XP might be the way to go, just ensure that everybody in the project agrees.

    Good Luck!

  25. Re:Benchmarks and leapfrogging on GNU GCC Vs Sun's Compiler on a SPARC · · Score: 1
    If you are going to spend a huge amount of money on compilers for a project lasting more than a few days that is. And for smaller projects I don't see that your budget would allow spending about $1-2K per simultanous user, which is a common charge for commercial UNIX based compilers.

    Your time is better spent finding better ways to solve your problems than fighting for an extra 20% performance out of compiler optimizations. When compilers tries to make tricky optimizations ugly and hard spotted compiler bugs often arises that will waste much more of your valuable time to find... this is only common sense!