The three worst annoyances in software development
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Are You Annoying?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The article seems slashdotted, so I'll offer three of my own:
1. People who won't read the documentation thoroughly. "How do you use dd?" "Well, it's documented in the man pages." "I know, but I thought I'd ask you." I hate people who want to be spoon-fed the answers. Even worse are the ones who will ask you the same question a week later. DON'T TELL THEM! Make them look it up - they'll learn so much more in the process.
2. People who blame the software. "I found a compiler bug - this loop won't exit." "Um, that's because your exit test is wrong." Count the number of times a person blames the compiler, the libraries, or the operating system for problems that turn out to be their own; this count will be inversely proportional to their quality as a programmer. The worst ones find a new bug in the compiler every day.
3. People who give up too easily. Something doesn't work exactly as it seems it should, so they try a few variations - maybe - and then they run for help. "This doesn't work like the book says it should!" "OK, did you try ____. Or ____? Or _____, or even _____?" No? then why are you bothering me? THINK about what you're doing, then try to figure it out for yourself before crying for help. Perseverance is a quality all good programmers have.
He owns at least three stations that I can think of... TNT, TBS and Turner Classic Movies.
No, those networks are owned by Time-Warner. Go to tbssuperstation.com, www.tnt.tv, or turnerclassicmovies.com, and at the bottom you'll see the text "A Time Warner Company."
The former means that the field strength is still 85 to 90 percent of the original value (still nearly intact), while the latter means that it is only 10-15 percent of that value (nearly gone).
And yet, miraculously, my I-top still functions. Better try to break that spin record while I still can...
Agreed. An iPod mini with a tiny FM transmitter seems an underpowered solution to this problem. A better answer would be a directed electromag pulse to burn out the electronics in the gangsta's CD player, his amps, AND his car's ignition. Then you just need the middle-finger salute as you drive off, leaving him in befuddled silence. HA!
Many of those requirements are written by people who have no idea what they're talking about.
Absolutely. Especially in big companies with HR departments. Department X needs to hire some people, and because the last guy HR hired them was a big zero (despite the fact that Department X interviewed him and gave him the thumbs-up), the manager of Department X will send out a memo asking his first-lines what skills they're looking for. X Secretary collates the responses into a wish list and sends it on to HR, which publishes the advertisement - perhaps after posting the job internally. Don't believe any ad you see asking for a thousand years experience with every skill known to man. Most times, the people you'll actually be working for - as opposed to the HR wonk who put together the ad - will be satisfied with much less.
A person who's willing to work hard, who can learn quickly, has good communication skills, and is a "team player" is considered a great candidate in most companies for an entry-level position. Some specific skills definitely help, as does a good GPA. But the people who you're going to work directly for, who will interview you, know that not every candidate is going to be a superstar, and they'll settle for less. Apply anyway.
This folding project is not a Huffman or Lang, and it's not as impressive as those pictured in the Times article, with their sweeping curves and elegant surfaces. However, it does have a small element of the amazing "How do you get paper to DO that" quality. Best of all, it's fairly easy to fold and to improvise upon. Enjoy:
I tried sending test messages from my gmail account to my hotmail and yahoo accounts. I then created a mockup invitation using the text suggested in the "Talent Show" blog, and sent it to both accounts. The results:
Hotmail: both the short test message and the invitation were received normally. Neither bounced, neither was shunted into the junk mail folder.
Yahoo: the test message was received normally, but the mock invitation was dropped into the Bulk e-mail folder. (In fact, yahoo created a Bulk folder for me - I didn't previously have one because this e-mail account was previously unused and in hibernation.)
So, of the various claims made in this story, I can verify only the one about invitations sent to Yahoo.
Single-use passwords are not the same thing as a one-time pad, which is a form of encryption. However, one-time passwords do sound like a good idea. Given reasonably good encryption like in SSL, then password management becomes a weak point - which this scheme addresses. (Just parroting Schneier, and wondering if this scheme will get mention in the next Crypto-gram newsletter.)
It's even easier than that, assuming Firefox works like Mozilla: 1. drag over the URL; 2. type ctl-t to open a new tab; 3. middle-click anywhere on the page that's not already a link. Middle-clicking in Mozilla will open whatever URL is in the paste buffer. This is handy on some sites, Slashdot for instance, where people might post the text of a URL, but forget to embed it in an anchor (you know, ...). Here, try it: http://google.com
"commercial manned space vehicle" could mean a Shuttle taking a private company's satellite into orbit...
Which is why I said "in the flesh". Most Shuttle payloads were military or government, and all payloads were so heavily subsidized that they were essentially free... no nongovernment customer could have paid the true cost of getting their payload to orbit.
My understanding was that you had to have one pilot, dead weight equivalent to two passengers, and three seats. In other words, you couldn't just add weight somewhere a passenger wouldn't really ride, like strapped to the hull.
If successful, the craft - named Space Ship One - will become the world's first commercial manned space vehicle.
I believe that distinction goes to the Russians, who are the first to fly a paying customer in the flesh. It would be more correct to say that Space Ship One is the first privately developed manned craft to reach space. Until they fly a paying customer, I don't count Space Ship One as a vehicle of commerce. Just splitting hairs...
But when linguistic evolution is driven by clueless people trying to show how "smart" they are ("Oh, look, I can make this word plural in a way that makes me look like I studied Latin"), then it should be smashed flat with a large-type edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. People invent words, sometimes because there's a true need for a new word, and sometimes because they're ignorant of the correct word. People who invent out of ignorance should be shunned. And the virii they rode in on...
A novice was trying to fix a broken lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly- "You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong."
No, I haven't tried much of anything yet, except to play around with FC2's out-of-the-box install. But I will definitely give ndiswrapper a try, and thanks for the pointer.
Re:Ok not bad for a first effort.
on
Fedora Core 2 Review
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· Score: 2, Informative
This isn't meant to be a troll, but can you imagine the outrage Windows users (and Linux zealots alike) would have if simply upgrading Windows wiped out the partition tables and resulted in an unbootable system?
This kind of thing is why I always keep a copy of my partition table settings. I run fdisk -l/dev/hda >/root/hda.out. Of course, if the partition table for hda is hosed, then you can't mount/, but you can work around that problem by booting into a rescue CD, making a partition table with one huge ext2 partition, then mounting it read-only. The filesystem will mount if / was in the first filesystem on the disk, even if the size of the filesystem wasn't originally that big. Then you cat/root/hda.out, umount/dev/hda1, and recreate the real partition table.
I started doing this after I accidently hosed my entire hda partition while I was traveling. I had about eight partitions on that disk, but by remembering the approximate sizes of each partition, and a little trial and error, I was able to fully recover the table. What was really hard was to not panic. Since then I always keep a readable copy of the partition table information (which I prefer to a binary copy of the partition table sectors).
Slashdot Mirror
...All your buzz are belong to us.
The article seems slashdotted, so I'll offer three of my own:
1. People who won't read the documentation thoroughly. "How do you use dd?" "Well, it's documented in the man pages." "I know, but I thought I'd ask you." I hate people who want to be spoon-fed the answers. Even worse are the ones who will ask you the same question a week later. DON'T TELL THEM! Make them look it up - they'll learn so much more in the process.
2. People who blame the software. "I found a compiler bug - this loop won't exit." "Um, that's because your exit test is wrong." Count the number of times a person blames the compiler, the libraries, or the operating system for problems that turn out to be their own; this count will be inversely proportional to their quality as a programmer. The worst ones find a new bug in the compiler every day.
3. People who give up too easily. Something doesn't work exactly as it seems it should, so they try a few variations - maybe - and then they run for help. "This doesn't work like the book says it should!" "OK, did you try ____. Or ____? Or _____, or even _____?" No? then why are you bothering me? THINK about what you're doing, then try to figure it out for yourself before crying for help. Perseverance is a quality all good programmers have.
He owns at least three stations that I can think of... TNT, TBS and Turner Classic Movies.
No, those networks are owned by Time-Warner. Go to tbssuperstation.com, www.tnt.tv, or turnerclassicmovies.com, and at the bottom you'll see the text "A Time Warner Company."
B is for biff, which reads all your mail
Always thought it should be "B is for biff, which watches for mail".
Sit, biff, sit. Good dog.
The former means that the field strength is still 85 to 90 percent of the original value (still nearly intact), while the latter means that it is only 10-15 percent of that value (nearly gone).
And yet, miraculously, my I-top still functions. Better try to break that spin record while I still can...
Agreed. An iPod mini with a tiny FM transmitter seems an underpowered solution to this problem. A better answer would be a directed electromag pulse to burn out the electronics in the gangsta's CD player, his amps, AND his car's ignition. Then you just need the middle-finger salute as you drive off, leaving him in befuddled silence. HA!
No winding, he needs to go right down the line.
221b Baker Street would be cooler.
Elementary.
Fuck off you anti-social "rebel".
No, no, no... it's "Stay away from my house, you freak!"
Many of those requirements are written by people who have no idea what they're talking about.
Absolutely. Especially in big companies with HR departments. Department X needs to hire some people, and because the last guy HR hired them was a big zero (despite the fact that Department X interviewed him and gave him the thumbs-up), the manager of Department X will send out a memo asking his first-lines what skills they're looking for. X Secretary collates the responses into a wish list and sends it on to HR, which publishes the advertisement - perhaps after posting the job internally. Don't believe any ad you see asking for a thousand years experience with every skill known to man. Most times, the people you'll actually be working for - as opposed to the HR wonk who put together the ad - will be satisfied with much less.
A person who's willing to work hard, who can learn quickly, has good communication skills, and is a "team player" is considered a great candidate in most companies for an entry-level position. Some specific skills definitely help, as does a good GPA. But the people who you're going to work directly for, who will interview you, know that not every candidate is going to be a superstar, and they'll settle for less. Apply anyway.
By my calculation you just fucking jipped me an order of fries and a toy
It's not a bug. It's a calorie reducing feature.
Yeah, those plastic toys are loaded with carbs and calories!
This folding project is not a Huffman or Lang, and it's not as impressive as those pictured in the Times article, with their sweeping curves and elegant surfaces. However, it does have a small element of the amazing "How do you get paper to DO that" quality. Best of all, it's fairly easy to fold and to improvise upon. Enjoy:
http://www.sgi.com/grafica/fold/page001.html
I tried sending test messages from my gmail account to my hotmail and yahoo accounts. I then created a mockup invitation using the text suggested in the "Talent Show" blog, and sent it to both accounts. The results:
Hotmail: both the short test message and the invitation were received normally. Neither bounced, neither was shunted into the junk mail folder.
Yahoo: the test message was received normally, but the mock invitation was dropped into the Bulk e-mail folder. (In fact, yahoo created a Bulk folder for me - I didn't previously have one because this e-mail account was previously unused and in hibernation.)
So, of the various claims made in this story, I can verify only the one about invitations sent to Yahoo.
...I bet you could trade one of these for a gmail account!
...it's Puzzlemaster Will Shortz. Please show proper respect, or we will send a (24-Down) to (10-Across) out your porch light.
100% artificial? Really? So it was written by an AI, produced by robots, and distributed by that new IA64 virus? Impressive.
Single-use passwords are not the same thing as a one-time pad, which is a form of encryption. However, one-time passwords do sound like a good idea. Given reasonably good encryption like in SSL, then password management becomes a weak point - which this scheme addresses. (Just parroting Schneier, and wondering if this scheme will get mention in the next Crypto-gram newsletter.)
It's even easier than that, assuming Firefox works like Mozilla: 1. drag over the URL; 2. type ctl-t to open a new tab; 3. middle-click anywhere on the page that's not already a link. Middle-clicking in Mozilla will open whatever URL is in the paste buffer. This is handy on some sites, Slashdot for instance, where people might post the text of a URL, but forget to embed it in an anchor (you know, ...). Here, try it: http://google.com
"commercial manned space vehicle" could mean a Shuttle taking a private company's satellite into orbit...
Which is why I said "in the flesh". Most Shuttle payloads were military or government, and all payloads were so heavily subsidized that they were essentially free... no nongovernment customer could have paid the true cost of getting their payload to orbit.
My understanding was that you had to have one pilot, dead weight equivalent to two passengers, and three seats. In other words, you couldn't just add weight somewhere a passenger wouldn't really ride, like strapped to the hull.
If successful, the craft - named Space Ship One - will become the world's first commercial manned space vehicle.
I believe that distinction goes to the Russians, who are the first to fly a paying customer in the flesh. It would be more correct to say that Space Ship One is the first privately developed manned craft to reach space. Until they fly a paying customer, I don't count Space Ship One as a vehicle of commerce. Just splitting hairs...
But when linguistic evolution is driven by clueless people trying to show how "smart" they are ("Oh, look, I can make this word plural in a way that makes me look like I studied Latin"), then it should be smashed flat with a large-type edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. People invent words, sometimes because there's a true need for a new word, and sometimes because they're ignorant of the correct word. People who invent out of ignorance should be shunned. And the virii they rode in on...
Rebooting the computer without knowing why you are rebooting it won't fix it. This is the best thing I've read in a while. Brilliant. :-)
Brilliant, but plagiarized from the AI Koans:
A novice was trying to fix a broken lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly- "You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong."
Knight turned the machine off and on.
The machine worked.
No, I haven't tried much of anything yet, except to play around with FC2's out-of-the-box install. But I will definitely give ndiswrapper a try, and thanks for the pointer.
This isn't meant to be a troll, but can you imagine the outrage Windows users (and Linux zealots alike) would have if simply upgrading Windows wiped out the partition tables and resulted in an unbootable system?
/dev/hda > /root/hda.out. Of course, if the partition table for hda is hosed, then you can't mount /, but you can work around that problem by booting into a rescue CD, making a partition table with one huge ext2 partition, then mounting it read-only. The filesystem will mount if / was in the first filesystem on the disk, even if the size of the filesystem wasn't originally that big. Then you cat /root/hda.out, umount /dev/hda1, and recreate the real partition table.
This kind of thing is why I always keep a copy of my partition table settings. I run fdisk -l
I started doing this after I accidently hosed my entire hda partition while I was traveling. I had about eight partitions on that disk, but by remembering the approximate sizes of each partition, and a little trial and error, I was able to fully recover the table. What was really hard was to not panic. Since then I always keep a readable copy of the partition table information (which I prefer to a binary copy of the partition table sectors).