The Daily WTF

Programming may be an art - or a science - or both. It could be a trade - or a profession - or both.

One thing for sure, it is not always logical.

Psychology pervades the field of programming almost as much as logic does.


A website called The Daily WTF catalogs some of the less logical pieces of programming out there.

It is humorous ...and educational.

Technorati tags: programming, snafus, weblog

Dell and Apple Grounded by Cautious Virgin

Virgin airlines has apparently taken in the news of the burning batteries built by Sony and used in Apple and Dell laptops.

Since that sort of thing, while dangerous on the ground, could be orders of magnitude more serious 8 miles up in the sky, the airline is taking no chances with the well-being of its customers.

Virgin Atlantic Bans Dell, Apple Laptops | Hardware:

Amid a slew of incidents involving exploding Sony batteries, Virgin Atlantic announced that it won%u2019t allow passengers to carry any Apple or Dell laptops onto flights.
Virgin Atlantic Airlines announced yesterday that passengers with any Dell or Apple laptop will not be allowed to use a battery while on the flight.

I wonder if this problem is arising solely from overcharged lithium batteries or there are other causes.... ?

Technorati tags: sony, apple, dell

Rethinking Schools - Just For Fun - Map Game

My grasp of geography in junior high school was proven to be pretty weak.

Basically, I knew that the world was a sphere, which put me ahead of some people in the world - but not by much.

Also, I knew the names of all 50 states in the U.S.A.

So I guess that has saved me from asking, upon meeting someone from Wyoming, So, what is it like - living in Europe?

Anyway, tonight I took a test on the geography of the Middle East.

Let us just say I did not do good. Took me 2-3 times to get Egypt, a couple to get Sudan, Saudi Arabia I got in just one or two tries. I got Iran pretty quickly and Iran probably took a couple.

The 'stans, alas, did not go well, even once I found the region where they are clustered.

I think I am going to make it a goal to learn where at least 50 countries are by the end of this decade.

In the meantime, drop by Rethinking Schools - Just For Fun - Map Game and try it out.

The way I see it, either you will do way better at it than I did - or you will be far more knowledgeable afterwards than you are now. Either way, you can't lose.

Technorati tags: geography

Xgl

Xgl looks very cool. I just saw it tonight for the first time.

I have heard about it before. Now I understand the murmurs of respect it has drawn.

Xgl from Novell for Linux:

Under the leadership of Novell's David Reveman, Novell has sponsored and led the development of this powerful new graphics subsystem for Linux since late 2004. Xgl is the X server architecture layered on top of OpenGL and takes advantage of available accelerated 3D rendering hardware. It is designed to integrate well with the composite extension and performs best when a compositing manager is running.

Technorati tags: xgl, linux, opensource, software, desktop

An impressive view of a desktop you can put on your computer for free

This demo of the Xgl desktop running on Ubuntu LInux just blew me away.



Ever see anything like that before?

Programmer turns Switcher

In his blog, Pete Wright talks about his evolution as a programmer.

From a poorly-paid - not just a cliche in this instance - wage slave, to a more experienced world-wise programmer, he recounts how he moved up in the field.

His computes have changed too.

When he started out with Windows a decade and a half ago it was shiny and new.

And he knew it was not a fad, despite what his anachronistic corporate boss told him.

His latest post was written on a Macintosh while a PC under his desk was uninstalling MS-Windows so he could install Ubunu Linux on it.

It is always interesting to read what another program writes about the evolution of his career and how technology has changed over a lengthy period of time.

Strange new worlds, and programming languages...: Good bye Microsoft; Pete has now left the building!

I just saw a video of Xgl running on Ubuntu Linux over at YouTube.com.

I can see why he is changing out his O.S. on his old computer at the moment.

The demo was the closest thing I have seen to jaw dropping in a year or two, I think.

Not only does it support 3D graphics and alpha transparency - something one operating system I know of will not even be able to do until next year.

It also supports physics.

That is to say, objects bend in 2 or 3 dimensions as you drag them. The faster you drag them, the more they bend. It is as if someone modeled the window as a 3D mesh.

It is not bad!!

Anyway, seeing Pete's post about switching to Mac plus Ubuntu Linux - on the tails of seeing that video of the Ubuntu desktop being demonstrated, let us just say I got what he was saying.

Or better yet: I got the picture!

HP... busted?

The first computer I ever programmed was made by Hewlett-Packard.

The model was the HP 2000 Access system. We accessed it at my high school using 2 HP CRT terminals (black-and-white monitors, of course) and a printer with a keyboard so we could sign on and print out our listings and get our program output on hardcopy to turn in.

I was stunned when I started hearing last week that HP had an ethics crisis and allegedly had its own director members and members of the press who do not even work for them - spied upon.

The scandal revolves around the claim that people's private phone call records were obtained by stealing their identities. Purportedly, certain sleuths got ahold of the social security numbers of the victims, impersonated them, and got their private phone call records from their respective phone companies.

Not too chic.

In fact, for me - it is an outright turn-off.

HP was instrumental in my early learning of how to use computers.

It looks like they have learned how to use people now, and it does not sound very nice.

This company really needs to turn around.

I bought a computer from HP a little over half a decade ago. It crashed a couple times during the first four hours that I used it. I was not impressed.

This somehow, seems even worse.

Because now, somehow, the company itself has crashed.

Calif. AG: HP Insiders May Face Charges: Financial News - Yahoo!Finance:

California's attorney general warned for the first time Tuesday that company insiders are likely to face criminal charges."We currently have sufficient evidence to indict people both within Hewlett-Packard as well as contractors on the outside," Attorney General Bill Lockyer said.

Technorati tags: hp, crime, california

Why I want to consume "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity"

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

by David Allen

Programmers everywhere are talking about the Getting Things Done book.

When you are a computer programmer, you have to constantly produce, virtually always have deadlines, and often have more than one thing competing for your attention.

You have:

1. your current project(s)
2. occasional rush jobs
3. constant need to find, study, learn, and practice with: new software/class libraries, new object-oriented frameworks, new programming languages, new file and document formats

I am just like other programmers and everyone else. I want to learn about Getting Things Done too!

See more about Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Intel Corp. to cut 10,500 jobs - Yahoo! News

The same year that Apple computer completely converted its entire product line from PowerPC CPUs to Intel CPUs, Intel has announced it will make massive cuts of its workforce.

Ten percent of the companies workers will go.

Although such announcements usually cause a short term rise in a company's stock, this time Intel's stock price did the opposite. It dropped.

Intel's stock price has not been going that well overall for the past year.

Jordon Robertson, AP writer:

ntel said Tuesday it will eliminate 10,500 jobs %u2014 about 10 percent of its work force %u2014 through layoffs, attrition and the sale of underperforming business groups as part of a massive restructuring

Technorati tags: economics, labor

Fortunately Firefox: JavaScript 1.7 - mother tongue of DHTML/AJAX in Firefox 2.0

Hey, there is a lot going on with JavaScript this past year.

First, we had Firefox 1.5 released late in 2005. It included SVG, SVG DOM support, and SVG JavaScript support. It also included a new Canvas feature, which is graphics controlled by - yup, you guessed it: JavaScript.

Then, last month, we had the long-awaited JavaScript: The Definitive Reference, 5th ed. come out. It covers JavaScript up through version 1.6, which is the version supported inside the Firefox 1.5 browser that is the current latest released version.

Now, next month Firefox 2.0 will come out. That is in late October. It introduces this new JavaScript 1.7.

Fortunately Firefox: JavaScript 1.7 - mother tongue of DHTML/AJAX in Firefox 2.0

JavaScript 1.7 borrows features from other well-known dynamic/functional programming scripting languages, such as Python.

What this means, is that former 98-pound weakling of programming languages, JavaScript, is now looking pretty studly.

Some browser makers have not updated their browsers in quite a long time, almost since the start of this decade.

So, contemporary programming tricks will not work in contemporary legacy browsers that a lot of people are using.

Fortunately, that does not really matter because Firefox runs on all the platforms that they do, and more, and has better and more numerous features.

That is because it has been under active development for the past few years. Something that one or two browser makers cannot say about their own ware.

I have not heard yet what version of Java will be shipping with Firefox 2.0.

However, since Java J6SE or JDK 1.6 or whatever they are calling it is not shipping yet - and Firefox 2.0's release is just 6 weeks away, I am guessing that Firefox 2.0 will come with Java 5 SE (JDK 1.5).

That is not too bad. JDK 1.5 super powerful platform with all kinds of concurrency features built in, the generics feature that some programmers were clamoring for the previous half decade or so, easier collection/for-loop iteration, and more.

JDK 1.5 Java has worked in/with Firefox for a long time. So while we have to wait a little longer to be able to use JDK 1.6 and JavaScript 1.7, JDK 1.5 is here now for applet writers.

Moodle - A Free, Open Source Course Management System for Online Learning

A couple people I know are in education. I think if I was an educator, I would look at this moodle software.

I looked over a book about it tonight. It has a lt of great qualities.

The person who wrote it is an educator, not a software engineer. They created moodle because they saw a need that was not being met by existing instructor-defined courseware.

I have this kind of intuitive hunch that media companies are going to extend their operations into the adult educational field during the course (pardon the pun!) of the next decade or two.

Why? Basically, they have got the goods.

History becomes more interesting when you can compare/contrast an ancient civilization with its descendants - or heirs. Math and science become more riviting when you can tie the subject matter to the latest scientific/industrial breakthrough. Economic theory and financial instruments are great subjects - when they are tied to the latest scandals, trends, and lucrative investment strategies - and surprising collapses/meltdowns.

Media companies have this stuff. It is still warm from their hands right now.

Media companies have the less recent things on file in their archives too. A lot is probably in digital form because it was created that way. The rest could be converted at jaw dropping speed. Two organizations that converted a lot of printed pages to digital form spring to mind right now.

The educational industry is in a time of change. It is expensive, intensive, and - lets face it - its product has the shortest half-life ever today.

Adults in many professions have to be self-teaching, self-educating, self-learning. They are both school and student, learning institution and resident scholar.

If people could look up more information they were looking for more quickly, with better help from the computer - yes, better even than Google is at the moment - then more people could be enabled to do jobs that would be too demanding for them today.

Law, Medicine, Counseling, Law Enforcement - perhaps not.

But, think about it - politicians, educators, managers, tycoons, bankers, parents who want to understand what kids are learning in school so they can help - these people could benefit from a media+education institutional hybrid.

Moodle - A Free, Open Source Course Management System for Online Learning:

Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a 50,000-student University.

Moodle seems to be crafted so that people who are not computer scientists can put together a significant training regimen for a subject in less time and with more compelling results.

Textbooks are going for over a hundred bucks a pop now. School systems are demanding students buy computers, which are selling for ever less money each year. They cannot just keep charging the people who have not ever made any money, more and more money to be able to make money someday

Media companies are hurting so badly that some of them are inflating their subscription/circulation numbers. They are the ones that have the cutting edge graphic artists, writers, illustrators, photographers, researchers, and reporters.

College students are finding they can't get a job upon graduation, interest from students the following year in taking that curriculum tanks. For each of those students that decides that school or curriculum is not for him - there could be a hundred professionals out there who know it is for them, and that they need a refersher. They probably want to update their aging skills more than that 17 year old wants to acquire them.

I see a partial media-education industry merger, not just collaboration/cooperation, as nearly inevitable.

Think about where matters affecting them stand, what directions they are moving in today - and extend the line. Where else could they be headed?

I know it sounds crazy, but think about it. Apart, these two industries are both on shaky legs. Combined, they could be one of the most relevant industries around. Not just an information/education industry - a genuine knowledge industry.

Technorati tags: moodle, free, opensource, educating, software, cms

Google hiring programmers to work across the US

I just looked at a Google Job Openings ad, which incidentally, was advertised by something that looked liked a Google AdSense ad - and, boy - are they hiring.

I always presume that all Google Jobs are in California, all tightly packed in one town, even.

They are not.

They stretch from coast to coast across the US and there is a link on the page cited below that indicates if you click it you will see jobs available from Google that are outside the United States too.

The jobs are pretty diverse. For the most part, they are not surprising. They do drive home the fact that Google is not a one OS company or even a one platform company.

They use a lot of languages, runtime platforms, and operating systems. Not tons maybe, but a lot more than just one of anything.

I really doubt Google will be known primarily as a web search company twenty years from now. I have no doubt they will still be around and highly respected for whatever they are doing at the time.

Software Engineering - California - Mountain View:

We have a broad range of Software Engineer positions available throughout the United States

Technorati tags: java, programmer, google, python, firefox, flash