Google is coming to the Dalles. They're planning to build a facility which will employ 50 to 100 people. I suspect the number will be closer to 100 because they have bought a decent-sized 30 acres of land. I like this, not just because Google is a really cool company and certainly welcome in Oregon, but because I want to work there! Get me a job there, o loyal horde or readers. Googlebot, if you're reading this, put in a good word for me. Seriously. I would be happy to spend my first year there scrubbing toilets.
I'm really kind of dissatisfied with my blog's current state of affairs. I've been checking out tags and have been coveting the classification system that del.icio.us offers with tags. I was also checking out the new web app design paradigm offered with the use of XMLHTTPRequest objects, web standards, XML, XLST, and JavaScript to put it all together. This group has been identified and labeled as Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript + XML), and can be seen in the form of Google Suggest and Google Maps. I'm seriously considering migrating my blog to the new, completely open-source WordPress 1.5, which offers these features via plug-ins. The tradeoffs are basically zero; there's even a capcha plugin to keep my comment spam in the neighborhood of...zero. The other bonus of using WordPress is the complete lack of a need to "rebuild" the site after template changes are made. Every change goes live, immediately. The other advantage of switching to a new platform: the opportunity to change my URL format to eliminate cruft. I can replace "http://mullingitover.com/archives/000943.html" with "http://mullingitover.com/2004/2/16/SUV_Owners.html", which is very appealing from a design perspective.
While physician-assisted suicide is under attack in our country, Hunter S. Thompson reminded us that gun-assisted suicide is practically enshrined in the constitution.
What's up with Firefox lately? It's looking like the spammers have cracked through the barricades, because I've noticed several popups in the past few days. Other people are noticing it, too. I'm guessing that the problem will be squashed fairly quickly but it's still kind of sad. I really didn't miss those damn popups.
Update: An example of this problem.
Update 2: It's not really Firefox, but Flash's ability to open a browser which causes the problem. The solution: the FlashBlock extension.
Ok, so I guess it's not necessarily secret just because it isn't advertised. I stumbled onto some discussion about the my favorite web app, del.icio.us. No big deal, lots of people are talking about it. What makes this one different is that it's a discussion with Joshua Schachter. He is the creator of the app, and the discussion about features and ideas goes back to December of 2003. I've been reading it all day learning about the reasoning behind the design. I must admit that del.icio.us has a certain genius to it in terms of design. Reading the notes is like being backstage at a great play, and hearing the director comment on his reasons for the choices he made. I really wish he'd open up the source for del.icio.us, but at the same time, for security reasons I can also see why he'd probably prefer not to. I've been sitting around in my spare time at work trying to figure out a good model for it so I can homebrew my own version. It will take time and I'm hoping to fire up a java-based solution with Struts and Tiles, but it'll be interesting to see what the schema looks like. Joshua said in a recent interview that he's using mod_perl, HTML::Mason, and MySQL. I'd sort of like to try running a del.icio.us clone in java just to how it stacks up with load testing to simulate the 50k+ users that del.icio.us has.
I stumbled onto a humorous indictment of groupware. The post starts out discussing how the author was kicking it with Nat Friedman, who announced the release of Hula (a calendar and mail server) the other day.
I'll spare you the details. I just liked the part where he says,
Your "use case" should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?
Nice.
Why does iSnoop.net dominate so much? I don't know, but I hope it doesn't stop any time soon. There are lots of neat little 1337 tools, but for the n0n-1337 there's also a nice gmail invite spool, and they have a couple hundred thousand invites available. I bet all those people who paid for their accounts with kidneys, firstborn children, and their virginity are kicking themselves right now.
Oregon is mulling a change to their tax scheme which would eliminate per-gallon gasoline taxes and replace them with per-mile taxes. The plan being researched by the Oregon Department of Transportation would be implemented by installing a GPS device in every vehicle registered in the state, tracking each vehicle's every move. Can you say "Orwellian"? I knew you could.
This smacks of a gross violation of the constitution on privacy grounds, and the only other way to implement such a plan (using the odometer) would violate the constitution as well. Can you say "Regulation of interstate commerce"? Good job. Because that's what this plan would accomplish. How could the state verify that you're driving all your miles in Portland, Oregon and not in Vancouver, Washington? They couldn't, so they'd have to tax you for miles you drove out of the state.
Of course, I'm not even mentioning the fact that this is basically another subsidy for SUV owners. Yes, because we don't have enough pollution, we need to remove any kind of penalty for driving a Hummer instead of an electric car.
The speed at which this tax is taken off the books by voter referendum going to give the state legislators whiplash.
Tulsa, Oklahoma software developer and blogger Michael Bates is being threatened by his town's newspaper, the Tulsa World. The charge? Excerpting copyrighted material (not illegal), and linking to the newspaper's web site (again, not illegal). Wow. Can you say, "Stupid?". The blog world is a bit irate over this, understandably. I think the Tulsa World didn't really have a clue about the hornet's nest they knocked over. They probably said to themselves, "What's up with this hornet's nest? This one doesn't look that bad. I bet my friends would think I was a badass if I gave this a good kick. Maybe my second cousin, Susie, will even go to the dance with me. Maybe I could even make it to second base. Yep."
While we're talking about CMM, I should point out someone's ideas about levels of capability and mapping them onto people. Funny, because someone else had this same idea years ago.
/\ndy's weblog raises an interesting point about the promises made by CMM, RUP, and really any process which promises repeatable results:
One of the goals of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is to achieve a defined, repeatable process to design and produce software. Software processes such as RUP implicitly promise that the Process will fix any problems introduced by us unruly people.Now I'm not going to say whether the CMM and RUP are good approaches or not, but I would like to pose a challenge for you.
I want a defined, repeatable, process for making a hit movie. It should be well documented, and perfectly repeatable, with no consideration of the talent involved. Just turn the crank, and rely on the process to work.
That's what everyone seems to want for software development. Creating movies is very similar to developing software: you need a potentially large team, with many specialties, a lot of disparate (and occasionally unruly) technology, a lot of creativity, a good overall architecture/design, and lots of attention to details. Oh, and it has to satisfy the sponsor and end-users as well, even if you're not completely sure what it will take to do that.
So given that they're very similar activities, I challenge advocates of repeatable software process to show me a process that will work for hit movies as well.
And when they can't, take a good look at why not.
I'm in agreement in principle. However, with some of the movies which have come out lately I sort of have to wonder if there is a box sitting in the corporate offices of Universial or Paramount cranking out the results of the hit-movie algorithm...
This blog is really insightful, discussing many poignant issues in programming. I have spent the last hour or so browsing. Everything in the blog seems to indicate that he has it together with Java, except this part:
During a conversation with Diego today, he pointed out that the protected qualifier in Java does not prevent access to classes within the same package.That was news to me. I always thought protected limited the access to subclasses of the class that contains the protected member.
Really? How did you not know that? No matter, the rest is pretty good.
The Onion offers a bunch of Love Coupons. I'm particularly excited about "One sexual act completed expressly for the purpose of procreating another child of God."
Can anyone tell me what the official origin of Valentine's Day is? I'm finding little conclusive evidence in the Wikipedia entry on Valentine's Day, but I get the feeling it's another pagan holiday hijacked by Roman Catholicism and finally commercialized. In Japan, Valentine's day doesn't work out so well for the ladies according to the Wikipedia article. Basically the girls are expected to purchase chocolates, often at great personal expense, for all their male co-workers. They get their payback on March 14, White Day, but they only get goodies from their significant other. Harsh.
the other nightPamie.com rocks it for you on Valentine's Day.
after eating chili
i ripped a pretty good one.
i lifted the blanket
to trap your head
and remembered
you weren't there.
i miss you.
I might have another blog to add to my daily tech reading rounds (usually gizmodo and engadget): MAKE magazine has fired up their own blog. Like the magazine, MAKE's blog is dedicated to nifty tech projects like hacking your OnStar box and printing food.
I finally got a capcha installed and running on my blog which means I can finally afford to open comments back up! It was easier than I expected. I was kind of waiting for the blogosphere to get it together so I could examine the best practices available, and I finally got a combination of capcha, blacklist, and security through obscurity that I like. It's not enough to keep my blog completely secure (nothing is, as long as it's open to the public) but it's enough to keep it safe from automated attack. I'm definitely going to keep checking out different mechanisms to figure out how to keep my system safer. I'm seriously considering completely rewriting the front end in flash and wrapping all my data in XML. In the meantime, comment away!
I might as well throw this in: a big list of apps useful when using the Xtreme Programming methodology. XPlanner is a nifty open source, browser-based app for project management, the XP way. I could spend all day describing the apps that are listed there, but I'll leave it to you, my dedicated readers, to research and enjoy.
I really like the Eclipse IDE. For starters, it has the most outstanding installation process I've seen on this side of the Mac OS: Open it. Run it. It works. Why can't all softare Just Work© like that? It also helps that it has an open architecture with lots of plugins available. I'm checking out EclipseSRS, an XML-based, use-case centric software requirements specification tool.
You could almost say that the IBM-funded Eclipse is competing with Sun's NetBeans IDE except, well, they're both free. The only thing they can really compete for is warm fuzzies from the open source community. NetBeans has its own plugin catalogue, but the Eclipse plugins are much more abundant and interesting.
For those of you considering a foray into the blogging world, I strongly recommend reading this tutorial, How To Start Your Very Own Blog In Fifty-One Easy Steps!, brought to you by kuro5hin. It provides lots of useful advice. A good read, even for experienced bloggers. I learned a log, especially about choosing templates, dealing with rude comments, and getting the children and elders out of your "profanity zone".
I stumbled across a really compelling use of Flash, RSS, and the Flickr API today in the form of the Flickr Graph. It comes courtesy of (who else) Marmushi, who was also kind enough to give us other astonishing feats like Newsmap.
The Flickr Graph picks up the information from Flickr and displays it in a wobbly, undirected, interactive graph. You can try it out with my usename, 'mullingitover', just for kicks.
This fine example of Dear Leader's steel-trap intellect brought to you by Hullabaloo. Can anyone guess what he's trying to say? I think it's actually a secret code.Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to what has been promised. 'Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the -- like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red. 'Okay, better? I'll keep working on it.'
The Cell is looking poised to do a bit of destroying when it ships in 2006. I found Cell Architecture Explained today, which breaks down the processor's capabilities and explains its significance in the big picture. It stands to seriously shake up Intel and Microsoft with its insane processing power. One Cell processor theoretically has processing power surpassing 5 dual-core Opterons overclocked to 3 Ghz, and the PS3 will boast 4 of them.
I'll be watching intently.
Now, after some three billion years, the Darwinian era is over. The epoch of species competition came to an end about 10 thousand years ago when a single species, Homo sapiens, began to dominate and reorganize the biosphere. Since that time, cultural evolution has replaced biological evolution as the driving force of change. Cultural evolution is not Darwinian. Cultures spread by horizontal transfer of ideas more than by genetic inheritance. Cultural evolution is running a thousand times faster than Darwinian evolution, taking us into a new era of cultural interdependence that we call globalization. And now, in the last 30 years, Homo sapiens has revived the ancient pre-Darwinian practice of horizontal gene transfer, moving genes easily from microbes to plants and animals, blurring the boundaries between species. We are moving rapidly into the post-Darwinian era, when species will no longer exist, and the evolution of life will again be communal. In the post-Darwinian era, biotechnology will be domesticated. There will be do-it-yourself kits for gardeners, who will use gene transfer to breed new varieties of roses and orchids. Also, biotech games for children, played with real eggs and seeds rather than with images on a screen. Genetic engineering, once it gets into the hands of the general public, will give us an explosion of biodiversity. Designing genomes will be a new art form, as creative as painting or sculpture. Few of the new creations will be masterpieces, but all will bring joy to their creators and diversity to our fauna and flora.