10.16.06
Posted in Politics at 9:36 pm by madcap
I happened across this report about the Shelby County, Tennesee elections (statewide primaries, I believe) and Diebold machines (that’s right, this Diebold). This is scary stuff. I’ve heard a lot of talk about the potential for massive election fraud, but here’s an example of horrendous security in a real situation.
Don’t be surprised when Thomas Swidarski is suddently elected president.
Developing…
Update: I’ve learned that HBO is coming out with a documentary next month (Nov 2- right before the elections) entitled “Hacking Democracy” that should prove interesting.
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10.15.06
Posted in Books, Deep Thoughts, Work at 8:50 pm by madcap
I’ve started reviewing Robert Greene’s 33 Strategies of War. Those of you who know me know that I’ve read each of his 3 books (he has another old book on philosophy that isn’t the same sort of instructional guide, and I haven’ read that).
There have been a couple of recent events which inspired me to review the book. Most especially some of the politics going on at the office. When it comes to office politics, I have a sort of love-hate relationship. I am a technical contributor at heart. I view politics as an obstacle to technical accomplishment. Therefore, when I play politics, it is usually to counteract a political environment, so I can get the best technical solution accomplished. I just happen to usually believe my solution is the best technical solution out there (why would I settle for a sub-optimal solution from myself?).
So anyway, the topic above is the first of the 33 strategies. The lesson is to use polarization to focus your energies (and those of your allies) against a single enemy, as a motivational tool. Identify your enemies and do not equivocate on their status. With that in mind, I’m keeping a mental list of the people I would consider my enemies at work. Not that they are actively seeking to bring misfortune to me, although in at least one case I believe that to be so, but some of them simply stand in the way of my vision of how we ought to do things.
Shameless Amazon Plug:
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Posted in Rants at 8:01 pm by madcap
Is it just me, or is myspace just so fucking slow (and ugly) that it’s barely usable. Alright I’m accessing it through a public wireless net from a coffee shop, but come on. Oh well, that’s why I prefer to run my own blog.
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10.11.06
Posted in Politics at 2:04 pm by madcap
http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD131506
I suspect this is just some noise from extremists trying to get attention. However, I notice we in the West giving a lot of credence to these things, especially since the Danish cartoon issue. I’d say that the Muslim world (which doesn’t seem so much to include Muslims here in the US) needs to grow up, but we can’t control the juvenile behavior of others. We in the West (and in the US, especially) should stop catering to these sorts of things and stand up for our way of life.
It should be obvious that a picture of ice cream and a square building were not designed to offend muslims. In fact, most of those Danish cartoons weren’t either. And for those that were, if someone’s drawing your religion’s founder with a bomb for a turban… maybe you should stop and ask why they are drawing him that way. Maybe blowing stuff up in response isn’t the best solution.
Let’s be honest though- this isn’t about an oppressed people being humliated by these things. If that were the case, where was the muslim outrage when it came out that the 3 of the photos the “Danish” Imams had circulated were not actually published by the newspaper. One was from a French pig-squeling contest, and another two were apparently created by Muslims themselves, and were much more offensive: “One of the other two additional images (a photo) portrayed a Muslim being mounted by a dog while praying, and the other (a cartoon) portrayed Muhammad as a demonic pedophile.” (from the wikipedia article). I don’t know if Muhammad was demonic, but he did have sex with his 9-12 year old wife.
I think all of this boils down to extremists acting like spoiled children, and getting away with it. They make some outrageous claim, like that the Apple building, or the top to a Burger King ice cream container is an afront to Islam, in the hopes that corporations, politicians and the general public will decide it’s not worth fighting. Every time they get away with it, they are emboldened to strike at a larger target, hoping that in the nebulous world of multicultural sensitivies, we will cave in again and again, until they wield undue political strength. Well I don’t have multicultural sensitivies like that, so I say to the Islamists: fuck off. Go ruin your own societies.
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10.10.06
Posted in Best Practices, Software Development at 3:00 pm by madcap
If you’re a trained software engineer (or purport to be one) responsible for a certain area of code along with team members, and you encounter a problem while testing some related area, have the decency to follow the following steps (in order):
- Gather all pertinent information, at least in your head. You’re a software engineer and should be more familiar with the area than a key op tester would be. So, whether you’re going to debug the problem yourself or ask someone to, you should have a much better idea of what kind of data to collect in order to triage the problem. Don’t just assume your teammate will be happy to reconstruct what you were doing and where logs, etc. might be. We may have to act like detectives sometimes, but it doesn’t mean we like to.
- Try to identify the problem yourself. Even if it’s probably not your fault (and it never is, is it?), what’s stopping you from looking into the problem a little and seeing if you can identify the bug. Hell, if it’s simple enough, fix it yourself. That’s why you’re on a team.
- When describing the problem to others, be detailed. Your teammates are not mind-readers. You know how frustrating it is to get a bug-report from a non-engineer along the lines of “the feature didn’t work,” so don’t do the same to your teammates, or any engineer you’re asking for help from. Personally, I react very poorly to someone showing up in my cube and saying “X isn’t working. What’s broken?”. A corollary to this is if you’re asking another engineer to look at your code (informally or in a formal review), give him or her some background as to what the code does, what you changed about it, and why. Just throwing some code listings in my face and asking me to look at it is probably going to garner a “looks good… whatever” from me, or at least force me to ask you explain yourself (if I’m feeling charitable).
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