Wednesday, May 05, 2004


PUT THAT COFFEE DOWN. Coffee is for closers!

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) - A movie about salesThe ultimate movie about sales is Glengarry Glen Ross. With a juggernaut of a cast and the most incisive script ever created in this genre, it is painfully realistic to watch. And the penultimate scene in this ultimate movie is Blake's visit to the sales force.

Blake: These are the new leads. These are the Glengarry leads. To you, these are gold; you do not get these. Because to give them to you would be throwing them away. ...

Blake: We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize?
[Holds up prize]
Blake: Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired...

Blake: Your name is 'your wanting', and you can't play the man's game, you can't close them, and then tell your wife your troubles. 'Cause only one thing counts in this world: get them to sign on the line which is dotted. You hear me you f**kin' faggots? ...

Blake: A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing, always be closing...

Dave Moss: Who are you? What's your name?
Blake: You see this watch? You see this watch?
Dave Moss: Yeah.
Blake: That watch costs more than you car. I made $970,000 last year. How much you make? You see pal, that's who I am, and you're nothing. Nice guy, I don't give a sh*t. Good father, f**k you. Go home"...

Blake: You got leads. Mitch & Murray paid good money. Get their names to sell them. You can't close the leads you're given, you can't close shit, *you are* sh*t, hit the bricks pal, and beat it, 'cause you are going *out*.
Shelley Levene: The leads are weak.
Blake: "The leads are weak." The f**king leads are weak? You're weak. I've been in this business fifteen years...
Dave Moss: What's your name?
Blake: F**k you. That's my name.
[Moss laughs]
Blake: You know why, mister? 'Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove an eighty thousand dollar BMW. *That's* my name...

Dave Moss: We don't gotta sit here and listen to this.
Blake: You CERTAINLY don't pal, 'cause the good news is - you're fired...

Blake: PUT THAT COFFEE DOWN. Coffee is for closers. I don't see any closers here...

Blake: And to answer you question, pal, why am I here? I came here because Mitch and Murray asked me to. They asked me for a favor. I said the real favor, follow my advice and fire your f**king ass because a loser is a loser.


Memorable Quotes from Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

TLA Hell

Amazon.com: Books: Ask the DustI'm worried... yes, worried... about acronym overlap. Three-letter-acronyms (TLAs) are propagating so fast that overlap is not only inevitable... it's already happened in every sector of life. Consider the following "identical" TLAs. Not only are they in the same genus, say, "Computer Software and Networking", but they're also in the same species ("Information Security"):

MAC - mandatory access control
MAC - media access control (e.g., "MAC address")
MAC - message authentication code

There are probably a few more MACs in the ballgame as well. Confusing, eh? How do we remedy this situation? I recommend FLAs for all technology-related subjects. Four-letter-acronyms. Let's say we just ask for... no, demand, that all TLAs are converted to FLAs. And that any new acronyms are FLAs. For instance:

MAAC - mandatory access control (pronounced: may-ack)
MACA - media access control (pr: mack-ah)
MEAC - message authentication code (pr: mee-ack)

Couldn't be simpler, eh? ;-) And the penalty for non-compliance? Anyone found violating the TLA rule must create an index of all existing TLAs. The only problem: we have to get everyone off of saying "TLA" or "FLA" because... what happens when we get to "five-letter-acronym"?

Ah, a meta-overlap!

Tuesday, May 04, 2004


"We know the truth"

Deliver Us from Evil : Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and LiberalismTis some powerful stuff: The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth released this note in the National Review, signed by 189 of Kerry's fellow veterans.

May 4, 2004

Senator Kerry,

We write from our common heritage as veterans of duty aboard Swift Boats in the Vietnam War. Indeed, you should note that a substantial number of those men who served directly with you during your four month tour in Vietnam have signed this letter.

It is our collective judgment that, upon your return from Vietnam, you grossly and knowingly distorted the conduct of the American soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen of that war (including a betrayal of many of us, without regard for the danger your actions caused us). Further, we believe that you have withheld and/or distorted material facts as to your own conduct in this war.

We believe you continue this conduct today, albeit by changing from an anti-war to a "war hero" status. You now seek to clad yourself in the very medals that you disdainfully threw away in the early years of your political career. In the process, we believe you continue a deception as to your own conduct through such tactics as the disclosure of only carefully screened portions of your military records. Both then and now, we have concluded that you have deceived the public, and in the process have betrayed honorable men, to further your personal political goals...

...Specifically, we the undersigned formally request that you authorize the Department of the Navy to independently release your military records (through your execution of Standard Form 180), complete and unaltered, including your military medical records...

...Senator Kerry, we were there. We know the truth. We have been silent long enough. The stakes are too great, not only for America in general but, most importantly, for those who have followed us into service in Iraq and Afghanistan. We call upon you to provide a full, accurate accounting of your conduct in Vietnam.

Respectfully,

Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, USN ... other signatories follow...


Swift Boat Veterans for Truth & John Kerry on National Review Online

Software Registration

rackproof Your Software: Protect Your Software Against CrackersFrom JOS' discussion board, a developer asks how best to prevent piracy of his application:

I am trying to come up with a software registration system. I am debating whether it is good or not to lock the application to a single PC (if possible at all)... I have a few methods in mind for registration...

* One registration method requires you to be connected to the internet. The connection might be needed for a few seconds either the first time you run the app, or every time you run it. This essentially is to make sure only one copy of the registration code is alive at any given point. So if you distribute the app to your friends, all of you can't run it at the same time.

* Another method requires me to generate a different (unique) binary everytime someone buys the app. I am not sure how I would send this binary to the customer though. I guess I would create it automatically, and then create a link only for that customer to download as soon as the credit card info is entered (i.e. the sale is closed). After the app is downloaded, the binary and the link will be deleted. This looks pretty involved though.

So based on your experience, what kinds of "maintenance" headaches would these methods create? I am pretty new to this registration stuff. I wish I didn't have to deal with it, but looks like I have to...


We use a paid registration code for our Personal Edition download (free, but some advanced features expire after a trial period). The code gets emailed to the user automatically after a purchase.

When the user enters the registration code into the client software, the program will attempt to report back to the central server. This report includes the code, the internal and external IP addresses, user-name, and other basic registration information. If the user isn't online, the program will wait a few days and try again later.

If we receive multiple notifications from a bunch of different IPs that all use the same code, we know some piracy has occurred. We gently notify the original purchaser that they are responsible for distribution of the code... and that's usually as far as it gets.

The Joel on Software Forum - Software Registration

Monday, May 03, 2004


Just bootstrap it

Start Your Own Software Company: A Step-By-Step Guide to Setting Up a Computer Software BusinessExcellent article on starting up a software company on the cheap.

Greg Gianforte thinks he knows the single best way to launch a business. Here's his secret: "Bootstrap it."

That's how Gianforte launched his first company, software maker Brightwork Development Inc., in 1986. Eight years later he and his partners sold the business to McAfee Associates for more than $10 million -- a move that enabled Gianforte to retire to Bozeman, Mont., at age 33. After realizing that he couldn't spend the rest of his life fly-fishing, Gianforte started his second major venture, RightNow Technologies Inc. In almost five years, RightNow has grown from a spare bedroom in Gianforte's home to 230 employees and $30 million in sales. So it's understandable that he might think that he's onto something good here...


Start with Nothing

Sound Focus

Sound Synthesis and SamplingFrom MIT's Tech Review, a fascinating description of emerging focused sound technologies. Imagine four people sitting in a car, each listening to their own personalized music, but without headphones!

...two inventors are each staking claim to a new audio technology that corporate customers say will have a huge market within the next five years. Known as directional sound, it uses an ultrasound emitter to shoot a laserlike beam of audible sound so focused that only people inside a narrow path can hear it. “It’s phenomenal,” says Simon Beesley, an audio marketing manager for Sony’s European business division. So far Sony has sold just a handful of directional-sound systems for specialty installations in stores and other locations, but ultimately, says Beesley, “Without question, this is going to be a billion-dollar-plus product.” ...

The Sound War

Sunday, May 02, 2004


Degree of Difficulty

Boxer's Start-Up: A Beginner's Guide to Boxing The debate occurs frequently: which sport is the most difficult? ESPN's analysis comes up with a clear winner.

We sized them up. We measured them, top to bottom. We've done our own Tale of the Tape, and we've come to a surprising conclusion. Pound for pound, the toughest sport in the world is: Boxing. The Sweet Science...

...But don't take our word for it. Take the word of our panel of experts, a group made up of sports scientists from the United States Olympic Committee, of academicians who study the science of muscles and movement, of a star two-sport athlete, and of journalists who spend their professional lives watching athletes succeed and fail...


Their chart is pretty interesting. They were very quantitative about the selection process, taking ten athletic variables: endurance, strength, power, speed, agility, flexibility, nerve, durability, hand-eye coordination and analytic aptitude. The top ten were:

1) Boxing
2) Ice hockey
3) Football
4) Basketball
5) Wrestling
6) Martial Arts
7) Tennis
8) Gymnastics
9) Baseball/softball
10) Soccer

Interested in the bottom five? Hint: Golf didn't make it, it was #51.

56) Curling
57) Bowling
58) Shooting
59) Billiards
60) Fishing

ESPN.com: Sport Skills Difficulty Rankings

Saturday, May 01, 2004


Deadwood

Al SwearingenThe Deadwood message board has some classic lines that rival the show's best. Deadwood, for those of you who don't subscribe to HBO, is a fantastically written mini-series. It's based on true events that took place in what became Deadwood, SD during the days of Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane. The central character of the "camp" is Al Swearingen, played brilliantly by Ian McShane (you may remember him from Sexy Beast). He's a vicious, money-hungry SOB who owns the combined saloon, whorehouse and casino. History recalls that he made between $5,000 and $10,000 a day from his operation in Deadwood. That's probably the current equivalent of $500,000 to $1,000,000 -- a day.

"As a base of operations, it is f**king hard to beat a saloon.", Al Swearengen

Swearingen, talking about the 'Hoopleheads': “Sometimes I wish we could just hit 'em over the head, rob 'em, and throw their bodies in the creek."
Tolliver, feigning horror: "But that would be wrong. ”

From the messageboard:
> Does anyone know what "hooplehead" means with any f**king certitude?
> Near's I can figure, a hooplehead is an ignorant, backwoods, dim-witted, slow-thinking, muddle-headed, addle-brained, limp-d**k, dumb-ass c**ksucker.
> But we use the term with great affection around here.

Deadwood Message Board

My Top Ten Tips for Avoiding a Fraudulent Antique

Antique Trader Antiques & Collectibles Price Guide 2004 (Antique Trader Antiques and Collectibles)For you antique collectors out there: my top ten tips for avoiding a fraudulent antique:

1) If you purchase nineteenth century stationary or business cards like this one:

Scotsman Hotel
Scotsman Montana
Jason Purdy, Proprietor
www.hotelscotsman.com

Look for a URL. If a web address is included, the item is probably not genuine.

2) If you purchase an ancient scroll written in Latin or Aramaic, have it translated. Phrases like "tee shot", "SUV" or "Donald Rumsfeld" are the giveaways you're looking for.

3) If buying a shroud purported to have been worn by one or more religious figures from antiquity, take a long whiff of the fabric. It should not smell Downy-fresh.

4) A presidential letter written during the Civil War should never appear on three-ring binder paper.

5) Carefully study any nineteenth century photographic portrait. You can be almost certain that the photo is a fraud if any of the subjects are wearing "Survivor Buffs".

6) If considering a sarchophagus with an enclosed mummy, the ribbons of mummy-cloth should be free of dry-cleaning tags.

7) A 1914 Stutz Bearcat automobile in original condition will not have halogen headlights, a neon-enhanced undercarriage or an exhaust "fart pipe".

8) Degas never painted on black velvet. Nor were his subjects ever card-playing pets.

9) While Da Vinci was one of the most magnificent intellects in history, I am almost certain that his manuscripts never included any Excel Macros.

10) While he was a brilliant orator and battlefield general, Ceasar never appeared on C-Span.

These tips should spare you the embarassment and shame so common in today's antiques marketplace.

Friday, April 30, 2004


The Rickshaw Effect

The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned ScientistsOhio is one of the states that, because of its high smog levels, is required to perform an emissions check on vehicles. Thus, it falls to the populace to wait in line at various E-check stations until someone adjudicates your vehicle's tailpipe gas and takes a $20 bill from you for the effort.

Aside from the fact that approximately 90% of all vehicles on the road comply and that ozone levels have dropped 30% or more in Ohio, here's why it's a bad idea for our area:

Ohio is in a valley threaded with interstate highways. That means if everyone in the metro area sold their cars and used bikes and rickshaws for transportation, we would still be an EPA offender. That's because through-traffic using highways like I-64, I-70, I-71, I-75, I-74, etc. would still be belching out carbon monoxide while we rode in our rickshaws. We happen to be at the confluence of an incredibly well-traveled set of routes. That's why national - not local - standards are needed.

E-Check

Thursday, April 29, 2004


Spin Zone

The Savage Nation: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Borders, Language and CultureSome random musings on the state of the media:

1) Interesting how ABC News -- or, the New York bureau of Al Jazeera, as I like to call them -- chose to devote an entire Nightline to reading a roll call of American war dead. Pity they couldn't devote a similar show to reading the roster of WTC victims, Pentagon victims, or even the gassed Kurds and hundreds of thousands of Saddam's murdered subjects: 'Nightline' plan to read war dead riles some

2) Lots of left-leaning pundits expressed glee and mock consternation over Cheney accompanying Bush to the 9/11 Commission hearings ("...watch, I'll drink a glass of water while President Bush answers your questions..."). But I can't seem to find too many mentions of the fact that Clinton had both Sandy Berger and another White House staff member with him during his testimony. The name escapes me at the moment but, true to form, I can find approximately eighteen quadrillion references to Bush/Cheney's testimony in a Google News search but virtually none mentioning Clinton's posse.

3) During Condy Rice's testimony, a lot of media attention was focused on Bob Kerrey's "swatting a fly" comment. "Kerrey expressed frustration with Rice's references to President Bush being "tired of swatting flies" in dealing with overseas terror outbreaks. "What fly had he swatted?" Kerrey said. "We only swatted a fly once, on the 20th of August 1998. We didn't swat any flies afterward. How the hell could he be tired?"... Kerrey said. "After the attack on the (USS) Cole in 2000, it would not have been a swatting of a fly. There were a lot of military plans in place in the Clinton administration."

Hmmm... nice try, Bob. After the USS Cole attack, Kerrey said... let's see... that he did not advocate a military response to that attack... instead, he gave a speech that the best thing the U.S. could do would be to address the threat represented by Iraq's leader, none other than Saddam Hussein. The transcipt (nor the media) does not record the color of Kerrey's face after this fact was pointed out to the commission: Rice delivers tough defense of administration

4) For that matter, the right-leaning Fox News can be overbearing and unbelievably tabloid at times. "Around the world in 80 seconds" is useful if you have the attention span of a parakeet. It's compelling if you're interested in, say, the kangaroo that dragged the tobacco farmer out of a burning barn or the tragicomic drama of a tractor-trailer smashing into a bus loaded with rodeo clowns. But if you're interested in hard news and analysis that is really fair and balanced, I'm not sure where you turn.

Surprisingly, PBS' News Hour with Jim Lehrer might be the closest thing we have to truly thoughtful reporting. Alas, despite Joan Croc's $200 million bequest to PBS, their powers-that-be are still hitting up Washington's Left for their traditional grants while shilling coffee mugs and PBS "flair" for donations from the unwashed masses.

Wednesday, April 28, 2004


Team Enterprise

Dragonfly : An Epic Adventure of Survival in Outer SpaceMy old consulting buddy Shawn sent me a note. A little bit of background: after a stint consulting at P&G for the Information Security folks, Shawn was called up for activities in Afghanistan which he might tell you about someday over a beer. Now he's back, working for one of the largest defense contractors in the U.S. And, it appears, he's doing some fun stuff on the side. Shawn is a very bright engineer and developer, with a lot of experience in messaging, directories, and now, it would appear, spacecraft guidance systems. Here's the tail end of this message:

BTW, I'm also doing some independent research outside of work. I'm working with some associates (aerospace engineers, mechanical engineers, astrophysists, etc) on a team to build a design proposal for the Earth Return Vehicle used in future manned Mars mission. I'm responsible for design of command & data handling subsystem, computing architecture, infrastructure/environmental control net, and navigational system. I think we're seriously going to turn some heads with this one. Our team's website is http://www.spacemagnetics.com/teamenterprise/home/index.html. Check it out and tell everyone you know. Publicity and notoriety are worth 20% of the evaluation criteria for our proposal! So if you know of any contacts to media outlets/venues to do a press release (i.e. home-town news, radio, Internet mags, etc.) let me know.

Hey Shawn, I don't think the JVM license agreement allows you to use it on mission-critical stuff like spacecraft nav systems! ;-)

Team Enterprise

Village Voice: Kerry Must Go

I guess things are worse in the Kerry camp than I thought. The Village Voice, well known for their conservative viewpoint - not, writes:

Note to Democrats: it's not too late to draft someone—anyone—else... ...With the air gushing out of John Kerry's balloon, it may be only a matter of time until political insiders in Washington face the dread reality that the junior senator from Massachusetts doesn't have what it takes to win and has got to go. As arrogant and out of it as the Democratic political establishment is, even these pols know the party's got to have someone to run against George Bush...

Mondo: Kerry Must Go

BM... V

Mr. T's blog has an entertaining rant on a recent visit to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Seems he needed to perform the oh-so-simple task of converting a leased vehicle into an owned vehicle ("I OWNZ YOU NOW"). Hours later and one AK carbine short of an ABC News Special, he came away with his mission accomplished. Guess he doesn't know about the tiny, but very efficient, BMV office located in Montgomery. My all-time longest wait was maybe six minutes. If I didn't know better, I'da thought he was describing the Reichstag-like BMV in Watertown, Massachusetts. Ah, the memories. Good times. Good times.

Bureau of Motor Vehicles


Robbers Die Trying to Hold-Up Suicide Bomber

My Life Is a Weapon : A Modern History of Suicide BombingLesson learned: never stick up a man wearing an explosives belt. Second lesson learned: never try to take the explosives belt off by force. Thanks to B for the link.

A Hamas suicide bomber blew up two armed Palestinians who tried to rob him at gun point in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas claimed the “stickup men” worked for Israeli intelligence, while Palestinian security forces said the two were ordinary thieves.

Rather than give up his explosives, the bomber detonated them, killing himself and the two robbers near the border fence between Gaza and Israel...


Robbers Die Trying to Hold-Up Suicide Bomber

Monday, April 26, 2004


Nine languages benchmarked

Becoming a Category of One: How Extraordinary Companies Transcend Commodity and Defy ComparisonThe following is a "Nine Language Performance Round-up, Benchmarking Math & File I/O". Accurate? Dunno. Interesting, though.

int
math
long
math
double
math

trig

I/O

TOTAL
Visual C++9.618.86.43.510.548.8
Visual C#9.723.917.74.19.965.3
gcc C9.828.89.514.910.073.0
Visual Basic9.823.717.74.130.785.9
Visual J#9.623.917.54.235.190.4
Java 1.3.114.529.619.022.112.397.6
Java 1.4.29.320.26.557.110.1103.1
Python/Psyco29.7615.4100.413.110.5769.1
Python322.4891.9405.747.111.91679.0


Whickety whack Benchmarking 9 languages

The Ghetto Mini-Pattern

Rick James, the Ultimate Collection, BeotchNo, this doesn't involve tales of Warsaw or Rick James. As a designer, architect or developer, have you ever been confronted with an unwieldy, nasty, fugly ball of application code that desperately needs a rewrite? Yet, there's too much working business logic to simply throw it away. Enter the Ghetto mini-pattern.

...Hide your ugly code inside a Ghetto. The ghetto is a single file or class where issues of code cleanliness do not apply. It is entered by reputable developers with no small amount of trepidation, and left as quickly as possible. On the other hand, it does the job, and it keeps the bad elements away from more cultured code...

Name: The Ghetto

DARPA and P2P

Kick-ass HTML coder? Checkity check"S" emailed me a hookup to this article in which DARPA is funding several efforts to improve P2P architectures for the raw processing power, bandwidth efficiencies, fault-tolerance in routing, and so forth.

Darpa is pushing toward a world of ultralow-cost, low-power, ad hoc mesh networks. The programs are part of a broad military drive toward ubiquitous computing based on next-generation networks, including RFID and wireless sensor nets...

DARPA looks past Ethernet, IP nets

Sunday, April 25, 2004


Revenge trip

Man on Fire (2004)I just got back from seeing the film Man on Fire. The screen adaptation of the A.J. Quinnell novel has received mixed reviews, but I found it remained generally true to the spirit of the book.

Creasy (Denzel Washington) is a broken-down, alcoholic, ex-special forces assassin. Visiting his friend Rayburn (Christopher Walken) in Mexico City, he ends up taking a job as a bodyguard to make ends meet. A kidnapping spree has spread throughout Latin America and a wealthy young couple hires Creasy to fulfill the terms of a kidnap-insurance policy.

Pita (Dakota Fanning)'s spunk and unabashed friendliness slowly penetrate Creasy's veil of pain and alcoholism. Soon, he's not only protecting her, but is also coaching her at swimming and helping with studies. Then, in the turning point of the film, despite Creasy's quick-witted defense, Pita is kidnapped from her piano lesson and Creasy left for dead with multiple gunshot wounds.

Corrupt cops, mobsters, and other officials are all taking their cuts from the kidnapping game. As Creasy begins to recover, he sets off on the ultimate roadtrip of revenge. And all hell breaks loose.

I rated this film four stars. Tony Scott has to tone down the nausea-inducing quick cuts, fades, over-exposures, and other tricks of the trade. When he gets into story-telling mode, he does his best work, as Fanning and Washington are nearly perfect in their roles. Do yourself a service and read the books. Nothing matches the entire Creasy series.

A.J. Quinnell's Man on Fire


Stupid people, behaving stupidly

Nothing PersonalJason Starr's Nothing Personal is a pure crime novel, plain and simple. Less noir and more documentary, it describes the lives of two families, the DePinos and the Sussmans. Joey DePino is a working stiff with a major league gambling problem and a violent loanshark after him. His wife, Melissa, is disenchanted with her life, especially as she sees friends like Leslie Sussman get ahead. Leslie is married to David, an ad exec, and living in a ritzy Upper East Side apartment.

But David's life isn't all peaches and cream. A beautiful Asian co-worker, with whom he's had an affair, has turned psychopathic. As Joey struggles to pay off his debts and David grapples with having his affair exposed, things go south in a hurry. And, typical of Starr's work, lives are lost in the process.

This is Starr's second book and, while not as cleverly plotted as Cold Caller, you'll get diabolical pleasure out of watching some stupid people do irrevocably stupid things. It's realistic, compelling stuff and Starr is a consistently entertaining author.

Jason Starr's Nothing Personal

Saturday, April 24, 2004


No, I am Doug Ross

Poems from a Beach, by Doug Ross I received this email a few days ago:

from doug ross to doug ross,

dude...please work on your representation of a doug
ross. you are totally off base w/ how i am portrayed.
i'm slightly dorky but you have taken it to another
level. chill be cool. be doug ross. thank you.

another doug ross.


My response:

When you search for Doug Ross on Google... who do you come up with?

When you need a hard-core hacker for those tough-to-crack problems, who do you
go to?

When you need a "Doug Ross" with 18" guns, who do you ask for?

That's right... me. All other Doug Rosses I'm aware of use me as a role model.

:-)

--doug


Perfectionism vs. Good Enough

Assume for a minute that some definitions exist:

good enough: The fuzzy range of software goodness which your customers are willing to accept your product and pay the negotiated price.

perfectionism: The software goodness required by which your best developer would showcase her software in a trade journal.

So... Is there not room for both? I mean a healthy software environment should consist of a tension between perfectionism and good enough...


My response:

It's "prioritization", not "perfection". The trait I look for, aside from technical ability and communications skills, is simply the ability to prioritize.

Nothing is ever perfect. Of those facets of our jobs that demand attention, which should be dealt with first? THAT, my friends, is prioritization. And very few folks I've come across have that ability.

When you have 30 days to ship a product, the developer who can figure out which tasks _must_ be accomplished to ship in 30 days... and spec out the tasks in the right order... is worth his or her weight in gold.

It all comes down to getting working software in the hands of users. Prioritization, IMO, is the key.


perfectionism vs. good enough

Friday, April 23, 2004

Is Cold Fusion Heating Up?

Nuclear Transmutation: The Reality of Cold FusionIs Cold Fusion really making a comeback? After all the controversy, ridicule and failed experiements, MIT's Tech Review reports:

Fifteen years after the first controversial claims hit the headlines, cold fusion refuses to die. A small cadre of die-hard advocates argues that experiments now produce consistent results. The physics establishment continues to scoff, but some scientists who have been watching the field carefully are convinced something real is happening. And now the U.S. Department of Energy has decided that recent results justify a fresh look at cold fusion...

Is Cold Fusion Heating Up?

Vulnerability Issues in TCP

Internetworking with TCP/IP Vol.1: Principles, Protocols, and Architecture (4th Edition)TCP under attack.

The vulnerability described in this advisory affects implementations of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)... if exploited, the vulnerability could allow an attacker to create a Denial of Service condition against existing TCP connections, resulting in premature session termination. The resulting session termination will affect the application layer, the nature and severity of the effects being dependent on the application layer protocol. The primary dependency is on the duration of the TCP connection, with a further dependency on knowledge of the network (IP) addresses of the end points of the TCP connection.

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is judged to be potentially most affected by this vulnerability...


NISCC Vulnerability Advisory 236929: Vulnerability Issues in TCP

Thursday, April 22, 2004


Writing a Great Employment Ad

Recruiting on the Web : Smart Strategies for Finding the Perfect CandidateA writer on JOS asks how best to write a high-tech employment ad. I wrote:

I've wondered whether putting something cryptic that --- only hard-core tech-heads would understand --- might filter out the non-conforming folks and leave you with some good candidates.

Kind of a Google Ad serving program, only offline. For instance, I was searching for "swish++" and got a Google employment ad.

So... how about something like this (modify to fit technologies you're interested in):

"AES, Blowfish, GRE tunnels, multi-factor, PGP SDK, IPtables/NetFilter, ... if you're savvy, email us a CV at mailto:dir-at-badblue.com."

Whatcha think?

p.s., uhmmm, not to be a shill, but do email me a CV if you're savvy in those areas and a great C/C++ Win32/Linux developer to boot!


Writing a great employment ad

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Tech Support Repartee

Running an Effective Help Desk, 2nd EditionWhen I worked at a consumer software company that shall remain nameless, we had a database feature called "Zap". This would not only delete the database and its underlying tables, but it would rewrite the area of the disk where the tables were, scrubbing it clean to meet some infosec requirement.

Anyhow, since this was such a destructive operation, the user interface would confirm the user's desire to Zap with a series of escalatingly alarming prompts.

"Are you sure you want to Zap the database? This operation will destroy the database entirely and cannot be undone."

Then:

"Are you absolutely certain you want to Zap..."

Then:

"Please confirm that you want to Zap... this is your final warning..."

So not long after adding this feature came the invariable tech support request (add hick accent if it helps):

"Ah jest zapped mah database and I wanna get it back. How kin I get it back?"

The tech support rep thought for a while and came up with the best response to this type of request that I've yet heard:

"Sir, do you have access to a time machine? Because time travel is about the only thing that will get you that data back..."

p.s., I'm licensed to use and parody hick accents as I was raised in West Virginia.

The Joel on Software Forum - Tech support repartee

Top Ten Worst Album Covers of All-Time

Top Ten Worst Album Covers of All-TimeThis is funny. Mad props to "L" (or whoever emailed her the link... probably "M").

Have you ever been to one of those parties where everyone sits expectantly and watches two people dance around like retards in a retard shop? Right. No one has, because those parties don't happen. Maybe it was a simpler time when songs like “Poor Little Fool” and “Splish Splash” had some kind of mind controlling power over teenagers. It caused them to pull their pants up too high and wear the worst socks ever made. No wonder there was such condemnation of Rock and Roll in the fifties. Look at what it did to their stupid kids. Granted, this one isn’t terribly offensive, but they get worse...

Top Ten Worst Album Covers of All-Time

Uhmmm... some more Top Ten Worst Album Covers of All-Time

Tuesday, April 20, 2004


TopCoder

TopCoderTopCoder:

The finals of the 2004 TopCoder Collegiate Challenge ,a programming competition seeking the brightest computer coders in the world, took place last Thursday and Friday at the Boston Park Plaza hotel. The original field of 700 competitors in the Algorithm Competition began the qualifying rounds online in February.

Through numerous elimination rounds, the field was whittled down to 32 for the Boston finals, eventually reaching a final four on Friday afternoon...


Boston.com: TopCoder

Saturday, April 17, 2004


More Cutaways

Click to zoomI did a Google image search for cutaway, because I like cutaway drawings. I came up with the accompanying drawing of how the rescue of a number of sailors trapped in the sunken USS Squalus was accomplished.

At 8:40 AM on 23 May 1939, [the submarine] USS Squalus was just beginning a test dive in the Atlantic, not far from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. All indications were that everything was ready for a safe dive. However, just after she submerged, the engine rooms began to flood -- somehow the main induction valve, a large opening that brought air to the engines while on the surface, had opened. Quickly, the submarine's after compartments filled with water, drowning 26 men there, and Squalus settled to the bottom, 243 feet deep. In the forward compartments, sealed by watertight doors, 33 men remained alive. Their Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Oliver F. Naquin, began survival planning. Since the water depth and temperature made ascent with the self-contained 'Momsen Lung' very dangerous, he elected to wait for rescue from above.

Within a few hours, other ships were searching for the missing Squalus, unfortunately in the wrong place. However, in the early afternoon a distant signal rocket was seen from a sister submarine, USS Sculpin (SS-191). Communication via the sunken sub's rescue bouy was soon established...


USS Squalus (SS-192) -- Rescue of Survivors, 23-25 May 1939

Click to zoomHere's a brutally cool cutaway of the F35. Click on the image to zoom it to full-size.

Click to zoomNot exactly sure what this is, but it might be a Fusion Reactor. Found it on Columbia University's Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics site. Click on the image to zoom to full-size. Looks a tad bulkier than the Mr. Fusion reactor featured in the film Back to the Future.