Posts by Carl

Its not about the shirt

People wear, say and do things every day that _someone_ is going to find offensive.

Sometimes that "someone" is going to make a fuss.

The question is what happens then.

What's happened here is ESA's seen a PR shitstorm coming, crapped its pants and sent Matt Taylor out to deal with it. Something which, as a rocket scientist rather than a PR drone, he is not equipped to do.

Here's what should have happened. One of those glossy talking head types up top at ESA should have got out in front of this and made the following statement.

"Good morning. Welcome to the press conference. We have some exciting new about the mission. Before I start I just want to touch on some stories that have been floating around concerning an item of clothing worn by one of the team last week. I have talked to that member of the team and am satisfied that the incident was a mistake and that the mistake will not be repeated. As project director I take personal responsibility for such matters and as such all questions about it should be directed to me personally. I regret in advance that since this is an ongoing HR matter I cannot due to privacy rules discuss the specifics of the incident nor the identity of those involved.

Now then. On with the press conference. Here is Matt Taylor."

And that would have been it. Done. This isn't rocket science.

Cognitive Bias

The commish says it's 90% because thats how much of his brain is obsessed with consipiracies.

As well it should what with the Hillsborough cover-up. Oh wait.

How lovely

This is the same Amazon cloud that my server perimeter gets all these port probes from, yes?

Smartbombs

Know how to fly down a laserlight cone.

Just saying.

Hang about

This is an opinion, not a ruling.

Oracle will have applied for the opinion ahead of an appeal. The opinion just indicates a belief that the appeal has merit. When the appeal begins (as everyone knew it would) the bar will be much higher and Oracle will need to prove copyright all over again with Google ready to defend itself accordingly.

Bah where's Groklaw when you need it.

Basically Oracle haven't "won" shit.

This is the same Jack White

...that espouses minimalism, right?

ha ha what pension fund

You put in your hard earned $ and when its time to cash in its "Oh dear, its all gone. Of course the market's not done well and then there were all those fees. The value of your investments can go down as well as up. Anyway, old boy it's been splendid talking but I really must chip along to the Lambo showroom. Nigel and I are buying matching Gallardos. Toodle pip."

Fucking "money men". Best thing we can collectively do is yank our pensions and starve the fucking lot of them. And yes I am bitter. With good reason.

me neither

I only support friends and family's computers if they run Linux.

Which basically means I don't have to do anything other than "sudo apt-get update" every 6 months.

8 converted from Windows and counting.

No idea

What that article was on about.

However, while reading this accountancy gobbledegook, I became sure of one thing:

The sooner the B-ark is ready for launch the better.

The answer is "JavaScript"...

now whats the question?

Just like how 10 years ago the "answer" was Java

And 10 years before that the "answer" was C++

And 10 years before that the "answer" was COBOL

Just another case of history repeating.

3 cheers for Me.Spandow

And 3 boos for Oracle.

I hope anyone looking to them for a job takes note.

I'll buy one when...

They figure out how to make regular LCDs LEDS and Plasmas that don't die after 3 - 5 years.

And when I get HD digital cable that isnt shit for less than 150$ a month in Canada :(

oh goody

I get to wrestle with Oracle's arcane, fidgety stealthily-proprietary-extension-ridden sh1te on another compute platform. How very perfect. I can't wait. Let the champagne corks fly.

Is it me..

Or does _everything_ Microsoft touch turn to sh!t

You know, whenever I see Microsoft marketing, ads etc it kind of reminds of political party ads (specifically Tory ones Im afraid). The reason is because it is an attempt to seem clever and/or funny that just ends up being a bit of a comedic train wreck.

I genuinely get a really uneasy feeling about stuff like this in the same way that I get uneasy if I end up speaking to someone at a party who's just a little bit too enthusiastic about his gun/porn/sword/knife collection or neighbour's teenagers.

This ickiness is more or less standard whenever The Establishment tries to have a go at being Edgy, New or Interesting. They always almost exactly manage to not pull it off.

Of course, the chutzpah of MS slagging Google off for being unethical lurks vaguely off camera like an enormous, flatulent elephant. I can't help the suspicion that at any second its ready to enter the frame and start shitting everywhere.

Not so fast.

"As everyone who has ever run a successful project knows, the first thing to do is to get the specifications right. Only once you've have, written in stone, what the system is going to do and how it is going to do it, can you possibly start to bring in anyone to start building it for you."

IMHO (which to be fair smart people pay good $ for)

The reason why projects fail is the over-emphasis on knowing every tiny detail up front because details change. Worse still pedants and people with agendas use the details to score points, devouring productivity. Concentrate on the big picture first. Get into the detail at the right time.

See wikipedia under "Agile".

Dont forget the OS licensing costs

ha ha ha.

Only joking.

Sufferer?

Jes*s H Chr**t.

Why does everyone need to "suffer" from something.

The problem here is lack of empathy, ineffective relationship maintenance and out-and-out bullying.

The boss you had in the first job? Moving goalposts, short deadlines? That's bullying, incompetent BS.

20 years ago (maybe 40, I lost count) this behaviour was widely tolerated and "different" people then were black, gay, female, welsh, or any number of things that a bully would pick up on and use as a weapon to justify their crappy existence at the expense of ours.

These days they can't do any of that because its verboten so they pick on the next level of "differences" - Aspergers, people with funny coloured hair, accents, weight etc. And if that ever gets barred it'll be the next level down: the "Golf Club" class of bullying based on what kind of car you have or what school you went to.

Bottom line is the world's full of bullying pricks. Best bet is to knee them (and their f**king HR dept) square in the bollocks and let the chips fall where they fall.

Folly

In the 19th century, industrial revolution era entrepreneurs would regularly build things like this.

They became known later as "follies": a reference to the ultimate uselessness and waste of money of this immense ego-fuelled money-wank.

Now I detest Bill Gates as much as the next Open Sourcerer but at least some of his money-wanks are vaguely altruistic if you look at them "just so".

But a patent on a door? Seriously?

Love the use of the word "Lawful"

Lots of things are or have been considered "lawful" in various places and at various times.

The systematic discrimination of people based on their gender, or the colour of their skin for example.

So with all due respect the NSA can stick "lawful" where the sun don't shine.

Bye bye Nokia

The MS embrace of death begins.

Stand by for the exodus.

Like all things Microsoft this will die on its arse, the only thing left "of value" being patents that MS will use to extort and bully companies that actually innovate.

Its a road we've all been down before and we'll all go down again.

Can't wait for Google to finally call them on their BS patents shakedown.

Groklaw shutdown

Pam's put a bullet in groklaw because she has no idea how to continue with Big Brother over her shoulder.

Not sure if she's just curtailing her own involvement or shuttering it. Sad day either way.

www.groklaw.net

ah yes the obligatory "apology"

As seen in noted bastions of human rights Iran and also N.Korea.

*round of applause*

The problem with ThermoNuclear War

The resulting cloud of toxic radioactive shit is just as likely to waft back into your back yard.

sigh

I started using java in 1996.

It was kinda cool. Nice and tight, not too much to learn.

You could do guis, listen on sockets, compute stuff. It was OK, and with 1.1 I could talk to DB and my world was complete.

And then... oh dear.

So I sit here today at my desk and Java (or rather JEE) is a bloated mess of a language with all kinds of crap I dont need, buzzwords, frameworks, annotations, black boxes, conventions, wierd gotchas and general broken-ness. And to cap it all the black hats are now a step or two ahead at all times.

Utter, utter garbage. It's turned into C++. The only people in love with it are up-their-own-arse propellorheads. And this is coming from a guy who, compared to the general population IS an up-his-own-arse propellorhead.