November 03, 2003
Grok Headline matches for November 03, 2003
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: November 02, 2003 - November
08, 2003 Archives
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: November 02, 2003 - November
08, 2003 Archives
11/04/2003 08:44 AMmodified a transcript of President Bush's remarks .. scrubbing its
transcripts .. Josh
Marshall
talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2003_11_02.html#002160<
br />track
this site | 6 links
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: October 26, 2003 - November
01, 2003 Archives
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: October 26, 2003 - November
01, 2003 Archives
10/28/2003 11:07 PMThe White Sheet Republicans are At It Again in Kentucky! 10/28 ..
attempts at voter suppression .. more than enough money .. Josh
Marshall reports .. asked for donations .. This is very ugly .. all
over
talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2003_10_26.html#002131
track
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COMDEX Las Vegas 2003 Media Preview
Panel To Take Place At The Aladdin Hotel
Sunday, November 16, 2003
COMDEX Las Vegas 2003 Media Preview
Panel To Take Place At The Aladdin Hotel
Sunday, November 16, 2003
11/04/2003 05:19 AMCOMDEX Nov 4 2003 3:59AM ET
Office 2003 Critical Update: November
11, 2003
Office 2003 Critical Update: November
11, 2003
11/05/2003 12:11 PMNovember 14, 2003
November 14, 2003
11/14/2003 07:32 PM
Time for the next Book of the Month.
Almost any argument about managing the software development process
inevitably deteriorates into anecdote-ping-pong. “We did wawa
and everyone quit.”
“Oh yeah? Then how do you explain Company X? They wawa
regularly and their stock is up 20%!”
If you have even the slightest bit of common sense, you should ask:
“Where's the data? If I'm going to switch to Intense Programming
I want to see proof that the extra money spent on dog kennels and bird
cages is going to pay for itself in increased programmer self-esteem.
Show me hard data!”
And, of course, we have none.
One set of people will tell you you gotta
have private offices with walls and a door that closes. Another
set of extremos will tell you everyone has to be in a room together,
shoulder-to-shoulder. Neither of them have any hard data whatsoever,
where by “hard data” I mean “data that wouldn't be
laughed out of a sixth-grade science classroom.” The truth is,
you can't honestly compare the productivity of two software teams
unless they are trying to build exactly the same thing under exactly
the same circumstances with the exact same human individuals,
who have been somehow cloned so they don't learn anything the first
time through the experiment.
Tom DeMarco was so frustrated at the inherent impossibility of
providing any kind of hard data that he went so far as to write a novel in which he fantasizes about a bizarre land in
which programmers are so cheap you actually can do
experiments where, say, half the people have offices and half the
people have cubicles.
But we don't have the data. We don't have any data. You can give us
anecdotes left and right about how methodology X worked or didn't
work, but you can't prove that when it worked it wasn't just because
of one really, really good programmer on the team, and you can't prove
that when it failed is wasn't just because the company was in the
process of going bankrupt and everybody was too demoralized to do
anything at all, Aeron chairs notwithstanding.
But don't give up hope. We
do have the collective wisdom of fifty years of building
software to draw from. Or at least, it's somewhere. Your typical
startup with three pals from college may not exactly have the
collective wisdom, so they're going to reinvent things from scratch
that IBM figured out in 1961, or go bankrupt failing to reinvent them.
Too bad, because they could have read Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering, by Robert L.
Glass, the best summary of what the software profession should have
agreed upon by now. Here are just a few examples from the 55 facts and
10 fallacies in the book:
- The most important factor in software work is
not the tools and techniques used by the programmers, but
rather the quality of the programmers themselves.
- Adding people to a late project makes it later.
- Reuse-in-the-small (libraries of subroutines) began
nearly 50 years ago and is a well-solved problem.
- Reuse-in-the-large (components) remains a mostly
unsolved problem, even though everyone agrees it is important and
desirable.
You can read the others in the table of
contents on Amazon. One of the best things about the book is that
it has sources for each fact and fallacy, so you can go back and
figure out why we collectively believe that, say, code
inspection is valuable but cannot and should not replace testing. This
is bound to be particularly helpful when you need ammunition for your
arguments with people in suits making absurd demands (“Can we
make a baby in 1 month if we hire 9 mothers?”).
November 30, 2003
November 30, 2003
12/02/2003 01:29 AM
I spent the long weekend grinding through the backlog of Joel on
Software translations. There are a bunch of new articles in various
languages including new sections for Esperanto and Greek. All in all
there are 264 translations in progress in 32 languages thanks to 242
volunteers around the world. 177 translations are complete and have
already been posted.
There are a few articles, already translated, which just need copy
editors before I can post them. If you read and write one of these
languages fluently and are willing to help out, I'd really appreciate
it! What's involved is just looking for typos and errors and improving
the translation wherever possible. If I don't find anyone to edit the
articles I will probably just go ahead and post them unedited but it
would be nice to have a second set of eyes improving the quality of
the translations.
Languages I need editors for: Chinese (Trad), Esperanto, Estonian,
Hungarian, Indonesian, Korean, Portuguese (Port.), Russian,
Swedish, and Tamil.
A frequently asked question: why bother with these translations?
Surely any real programmer knows English! And my frequently answered
answer: First of all, not every programmer knows English, and if they
do, they may not know it that well, so they may not really enjoy
reading things written in English if they don't have to. Second, even
if the programmers have learned enough English to decipher online
documentation, their pointy-haired bosses from management may not
have.
Another frequent question: why not just use Babelfish or Google
Language Tools or another similar translation tool? Answer: They are
seriously little. You cannot include/understand simply the exit. Er,
what I meant to say was, they are seriously inadequate. The quality of
translations produced by automatic software is so horrible that you
really can't understand the output. Try asking Google to translate http://french.joelonsoftware.c
om from French to English for some real howlers. "Then why does
nobody make planning? Two principal reasons. Firstly, it is really
difficult. Secondly, nobody believes that that is worth the sorrow of
it. Why give so much difficulty to be worked on a planning if it is
known that it will not be correct?"
November 07, 2003
November 07, 2003
11/10/2003 11:08 PM
Toronto
group forming. Any others?
November 06, 2003
November 06, 2003
11/07/2003 12:56 AM
Two questions and a font
Question one, for you telecom mavens out there. If you buy DSL
service in New York from Covad, aren't they just going to get Verizon
to install the actual DSL circuit? If so... why is it cheaper to get
it from Covad?
Yes, we seem to be in the market for a new DSL provider. And I'm
tired of playing the blame game where your DSL provider blames
everything on Verizon and Verizon blames everything on the DSL
provider, so I'd be willing to pay the monopoly tax if it meant when
our DSL went down there was nobody left to blame. If you know whether
Covad uses Verizon, post an answer here.
Question two, for you reliable SQL Server mavens out there. Suppose
I wanted to build a Win2K-based web service using SQL Server to store
the data. But I'm a reliability nut. So obviously I'll use industrial
strength servers with RAID, two power supplies and network cards, etc,
and they'll live in secure
colocation facilities.
To further minimize failure points, I'll have a hot backup. But the
twist is that I figured as long as I'm paying for a hot backup, it
would be more reliable if it was somewhere else, say, on the other
coast.
So here's the plan I'm working on. Server A in New York, with IIS
and SQL Server. Server B in Vancouver, with IIS and SQL Server. Server
A is somehow "writing through" any database changes to server B. I
know I can do this with transaction log shipping; is this
a good way to do it? Is there a better way?
Then if Server A blows up, I simply ask my ISP to route the packets
intended for Server A to Server B. (I assume they can do this if it's
their backbone).
What do you think of this
scheme?
Might I please kindly request in advance that you do
not suggest using Linux instead of Windows 2003. Yes, I concede that
Linux is "more secure," but not when I'm the one pushing the buttons.
Last time a flaw was discovered in Windows, it took me two clicks to
patch it. Last time a flaw was discovered in SSH, it took me four
hours of compiling and messing around to patch it. I apologize but I
don't have the skilz to keep a Linux box secure, so please, let's talk
about how to make this particular configuration reliable, not
about whether Linux is a better OS than Windows. Or, actually, if you
do want to talk about whether Linux is more secure than Windows, do so
here.
And a font
Back in the days when I did Mac development (System 6) the biggest
monitors available for the Mac were maybe 9", and the only way to see
a reasonable amount of code on screen was to use a tiny font. Now that
I have two 18" LCD panels, the only way to see a reasonable amount of
code on screen is to use a tiny font. The world is awash in lovely
TrueType fonts but none of them are monospaced, which is a nuisance
for programming because things which should line up won't.
Fortunately, I have found ProFont, and all
is well again.
November 22, 2003
November 22, 2003
12/02/2003 01:29 AM
Tidbits
My incoming spam is running at over 200 junk emails a day, but SpamBayes is catching
them all, with virtually no false positives. Bayesian filtering,
invented by Paul Graham and available in many open source
implementations, is the best answer yet.
IAR Bits and Bytes for November 6, 2003
IAR Bits and Bytes for November 6, 2003
11/06/2003 10:47 PMInternet News Nov 6 2003 9:06PM ET
K5 Monthly Update, November 2003
K5 Monthly Update, November 2003
12/04/2003 01:20 AMPay no attention to that timestamp above. To be perfectly honest, I
have little to say about K5 for November. Besides the fiction contest,
which I'm sure you're all aware of already, nothing very interesting
happened here behind the scenes. So instead I'm going to use this
bully pulpit to call for a vote on an issue which has come up with
increasing frequency and which I do not know the right answer to. The
short question is, should people be given the tools to delete
everything they ever posted here if and when they decide to leave, and
if so, how? Read on for more background, and please vote. I will hold
to what the vote shows two weeks from today. Update [2003-12-4
0:39:38 by rusty]: See update at the bottom of the story for an
additonal point.
"TOP500 List for November 2003"
"TOP500 List for November 2003"
11/18/2003 10:22 AMNovember 2003 Web Server Survey
November 2003 Web Server Survey
11/06/2003 10:03 AMApache has a significant percentage gain this month as register.com, a
leading domain registrar with a domain parking system serving
responses for over one million domains eliminated its Windows front
end, and reverted to Linux and Apache which it ran previously. Barely
weeks ago its largest rival, Network Solutions made a similar switch
from Microsoft-IIS back to SunOne, nee Netscape-Enterprise, for its
own domain parking system.
During 2001 and the first half of 2002 several companies hosting very
large numbers of hostnames including Webjump, Namezero, Homestead,
register.com and Network Solutions migrated to Microsoft-IIS.
Subsequently these businesses have either failed, significantly
changed their business model, or reverted to their previous platform,
and Microsoft-IIS share is now in line with its long term pre-summer
2001 level of around 20%.
Execs & Accounts for November 3, 2003
Execs & Accounts for November 3, 2003
11/04/2003 05:16 AMInternet News Nov 4 2003 4:29AM ET
TOP500 List for November 2003
TOP500 List for November 2003
11/16/2003 04:00 PMTOP500™ SuperComputer Sites List for November
2003http://www.top500.org/list
s/2003/11/The 22nd TOP500 List will be introduced
during the Supercomputer Conference (SC2003) in Phoenix, AZ. The BOF
session will be held Tuesday, November 18, 5:00PM - 6:00PM, Room 36-37
at the SC2003 conference. A comprehensive list of the top 500
supercomputers throughout the world.
Execs & Accounts for November 14, 2003
Execs & Accounts for November 14, 2003
11/14/2003 08:40 PMInternet News Nov 14 2003 8:14PM ET
Google Update Florida - November 15,
2003
Google Update Florida - November 15,
2003
11/15/2003 09:56 AMWith all the changes in the Google update process the last six months,
it is hard to tell what is and isn't a major update. By-all-accounts,
this appears to be a major update - it is an old school dance.
This Week on perl5-porters (10-16
November 2003)
This Week on perl5-porters (10-16
November 2003)
11/17/2003 03:03 PMFor some reason, (maybe the approach of mod_perl 2), one of the main
topics this week was interpreter cloning and the problems it may
cause. But the release of perl 5.6.2 is an event that is not to be
neglected. Read on.
Linux Advisory Watch - November 7th 2003
Linux Advisory Watch - November 7th 2003
11/07/2003 10:00 AMThis week, advisories were released for bugzilla, apache, fileutils,
postgresql, CUPS, and thttpd. The distributors include Conectiva,
Guardian Digital's EnGarde Linux, Gentoo, Immunix, Mandrake, RedHat,
Slackware, and SuSE.
This Week on perl5-porters (17-23
November 2003)
This Week on perl5-porters (17-23
November 2003)
11/25/2003 10:31 PMDue to my laziness, or perhaps to the lack of traffic on perl5-porters
this week, this summary will be rather short, but hopefully long
enough to provide your weekly dose of perl core information. Read on.
This Week on perl5-porters (3-9 November
2003)
This Week on perl5-porters (3-9 November
2003)
11/10/2003 11:32 PMThis week was undoubtedly a maintenance-oriented week, as it has seen
the release of perl 5.8.2, and of perl 5.6.2 RC1. But of course and as
usual this wasn't the only topic on the always active p5p list. Read
below for the full details.
This Week on perl5-porters (24-30
November 2003)
This Week on perl5-porters (24-30
November 2003)
12/02/2003 01:03 AMA quiet week for the Perl 5 porters, but some threads are worth
noting. Notably, I have now a reason to mention Leon Brocard in the
summary without appealing to any running joke.
Apple Store Event on November 28th, 2003
Apple Store Event on November 28th, 2003
11/19/2003 08:03 AM
As previously hinted, Apple is planning a Special in-Store Event on
Friday, November 28th.
The Music oriented in-Store event is aimed to take advan...
Latest Bios and Drivers updates! -
November 06, 2003
Latest Bios and Drivers updates! -
November 06, 2003
11/06/2003 04:59 PMLinux Advisory Watch - November 28th
2003
Linux Advisory Watch - November 28th
2003
12/02/2003 12:44 AMThis week, advisories were released for BIND, Ethereal, Glibc,
Libnids, phpSysInfo, Stunnel, EPIC, iproute, Pan, and XFree86. The
distributors include Guardian Digital's EnGarde Linux, Gentoo,
Mandrake, and Red Hat.
Linux Advisory Watch - November 14th
2003
Linux Advisory Watch - November 14th
2003
11/14/2003 09:13 AMThis week, advisories were released for thhtpd, cups, ethereal,
mpg123, xinetd, hylafax, postgresql, conquest, epic4, glibc, and and
zebra. The distributors include Conectiva, Debian, Mandrake, Red Hat,
and SuSE.
CBS News | If I Were Bush's Speechwriter
... | November 3, 2003 08:36:15
CBS News | If I Were Bush's Speechwriter
... | November 3, 2003 08:36:15
11/04/2003 05:18 AMCBS News If I Were Bush's Speechwriter ... November 3, 2003
08:36:15
cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/31/60minutes/rooney/main581171.
shtml
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This Week on perl5-porters (27 October /
2 November 2003)
This Week on perl5-porters (27 October /
2 November 2003)
11/03/2003 08:52 AMThe big news of the week is of course the first release candidate of
perl 5.8.2, the problems it solves, and the new problems it causes.
Latest Bios And Driver Updates -
November 15, 2003
Latest Bios And Driver Updates -
November 15, 2003
11/16/2003 08:09 AMCumulative Security Update For Internet
Explorer November 2003
Cumulative Security Update For Internet
Explorer November 2003
11/11/2003 04:27 PMBlueprint For A Mess - New York Times
Magazine, November 2, 2003
Blueprint For A Mess - New York Times
Magazine, November 2, 2003
11/01/2003 03:06 PM Despite administration claims, it is simply not true that no one
could have predicted the chaos that ensued after the fall of Saddam
Hussein... What went wrong was not that no one could know or that
no one spoke out. What went wrong is that the voices of Iraq experts,
of the State Department almost in its entirety and, indeed, of
important segments of the uniformed military were ignored. As much as
the invasion of Iraq and the rout of Saddam Hussein and his army was a
triumph of planning and implementation, the mess that is postwar Iraq
is
a failure of
planning and implementation (
pdf). See also, from June 24, 2003:
A marred
follow-up to a brilliant military campaign by Tim Carney. (Added
to illustrate a very slow learning curve indeed.)
Blog for America : The Vote: Your
Country, Your Campaign, Your Decision |
November 04, 2003
Blog for America : The Vote: Your
Country, Your Campaign, Your Decision |
November 04, 2003
11/05/2003 08:41 AMThe Vote: Your Country, Your Campaign, Your Decision .. letting the
decision lie in their hands .. Duck's e-mail .. pros and
cons
blog.deanforamerica.com/archives/002128.html
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Object Lesson: Disconnected Urbanism |
Metropolis Magazine | November 2003
Object Lesson: Disconnected Urbanism |
Metropolis Magazine | November 2003
11/19/2003 12:32 AMWhere Are You? Are You Sure? .. Disconnected Urbanism ..
more»
metropolismag.com/html/content_1103/obj/index.html
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November 11, 2003> Current Awareness
Happenings on the Internet - Bots, Blogs
and News Aggregators Streaming Video
November 11, 2003> Current Awareness
Happenings on the Internet - Bots, Blogs
and News Aggregators Streaming Video
11/11/2003 11:40 AMThis edition of
Current Awareness Happenings on the Internet by
Marcus P.
Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. (
November 11, 2003 V1N24) is
dedicated to his latest lecture. Click on the below link to view a
brand new 90 minute streaming lecture presented by Marcus P. Zillman
at Florida Gulf Coast University titled
Bots, Blogs and News
Aggregators. A complete listing of all the latest URLs
created by Marcus P. Zillman is available at the
Links By
Marcus™ link listed below:
Bots,
Blogs and News Aggregators - 90 Minute Lecture by Marcus P. Zillman,
M.S., A.M.H.A. http://www.in-sightstudios.com/
Links By Marcus™http://www.LinksByMarcus.com/
November 17, 2003> Current Awareness
Happenings on the Internet - Internet
Sources Book
November 17, 2003> Current Awareness
Happenings on the Internet - Internet
Sources Book
11/17/2003 05:32 PMThis edition of
Current Awareness Happenings on the Internet by
Marcus P.
Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. (
November 17, 2003 V1N25) is
dedicated to his latest book
Internet Sources™.
Click on the below audblog link to hear the author Marcus P. Zillman
discuss this just released today book!. The site to learn more about
this book including a downloadable table of contents and to
immediately purchase and download this book is available below. A
complete listing of all the latest links created by Marcus P. Zillman
is also available at the
Links By Marcus™ link
listed below:
Internet Sources™ Book by
Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. http://www.InternetSources.inf
o/Links By Marcus™http://www.LinksByMarcus.com/
audblog audio
postInfoWorld: Microsoft prepares security
assault on Linux: November 11, 2003: By
Kieren McCarthy, Techworld.com: Security
InfoWorld: Microsoft prepares security
assault on Linux: November 11, 2003: By
Kieren McCarthy, Techworld.com: Security
11/12/2003 10:23 PMThe Fog that was November
The Fog that was November
12/02/2003 01:26 AM Most every day of November was dark, rainy, foggy and, well, dark. :)
Hopefully December will at least bring...
"November"
"November"
06/25/2004 10:29 AMWhere will you be in November?
Where will you be in November?
06/16/2004 06:14 PMI know where I'll be November 7, 2004: in New York City running the
ING New York City Marathon! The lottery results have been posted and
for once I've gotten lucky with a lottery and I'm in. Woo hoo! Now
this means my running and training must get much more serious. But
that's OK because I've always wanted to run a marathon, and the NYC
marathon looks to be really fun. As fun as 26 miles can be, that is.
Five bridges, five boroughs, and more than two million spectators make
the ING New York City Marathon a race like no other.
Maybe I'll even "marablog" -- blog as I run. ;)
Grok Description matches for November 03, 2003
GrokA matches for November 03, 2003
November 03, 2003
