Christopher J. Baker

1. That won’t scale.
2. That’s been proven to be O(N^2) and we need a solution that’s O(NlogN).
3. There are, of course, various export limitations on that technology.
4. The syntax is idiosyncratic.
5. Trying to build a team behind that technology would be a staffing nightmare.
6. That can’t be generalized to a cross-platform build.
7. Unfortunately, the license would contaminate our product.
8. If we go with that idea, we’re going to have Don Marti camped out in the front lobby with 300 angry software jihad supporters.
9. Our support infrastructure simply can’t handle the volume that change would involve.
10. I had one of the interns try that approach for another project, and it scrambled the CEO’s hard drive. So I think it’s going to be a hard sell.
11. Yes, well, that’s just not the way things work in the real world.
12. I like your idea. Why don’t you write up a white paper and we’ll review it at the next staff meeting?
13. Unfortunately, we’re an all-FORTH shop. Otherwise, it’s a nice idea.
14. I think you need to stop taking this so personally. We need to think about what’s best for the project, not about our own little pet theories.
15. Oh, I played with that approach back as an undergrad. Got a D, too.
16. I was reading about that on BugTraq yesterday.
17. Yes, I believe that’s the approach Windows NT is taking.
18. That’s totally inefficient on modern hardware.
19. Well, yes, but it really reduces to the knapsack problem in that case. Do you have some kind of heuristic, or are we dealing with an NP-complete case?
20. Have you LOOKED at the number of I/O requests that will create?
21. We can’t afford the transaction overhead.
22. Yeah, or we could all just plink away on Amigas or something.
23. What? I don’t speak your crazy moon-language.
24. Hmm. Didn’t they just go bankrupt? It’s OK, I guess — there’s some German company who’s picked up the existing service contracts.
25. No, no, no. We’re really working on an N-TIER architecture, here.
26. No, no, no. It’s fairly important that the database be in THIRD NORMAL FORM.
27. No, that would break object encapsulation.
28. I don’t think that’s altogether clear. Please write it up in UML for me.
29. I think there’s a problem with your drive geometry.
30. Can you generate some USE CASES that would justify the change?
31. How is that going to impact the schedule?
32. RAM is cheap and all, but…
33. It would probably be best if we deferred that until version 2.0.
34. I like it, but it is too point-oh for my tastes.
35. If you make this change, I will fork the code.
36. Yes, well, unfortunately the economy is going away from anything remotely like that. Our investors would kill us.
37. Jakob Nielsen wrote an interesting hit piece on that.
38. Yes, yes, we’ve all read DJB’s RFCs on the subject.
39. This is all covered in Knuth, and we don’t have time to go over it again.
40. This one is in the FAQ: http://www.linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#your_dumb_technology
41. I don’t have time for this extropian nonsense.
42. Well, I guess we could start the QA cycles again from square one. That would require a press release, though.
43. You used to program in Pascal, didn’t you?
44. Why don’t we make a generalized solution including both options, and let the administrator decide with a config-file setting?
45. You’ve obviously ignored the various namespace issues.
46. I don’t think you’re considering the performance trade-offs.
47. What kind of benchmarks have you been running?
48. Let’s table this for now, and we’ll talk about it one-on-one off-line.
49. This really doesn’t jibe with our core competency.
50. This sort of thing should really be outsourced.
51. I remember that IBM had a project to do that back in the 70s.
52. Um, hello? We’re using VON NEUMANN MACHINES HERE.
53. We need this to fit on a single floppy.
54. Yes, but can this be embedded in a toaster, for example?
55. We need something that my mom can use.
56. Users won’t want to click through that many layers of hierarchy.
57. The packaging costs will be prohibitive.
58. OK, but what about internationalization?
59. Look, would you just get off your Be obsession for FIVE MINUTES and talk serious design with us?
60. That’s a good idea — you should do that on your home page.
61. Yeah, Linuxcare tried that with the Sourceror project.
62. Ho, man! Are they still AROUND? That’s so cool. I thought that whole idea was discredited years ago.
63. What you’re not seeing is the difference between an ‘is-a’ and a ‘has-a’ relationship.
64. There is no hope for the widow’s son, Boaz.
65. Yes, but we’re standardizing on XML.
66. That doesn’t fit into the MVC model.
67. Well, that’s great if you have an AI running the thing.
68. Well, they’re going to do that with the next version of Perl, so we should probably wait.
69. Well, they’re going to do that with the next version of OS X, so we should probably wait.
70. I heard that the only real application for that technology was child pornography. How did you hear about it?

I was going to post a video of my object of lust, the Lotus Exige, by simply linking in a youtube video. However, I was bugged by the red/grey color scheme in their video player. So I got curious and created my own flash video player. Its not complete however it does play, pause, rewind and scrub with a loading bar. Check it out..

I was messing around with some flash and made pong. Don't flame me for the interface, i know its cheesy, however it only took me an hour to code the whole thing.

I recently read and article from a Microsoft employee’s blog here. In the article, he describes all the steps that result from a slight change in software, which most people do not realize even happen. These steps are all too familiar to me as I too worked for a very corporate IT department. Sometimes it left me frustrated that my < 5 minute code change, did not get the fix to the customer for days.

• One dev to spend five minutes implementing ChangeLightBulbWindowHandleEx.
• One program manager to write the specification.
• One localization expert to review the specification for localizability issues.
• One usability expert to review the specification for accessibility and usability issues.
• At least one dev, tester and PM to brainstorm security vulnerabilities.
• One PM to add the security model to the specification.
• One tester to write the test plan.
• One test lead to update the test schedule.
• One tester to write the test cases and add them to the nightly automation.
• Three or four testers to participate in an ad hoc bug bash.
• One technical writer to write the documentation.
• One technical reviewer to proofread the documentation.
• One copy editor to proofread the documentation.
• One documentation manager to integrate the new documentation into the existing body of text, update tables of contents, indexes, etc.
• Twenty-five translators to translate the documentation and error messages into all the languages supported by Windows.The managers for the translators live in Ireland (European languages) and Japan (Asian languages), which are both severely time-shifted from Redmond, so dealing with them can be a fairly complex logistical problem.
• A team of senior managers to coordinate all these people, write the cheques, and justify the costs to their Vice President.

Merry Christmas!

…your server rack collapses and kills six dogs.

…your server tower is up on cinderblocks.

…you continually short out keyboards because of tobacco spittle.

…your UPS and backup generators run on moonshine.

…your NASCAR mouse only turns left.

…you’ve decided to show the case-modders a thing or to, and have somehow figured out how to soup up and race your PC around a dirt track. Only turning left, of course.

…your CD-ROM isn’t a cupholder, but an ashtray.

…your default password is “earnhardt”

…instead of backspace, you have a “do wut?” key

…you’ve bought a new video card so you can play Big Mutha Truckers, Deer Hunter, or EA Nascar:2006 at 1600×1200

…you get “flat panel” confused with “pat’s flannel” all the time

…you own a shotgun with a USB jack

… you’ve got high-speed internet, but no indoor plumbing.

… if you mow your yard and you find 5 old hard drives and a dot-matrix printer.

… if when you log on to windows, your computer starts playing sweet home alabama.

… if you have a holster on your herman-miller aeron chair

… you have more usb thumb drives than you have teeth.

… you have a computer that costs more than your house.

… you have ever made a program that pings convenience stores to find the cheapest place to purchase chewing tobbacco.

… if you have ever typed <input type=”submit” value=”Get’er Done!” />

… your UML diagram has more branches than your family tree.

… your server rack and gun rack use the same key.

… you keep your bare feet warm with the fan of your CPU.

… you have more browsers than you have teeth.

… you have more monitors than you have shoes.

… your outhouse has wireless access.

Lets keep it free…

wearetheweb.org

A couple weeks ago I stumbled upon G2P, Google to person. It is a proposed alternative to P2P (Person to Person) File sharing. There are alot of people screaming about moral/ethical issues of file sharing, however I am not as much interested in that as I was in learning how Google worked to better my searches and find information quicker.

Its worth checking out…

g2p.org

After recently diving into some web developing, my hatred for Internet Explorer has reached an all time high. So, I decided to post the offical definition of Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer

Pronunciation: 'in-t&r-"net ik-'splor-&r
Function: noun

1: A simple Windows XP tool which allows the user to browse to Mozilla.com and download Firefox, a web browser.

2: Microsoft's attempt to dominate the Internet by integrating this poor excuse of a browser with every Windows OS, although this was deemed illegal, they made some thing up about it being a core part of Windows. So in the end, they integrated this POS into Windows. IE is buggy, has many security holes, is slow, supports ActiveX so websites can install their XXX dialers on our systems, and finally, it's not standards compliant, so 80%+ web pages have sloppy HTML which doesn't work with standards compliant browsers, only IE. How convenient.

Example: As soon as I installed XP I opened Internet Explorer and grabbed the latest version of Firefox.

GET FIREFOX!

No, I’m not talking about your local Starbucks. Google. Google’s free WiFi. If you live and San Francisco, you already have access to Google’s completely free WiFi access. Many rumors have been circulating about Google expanding this service to become nationwide. Google promises that the speeds will be fast enough to drop your DSL or Cable ISP. I believe this will happen and will be a big blow to most ISPs like Yahoo, Verizon, and so on. Imagine the possibilities of a free ISP everywhere you go. Then imagine a Skype enabled WiFi device (Sony’s Mylo is already out). The hit the cell phone industry would take would take be devastating. I think it’s something to look out for or look forward to in the near future.