The Desktop Fishbowl
Charles blogs all the random nerd stuff he can find.

Thursday, 17 January 2002

Bill Gates (via The Register) We have done a great job of having teams work around the clock to deliver security fixes for any problems that arise. Our responsiveness has been unmatched -- but as an industry leader we can and must do better. Bruce Schneier (From his January 2002 Crypto-Gram Honestly, security experts don't pick on Microsoft because we have some fundamental dislike for the company. Indeed, Microsoft's poor products are one of the reasons we're in business. We pick on them because they've done more to harm Internet security than anyone else, because they repeatedly lie to the public about their products' security, and because they do everything they can to convince people that the problems lie anywhere but inside Microsoft. Microsoft treats security vulnerabilities as public relations problems. Until that changes, expect more of this kind of nonsense from Microsoft and its products. 9:39:46 PM

The Kernel of Pain (Linuxworld) [via Slashdot] Summary For desktops, the 2.4 version of the kernel is just fine. If you have heavy-duty processing needs, 2.4 has been a series of disappointments. Sysadmins of big iron have two choices -- go back in time or play upgrade hopscotch. Both have problems. 9:26:34 PM

As anyone who knows me will (tiredly) attest to, I really like my powerbook. One of the cooler things about it is probably the sleep/restore feature. When I close the lid, it turns itself off immediately. Even if I leave it on standby overnight (which drains about five percent of the battery), when I open it up again, it'll go from totally dark to ready-to-type in two seconds. This, plus the fact that OSX is really pretty solid, means I don't have to turn the thing off. Ever. [worlds:~] cmiller% uptime 8:29PM up 3 days, 6:27, 4 users, load averages: 1.01, 0.58, 0.45 Three days uptime. If I remember, that's because I forgot to plug it into the power at work on Monday and the battery went flat. Not at all bad for a laptop. 8:38:35 PM

I was chatting to Keith about the XP vs Interaction Design article below. The interesting part is that the combination of Interaction Design and XP was exactly what we used for phase two of the project we're just finishing up now. One or two people from outside the programming team went away, worked with the customer, produced prototypes of the desired functionality, and then delivered them to the programmers to make work. That seems a lot like the combination that Alan Cooper was proposing. In the end it worked quite well. It wasn't perfect - the prototypes left a lot of questions unanswered as far as the particulars of the application went, and those particulars often were the difference between a little code and a great deal of code, but it was certainly better than the requirements vacuum we were living in for phase one. 5:22:00 PM

Somebody's bitter: This page cannot be fucking displayed. A friend who works at Earthlink Internet in the states tells me that this is their internal link of the week. It brings back memories of sitting in front of a PC doing phone tech support, with Notepad open, typing "Die you bastard. Die you bastard" over and over while I waited for the luser on the other end of the phone to find the damn Start menu. 4:48:23 PM

Extreme Programming vs Interaction Design. An interview with Kent Beck and Alan Cooper. Wouldn't it be lovely if things were just this clear-cut in the real world? (as opposed to the one Kent seems to inhabit) Can XP work without that key element? Beck: From the customer's perspective, no. I've had teams be called "whiners" because after 25 percent of the budget is spent, they're saying, "We have 10 features to add and we're going at half the speed that we expected. Which five would you like us to work on first?" And the customer says, "Oh, you whiners. Work some overtime or just get back to work or quit complaining." What do you say in a situation like that? I don't know. What do you say? Beck: You say, "I quit." Life's too short to work on doomed projects you already know are doomed after 25 percent of the budget is spent. 4:40:56 PM

Has J2EE Hit a Fork In the Road? (SD Times) No one has ever really believed in the ?write once, run anywhere? credo. But the final nail in the coffin may be BEA Systems Inc.?s upcoming new application framework, code-named ?Cajun,? as well as the extension of J2EE-compliant application servers by other vendors. The platform-independent view of Java is fading into the woodwork very quickly, and threatens to take what was conceived as a standards-based solution into very different proprietary directions. The article seems to be mostly flamebait - that a server supports something on top of J2EE doesn't mean it doesn't also support J2EE applications. Also, it ignores the fact that for the entire history of Java application servers, they've been woefully incompatible with each other, so it's not like the situation is getting any worse. 4:35:27 PM