September 2010
2 posts
My Last Tumblr Post →
Zach explains why I will not be using Tumblr any more. Instead I will make an effort to post more frequently on Wordpress. Even before Zach’s diatribe I’ve come to feel that my tumblelog has turned into a series of rants, and that’s just not useful to anyone.
A horse in the Apple Store →
Makes me wonder how you housebreak a tiny pony. Maybe her human always carries a really big plastic bag with her, you know, just in case the pony decides to poop in the Apple Store.
August 2010
1 post
China's Traffic Jam: Ouch →
Wow, that has to be pretty embarrassing for the up and coming world superpower. The capital city is so overwhelmingly popular that you have to spend several days in traffic just to get there.
June 2010
2 posts
April 2010
1 post
Performance Reviews →
Thankfully my experience at Sun was nothing like this. The annual reviews were a chore, granted, but it was a good opportunity for me and my manager to focus on what I achieved and what I would be striving to do in the coming year. The important thing is to get constructive feedback, not just a numeric score, which is patently useless. Sun really understood that.
February 2010
4 posts
Terrific article on MapReduce →
After reading this you’ll see just how biased the previous article was. They clearly ignored obvious ways in which to improve the Hadoop benchmarks. Just goes to show that it doesn’t matter how many authors you have contributing to an article, but how smart they are. In fact, I think most of the readers are smarter than Stonebraker, who clearly thinks that his thinly veiled marketing...
Stonebraker at it again (MapReduce vs DBMS) →
This article is an improvement over the other earlier writings by Stonebraker, but still heavily slanted to show Vertica in a good light. I love how his vested interest in Vertica is never brought to light in the entire article, but the very first commenter spotted that immediately. The most off-putting statement though comes with the “stand on the shoulders of giants” reference. In...
Another judge who doesn't get the Internet →
I think “ridiculous” is just the tip of the iceberg. This judge clearly has no understanding of the ramifications of such a decision. Imagine if YouTube had to screen every video that was uploaded. Google could never hire enough people to screen the videos, subsequently the queue of pending reviews would stretch to the asteroid belt, and subsequently no one would bother uploading...
Could not agree more →
I have felt this way for years. Microsoft has done nothing but bought, copied, or stolen nearly everything they have ever released as their own. You disagree? Prove me wrong.
January 2010
4 posts
Shame on Toyota →
Shame on Toyota for not addressing this problem properly when it first appeared 10 years ago. They could have saved people’s lives. Now the issue is so big it will takes years to live it down. My hope is that their reputation for quality is sufficiently damaged at this point. No one should fool themselves into thinking Toyota has their safety in mind.
Update: LA Times has a follow-up...
Nature's Running Shoe →
So glad to see more research leading us back to what’s been obvious to other cultures for generations.
For a single department, so much incompetence →
So if other people can simply misspell or change their names to avoid the retarded “lists”, why can’t the terrorists? Makes the TSA look ineffective and laughable at best, downright dangerous at worst. Their notion of security is nothing more than covering their asses, no one should ever think this process is working.
Job satisfaction →
I recently left Sun for a new company and already miss the old team (and Microsoft-free environment). The worst thing I’ve encountered so far is a manager who values speed of development over quality, and does not want developers to waste time writing unit tests.
November 2009
7 posts
Weirdest Windows issue I've ever heard of →
A black screen upon login to Windows, wow. Makes me glad I’m using a Mac. For three years I’ve been exclusively using Macs both at work and at home and I’ve had no problems whatsoever.
Ex-Microsoftie discovers software can be better →
A Microsoftie is laid off, gets a job at Google, and discovers that there are better software products out there than what Microsoft develops. Wow, imagine that. It’s like the blinders have been removed. Yet another reason I’ll never work at Microsoft (or Oracle).
Sarah Palin really is stupid, and full of shit →
It’s impressive the way Palin has built up a reality distortion field around herself. She is so full of shit, on top of being a complete idiot, that I wonder how anyone could have ever taken her seriously.
Stonebraker on NoSQL data stores →
If you’ve read any of Stonebraker’s other recent posts (in particular from January 2008), you might feel this is another case of mis-categorization. I don’t know where he gets the idea that the NoSQL camp is trying to perform OLTP with their data stores, but that seems to be what he has focused on. Oddly enough, in many cases such data stores are for batch data processing....
Toyota and the feds don't care if you die →
After reading this article I’ve made two conclusions. One, I will never buy a Toyota, ever. Two, the NHTSA does not have your safety in mind, which is ironic given their name. Thank God for journalists.
NY Times Unemployment Chart →
So the conclusion here is, if you don’t have an education, you’re screwed. If you’re black, you’re also screwed, but not as much as those without a high school diploma. Granted, these are just numbers without any clear correlation to other factors, but it’s revealing nonetheless.
October 2009
3 posts
Need to watch Jon Stewart more →
Who else could take a case involving gang rape by government contractors and make it sound funny. Not the actual crime, of course, but how it is so poorly handled by the idiot Republicans who voted against the amendment to avoid doing business with these contractors in the future. Like Steward said, how can anyone be against this?
How Utterly Incompetent Can You Be? →
The largest software company in the world apparently failed to manage the risk of data loss of customer backups. Even I have a better idea of how to prevent data loss and I’m not even experienced in the storage field. I hope people aren’t paying for this pathetic service.
Charlie Brooker on Windows 7 launch party →
Hilarious take on the Windows 7 launch party video tutorials put out by Microsoft. This is perhaps the best argument I’ve seen for why everyone using Windows should switch.
September 2009
5 posts
Lesson learned: don't sack a conspirator →
Renault sacked Piquet and of course he spills the beans on their race fixing conspiracy. Gosh, can’t imagine why they didn’t see that coming.
Oracle buying its way to success →
When your growth plan means acquiring every other company in the industry, there’s bound to be a point at which the plan is no longer sustainable. Add to that they’re gouging their customers during the worst recession in decades and you begin to wonder if they are someone you’d want to work for.
Petabytes on the cheap, or is it? →
Just when you thought it would make sense to buy cheap hardware, cut corners and sacrifice just about everything (performance, reliability, etc), lo and behold it’s really not the case.
Well, duh. Of course I didn't see it coming... →
In hindsight this now seems obvious and makes me wonder why Oracle thought the acquisition process was going to go through unchallenged. At this point it seems like a considerable road block with only one satisfactory solution: sell off MySQL.
August 2009
2 posts
Spank them disabled kids! →
Gotta hand it to The South for keeping the Old Ways alive and well. “One principal said, ‘I was whipped as a child, so it’s fine with me.’” Why stop just because you grew up?
Thank God for TweetLater! →
All of my problems have been solved, thanks to TweetLater. What with Twitter falling down two days in a row it’s a godsend to be able to express myself immediately and still have my nuggets of wisdom appear once Twitter is back online. After all, you know that I’d otherwise forget and never post anything. :)
July 2009
4 posts
Word spy: frequency illusion →
I’m so happy that I’ve learned this phrase. I’ve noticed this phenomenon myself for years and now I finally have a way to refer to it.
Azerbaijan: another place I won't be visiting →
If I had a fight with a person here in the U.S. I’d face a night in jail and a fine. But in Azerbaijan you get one to five years for so-called hooliganism. That’s what I call a tool for the government to suppress views they don’t want anyone to hear.
From Ford president to Defense Secretary →
I would love to hear an explanation as to how and why the president of Ford Motor Co. would be tapped to lead the Pentagon. That’s like choosing Sarah Palin to be president of Harvard University.
June 2009
5 posts
Google invents another monopoly →
Leave it to the web search monopoly to invent another monopoly with which to generate revenue from content they didn’t create. We should all be so clever.
Iran run by insincere non-believers →
Reading this article I see several things. One, there’s a nihilistic nut out there shooting random people. Two, if the leaders of Iran are true believers of Islam, they will publicly denounce the muders of innocent civilians, disband the Basij who are nothing more than vigilantes on a rampage, and hunt down and kill those responsible for the murders of the innocents. Three, what sort of...
Microsoft Marketing Defies Logic →
“If you turn your head sideways and look in a mirror, while closing one eye and squinting the other, then you’ll see what we’re saying.”
A once proud nation slips into chaos →
As I understand it, Iran (or rather Persia) should be proud of its heritage. But looking at these photos, you would hardly think that now. Next time the clergy should only allow their own candidates to run, thus avoiding any controversy over voting.
Hans Rosling on showing statistics →
Absolutely stunning, amazing, and eye opening presentation. Very compelling argument for releasing the publicly funded research data to those who really own it, us.
May 2009
2 posts
The Horrors of Hugging →
At my high school they banned wearing short pants, because two imbeciles decided to wear shorts in the winter, when snow was on the ground and it was quite cold. That almost makes sense to me when compared to banning hugging. Are these principals descended from Quakers?
Weird web server config →
The first time you visit this site with any browser, you get a weird error about there being no server configured for that address. But, hit the reload button and you’re redirected to the full name, with the www prefix. I’ve never seen that before. Makes me wonder how many customers were turned away by this.
April 2009
8 posts
“‘[W]e should just quietly grow j++ share and assume that people will take...”
– http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090421111327711
Persistence doesn't always pay off →
Calling this puppet of a leader a hard-liner is like calling the Titanic a big boat. He raises “stupid racist” to a whole new level. At the very conference where the U.N. is trying to end racism, this moron is fanning the flames. The good news is he’s up for re-election and it looks like he’s quickly losing support.
Good reason not to pirate software →
Stupid software pirates unwittingly turned their computers into zombies for a botnet. Nice. I call it karma. Paying the reasonable price for the software would have been cheaper in the long run.
Microsoft and their toady caught in a lie →
Like I said before, show me something equivalent for the same price and I’ll be surprised. Fact is, when you add it up, the Mac is a better value. No matter how hard you try to ignore the obvious and stack the results in your favor. Microsoft is pathetic, as is their stooge of an analyst.
Twitter on Ruby vs. Java VM →
I’m thrilled that these guys saw through the Ruby on Rails hype and found something more suitable for their application. If you listen to the Rails community, you’d think they invented computer science and that all other languages and frameworks are worthless. Glad to see someone realized that is not the case.
Phoenix police raid blogger, WTF? →
To say that stuff like this makes me sick would be an understatement. People in law enforcement are not above the law, and in fact should go out of their way to abide by it. It’s clear that some folks in Phoenix need to lose their jobs as they are obviously stepping very far out of line.
Humor: FSF and cloud vendors create FOCA →
Hilarious, from beginning to end. I like the “Cloud Computing is not a trademark of Dell.” Too right.