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Author Archives: specialk
The SIGGRAPH Community Cares
So there is a massive earthquake in Japan, with who knows what consequences, and the great and glorious SIGGRAPH papers community has taken action.
Why yes they have, they have given the folks in Japan 48 hours.
Dear authors,
Due to the severe earthquake in Japan, papers with Japan-based authors may have an additional 48 hours to submit their rebuttals (beyond the regular deadline which is today, March 11, 22:00 GMT). These late rebuttals can be sent by email to papersadmin2011@siggraph.org.
SIGGRAPH 2011 Technical Papers Chair
How about a week guys, or has the program committee already booked their tickets?
Dynamic Programming Languages are a net negative on engineering productivity
For the purposes of this discussion I will use the term application and system interchangeably to describe a piece of software with more than 300k lines of code and with more than 5 developers.
Dynamic programming languages allow you to make the Faustian bargain of ease of prototyping at the expense of maintainability. They let you prototype your system quickly without having to think too deeply about the core abstractions. In an application space where the core abstractions are hard to determine because the business is so new, this is a good thing. No point in thinking through the abstractions when you are building something radically new.
However, at some point, software becomes more permanent as the business it supports becomes more permanent. At that point in time abstractions become necessary to get engineering leverage. And then the Devil turns on you. Because the lack of abstractions early on make it hard to define them later. Worse, because of the dynamic nature of the language, it becomes hard to impose rules on the abstractions on the programmers. And as the team scales it becomes increasingly harder.
Over time you get a large piece of software for which reasoning about becomes increasingly more difficult.
And then you try and make the dynamic language more structured with more well defined abstractions and rules that the compiler and language and tools do nothing to help you with.
So the choice is always yours, pick a dynamic language and have no support when your business scales, or pick a structured language and struggled with the type-safety.
At the end of the day, you either believe types and abstractions make for productivity or you don’t. If you do, then you agree with me. If you don’t then you don’t. But 30+ years of programming language design has taught us that types do matter.
Baby’s First Cubicle
http://www.littletikes.com/toys/young-explorer.aspx
In this age of technology we think it is essential that children learn about computers as early as possible. This technology can enhance critical and cognitive thinking skills, problem-solving abilities and analytical thinking. Having child-appropriate computers and software in your facility shows parents that you understand the important role technology plays in providing an enriched learning environment for their child’s growth. It’s a hallmark way to set you apart from other childcare facilities.
- Furniture features:
- Flat desk area
- Left and Right built-in mouse pads
- Bench seat that fits two children and offers storage inside for supplies
- Two locking cabinet doors
- Computer wiring stores safely inside ventilated cabinet.
- Locking castors keep unit from rolling during use.
So poor Nick. Life in the cubicle begins very soon after sentience. What ever happened to schools showing off their playing fields and talking about their sports clubs? Whatever happened to debate teams? In this day and age we prep them young to go from
To
The Worst Customer Experience Ever at Fry’s Electronics
Fry’s Electronics is a Bay Area institution. Fry’s has notoriously poor customer service paired with excellent selection and an amazingly great no questions asked return policy.
How bad is the customer service?
When Best Buy set up shop here, they ran a sequence of ads asking local Bay Area residents what they thought of Fry’s customer service. Let’s be clear, they said that their pimply faced sales reps knew more about the products they were selling than the other guys sales reps. They were saying the other guy had set the bar so low, that they could vault over it …
Fry’s Sales Reps Mislead
Many years ago I learned that a Fry’s Electronics rep would mislead you. The sales rep in 1998 sold me a VCR that he said could skip over ads. Stupid Kostadis, what the sales rep meant was that there was a 30 second skip button on my VCR.
Two years ago, I relearned that lesson when I tried to buy a portable AC. The sales rep tried to sell me the product he was tasked with selling even though it was the wrong product for my needs.
Fry’s as a warehouse
The last two years I have used Fry’s as a warehouse. I show up with a piece of paper that describes the precise product I want. I avoid every single sales rep in the store, pick up the product, and then leave. If I have any questions I use my cell phone to look the information up. If a sales rep approaches me I growl at them: Go away. If they try and offer help: I say no, I don’t need it.
That approach mostly worked. Until today.
The all-time low
I wanted to buy some memory for my new 10” netbook. So I write down the specifications, and I march into Fry’s expecting to find the part and leave.
Unfortunately I could not just pick up the memory module from an aisle. A sales rep had to enter the specifications and then fetch me the part. I was ready to turn around and leave but figured that the simple task of entering some data into a computer and fetching the memory should preclude the usual set of Fry’s shenanigans.
But no.
The sales rep enters the information I carefully wrote down, tells me the price and I say okay. But before I sign and she gets her commission, she asks me a question. The question made it clear to both of us that she didn’t have the part I wanted. Instead of admitting that she could not fulfill my order, the Fry’s shenanigans began.
First she says that:
The memory module does not exist. That the memory module whose specifications I recorded from a memory module being sold on Amazon did not exist.
When I look at her with disbelief and say, no I want this specific part, she turns around and says that
To get the memory module I wanted, I had to buy 4 GB.
And when I refuse to do that, she starts mumbling stuff. Frustrated, and concerned that her inability to speak English was causing a misunderstanding, I ask if she could just get me the part so I could read the packaging for myself and determine if I wanted to buy it. Her response was:
No
Okay, so I can’t get the part I want, I can’t look at the part I before I buy it, but there is an excellent return policy.
Wait, I know of a website that lets me get the part I want, doesn’t let me touch the part before I buy it, and has an excellent return policy …
Hmm…
And so 15 years later my sordid affair with Fry’s is over. I will never buy anything from that store as long as there is the option to buy it from Best Buy or Amazon. And if it only exists at Fry’s, I will live without the product.
Greeks leaving Greece, again
http://www.tovima.gr/default.asp?pid=2&ct=1&artid=351032&dt=29/08/2010
Το πιο εντυπωσιακό συμπέρασμα της έρευνας της Κάπα Research είναι ότι η μεγάλη πλειονότητα των νέων με πτυχίο στην Ελλάδα δηλώνει πρόθυμη να εγκαταλείψει τη χώρα για να βρει μια σταθερή και καλά αμειβόμενη εργασία. Από το σύνολο των ερωτηθέντων, το 73,6% δηλώνει ότι θα έφευγε από την Ελλάδα, ενώ το 42% δηλώνει ότι έχει ήδη προβεί σε συγκεκριμένες κινήσεις για να το επιτύχει, αναζητώντας εργασία στο εξωτερικό, κατοικία ή κάποιο ειδικό εκπαιδευτικό πρόγραμμα πρόσθετης επιμόρφωσης. Από εκείνους οι οποίοι δηλώνουν πρόθυμοι να εργαστούν στο εξωτερικό, το 66,4% δηλώνει ότι το κάνει για να έχει καλύτερη ποιότητα ζωής συνολικά, το 44,7% για να βρει μια καλή δουλειά και το 32,6% για να διασφαλίσει περισσότερη αξιοκρατία στην εξέλιξή του. Μάλιστα, το 60,7% δηλώνει ότι θα προτιμούσε μια θέση εργασίας με προοπτική καριέρας στο εξωτερικό παρά μια μόνιμη θέση εργασίας στον ιδιωτικό ή στον δημόσιο τομέα στην Ελλάδα. Ταυτοχρόνως, η συντριπτική πλειονότητα εκείνων που δηλώνουν πρόθυμοι να μεταναστεύσουν θέτει ως επιδιωκόμενο μισθό ένα ποσό της τάξεως των 1.500 ως 5.000 ευρώ. Ακόμη τονίζουν ότι «οι Ελληνες της ξενιτιάς είναι δύο φορές Ελληνες», προσθέτοντας ότι «μπορεί να γίνει πατρίδα και η χώρα που μπορεί να εργαστεί και να ζήσει κάποιος αξιοπρεπώς».
Διαβάστε περισσότερα: http://www.tovima.gr/default.asp?pid=2&ct=1&artid=351032&dt=29%2F08%2F2010#ixzz0y11LUstZ
In this article by Vima, an Athenian newspaper, 73.6% of Greeks between the ages of 22-35 want to leave Greece, and more depressingly 42% of them are in the process of making plans to leave.
Reasons are opportunities, and depressingly 32.6% say that because they don’t feel that Greece has opportunities for advanced based on merit. In my own life that was part of the reason I wanted to leave. The fact that you had this impression that who you knew was more important than how good you are…
What’s really depressing, is that in the mid-80’s to late 90’s a similar study would have revealed the same data. In the 90’s, with the economic boom, things changed. Greeks in that demographic wanted to stay in Greece.
But now we are back to where we started. And what’s depressing is that the best educated segment of the country will leave, again.
Look at my post
I love this humorous comment on youtube:
Look at your comment, now back to mine. Now back at your comment now back to mine. Sadly it isn’t mine, but if you stopped trolling and started posting legitimate comments it could look like mine. Look down, back up, where are you? You’re scrolling through comments, writing the comment your comment could look like. What did you post? Back at mine, it’s a reply saying something you want to hear. Look again the reply is now diamonds. Anything is possible when you think before you post.
twitterblog rides again
After almost a year long hiatus, I got my python program twitterblog to work again.
twitterblog lets me take a twitter time line and directly dump it into my typepad blog.
There were a couple of limitations of the original software, which are now fixed, and on top of which I added a couple of new features.
So the new features are the ability to specify the title from the command line with the –T option and the ability to specify an end time for a time line so you print out the tweets from 4 days ago, and only four days ago using the –e option.
I also fixed a bug related to how tweets that contained non-ascii characters were being treated. Normally twitter returns nothing but text, but if the text contains UTF-8, the rather simplistic parser I had would puke.
Now if I detect an error while parsing, I’ll do something semi-intelligent, but at least no longer crash.
Python continues to impress with it’s syntax and it’s wealth of libraries.
Schweet… 8 CPU’s
Okay so they are virtual and not quite real, but hot-doggedy-damn.
I saw 8 CPU’s in Windows 7 viewer and that was just cool. Almost 10 years ago I thought it was super cool that I had an Octane as a workstation with TWO processors, and here I am with my new shiny laptop and it has EIGHT.
That’s cool.
Scott Hamilton: The snark
Twice this Olympics Scott Hamilton has been snarky.
First it was the Brian Boucher comment: Finally Brian gets his gold medal. Like really dude, we know you beat him. We know it. And yes we’re bitter as Canadians that Brian came in second twice.
Then it was the comment on Ice-Dancing: I’ve been around the sport of ice-dancing my whole career, but I’ve never understood it.
well at least that one I can get behind.