DailyDigital

Part of a comment on /.:

But I think there’s also a subtler problem, one which, sorry, I’m probably going to do a bad job explaining but I hope you’ll bear with me. The problem is that if you’re a great brilliant technical developer, you’re not going to even think about how to make your program simple. It’s sort of a “not seeing the forrest for the trees” problem. You’re going to be so smart about understanding all the complicated things your program does, and so well-versed at everything that can be done with your program, that you’re not going to be able to understand what a new user will be thinking when he first approaches your program. You’re just too close to the problem.

I totally dig this. I think it is very common too, and not only with programmers. I think it happens all the time, when people are really into a problem and try to explain it to a layman. The layman may be a expert in his/her field, but not in the particular field that is the object of discussion at that moment. Even very bright people will need to have some dots connected if they are to follow the expert.

That is why experts good at explaining things are very rare – and populair!

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“Ignorant” is not the same as “stupid”, and can be cured by means much less dramatic than death.

This is a comment on a post about a special NASA page about 2012. I have not seen the movie, I might still do that. But the fact that there are that many people out there who appear to believe it boggles my mind…

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“We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost — for support, but not for illumination.”

David Ogilvy

This is so very much a W. Bush doctrine. I hope Obama does it a bit different…
But there are lots of places where this is happening. Just look at this page where a new fossil is announced. The amount of people that will use any excuse to say evolution is just a theory (or similar statements…) is just astounding…

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wanneer is die mapampang storing /onderhoud nou eens klaar?
ik kan al een hele dagoe pantje maand mijn belstatus niet bekijken!!!

Ik bel nu dus maar gewoon en natuurlijk krijg ik binnekort een kaolo rekening van tollie 80 euro!!!

T-mobile is echt wack!! wat een doffe provider amateuristisch gedoe hiero

Tja. Wat moet je ervan zeggen? Ergens vind ik het toch wel droevig….

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Well, it happened. Apple updated iTunes to version 8.2.1. According to the changelog, it offers bug fixes and “addresses an issue with verification of Apple devices.” In other words, “Buzz off, Palm Pre. You ain’t no iPhone.”

Link

Palm: “Oh no you didn’t!”

Apple: “Oh yes iDid.”

Palm: Talk to the hand.

Apple: Bite me!

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The US Postal Service moves 1300 of its servers over to Linux. That is, of course, news I love to hear.
Slashdot, the famous geek-site, had a article about it.

Link

But it would not be /. if there would not be some very funny remarks:

1300 servers, processing 40 million transactions a day… that’s about 30,800 transactions per server. Or one transaction every 2.8 seconds or so. With an entire Linux box dedicated to it.

I work in the scan processing group at FedEx. At peak, we see over 100,000,000 transactions a day. And that’s handled on 45 linux boxes, and 12 more for the database, doing upwards of 6000 transactions per second during bursts. That’s a peak of about 133 transactions per second, per box. That’s a little better than 0.3 TPS for the Post Office. So we have about 400 times the performance with 5% of the hardware. By that margin, I could do their processing with about 25 boxes total. That would mean another 98% savings on hardware alone.

For some reason, I fail to be really impressed that they’ve gone from “Crappy performance and Expensive” to “Crappy performance and less expensive.”

I wonder if I can get the bazillion dollar contract to rewrite their system… No, wait, my name isn’t “Boeing” or “Lockheed” or Ken Murtha.

To which someone replies:

Maybe their servers are in the union?

:-)

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See, I don’t think there is ever a good time or place for SQL.

SELECT text FROM mild_introductory_statements WHERE id=random();

Anyone who says so has never had to use it.

SELECT text FROM statements_indicating_superior_experience WHERE id=random();

I like to compare it with JavaScript.

SELECT text FROM unrelated_tool WHERE id=random();

It’s a language that is difficult to refactor, maintain, and while it’s a standard, the standard is so vague that it’s useless.

SELECT text FROM seemingly_valid_yet_unsubstantiated_objections WHERE id=random();

Like JavaScript, people are trying to build other languages on top of it to hide its shortcomings — for javascript you have tools like GWT, and for SQL you have HQL, Linq, etc.

SELECT text FROM wrongheaded_causal_analysis WHERE id=same_one_as_two_queries_ago();

Not to say that there is anything wrong with relational databases, we just lack a good tool to interface with them.

SELECT text FROM reasonable_sounding_parthian_shot_to_obscure_trolling WHERE id=random();

—

Link

I love these kind of posts.

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It’s easier being Santa Clause than Scrouge

Quote from the BBC of today :)

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but men do not always think with the organ God gave them to think with…

Quote I heard on the BBC :-)

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:-)

Quote I heard on the BCC today…

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