I have to admit, it ranks pretty high on the things I’ve seen too. I’m not sure I’d employ him though.
Microsoft helping startups?!
It’s a curious move, coming from one of the largest software companies in the world, but a welcome one.
Yes, it’s a transparent attempt to fight open-source software by getting companies hooked on their product before they’ve grown into the next Google. But it can also help such companies when they need it the most. So while I can’t applaud Microsoft’s self-serving action, I can and do applaud the (likely unintentional) side effect of making their software affordable to companies that are watching every penny.
Of course, I’ve just heard of this program, and it’s likely that many startups won’t hear of it at all until after they’ve already adopted a system. And Linux has a big lead in the minds of the technical college-age kids who are the most likely founders of startups. But hey, it’s a start. 🙂
“Israelis develop ‘safe’ plutonium: good for power, bad for weapons”
Of course, it’s only good until someone else comes up with a way to remove the contaminant that makes it safe. Something you know will happen, eventually.
“McDonalds to cook up EV charging station network”
Well, that’s one good way to get around the chicken-and-egg problem with electric vehicles.
Roast Pidgin
A few days ago, I started getting this message from Pidgin, the instant-messaging client that Ubuntu Linux uses by default:
The client version you are using is too old. Please upgrade at http://pidgin.im
Well, I’ve seen that happen before, so I waited. Sure enough, that evening’s software update told me that there was an upgrade for Pidgin. I told it to install the upgrade and thought nothing more of it.
Until today, when I noticed that it was still giving me that error. Which was rather confusing, since it was definitely fixed, and I explicitly recall seeing the upgrade come in. Checking the version number of Pidgin just made me more confused, because it claimed to be version 2.4.3 — not 2.5.2, which the Ubuntu servers were passing out. Removing and reinstalling it didn’t seem to make any difference, either to the problem or to the version number.
It took a little while before I recalled that I’d manually installed a version of Pidgin about a year and a half ago, and considered the possibility that it was still hanging around. Sure enough, a peek into /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/lib showed old versions of Pidgin, the libpurple library that it uses, and the OTR plug-in as well. Cleaning those out solved all of the problems.
I guess I’m still getting used to Linux. Under Windows, you had to wipe out the OS and reinstall it every so often, so it was rare that you’d forget what you’d installed since the last one. One of the hidden advantages to running Windows, I guess. 😉
Geek Drivel Updated
As you can probably see, I’ve made some updates to the blog. Some are visible, like the new “favicon” and a new theme; some aren’t, like removing some junk plugins and making some security improvements.
All in all, I’m fairly happy with the results, but let me know if you see any weirdness.
Superbug!
(This entry is for software developers only. If you’re not a software developer, stop reading now, or you risk terminal boredom. 😉 )
As I’ve mentioned before, I wrote a program (which I refer to as Project Badger here) that was sold to a larger company, which keeps my company on call to advise on its continued development.
Customers have been complaining about a minor but annoying problem, off and on, for well over a year. We could never reproduce it, and after they complained, the customers couldn’t either. It seemed to happen only under extremely rare conditions, only some of which were under the user’s control. Fortunately, one of the testers in the company found a way to reliably reproduce it (on his machine, at least) a few weeks ago, so the senior developer and I have been on its trail ever since.
Ford’s Latest TV Commercial
GoddessJ and I watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report every night that they’re on. (They’re really the only shows that we watch, we mostly use the TV for watching DVDs and playing the occasional PS2 game.) The only real complaint that we have about it is the sheer mind-numbing repetition of the ads. We retaliate by making jokes about them. (“Where else can you see fashions like this?” a recent and oft-repeated ad gushes. “At the Goodwill store,” GoddessJ retorts.)
But there’s one ad we’ve been seeing for the last week or two that caught my attention. It’s for Ford cars, and it features a couple dozen people, all saying — regularly, repeatedly, and repetitively ad nauseum — how Ford’s quality is now equal to Toyota’s.
Japanese-based automakers have only two quality advantages over American-based ones. They’re designed to last (no “planned obsolescence” for them!), and they test each part before putting the car together. Parts that don’t make the cut get rejected, period. American-based automakers have historically just thrown the parts together and did some basic testing on it afterwards, and if they can drive it onto a truck, it gets shipped to the public. I don’t know whether that practice has changed, but I have my doubts — testing each part is time-consuming, and “time is money.”
On the other hand, a little Internet research turns up a surprising fact: the claim seems to have a kernel of truth to it, at least for “initial” quality (i.e. problems in the first ninety days that a customer has the vehicle).
Would I buy a Ford because of it? Hell no — at least, not until their vehicles have proven to be as high-quality and long-lasting as the two Toyotas that I’ve had. And that’s going to take some time to prove, since my current one (a Corolla) is now thirteen years old and still going strong. You can’t even tell its age by looking at it. I’ve seen too many American cars that are rust-buckets at half that age, and I’ve heard too many horror stories about expensive mechanical problems with them after only a few years.
But it’s nice to see that at least one American car maker is trying to match the Japanese in quality. I might even be persuaded to buy a Ford car… some day. 🙂
Two New Insights on Batteries
Want to charge your lithium-ion battery in three seconds? It’s apparently coming in the next couple years. And the longer term may hold Magnetic Tunnel Junction batteries, which could be even more useful.
“Choosing a Bad Password Has Real-World Consequences”
As Bruce Schneier says, “oops.”
Encryption is not a silver bullet. How many times do we geeks have to say it? Passwords that can be found in a dictionary (come on, “progress”?!) are ridiculously easy to break. Wake up, people!