Big news the other day, AT&T is about to acquire T-Mobile. Internet rage ensues. It was only a matter of time before someone started a petition, one of which made it to the front page on reddit.com:
Please sign the petition to actively stop AT&T from becoming a huge monopoly and saving our right to choose
Short history debrief: First AT&T was Ma Bell, then the Federal government broke that up into several companies which created fierce competition in the market. Many of those companies grouped together again under the same umbrella, in one legal way or another. Several years later and the Ma Bell antics are in full swing once again; in 2005 it was announced that Cingular Wireless, a joint venture between AT&T and BellSouth, would be sold under the AT&T name. And now AT&T is after T-Mobile.
If history taught us anything, wasn’t it that we can’t allow corporations to monopolize an entire industry?
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A long time ago, I created this idea called Verbal Reckoning where I would collect the most absurd claims and arguments from the web and comment on them myself in a thorough, very critical, insulting and sarcastic way…like policing internet trolls (a contradiction in itself). But mostly it was for humor’s sake, entertainment for the soul. This project idea faded quickly as I took interest in other things, but there was one relic from this ancient endeavor which I recently found on my FTP server and still hold close to my heart…
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“A well-designed program uses classes and design patterns; it has high cohesion, low coupling, and limited cyclomatic complexity.” -Riyad Mammadov
BEEP BEEP BEEP BULLSHIT DETECTED
Source: Reddit user rafekett
Riyad Mammadov
Any programmer worth his intellect would be cautious of statements such as this one. I’m surprised to see this advice come from an Enterprise Architect with 16 years of experience. Come on man, put away that skunk! Commenting source code is a tool like any other, including unit tests. Some people prefer different tools or a combination of them all. Design practices such as unit testing and commenting source code should yield positive results when used correctly. Why else would these tools exist?
To make an outrageous claim that one should not use a fundamental tool such as commenting source code would be akin to me saying unit tests are a waste of time because they introduce an extra layer of design and complexity that is probably not necessary or useful at all, causing more dependency and a longer development period, not to mention costing the client more money in the end. While my statement is correct in some context or another, there are aspects of unit testing which I cannot deny the plausibility of, such as NASA using their own method of unit testing during the development of Project Mercury in the 1960′s. And I bet my butt that they also had documentation in the form of written English, which is precisely why commenting source code is a solid practice!
Classic sensational headline with a follow up clarification to keep oneself in good standing? In response to his original article, which received a flurry of negative feedback from Reddit.com users, he goes on to clarify that “one often-repeated mistake was that I am advocating against ALL source code comments. This is simply not true, and if you read the blog post through the end, you will see a pretty funny example of a very legitimate comment one programmer left in his code.”
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What the hell? How did this \\heaven\HP4650 printer get added to my system at login!?
Enter Google Cloud Print.
“By connecting your printer with the Google Cloud you will be able to print to your printer from any computer or smart phone, regardless of where you are. Just activate the Google Cloud Print connector in Google Chrome and your printer will automatically be available to you from Google Cloud Print enabled web and mobile apps.”
The Google Cloud? The Cloud? Cloud Computing? In the Cloud? Google Computing? In the Google!? AAAGGGHHH SHORT CIRCUIT….
Utterly confusing. This is simply the American way, re-branding old $hit for profit. So Google has their own Cloud in the sky. I guess the way they see it, different Cloud-based providers will have their own “Clouds” (read: data centers) where they host and provision software, services and resources on the web.
But how is Google Cloud Print any different than setting up Internet Printing Protocol on your HP Color LaserJet 4650 or Canon iR5000 printer? I’ll tell you the glaring differences:
- Requires Google Chrome on the computer that will be sharing the printer.
- Requires Google Cloud Print-enabled apps to print from, such as Gmail, Google Docs, and Chrome OS. There aren’t many alternatives at this point.
- Works with just about any printer attached to your computer.
- You now rely on Google as a middle man between your internet device and your printer at home.
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Big news for old gaming junkies! GameInformer reports today that Duke Nukem Forever is set to be released on May 3, 2011 after 14 years of development and delays. GearBox Software unveiled the game in playable form at PAX a few months ago. GearBox has put out some very polished stuff in the past, so we might actually see Duke hit the shelves once again, with infinitely more anger and firepower for those alien bastards who shot up his ride.
To celebrate this news, I will be personally releasing a never before seen episode pack for Duke Nukem 3D that I developed many many years ago titled Deth. Stay tuned…
Check out the new official trailer, which speaks for itself…
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If the Connect a fingerprint sensor fiasco wasn’t enough…
We needed a new way to backup our remote users’ files who regularly work on their laptops in the field. The USB thumb drives we assigned to those users no longer work since we discovered they were full of unecessary files and basically not being used since the backup process was not automagic.
Enter Offline Files, included as a standard feature in Windows XP Professional or better. Offline Files is not without it’s own quirks though. I quickly discovered how temperamental it can actually be, behaving normally one minute and totally out of whack the next minute. After completing several run-throughs with Offline Files in my test environment, we concluded that it would be highly beneficial to the company not only for backup purposes, but since the remote users’ files were now being stored on our server, we could integrate those files with our project management software and cut down on email usage.
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We were hiring an employee for our sales staff, so I had the privilege of purchasing a much nicer laptop than usual due to a reduced wear and tear factor for our field staff. We buy all of our computer systems through Dell, so I browsed the business section on Dell’s website until I found the perfect match for our new employee: a Dell Latitude E6400 with solid state disk.
Booting up Windows XP on this laptop was an absolute dream. The solid state disk eliminated that immense 5-15 minutes of sluggishness one experiences while all of the startup programs are loading, checking for updates, etc. It seemed like the solid state disk alone doubled the system’s responsiveness. So far, I was impressed.
My final task would be to enroll the new employee’s fingerprints so he could log on by swiping his finger rather than typing a password. Every attempt I made at doing this failed. All it said was Connect a fingerprint sensor, even though the damn fingerprint sensor was built into the palm rest. So I called Dell Support, and this is where things got a little out of control.
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Glass Ocean is Perry Butler's Blog, Music Productions, Services, and Software Development.