2009-03-31

python moves to Hg (surprise!)

No surprise, but here's has a real surprise:

quote: As git proponent, I had placed some comments in the usage scenarios explaining what was happening, and got a *lot* of pushback.  The basic workflow should involve *no* thought *at all*, that was a common position.  Even comments on theory of operation are a bad sign.  The closer the workflow scenarios approximated "no change in thinking" (== no thought at all in the ideal), the better.  People didn't even care to find out if it *was* complex, the mere scent of complexity put them off.
wow...!  Why even bother to convert from SVN then?  As someone who's trying to propagate git in $DAYJOB, I can understand this sort of reaction, but from a FOSS project?

And I didn't see a rebuttal of this post in the rest of the thread either...

2009-03-30

(MBA) 360 Degree Feedback Survey for someone joining ISB

I did someone's "evaluation" for admission into ISB (actually the person has already got admission so this is somewhat less critical).

One of the questions was: "To sum up, what advice would you have for this individual on becoming more effective as a leader?".  Now, the person in question is a very soft-spoken, unaggressive, person (as far as I can see -- I could be wrong), so here's what I wrote:

My answer:  as an MBA, he may be called upon to take decisions that he will later have to defend (like perhaps why he voted a certain way in a certain board meeting ;-)  Even if he's right, he has to be able to defend his stance against more outspoken people.  Defending himself if he's actually wrong could be the next step.

:-)

B-schools don't teach ethics anyway, so hopefully they have at least developed a thick skin...

2009-03-26

(funny quote) Dorothy Parker on some book...

"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

2009-03-24

(standards/drivers) new hardware and linux

http://blogs.gnome.org/dcbw/2009/03/20/thats-when-i-reach-for-my-revolver/

This is a very entertaining article on why your new hardware sometimes doesn't work in Linux, written by one of the guys in charge of the "NetworkManager" applet.

Even if you're not a techie, you can still read it to get a flavour for the kind of problems these guys have supporting the same basic thing in a dozen different ways!

2009-03-23

(funny) six of one and a half-dozen of the other

via Jokes2Go Daily Humor on 3/21/09

Recently, when I went to McDonald's. I saw on the menu
that you could have an order of 6, 9 or 12 Chicken
McNuggets. I asked for a half dozen nuggets. "We
don't have half dozen nuggets", said the teenager at
the counter. "You don't?" I replied. "We only have
six, nine, or twelve," was the reply "So I can't
order a half-dozen nuggets, but I can order six?"
"That's right." So I shook my head and ordered six
McNuggets.

2009-03-20

(funny) Look Out, Firefox 3 --- IE8 Is Back On Top For Now


All alone
by AKAImBatman (238306)

IE8 Is Back On Top For Now

You know that kid who rushes to the top of the hill, just knowing that he's finally going to win King of the Hill for the first time ever? Then when he gets to the top of the hill, he's elated when he realizes he's at the top... only to realize a few moments later that all the other kids ran up a different hill?

That's Microsoft.

2009-03-16

(standards) differences between IE7 and IE8

Apparently spurred by the imminent release of Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft's IE Team has published a list of differences between IE7 and IE8, and how to fix code so that it will work on both: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/03/12/site-compatibility-and-ie8.aspx

And if you know someone who still (even today) needs proof that the existing IE 7 and below were grossly non-compliant to standards, pass this on to them too.

They don't need to understand HTML or JS or the DOM to appreciate this. This MS blogger is quite honest and upfront about it. Here's a quote; note the repeated use of the phrase "Standards mode", and their recommendation of the "best option in the long run" :-)

We see the majority of compatibility issues in IE8 Standards Mode. Most of these occur when sites expect legacy behavior that no longer exists in IE8 Standards Mode. Upgrading your site to run in IE8 Standards Mode is the best option in the long run, but in the interim you can quickly fix these types of issues by running your site in Compatibility Mode.

2009-03-12

(MBA) 3 letters to hell -- Masters of the Business Apocalypse

The best thing I learnt today: that George W Bush had an MBA from Harvard -- he is in fact the only US president to have an MBA, thus proving forever that MBAs (at least from Harvard) are worse than lawyers from anywhere. All lawyer jokes shall henceforth be treated with the following perl recipe:

perl -i -e 's/lawyer/Harvard MBA/gi'

----------------------------

other expansions of "MBA" from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article5821706.ece :

Mediocre But Arrogant
Mighty Big Attitude
Me Before Anyone
Management By Accident

----------------------------

One quote from the article reflects what I have been saying all along, that MBAs are not taught ethics.

During my time at the school, 50 students were chosen to participate in a detailed survey of their development. Scott Snook, the professor who ran it, reported that about a third of students were inclined to define right and wrong simply in terms of what everyone else was doing. "They can't really step back and take a critical view," he said. "They're totally defined by others and by the outcomes of what they're doing."
When I asked someone how the dean of ISB would explain to his students why he voted the way he did on Dec 16th or thereabouts, the answer I got "what's to explain? The word 'Ethics' starts with a Z in the MBA dictionary...". (I'm not telling you who said this to me; he was not an MBA anyway)

----------------------------

A personal note. A few people I personally love very much are MBAs. You know who you are. You (and I) know what your job is and that it is nothing remotely like the stuff described in that article.

2009-03-10

2009-03-03

(git) sourceforge and git

In a very interesting move, sourceforge, which till now only supported Subversion (SVN), is now supporting git-hosted projects.

http://apps.sourceforge.net/trac/sitedocs/wiki/Git

Just in case it isn't obvious, Sourceforge is owned by collabnet -- the people behind...

[scroll down for the answer]
































































...SVN :-)