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Also known as "I cannot be bothered to actually be a journalist today, I've got a hangover. I know, I'll write an opinion piece about open sourcing Windows, that'll attract a few clicks."
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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Things have changed a lot in 30 years. Back in 1985 the FSF was primarily focused on building free pieces of software that were primarily useful to nerdy computer people. These days we have software, services, social networks, and more to consider. And now 30 years later, all software is free. Mission accomplished!
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IT infrastructure is increasingly giving way to the cloud. Here's how to remain relevant in the years ahead. "We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot"
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We didn't get the future that was predicted. We got a much better one. "It's really gonna be a better world, So many people try again and again and again to change"
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I'm just so tired from new futures arriving so frequently, each of them expecting special treatment and a big reception; but, I'm equally worn out by the never-ending demands of the past: all those memories clamoring to be re-lived ... exhausting !
And, I'm bored as hell in the present, except when I'm programming ... which is when I am depressed because I realize how much I don't understand about what I'm doing.
cheers, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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A much better one?
Instead of the Jetsons, we are seeing a global economic downturn, extreme pollution and science calls it the sixth great extinction.
Yes, the future is awesome. No need to turn out the light after the party.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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We got a much better one.
Yeah, tell that to the waves of refugees fleeing Syria and, I could go on, but this isn't the SB.
I often wonder, as I'm listening to the news on the radio driving down a beautiful road in idyllic countryside on my way to buy high priced organic food that may actually be worse for the environment than conventional, picking up homeopathic remedies that supposedly don't do anything, and scheduling an appointment with the chiropractor on a phone that costs me more per month than many people make in a year, well, I wonder, how the heck did I get so lucky, and WTF is wrong with the people who can't just let other people live in peace. 
Marc
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Researchers from the two tech giants claim new headsets and more powerful phones are paving the way for brain-controlled smartphone apps. I'm thinking of a number between 1121111 and 9989999
Area codes give me a headache
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Work fast and die young. That seems to be the motto of professional world. "You load sixteen tons what do you get?"
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Most developers don’t know how to test Bonus #0: Does the code work?
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with absolutely no description whatsoever of the test’s purpose
I inherited a bunch of Ruby code where the only clue was the name of the test.  And to make matters more complicated, while there are 100's of unit tests, there are also 100's of integration tests, and when it fails, you basically get an "oops, something broke" error on the web page, or the test blows up because the next step (a button, a control, whatever) can't be found on the page.
And since the tests are written in a separate script language (cucumber, capybara, whatever, I can't remember the idiotic names the open source community likes to use and I don't want to) the stack trace (if you can call that abortion of class::method mess a stack) into the Ruby code is blown. I had to write a top-level exception handler to force a debug breakpoint that was monkey-patched (gawd, I hate Ruby) into the script runner (thank you SO for finding that gem, no pun intended.)
Oh, how I loathe Ruby. And pretty much any non-statically typed language.
Good article, it's rather quite surprising (or not, see my other rant below somewhere) that devs writing unit tests actually have to be taught these 5 basic questions. You shouldn't be writing unit tests (or code for that matter) if you don't know that already.
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: You shouldn't be writing unit tests (or code for that matter) if you don't know that already.
I know many people that shouldn't write code...
'Seniors' that haven't heard of SOLID or Design Patterns, who write functions with 100's of lines of code, who rely on copy/paste, who don't really know how types work, who put their business and data logic in their forms/controllers and who use hidden textboxes to store variables (yes, really). Some of these people have been writing code for 20 to 30 years at different companies.
Unfortunately they do write code, I get to fix their sh*t, and somehow they usually make more money too
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IMHO there are 'Seniors' who heard of SOLID and Design Patterns but implement them all wrong - with idiotic constraints in the first case and "trying to fit a square in a circle" in the second.
I have to integrate code like that and it is hell.
As stated below, incompetent people generate bad products, anyway and every way that is possible.
Geek code v 3.12 {
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- r++>+++ y+++*
Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
}
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
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den2k88 wrote: IMHO there are 'Seniors' who heard of SOLID and Design Patterns but implement them all wrong
I've worked with a self-proclaimed senior who thought Single Responsibility Principle was equal to a class with just a single method. And if you have just a single method you don't need state either, so everything can be static...
After a vacation I once found he had 'refactored' my code into something like this:
static class SomeClass
{
static Something DoSomething(params)
{
}
}
static class AnotherClass
{
static Something DoSomething(params)
{
}
}Also, because all those classes had a method called DoSomething that always returned the same type and had the same parameters (that weren't always used) these classes (or rather methods) became interchangeable, making it good OO practice 
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 did you work in Arkham? 
Geek code v 3.12 {
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- r++>+++ y+++*
Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
}
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
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Sander Rossel wrote: who write functions with 100's of lines of code, who rely on copy/paste, who don't really know how types work, who put their business and data logic in their forms/controllers and who use hidden textboxes to store variables
Sounds like my gig at the moment. 
Kevin
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A few more:
6) Make sure both "actual" and "expected" are initialised to non default values different to each other before the test runs*
* (Obviously this can't be the case if they are bools - in that case make sure actual is always initialised to the non-default case so it has to undergo a change in order for the test to pass)
7) Write negative tests too.
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Luckily ISOs are available for users of Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10 to download and use to get the plain vanilla install of their OS without all those OEM extras. *License not included
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As comments on the site point out, doesn't work very well with OEM versions. Sadly.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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The password, the chief means of securing access to our most valuable data, has become almost completely useless, no longer even presenting a speed bump for hackers and mischief makers. Which one? I have a few of them here.
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I have a fingerprint scanner sitting on my desk, can't wait to see how easy it is to spoof it. I rather suspect that cyber-crime will escalate to new levels, beyond the more brutish "cut his thumb off" -- we will soon be seeing all sorts of new mischief in pulling your fingerprint off that wine glass or beer bottle and creating artificial thumbs.
And then there's that new Intel processor that will log you in based on a two camera view of your face. Now, why is that something only the "new" Intel processor can do? Anyways, sounds like it'll be fun to try an spoof too -- take a couple pictures of me at two different angles and hold them up to the cameras, I suppose. I wonder what would happen if I shave my beard.
At the end of the day, whatever you use to authenticate is just data, whether it's "Bob" or a K or so of thumbprint, eye scan or facial data.
There simply must be a better way.
Nope, not until we get brain implants and we can enter in a continually shifting randomized time limited sequence. We already have external versions of that like this[^], but even (can't remember the company name now) those are hackable. Oh well. 
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: pulling your fingerprint off that wine glass or beer bottle and creating artificial thumbs.
Nah, it's far more easier to substitute one fingerprint reader with an "improved" version and record the data, then print it (whoo-hoo 3d printers!).
It is the standard method used to clone debt cards at ATMs.
Geek code v 3.12 {
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- r++>+++ y+++*
Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
}
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
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C is everywhere and in everything. "This is not a love song"
OK, it pretty much is.
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