Archive for the ‘“ninja”’ Category

When Close Isn’t Good Enough

For a lot of engineering problems, "almost right" isn’t good enough. Remember the Mars Climate Orbiter? Traveling through space for nearly a year, and covering 700 million kilometers, the Orbiter disintegrated after entering the Martian atmosphere at an altitude just one-hundred kilometers lower than planned. That’s like a $100 million dart exploding when you miss the bullseye by less than the width of a human hair. A less dramatic — though more common — failure is the embarrassing auto-correct. After countless convenient corrections, there is inevitably a mistake that calls into question the overall utility of the system. For one contributor to this blog, that moment occurred when the intended "wild beasts" was publicly disseminated as "wild breasts" — on the bright side, that "correction" did seem to increase interest in the text. via

Split Second Persuasion

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You’ve Got Elwood Edwards

How to Start a Group

It seems that there are two ways to create a group. And when I say "group" I mean a software team, a band, a company, a project, or whatever.

One way is for one person to have an idea and start working on it. Soon he drags in another guy and they work on it until there’s a solid foundation to the group and things are rolling. Pretty soon other people start to notice and ask to join. They join one by one and are indoctrinated to the philosophy of the group. The hard decisions have been made, so the only people who are attracted are those who want to actually contribute.

The other way is for one person to have an idea and broadcast, "Hey everyone! I’ve got this idea and I think we should start a group to do it! I’ve created a mailing list for it, so everyone who’s interested should subscribe and we’ll all create something great!" A bzillion people join, there’s lots of enthusiasm and energy, and they argue so much over the name of the group and what the icon should look like that nothing gets done.

Every time I’ve seen approach #1 it has worked out pretty well, and every time I’ve seen #2 it’s fallen apart. Examples of #1 are Linux, MacBSD, most bands, HTML, Apple, the United States, and Microsoft. Examples of #2 are MacLinux, the PDI band, NeXT, the Perot campaign, the European Union, and VRML 2.0.

People are quick to volunteer work and slow to work. The quickest way to kill a project is to attract people who will grind it to a halt with their enthusiastic non-action. Slow assimilation works best.

.:teamten.com->

Planking Win

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By definition, planking is "the act of lying face down with arms to the sides of the body, in unusual public spaces and photographing it."

That, seemingly simple and non-eventful action is the latest craze, fad, sensation, whatever, that seems to be sweeping not only the country here in the U.S.A. but globally as well.

Who’s doing it? After seeing some photos and videos a few weeks ago I would have said that it was only the geeks of the world (and yes I count myself in that category, so that’s not a knock on the Geek Nation). But lately I’ve been seeing folks from all walks of life getting their plank on !! (Source)

Working for Yourself

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Working for yourself is different doesn’t mean you have to have your own business. It just means you take full responsibility for all your job choices and that you’re doing things because you truly want to do them, not because you’ve bought into someone else’s dream fro your life.

So many people live their life building something for someone else. There’s nothing wrong with that. Not everyone is an entrepreneur. Not everyone can build their own thing. Not everybody is meant to go create something for nothing. But for God’s sake, don’t build something for someone else if it’s not something you truly want to be doing.

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Evisceration (in full)

SO if you’re the last person to watch O’Reilly get murdered by Jon Stewart, well then I feel bad for you. Basically, the "selective outrage machine" that is FOX news - and O’Reilly in particular - decided that it had a problem with Common being a performer at a poetry slam at the White House. O’Reilly seems to suggest that he’s a dodgy character with whom the president should be ashamed to associate. In the clip below, Jon explains to O’Reilly why he’s wrong, basically doing to him what Obama did to Trump, except to his face (and complete with a "BOOYA").

I both love Common and also find myself in position to be artistically aware of almost the entire breadth of his portfolio (meaning that I listened to him before ‘Like Water For Chocolate,’ and way before Kanye single-handedly made him a commercial emcee). Especially in the old school, Common (Sense) had some really raw lyrics. I mean, the guy was a pimp, supposedly, before being a musician.

Interestingly, you can see how Common changes throughout his musical career, eventually releasing some of the more heartfelt and poetic (read: soft) verses in the rap game to date. Don’t get it twisted, he will eat 99% of y’all still. Anyway, to me this raises larger, more important questions. In my opinion those questions are: how much artistic freedom should we give rappers credit for? How closely associated do you have to be to a public figure to be considered lending them credibility? How could somebody watch this clip and still believe any of Bill’s bullcrap?

Hipster Fort Win?

Seeds Of Doubt

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We pride ourselves on our skepticism and our nullius in verba approach to scientific questions. Many people are familiar with the works of Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, and Martin Gardner. The vague platitudes of astrology and the self-delusion of television psychics are not for us. However, scientists such as ourselves are not immune to self-delusion, and even the brightest among us can fall prey to the substitution of wishful thinking for rigorous logic when the science points to conclusions that uncomfortably conflict with our world view.

.:pubs.acs.org->