I don’t work with idiots…

Scary thought, I know.. Even in this dilbert-like world you can walk away from a quick chat confident that the other person knows what they’re talking about

It was basically a quick question to a DBA about the pros+cons of using a stored procedure vs a trigger to populate an archive table automatically on changes..

His first question? “What version are you using?” Why? because SQL 2000 has to go back into its logs to get the inserted/updated pseudo tables, whereas 2005 is faster ‘cos it uses its built-in row-versioning support..

Thankfully, I’d already thought of that but I was impressed it was the first thing he thought of – I was rather expecting a vague “triggers are bad” answer

On facts and fanboys…

Why is it that a certain subset of users always simply assume that everything would be better if only the software were running on unix or linux or windows even?

Ok, I jest with the last one – I’ve yet to hear anyone rant about using Windows above all else for server stuff…

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been poking about with the systems of a couple of different projects which must now hold hands and play nice.  One side is very helpful – tons of detail, perf issues, usability.. the other side? not so much..

All they would tell me was “its crap, if we move to unix everything will be 10x better” – and so obviously I followed up asking what testing they’d done, where the issue was with Windows, etc etc

And y’know what?  shockingly they hadn’t got any benchmarks at all, nor had they even looked into the cause – no, UNIX will magically fix everything ‘cos “Windows is crap and unstable”

Lotus Notes follow-up

I started writing this in the comments of my earlier post, but it turned into a lil rant so figured I’d drop it in here instead..

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I’m definitely not qualified [yet] to make a fully educated comparison of the various clients as I’ve only been subjected to Notes for a couple of weeks perhaps my opinion will change in time..

Saying that, I’m generally just not impressed with the usability side – and while yes, I’m a developer and enjoy playing with technology and am smart enough to figure out most stuff put infront of me, I don’t want to have to dedicate any of my time to the client thats showing me my emails.

And nor should I have to. Email, Calendar, Address book, etc are not exactly difficult. Hell, I choose to use outlook express at home ‘cos all I want to see is my email – I don’t care about a lot of the extra crap that gets dropped into these things and just dont need them.

As hinted at above, my main problem with Notes is just that its making me think too much – the preferences are hard to get at, notes ids are a pain, the webmail is ugly and inefficient, etc etc

Perhaps one day I’ll be introduced to killer feature x and my usage patterns will change and I’ll become a believer, but as of right now all I want is the easy stuff, and why should I change my working practices to suit the toolset?

Edit: Case in point.. I was just in the mail view and pressed F5 thinking it would refresh and it logged me out!

Lotus Notes is terrible!

Think that about covers it.  I’ve just moved from accenture to another large consultancy place (name withheld to protect the guilty) and however bad some of the stuff was in the last place, this new one is a step back into the dark ages!

Oh well.

Wii

Pretty much every review I’ve read on the Wii falls into two camps.  I think that as of right now, I’m firmly on the gimmick side.

The wii play/sports type stuff actually shows some potential as theyve designed and showcased types that can benefit from the control mechanism.  However, the ‘normal’ games like zelda are simply uncomfortable – they’ve just bolted the motion sense onto a standard control mechanism and so basically it offers no value and simply replaces a button press ‘cos all its functioning as is the swing-sword button, with no control over direction etc

Had they reversed the peripherals and had the remote working as your view up/down/left/right instead of simply being a trigger it may have been of some use but as it is, its unplayable for me at least ‘cos it just feels unnatural.

Best TCP explanation ever :)

I’ve been reading joel on software for a while now, but recently decided to trawl through the archives and found the following gem – ok, I already knew the details of TCP and such but sometimes the story is in the telling..

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.html

 ”Imagine that we had a way of sending actors from Broadway to Hollywood that involved putting them in cars and driving them across the country. Some of these cars crashed, killing the poor actors. Sometimes the actors got drunk on the way and shaved their heads or got nasal tattoos, thus becoming too ugly to work in Hollywood, and frequently the actors arrived in a different order than they had set out, because they all took different routes. Now imagine a new service called Hollywood Express, which delivered actors to Hollywood, guaranteeing that they would (a) arrive (b) in order (c) in perfect condition. The magic part is that Hollywood Express doesn’t have any method of delivering the actors, other than the unreliable method of putting them in cars and driving them across the country. Hollywood Express works by checking that each actor arrives in perfect condition, and, if he doesn’t, calling up the home office and requesting that the actor’s identical twin be sent instead. If the actors arrive in the wrong order Hollywood Express rearranges them. If a large UFO on its way to Area 51 crashes on the highway in Nevada, rendering it impassable, all the actors that went that way are rerouted via Arizona and Hollywood Express doesn’t even tell the movie directors in California what happened. To them, it just looks like the actors are arriving a little bit more slowly than usual, and they never even hear about the UFO crash.”

On dog attacks..

BBC News has a comments board open on the recent dog attack in UK..

Some of the comments are the usual kneejerk ‘ban them all’ rubbish, while some are the equally stupid ‘they’re harmless if looked after well’ that always seems to grace such discussion..

My view on it?  The owner is at fault 100%  Dogs may have been domesticated but they’re still only subject to the behaviours taught them by the owner – and even then there are instincts underneath which will be impossible to overcome through nurture.

Unfortunately for the little girl attacked prior to this latest media frenzy, the family member who owned the dog seems to be of the sadly more and more common variety which likes to feel hard by owning the intimidating breeds, more often than not wanting a large dog which acts aggressively..

Equally unfortunately, the family itself seem to have been largely of the equally common bloody-stupid variety that will leave an aggressive breed of dog unattended with a small child.

I rather like dogs, especially the bigger ones – anyone insisting they all be banned or always go around muzzled is talking rubbish - there are far far less attacks by dogs than simply by humans – hell, most of the owners of the large scary breeds are probably more violent than their dogs are.

So by all means insist on tighter control, registration, compulsory training, periodical evaluations, whatever.. but don’t just inflate the issue ‘cos frankly the dogs are just doing what dogs do – the owner is taking on the responsibility of looking after the dog, and if he/she can’t fulfill that contract then they shouldn’t be keeping it.

Frankly, they should be treated in the same way as a driver – a car is just as much a deadly weapon if not more so, and the driver has the responsibility to control the vehicle – if you were to purposefully drive into someone, or do so while incapacitated (drunk or similar) then you would be charged as appropriate – assault w/deadly weapon, manslaughter, etc   Why should it be any different with dog ownership?

Distasteful

Ok, quick one this time.. while visiting one of the many sites I frequent I came upon a post basically talking about a bootleg video of saddam being hanged – then commenting that it should’ve been a full HD quality one..

Now it could just be me, but I find that incredibly distasteful – being satisfied at a death sentence (arguably well deserved) is one thing.. watching it being carried out and complaining that its not high enough quality is quite another!

Happy new year though :p

V for Vendetta is really good

Yup, nice quick post this time – if you haven’t already seen it, you really should go find a copy and drop it in the dvd player – well worth your time.

512bit vernam cipher? wtf?

Ok, so I’m no expert on cryptology.. hell, the best I’ve done was when I’d first started out coding and inadvertently came up with the vernam cipher – had never even heard of the various cool implementations floating about now..

 Anyway… was just watching swordfish and apparently the guy has to crack an ‘impossible’ 512bit vernam cipher… now, is it just me or is that backwards considering that you need a key the same length as the data to be encrypted? if they were to use a 512bit key using vernam, it would be amazingly insecure since its no longer a one-time pad… oh well, hollywood eh