This is a good article that I just read... I especially liked the following question and answer.
I believe it not only applies to software development, but to all aspects of technology. I use the technique that he talks about (quick and dirty, then immediately improve and fix), but just never realized or thought about it. It just seems the most natural way of building or working with technology. You must be careful though to not overlook the improvement part... you have to do it immediately or else you'll never end up having time to go back later to improve it.
Ed: When you're doing your day-to-day work, maybe you are coding or designing or doing technology development, and you have the choice between doing the "right thing" or the "quick thing," how do you motivate yourself to do the right thing?
Rod: I am actually very biased in favor of doing the right course. One thing that I might do is make a deliberate decision as to what gives me the greatest velocity. So, for example, I might do it a quick and dirty way, verify that it works, and then come back and fix it immediately, because it's way easier to improve working code than to do something more complex when you don't have anything working. But, in general, I don't tend to take shortcuts, and one of the whole goals with Spring is to make the right thing easy to do. I mean, I think if you consistently find that the right thing is hard to do, there's something wrong. The right thing should be the right thing partly because it's easy and natural to do. If the right thing is unnatural, that is kind of an environment smell. It's beyond a code smell. It's telling you something.
Click here to read the rest of the article
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Secrets of rock star programmers
Google Sites Taking on SharePoint?
I haven't messed with the latest and greatest SharePoint version, but they are going to need to 'kick it up a notch' if Google is going to play in this market.
GOOGLE GOES AFTER SHAREPOINT
Perhaps as a move to upstage Microsoft's first SharePoint conference
next week (http://tinyurl.com/yo2b6r), Google today took the wraps
off Google Sites, a set of tools that can be used to create
collaborative Web sites.
http://sites.google.com/
The new offering, which is built on a wiki technology the company
acquired last year, will be the latest member to the company's Google
Apps suite of software. Supposedly, Google Sites helps users with just
a smidge of technical ability to piece together Web sites in a matter
of minutes. They can use these sites to house different functions such
as calendars, spreadsheets and videos.
While the technology appears to be aimed at non-technical consumers,
the timing of the announcement relative to Redmond's SharePoint
conference might be sending a signal about where Google ultimately
wants to target the product. Some feel that Google is hoping business
users will hold Google Sites and SharePoint side-by-side and,
consequently, steal some of those users looking primarily for hosted
solutions. The company is betting some users don't want to invest any
more infrastructure solutions based inside their IT shops.
Google has been pretty adept at wedging its way into corporate
environments under the IT radar (something Microsoft itself was pretty
adept at doing 20 years ago), but it figures to have its hands full
competing against Redmond's SharePoint franchise, which is becoming
fairly well-entrenched in larger IT shops.
By Ed Scannell
Editor, Redmond magazine
escannell@redmondmag.com
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Manufacturers agree to bundle VMWare ESX 3i
VMWARE REACHES OUT
At its VMworld Europe 2008 conference going on this week on the sunny
shores of Cannes, France, VMware announced a handful of agreements
that will have it bundling its ESX 3i Hypervisor with several of the
top server vendors.
http://redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?editorialsid=9592
Within 60 days, you can reasonably expect to see VMware's server
virtualization layer bundled with the latest server units from IBM,
Dell, HP and Fujitsu Siemens. "Customers can now get VMware
pre-integrated and pre-configured for the hardware platform of their
choice for immediate standalone server consolidation," said VMware's
president and CEO Diane Greene in a prepared statement.
Besides spreading the word and the hypervisor, having the servers
from those VMware partners bundled with VMware ESX 3i hypervisor
will also serve to keep the door open for customers who might be
interested in upgrading to the complete VMware Infrastructure 3
suite. The ESX 3i hypervisor itself is based on VMware's core
virtualization technology. It boasts the smallest footprint at 32MB,
and is also the only completely OS-independent platform out there.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Google Maps Without the Scripting
This is pretty cool and could come in handy in certain situations.
Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 10:50:00 AM
Posted by Tom Manshreck, Maps API Team
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably already use the Google Maps API and love it as much as we do! But you may find it not useful for certain cases: the Google Maps API requires JavaScript, can take a while to load over slow connections, and requires some overhead to maintain a dynamic website.
The Google Static Maps API provides a simpler way to add maps to your website. Rather than use JavaScript, the Google Static Maps API creates map images on the fly via simple requests to the Static Maps service with HTTP requests. No JavaScript, no overhead. Just create a special URL as the src attribute within an <> tag and let the Static Maps service create your image.
Click Here to read the rest of the article
Monday, February 25, 2008
Research Team Finds Security Flaw in Popular Disk Encryption Technologies
Laptops in "Sleep" or "Hibernation" Mode Most Vulnerable to Attack
San Francisco - A team including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Princeton University, and other researchers have found a major security flaw in several popular disk encryption technologies that leaves encrypted data vulnerable to attack and exposure.
"People trust encryption to protect sensitive data when their computer is out of their immediate control," said EFF Staff Technologist Seth Schoen, a member of the research team. "But this new class of vulnerabilities shows it is not a sure thing. Whether your laptop is stolen, or you simply lose track of it for a few minutes at airport security, the information inside can still be read by a clever attacker."
The researchers cracked several widely used disk encryption technologies, including Microsoft's BitLocker, Apple's FileVault, TrueCrypt, and dm-crypt. These "secure" disk encryption systems are supposed to protect sensitive information if a computer is stolen or otherwise accessed. However, in a paper and video published on the Internet today, the researchers show that data is vulnerable because encryption keys and passwords stored in a computer's temporary memory -- or RAM -- do not disappear immediately after losing power.
Click Here to read the rest of the article...
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Recharge your device, wirelessly??
Splashpower Vision
Our Vision for wireless power is that consumers will be able to charge "any device, anywhere, anytime".
Our intent is to enable our partners to deliver charging in cars, in hotels, in cafes as well as at home and in the office. In fact anywhere you want to top up your battery.
http://www.splashpower.com/Home
Monday, February 18, 2008
Free Online Security Check from F-Secure
This is a neat little tool... it goes through several categories and lets you know if any changes are needed.
http://support.f-secure.com/enu/home/onlineservices/fshc.shtml