Month: October 2007

Within UltraMegaCorp, there is a strong push to move jobs offshore. This is done in the name of improving the bottom line of the company, because they can get equally-competent people overseas for a fraction of the cost of USA domestic employees. Now, I agree with this in part. We have some employees on our team among the thousands employed by UltraMegaCorp in India. Some of these employees are competent, motivated, and have come to know the job well in the year or so they have been working on it.

Unfortunately, those two people are really, really busy.

Exhibit A: Service request from QA tester. Background: A “V440” is a Sun Solaris machine. In the case of this particular machine, it is running Solaris 10, a UNIX variant. Solaris, for those who don’t know, is nothing at all like Windows except that it runs on a computer. With memory. And hard drives. And, you know, configurations. And stuff.

Now, you would think that a highly-qualified, highly-trained Quality Assurance Engineer would understand what operating system he is working on. In fact, it probably is part of the spec against which he is testing. See if you can spot the error.

—————————————– Service Request Details —————————————–

SR #: 38-3471727291 Date Opened: 10/3/2007 04:49:30 AM Requestor: Mgobudana Raghiva (MGORAG) Job Title: CONTRACTOR: Engineer – Performance Engineering (Superlative) Contact Phone #: Office Phone #: (555) 555-1212 Location: Bangalore Time Zone: Manager: MGROBERT

SR Title: Increase buffer size in SMGV440S999 machine

Description:

When we executed the test, observed the following errors.

Action.c(63): Continuing after Error -27790: Failed to read data from server “smgv440s999”: [10055] No buffer space available

Try changing the registry value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\ tcpip\Parameters\TcpTimedWaitDelay to 30 and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\ tcpip\Parameters\MaxUserPort to 65534

Try also increasing the size of the NonPagedPool Memory as follows:

1. Open the Windows Registry. 2. Select Find>Data and search for the term ‘SharedSection’. 3. This search should return a path similar to this: My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\ Control\Session Manager\Sub Systems\Windows 4. Modify the second value to 4096. 5. Reboot the machine.

Details:

UID: performanceguy PWD: superstar26

Thanks Mgobu.

This is a bit like dropping off your clothes dryer at the local Toyota dealership and asking them to fix the noisy fan in your furnace…

I read a very thought-provoking article today by Pervez Hoodbhoy, chair and professor in the department of physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, where he has taught for 34 years.

http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_60/iss_8/49_1.shtml

It was interesting to read and realize that things I accept as commonplace are unusual in many Islamic nations. What I came away with is the general impression that, while Islam is compatible with science, there are numerous factors in current Islamic leadership and society which retard growth. The main points I drew were:

• Suppression of women — particularly requiring the veil — leads to an environment in which fewer people are willing to speak up, with fewer contributions by women and men.
• Science and religion are still at odds in some ideological areas, and when the nation is Islamic, science loses.
• Most Muslim countries are still poor, despite the exception of a few oil-rich states.
• Native languages do not cope well with science.
• Few scientific works are translated into native languages.
• The scientific method is alien in a “society in which absolute authority comes from above, questions are asked only with difficulty, the penalties for disbelief are severe, the intellect is denigrated, and a certainty exists that all answers are already known and must only be discovered.”
• Religious experience is believed to have scientific credence, with the resulting lack of testable hypotheses. “Science finds every soil barren in which miracles are taken literally and seriously and revelation is considered to provide authentic knowledge of the physical world.”
• The West financially and ideologically supported fundamentalist Islam for many years because it suited its colonial and resource needs. A rise in fundamentalism comes at the expense of Enlightenment thinking, and corresponds to a fall in scientific innovation.

All is not lost, however, and Hoodbhoy sees a future in which the Islamic communities which brought us Algebra and astronomy are again full participants in advancing science. He believes, however, that it will require a fairly radical shift in Muslim thinking which “shrugs off the dead hand of tradition, rejects fatalism and absolute belief in authority, accepts the legitimacy of temporal laws, values intellectual rigor and scientific honesty, and respects cultural and personal freedoms.” Most importantly, though, he does not think that real scientific progress can occur while these endless clashes with the West continue.

“On an ever-shrinking globe, there can be no winners in that conflict: It is time to calm the waters. We must learn to drop the pursuit of narrow nationalist and religious agendas, both in the West and among Muslims. In the long run, political boundaries should and can be treated as artificial and temporary, as shown by the successful creation of the European Union. Just as important, the practice of religion must be a matter of choice for the individual, not enforced by the state. This leaves secular humanism, based on common sense and the principles of logic and reason, as our only reasonable choice for governance and progress. Being scientists, we understand this easily. The task is to persuade those who do not.”

The SWEENEY TODD trailer with JOHNNY DEPP is now available!! WooT!!

CLICK HERE TO GET SLICED AND DICED!!

BTW: Matt, if you feel like imbedding this, please do!

If I was running for President in 2008, I would campaign that every U.S. citizen gets health insurance coverage through either their employer or through the government. Every single person has access to health coverage.

Unless you smoke. Then you don’t get health insurance. If you use illegal drugs, you don’t get health insurance. If you drink and drive, you don’t get health insurance. If you smoke, do drugs, etc. and have dependents, no one in the household gets insurance.

I know people who haven’t been to a doctor in 10 years because they take care of themselves. Meanwhile, folks abusing their bodies with terrible substance habits drive up the cost of care and the tax burden for everyone else. No problem. You want to abuse your body with that crap, go right ahead. You don’t get health coverage.

That’s the basic premise. The more I think about it, the more I like it.

Okay.. here’s a fun one (Ben, are you listening?)

So, we all know that there was movie called “Snakes on a Plane”. Let us assume that Joe Schmoe also had a screenplay called “Snakes on a Plane”, and while it had snakes and a plane, it was otherwise, a totally different story.

Let us assume that the screenplay for the unmade film was copyrighted first, but that the writer of the other (hit film) “Snakes on a Plane” had no idea there was ever an unmade screenplay with the same name.

SO.. now there is a guy with a screenplay that the filmmakers never knew about, but he knows his copyrighted screenplay predates the film. Does he have a case?

So, for the third year in a row, I’m recording a local conference for a non-profit charity in Salt Lake City. It’s the standard fare: a few videos, a bunch of presentations, a round-table discussion, an open-ended business meeting about the organization’s goals for the coming year, and that kind of thing.

Due to privacy and bandwidth concerns, although we’ve done video in the past, it’s totally an audio event. Here is my usual recording rig for this event:

• 12-channel mixer.
• Additional 4-channel mixer “just in case”… sometimes we have breakout sessions or outside-the-floor events I want to capture audio from.
• Six microphones. One wireless body mic, one wireless hand-held mic, four cabled mics with boom stands.
• A Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop at the heart of the rig, running Cakewalk Sonar, with external several-hundred-GB USB drive.
• M-Audio Firewire Audiophile sound card (I hate this and must replace it, it sucks badly. But it cost a pretty penny and sounds better than the internal sound card.)

This is my third year doing this gig, and although the pay is bad, it’s a chance to stretch my legs with my audio engineering skills. I also fill in as the A/V guy for the conference, though I’m really not (I’m just supposed to do the recordings). There just isn’t much competent technical help for the conference.

This year, I want to do some streaming audio, rather than my usual “stop recording, dump to .wav, compress to .mp3, upload to web server between presentations” routine. I have a second laptop available. What would you recommend to do streaming audio to the widest-possible audience running on an eccentric mix of platforms, at extremely low bitrates?

Got this bit in my inbox, thought I’d share 🙂

FOR A MAN WHO NEEDS A LAUGH & A WOMAN WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR

DICTIONARY FOR WOMEN’S PERSONAL ADS

If THE AD says…. Then THE AD means….. 40-ish – 49 Adventurous – Slept with everyone Athletic – No tits Average looking – Ugly Beautiful – Pathological liar Contagious Smile – Does a lot of pills Emotionally secure- On medication Feminist – Fat Free spirit – Junkie Friendship first – Former very *friendly* person Fun – Annoying New Age – Body hair in the wrong places Open-minded – Desperate Outgoing – Loud and Embarrassing Passionate – Sloppy drunk Professional – Bitch Voluptuous – Very Fat Large frame – Hugely Fat Wants Soul mate – Stalker

WOMEN’S ENGLISH If she says….. Then she means….. 1. Yes = No 2. No = Yes 3. Maybe = No 4. We need = I want 5. I am sorry = you’ll be sorry 6. We need to talk = you’re in trouble 7. Sure, go ahead = you better not 8. Do what you want = you will pay for this later 9. I am not upset = of course I am upset, you moron! 10. You’re very attentive tonight = is sex all you ever think about?

MEN’S ENGLISH If he says…… Then he means…… 1. I am hungry = I am hungry 2. I am sleepy = I am sleepy 3. I am tired = I am tired 4. Nice dress = Nice cleavage! 5. I love you = Let’s have sex now 6. I am bored = Do you want to have sex? 7. May I have this dance? = I’d like to have sex with you 8. Can I call you sometime? = I’d like to have sex with you 9. Do you want to go to a movie? = I’d like to have sex with you 10. Can I take you out to dinner? = I’d like to have sex with you 11. Those shoes don’t go with that outfit = I’m gay

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” -H.L. Mencken

Matt, I leave it up to you to censor this if you deem it necessary. I feel it works in the context, but this is your blog and you can play FCC if you see fit.

On no, here she comes, the Drama Queen Bet she says something mean Bet she says something nasty Bet she says something quite obscene I hate the feeling she brings with her Awkward, uncomfortable are words to describe her vibe Lazy and useless just a few more Don’t care to hear about your latest score Don’t want to hear your proud comments About your incompetence Or your latest offence It doesn’t make sense why I have to feel so tense In your presence Just my $.02 Would it be so hard to try a little bit Not throw a little fit, be a little snit When the answer isn’t explicit Give up, throw your hands in the air I’m here to cover your derriere Even though I got work from here to there You’re perfecting your lazziez-faire EVEN THOUGH THE ANSWER IS RIGHT FUCKING THERE! You rub everyone quite the wrong way And your personal life is in disarray And you’re never, ever, ever, ever wrong Even so, we could get along If you just picked up your share Carried your load, but beware If it don’t change, and don’t change soon If you don’t buck up, change your tune That house in the neighborhood you abbhor That car you bought you can’t afford Will be gone, bye-bye, out the door Oops, did I strike a chord? Do you feel floored? Or is this something you’ll just ignore? Like other signs from before Well let me reiterate, underscore The situation you’re spiraling towards Pull your weight, carry your load Or find yourself hitting the road

Some background: I have a co-worker who I’m just a little fed up with right now. Just a little 😉

“You type so fast, it sounds like you are a kid on the computer mashing the keys at random.” — Christy Barnson, about Matt Barnson’s typing speed

Fact: I am on my third computer keyboard at work so far this year. I destroyed the previous ones through over-use. And I really need to replace the keyboards on my laptops. My only saving grace is that I use an external keyboard on at least one of my laptops, and my other laptop gets used more for gaming and surfing the web than my actual writing.