Fighting the automation paradox || Deployment θα κάνουμε φωνάζοντας "αέρα"
Interesting restatement of Joy’s Law:
Open source is an answer to the question posed by Joy’s law that states that the number of smart employees in your organization is the log of the number of employees in your organization. Note that OSS is not the *only* answer to this question
[via Interesting-People]
cowboy system administration: n.
The practice of system administration as a one-man show, usually with no documentation at all. When practiced over a long period of time, it leads to symptoms like the martyr complex as it is described in “Time Management for System Administrators“.
The term occurred to me while discussing with some colleagues about cowboy coding.
New Entry: cowboy consulting
Τον τελευταίο μήνα (και βάλε) έχουν γεμίσει οι στάσεις των λεωφορείων στο κέντρο με τέτοια χαρτάκια:
Στην αναμπουμπούλα οι λύκοι χαίρονται…
Χτες το πρωί το αγόρασα. Χτες το βράδυ τελείωσα την πρώτη ανάγνωση. Σκέψεις:
Παράγγειλα ήδη την αγγλική έκδοση.
Υ.Γ. Να περιμένουμε ένα δεύτερο μέρος με ήρωα τον von Neumann;
Nobel Prize 2008 Laureate Paul Krugman writes:
“More important, however, I suddenly realized the remarkable extent to which the methodology of economics creates blind spots. We just don’t see what we can’t formalize.” –Paul Krugman, “How I work“
[via HackerNews]
Fresh from my INBOX:
The National Security Agency has released a case study showing how to cost-effectively develop code with zero defects. If adopted widely, the practices advocated in the case study could help make commercial software programs more reliable and less vulnerable to attack, the researchers of the project conclude.
The case study is the write-up of an NSA-funded project carried out by the U.K.-based Praxis High Integrity Systems and Spre Inc. NSA commissioned the project, which involved writing code for an access control system, to demonstrate high-assurance software engineering.
With NSA’s approval, Praxis has posted the project materials, such as requirements, security target, specifications, designs and proofs.
The code itself, called Tokeneer, has also been made freely available.
More on the Tokeneer project here.
Update: dds offers constructive criticism on the project’s source code after reviewing a single file!
[via Interesting-People]
Διαβάζοντας το “Told you so” και το “Connecting the Dots” σκέφτομαι πως όλοι αυτοί που στα δελτία ειδήσεων αναρωτιούνται για το ποιος είναι ο “ιθύνων νους” για το “ιερό real-estate” μπορούν να εφαρμόσουν social network analysis (ξεκινώντας π.χ. από αυτό το βιβλίο) αντί να εκφράζουν εικασίες και να αφήνουν το τοπίο θολό.
Μπα… που τέτοια τύχη.
Με απόφαση του Συλλόγου Εργαζομένων του ΤΕΕ, έχει κυρηχθεί απεργία για αύριο 14 Οκτωβρίου 2008.
Ενημερωτικά για όποιον το διαβάζει και σχεδίαζε να έρθει στα γραφεία αύριο.
Logicomix: Ένα Εικονογραφημένο Μυθιστόρημα για τη Λογική και τα Μαθηματικά, επιτέλους* κυκλοφορεί στην Ελλάδα, από τις εκδόσεις Ίκαρος, στις 20 Οκτώβρη!
Update: Logicomix – αντί κριτικής.
[via Καθημερινή]
[*] – ‘Ημουνα νιος και γέρασα
From Eight hundred years of financial folly:
There is a view today that both countries and creditors have learned from their mistakes. […] the ability of governments and investors to delude themselves, giving rise to periodic bouts of euphoria that usually end in tears, seems to have remained a constant.
On a more positive note, our research at least raises the question of how a country might “graduate” from a history of serial default. Interesting cases include Greece and Spain, countries that appear to have escaped a severe history of serial default not only by reforming institutions, but by benefiting from the anchor of the European Union.
PDF document: This Time is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises (local copy).
[via Lispmeister]
Managing organized complexity 