Month: February 2004

Tim Bray takes umbrage at the Economist for asserting that the outsourced jobs represent the low-end of high-tech . . . .

Coding Makes You Dumb
I quote from an article in this week’s Economist (read it here if you’re a subscriber) arguing that the negative impact of “Offshoring” is exaggerated. The reasons we need not worry include … the bulk of these exports will not be the high-flying jobs of IT consultants, but the mind-numbing functions of code-writing. [Update: my first cut of this had a snarky aside, but I decided to lose that and let the assertion above stand or fall without commentary.] [ongoing]

I just missed getting the snarky bit in here but my client updated his feed too quickly . . . .

I think there’s a kernel of truth to the Economist’s claim: I think a lot of what will be sent offshore will be the implementation and possible iterations of ideas generated domestically (for certain values of domestically. Suppose Sun’s folks in the Silicon Glens of Scotland came up with some idea that was designed there but coded up, tested, and shipped from Bangalore. If all involved are Sun employees, is that domestic or not?).

In my brief foray in computer science at UW, it was made clear that a lot of what programmers do is fix, work with, debug or refactor other people’s code. You don’t always start with a clean slate.

Reading the code and comment extracts (kuro5hin has some) make the struggle of working with other people’s cruft painfully clear . . . .

I got a trial subscription to Bicyling magazine (two free issues and a couple of premium booklets on training and maintenance), and in the most recent issue, they list the 50 best things about cycling. To my surprise, I just did one of them. Twice. In one day.

Item number 34, the slow motion fall resulting from being unable to get unclipped from your pedals in time, twice in about 20 minutes yesterday. My right knee looked like bargain-bin hamburger, my left better but still not what anyone would call good.

Oh, well, I always was too dumb to quit, so while I didn’t go as far as I would have liked, I still got about 10 miles in. Tomorrow’s another day, and perhaps it won’t rain.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: February 22, 2004 – February 28, 2004 Archives:

[T]here are many, many Iraqi nationalists who were willing to do or sacrifice anything to rid their country of this brutal dictator. And from that perspective I can understand how their consciences would be clear. They’re not Americans. They’re not bound up in the ins-and-outs of truth-telling in the context of American domestic politics. Their primary interest is not the vital interests of the United States. What they’re trying to do is overthrow a tyrant in their country. And if that means hoodwinking the great power to come in and do the job or perhaps just telling the leaders of the great power what they want to hear, then so be it.

Josh goes on to remind us that the flawed intelligence used to convince the world of the presence of WMDs was paid for by the US and gathered by the same nationalists who now admit to lying about all that. And that we have agreed to pay for more of the same intelligence through the end of this year.

Anyone else feel like a sucker? I guess we’ll wait and see if anyone else tries to convince us that they have a world-threatening dictator for us to remove. There’s already a list.

gladwell dot com / Big and Bad:

The trouble with the S.U.V. ascendancy is that it excludes the really critical component of safety: the driver.

Fascinating article about what makes people buy SUVs and how really safe and practical SUVs are.

I chuckled and thought of this when I came across this passage:

[I]nternal industry market research concluded that S.U.V.s tend to be bought by people who are insecure, vain, self-centered, and self-absorbed, who are frequently nervous about their marriages, and who lack confidence in their driving skills.

Study shows Mac OS X Server among most secure in world:

Linux bore the brunt of 80 percent of the overall attacks, followed by Microsoft Windows at 12 percent and BSD and Mac OS X at 3 percent, together.

The total number of successful attacks, according to mi2g, was 17,074, of which Linux accounted for 13,654, Windows 2,005, and BSD and Mac OS X 555. Looking strictly at successful attacks against government servers, Linux comprised 57 percent of those, followed by Windows at 35 percent and BSD and Mac OS X at 0 percent, which the company notes is a first for that category.

Interesting perspective: more linux adoption by unskilled admins accounts for some of it. What it doesn’t look at is where the *BSDs and OS X have made inroads: the report seems to view the playing field as linux or windows.

Kevin Kelly — Cool Tools:

For a bonus challenge, try mixing up Macs and PCs on the same network. Into this mess a new breed of entrepreneurs rushes offering home networking skills. (At a rate of $60/hour, if you’ve got the know-how, you’ve got a steady job.)

It ain’t that hard, but for that kind of money, I’ll keep that to myself.