The crappy code problem

In "What Compsci textbooks don't tell you: Real world code sucks", author David Mandl at The Register talks about how badly coded software is everywhere and yet there is little being done about it: relating to his experiences in writing software for financial houses, he cites some scary problems that have caused stock market trouble and made billions "disappear".
The article targets some basic faults with software projects: first, that programmers are just not very good , or worse still make their code unnecessarily complex so that no-one else can understand it, effectively keeping themselves employed since they are the only one who knows how it all works.
Then there is the "eternal patching" problem: badly written wares are patched to fix the fault but then there is little incentive to fix the original code so it keeps getting patched and becomes unweildly.
Well, I can see that this is a modern problem that won't be going away soon.

Sometimes I think that I should just stop upgrading to escape from the new bug problem and the de-featuring problem. I'm talking about iTunes 11 here. For some reason known only to Apple, they have removed features from the previous version and changed things that I certainly didn't need or want changed.
The worst part of all?
iTunes 10 would start when I pressed the play button, but the new version can be delayed by as much as seconds after I press it. WHY? the files are the same, the computer is the same, so why a new delay? I can only call it an anti-feature. I have been warned not to try and go back to the old version too: apparently there is a real danger of losing your library and having to rebuild it.   WTF?
This is definitely the silly season folks.

Railroaded

A long time ago when America was young, they were putting the railroad through the middle of their huge land  - but there was a problem: settlers had already arrived and put homes, farms and even towns in the way of the railroad. Well, the Railroads had an answer: they just went ahead and put the railroad in, regardless, hence the term "railroading".

I think I have been railroaded. What stumps me is why.
I have joined dating agencies twice now and both times someone has attempted to destroy my efforts to find a suitable companion.
This not just empty speculation  iether: I have evidence from friends that it is deliberate.
I have speculated that it maybe it is because I am an atheist and the opponent is religious - or maybe they are just hung up on something they think that I did many years ago. It does not matter though: the result is the same. I did get one real date from the agency but that was it, the rest were so fake some of them did not even bother to make the photo match the profile.

I counted over thirty messages I sent, of which I had seven total contacts via email and apart from the one real person all of the others were either (a) either the other side of the country or (b) overseas despite the original profile saying they were local to me. Three of them were 419's. None of them would talk to me via Skype or  Google Hangout video chat just to prove that they were real people, therefore I can only conclude they were all fakes, with the possible exception of the lady in deepest Russia who does not even have her own PC but uses one at work to email me . . . . . assuming that she is real: there is evidence to suggest that one was fake too.

So, in short, I was being bullshirted all the way. The final episode yesterday was where the person I was supposedly talking to via email claimed that they were signing off the agency and they would be seeing me soon . . . well, I was going to sign off any way after the crap I had been experiencing, but then same person asks me about my experience o the dating site. once I explain, said person then says
"you got  alots  of  women you talk to. GOD bless you. i dont need a man with alots of  women"
Note the terrible spelling and grammar. It has varied over the conversations as if there were more than one person on the line with different grammar and spelling abilities.
 This is definitely a nutter: apparently "her" man cannot be permitted to talk to other women  - by email !!  Well, either that or it was all BS designed to get me off the site , which since it is now done, "she" can provide a BS reason why to disconnect.

What makes me so Bloody Furious is that these crims  can't be found: who are they? why bother pissing me off? I am not important, not even slightly rich or influential.  Hell, pretty much nobody reads this effing blog either!  (All two of you readers out there know that: just look at the stat down the sidebar. )

Well, to you railroader shmitheads: Fuch you very much you lying cheating stealing jerks, burn in hell and die horribly from some painful and incurable disease.You haven't even got the guts to come forward and honestly accuse or argue a point with me while I have been open and honest to everyone so you MUST be crooks. Or nutters, or most likely both.

And you think I'm gonna be going along with your little setup again? after the last few gambits? Fuch you too. Die Nazis, Die horribly.

Well, I'm off for a few drinks with my new girlfriend, then we are going back to her place to celebrate Xmas properly.  Have a fun silly season folks, and take care. And don't trust anyone on the net.

How the world's decisions are made?

Have a look at this article. It's about the World conference on Internet Communications or WCIT.
Written by an American who went there, it is an eye opener about what goes on at those high-flyer conferences we only ever see the outside of. 

What is most interesting about the whole thing is that the whole process of deciding international internet law is being done by committees, sub-commitees and "ad-hoc groups.  It does not end there either: since this is a global meeting, there are people from every government there who all have their own ideas of how the net should operate, what should and should not be permitted and who should pay for it.

Let's just boil this down for a moment: All of the big players or groups want the "game" to be played their way.  Is it any wonder then that there was very little "consensus" reached?
At one point, things get so stalled that the chair simply goes for a show of hands to get something decided, but of course it is ultimately futile: some countries won't sign the new deal. 

Here, in a concentrated form, we have the essential problem of the human world. 
Countries and nations have differing ideas about law, ethics, responsibility and rights. Who is right? depends on who you ask, which viewpoint you take on various matters related to politics and society.
 
I can't comment on the details since I don't know what they were arguing about but I find the whole story of the event veeerry interesting.

I am betting that this won't go away either: it will be an ongoing issue because people want the perceived freedom of net communications while governments want the right to control populations, supposedly for their own good or "national security".
As I said, I can't judge anything here.

Thanks to Ars Technica for the article.

Safety thanks to cardboard?

I am a fan of cardboard: from my early years I made many things out of it since it was cheap, easy to get and easy to work with: no fancy glues or exotic tools are needed,  I even managed some pretty spectacular results getting it to bend. See below.

Now someone has made a real bicycle helmet using cardboard cells to absorb impacts.

Here is the WIRED page.  Some people can't quite believe that something resembling corrugated cardboard can be a good impact absorber.  On the other hand, how come it is such a puzzle? Much of the world's delivery goods arrive in boxes made of corrugated cardboard , and for good reason.

The stuff the helmet is made from resembles the inside of modern doors: hexagonal cell sheet, an idea also used in aerospace although they make theirs from metal or modern composite.

I am impressed  and pleased by the gent concerned, and to top it all off the Kranium company are offering helmets shaped to your head, (they scan your cranium!)  which would be a  great safety improvement. Not sure I can afford a custom helmet but at least the potential is there. 
Kranium also make a pretty good electric bike too, seen here.

Canada cans JSF

I am always interested in military technology, partly because it is impressive stuff to watch (and usually features the leading technology too) and partly because it is such a political and economic battleground. 
Mind you, who needs to fight the enemy if you can suck them into buying  preposterously pricey military machines that are so expensive it could put the nation in the poorhouse?

The JSF (2)  sure looks like that to me anyway: just like the previous wonderplane JSF-1 (which never arrived, please note: our airforce got recycled F-111's instead) we now have JSF-2 and sure enough it is doing exactly the same thing as the previous plan: It certainly looks like Canada has decided to opt out of the plan based on realistic cost projections. Naturally, they will be in trouble with Uncle Sam for that: if too many players opt out, the whole thing will die and billions will need to be "written down". 
None of this affects the quality of the plane itself though folks: I fully expect it to go into service, probably some years and some billions overbudget as these things do . . . . . . . but I still think little countries like ours should not be stumping up zillions for this stuff when it does not even look to me to be suitable for our theoretical needs.
The F-111 was actually useful because when fitted with wing tanks it had enough range to cover a fair slice of this huge mostly empty continent. it had a big airframe that provided  plenty of room for the various local mods that we gave it over the years too.
How will this single seat high speed fighter fit with that? I have grave doubts, and I am just a normal guy, not some planning bigwig.
I sure hope they are a hell of a lot smarter than I am and can figure out what the point of all the billions of cost will give us.

A Failure Of Ethics

Today, two articles from SMH that point the finger at what I see as the main problem of our western world, both from the same edition.

First, Ross Gittins writes about America's ethical failure here:

Quote:
"Jeffrey Sachs, of Columbia University, is one of the biggest-name economists in the world. Yet in his book, The Price of Civilisation: Economics and Ethics after the Fall, he admits America's greatest problem is moral, not economic. Actually, he says that at the root of America's economic crisis lies a moral crisis."


. . . . and in this article we find out how crazy and completely undemocratic our Australian political system can become, where thanks to one religious zealot, our children are not permitted to attend ethics classes  -nay, the children and parents are not even to be informed that ethics classes exist until they have opted out of "religious education". This is after said zealot wanted to abolish ethics classes . . . . . .

I noted this as a child: we may have progressed technologically, but it sure looks like most of the human race is still mentally in the dark ages.
Imagine a Toyota Prius hybrid complete with GPS navigation drives past, and on the door is a church symbol: that is our world.

Back Online

Well, I'm stumped. My wireless internet service is now back on, and I still have no idea why it didn't work before.

A brief note about the previous post (In whose interest): I do not under any circumstances support "hackers" or those who attack systems or try to cheat on the net or elsewhere. I posted it to give people a clear idea of the way these people think, and maybe even evoke comment (hah!)

Also, I am now on Google +, and it looks good to me. I never liked Facebook and although I have an ID there something about it just didn't sit right with me.  I'll see how G+ goes but already I am happier with it since I have this and two other blogs there. 
Now I only need to find Google Talk, which according to rumour is/has Video chat.

Oh yeah - I have been seeking a partner online, with somewhat mixed results. Lots of new netfreinds (Hi all! :D) but sill no lovedove. I can't count the number of people who have initially appeared to be local to me , then turned out to be the other side of the world. no offence, but that is fakery and I'm less than impressed by it. Then there is the second step from my point of view: if they meet the basics, and they are not in my home town, I want to video chat with them, and that has been an eye opener: even people who seem genuine suddenly back off . . . almost as if the site is faking me continuously, trying to keep me paying with a string of phonies . . . . . . because they can't really do anything for me. Well, that's the end, no video chat, no more emails. Video chat can't be easily faked (well, not without a lot of prep and some serious computer hardware, and I haven't seen it done yet)
so that remains my big test.