It's been a hectic week or so with some upheaval in my love life but I'm back now folks sans pretty Mexican girlfriend. This means definitely no Fiestas Patrias for me this weekend.

I've been stumbling upon more and more bookmark worthy articles and comments on Slashdot which is weird because I've always been somewhat of a Slashdot intellectual snob. The most recent insightful thread I considered bookmarking was this one (and this comment which I accidentally stumbled on looking for the original comment). I also found the a link to an article by Malcolm Gladwell called The Talent Myth: Are Smart People Overrated which was a rather insightful look at corporate culture which I have bookmarked and has made me consider a subscription to the New Yorker. My thoughts on this essay and how much I think it applies to my employer below.

Also included below are thoughts on Bruce Perens' job loss, where the quality print journalism is, the proliferation of advertising for "male enhancement" drugs, conversations with my dad and a true story involving the former Worldcom CFO.

Poll: Why did you go to college?

 

 

Sam Ruby has a weblog entry that points to a new Joel Spolsky article on the importance of making development platforms free to ensure adoption by the developer community. This is probably the first Joel On Software article I have disagreed with. Exposition on why I disagree with how Joel presented his argument against how Groove is currently being licensed.

I bumped into a fellow Borg employee at a night club last night and the experience cemented my earlier decision to avoid dating within the Borg ranks. More below.

Poll: Favorite Pickup Spot?

 

 

It's about that time of the year. As an intern I missed the last one so I'm interested in seeing what actually happens at one of these Borg shindigs. I have a friend who was about to quit last year who was so impressed by the last one that he decided to stay with the company. I guess that's why Business Week called it part religious revival and part business report.

I'm particularly interested in seeing stuff like akin to the antics on the the CEO of the Dance page. I was chatting with some co-workers over lunch about the fallout from the videos on the Internet and they both remarked about how cool it was that our CEO is that into the company.

Poll: Was Ellen Feiss high?

 

 

On Monday Slashdot had a story entitled Did MS Lobbying Stop NSA Work On SELinux which implied that MSFT basically told the NSA what to do and how to spend their software development efforts. As usual with Slashdot reading the linked article tells a different story. Basically the article mentions that an anti-Open Source report was written by Alexis de Tocqueville Institution a while ago and that some [aka a Slashdot article] believed it was Microsoft funded.

The kicker was a slashdot post by Reid Wightman who works with the NSA software folks and claimed it was a GPL misunderstanding. Of course, the slashbots followed up to claim that the GPL is so easy to understand that this isn't the case. Funny enough, I used to think this too until I took the GPL license quiz on the GNU website and got 6 out of 9 questions right.

Poll: What was your score on the GPL Licence Quiz?

 

 

This past weekend marked my 6 month anniversary working in the Belly of the Beast. People typically bring M & M's (or other candy) to share with their co-workers on their work anniversary. Typically one pound of M & M's per year they've been here. I had planned to buck the trend by bringing half a pound of M & M's to work to mark my six month anniversary but never got around to finding a candy store. :)

My mom just called and reminded me that today marks exactly five years since I came to the US to start my [college] life over.

Poll: Favorite Standards Body

 

 

I've just spent a frustrating bunch of hours fighting with Tomcat trying to figure out how to get a simple servlet that talks to Xindice and is available as a servlet to work.

Tomcat has now wrested the title of most painful piece of software to work with away from Oracle's 8i database. I am now taking suggestions for a free [as in beer], Java application server I can use for a personal project.

Poll: Favorite Java Application Server?

 

 

Saw another " Tech industry sucks, I hate it all" article on Slashdot which makes me more and more thankful that I actually like practically everything about my job. I still can't help feeling that most people who bitch are those who saw the Tech industry as a way to cheddar and bling bling instead of as a profession where they did it for the love. So I completely agree with these sentiments I see my job as being paid for stuff I either used to do for free or had to pay Georgia Tech umpteen thousand dollars a year to get to do.

Thoughts on XHTML 2.0, the Fear dot com movie, Afghanistan War Syndrome, and working for the devil below.

Poll: Best HTML version

 

 

Read it and weep, suckas

 

 

I went to San Francisco on Sunday night and returned on Monday morning after an irritating trip to the Chinese consulate. After having my passport mailed back to me by the LA branch of the Chinese consulate and being told to go to San Francisco in person, I did.

When I got there the visa official acted like no Nigerian had ever tried to get a Hong Kong visa before the way she kept thumbing through all her booklets and guides before going to get a supervisor. The supervisor told me they'd have to fax my details to Hong Kong where it could take one or two months for me to get approval then I'd have to fly back to San Francisco. Of course, the fact that I'm actually going to be speaking at the event (which is being held in about three weeks) I'm attending didn't matter a whit.

Poll: Best Mike Myers movie?

 

 

Doing my daily blog stroll I came across an article in the Seattle Times via Patrick Logan and Sam Gentile. The quote of contention from the article is

Case in point: What happened to .NET? Microsoft's flagship strategy for "any time, anywhere computing from any device" has sunk like a stone. By now we were supposed to be seeing initial .NET applications, but the new rallying cry seems to be for Palladium, a security initiative that has met with the same skepticism and resistance from the developer community that .NET inspired.

I pretty much agree with the article while Sam Gentile and Patrick Logan go in MSFT-booster mode and disagree with the author. Thoughts on why I agree with the article below.

Poll: Favorite Style of Interview Questions?