I noticed that the Nigerian government cancelled the fatwa against the reporter which started the Miss World riots. I notice the Western media had lots of coverage of the fatwa decree I wonder if there'll be as much coverage now that the Federal government has attempted to repeal the fatwa. Doubt it, instead we'll probably see more interviews with Pat Robertson preaching religous intolerance.

It's looking extremely likely that my job description might change from SDET to PM in the coming months. I found very good description of what PMs do on the Joel On Software forums for those who wonder what the acronym means. The main thing I'm going to have to learn is talking to people who aren't as aware of the technology as I'd like. As a tester I mostly talk to devs or our standards reps who usually have more knowledge about the technology than me, as a PM the reverse will be the case. Interesting.

Poll: Favorite Part of Traditional Thanksgiving Meal?

 

 

So my schema authoring article was posted on Slashdot yesterday and a little later I got an email in my inbox from an XML-DEV regular about tooting my own horn by submitting it to Slashdot and also posting it to XML-DEV. Well, next time I write an article about a technology that may be relevant to technical people who use said technology I'll be sure to avoid informing people about it. :)

On a lighter note, I believe I just found the first instance of flirting on Slashdot I've ever seen in a response to my post on why I don't use PDAs anymore.

Thoughts on the current situation in Nigeria, James Gosling transformation into a bitter old man and the new generation of Slashdot karma whores below.

Poll: Favorite Programming/Scripting Language Creator?

 

 

In a recent diary, some people asked if I seriously thought violence would occur if my dad got directly involved in the Amina Lawal case. Well, to answer that question I provide this link to a VoA article entitled Nigeria Muslims Riot Over Miss World Contest which includes the choice quote

Muslim youths took to the streets Thursday burning churches, looting shops and smashing car windows. Witnesses say they saw burned bodies in the streets.

Poll: Favorite James Bond?

 

 

I just noticed the Demise Of The Premier .NET community site article on Slashdot. Looks like it didn't make it to the front page which is a surprise given it is negative news about Microsoft. Anyway after reading the details of the impending shutdown of ASP Friends I looked around internally to see what was up since the FAQ makes it look like a screwup on our part.

My cursory investigation led me to a response by the ASP.NET folks which seems to put some of the story in context. However some of the comments by Charles Carroll struck a chord since I have to deal with them daily and I felt like clarifying some points.

Poll: Best place to get answers to technical questions?

 

 

Even though the flames from the Java community haven't died down enough from the MiddleWare company's J2EE vs. .NET benchmark, it looks like they may be hitting another sore spot with their target community. The headline on their front page reads

According the Gartner Group, 70% of Java projects fail due to lack of skills

There are 2.5 Million Java developers in the world. Only 800,000 of them have genuine knowledge. 70 percent of these developers agree that the lack of advanced Java skills makes adoption of EJB/J2EE risky

I'm sure there are going to be a bunch of flame warriors who take TMC to task over reporting this and question the gartner results if this ever hits The Server Side

 

 

I hung out with Joshua and Doug yesterday evening. It was cool shooting the breeze about work over port and beer plus I got to chide Doug for not only using Mac OS X but running Mozilla as well. Of course, my hypocrisy knows no bounds given that I use Apache at home and Emacs for all my coding and XML editing needs. :)

I spoke to my mom this morning and she confirmed the news that the Nigerian government is keen on preventing Amina Lawal from being stoned to death.

I saw I-Spy with a couple of co-workers on Friday. I liked it. More details below. Also some thoughts on the recently announced new C# language features announced at OOPSLA.

Poll: Favorite New C# Language Feature?

 

 

Just checked out Joel on Software and see he's announced fogBUGZ 3.0, the newest version of his bug tracking software. He explicitly points out the fact that FogBUGZ 3.0 does not provide a mechanism for tracking performance metrics like how many bugs are filed against a particular developer because FogBUGZ is not a crutch for your HR department. I disagree with his point but concede that such a feature is probe to abuse by clueless management. More thoughts below.

Also links to a sweet online emulator, Linus Torvalds uses his flaming fist and a truly stupid article on Slashdot.

Poll: Favorite Characteristic of Quality Software?

 

 

I was in Atlanta for a recruiting trip the week of 22^nd of October and spent all last week catching up on missing four days of work. It was good to be back in Atlanta kicking it with friends and the actual time at Georgia Tech was surprisingly nice with almost no heckling from the students. In fact, I got more teasing from people who knew me for ending up with the Borg (Yes, I was a Linux/Java bigot) than we got negative comments about my employer. Thoughts about the airport trip below.

One of my co-workers mentioned that he finally caught up on my K5 diary and had noticed the sudden influx of "daddy dearest crap". Well, guess what? There's more of that stuff in this diary. Plus some bitching and some celebration.

Poll: Favorite M$ Article On Slashdot in the Past Week?