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Submission + - Why a Google Ethics commission is an oxymoron (computerworld.com)

Submitted by rsmiller510
rsmiller510 writes: Ah, you have to love Google. After people raised concerns about its purchase of Deep Mind, an artificial intelligence company, Google reportedly responded by saying it would form an ethics commission to make sure that all of Google's artificial intelligence research was on the up and up. Excuse me while I spit out my coffee, but Google and ethics go together about as well the House Intelligence Committee. Which of these things is not like the other and who in their right mind is going to trust Google to be self-policing on anything, never mind AI?

Submission + - When the Project Manager Is the Problem

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Project managers need to be great traffic cops, coordinators, and problem solvers. When they do their jobs right, they make everyone around them more effective. But when they’re bad — ouch. They can become the worst sort of bottleneck, and inspiration for a lot of heavy drinking.

The question is: How can you tell that the source of the problem is the project manager rather than the situation in which an otherwise-good project manager finds herself? And even when it's obvious, what can you do about it? In The Cure After Diagnosing a Bad Project Manager, Tim Walker helps you identify when it’s the project manager who’s the problem as well as causes and some useful, non-career-limiting solutions. ("Copy out, then copy up" might have been useful to me in one poopstorm.)

Got suggestions to add to his list?

Submission + - Moving beyond Snowden, what kind of country does America want to be (computerworld.com)

Submitted by rsmiller510
rsmiller510 writes: We've pretty much exhausted the Edward Snowden debate. You may think he's a hero or a villain, but whatever you think you can't undo what he did. The genie is out of the bottle and we now what we know about the extent of government surveillance. We can't pretend we don't, so the time has come to debate the issues and figure just what level of surveillance is required to make us safe --and if we can do it within the rule of law or continue to give security apparatus carte blance to monitor anyone's activities at any time, regardless of whether they are suspected of a crime or not.

Submission + - OF COURSE I want a Star Trek Bridge at home!

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Anyone who hangs out on slashdot can be relied on for Star Trek literacy if not fandom. As Carol Pinchefsky writes, "Chances are you've wanted to live on the Enterprise, quaff a glass of tranya and wager your quatloos on a death match. You can't — not until quatloos are legal tender. But if you're Line Rainville, you can have the next best thing: a full-sized basement that replicates the spirit of the NCC-1701." And so, in Fan explains why she spent $30,000 to re-create the bridge of Star Trek's Enterprise, Pinchefsky interviews the woman who made that kind of investment. Admit it: Even if you think this is overboard, you want to peek at the photos.

Submission + - The Pre-History of Software as a Service

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Nowadays, everyone uses Software as a Service; it's the one part of cloud computing that doesn't make anybody sneer. But some of us are old enough to remember that we tried this business model before, over a decade ago, and it failed miserably. What changed in cloud computing to make SaaS work today, when few Application Service Providers survived?

Steven Vaughan-Nichols and I worked together at Sm@rt Reseller magazine in the late 90s during the heyday of ASPs (along with Mary Jo Foley, Debbie Gage, Jason Perlow, and other journalists whose names you know), and we got into a discussion about what made SaaS work where ASPs failed. In The Pre-History of Software as a Service, sjvn goes into the reasons... and no, it's not just a matter of virtualization technologies.

Submission + - A Short History of Computers in the Movies

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: The big screen has always tried to keep step with technology usually unsuccessfully. Peter Salus looks at how the film industry has treated computing.

For a long time, the "product placement" of big iron was limited to a few brands, primarily Burroughs. For instance:

Batman: The Movie and Fantastic Voyage (both 1966) revert to the archaic Burroughs B205, though Fantastic Voyage also shows an IBM AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central. At 250 tons for each installation (there were about two dozen) the AN/FSQ-7 was the largest computer ever built, with 60,000 vacuum tubes and a requirement of 3 megawatts of power to perform 75,000 ips for regional radar centers. The last IBM AN/FSQ-7, at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, was demolished in February 1984.

Fun reading, I think.

Submission + - SF movies teach us project management skills

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Or maybe they don't, but it's certainly fun to pretend to find work inspiration from our favorite SF films. That's what Carol Pinchefsky does in two posts, one about positive business lessons you can take away from SF films (such as "agile thinking can save many a project (and project manager) in a crisis" from Robocop and team motivation lessons from Buffy), and the other, 5 Project Management Horror Stories Found in Sci-Fi Movies, with examples of the impact of poor documentation on Captain America.

It's worth a giggle and, maybe, a thoughtful moment.

Submission + - Security hole in ack versions 2.00 to 2.11_02.

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: ack is a grep-like tool that is specifically created to make searching source code easier. One of the features added in ack 2.00 was the ability to have command line options in per-project .ackrc files. This has led to a serious security hole. There is, however, a workaround.

Submission + - Heroku will only sponsor events that have a code of conduct in place (heroku.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: No code of conduct? No cash. Heroku (owned by Salesforce) announced a new policy that requires events to have —or adopt— a code of conduct policy before getting sponsorship funds. Heroku also became an Ada Initiative corporate sponsor with a $10,000 contribution.

Submission + - Why Johnny Can't Write Multithreaded Programs

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Programming for multiple threads is not fundamentally different from writing an event-oriented GUI application or even a straight up sequential application, writes Jim Mischel. The important lessons of encapsulation, separation of concerns, loose coupling, etc. all apply.

But developers get into trouble with multiple threads when they don’t apply those lessons; instead they try to apply the mostly-irrelevant bits of information they learned about threads and synchronization primitives from introductory multithreading texts. Mischel focuses on two things that developers do wrong when writing multithreaded code, and explains how to avoid them.

Here's one of them:

Probably the most important lesson to be learned from the past 60 years of software development is that global mutable state is bad. Really bad. Programs that depend on global mutable state are harder to reason about and generally less reliable, because there are too many possible ways for the state to change. There is a huge amount of research to back up that generalization, and countless design patterns whose primary purpose is to implement some type of data hiding. The best thing you can do to make your programs easier to reason about is to eliminate as much global mutable state as possible.

Think he's on track? What have you you learned about writing multithreaded code that might save the next programmer from teeth-gnashing?

Submission + - 12 Things Developers Wish the CIO Remembered

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Every CIO wants to build a development team that’s hard-working, loyal, and devoted to creating quality software. The developers are willing! But they want CIOs to lead them and understand their needs. Andy Lester writes an open letter explaining what developers hope their CIOs keep in mind to motivate them and make them happy.

For instance:
  • We need to be protected from the rest of the organization.
  • We don’t ask for stuff just for the hell of it.
  • Be glad we spend so much time on automated tests.

Read his list, and see if there's anything you'd add, or with which you disagree. (Wait, this is slashdot. Of course you are going to disagree!)

Submission + - How to Keep a Job Search Going Through the Holidays

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Companies don’t hire during the holidays, you say? Corporate hiring managers are all out on vacation? Nobody’s going to get back to you, so you’re just going to go stand in line at a big-box store on Black Friday and dive into shopping mob frenzy? Bah, humbug! The truth is: Companies do plenty of hiring during the last two months of the year, and the rare job seeker who keeps up the hunt is a big fish in a shrinking pond.

It's a lousy time of year to be out of work (I know; I was once fired on December 15th, after paying for presents with credit cards), when everyone else is cheerfully spending money. And, you're sure, all the hiring managers are all off drinking at holiday parties. Except... it isn't true, or not anymore. For example, 62% of recruiters say that hiring decisions increase in November and December or stay the same as at other times of the year. Fifty-three percent of executive recruiters report their interviewing activity stays the same or increases over the holidays. Lisa Vaas offers a few holiday-themed suggestions about what to do during this time period; for example, all those holiday parties? It's a good time to schmooze with people who are a bit more relaxed than usual.

Submission + - How To Dissolve the Arrogance of the Young Hot-Shot on Your Team

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: There is no expert as authoritative – in his own mind – as a college kid fresh out of school. Nobody is more sure that he is right about everything, and that he knows the exact right thing to do. Even if that makes the more experienced people on the project roll their eyes in disbelief.

But you have to work with them anyway.

Here's my advice — with input from several experienced project managers — on how to pull that off.

Submission + - 48 free LISA '13 videos (usenix.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: USENIX adopted an open access policy a few years ago, which is especially awesome if you are a cash-strapped sys admin who can't afford to travel to tech events. Here's a list of 65 links to LISA '13 videos, audio, news stories, and event photo albums. The talk papers are free on the USENIX site, too.

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