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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.

Submission + - The Real World Always Outpaces Sci-Fi, And Fast (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: In the dystopian future of 'Escape From New York,' soldier of fortune Snake Plissken must rescue a presidential speech — of which only one copy exists, on cassette tape. In the high-tech world of 'Minority Report,' Tom Cruise manipulates UI elements by moving his hands in the air — but he has to wear gloves to do so, an accessory Kinect users have never needed. Considering how much efforts sci-fi writers put into imagining the future, it's amazing how often the tech in their stories is quickly surpassed by real life.

Submission + - 3 Things I Wish I Knew When I First Began Managing Projects

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: When someone gives you project management responsibilities — not necessarily making you the Big Boss, but more likely the team lead who's responsible for coding as well as ensuring the work gets done on time — you might think those "management" tasks are stuff you can do just by appealing to the good nature of the people around you. And you can, to a large degree. We are basically good, at least among the tech staff, as long as people get our buy-in to the goals and trust us to do our jobs.

But there were some things I learned the hard way, that I wish I could have learned from someone else's advice, such as "when to fight for more time and budget." These are my Three hardest things to learn as a project manager. What would you have put on your list?

Submission + - Removing Insecurity: The IETF Hums 5 Times 1

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: The IETF, which defines and promotes Internet standards, is taking a stand against the activities of the NSA by agreeing to improve the security of Internet protocols.

Nearly 1,100 people attended the IETF meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia at the beginning of November, where the big topic was security. “The Internet has been turned into a giant surveillance machine,” said Bruce Schneier, who spoke at the meeting’s technical plenary. “This is not just about any particular country or individual action. We need to work broadly to fix the problems of today and tomorrow.”

Five votes were cast — they hum, isn't that cool? — with perhaps some long-lasting effects. “At the IETF technical plenary, participants agreed that the current situation of pervasive surveillance represents an attack on the Internet,” said Stephen Farrell, one of the IETF’s two Security Area Directors. “While there are challenges isolating the specific areas of attack that IETF protocols can mitigate, all of the working groups that considered the topic have started planning to address the threat using IETF tools that can mitigate aspects of the problem.”

Peter Salus pulls together more information and speculates what it all may mean.

Submission + - Time to forgive Ed Snowden and let him come home (computerworld.com) 2

Submitted by rsmiller510
rsmiller510 writes: When Edward Snowden began showing us the extent of the US surveillance state back and in June, he was doing us a huge favor. He peeled back that curtain and let us see exactly what our government was doing, and in the process, while he surely embarrassed US officials, he didn't reveal any US government secrets that put US security at risk. For that reason, Snowden should be allowed to come back home without fear of retribution to testify before Congress, so that we can discuss these issues in the open and find the level of surveillance we are willing to tolerate in a free society in the name of keeping us safe.

Submission + - Stop listening to your users (citeworld.com)

Submitted by rsmiller510
rsmiller510 writes: It would seem on its face that simply asking your users what they need in an app would be the easiest way to build one, but it turns out it's not quite that simple. People often don't know what they want or need or they can't articulate it in a way that's useful to you. They may say I want Google or Dropbox for the enterprise, but they don't get that developers can be so much more creative than that. And the best way to understand those users' needs is to watch what they do, then use your own skills to build apps to make their working lives better or easier.

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