uriah923 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Defining Useful Coding Practices (omninerd.com)

Submitted by markmcb on Saturday December 05, 2009 @07:10PM

markmcb writes: A NASA engineer wrote about his disappointment that despite having well-documented coding practices, 'clever' solutions still made the code he now has to maintain hard to follow. This got me thinking about the overhead spent at my own company regarding our code. We too have best practices that are documented, but most seem to focus on the basics, e.g., comments, modularity, etc. While those things are good, they don't directly ensure quality, maintainable code is written. As the author points out, an elegant one-liner coupled with a comment from a few revisions ago makes for a good headache. I'm curious what experience others have had with this, and if you've seen manageable practices that ultimately offer a lot of value to the next programmer down the line who will have to maintain the code.

Submission + - Visualizing Complex Data Sets (omninerd.com)

Submitted by

markmcb

on Monday January 19, 2009 @06:18PM

markmcb writes: "My company recently began using SAP as its ERP system and as we move into our second year with the software, there is still a great deal of focus on cleaning up the "master data" that ultimately drives everything the system does. The issue we face is that the master data set is gigantic and not easy to wrap one's mind around. As powerful as SAP is, I find it does little to aid with useful visualization of data. I recently employed a custom solution using Ruby and Graphviz to help build graphs of master data flow from manual extracts, but I'm wondering what other people are doing to get similar results. Have you found good out-of-the-box solutions in things like data warehouses, or is this just one of those situations where customization has to fill a gap?"

Submission + - Balancing Performance and Convention (omninerd.com)

Submitted by

markmcb

on Friday January 02, 2009 @04:03PM

markmcb writes: "My development team was recently pondering over a finding a practical solution to the problem that's haunted anyone who's ever used a framework: convention vs. customization. We specifically use Rails, but like most frameworks, it's great for 95% of our situations, but it's creating big bottlenecks for the other 5%. Our biggest worry isn't necessarily that we don't know how to customize, but rather that we won't have the resources to maintain whatever customize code going forward, i.e., it's quite simple to update Rails as it matures versus the alternative. What have been your experiences with this problem? Have you found any best practices to avoid digging custom holes that you can't climb out of?"

Submission + - A Snarky Halloween History: Monsters Edition (omninerd.com)

Submitted by

uriah923

on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @11:18AM

uriah923 writes: "Nick Dilmore has published the second edition in his Snarky Halloween History series, featured on Slashdot last year. This time around, he concentrates on movie monsters: vampires, werewolves and zombies. From the article, "[D]id you know the movie monsters we've all to come to know and love (in a platonic way, of course) have colorful histories stretching back to the earliest civilizations? What, you didn't think some Hollywood hack actually had enough imagination to invent vampires, werewolves, and zombies, did you? Silly, silly non-monster-trivia knowing person.""

Submission + - Busting the MythBusters' Yawn Experiment

Submitted by

markmcb

on Sunday April 22, 2007 @09:16PM

markmcb writes: "Most everyone knows and loves the MythBusters, two guys who attempt to set the story straight on so many things people just take for granted. Well, everyone except Brandon Hansen, who has offered them a taste of their own medicine as he busts the MythBusters' improper use of statistics in their experiment to show yawning is contagious. While the article maintains it is still possible yawns are contagious, the author makes it clear that he's not giving the MythBusters any credit for proving such a claim, 'not with a correlation coefficient of .045835.'"

Wal-Mart Begins Massive Push For HD DVD 338

Posted by kdawson on Saturday April 21, 2007 @09:52PM from the 200-bucks-by-Christmas dept.

Several readers sent us word of Wal-Mart's ordering 2 million HD DVD players from China. Hans V wrote, "My kids work at Wal-Mart and the manager there has been talking about this. HD-DVD's are selling like mad there so I hear." Another reader sent us a few links in Chinese and summarized them this way: "The first batches of these blue-laser HD DVD players are to land sometime in 2007, with complete fulfillment of the order [from Fuh Yuan] in 2008. The deal could be worth up to $300 million US, which translates to $150 per player. If so, by the time Christmas 2007 rolls around, Wal-Mart could be selling these for less than $200 retail, although some speculate that the initial manufacturer suggested retail pricing might be in the ballpark of $299. Currently the cheapest high-definition player is a Toshiba HD DVD with an MSRP of $399." By comparison Blu-Ray players, manufactured in Japan, are not expected to drop below $1000 until next year. The International Herald Tribune writes about the risk Toshiba is taking by bringing in Chinese manufacturers to trump Sony in the format war.

Submission + - Top 12 Operating Systems Vulnerability Summary

Submitted by

markmcb

on Tuesday March 27, 2007 @10:30PM

markmcb writes: "Have you ever wondered how vulnerable your computer is from the first bit you write to the hard drive all the way until you have a fully patched system? If so, Matthew Vea has posted a concise summary of security strengths and shortcomings for twelve of the major operating systems of 2006/2007. In his summary, Matt tests each OS with widely available tools like nmap and Nessus, and notes responses at install, pre-patch, and post-patch times for each system. After the tedious job is done, he produces results that will make both the Apple and Windows communities cringe with regards to security. From the article, 'As far as "straight-out-of-box" conditions go, both Microsoft's Windows and Apple's OS X are ripe with remotely accessible vulnerabilities. ... The UNIX and Linux variants present a much more robust exterior to the outside. Even when the pre-configured server binaries are enabled, each [Linux] system generally maintained its integrity against remote attacks.'"

Why Exercise Boosts Brainpower 331

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @01:27PM from the muscle-head dept.

aditi sends us a report from Reuters on research indicating that exercise boosts brainpower by building new brain cells in a brain region linked with memory and memory loss. Quoting: "Tests on mice showed they grew new brain cells in a brain region called the dentate gyrus, a part of the hippocampus that is known to be affected in the age-related memory decline that begins around age 30 for most humans. Researchers used magnetic resonance imaging scans to help document the process in mice — and then used MRIs to look at the brains of people before and after exercise. They found the same patterns, which suggests that people also grow new brain cells when they exercise."

Submission + - NASA create 3D movie of Mars surface

Submitted by

Matthew Sparkes

on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @01:11PM

Matthew Sparkes writes: "NASA have created virtual flyovers of two Mars rover landing sites using 3D imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The images were made using the most powerful camera ever sent to another planet, MRO's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). The three-dimensional information is obtained by taking pairs of images from slightly different vantage points as the spacecraft orbits the Red Planet."

Submission + - First quantum computer demoed, plays sudoku

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Thursday February 15, 2007 @12:46AM

prostoalex writes: "Canadian company D-Wave Systems is getting some technology press buzz after successfully demonstrating their quantum computer that the company plans to rent out. Scientific American has more of technical description of how the quantum computer works as well as possible areas of application: "The quantum computer was given three problems to solve: searching for molecular structures that match a target molecule, creating a complicated seating plan, and filling in Sudoku puzzles." There are also some videos from the demo."

Comment Re:Content vs Control (Score 1) 303

by uriah923 on Wednesday February 08, 2006 @01:39PM (#14670755) Attached to: Got a Question for Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales?

It's easy to see that most articles aren't controversial, but what about 'content control' edits outside of controversy? I listed some examples of this in my previous post and I wonder how the numbers would turn out if they were included. (By the way, do you have a link to the 'numbers' you referenced?)

Look at the history of a random article on Wikipedia and scroll through the edits. As an example, I chose the "Booting" article and got about 15 content control edits before I found one on January 4th that added content.

Of course, I don't know how this phenomenon could be resolved, or even that it should be. After all, WP editors are mostly amateurs and it makes sense that their contributions would be small or need to be controlled if large. I just wonder about the stats...

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