Barry Ferg's shared items in Google Reader

Paul Vixie On What DNS Is Not

timothy — 2009-11-07T11:30:00-08:00

CowboyRobot writes "Paul Vixie (AboveNet, ARIN, ISC, MAPS, PAIX) has a fresh rant titled What DNS Is Not about the abuses of the Domain Name Server system. 'What DNS is not is a mapping service or a mechanism for delivering policy-based information. DNS was designed to express facts, not policies. Because it works so well and is ubiquitous, however, it's all too common for entrepreneurs to see it as a greenfield opportunity ... a few years ago VeriSign, which operates the .COM domain under contract to ICANN, added a "wild card" to the top of the .COM zone (*.COM) so that its authoritative name servers would no longer generate NXDOMAIN responses. Instead they generated responses containing the address of SiteFinder's Web site — an advertising server.'"

Introducing Closure Tools

Mike Marchak — 2009-11-05T11:11:58-08:00

Millions of Google users worldwide use JavaScript-intensive applications such as Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Maps. Like developers everywhere, Googlers want great web apps to be easier to create, so we've built many tools to help us develop these (and many other) apps. We're happy to announce the open sourcing of these tools, and proud to make them available to the web development community.

Closure Compiler
Closure Compiler is a JavaScript optimizer that compiles web apps down into compact, high-performance JavaScript code. The compiler removes dead code, then rewrites and minimizes what's left so that it will run fast on browsers' JavaScript engines. The compiler also checks syntax, variable references, and types, and warns about other common JavaScript pitfalls. These checks and optimizations help you write apps that are less buggy and easier to maintain. You can use the compiler with Closure Inspector, a Firebug extension that makes debugging the obfuscated code almost as easy as debugging the human-readable source.

Because JavaScript developers are a diverse bunch, we've set up a number of ways to run the Closure Compiler. We've open-sourced a command-line tool. We've created a web application that accepts your code for compilation through a text box or a RESTful API. We are also offering a Firefox extension that you can use with Page Speed to conveniently see the performance benefits for your web pages.

Closure Library
Closure Library is a broad, well-tested, modular, and cross-browser JavaScript library. Web developers can pull just what they need from a wide set of reusable UI widgets and controls, as well as lower-level utilities for the DOM, server communication, animation, data structures, unit testing, rich-text editing, and much, much more. (Seriously. Check the docs.)

JavaScript lacks a standard class library like the STL or JDK. At Google, Closure Library serves as our "standard JavaScript library" for creating large, complex web applications. It's purposely server-agnostic and intended for use with the Closure Compiler. You can make your project big and complex (with namespacing and type checking), yet small and fast over the wire (with compilation). The Closure Library provides clean utilities for common tasks so that you spend your time writing your app rather than writing utilities and browser abstractions.

Closure Templates
Closure Templates grew out of a desire for web templates that are precompiled to efficient JavaScript. Closure Templates have a simple syntax that is natural for programmers. Unlike traditional templating systems, you can think of Closure Templates as small components that you compose to form your user interface, instead of having to create one big template per page.

Closure Templates are implemented for both JavaScript and Java, so you can use the same templates both on the server and client side.

Closure Compiler, Closure Library, Closure Templates, and Closure Inspector all started as 20% projects and hundreds of Googlers have contributed thousands of patches. Today, each Closure Tool has grown to be a key part of the JavaScript infrastructure behind web apps at Google. That's why we're particularly excited (and humbled) to open source them to encourage and support web development outside Google. We want to hear what you think, but more importantly, we want to see what you make. So have at it and have fun!

By the Closure Tools team

Spurning the "false god of coffee" - Boing Boing

(author unknown) — 2009-10-20T11:30:14-07:00

Shared by Barry Ferg
FALSE god?! Nice graph though.

Michael Geist - The Copyright Lobby's Secret Pressure On the Anti-Spam Bill

(author unknown) — 2009-10-16T15:19:50-07:00

Dr. Michael Geist is the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa., copyright lobby pressure

Charlie's Diary: Why I hate Star Trek

(author unknown) — 2009-10-14T11:46:44-07:00

Shared by Barry Ferg
I don't hate Star Trek, but I know it isn't Science Fiction.

Fill this in yourself.

Amazon Kindle Launches in 100 Countries But Not Canada

(author unknown) — 2009-10-07T12:32:14-07:00

Shared by Barry Ferg
As usual, the poor Canuckistani gets left out.

Amazon has announced that the Kindle e-book reader is now available in 100 countries, but not Canada. It would be interesting to know the reason why, though my guess is the lack of a deal with a telecom carrier for wireless downloads.

Telus and Bell to Become Second and Third iPhone Carriers in Canada

(author unknown) — 2009-10-07T10:38:05-07:00

Shared by Barry Ferg
The real news is that Telus and Bell are adding GSM to their CDMA network.

Those of you dreaming about the end of AT&T’s exclusivity in the U.S., keep in mind that the only other GSM carrier in the U.S. is T-Mobile. And the scope of today’s Verizon announcement suggests that they’re betting on Android.

★

StreetView also arrives in Canada

(author unknown) — 2009-10-07T09:19:44-07:00

Shared by Barry Ferg
Yay! I can see my house!

Along with releasing StreetView imagery in Prague, as we announced earlier today, Google has also released StreetView in a number of cities in Canada.

According to Google Maps Mania, the new cities include:

Calgary

Halifax

Montreal

Ottawa

Quebec

Toronto

Vancouver

It's quite a comprehensive update, so check out the new sights and let us know of any noteworthy things that you find.

What's Inside a Cup of Coffee?

(author unknown) — 2009-10-05T10:05:19-07:00

Shared by Barry Ferg
I find it's the 3,5 dicaffeoylquinic acid that makes it so delicious.

Caffeine
This is why the world produces more than 16 billion pounds of coffee beans per year. It's actually an alkaloid plant toxin (like nicotine and cocaine), a bug killer that stimulates us by blocking neuroreceptors for the sleep chemical adenosine. The result: you, awake.

Water
Hot H₂O is a super solvent, leaching flavors and oils out of the coffee bean. A good cup of joe is 98.75 percent water and 1.25 percent soluble plant matter. Caffeine is a diuretic, so coffee newbies pee out the water quickly; java junkies build up resistance.

2-Ethylphenol
Creates a tarlike, medicinal odor in your morning wake-up. It's also a component of cockroach alarm pheromones, chemical signals that warn the colony of danger.

Quinic acid
Gives coffee its slightly sour flavor. On the plus side, it's one of the starter chemicals in the formulation of Tamiflu.

3,5 Dicaffeoylquinic acid
When scientists pretreat neurons with this acid in the lab, the cells are significantly (though not completely) protected from free-radical damage. Yup: Coffee is a good source of antioxidants.

Dimethyl disulfide
A product of roasting the green coffee bean, this compound is just at the threshold of detectability in brewed java. Good thing, too, as it's one of the compounds that gives human feces its odor.

Acetylmethylcarbinol
That rich, buttery taste in your daily jolt comes in part from this flammable yellow liquid, which helps give real butter its flavor and is a component of artificial flavoring in microwave popcorn.

Putrescine
Ever wonder what makes spoiled meat so poisonous? Here you go. Ptomaines like putrescine are produced when E. coli bacteria in the meat break down amino acids. Naturally present in coffee beans, it smells, as you might guess from the name, like Satan's outhouse.

Trigonelline
Chemically, it's a molecule of niacin with a methyl group attached. It breaks down into pyridines, which give coffee its sweet, earthy taste and also prevent the tooth-eating bacterium Streptococcus mutans from attaching to your teeth. Coffee fights the Cavity Creeps.

Niacin
Trigonelline is unstable above 160 degrees F; the methyl group detaches, unleashing the niacin—vitamin B3—into your cup. Two or three espressos can provide half your recommended daily allowance.

“Hawk” Ashtray | Significant Objects

(author unknown) — 2009-10-02T11:29:43-07:00

Shared by Barry Ferg
Part of the cold war was fought with tie-tacks.

Coffee, start to finish

(author unknown) — 2009-09-24T13:30:53-07:00

Shared by Barry Ferg
Now that is how to make a cup of coffee.

What a cute video about roasting, grinding, and siphon-brewing coffee. Style points for the Gershon Kingsley soundtrack, and it's not even Friday! [via BoingBoing]

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

The Duct Tape Programmer

(author unknown) — 2009-09-24T09:58:10-07:00

Shared by Barry Ferg
JWZ is my kind of guy...

Jamie Zawinski is what I would call a duct-tape programmer. And I say that with a great deal of respect. He is the kind of programmer who is hard at work building the future, and making useful things so that people can do stuff. He is the guy you want on your team building go-carts, because he has two favorite tools: duct tape and WD-40. And he will wield them elegantly even as your go-cart is careening down the hill at a mile a minute. This will happen while other programmers are still at the starting line arguing over whether to use titanium or some kind of space-age composite material that Boeing is using in the 787 Dreamliner.

When you are done, you might have a messy go-cart, but it’ll sure as hell fly.

I just read an interview with Jamie in the book Coders at Work, by Peter Seibel. Go buy it now. It’s a terrific set of interviews with some great programmers, including Peter Norvig, Guy Steele, and Donald Knuth. This book is so interesting I did 60 minutes on the treadmill yesterday instead of the usual 30 because I couldn’t stop reading. Like I said, go buy it.

Go! I’ll wait.

Here is why I like duct tape programmers. Sometimes, you’re on a team, and you’re busy banging out the code, and somebody comes up to your desk, coffee mug in hand, and starts rattling on about how if you use multi-threaded COM apartments, your app will be 34% sparklier, and it’s not even that hard, because he’s written a bunch of templates, and all you have to do is multiply-inherit from 17 of his templates, each taking an average of 4 arguments, and you barely even have to write the body of the function. It’s just a gigantic list of multiple-inheritance from different classes and hey, presto, multi-apartment threaded COM. And your eyes are swimming, and you have no friggin’ idea what this frigtard is talking about, but he just won’t go away, and even if he does go away, he’s just going to back into his office and write more of his clever classes constructed entirely from multiple inheritance from templates, without a single implementation body at all, and it’s going to crash like crazy and you’re going to get paged at night to come in and try to figure it out because he’ll be at some goddamn “Design Patterns” meetup.

And the duct-tape programmer is not afraid to say, “multiple inheritance sucks. Stop it. Just stop.”

You see, everybody else is too afraid of looking stupid because they just can’t keep enough facts in their head at once to make multiple inheritance, or templates, or COM, or multithreading, or any of that stuff work. So they sheepishly go along with whatever faddish programming craziness has come down from the architecture astronauts who speak at conferences and write books and articles and are so much smarter than us that they don’t realize that the stuff that they’re promoting is too hard for us.

Here’s what Zawinski says about Netscape: “It was decisions like not using C++ and not using threads that made us ship the product on time.”

Later, he wrote an email client at Netscape, but the team that was responsible for actually displaying the message never shipped their component. “There was just this big blank rectangle in the middle of the window where we could only display plain text. They were being extremely academic about their project. They were trying to approach it from the DOM/DTD side of things. ‘Oh, well, what we need to do is add another abstraction layer here, and have a delegate for this delegate for this delegate. And eventually a character will show up on the screen.’”

Peter asked Zawinski, “Overengineering seems to be a pet peeve of yours.”

“Yeah,” he says, “At the end of the day, ship the fucking thing! It’s great to rewrite your code and make it cleaner and by the third time it’ll actually be pretty. But that’s not the point—you’re not here to write code; you’re here to ship products.”

My hero.

Zawinski didn’t do many unit tests. They “sound great in principle. Given a leisurely development pace, that’s certainly the way to go. But when you’re looking at, ‘We’ve got to go from zero to done in six weeks,’ well, I can’t do that unless I cut something out. And what I’m going to cut out is the stuff that’s not absolutely critical. And unit tests are not critical. If there’s no unit test the customer isn’t going to complain about that.”

Remember, before you freak out, that Zawinski was at Netscape when they were changing the world. They thought that they only had a few months before someone else came along and ate their lunch. A lot of important code is like that.

Duct tape programmers are pragmatic. Zawinski popularized Richard Gabriel’s precept of Worse is Better. A 50%-good solution that people actually have solves more problems and survives longer than a 99% solution that nobody has because it’s in your lab where you’re endlessly polishing the damn thing. Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.

One principle duct tape programmers understand well is that any kind of coding technique that’s even slightly complicated is going to doom your project. Duct tape programmers tend to avoid C++, templates, multiple inheritance, multithreading, COM, CORBA, and a host of other technologies that are all totally reasonable, when you think long and hard about them, but are, honestly, just a little bit too hard for the human brain.

Sure, there’s nothing officially wrong with trying to write multithreaded code in C++ on Windows using COM. But it’s prone to disastrous bugs, the kind of bugs that only happen under very specific timing scenarios, because our brains are not, honestly, good enough to write this kind of code. Mediocre programmers are, frankly, defensive about this, and they don’t want to admit that they’re not able to write this super-complicated code, so they let the bullies on their team plow away with some godforsaken template architecture in C++ because otherwise they’d have to admit that they just don’t feel smart enough to use what would otherwise be a perfectly good programming technique FOR SPOCK. Duct tape programmers don’t give a shit what you think about them. They stick to simple basic and easy to use tools and use the extra brainpower that these tools leave them to write more useful features for their customers.

One thing you have to be careful about, though, is that duct tape programmers are the software world equivalent of pretty boys... those breathtakingly good-looking young men who can roll out of bed, without shaving, without combing their hair, and without brushing their teeth, and get on the subway in yesterday’s dirty clothes and look beautiful, because that’s who they are. You, my friend, cannot go out in public without combing your hair. It will frighten the children. Because you’re just not that pretty. Duct tape programmers have to have a lot of talent to pull off this shtick. They have to be good enough programmers to ship code, and we’ll forgive them if they never write a unit test, or if they xor the “next” and “prev” pointers of their linked list into a single DWORD to save 32 bits, because they’re pretty enough, and smart enough, to pull it off.

Did you buy Coders at Work yet? Go! This was just the first chapter!

Need to hire a really great programmer? Want a job that doesn't drive you crazy? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Open identities for open civic action? Yes, we can!

Nico Popp — 2009-09-09T08:14:33-07:00

Today, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra is announcing the first pilot for its Open identity initiative. The pilot will support both OpenID and Information Card technologies. Initially, it will be conducted by the Center for Information Technology (CIT), National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other agencies. Over time, over 500 governmental web sites may become Open ID relying parties, potentially, creating one of the largest federated identity network.

Bien sur, VeriSign and the PIP will participate to the pilot as Open ID authentication services. This means that your VeriSign PIP ID will be accepted across participating federal Web sites. Saying that we are proud of being a part of this important announcement would be an understatement. The open identity initiative is a crucial step in President Obama's mandate for open citizen participation on key society issues such as health care, ecology and energy.

The goal is as bold as it is audacious. By embracing open and distributed identity systems, the US government is taking a resolute step towards turning the Web into an organizing engine for participative civic action. Identity is foundational. Making it easy for users to register and participate in government Web sites is smart. Removing obstacle to participation by allowing citizens to manage their digital identity through independent service providers of their choice is inspired. Yes, the tone is definitely right. Civic participation should be based on principles as open as is the Internet that enables it.

User centric identities for a citizen centric Internet? It certainly feels very right to me.

Read our Press Release.

Jonah Reviews Movies, Episode Six: The Incredibles

(author unknown) — 2009-09-05T19:35:24-07:00

Jonah Reviews Movies, Episode Six: The Incredibles

In Nomine Jobs, et Woz, et Spiritus Schiller

(author unknown) — 2009-09-02T09:56:46-07:00

Shared by Barry Ferg
So I guess I'll hold off on installing it for a little longer...

Maybe it depends on the pew you’re sitting in.

To developers, uber-nerds, and sundry people I love and admire (Snell and Siracusa and Gruber and Neven and on and on and on), Snow Leopard must feel like a game-changer. Because it IS. It literally is.

In addition to adding lots of the infinitesimally small, near-non-existent tweaks that only hyper-nerds notice or care about (and which helps us Apple dorks each feel extra special for “noticing”), 10.6 introduces a handful of unbelievably useful things that will help smart people make the next generation of applications on the most promising OS platform that exists today. Taken as read. Done. Boom.

But there’s also the sad, sorry bastards like me. The laity. The “Power Users.”

I’ve lived on a Mac every day since January of nineteen hundred and eighty-seven, and I know how to make this thing do some shit that would curl your hair. But, I’m NOT a developer. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t know an NSWhateverTheFuck from a Nib from a .plist from a .DS_Store. No idea. And THAT’s how I likes it.

For better or worse, I AM several other things.

For one, I’m a guy writing a book on deadline. Which guy dislikes it when his right hand crashes unexpectedly with a generic memory error for 2 or 3 days.

I’m also a ham and egg graphics guy who dislikes that (a supposedly up to date copy of) Photoshop CS 3 crashes on save. That one was hilarious.

I’m also a demi-nerd user of Quicksilver — an app that, I’ll stipulate, lives out its final days in palliative care, more dead than alive. Still. It’s responsible for a giant amount of how I do what I do and now it’s not working. It’s basically dead unless I upgrade and wipe the App Support folder whose 5 years of usage == what makes QS useful at all. And, YES! You are correct. I cannot, by any reasonable technologist’s point of view, blame that on Snow Leopard. And I don’t. But it’s true. It worked before, now it doesn’t, and the Lord giveth as the Lord taketh (my triggers) away. Dominy, dominy. Peace be with you.

Plus, I’m other things too. Including a 1-person IT staff who accepts that he has to stop doing real work for a day and a half in order to make sure that a new point-something OS upgrade is working properly on five (5) computers in two locations.

Nota bene: That is just so much more difficult than it sounds. Believe me. Taking into account Dot-Me, Back to My Mac, Dropbox, and on and on and on. It’s…nuts. The no-maintenance “cloud” is a myth that only holds up under the influence of the heady radon fumes in your Mom’s basement. Even when everything’s working flawlessly: safe, secure, AND dependable multi-box maintenance is crazy, quantum, fractal hard.

So.

I accept the catholic, mediated experience of being a Mac and OS X user with unapologetic gusto. Partly because all of this sect’s ecclesiastical asterisks are big and clear and printed in Myriad Pro 10,000 on a giant, wall-sized placard that everybody sees and understands:

Here’s what this does

Here’s what this doesn’t do

There’s no catches or weasel words

You pay us a little more for

impeccable design,

insanely great build quality, and

an assurance that you won’t find your iDick in a door on day zero

So, my problem right now is that my beloved church and I aren’t seeing eye to eye. They want me to see a big update that has ramifications beyond the “Yeah, yeah, something, something, press release” stuff like “Innovative Chinese Character Input.”

Whereas I want what I’ve always wanted: a computer that fucking works. Without asterisks. Or (and this was so okay with me in 10.5) I want a feature set that is so distractingly gorgeous and giant-nippled that I’m not noticing that every dot-something upgrade is precisely as enjoyable and carefree as inserting one-third of a Tic-Tac into a fresh anal fissure.

Also. Amendment: I want five computers that fucking work. Without asterisks. (Ibid re. fissures, etc.)

Thing is, when I try to mention how this latest little codicil of Vatican II has inserted some batshit insanity that’s so not working for me, I get the stink eye from all the big boys in the red robes and coney hats.

“Reeeeeeeeallllllllly?”

“Yeah. A lot of stuff is suddenly broken for me.”

“Did you know how much time and effort was put into making this OS innovative and subtly enhanced?”

“Yes. I read about that. But my apps keep crashing. Like, a lot.”

“What apps, Mr. Mann?”

“Lots of them. Ones I use a lot. Almost seems like the developers of some super-popular apps were testing against a different build. It’s weird.”

“Reeeeeeeeallllllllly?”

“Yes. Totally. Crashy crash crash crash. It’s bananas.”

“Did you know how much innovation and subtle refinement this new release represents?”

“Like I say, yeah. It’s fast. It’s efficient. It’s slightly prettier.”

“Sliiiiiiiightly?”

“Yeah. Very slightly. It’s fine. But a bunch of my shit is broken (on 5 machines) so now I’m blowing time trying to track down updates (on 5 machines) plus miming through all the usual dot-something kabuki of re-entering serials (on 5 machines) and re-okaying launchd preferences (on 5 machines) and re-approving firewall permissions (on 5 machines). It’s a tremendous amount of hassle given that I’m mostly doing it just to stay up to date (on 5 machines).”

“Reeeeeeeeallllllllly?”

“Yes. Really.”

“Have you tried rebuilding the Desktop and trashing your MacTCP prefs?”

“Why are you fucking with me, Cardinal Cupertino?”

“Reeeeeeeeallllllllly?”

I’m glad the OS X platform is thriving. I’m thrilled that many of the most talented developers have flocked toward a tree that used to feel utterly leafless and lonesome (As late as 1999: “What? Print from your ‘MacinToy?’ Here? In an adult’s office? Hippie, are you fucking high?”).

I’m dazed and delighted every day to see millions and millions of people using products by a company that nobody I knew but me used to patronize.

That’s all swell. So swell.

What’s not swell is being hazed into agreeing that this has been a smooth release that benefits end-users as thoroughly as developers and nerds. That’s fucked up.

Stuff is broken. And companies are still scrambling to push out half-finished updates to help their users keep the lights on. Is no one else but me seeing this? (Reeeeeeeeallllllllly?)

As I’ve said, I hate arguing about software, But, I also hate being shouted down for having the temerity to say something that doesn’t happen to benefit my friends whose living turns on Apple’s public reputation and success. That’s not a slam, but it is a warning shot, and I’ll tell you why.

Because when you start ignoring the boring, positively eye-rolling problems of dumb users in favor of supporting a party line about “Enhanced Features,” you move a little bit closer to the tone of a company outside Seattle that a lot of us love to rag for employing exactly the same kind of scalable nonsense. (“Did you install the Service Pack then reinstall all your applications then circumcise a newborn ram on the registry? WELL? Well, there’s your problem. Asshole.”)

Yes, I will update my apps on five computers. Yes, I will buy or borrow as many rubber chickens as I need to return all my preferences that have magically albeit subtly disappeared. Yes, the new Dock is pretty. Yes, I can’t wait to see all the cool apps people build using the extra gigawatts afforded by the 64-bit flux capacitor.

But, fucking A, guys. I realize you’re having a big, beardy lemon party about all these homeopathically non-obvious new features, but come on.

Don’t wag your finger at people like me for pointing out shit that shipped empirically broken. Let’s not conduct an auto de fe on the heretics who pose sensible, relevant, and acceptably reverent questions about whether parallelization is literally the body of Christ. Even when the screen hangs for 40 seconds for no Godly reason.

Cardinal, sir: your communion has bugs in it. And while that doesn’t mean I won’t eat it, you damn sure better not put all the rosaries on my penance. That’s just…not Christian.

Big-ass flying boats full of water save LA from fiery doom!

(author unknown) — 2009-09-01T20:48:46-07:00

Shared by Barry Ferg
I've seen these in action a couple times - they're based here in BC. An awesome sight!

A ginormous amphibious air tanker called the Martin Mars just made a massive water drop over Mount Wilson, the hill northeast of Los Angeles where the century-old Mount Wilson Observatory and nearby TV, radio and cell phone towers are all located. The World War II-era flying boat literally water-bombed the peak today to douse flames from the Station Fire, which has burned 127,000 acres (the largest in LA County history).

Here's an LA Times pic of this bad boy in action over Mt. Wilson. Snip from the accompanying story:

Los Angeles County Fire Department Battalion Chief Steve Martin said, "We are going to burn, cut, foam and gel. And if that doesn't work, we're going to pray. This place is worth a lot, but it's not worth dying for. "
In a worst-case scenario, firefighters were expected to retreat to the safety of the observatory parking lot or seek refuge in the concrete and steel basement of the 105-year-old, 100-inch telescope observatory. A Martin Mars air tanker, also known as a Super Scooper, dropped 7,500 gallons of water on Mt. Wilson.

In previous BB posts about the LA fires, I mentioned these giant 747s that have also been spurting water from the sky, to extinguish the blaze. Wired has a nice photo gallery of those guys in action here. And Popular Science has some interior shots of the 747s. Spoiler: they are friggin huge inside.

The managers of the observatory are now very optimistic that the historic site will make it okay.

Below: Astronomer Mike Brown has been tweeting while the area around the Mt. Wilson Observatory burns, and he spotted the WWII flying boat in action.

Previously:

IT restrictions hurt productivity

Cory Doctorow — 2009-08-26T09:10:17-07:00

Farhad Manjoo sez, "I just wrote a piece about why office IT restrictions hurt productivity. There's a great deal of research showing that people are more creative and driven when they feel some sense of autonomy at work; locking down their computers works against that goal."

The restrictions infantilize workers--they foster resentment, reduce morale, lock people into inefficient routines, and, worst of all, they kill our incentives to work productively. In the information age, most companies' success depends entirely on the creativity and drive of their workers. IT restrictions are corrosive to that creativity--they keep everyone under the thumb of people who have no idea which tools we need to do our jobs but who are charged with deciding anyway.
If I sound a bit over-exercised about what seems like an uncontroversial practice, it's because I am--for too long, office workers of the world have taken IT restrictions sitting down. Most of my co-workers at Slate labor away on machines that are under bureaucratic control; they need special dispensation to install anything that requires running an installation program, even programs that have been proved to be safe--anything that uses the increasingly popular Adobe AIR platform or new versions of major Web browsers. Other friends are blocked from visiting large swaths of the Web. IT departments install filtering programs that block not only adult sites but anything that might allow for goofing off on "company time," including e-mail and chat programs, dating sites, shopping sites, and news sites like Digg or Reddit (or even Slate).
Different IT managers have different aims, of course. At some companies--like Slate--the techs are mainly trying to keep the network secure; preventing people from installing programs is a simple and effective (if blunt) way to ensure that corporate computers don't ingest scary stuff. Other firms want to do something even more sinister: keep workers from having fun. These companies block the Web and various other online distractions on the theory that cowed a workforce is an efficient one. But that's not really the case.

Unchain the Office Computers! (Thanks, Farhad)

Facebook Reaps Recruits at High Levels - BusinessWeek

(author unknown) — 2009-08-24T16:23:47-07:00

Shared by Barry Ferg
Congratulations Dave!

Boosting hiring amid a job slump, Facebook snares Yahoo!'s security chief, an open-source guru from Six Apart, and talent from Genentech and Google.

Take an 8-bit Trip with Tomas Redigh & Daniel Larsson

(author unknown) — 2009-08-23T14:18:32-07:00

Shared by Barry Ferg
Combining two essential elements of my childhood... "Press play on tape #1"

Tomas Redigh spent 1,500 hours using LEGO to animate a song by Daniel Larsson. With appearances from Mario, Pong, Tetris, Pac-Man, and more, the video is sure to please any video game fan.

Via Wimp.com. Great tip, nnenn!

Eulogy to _why

John Resig — 2009-08-19T10:05:24-07:00

Unfortunately I'm short on time at the moment (trying to launch a project this week) but I have to say, at least, a few words about the hacker and artist _why.

At this moment, _why's online presence appears to be no more. All of his sites and code are gone. This includes, and is not limited to:

http://twitter.com/_why
http://github.com/why
http://whytheluckystiff.net/
http://poignantguide.net/
http://hackety.org/
http://shoooes.net/
http://hacketyhack.net/
http://tryruby.hobix.com/

Two conjectures are common at the moment: His account(s) were hacked and sites taken down or he simply decided to delete his online presence. I personally believe that he did this deliberately and with some amount of forethought.

One of the things that's made _why unique amongst programmers is that he has worked in virtual anonymity. Some people knew his name but it was never a focus of his online persona (and, at least, never actively associated with him as a person - I've seen sites that purport to identify him, but they're generally incorrect, and fringe, at best). Even live, giving talks or performing music, he still went by his pseudonym.

Reading through the original discovery thread you can see a full range of emotion regarding his disappearance; Anger, confusion, and sadness.

Personally, I feel a mixture of joy and amazement.

_why, the code he's written, the persona he projected, and the art he produced has been a long-time admiration of mine. Some only see _why's code or writing (Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby, for example - which can still be purchased on Lulu).

I tend to see _why more as an artist. He used a wide variety of mediums for his exploration: Written word, drawings, code, and even music.

Not many know that he released an album to go along with Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby. One of my favorite songs from the album is the one for the second chapter: This Book is Made (of Rabbits and Lemonade).

Nothing can capture the artistic ethos of _why better than the above song.

_why - even in his code - was eccentric, humorous, cute, and whimsical. He relished his ability to express his art and was extremely good at it, at the same time.

Underlying the layer of whimsy that permeated his work there was a more serious tone: expression, simplicity, and education. In all of his code, and writing, he was constantly trying to find ways to bring the art of hacking to more people - to younger people - to simplify the complexities that normally permeate development.

It's never completely clear from his writing, but I like to imagine _why with children. Either as a grade school teacher or with his own children. Finding ways to communicate with them, teach them, and encouraging their imagination and freedom of expression.

Due to his expressive nature I feel like I understand _why, even though I only managed to chat with him once, for a couple minutes, on IRC. I can especially appreciate his anonymity.

In my life I constantly try to keep my work and personal life separate. What _why did with his online persona has been a great inspiration to me. He was successful in having virtually no bleed-over of his personal life (with his family and friends) into his online persona, and likely vice-versa.

People get way too caught up in their work. I like to think that he was able to keep the products of his online persona separate from the rest of his life, treating them as completely distinct entities - the perfect, clear-cut, division between personal life, work, and play.

Seeing the complete deletion of his online persona doesn't terribly surprise me. Back in 2007 _why closed his main blog (RedHanded). That event truly shocked me, but it helped me to better understand him as a person. The blog, even though he had put years of work into it and people strongly identified him with it, was immaterial. It didn't feel like the right place to talk anymore so he moved on to another place, abandoning the old site.

If there's any analogy that I can make about _why, his online persona, and all the works that he's produced over the years it's to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of the sand mandala.

Sand mandalas are incredibly intricate works of art that take many people many days to construct. They're very expressive, but fragile, works of art.

After a mandala has been constructed - and displayed - it is ceremoniously deconstructed - which is meant "to symbolize the Buddhist doctrinal belief in the transitory nature of material life."

_why's entire online presence and code was presented in the sand mandala that was '_why'. The person behind '_why' simply decided to move on and close that portion of his life.

I've seen a few people ask why he opted to remove his code - why didn't he take his work seriously? (Especially since others have grown to depend upon it.)

Looking at the cumulative work and art of _why it should become painfully obvious: The online presence of _why, and all the code, writing, music, and drawings that've been produced are a mere transitory portion of one person's life. He was constantly moving from project to project, blog to blog. Now he's truly moved on and we should feel joy in having gotten to know him, and his art, over the past couple years.

While this isn't a eulogy for a living person - I fully expect that he's happy and continuing to explore life with his friends and family - it's a eulogy to one portion of one man's life.

I wish I could better express what I feel for _why. Whenever I think of him I think of artistic expression, happiness, and the joy of exploration.

To _why: Thank you for bringing your code and art to us over the past couple years. It's been greatly appreciated, more than you can know. Please continue to enjoy your life and bring your joy and whimsy to others all over the world.