Software Trenches

Debugging with Ruby

Here is the way to use Ruby for debugging. Very efficient, indeed!

Thanks to PragDave for this link.

RubyCocoa bundled with Mac OS X Leopard?

It looks like there is a good chance that RubyCocoa will be distributed with Mac OS X: RubyCocoa Mailing List Archives

Can't wait... this will make writing and distributing Cocoa applications in Ruby easy and fun.

Coffee from Costa Rica

I brought a few bags of coffee from our trip to Costa Rica and after they were finished I couldn't find anything close to the real Costa Rican coffee in Canadian stores.

Fortunately, the bags had the website addresses on them and both Cafe Rey and Cafe Britt are taking internet orders:

• http://cafebritt.com/
• http://caferey.net/english.php

Internet Is a Series of Tubes

Next time you wonder why your internet connection is slow you should see Ted Stevens' explanation of this problem:

You can also hear a song at the Ted Stevens Internet Fan Club

GData

It is great to see that Google is moving away from SOAP: "Atom is quietly becoming the standard for reading and writing to Google (RSS for reading as well). They're not saying that in public, but it's happening. Atom is becoming the standard RESTian web services envelope."

Found in O'Reilly Radar.

See also: Google APIs.

Mark Evans on Firefox and Roboform

Interesting note: "Roboform, in my view, is the Web 2.0 because its easy to ramble all over the Web without having to punch in passwords at each site".

From Firefox's Market Share Chugging Along

Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity

ABC News website has an excerpt from Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity—the book written by John Stossel:

http://www.abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1898820

Some of the myths in this excerpt include:

• The media will check it out and give you the objective truth.
• Pesticide residues in food cause cancer and other diseases.
• Radioactivity is deadly; keep it away from food!
• Chemical pollution is the cause of the cancer epidemic!
• DDT causes all kinds of cancers, and nearly wiped out every bird in the world.
• "My teacher molested me." Kids wouldn't make up stuff like that!
• Schools are violent.
• We have less free time.
• We are running out of oil fast.

$45 per case of soda

The US Army is discontinuing the multi-billion deal with Halliburton.

"Government audits turned up more than $1 billion in questionable costs. Whistle-blowers told how the company charged $45 per case of soda, double-billed on meals and allowed troops to bathe in contaminated water."

From Washington Post

Bayes' Theorem and the Mass Surveillance

Floyd Rudmin is using the mathematics of conditional probability to show that: "Mass surveillance by NSA of all Americans' phone calls and emails would be very effective for domestic political intelligence.

But finding a few terrorists by mass surveillance of the phone calls and email messages of 300 million Americans is mathematically impossible, and NSA certainly knows that."

Found via Schneier on Security blog.

More on Bayes' Theorem in Wikipedia.

Robert Kiyosaki about Consultants

It seems that Robert Kiyosaki isn't fond of consultants. "A consultant is someone who knows 72 sexual positions, but can't get a partner," said Kiyosaki.

There is a truth in this statement. We, IT consultants, know so many positions most of us do not use them to build our own business - we prefer to stay closer to employee/self-employed quadrant.

And at the end this must a losing strategy - we spend our life to create the value for someone else. Paul Graham described it very well "... think about what's going on underneath: the company has some money, and they pay it to the employee in the hope that he'll make something worth more than they paid him. "