robkeeney

Something I just thought about: Parallel programming really isn't new. We've been doing it as long as we've been networking. Client-server interactions are one form of parallel programming.

So I was thinking about the Day of Atonement and the ceremony of the two goats described in Leviticus 16. In verse 8, they're instructed to cast lots to choose which of the goats is to be sacrificed, and which is to be taken out into the wilderness. The goats represent Christ and Satan. Christ was sacrificed for us and Satan will be bound during the Millennium (Revelation 20). The thought I had was that they had to cast lots to determine which goat was which. God didn't instruct them to take a perfect beautiful goat and a diseased deformed foul goat. He told them to take two goats and cast lots to determine which was which. They could not tell the difference between Christ and Satan on their own. They needed God to show them!

It's much the same with us today. We need God to show us what is Godly and what is of Satan. 2 Corinthians 11:14 tells us that "Satan disguises himself as an angel of light". There is so much in the world today that looks good, that looks Godly to our deceived eyes, but in reality is sinful and hated by God. We need His guidance through His Word to show us what is of Christ and what is of Satan, and we cannot trust our own perceptions.

 ³ And not only so, but we also rejoice in our tribulations: knowing that tribulation worketh stedfastness;

 ⁴ and stedfastness, approvedness; and approvedness, hope: (Romans 5:3-4, American Standard Version)

Very appropriate right now.

is that all the people who just want to program because it "pays good" are switching to it now, instead of using C++.

But I really hate when people say "24 x 7 x 365". That indicates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The proper progression should either be "24 x 365" or "24 x 7 x 52".

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

A whopping 70 percent of American kids aren't getting enough vitamin D playing in the sun enough.

Fixed it for you...

Seriously, there is no way that an educated person can rationally believe that human beings weren't meant to get extensive sun exposure.

From Sharp As A Marble:


Robb Allen takes "fake but accurate" to new heights. Birthers AND anti-birthers show up in the comments. Hilarity ensues!

In which a large daily newspaper displays the extreme poverty that is American science education today:

Authorities have noticed an increase in high-caliber weapons in Los Angeles. One of the most startling incidents was when a Fabrique National 57, an assault pistol used to kill big game, was found in a victim's car by detectives investigating a double-homicide last year in North Hollywood.

"You use it on large lions, tigers and bears," said LAPD Deputy Chief Michel Moore, commander of the Valley Bureau.

From the Los Angeles Daily News article "Deadlier weapons triggered arms raids", emphasis added.

High caliber? Big game? I'm going to assume that this reporter did no research on the FN FiveseveN, whose name is derived from the cartridge it was designed around: the 5.7x28mm (0.224 inches), a souped up .22. High caliber it ain't. This cartridge is illegal for white-tail deer because it's TOO SMALL! Only an absolute idiot would try to hunt lions and tigers and bears (OH MY!) with this round. It would be suicide!

The only thing I can guess is that these idiots saw the "57" and decided it was bigger than a .50 caliber (e.g. bigger than a half inch) instead of noticing that it's 5.7 millimeters. These people must not be familiar with SI measurements. Seriously, a reporter whose job it is to research and find the truth, and the LAPD Deputy Chief! Both of these people should know better! The only rational conclusion is that they are too poorly educated to understand this or else they are willfully misrepresenting the issue.

I think the real kicker is that they call it an "assault pistol" (an oxymoron if ever there was one) and then describe it's use as hunting big game. We're constantly told by these people that "assault weapons" have no legitimate sporting use, but now they tell us that here is one used for a particular type of hunting? They just can't keep their story straight.

Contrast this with what noted gun writer and Hoosier farmer Frank James says: in a carbine it works OK as a farm gun for varmints.

I'm glad to see that Winston Smith has found work.

Since feyfern and the kids stayed at my parents house Tuesday through today, no one was home all day. I feed and watered the chickens in the morning, and opened the hen house door to let them free range. There had been no problems with this for a long while. Yesterday, that turned out to be a big mistake. I had a feeling when I fed them I ought not let them roam, but I did anyway. I hate to have them cooped-up all day. They don't eat bugs or fresh greens and they start picking on each other.

Normally, with Meredith and the kids home, someone is almost always outside. Roaming dogs will be noticed quickly and deterred from causing trouble. But yesterday no one was home while the chickens ranged free. The neighbors' dog was also loose. She was a stray they'd had for months. She'd come down and killed a chicken once before, but that was months ago and they'd been keeping her locked up and were going to put in an invisible fence. When I arrived home yesterday, she was in the drive by the barn near a freshly killed chicken. It wasn't the first she'd gotten. There were feathers everywhere and I feared she'd gotten all of them. Normally there's an almost constant sound of chicken clucking. Yesterday, it was completely silent. That dog was very lucky it didn't get shot right then. It ran off into the bean field.

Slowly survivors emerged from their various hiding places. The rooster survived, along with nine of the ten laying hens, though one of them was so badly wounded I sent her on to the refrigerator. We had sixteen broiler chicks. Four were KIA, six survived the attack, but one was wounded so badly it too was sent on to the refrigerator. The other six are still MIA. Hopefully a couple more of them have survived and will have reported in by this evening, and the other wounded will recover.

I called the neighbors. They came down and cleaned up the bodies and feathers, and more than made good for the lost chickens. They're getting rid of that dog today. They're really good people and I'm glad they're my neighbors.

Update: The tenth hen and three more broiler chicks had reported in by the time I got home yesterday. That leaves three broiler chicks MIA. I expect there may be more losses among the survivors from their wounds though.

Official crime figures show the UK also has a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S. and even South Africa - widely considered one of the world's most dangerous countries.

Not too well, I see. If you don't punish crime, you'll get more of it, and the Brits seem to have thoroughly given up the idea of punishing crime (but they'll smack you down right quick if you try to defend yourself).

So, over a week ago the driver side power window on my "junk" van that I drive to work quit working and of course, it was rolled down. Now, all that time that it wasn't working, it was raining every day, so I couldn't drive it -- can't leave it in the parking lot soaking up rain all day. I had to drive the family van. Monday afternoon I got the window motor pulled off the parts van and replaced the dead one on my van. It hasn't rained since, and the national weather service shows only 2 days with just a 50% chance of rain for the next week. Hmmmm....

Well, the obvious conclusion is that broken car windows bring rain. To everybody in the midwest, I'm sorry I didn't fix it earlier. I won't let it happen again. :^)

The programmer's job is to turn interesting problems into boring solutions.

So I have to develop on a *nix box through a Windows desktop PC. Plain terminal emulation is no fun (who wants to develop in vi?). Through the magic of open source, I don't have to and neither do you! Here are the simple steps to follow:

1. Install Cygwin including Cygwin/X — download the installer, make sure the xinit package is selected in the things to install, and hit go!
2. Install PuTTY and enable X forwarding in your session settings. PuTTY will automagically set your DISPLAY environment variable correctly.
3. Start your X server (Start -> Programs -> Cygwin/X -> XWin Server ) — you may want to copy this to your Startup group so it runs whenever you log in.
4. Use PuTTY to connect to your *nix box and fire up an X Windows program — remember to "amp it off".

Your X program should pop up on your desktop and look just like it's running locally — the beauty of X!

So, night before last it seems our DSL modem got fried by lightning. I just ordered a new one which should be here by Monday. No internet at home until then, but we are going to the in-laws for the weekend anyway, so no big deal. I am going to get a surge suppressor though...

An exciting rum & coke.

...and the journalists who've blindly parroted the FUD.

You may have seen all the fear mongering in the press lately about the state of our GPS satellites. You may have even seen it on certain church "news-related" web sites as evidence of the coming prophesied dominance of Europe.

Well. Cringley proves that journalists are worthless. Since when is parroting press releases "providing the knowledge necessary to manage life in a complex world", which our intrepid media lawyers assure us it takes "real journalists" to do? I've read way too many "news stories" that were nothing more than minor rewording of a press release, and more than a few that were press releases out right. Big newspapers are dead and deservedly so. The sooner the corpses are interred, the better.

Journalism is still being done these days, but it's done like this.

When your only goal is to win and hold the position, you're irretrievably lost.

Code clarity results in performance gains.

Code "optimizations" result in bugs.

Knuth was right.

A thought in passing... Properly done object modeling is not a complete modeling in software of all the real-world attributes and interactions of the real-world objects being dealt with. There is (likely) no need to note the color of a mail piece in the software object that represents it. On the other hand, there is frequently a need to add to them entirely conceptual attributes such as synchronization objects (e.g. mutexes, semaphores) or properties such as being a singleton or serialization methods, which have no real world analog. These allow the object to cross into an orthogonal domain from the real world problem domain, and later pop back into it, easing the solution of the real world problem. A sort of conceptual hyper-space jump, you might say. :) Being a mail piece is an entirely different domain from being a synchronization object is an entirely different domain from being serializable to persistent storage.

In the wake of Sunday's post re: journalistic hubris comes the news that the San Jose Mercury News plans to bankrupt themselves.

Don't try to sell me water when you're standing right beside a public water fountain.