A: Marketing

News has broken out that NASA has successfully tested a deep space version of the internet:

The US space agency NASA said it successfuly conducted a first test of a deep space communications network modeled on the Internet.

"This is the first step in creating a totally new space communications capability, an interplanetary Internet," Adrian Hooke, NASA's manager of space-networking architecture, technology and standards, said in a statement.

The US space agency said Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit dozens of space images to and from a NASA spacecraft some 20 million miles (32.4 million kilometers) from Earth.

NASA said the software protocol, which must be able to withstand delays, disruptions and disconnections in space, was designed in partnership with Vint Cerf, a vice president at Internet search giant Google.

DTN sends information using a method that differs from the normal Internet's Transmission-Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, communication suite, which Cerf co-designed, NASA said.

Like many things in computing, there tends to be stupid "religious arguments" among geeks about certain things.  Windows vs. Linux.  MS SQL vs. Oracle vs. MySQL.  You get the idea.  People will even argue about whether GUID is supposed to be pronounced "Goo-id" or "Gwid".  Now you can answer... neither!  It truly is supposed to be a UUID... a Universally Unique Identifer.

From Jeff Atwood:

"How will this software get my users laid' should be on the minds of anyone writing social software (and these days, all software is)."

Isn't that the reason why men do anything?  To impress women?

Yes... someone actually asked me to do that at work today.

... when a tester asks you, "Hey, do you want to see you something cool?"

Cool for a tester usually means broken for you.

Some people may not understand how I organize my desk.  For those of you who don't, here is a brief run down.  I have one area that is the "heap", and another that is the "stack" (which has the most recently used items on top).  Approximately twice a year I clear my desk in a ritual known as a "core dump".  I'm still trying to find someone who will be my garbage collector.

Microsoft has announced that their next operating system is being planned for around 2010, and they're changing the codename from Vienna to "7".  I hope George Costanza doesn't hear about this... that's what he wants his son to be named!

Unless you want to learn how to build a watch.

This quote is too perfect... too funny... and applies equally well to both my personal blogs.  I just don't know where to put it, but I have to share it.  From Nathaniel Borenstein:

It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.

Via Coding Horror who has many other fantastic quotes to share.  My personal favorite quote is from Michael Sinz:

Programming is like sex, one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life.

An amazingly accurate technical deconstruction of a "</hate>" t-shirt by a lawyer.  It's nice to know that non-technical people can have such a good grasp on XML compliant syntax.  Of course, he has totally declared himself a geek in the process, but there's nothing wrong with that.

Just now I took a big drink of my non-fat vanilla latte, looked at this morning's Dilbert cartoon, and almost spit all over my computer.  You've been warned.

... reading a post about Beowulf first conjures memories of the distributed computing project, and not the original Old English poem.

If you can't keep a voice mail to under 15 seconds, then put it in an email.  If your voice mail is longer than 15 seconds, then make sure the most important information is first, because I'm pretty sure I'm zoning out after that.

I'm avoiding risk by delaying a decision until the last responsible moment:

Making decisions at the Last Responsible Moment isn't procrastination; it's inspired laziness. It's a sold, fundamental risk avoidance strategy. Decisions made too early in a project are hugely risky. Early decisions often result in work that has to be thrown away. Even worse, those early decisions can have crippling and unavoidable consequences for the entire future of the project.

Early in a project, you should make as few binding decisions as you can get away with. This doesn't mean you stop working, of course-- you adapt to the highly variable nature of software development. Often, having the guts to say "I don't know" is your best decision. Immediately followed by "..but we're working on it."

And this isn't a joke.  It's actually very true.  And although I can't claim to practice this strategy because I thought about it thoroughly, and decided that it was always responsible to do things at the last possible minute... I'm sure deep down that's the motivation for my procrastination.  I just haven't taken the time to analyze my reasoning yet... I'll do that tomorrow.

I do this all the time with technology I buy.  People are often times surprised that I don't have more really cool and up to date tech goodies than I really do.  And at one point in time in my life, I used to buy lots of this stuff.  But then I realized I wasn't using half the stuff to its full potential... and when I finally needed to use it, there was a new thing out there that did the job 10 times better.  But now I've got this thing that I bought a year ago when it was more expensive, and I'm pissed.  So now I wait to buy stuff until I actually have a real good use for it... and often times I wait a little longer.

I tend to do this with the code I write as well.  I prioritize the bugs I'm fixing and the features I'm implementing by the amount of information I know about it... not how long it will take to do the work.  It kills my boss when I do it that way, because it sometimes means I'm doing the larger stuff last, when most project managers like big features done first... but I also have to redo a lot less work than everyone else because of this strategy.

Do you know how much of a geek you are?  If not, here's yet another test you can take to find out.  As for me...

You are 57.5% geeky.

Not bad. Maybe you spend a little too much time with your computer, but at least you have friends. You do have friends, right?

The current average score is: 31.07%

Fact: 35.69% of people who took this test admit to wearing a costume "just for fun".

Another Fact:  I was not one of them... and I'm sticking to that answer.  Via Samantha Burns.

From a comment on Asymmetrical Information:

I'm a poor programmer whose solution to execution failures is type louder and more slowly.

I hear evidence of this in the cubes all around me sometimes.

You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave.  Check out the link to a story about a 30 year old guy who attempted to cancel his AOL service... but couldn't because the representative wouldn't let him.  At one point, the service representative even asked to talk to his father!  Apparently this is not an isolated incident.  I don't have very high opinions of AOL, so I can't say I'm exactly surprised.  And I'm almost willing to say this guy got what he deserved by using such a crappy company for so long.  But that would be going too far.  When you cancel, that ought to be it.  No ifs ands or buts.

Apparently now Dell will start installing certain Google desktop applications on their machines at the factory.  This article doesn't directly mention which Google apps will be included, and which ones won't, but the first thought that came to mind was, "Great, more I have to uninstall."  I've actually been looking into buy a new laptop as my old one is starting to show its age and is having more hardware problems that annoy me.  The latest is a barely functioning CD-ROM drive.  The reason I have a hard time selling myself on buying a new computer is how long it takes me to get it the way I like.

When you get a new computer from some manufacturer these days, it almost takes more time uninstalling the crap they add than it takes me to install all the stuff I want.  Between demo versions of software I never use, trials of antivirus programs I'll never buy, and who knows what else, it takes forever to clean it up the way I like.  Adding Google software won't help.  I use exactly three Google desktop applications... the toolbar, Gmail Notifier, and Picasa.  I have not, and refuse to install the desktop search application because I don't know what they do with my private data on my machine.  If Dell were to install it, that would be the first thing to go.