Posts by mmaug

RIP Fred 'Mythical Man-Month' Brooks: IBM guru of software project management

But Agile will fix everything!

I read MMM, the first time, in the early 80's. I was working on a IBM OS/370 mainframe (running Michigan Terminal System for time-sharing) so the references to PL/1, LOC, and other metrics of the time made sense to me. While the metrics may have changed, the message still holds: Software Development is a "creative" activity requiring engaged intellect; it can not be reduced to assembly line steps that a Project Manager can control. I'm always amazed at how few PMs have heard of, let alone read, this book.

Even robots have the right to learn from open source

Re: A Thought Experiment

MS paid SCO to sue IBM because there were 'similarities' in lines between ctype.h Linux and the Unix source that MS bought and gave to SCO.

Don't think the lawyers won't go after fair-use; they've nearly destroyed fair-use in the music industry.

Re: Tone deaf article

Anyone remember the SCO V Linux battles(GrokLaw.net)? MS had its hands in deep on that one and this is more of the same.

We have entered the extinguish phase of the operation...

Licenses matter and AI does not get to ignore licenses. Just because they do not have the tech to properly apply the license conditions is not a reason for them to be ignored. If they want to stick to open permissive license then their exposure is much less, but actively using copyleft'd software to learn (even if none of it appears on the output side) is problematic. And trying to hand wave it away is incredibly naive at best and dishonest at worst.

Carrying water for a multi-billion dollar corporation, exploiting the unpaid work of others, is not a good look.

Fitbit health alert: You appear to be bleeding

Pebble v FitBit

Have a Pebble 2 and a FitBit Alta. I can sit for 8 hours and the FitBit congratulates me for walking up 9 stories! The Pebble 2 has been accurate and integrates with multiple apps. Sorry to se Pebble go away, but hope that some of their knowledge and experience rubs off.

Find your happy place: Fedora 26 has landed

It was a fairly quick update but I've been plagued with frequent GNOME shell crashes on Wayland which terminates my session entirely. At least with Xorg only the window decoration disappears and the then returns without closing my apps; it is much slower however. My machine is 4 years old but has been upgraded with an SSD and extra 8GB of memory, so I really have no desire to buy a new machine. Hopefully and GNOME Shell patch will come thru soon to fix the instability...

Daddy, what's 'P2P file sharing'?

Who''s not getting paid?

"Amazingly however, 41 per cent of 24-to-34s don't agree that artists should be paid when their music gets played"

Are they convinced that artists shouldn't get paid, or are they cynical in thinking the money goes to big music houses and very little goes to the artist? The behavior of Sony, Warner, Columbia, et al. does not encourage any sympathy; they try to block everything and anything whether it infringes or not with no real concern. It's about their profits, not about the artists. I prefer to avoid the official releases and back artists more directly thru PledgeMusic and buying merch at live events.

Orlando shootings bring Facebook's safety check to US soil

FB at VTech

I saw FB used for this purpose before they had the feature. My daughter was at Virginia Tech in 2007. The phone links going into Blacksburg were overwhelmed on that April morning; both mobile and landlines were unusable. Students on campus started updating their FB statuses every hour or so since they did have Inet connectivity. On the outside, we were getting news a couple of hours delayed, so we never knew whether our children were safe with each new revelation. I had to ask my company to un-block FB so I could check with my child; they never put the block back in. In a time of crisis, it is the little connections that make a big difference. We were lucky, we made contact with my daughter that evening but she had lost two acquaintances.

These big-name laptops are infested with security bugs – study

"Meh. The first thing I do with a new laptop is format and install GNU/Linux anyway."

FTFY