behold the power of sed

I am an old unix hacker. I admit I get a thrill out of sed, awk, the shell and regular expressions. Here is an IM exchange I just had. Names changed to protect the innocent:

joe : got a second for a sed question?
el_jefe: uh-oh
el_jefe: ok
joe : I've got a filename, foo_293849723.txt, I want to rename it to foo.txt
el_jefe: ok
joe : so I want to strip everything from the _ to the .
el_jefe: ok
joe : I've stripped the _ and the ., but not the stuff in between
el_jefe: sed 's/_.*\./\./' ?
joe : that's it!
el_jefe: whew
el_jefe: good to know i can still do that
joe : I'm going to stare at that one for a while and figure out how it's any different from what I was trying
el_jefe: good luck

Alternate port websites

I like to consider myself in tune with 'Underground' culture (although as I've aged I'm sure I've lost touch somewhat). I've always wondered if there was a whole hidden universe on the internet that wasn't being served on port 80. It seems like a fairly simple way to keep a website underground as most internet users probably aren't even aware that there's a port setting involved when they visit a website. Anyone out there know of any websites being served on a port other that 80/443?

Blog as Project Tool, Revisited

A month has passed since I first install a multi-user blog for use as a project tool for our team.

We've accumulated 145 posts, and the general feedback on the tool (and the data captured through posts) has been positive. Adoption by the team was higher than I thought it would be, given it was a completely new tool.

We use it to capture information that would generally be lost - quick notes regarding this or that, out of office notices, and the like. But the most important data we have found is

Additionally, we've added users to the blog from outside our organization - while my boss sees it as a way to share information, I see it as an important aspect of transparency. It shows the external users that we aren't hiding anything from them.

If you're looking to do something similar for your organization, I found a round up of multi-user blog tools linked from Chad Dickerson's blog. Again, we're using Blojsom, which, after a h

How much is that old Palm Pilot worth anyway?

My wife was cleaning out the bonus room in preparation for turning it into a play room for our daughter. (There goes my last refuge at home.) She found my old palm pilot and asked me how much we should sell it for in a garage sale. I started thinking. How much was that gadget worth to me?



To be honest, it never was worth very much. It was difficult to enter data into and I never used it. Now there are cell phone/palm pilots, usb storage you put on your keychain, and of course the iPod is all the rage. These gadgets seem to complicate my life and they inevitably end up like the palm, discarded in the bonus room. What is the attraction to these gadgets? Is it just the cool factor of being the first one to own it or does it really improve the quality of life? Maybe I lack the patience to learn to appreciate them. Maybe the killer gadget that I can't live without hasn't been invented yet. Maybe someone out there could clue me in.

Game Developers complain

Oh well, all those hours I have spent slaying beasts on Halo and thinking how much fun it would be to develop games, but it doesn't sound any better than the rest of the technology industry:

“The management is working employees to the ground,” said Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developer’s Association. “I don’t think it is right to exploit people’s passion and energy.”

One of the main sessions was the day-long Quality of Life summit organized by the IGDA, a professional membership association that represents about 10,000 game developers worldwide.

Academics, industry managers, studio heads, and developers discussed living conditions, gender equality, credit standardization and recognition, outsourcing, and shortage of labor.

Burnout isn’t the only side effect. The industry has a high churn rate, leaving the workforce with no real leaders. Electronic Arts and Vivendi Universal have both recently been slapped with class-action lawsuits by employees frustrated by bad conditions.

The IGDA’s goal with the summit, Mr. Della Rocca said, was to encourage developers to take action, and try to solve the industry’s labor problems.

Some companies are trying to turn things around, said Mr. Della Rocca. In their presentations, Intel, Vicarious Visions, and Breakaway, said they are trying to organize the industry in terms of management and training and formalize the software development process."

If your manager sucks, you suck too

Continuing on the theme of sucky managers: if your manager sucks, you suck too. At least that is what Tom Demarco seems to be saying in his book, Slack:

"It's easy (and fair) to blame lousy management on lousy managers. But it's not enough. It's also necessary to blame the people who allow themselves to be managed badly."

That is the approach I have been taking lately. If I see something that is not right, I speak up and make an effort to change it. I guess that makes me a pain, because I seem to be speaking up a lot lately. I don't care too much though - I am getting too old to be putting up with lousy technology leadership.

Symantec Awarded Patent For Anti-Virus Scanning Technique

Here is an example of a software patent that should help a smaller company (Symantec) protect itself from a much larger predator (Microsoft):

"Symantec announced Wednesday that after a five-and-a-half-year process, one of its chief researchers had been granted a patent on anti-virus technology that speeds up detection of complex threats.

Carey Nachenberg, the chief architect of Symantec Research Labs, received a patent for what's described as "data driven detection of viruses," a technology that's used throughout the Cupertino, Calif.-based security giant's desktop, server, and gateway anti-virus products.

"Traditional virus scanners work by scanning a few fixed parts of the file for signs of infection," said Nachenberg. That technique relies on the habits of virus and worm writers', who typically insert their code in the same specific spots in an executable file, often at the beginning or the end of the file. "

You Suck as a manager when....

Following up as Technodog's post, you know that you suck as a technology manager if:

1. You recently started a conversation with a staff member saying, "I want you to...", rather than, "What do you think about..."
2. You sent out an email announcing a major effort or reorganization, rather than talking to your staff in person about it.
3. You are making all the important decisions, rather than allowing your staff to participate in the decision making process.
4. You think you are the sole source of good ideas
5. Your project plan must be so detailed, that you know what everyone on your staff is working on at all times
6. You routinely ask someone to put in an extra effort over the weekend
7. No one else on your staff knows what your budget is.
   

Feel free to add your own....