Girl Developer

Thank You, Yahoo

 In October of this year Yahoo host Open Hack Day in NYC. It was a cool event, they had great speakers (including a keynote from Clay Shirky); they also provided space, resources, and food to those who wanted to compete in an overnight coding competition. They had workshops, and cool exhibits (like the Makerbot 3d printer using icing). They had amazing food that included a  hot dog stand and Stella (my favorite beer). It was a great experience, I didn't get to catch many of the talks, but I did get to speak to other developers, meet some fine folks, and learn much about Yahoo's dev tools. 

In our welcome pack we got a bag, which included our schedule, a toolkit for "hacking," and a bag of toiletries for those of us that decided to stay the night.  The bag included things like soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant...etc. It was a great idea, and nice of Yahoo to consider the developer's personal hygiene. 

Thinking I could use the soap or the lotion included I threw my kit in my gym bag. I've taken to working out before heading into the coworking space I work out of some days recently. The week before last I was at my gym, freshly showered and about to put work clothes on when I realized I had forgotten to grab deodorant. I remembered I had that little Hack Day toiletry kit and I remembered the deodorant inside. I have used men's deodorant in a tight spot before, I figured I would just make due. I automatically assumed it would be men's deodorant, I mean, this was a coding competition? 

It wasn't! It was scentless gender neutral deodorant. I know it's dumb, but this surprised me greatly and made me feel included. I know there was some scandal involving the Hack Day in Taiwan and female dancers, however, the Hack Day in New York was a smashing success and whomever planned the goodie bag is awesome. 

So, thanks, Yahoo, for thinking of the ladies as few as we may be. 

The Rotting Stink of Corporate IT

My friend Lisa has a prejudice against those lip glosses that come in a little jar. The kind you dip your finger in and rub on your lips? She calls them little petri dishes, with all the bacteria and germs from your fingers just living in there waiting for their next home.

I see many similarities between lip gloss germ factories and corporate IT. There are good bacteria, and there are bad bacteria, but what they have in common is that they fester. The good developers fester in frustration, the frustration of change request forms. The frustration of knowing the right thing to do, and not being able to do it until four months later when the "budget is there." The bad programmers are festering in sloth, in the fact that their work goes largely unnoticed and as long as their tie matches their shirt we can ignore the fact that their classes go on for days, and their code is illegible, and their methods are bloated. In these environments you are taught that to care is to waste time, and the only thing that is important is that it GETS DONE, not if it is done right. A culture of apathy and wanton disregard for standards is all that is being enforced.

The biggest issue here is not the bad programmers, it's not the suffocated good programmers, as they say "A fish rots from the head." Management is who decides what the priorities are. If the priority is to "get it done so it works for now and ship it out" you will get exactly what you asked for. It starts at the top, when the CTO puts pressure on the IT Directors who put pressure on the Department Managers who in turn flip on their coders and turn the screws that bind them. Some symptoms of this are projects that are constantly coming back for work, deadlines that are constantly pushed, and the blame game from QA to the developers to the testers.

Can a large corporation have a healthy team? Yes. I didn't used to think so, but I have kept my eyes and ears open. I haven't experienced it, but I have met people that have shared their good experiences. The friends I have that are in corporate IT that are also happy have always had one thing in common: small teams. When you break up a big group into small teams, and hold the leaders of those teams personally responsible for the health of the team it succeeds. When you give them the tools they need for success, when you make it about who is contributing the best, when managers take the time to examine who is touching the code and IF what they are doing is the best solution, that's when you can succeed. When you allow for enough time and budget to make sure that things only need to be done once, and changes can be easily made, that's when you can succeed. The Five Dysfunctions book is a great place to start if you are looking to do so. I can imagine it's hard work, but when you look at companies like Microsoft and Google the reward is obviously worth it.

C'mon, You Guys, We Can Do Better Than This

This article is in response to the presentation seen here  which was given at the Golden Gate Ruby Conference a few weeks ago. It has stirred up quite a few reactions, some of which are here and here.

The first thing I thought of was "I totally could imagine being in that audience." I know exactly how it went. The images went up on the screen, and every guy in there looked sideways at the closest girl (maybe three rows over) to see how she was reacting. Every girl in that audience was thinking "Make it look like you don't care, make it look like you aren't feeling weird about this." My insides are cringing.

I've seen the reactions all over web, "we're rockstars," "we're all adults here," "I'm an R rated person, I'm ok with it." Well I'm not going to sit here and say it's "unprofessional," or "sexist," or "perverse." It was all of those things, but that's been said. I'm going to sit here and say "shame on all of you."

I am a feminist. I support a woman's right to do and act the way she chooses to (and accept the consequences when they are due). I think that we should have the same rights engendered to a man, without question. I do not, however, disregard the difference between the sexes. We are women, you are men. That's why I say "shame on you." Shame on each and every one of you men who sat next to a woman and didn't treat her like a lady. Shame on you for letting the women who were brave enough to come to your convention sit there, and experience the discomfort of having borderline pornographic images on the screen that were intended to arouse (admit it, it wasn't there so you could all study the brilliance of the photographer and his use of light) and stimulate the audience sexually enough to keep them interested. What if that were your sister, or your mother sitting in that situation. What would you want the man sitting next to her do? Would you think it's ok if he laughed and thought it was a "great ploy?"

Some may think it ironic that the girl that has "All marriage proposals must be accompanied by last year's W2" on her blog is criticizing others.  I'm not saying it's always inappropriate. Looking at these things in your own homes or as part of your personal recreation is fine. Some women are comfortable around this kind of thing, they let you know by telling you, or joking with you about it. Then it's status quo, and we all can have fun. However, to put a woman you don't know in the situation where she either needs to laugh along or feel like an object is way "Goofus" and not at all "Gallant."

This may make me prude, or old-fashioned, or plain not fun; however, I think we know I'm none of those things. I don't think I'm overreacting either. It is difficult to encourage young girls to get in this field. I get emails all the time. It is scary being "the only girl in your class," and one of three in a room of fifty people. It's scary to ask questions when you're afraid your entire gender will be judged by your grasp of a concept. Asking girls to brave these situations because writing software is fun, and interesting, and exciting is a moot point when faced with these type of stories.

The "deep zoom" Playboy thing at Mixx was a bit tasteless. This situation is just embarrassing. The community really needs to do some introspection if it wants to attract more women to the field. You are saying one thing, and doing another.

PS - I'm only saying this because I freakin love you guys. You have made being a part of this community an awesome time thus far. I only want other girls to have the same experience I have.

Is Microsoft the New IBM?

Remember in, like, 1993 when it was awesome to work for IBM? I remember hearing about their awesome rockstar offices and how many amenities that they had. This guy at my church had just finished Chubb's "Top Gun" program and now was a shoe in at IBM because it was such a great place to work. I heard they had a coffee shop and hair salon INSIDE the building. (hey, it was cool then). I had heard that programmers that worked for big companies like IBM made, like, $200 an hour. It was the place to be.

Then around 2000 I started noticing that only my dad's weird friends worked at IBM. The ones who didn't care that much about where they worked or what they did. The company name wasn't thrown around that much, didn't have the same impact anymore. I no longer had any desire to be a programmer at IBM, it seemed like a bummer.

So, this past weekend the Microsoft in Manhattan hosted Code Camp III. I had a freaking blast, not only did I get to rock my new hightop sneakers but it is so much fun communing with other nerds, isn't it? I don't get to do that too often, my office hasn't had any other developers until recently (our hardcore vegan yoga teaching flash guy), and though I have programmer friends I don't actually SEE them too often. The talks were great, even though I didn't pick up any new tech I wanted to try it's good to see how other people do things sometimes. Gives you a lot of ideas.

One thing struck me as odd, though. So, I expected MS in Manhattan to be posh. However, when I got there they looked like a regular drab office in the city. Now, how "cool" your office looks doesn't make the entire company. However, it does reflect on the management and how much they prioritize their employees. Now, they did have xbox workstations, however, they were the kind you see at Radio Shack. Obviously for visitors and not employees.

Here is a team that knows what they are doing. The fog creek offices are seriously posh. Who WOULDNT die to work there (well, maybe not DIE). Something that Joel knows is that in order to make your staff bust their buns and make your company successful you should show them that they matter to you. Make them love where they are. Even in Joel's blog post about the subject he said it cost a tiny fraction of their revenue. I'm in some pretty sweet digs here (I'll post some pics in the AM, I'm tired). This company understands that in order to attract the talent you need to show them how much they mean to you, we have some serious rockstars under this roof.

Like I said, it's not EVERYTHING. However, if I got a call from Microsoft tomorrow I don't know that I'd be jumping for the phone. That's a very different attitude than the one I used to have. Am I hating on Microsoft? No, I am pretty grateful for this whole "career" thing... but I think that in order to stay current they need to spend a "tiny fraction" of the big bucks they have. Because beleive me,  reputation trickles down. If developers don't want to be there users will find out. No matter who they hire, one thing they know is that developers are the best evangelists they have.

Rating my iPhone Applications (straight up Ebert style)

According to Josh who commented a few posts ago, "developers don't need iPhones, only sheep do." That being said a lot of us have them, the 3G one and the OG (Original Gangster). First of all, quit acting like you are cooler than me because you have the 3G, I am yet to see a compelling reason to switch (except that I may get less attitude from sales people who told me the only skins they have are for the 3G like I was carrying around a VCR). I figured I could rate the apps I have used and maybe you could share some of your own? If you don't have an iPhone make sure to tell us why your phone is cooler, I can be convinced. Here goes:
 

Ok, so I downloaded a twitter client because I didn't really want to get twitter texts. To be honest with you I'm not a huge fan of Twitterific. I swear it kills my battery (a conclusion I came to after gathering much circumstantial evidence). I really fare better by going to twitter on the browser on my phone. The mobile UI that is provided by twitter is much cleaner, and straight forward. I give it 2 out of 5 tweets.

 

 Taptastic is the perfect game to play when you are somewhere and you are uncomfortable and you want to pretend you are doing something important. It's a game that flashes little boxes on the screen and you have to tap them. Get it? Taptastic! I have never gotten past the third level, nor have I wanted to. Altogether a good purposeless app, 7 out of 10 carpel tunnels.

 

 So it could be that my hand eye coordination stinks because, unlike you guys, I haven't been playing first person shooters my whole life. It could be that I have the attention span of a goldfish and I didn't play with it long enough. However, it also could be that  Tap Tap Revenge just stinks. It's supposed to be like guitar hero, but it's not. I get the strings at the right time and it doesn't register and the music isn't melodic enough to get into. I give this app 1 out of 10 pretend instruments.

 

 Spore is the only app I have paid for. It was 7.99 (actually, that's a lie I have paid for 2) and I think it was worth it. I got a real feel of the game (it is like a small portion of the real game – the beginning I gather). I'm currently stuck on level 27 I think, it's a level that you have to push one animal into another round animal to kill it but if you push the animal too much it dies. It's heck-a annoying. I do feel like I got my moneys worth and got at least an hour of entertainment. I give it 4 out of 5 over-hyped PC games.

 

 Ok, so I bought this Absolute Fitness app when I had a large motivation to get fit, it worked well. It's a food diary/calorie counter/weight tracker/workout buddy. The only thing is that it's time consuming, but I think I may start tracking again since it's holiday time. The price is a little steep $14.99, but you get a lot of bang for your buck. Some failings: the food list is incomplete, I would love it if it remembered things you input recently. I give it 3 out of 5 muffin tops.

 

Pandora seriously takes the cake as being the best application you can download on your phone IMO. It has come in handy so many times. At work we have one of those sound systems where you can just plug in your ipod and I put it in there sometimes. I listen to it at the gym when I want a change from my workout songs.... it's great to have assorted music you will like so handy. I give it 9 out of 10 awesomes.

 

These applications are all ones I think are good ideas but have never used:

iTalk looks good because I constantly get mislead by CS people trying to get me off the phone. Then I call back when something doesn't happen, like a refund, or a cancellation, and a different CS agent says there is no way I was told what I was told. This is never fun so I keep meaning to start recording these calls but I forget.

 

 

The Fake Calls thing is exactly as it appears, I haven't had to use my phone to get out of a sticky situation yet.

 

I have used Say Who once, it's a voice dialer, it's pretty good but in order to use it I have to do as much tapping as if I were dialing myself...so eeeeeeeh.

 

So, that's it! Later gators.

O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo

Today was the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo at the Javits Center in Manhattan. Today was "Workshop Day" and that's what I thought looked the most applicable for me, I have a feeling the expo will be filled with things like this so I would be more productive at work. The conference was cool, there were SOME nerds which was awesome. I heart nerds that wear backwards baseball caps and dirty jeans and lean back in their chairs and don't care what you think, because if I was a guy that's how I would be. Plus I would skateboard. Not saying girls can't skateboard, because they totally can, but I digress. I met a few cool nerds, and think I made some friends.

There were also a bunch of people walking around loudly talking on their cell phones saying things like "Really? Did you check to make sure the blog was published? Ok, well then you should definitely twitter about it and post a bulletin. Ok, then check the adsense and call me back." BLECH. I'm SO on Web 5.0 at this point. My Space is SO the AOL of 2002 I'm deleting mine this week I'm almost embarrassed to be there. Twitter : Internet as DVR : Television, it just is. Developers need to come up with some anti-Web 2.0 terminology ASAP.

This morning I went to a talk about "Building Successful Next Generation Web 2.0 Applications," it basically reinforced in my mind that 'm doing the right thing. S3, REST, JSON, CSS, XHTML, AJAX, JQuery... the whole she-bang. It got me feeling pretty confident that I was keeping on top of things, however, I didn't learn much. This afternoon, however, was totally worth it. I went to a talk for Developers (which there were hardly any at all as seen here):

About Advanced Javascript given by this guy (PS, I just noticed, um he only MADE JQuery), is it weird that I decided his talk would be interesting because he had cool glasses? I think he may have skipped fourth period health to give this talk, I can say that because not 3 months ago my orthodontist asked me what grade I was in.... (it's like when you make racial jokes about your own race). Not only was the teaching tool he used awesome (See? You can edit and debug(kinda) and compile) but I learned a lot that I really want to play with. Javascript is like a mountain, once you conquer it you think it's awesome, but if it's in your way you abhor it. People that are good at JS freaking love it, and wouldn't live without it... but getting to that point is rough because of limited debugging resources and other languages that offer more functionality (because regardless of how fast the client is, the server has just so much more info) tend to be distracting.

So I learned about Javascript caching, which is cool. Basically what you have to do is declare a function's cache, like so:

Add.cache = {};

Then set it within a function like this:

                                                                                       
function Add(num){  
if(Add.cache[num] != null)
return Add.cache;
var ber;
ber = num + 1337;
Add.cache[num] = ber;
return ber;
}

then you can call the cache if the variable passed in is the same, through the cache.

assert(Add(3) == 1340, 'YAAAAY');

assert(Add.cache[3] == 1340, 'YerAwesome');

For small functions like this it means nothing... but when you're holding up processes with your insane JS calls this is super handy. I also learned about OO Javascript, and inheritance, and recursion (the only thing I was already aware of) and all sorts of fun things. I will do a more indepth post at a later date.

It never fails, though, at these talks there are always guys that ask questions just to ask them. Kind of like "stump the speaker" where they already know the answer but they are asking to see if HE knows the answer. This would be fine in moderation but when it happens over and over it's a bit annoying.

While I was in the shower the Mets decided to finish their nap, so the game is over. Now it's time for The Shield and 90210 (I don't even want to hear it that show is AWESOME). My card for Thursday this week starts my study on LINQ for filesystem. It looks hella useful and if it is I will make sure to tell you all about it.

ALSO, if anyone else is having trouble with their OpenId on StackOverflow (Technorati) please let me know, I can't log in, I'm experiencing analphylatic shock, I thought if there were a bunch of us we may be able to get the attention of the overseers.

The Politics of a Developer

      I'm not here to tell you who to vote for, however if you're going to vote based on what some girl on the internet tells you you may as well listen to me. Why? Because I'm funny, that's why.

    It can be argued that there isn't much difference between the two parties. This is very true, and I myself don't affiliate myself with either. I do practice my right to vote. For all the things about our government that I disapprove of, the fact that we can vote to elect our officials is pretty cool. My grandmother's generation fought so that I can vote, therefore I take pride in the fact that I can do it.

  I mean, there really isn't a debate about which candidate is more computer savvy. Obama also supports tax breaks for companies that don't outsource. If you're voting as a developer it just isn't feasible to vote for a man who admits never being in front of a computer. However, some of you may be voting with your values, and that I can understand.

  The biggest thing that appeals to me about Obama has nothing to do with his qualifications to be president, though I think it contributes. The thing I adore is his unfailing idealism. I'll say it again unfailing idealism. Some may associate that with naiveté and inexperience, however, I maintain that it is part of the foundation of success. It's not the message of "change" that gets me. The word "Change" along with the phrase "Web 2.0" makes my ears bleed at this point. Its the idea that your dreams are possible, that hope isn't a weakness. Associating our emotions with manifesting our dreams and goals is a message I can stand behind. 

   This attitude is mistaken for weakness too often. I'm sure some of you are shaking your heads and rolling your eyes as I speak (or type). You probably think I am "young" and "just haven't learned what reality is yet"  I maintain that I have accomplished things uncharacteristic for my demographic. Why? Because I know I can.

   There are many discouraging things that come my way on a daily basis. I have failed, others have told me I will fail, and people tell me that I need to get a grip of what I am capable of. People have asked who I think I am, they don't like my attitude, they think I am loud and overly confident. I am tempted to feel sorry for myself, to make excuses on why something can't be attained. I can't afford to listen to any of these things. I can't for an instant take my eyes off my goals. Why? Because that's when I fail.

   There are a lot of mumbo jumbo books out there like "The Secret" that promote this type of thinking. The thing that they lose is it's not some "magical key to unlocking your future" and it's not some great revelation, it's been known for a long time. Thomas Jefferson said "Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."

   Do I lose sight of this? Often. Not two months ago someone had to remind me to stop questioning myself. I'm knee deep in this project because of it (more like waist deep at this point). But, I digress, Politicians break hearts. This I know. However, the one thing I see in this candidate is the chance that someone may show the next generation something that has been lost in ours, that idealism and belief in ourselves and each other can move mountains.

   Ok, I'll get off my soap box in a hot second. However, I have to say something quick to say about Michelle. She isn't the pretty woman in the nice dress that is standing behind a great man, she's the pretty lady in the nice dress that is standing WITH a great man. When her husband speaks to her I hear something I haven't heard in a politician before, he talks to her like she's a man. By that I mean, that he addresses her as a true equal, and that's something I can admire.

   I guess this comes across as one big endorsement. On a level I suppose it is....I'm not trying to open a debate about platforms and earmarks and inexperience and whatever else is a hot button issue. I understand we all have our beliefs and I'm not challenging yours. I just can't help but admire his unwaivering belief in his own ability to affectively improve our country. That is something I would want exemplified for my (currently non-existing) children.

 

StackOverflow - The Answer to "-site:ExpertsExchange"?

So, the collaboration between Atwood and Spolsky titled StackOverflow has come to (beta) fruition. The buzz is finally starting to come in. I have seen both good and bad and decided to see for myself what the hype was about.  I'm going to walk you through my experience and give you some of my reactions.

The UI is welcoming, and I say that as a developer. Well, maybe not so much a developer as much as just someone who likes a "no frills" UI. I'm more of a reddit girl than a digg girl, I don't like extra bells and whistles and even special colors. Let me rephrase that, I like a high functioning skeleton without all the distracting "Look at me! Look at me!". In other words I like plain webpages. Why was that so hard to say?

So, naked UI, check. How does this thing work? I figured I would play around... so I did the obvious and asked a question. This is a problem I am really having with my Visual Studio. I think it has something to do with Installing and Uninstalling both Refactor Pro and Resharper. It comes and goes, but regardless it's an annoying problem and I figured I would check to see if anyone else had it. I was able to post a question without registering. I gave myself the moniker "Kevin Lee." I often hear that being a female I get my questions answered a little faster than the average nerd. Something about a "Geek to the Rescue" fantasy. I figured if I just pretended to be the average programmer I could see an unbiased response time. My question was answered quickly  (I notice you can't see exactly but it took about 20 mins) and the integral goal of StackOverflow was fulfilled. I was impressed, only because my first question about StackOverflow was "Well, I mean, don't we have forums for that?" However, it takes me a lot longer to get an answer on the ASP.NET forums. Was it answered correctly?  Yes, after a few. There were some answers that were a little off the path for my question, though I could see why a programmer would go to them, they didn't apply. The same experience as if I was in a forum, answered a little faster. So, I mark the answer as "accepted" and go to rate up the answer as well (may as well throw around some points). 

What's this?  Hmm,  apparently I can't rate answers up if I don't have at least 15 points. Well, that's clever, I need a rep in order to decide what question rates. What about if I want to vote an answer down? I need 100 points, so if I'm some kind of jerk who likes to go spreading bad web vibes I have to work REEEALY hard to get there. I guess that adds to the Wiki-ish flavor. A lot of the feedback I have read in the "sphere" points to the idea that everyone that answers questions isn't necessarily going to answer correctly. I found that the correct answers tended to be indicated and rated high, possibly this algorithm for voting is to thank for that.

Ok, now let me go answer some questions. Mmmm, I had a little trouble including multiple tags when searching questions, now I'm not going to jump on the "THIS IS A BUG" wagon, but if it isn't then the UI could be a little more explanatory. I entered the names of multiple tags I saw on the list, but when I entered C# and then .NET (with a space in between as instructed) nothing was returned. I was able to answer questions with ease... nothing too exciting (though the level of most of the questions being asked was impressive).

What are some of the other features I noticed? Well, you can earn badges based on performance. I was really excited to see that
I had earned the "Autobiographer" badge, but then I realized it was simply because I had filled out my profile. I sincerely hope I get a "Kiss Ass Blogger" badge for this post. Some other fun things were the ways you can filter questions by what is unanswered, or what is popular, and other nifty filters to make browsing more interesting.  I'm sure I will discover more in time.

What didn't I like? Well, the amount of information all at once was kind of daunting. I supposed this could be partially remedied by the use of multiple tags. I would also recommend giving users the option to not see a preview of each post and just view titles. There were many times I wanted to rate an answer or question and I can't yet which was frustrating. I suppose that's the price you pay to keep the community clean.

So, the question remains, is StackOverflow THE new resource for all your coding needs? Is it going to put Experts Exchange and other pay-for-your-answer sites out of business? My answer is: no one knows and don't pretend you do, blaggers, because you don't. If I were to design a perfect UX for a one-stop-shopping coding resource this is pretty dang close. However, it's really up to us as a community to put in the effort. It seems to have a huge following already in beta, so Joel and Jeff as developers may have hit on something big (is this possible for people not named Scott?). I'll be interested where this thing goes and what changes are made for the first official release (may I suggest a NY release party?).

Yeah, you know that whole Microsoft/Apple war? We made that up.

 

 

Now wait, before you say anything, I want you to do me a favor, I want you to pretend we're just having a chat. It's you and me, we were just at a conference, or an expo, or a workshop or something. I noticed your tee shirt on the street, whatever, something happened and now we're talking tech, it's going well. Have you seen the stuff you can do with Jquery? RIA, what do you think? Then it happens, one of us brings it up and the lines are drawn.

 

Oh, you're a .NET developer? Run Vista? That's cool.

 

Wait, you live on Leopard? You think iPhone apps are the new wave?

 

We both know this wont end well. One of us is going to talk UI and hardware performance, the other computability and support... we're never going to agree, so let's just talk politics... FISA, will we ever recover?

 

There are wars fought world wide over arbitrary ideals, developers will be the first people to tell you that. Why can't we apply the same unbiased principles to ourselves? Why must we throw our souls behind any million dollar corporation that makes the thing we happen to relate to the most? What exactly do Apple, Linux, and Microsoft compete on? Operating systems? They all specialize in very different things, it doesn't seem like they should be a threat to each other. They also offer much more then just OS's, I bet Apple and Microsoft both make much more money in other things than OS packages. Why are we feeding their gluttonous revenue streams by turning against each other?

 

Linux/Unbutu guy, we know how little you need UI. You make your own operating system, and you're not afraid of a challenge. No one holds your hand, if it's tough you figure it out. You're the triathelete of developers, and we'll never forget that.

 

Oh you Apple lover, we know how close your relationship is with your users. OS X is good looking, and easy to use. We know what respect you have for true color, for beauty and art in design, you can't accept a sub par UX in exchange for functionality. You know simple and attractive is agile, we think you have a point.

 

 

.NET developer, we don't think you're a fanboi. We know that you respect quality, reputation, and stability. We don't think you're a follower, really, we know you're leading the way in cutting edge technology. So what people don't think you're edgy off the bat, they have no idea what kind of difference you are making in the industry.

 

Instead of letting big brother corporations buy our allegiance with straw man advertisements and snazzy swag, why don't we make this market what it should be. Let's invest in the products that are the BEST. Also, that's just a matter of preference and opinion! There is no Bible here. Myself? I love my Vista, it's really snazzy and fast, after all I develop in .NET. I'm running it on a Mac Book Pro. I have an iPhone, I'm writing this article in Open Office, I use Subversion. I think that when I'm editing HTML/CSS the only place to be is in Firefox, when I'm surfing it's only IE. I keep Leopard on my machine so that I can be more familiar for my users. For me this isn't about a “team” or a “side.”

 

Believe me, I know. Mac is the little guy, Linux even littler. Microsoft is the New England Patriots of the Software world, secretly, lots of people love to see them lose. Guess what, though, they do a lot of things really well. Until they stop, I'm going to use their product. When someone makes what I need better I will be using that.

 

Though, if you really just want to take the side of wherever the cool kids are have I got a product for you. It's an operating system, and it's brand new, cutting edge. Not even out yet, don't ell anyone but I can get you a hot copy of Windows Mojave before it even hits the streets. Just make your check out to “Girl Developer” and you'll be one step ahead of those Apple dorks. They'll be too busy eating their granola and smelling like patchouli to know what hit them.

Untraceable - Review

    So I got this movie on Demand tonight and I found it highly entertaining. On one hand, it was a little sick. I'm not big on horror/slasher type things, I was never allowed to watch those types of movies as a kid, so now movies like that really freak me out. This wasn't as much horror as gory thriller, but still, I'm a big believer in Garbage In/Garbage out so I try to stay away. On the other hand I liked the premise, it focused on an FBI agent named Jennifer Marsh that was in a cyber crimes unit. Since this was a web focused movie, it really piqued my interest. One thing I really appreciated is they fact that it wasn't dumbed down at all. Most of these movies set up these situations where someone says something the average Joe might not know, and someone who happens to be in the roon that isn't so savvy says something like "That's all greek to me" so someone explains it so the people in the audience get what is going on. It may have been irritating for the less aware, but they threw around terms like rotating DNS and botnet, and no one had to explain it in simple terms. Also, no fake OSs this time, she was running Vista on her home machine. There was also no "traveling through the virtual internet" shots where we are shown what the inside of computers look like with floating words, and binary, and beautiful green light.

   It wasn't all realistic though, for example her daughter in the movie had admin rights to her machine that she used for work at home that had sensitive FBI info on it. That was a bit off. They were also using trackball mice, which I thought was just dumb, I guess they thought it looked cooler. The "hacker" killer wasn't very good with a keyboard if you ask me, At work she looked at sites with a proxy IP in a vitual machine, yet at home this was not the case. I may be reading too far into these things. I did however, learn new abbreviations like MTC (more to come) and LFM (looking for more). I'm going to be a texting goddess (incedentally, I am tired of people who don't use t9 when text messaging, that's so 2002. Saw someone doing this yesterday).

  The movie brought up a few issues in my mind. Mostly net neutrality. I'm all for it, and no censorship. However, common sense says that what's illegal IRL should be prosecuted online as well. It does need to be regulated on a level, as much as I hate putting control in govenment hands. There are some real sickos out there, and with the access the web gives them it's that much more important to stop it. It also made me think a little more about my personal safety, I know there is all kinds of personal information floating around the intarnette, and I really need to put a kibosh on that stuff. I'm so trusting, you really want to be. It's nice to think that everyone around you has the same intentions you do, but that's simply not the case and I really need to start protecting myself.

 Anyway, decent film 2 1/2 stars IMHO.