Early in the development cycle, it’s perfectly acceptable to go for a policy of “zero bugs” and “100% tests”. But as the deadline looms, these choices need to be reconsidered all the time and evaluated while keeping a close eye of the final goal. Very often, Agilists simply forget that their job is to produce software that satisfies customers, not software that meets some golden software engineering scale.

Worthy article written by someone who understands stuff. Read it.

— Mom? I have a confession to make. I use Java.
— What the hell are you talking about?
— I want to use a programming language which doesn’t only run in Windows.

My, this is so full of win!

— Hey, what are you guys up to?
— We are just enjoying some porn…
— Hope you’re not doing Java and open-source!

Watch it. Now. Try not to laugh to loud (I failed that quest). It’s hilarious and simply brilliant.

P.S. it features Scala Johansson, William Windows and a new start Lenny Linux!

I didn’t — and now it occurs to me it’s a nice way of browsing through news. Granted, it isn’t the most productive way if you need to find what’s going on in the world — quickly, but can certainly be used to kill some of that invaluable resource we all love to waste so much :)

Shamelessly stolen from here.

1. You should have a DMZ’ed (or accessible from outside world in some way) server running in your home network which you can SSH into.
2. Your home Mac should be on (you can use etherwake command from within your network to wake it up first).

As long as these two criteria are met, you simply do:

laptop:~ kirillov$ ssh -p19322 -L59000:imac:5900 user@home.selfip.org -fN

The bit

-p19322

you need only if you’re running your SSH daemon on a non-standard port (or your forwarding is set from a non-standard port); either way, it is highly recommended. This piece

-L59000:imac:5900

says “I want to forward all requests coming on port 59000 of my localhost to host imac in the target network, port 5900” (which is a default VNC port). Finally,

my_home_username@myhomeserver.selfip.org -fN

is pretty straightforward, “-fN” says “go to background right after asking for login and password if they are needed”.

After you’ve done that, all you need to do it to hit ⌘K in your Finder (or start a dedicated VNC application) and do:

After that you’re likely to be asked for login and password, which, by coincidence will be login and password from your home Mac. And you’re in!

Guess who — and what is this about?

After he leaves, I am finally left alone with an iPad. Finally I get some finger time. I peep under the slip holder, and there it is. When I switch it on, a little sigh escapes me as the screen lights up. Ten minutes later I am rolling on the floor, snarling and biting, trying to wrestle it from the hands of an Apple press representative.

That is not strictly true, but giving up the iPad felt a little like that. I had been prepared for a smooth feel, for a bright screen and the “immersive” experience everyone had promised. I was not prepared, though, for how instant the relationship I formed with the device would be. I left Cupertino without an iPad, but I have since gotten my own, and it goes with me everywhere.

…

It is possible that the public will not fall on the iPad, as I did, like lions on an antelope. Perhaps they will find the apps and the iBooks too expensive. Maybe they will wait for more fully featured later models. But for me, my iPad is like a gun lobbyist’s rifle: the only way you will take it from me is to prise it from my cold, dead hands. One melancholy thought occurs as my fingers glide and flow over the surface of this astonishing object: Douglas Adams is not alive to see the closest thing to his Hitchhiker’s Guide that humankind has yet devised.

Either Apple has paid Mr Fry a whole lot of money … or they didn’t. It could also have something to do with the fact that he’s got an iPad now — before the official launch. Anyway, this is quite an amusing article with a bits of interview with yet another Steve — the one on the cover; worth reading (on of a very few of such kind in Time magazine). Read on.

The iPad Launch: Can Steve Jobs Do It Again?

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try
{
    FileSystem dfs = DistributedFileSystem.get(hadoopJobConfiguration);
    final FileStatus[] sts = dfs.listStatus(new Path(this.hdfsDirectory));
    for ( FileStatus s : sts )
    {
        if ( s.getPath().toString().endsWith(".jar") )
        {
            log.info("Jar found: " + s.getPath().toString());
            DistributedCache.addFileToClassPath(new Path(s.getPath().toUri().getPath()), hadoopJobConfiguration);
        }
    }
}
catch (IOException e)
{
    throw new MyException("FileSystem exception while caching JAR files: ", e);
}

Hadoop still manages to surprise me every day. Now, it would certainly make sense if I take Path object from DistributedFileSystem and feed it to DistributedCache’s addFileToClassPath. It would. But it doesn’t work.

In fact, full Path in Hadoop looks like http://hadoop-master-host:9000/path/to/the/file. But if you want to use this path with DistributedCache you need to chop off everything but the path itself, which is /path/to/file in this example. And of course, there’s no other way to find out about this but to try (in fact, I only figured it out because I had some hard-coded constants which did work, while nice and clean code didn’t).

What is it anyway? Here you go: I think the screenshot is pretty much self-explaining:

As it follows from the name, it’s initial purpose was to track GPS trails of your running, but now it could do much more than that. In short words, it allow you:

1. Plan routes for cycling, running and hiking, drawing it on the map and uploading to a GPS of your choice.
2. Importing and analysing your records from GPS — so you can view not only the route itself, but also elevation, pace, speed and so on.
3. Manage your own library of favourite routes, which you can adjust and load to GPS
4. Show your routes on different background maps, including Google Maps Satellite, Terrain, Streetmaps, and also OpenStreetMaps and Bing Maps (wow!).
5. Share your routes on EveryTrail.com (which I personally adore) and GPSies.com
6. And so on, and so forth, so go and check the list yourself at trailrunnerx.com

TrailRunner is donationware, and I most definitely consider donating to author — this is so great, when somebody creates a really useful piece of software which just works.