COMPUTER BUMS

"Bright young men of disheveled appearance, often with sunken glowing eyes, can be seen sitting at computer consoles, their arms tensed and waiting to fire their fingers, already poised to strike, at the buttons and keys on which their attentions seems to be riveted as a gambler's on the rolling dice. When not so transfixed, they often sit at tables strewn with computer printouts over which they pore like possessed students of cabalistic text. They work until they nearly drop, twenty, thirty hours at a time. Their food, if they arrange it, is brought to them: coffe, Cokes, and sandwiches. If possible, they sleep on cots near the printouts. Their rumpled clothes, their unwashed and unshaven faces, and their uncombed hair all testify that they are oblivious to their bodies and to the world in which they move. These are computer bums, compulsive programmers..." - Joseph Weizenbaum.

The Little Brag Book | Carnegie Mellon University

The Little Brag Book Carnegie Mellon University:

"Preventing computer crime— one word at a time

Computer Science alumnus and professor Luis von Ahn and his colleagues are responsible for developing
CAPTCHAs, those wavy, distorted words online shoppers often need to decipher before completing a transaction.
CAPTCHA stands for 'completely automated public Turing tests to tell computers and humans apart.'
About 200 million CAPTCHAs are used each day, and they prevent many forms of computer crime.
Von Ahn's latest version, reCAPTCHAs, goes a step further, harnessing this puzzle-solving human effort to digitize smudged words from old books and newspapers."

ECLIPSE STILL LEADING THE PACK

Stumbling upon Adam Bien's blog on "Which Of These Is your Favorite IDE", I decided to vote. My obvious choice ofcourse was Netbeans. Not that I had much of a choice. Well truth is I moved from plain text editors to Netbeans. I happen to have tried JDeveloper but I guess we didn't get along.

The polls were quite interesting, starting with the fact that the total percentage was 120% as against 100%. While Eclipse managed a 2% lead over Netbeans, as the poll showed, Weblogic workshop garnered 0% with 6 votes (now that's interesting as well). This is how the IDE's polled as at my voting time:

Eclipse 47% with 836 votes

Netbeans 45% with 799 votes

IntelliJ 17% with 309 votes

Plain text editor 4% with 63 votes

Myeclipse 3% with 45 votes

JDeveloper 2% with 28 votes

Other 1% with 24 votes

RAD /WSAD 1% with 19 votes

Weblogic workshop 0% 6 votes

Again total votes was somewhere over 2000 as against 1781 as calcualted by the polling machine.

To see the polls or enjoy some bantering over world's best Java IDE you can hit http://www.certpal.com/blogs/2009/08/your-favorite-java-ide/

Alpha Geeks, Alpha Male...Alpha ?

The quest for dominance is inherent in man, and imo, is what has driven innovation to the height it has attained today.

The term alpha has been used to describe the individual whom the others follow(see Wikipedia). In humans the alpha male refers to a man who is powerful or in high social position.In business, academics, politics or sports alpha's seem to take the lead and influence the directions of such endeavors.

Ever since Tim O'Reilly used the term 'Alpha Geek' in his talk, many writers, bloggers and and commentators have used used the term and have tried to describe the alpha geek. The simplest description being:

Alpha geeks are typically experimenting with technology. In software development they are the
people who first try new languages and frameworks. They are also inclined to build things to
solve their problems if there isn't a viable alternative out there. Although they can be wedded
to a particular platform, most of them will use what makes them most effective, hopping between platforms. they are very passionate about software development and spend more time, often spare time, reading books, going to conference, and tinkering.

You are an alpha geek if most of the following applies to you:

If you got your email around say 1978, when the internet was still an embryo

If you remember details well, but tend to forget your spouse birthday and the dry-cleaning.

If you can't trust software unless you've written it... (according to Martin Fowler)

How much is your life experiences worth?

After such much buzz and news about winning Oscar awards, I finally got around to seeing Slumdog Millionaire. As I stepped through every scene of the movie, what kept running through my mind was could I be paid 20 million Naira for my life's experience. Peharps my life's experience is worth more than that, yet may be not.

After watching that movie I remembered my goals and aspirations on how much I'd be worth at this stage of my life, what I would have to contributed to other peoples' dreams and aspirations. Of course doing a reality check I realize how far I am from realizing them.

While I entertained myself at Easter with this classic masterpiece (in my opinion) I couldn't help wondering aloud "How far are you willing to go in actualizing your visions"?, How much of life's filth and dirth am I willing to endure? How much of my personal experiences made impressions on me so much that I can recall them?

As I revel in the character Jamal, and think to myself how extraodinary he seems, just as the writer of that movie, I can't help but imagine that across the slums of the the world there are many potential millioniares.

Ultimately I ask, how far are we willing to go just to end up with those we love, or we think we love and to give meaning to their lives?