Everyone Hates Firefox Updates

WebMonkey posted this last week on some of the discussions at Mozilla around updates. The story has links to the original post by developer Jono DiCarlo as well as some links to the discussions surrounding the post. The gist of the post is this, all the constant updates to Firefox, to be more like Google Chrome, is killing Firefox.



I couldn't agree more. Chrome can do all those updates because they take place in the background and seldom make any changes to the UI. By contrast, Firefox constantly asks you to approve the updates and the changes too often include major changes to the UI.



This is a particular pet peeve of mine. Of course software needs updated, but often these updates occur too frequently. Mac OS X, gets updates too often. Just when I get to the point where I start to enjoy a version, I HAVE to upgrade again.



The latest Ubuntu UI update is really irritating. It is not that the new Unity Heads Up Display (HUD) is bad. I just really liked the old version of the UI. Why are you forcing me to switch when I don't want to?



To me a 3 to 5 year cycle on operating system UI updates make a lot more sense, than yearly or even bi-yearly cycles. Plus, can't someone come up with a way so I can keep some of the features I like? That would be truly awesome.

Why we write Software

We write software for one of two reasons: to increase revenue or to decrease costs. When you distill down the essence of software development in the dot-com world it comes down to those two choices.

Sorry if this bursts your bubble, but that's it.

Oh sure, writing software is a great vocation, I highly recommend it.

However, understand that all those years spent learning, debugging, testing and patching, still comes does not resolve the question of why we do what we do?

For the 99 percent of us (myself included) who are *not* the top one percent of the programming elite (Stroustrup, Sutter, Gosling, Lamport, etc)... we write corporate software because some 'suit' thinks this idea will generate revenue, or some pointy-haired Dilbertian boss wants to reduce software overhead (cost).

It's somewhat different in the dot-gov and dot-org world, but not much. If this sounds harsh feel free to post a rebuttal.

Living under a lucky star

I have, on many occasions, been accused of living under a lucky star. Not wanting to buy into the whole 'luck' paradigm... I may have to agree as I once again find myself in a 'lucky' situation being one of the few programmers in my organization that understand how to effectively use and program for multicore processors. Fortuitous I have to admit in light of the article below.

Where Are the Programmers?
EE Times (03/12/07) Merritt, Rick

At a time when the amount of students pursuing computer science degrees is declining, researchers are struggling with the parallel programming that will run on the next generation of multicore processors.

F-22 Raptor DST bug?

Perhaps not a DST bug, but a time processing bug non the less...

According to the Official Air Force website the F-22 Rapture was delayed in deployment to Kadena.

While en route to Kadena Air Base, Japan, Feb. 10, a software issue affecting the F-22 Raptor's navigation system was discovered.

The Air Force website did not go into more details than that, however CNN Analyst Don Sheppard did,

It is stealthy. It's fast and you want it all to go right on your first deployment to the Pacific and it didn't. At the international date line, whoops, all systems dumped and when I say all systems, I mean all systems, their navigation, part of their communications, their fuel systems... they could have been in real trouble.... they tried to reset their systems, couldn't get them reset. This could have been real serious. It certainly could have been real serious if the weather had been bad. It turned out OK. It was fixed in 48 hours. It was a computer glitch in the millions of lines of code, somebody made an error in a couple lines of the code and everything goes.

Gee, what could cause a software program to crash while crossing the international dateline? Perhaps a time of day processing function?

Let me see if I can reproduce such a bug...


#include "time.h"
#include "assert.h"

static time_t last_update = 0;
const time_t now = ::time(0);
double dif = ::difftime( now, last_update );

assert(dif >= 0.0);

// refresh 'status' every minute
if ( 59 < diff) {
last_update = now;
// do more useful things...
}

This code assumes that at some point in time while crossing the IDL the F-22 received a clock resync (perhaps from a ground station in Japan?). The code above would cause the system to abort, while crossing the IDL from west to east. I'll leave the reverse case as an exercise to the reader.

As we all prepare for the DST bug to hit our email servers, blackberries, and other systems... be thankful we are not flying in an F-22 Raptor.

Cranky Old Men

There is a new twist on the search engine game, cRANKy.com. Now, I have to say up front that I'm not a cranky old man, but the definitive vote is left for my wife to cast and really, that's the only vote that counts. According to cRANKy.com it's the first age-relevant search engine. Apparently you have to be 50+ years old to really appreciate the services provided by cRANKy.com.


The top ten searches on cRANKy.com (today) are:

1. sex
2. jobs after retirement
3. brain builders
4. work from home
5. rachel ray
6. wallpapers
7. ira rollovers
8. escorted train tours
9. helen mirren
10. retirement planning

If you toss out #2, 7 and 10 I don't see how this differs from google?

Is anyone surprised by number 1, sex?

What an odd mix to see Rachel Ray on the same list with Helen Mirren! Or is it? I think so.

I'm just a bit curios to find out what is involved with an escorted train tour. Is it anything like the escorted train tour Tom Cruise and Rebbecca De Mornay had in Risky Business? I could only hope so... but that gets us back to number 1 again!

Why I hate software

While trying to archive an email message on google (gmail) it generated an error message "Oops... the system was unable to perform your operation (error code 602). Please try again in a few seconds." Now normally I have few complaints w/ google or gmail because by and large "it just works". However after a particularly frustrating day wrestling w/ my own software and software from others at the office I had had it! Yes, true to the error message, I was able to archive the message. Perhaps I should be more forgiving, considering I make a living from software, but I'm not. I believe that software should be infinitely difficult to configure incorrectly. It should be, conversely, "hung over from the Christmas party at 4am" easy to use, configure and install. Have I achieved that with the products I write? Nope. So I should be more forgiving but I refuse to allow my lack of planning, my poor planning to ruin the customer's experience. I'm paid to think of failures and plan for them, all of them. Harsh? Yep. Perhaps it's a calculated behavior serving as a stark contrast to the lackadaisical image some in the industry are fond of displaying.