Most people think that "failover is essentially automatic and magical." ☛ Michael Nygard's

 Depending on the detection and notification, there can be quite a delay before failover is initiated at all. (I once spoke with a retailer whose primary notification mechanism seemed to be the Marketing VP's wife.)
 
via  Wide Awake Developers Blog by Michael Nygard

I come from a systems management and operations background.  On a recent consulting engagement, I asked the tech leads what tools they used to monitor their production systems?  "None".  Well, I asked, how do you know when there is a production problem?  "The user calls us!"

"... people are the central element in software development, and people are inherently non-linear and unpredictable..."

At this point I lost interest. I spent a fair bit of time in the 80's and 90's mucking around with this idea. In the end I decided that it was too hard and of limited value. Why this is so was primarily crystallized for me by Alistair Cockburn who explained that since people are the central element in software development, and people are inherently non-linear and unpredictable - such an effort is fundamentally doomed. Or at least it is until people become predictable agents that can be described with tractable mathematics - for which event I'm not holding my breath.

''Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do and how you do it.''

In his third month as Mayor, the one-time political science major had occasion to describe his philosophy of government at a New York Post forum on crime. His passage from the liberal beliefs of his younger years was complete.

Freedom does not mean ''people can do anything they want, be anything they can be,'' he said. ''Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do and how you do it.''

In New York, he seemed to announce, that lawful authority was his.

via nytimes.com

This popped out of a re-reading of articles around the "Broken-Window Theory" that Rudy Giuliani put to use as mayor...

IRS agents, Security Burocrats, and bad software people should go on the first ship. Don't worry, we'll be right behind on the second ship. (@unclebobmartin)

unclebobmartin (@unclebobmartin):
4/5/10 12:58 PM
IRS agents, Security Burocrats, and bad software people should go on the first ship. Don't worry, we'll be right behind on the second ship.

"Java's more relevant than you think" - enigmastation.com

It’s really funny, honestly, but kids, Java isn’t cool. It hasn’t been cool for a long time.

Slashdot even posted “The Struggle to Keep Java Relevant,” which … wow. Not only is Java not cool, but it’s not even relevant any more. Now, that article is … odd, because “relevant” apparently means “used by people with piercings,” which is an odd metric, but still!

via enigmastation.com