Well, well ... i've finally spent some time (during Christmas ) to reorganize my movie-database (800+ movies and TV-episodes) on my Apple-TV (yes, with a 1 TB raid-secured NAS attached ) ... but, as u might know, I'm practically deaf so i need subtitles (i even have russian-sound movies with english subtitles ) ... well, just download the subtitles and there u go: bad translations, hacker inserts and worse of all, a seriously bad synchronization .. but hey, I'm a programmer right? ... so there i had my first project since a long time ... of course written in Ruby on a Mac, it took me a few days to get my brains into shape again .. I guess management and strategy leaves a few neuron-cells unused .
Anyway, if u have a Mac with Snow Leopard and the latest download of Macruby (here) .. u can find my first attempt here
I already dusted my closet of movie subtitles pretty quickly so it's at least a great tool .
Have fun watching movies ... merry Christmas and a happy new year !!!
As summer light and warmth is a welcome vitamin for the body, it might be not the time to think about winter again. And indeed, I won't bug myself with memories of cold, snow and traffic jams but still I sens a chilly wind.
As some of you might remember, I have a special interest in Artificial Intelligence (look @ Descartes or HAL).
Now there is a special expression: an AI winter. This means a period of reduced funding and interest in Artificial Intelligence research. History showed already quite few of these winters. A lot of high expectations about things like programming languages, expert systems and speech recognition or other human capabilities were not fulfilled causing a shift of attention and investments towards other areas of technology.
Last month an international group of experts came out with a list of the 25 most occurring errors in software engineering causing a lot of security breaches in software. The team consisted of guru's of various companies including Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Red Hat, University of California, Tata, Symantec. Just to name a few. In other words a most respectful bunch of people with unquestionable knowledge and experience. The result was not only a list of the errors but also a good understandable description and even better, a full list of solutions and directions to avoid these errors. A knowledge base for every software engineer because to their own surprise, their surveys showed that even experienced Software Engineers often had little knowledge around these common mistakes. Please look @ http://cwe.mitre.org/top25/
To me the most surprising part of the story is more indirect. This jointly action showed the power of cooperation, exchanging ideas, building on each other and with an impressive result. The involved companies and independent guru's volunteered without claiming intellectual property rights. So what did they give and what did they lose? Well, they just gave away what they already knew and gained new knowledge from others. That made them improve their products and services, made their guru's more guru and the less educated simply better then they were before So no competitive edge given away? No, not really. Everybody acts on a higher level so the balance in competition stays the same but the world is made better.
Today, while driving in the heavy rain towards work, i was pondering on standardization. Again, apparently i do that often coz i can't get it out of my mind for the last 30 years or so . The most common contribution to the discussion is that standardization ruins creativity, flexibility and craftsmanship. I do not only disagree with that standpoint, i think it's complete nonsens! I consider it as a sort of defense mechanism to protect freedom and there is not much against that but on the contrary, creativity is ruined by lack of standardization. When people reinvent things they could have taken of the shelf, they prevent themselves thinking on a higher level. Abstraction, complexity or something original.
May be ignoring standardization is even a matter of respect. Or better, the lack of respect. Ignoring work and good ideas from somebody else is simply not a very nice thing to do.
No respect for the predecessors who tried to set a standard by not following it and reinvent the wheel or just fooling around with fancy alternatives.
No respect for the employer by reducing productivity and throwing away time and money.
No respect for successors who have much more difficulties re-using ones knowledge and components.
No respect for oneselves by preventing a faster learning curve.
Technology advances fast. Getting seriously hearing impaired, I can't wait for any solution to restore my communication. A little byond the horizon, solutions appear like DNA-manipulation, transplantation, cochlear implants or even a direct connection to the brain. From my point of view developments are way too slow but looking on a more larger scale, my little 13 year old nephew, will probably not experience the hazzards I am in. In a about 50 years from now people will have all sorts of devices to restore what they lost as a 100% healthy person. Visual and audio implants, a chip in the head to avoid epileptic attacks, artificial heart, kidney, liver and lungs, sort of brain-pacemaker to stay at ease and a computer in the back to be able to walk and run again after a serious motor-cycle accident and may be a lot more. That a person is still human is probably proved by the fact that there is still some flesh and blood and probably a mother claiming a birth a while ago. To make things not too complicated, let's skip the problems of discrimination for a moment.
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Well, well ... i've finally spent some time (during Christmas 
) to reorganize my movie-database (800+ movies and TV-episodes) on my Apple-TV (yes, with a 1 TB raid-secured NAS attached 
) ... but, as u might know, I'm practically deaf so i need subtitles (i even have russian-sound movies with english subtitles 
) ... well, just download the subtitles and there u go: bad translations, hacker inserts and worse of all, a seriously bad synchronization .. but hey, I'm a programmer right? ... so there i had my first project since a long time ... of course written in Ruby on a Mac, it took me a few days to get my brains into shape again .. I guess management and strategy leaves a few neuron-cells unused 
.
.
As summer light and warmth is a welcome vitamin for the body, it might be not the time to think about winter again. And indeed, I won't bug myself with memories of cold, snow and traffic jams but still I sens a chilly wind. 
Last month an international group of experts came out with a list of the 25 most occurring errors in software engineering causing a lot of security breaches in software. The team consisted of guru's of various companies including Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Red Hat, University of California, Tata, Symantec. Just to name a few. In other words a most respectful bunch of people with unquestionable knowledge and experience. The result was not only a list of the errors but also a good understandable description and even better, a full list of solutions and directions to avoid these errors. A knowledge base for every software engineer because to their own surprise, their surveys showed that even experienced Software Engineers often had little knowledge around these common mistakes. Please look @ 
Today, while driving in the heavy rain towards work, i was pondering on standardization. Again, apparently i do that often coz i can't get it out of my mind for the last 30 years or so 
. The most common contribution to the discussion is that standardization ruins creativity, flexibility and craftsmanship. I do not only disagree with that standpoint, i think it's complete nonsens! 
I consider it as a sort of defense mechanism to protect freedom and there is not much against that but on the contrary, creativity is ruined by lack of standardization. When people reinvent things they could have taken of the shelf, they prevent themselves thinking on a higher level. Abstraction, complexity or something original. 
Technology advances fast. Getting seriously hearing impaired, I can't wait for any solution to restore my communication. A little byond the horizon, solutions appear like DNA-manipulation, transplantation, cochlear implants or even a direct connection to the brain. From my point of view developments are way too slow but looking on a more larger scale, my little 13 year old nephew, will probably not experience the hazzards I am in. In a about 50 years from now people will have all sorts of devices to restore what they lost as a 100% healthy person. Visual and audio implants, a chip in the head to avoid epileptic attacks, artificial heart, kidney, liver and lungs, sort of brain-pacemaker to stay at ease and a computer in the back to be able to walk and run again after a serious motor-cycle accident and may be a lot more. That a person is still human is probably proved by the fact that there is still some flesh and blood and probably a mother claiming a birth a while ago. To make things not too complicated, let's skip the problems of discrimination for a moment.
