M-A-O-L

The Project Saboteur’s Handbook:

There are many ways to sabotage a project. Recognizing them is the first crucial step to counter them. In this brief handbook I will present a number of ways of sabotage that I have encountered in various projects. This post is the saboteur’s handbook.

Tongue in cheek…

Double Fine Double Feature:

The story of Double Fine is such a feel-good story, but it almost wasn’t. A few years ago, if you said the name Double Fine aloud, you were talking about what could have been, or what should have been. You were talking about how you fell in love with games all over again because of the quirky, creative risk-taking in the ahead-of-its-time Psychonauts. Or you were talking about how you learned to loathe the major blockbuster game machine all over again because of the stunted promises of Brutal Legend. Or you were talking about how you used to love the games Tim Schafer made with LucasArts and wished he could make more of those, or modern games that were more like those, or something — anything — that would be both fun and successful. 

Good stuff, and creative layout.

A Brief History of Slashdot Part 1, Chips & Dips:

As part of our 10 year anniversary celebration, I’ve decided to post a story here telling the tale of the transition from Chips & Dips to Slashdot back in 1997.

A Brief History of Slashdot Part 2, Explosions:

When last we left off, Slashdot had grown beyond my ability to maintain it as a hobby, as well as beyond the simple DEC Alpha Multia 166 that had served it so well for the first week or two, and then immediately buckled under the traffic.

History of Slashdot Part : Going Corporate:

When we last left off we were in early 1999- Slashdot had a small business behind it, known as Blockstackers Intergalactic. But we knew that we would need real infrastructure to handle the ever increasing traffic and needs of our readers as well as our employees.

The History of Slashdot Part 4 : Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow:

Today, on the last day of our 10 year anniversary navel gazing spectacular, I present the final (thank god!) chapter in my 4 part history of Slashdot. I’ve written about the creation, the explosion, and the corporatization.

I stumbled upon this story from a couple years ago while looking for something totally else – and couldn’t believe I didn’t see this earlier, after Symlink and everything that was!

I finally got around to creating an IFTTT recipe to automatically push my Pocket favorites to this blog. My queue was overflowing… so much read, so little time to go back and write about it! Let me know if you’re interested in the recipe. I’m holding off publishing it for now, until I know it works satisfactorily.

I bought this one: TOUCH TIME: Digital Watch with Touch Screen by Donald Brewer.

Next generation digital watch with a touch screen, Smartphone-like watch apps, “always on” display, and you never need to charge it.

Reminded me about my recent self:

One of the key components to finding long term happiness is doing meaningful work. But in the modern world, meaningful work has become increasingly more difficult to find. A couple of hundred years ago, a person could look back on a day and see the field they planted that would feed their family. Today, we often don’t know what our work produces.

Instead, many of us find ourselves doing jobs by rote without any connection to why or what we’re accomplishing. For Joe “moving numbers around on a spreadsheet” seemed to produce nothing and therefore meant nothing. How he could wake up everyday and knowingly barter away the significance of his life for a biweekly paycheck was beyond my understanding.

via The Search For Meaningful Work.

Mozilla announced that Thunderbird will no longer be actively developed by the Mozilla folks. Because they don’t see innovation in the email fat client space. Coincidentally I stopped using Thunderbird a couple months ago in favor of a Roundcube based webmail solution for my private email needs (corporate is still Outlook), so I would tend to agree.

It’s been a while that I last posted, I’m well aware of that. Go over to Instagram to see part of the reason: a nice trip that took us to (among other places) Monument Valley, Antelope Canyon, Valley of Fire, and Hotel Rumor in Las Vegas. Eventually I might also find the time to post some of our Florida pictures.

On another note, I started a new job as IT Auditor today. Changing sides always provided very valuable insight for me in my professional career so far, let’s just hope that looking from the outside into my old organizations doesn’t shock me too much 😉

I intend to increase the frequency of posts again, not least to stay in touch with technology in my new job…

Great Bloomberg interview with Cloudera CEO Mike Olson on open source and big data.

Via the 451 group

Oracle recently released it’s Oracle Database Firewall.

[The] release of Oracle Database Firewall is the culmination of the company’s  acquisition of database security vendor Secerno last year. The product  creates a defensive perimeter around databases by looking at SQL  statements sent to the database through the wire to determine whether to  pass, log, alert, block, or substitute SQL statements based on an  organization’s policies. Users can set whitelist or blacklist policies  to control the product, which is designed to work not only with Oracle  databases, but also other major platforms, such as DB2, SQL Server and  Sybase platforms.

As usual, they claim it’s going to replace all competitor’s remotely similar products, which is now causing quite a controversy among them, nicely summarized by Pete Finnigan in Oracle Database Firewall Controversy.