March 2005 Newsletter
Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy. –Isaac Newton
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. –Thomas H. Huxley
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. –Winston Churchill
To use power wisely is the final test of leadership. Thus, the first rule in the game of power (or life) and, in fact, the only hard and fast rule in the entire game is: POWER MUST BE THE SERVANT; IT MUST NOT BE THE MASTER! –Thomas D. Willhite
The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause. –Mark Twain
What really counts in life is what you learn after you know it all. –John Wooden
Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. –Johann Von Goethe
A company's character is known by the people it keeps. –John Ruskin
Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality. –George Santayana
The article provides an overview of the Software
Engineering Institute's Capability
Maturity Model Integration, which provides a framework for assessing an
organization's development processes and methodologies against industry
standards.
http://www.computerworld.com/developmenttopics/development/story/0,10801,99159,00.html
One of the basic tenets of extreme programming (XP) is paying close
attention to the intent of the code being written and the module under
development. This book excerpt examines
some of the principles on of intentional programming.
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=357688
Even though computing power still follows Moore's Law of speed doubling
every 18 months, the end-user experience concerning system performance severely
lags behind. This article examines the
reasons for this apparent paradox.
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-cranky49.html
According to this author, the biggest reason for project failure is that
the team was working on the wrong problem.
He offers some reasons for this problem and recommended remedies.
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=354573
The British Computer Society has
published two reports
on the top computer science research and academic challenges. The cover such areas as using quantum
physics in computing, nonclassical computing, ubiquitous computing, and
more. They want to harness the concepts
used by the human genome mapping project in the 1990s and adapt it to computing
research.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/01/25/HNfuturechallenges_1.html
This sample book chapter gives an overview of UML, what it was created
for, and the basic terminology used.
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=347699
First of a two-part series on getting started with the bash command-line
environment and the power that it provides.
http://www.redhat.com/magazine/004feb05/features/bash/
This introductory chapter from a new book on aspect-oriented software
development (AOSD) gives a nice initiation to the topic. AOSD is a new
development paradigm that encourages segmented development in which all of the
pieces easily come together to make the whole.
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=340868
The online interactive quiz tests your basic knowledge about TCP/IP and
how it fits into the network structure.
http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6228_11-5556897.html
Online job-posting service Dice Inc. reports that pay in IT profession was down across the board in 2004. Support and help-desk jobs saw the greatest decline.
http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=59300528
HP researchers have demonstrated computational capabilities at near-quantum levels. This technology may pave the way for non-silicon transistors.
http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=59300089
This excerpt from a book by Robert Herbold, who was formerly the COO of Microsoft, discusses how empire-building detracts from organizational effectiveness and how to dismantle them.
http://www.bpmmag.net/magazine/article.html?articleID=14314
This 30-question survey, which takes 5 – 7 minutes to complete, will help you to identify your strengths and weaknesses in the areas of organization, time management, and more. While it's really a sales pitch for Microsoft Office, it is still a useful tool.
http://www.microsoftofficeppc.com/overview.aspx
IT organizations are expecting less competition, higher prices, and poorer customer service as a result of the consolidation in the telecom industry, such as impending SBC buyout of AT&T.
http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/outsourcing/isptelecom/story/0,10801,99531,00.html
Presentation by CEOs of SBC and AT&T on their merger and the basic financials as well as the expected synergies and impacts.
http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/11/113088/reports/SBC-ATT_Presentation-color.pdf
AllSnap is a small, system tray-based utility that allows all top-level windows to automatically align like in applications such as WinAmp or Photoshop.
http://ca.geocities.com/ivanheckman@rogers.com/
Excel Utilities is a collection of utilities and add-ons to improve efficiency in working with Excel. Features include simplifying actions involving defined names, worksheets, application settings, shortcuts and improved selection tools. Includes a toolbar for each of the add-ons.
http://www.appspro.com/Utilities/ExcelUtilities.htm
Network Notepad is a free diagramming tool similar to Visio, but it is specifically designed for preparing network diagrams. It includes a large library of icons for common network elements and equipment.
http://www.networknotepad.com/
DataFreeway is a free GUI for SSH (1 & 2), SFTP, WebDAV, and FTP that allows you to conveniently access data resources on Linux or Unix servers from your Windows desktop. It allows you to drag-and-drop and cut-and-paste operations between the remote system and your local system.
http://www.enginsite.com/ssh-webdav-ftp-sftp-client.htm
Magpie is a web browser extension which allows on-the-fly markup (highlighting) of pages with semantic ontological meanings. Basically, what this means is that web page text related to particular topics will be highlighted for quick perusal. The concept is rather difficult to explain, but it is very powerful.
http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/magpie/main.html
After adding a lot of items to your Internet Explorer Favorites, it can become difficult to find the particular shortcut that you are looking for. A quick change to the registry will re-sort all of your Favorites alphabetically: Open the Registry Editor (Start | Run… | regedit) and navigate to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MenuOrder\Favorites key. Then delete the Order value. Close the Registry Editor and restart Internet Explorer and your Favorites are alphabetized now.
Did you know that Americans speak over 1000 distinct "dialects"? This companion site to a PBS series on language in America includes interactive quizzes, speech samples, and articles on topics such as linguistic prejudice and the media's impact on language.
You may think of luxury cars when you hear "Rolls-Royce", but they are actually more famous for their jet engine design and manufacturing. This Flash-based site gives you an insider's view (literally) of how a jet engine works.
http://www.rolls-royce.com/education/schools/journey/flash.html
Nice collection of optical illusions and mind "tricks". The site provides excellent explanations of the illusion and the sensory reason that it appears as it does.
This humorous piece (done with some nice HTML) looks at the progression of a programmer in how he or she writes the classic "Hello, world!" program at various stages in his/her career.
http://www.system-shock.com/evolution/