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Pleasurable, but they'll still be there. Waiting for you. Still unpleasant. Like the vapours left in the elevator after lunch.
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TTFN - Kent
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Quote: Google has added a filtering system to Gmail that automatically sorts email under different tabs. As well as the Primary inbox, you can select Social, Promotions, Updates, and Forums. These should help people who can't be bothered to set up their own filters, though I have not found them accurate enough to be useful. The settings are under Settings and then Inbox.
The only one I'm currently using is promotions which had an initial ~90% alignment with my existing marketing label; after about 2 weeks of dragging messages that it put in the wrong spot around and clicking always-do-this I was able to delete 9(?) label rules that were previously being used to filter that clutter away for mass mark-read's when I'm not looking to buy any bits of tech gear. I haven't used any of the others because they don't line up well with my existing filter categories, and between them they have my inbox reasonably well controlled.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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We announce stuff all the time, but it's hard to keep up with what's important, what you need to know, and stuff you should start paying attention to because it's going to be a big deal really soon. So here's my quick summary of the important things that happened in 2013 and what I think it suggests we watch for in 2014. A few <%%>, a couple of <%@ %>, and more
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The war for programming talent is full bore. Here's how to hire the best coders when competing with the big boys. Bonus #8: Able to win at musical chairs is not a good selection criterion
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#9 - Bonus...
It's funny how Dan Tynan does not count the issue of payment as a important factor of hiring...
I saw a lot of places where asked for the stars from haven, but only willing to pay peanuts...
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True, but he is writing it from the company's perspective, so peanuts would be beneficial in his mind.
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TTFN - Kent
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Let me argue with that - willing to pay peanuts only can seriously harm the company's hiring plans...
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No, I hear you: I just don't think that the idea of getting decent developers on crappy salary is front of mind for most companies. It *should* be, but "maximizing shareholder return" and all that.
There was an item a week or so back that I chose not to put in the newsletter where a company executive had said a salary was, "Good enough for a {fill in country of origin}." If a company could get away with paying devs minimum wage, I think they'd try. It's not in their best interest by any means, but I do think they'd try.
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TTFN - Kent
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Microsoft’s 12-year-old Windows XP operating system powers 95 percent of the world’s automated teller machines, according to NCR, the largest ATM supplier in the US. While the idea of Windows powering ATMs may surprise consumers, XP runs in the background powering the software that bank customers interact with to withdraw money. They have plenty of time to update them, don't they?
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Interruptions are one of the biggest sources of inefficiency for programmers. Now, to be fair, they’re probably a big source of inefficiency for everyone, but relatively speaking, they’re worse for programmers. Without resorting to your homemade Taser
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I thought to send this link to my manager who interrupts me, he is a source of time wasting for me.
However, I don't think that the PMs who don't understand programming will read this.
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Hehe. Nice tautology there in the quoted text. The offender, of course being "relatively speaking". The word worse already indicates a comparison of one thing to another.
That said, the suggestion offered gave me more than a slight sense of sadism as I laughed maniacally at it.
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Interruptions are part of the gig, especially in the last 10 years since we all have cell phones. I still swear when I am neck deep in debugging, or on the cusp of finishing a tough block of code and the phone rings. It's worse when it's the cell phone...and especially if it happens to be the wife or retired relative who is calling mostly to drone on about their boring lives, or worse complain about something. 
Sure, I can ignore the cell phone, but then run the risk of being questioned later about why I didn't answer earlier, or have to listen to and delete an idiotic voice mail like 'hey, call me'.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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The first call I've made on cell-phones over the past 9-odd years is to voice-mail to disable it. Everyone that knows me knows to ring again if I dont answer and its important. Failing that, I will respond to any text message at a time suitable to me.
The phone very rarely rings a second time. 
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The reason you will always struggle to prepare answers to every single question you are asked in an interview is that the interviewer themselves didn’t prepare them. They don’t really care too much about all the answers you give either. What we do know is that an interviewer has one major objective to fulfill and that is to get the answers to the five basic questions. Based on the answers, he or she will then compare the answers to that of any other interviewer’s and they will then rule you in or out. Nothing at all about my parachute?
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Drawing on its massive store of customer data, Amazon plans on shipping you items it thinks you'll like before you click the purchase button. The company today gained a new patent for "anticipatory shipping," a system that allows Amazon to send items to shipping hubs in areas where it believes said item will sell well. This new scheme will potentially cut delivery times down, and put the online vendor ahead of its real-world counterparts. And it will return it before you order as well
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The malware can read card data from the memory of point-of-sale systems, a technique increasingly used by cyber criminals. And people say you can't use VBScript to develop anything useful
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Maybe it's not the sexiest programming language, but SQL continues to be relevant. In fact, TIOBE Software, which publishes a TIOBE Programming Community Index gauging the popularity of programming languages, named Transact-SQL the language of the year for 2013. It would like to thank the academy, its parents (Sybase and ANSI), and all the people that struggle with sub-queries
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Transact SQL the language of the year?
Oh man. That just seems so wrong given the direction the industry has headed with NoSQL.
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I generally think of NoSQL databases serving a different user base than SQL databases.
They can be complementary.
I'd probably complain if my bank abandoned ACID-based transaction processing (unless it worked in my favour of course).
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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Cisco's 2014 Annual Security Report points the blame at Oracle's Java for being a leading cause of security woes. Breaking News you already knew
Actually, I would have thought Flash would have been up there.
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It’s no secret that Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform got off to a much slower start than many had hoped. But with a couple years now behind the platform, there is solid proof that Windows Phone is growing and that Microsoft's marketing efforts are paying off. "Just what makes that little old ant think he'll move that rubber tree plant?"
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It's also a lousy name for a great idea that is doomed from the start. Here's why. Just look how long it's taken us to get a standard mobile cable
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"The phenomenon is arising in an industrial environment of powerful companies that each want an unlevel playing field in their favor, or that have strong and mutually exclusive ideas about how the industry should work."
- CORBA, remoting, REST...
- Proprietary blobs via TCP/IP, SOAP, JSON...
Give it time - it will happen. 
/ravi
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CESG, the UK government's arm that assesses operating systems and software security, has published its findings for ‘End User Device’ operating systems. The most secure of the lot? Ubuntu 12.04. Assuming you follow all the instructions in 'man SECURE-SYSTEM', add the .nohack parameter in /etc/lib/protectsystem, and compile the kernel with the -ED209 switch.
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