The Changelog - Comments

Danielle: If Version Control Systems were Airlines

nospam@example.com (Danielle) — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:51:23 -0500

We use Accurev here at work, so let me try that.

Well, I do know that several airlines actually use Accurev and Forrester wrote a case study on one of them about release management (thought it was US Airlines but later learned it was "a US airline" to stay anonymous. It was pretty impressive stuff.

But to be funny...

If Accurev were an airline, it would be called Streamlined Airways.

-- Planes would land on time (aka TimeSafety) with cleaner wheels than when they took off.

-- Passengers could book their seats from London, Boston and San Diego and check-in all at the same time without worrying about sitting on one another.

-- Bags would be checked and frequently merged with other good bags in multiple stages to prevent searching every single passenger's dirty laundry and saving time tracking down bags that didn't pass the beagle's sniff test.

Planes could be diverted from their original destination while in mid-flight and still every passenger would arrive safely, as if by magic. No one would have to be dragged from their seat and dropped without a parachute.

If Accurev were an airline, it would run on water and burn water vapor to help grow our nation's farmland...ok, I have to get back to work now... ;-)

~D

John Calcote: If Version Control Systems were Airlines

nospam@example.com (John Calcote) — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:34:30 -0500

Continuus Airlines:

This airline started as a skunk-works project in Sweden that was sold as a "sort of version control thing" to a few buddies of the designers that happened to run large companies. Eventually enough "buddies" were recruited into the club that the airline became noticeable to IBM, who bought it and renamed it to CMSynergy airlines without changing any functionality.

This airline will get where you need to go if you don't care how many stops you have to make along the way, or long it takes to get there. The really neat thing is that it will let you back up to any of the stops along the way if you don't like where you ended up. Additional flights may merge with your flight along the way between any of the stops. If you happen to back up to a point before one of these mergers takes place, don't worry, you'll be fine. It's the merged passengers that will have to worry.

If you need to personalize your plane, you may do so, but good luck finding the maintenance manual to do so. If you ask for help from the stewardess, there's a good chance the plane will crash, so it's best to just experiment while in flight.

Jim Jones: Thoughts on Redmine

nospam@example.com (Jim Jones) — Wed, 07 May 2008 07:43:24 -0500

Just a small update:

The redmine forums have been moved to redmine.org 4 days after your post:

http://rubyforge.org/forum/forum.php?thread_id=23105&forum_id=7504

I can understand your concerns about the seemingly slow process but my gut feeling from lurking at the forums is that they're (slowly) accelerating.

As a happy redmine user for over a year I must say I'm fairly satisfied overall. I have not yet stumbled into a single bug (can you maybe cite one?)
so it has been smooth sailing.

The big deal with redmine for me is the UI and ticket-system. I curse trac every time I have to search for a ticket or, god-forbid, just want to follow up a ticket that I submitted myself. I find the redmine UI and search much more usable in these regards.

mantaar: So long, Vim. I'm returning to Emacs

nospam@example.com (mantaar) — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:49:58 -0500

What the hell are you guys talking about? Is it really that bad? Can't programmers google anymore? Swap Caps and Escape insensitive clods. Here's the xmodmap to do that:

! swap caps and escape
remove Lock = Caps_Lock
keysym Escape = Caps_Lock
keysym Caps_Lock = Escape
add Lock = Caps_Lock

You can do the same thing for the linux console with this:

keycode 1 = Caps_Lock
keycode 58 = Escape

Indentation works in vim for everything but Haskell. Have you tried :filetype indent on yet?

I've been a former Emacs user myself, changed to vim a year ago after my RSI... it *helped*!
But, to be serious, both suck. Vim's major flaws are: it's folding is just plain broken. It just doesn't work reliably. And using this half-hearted vimscript thing as a backend was a wrong decision. Having a complete language to back your editor configs up (like emacs) would be waaaay better.

One *very* nice thing about vim is the eclim-plugin - vim-integration to eclipse! Yay!

Cameron Dale: Towards Better Bookmark Syncing: del.icio.us and diigo

nospam@example.com (Cameron Dale) — Sun, 04 May 2008 11:57:00 -0500

I use the Google Browser Sync firefox extension on all 3 of my computers. It syncs everything: bookmarks, cookies, history, and (most importantly) open tabs.

Lars Wirzenius: Towards Better Bookmark Syncing: del.icio.us and diigo

nospam@example.com (Lars Wirzenius) — Sun, 04 May 2008 09:32:32 -0500

I've been thinking about setting up an
ikiwiki site to handle my bookmarks.
I'm currently using a wiki page on
my site for (public) bookmarks, but
it's just a list. It would be possible
to use a "blog" for links, one "post"
per link. Tags would work as they
usually do in ikiwiki. With a good
DVCS backend in place, sharing between
different computers would be easy.

John Goerzen: DjVu and the scourge of the PDF

nospam@example.com (John Goerzen) — Sun, 04 May 2008 07:53:20 -0500

I guess what I would say is that PDF *can* faithfully reproduce documents, but doesn't guarantee that it always will, dpeneding on how it was created.

John Goerzen: Towards Better Bookmark Syncing: del.icio.us and diigo

nospam@example.com (John Goerzen) — Sun, 04 May 2008 07:51:02 -0500

I agree with you; I have some file:/// URLs bookmarked.

The del.icio.us has a syncing algorithm, and I have found the local XML file where it keeps a cache or all your bookmarks. I haven't tested yet, but it would appear to work fine offline.

madduck: Towards Better Bookmark Syncing: del.icio.us and diigo

nospam@example.com (madduck) — Sun, 04 May 2008 06:51:03 -0500

None of the tools I've seen so far support true decentralised operation. As strange as it may sound, I want my bookmarks to be available when I'm offline.

I am not ready to give my bookmarks to any site out there, for various reasons.

So far, bookmark management is one of those areas that need a lot more work and more brains than those of PHP hackers.

I actually prefer the Internet Explorer approach of having a bookmark per file to Mozilla's horrific bookmarks.html approach. Once we're at that point, a tagging system could be used, ideally one that integrates documents, bookmarks, and mail... so far, that's just a dream.

Ark: Backup Software

nospam@example.com (Ark) — Sun, 04 May 2008 00:34:41 -0500

Good post, I like one free software [url=http://www.softsea.com/review/Karens-Replicator.html]karens replicator[/url], easy for newbie, some tool under linux should be cool.

Anonymous: Towards Better Bookmark Syncing: del.icio.us and diigo

nospam@example.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 03 May 2008 23:13:17 -0500

I'll second Foxmarks. And they do have a Firefox 3 version in beta test right now.

asdf: Towards Better Bookmark Syncing: del.icio.us and diigo

nospam@example.com (asdf) — Sat, 03 May 2008 15:55:11 -0500

http://debaday.debian.net/2008/04/20/sitebar-centralized-bookmarking/

Bas Zoetekouw: Towards Better Bookmark Syncing: del.icio.us and diigo

nospam@example.com (Bas Zoetekouw) — Sat, 03 May 2008 14:33:42 -0500

Hi John!

You might be interested in the foxmark plugin [1] to synchronse your bookmarks. Although they offer a commercial service that lets you store your bookmarks at their site, the plugin is OSS, and it allows you to store the bookmarks on any ftp or webdav site.
I've been using it for a while, and it works pretty well. Only disadvantage is that it doesn't have a firefox 3 version yet.

Bas.

[1] http://www.foxmarks.com/

GodsWords: Knuth and Reusable Code

nospam@example.com (GodsWords) — Sat, 03 May 2008 12:44:48 -0500

My guess is that the reusable code menace refers to shrouded/black-box libraries. Note the earlier part of the interview on the open-source movement.

The harmful aspect of such so-called "reusability" is that you are asked to submit on faith that whatever code you're reusing, typically via function/API calls, does what it's supposed to. From the viewpoint of purists, this act of unsubstantiated belief has no place in good programming.

You could even elevate such a discussion to encompass for e.g., what it means to live in a society where so many thingumajigs we take for granted are opaque devices sent down from heaven, as they were. It used to be that the average joe generally understood and could self-repair the gadgets he owned.

Well these days, "ownership" has taken a whole different meaning now, hasn't it? Just like "reusability."

Samuel Bronson: DjVu and the scourge of the PDF

nospam@example.com (Samuel Bronson) — Fri, 02 May 2008 20:45:05 -0500

PDF has the ability to faithfully reproduce documents -- the main thing is to embed ALL fonts, even those standard Adobe ones, since Adobe themselves have stopped shipping them with their PDF reader. And since it is a vector format, it will do this to whatever resolution your printer can handle (or fake), unlike DjVu which will only go up to whatever resolution the document is rasterized to.

That said, I think DjVu is excellent for on-screen use, especially for people with 56k modems. I think it would be great if CiteSeer would bring back this option.