Jeremyopolis

Have you tried a little love?

Jeremy — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 16:32:43 +0000

Ethics are a funny thing. We spend hours making them up and then try and find ways around these self-imposed moral rules. The best solution to an ethical problem is love. If everyone loved their boss, everyone would always give an honest day of work. If everyone loved their customers, we wouldn’t need the Better Business Bureau to protect consumers. If love was the motivating factor for all we did, we wouldn’t need ethics anymore because everyone would do what is best for the other person; we would all have adequate care. All of this begs the question: have you tried a little love?

My Creative, Yet Still Nerdy Side

Jeremy — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 05:28:19 +0000

For my computer ethics class I wrote two creative writing projects. Enjoy!

Life of a Programmer
segmentation fault!
will I ever fix this bug?
finally, it runs.

Loss of a Dear Friend

I felt empty inside. Cágor was dead. Yet, I was undaunted. The glass on my CRT reflected my feelings, “LF Rez 40gp!” I kept playing.

Python in a Nutshell – Review

Jeremy — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 03:58:43 +0000

Python in a Nutshell has been a great addition to my library. This book is clearly meant as a reference rather than something to be read completely through. However, when you look something up, it is well worth the time to read the whole chapter or section on that subject. There is always a concise, pertinent and in-depth explanation of every subject I have looked up. Python in a Nutshell is also great at explaining Python’s unique conventions and specifics.

Another great aspect is that concepts are explained using correct programing language terminology. This means words like closure and scope are used correctly to enhance explanations. Yet, this book will not be useful to everyone. Unless you already know a programing language or two, this book does not give a beginners explanation of flow control statements or loops or anything in Python. If you are a beginner, you will be better off learning from a tutorial or a beginner book. This book will come in handy later, when you need to reference parts of Python you have never used.

Overall, this book is a great buy. If you are already an avid programmer or intend to become one in the future, you will not be sad having this book about Python on your shelf.

IP – ’tis Broken

Jeremy — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:57:09 +0000

Few May Start, But Many Will Succeed

Jeremy — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:57:49 +0000

Wikipedia was started by a handful of people; Linux was started by one person. Both of these projects have become mainstream. They are well accepted by the general populace and everyone knows about them. They succeeded because after a smart founding, a large group of many people supported and helped the project to progress. The same is happening with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A decade ago, the Church began to have a strong online presence. That presence was brought about by a small group of people. Today, many, many members of the Church are spreading that online presence and helping the project that few started to succeed through the help of many.

Externalities Are Amazing

Jeremy — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:20:55 +0000

The Internet motivates people with externalities. Ask any economist and he or she will tell you that externalities do not motivate people. Yet, the Internet illustrates that externalities do motivate people; Wikipedia and open-source software being the two best examples. These projects show that externalities motivate because the people who write Wikipedia articles do not benefit directly from writing articles. They receive no remuneration; yet, there are consistently people editing articles. Who knows why they do work for free, with a few shakes of externalities thrown in on the side, but thank goodness there are people that will do the work so all Internet users can benefit.

Software Outsourcing – Two Options and They Both Stink

Jeremy — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:39:57 +0000

There are two kinds of software outsourcing: some or all. Outsourcing the whole project is not smart. Typically, when outsourcing a complete project, the outsourcing company acts as a consultant. This means they write the software, get paid more than they bid for the job, and then leave, never looking at the software again. Because they leave, they don’t care how well the software is engineered; they don’t care that fixing a bug will take eons and hoards of cash. You, who just paid a pile of green for the poorly coded software, are now stuck with the cost of maintenance and no software gurus on your team that know how the software works.

The second option is to outsource some of the software. The problem with outsourcing some of the software is that the software needs to be embarrassingly parallelizable. This means that there needs to be discrete parts of the software that do a complete function on their own without relying on any other piece of your software. When a program can be divided this way, some of these distinct parts can be outsourced, while others will stay within the company. Most software does not have the property of being embarrassingly parallelizable or else software engineers would simply create the specific parts once and plug them together. Then no one would need to program any more. Clearly, there are more programmers today than there were last year.

Both of these software outsourcing options stink. Pay more money now and less later; choose the third option: no outsourcing.

double math in Java

Jeremy — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:51:01 +0000

I have been programming extensively using doubles and Doubles in Java. Often, I have run into problems where simple mathematical operators will return 0.0. For example:

ArrayList a, b;
double temp = (a.get(0) + b.get(0)) * (a.get(0) + b.get(0));

After executing this code, temp would be equal to 0 no matter what values a.get(0) and b.get(0) had. This seemed very annoying and backwards and the only way I had to solve it was thusly:

double temp = (double)a.get(0) + b.get(0);
double result = temp * temp;

Then, result would actually have a result in it. Go figure.

Crowd Source Patents

Jeremy — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:39:45 +0000

Disclaimer: I know quite a bit about patents. However, I don’t know everything. If there is already an easy way for people to comment on patents, regard this article as a highlight of my ignorance.

People file for crazy patents all the time. Even a simple patent search turns up patents for things like linked lists or other very common, everyday items that have been around longer than the life of a patent. What is even crazier is that the patent office grants them, despite the angry mobs of bloggers who fill their blogs with enraged posts about the shortcomings of said patents. Crowd sourcing patents is a capable solution to this patent problem. Give this mad mob of bloggers and all people an easy to use web site where they can gather evidence for or against a patent. Crowd sourcing patents would solve the problem of the patent office having to employ experts in every field. The power, and responsibility, would be back in the hands of that wrathful mob who could invalidate the crazy patents before they are even granted.

A New Dinosaur

Jeremy — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:34:33 +0000

Brigham Young University recently found a new long-necked dinosaur in a quarry in Utah. There is a large problem with new dinosaur discoveries: no one really knows if they are correct or not. Scientists have supposedly found “120 known species of sauropods [but], there have been only eight instances in which scientists have been able to recover intact skulls.” How do the scientists even know if there are 120 different sauropods if they have only ever found 8 skulls? Maybe every sauropod had a different shaped head because they used them to bash coconuts open so they could enjoy sweet coconut milk. The real point is, these dinosaur scientists don’t really know anything about the dinosaurs because they didn’t live during the Age of the Dinosaurs. The amount of fossil evidence that has been found is tiny, as evidenced by the quote above. This leads me to wonder why we keep inventing new types of dinosaurs when we find a new leg bone here or a new skull there. For all we know, they could be from the very same dinosaur.