All blog posts for July 2010
Project Audit considered Moribund
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I've seen the term “moribund” used a few times to describe various packages and executables, but no one has come out and defined “moribund software”. So let me have a crack. Moribund Software is code that is neither maintained nor used, and is not likely to be either in the future. It may be buggy – or maybe there's not enough “there” in the codebase to have bugs in it. Instead, there's a paltry few features fleshed out to prototype stage, but not beyond. Software becomes moribund because turns out not to be necessary - either to the author(s) or anyone else. Or so I think, because these sentiments are what I pretty think of Project Audit.
Essay Spam 2 - when people don't read
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Someone hasn't been paying attention. I write a post describing essay writing firms; I also condemn them wholeheartedly as cheaters and frauds. Then some idiot comes along and adds not one, nor two, but six comments with six links to six different writing firms. I am confident it is only one idiot (or one idiot and friends), because it is statistically improbably for six random strangers to comment using the same email address. I am also certain that the email address belongs to spammer, because I emailed the address to ask why he was representing six different firms. No denials. No "It's not me!". No "Delete the comments - I don't care." Just silence - sometime golden, but in this case suspicious.
Oil S[l]ickness
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Don't be like me. Don't forget there's still an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It slipped my mind. I guess it's not newsworthy, because news about the event would almost seem repetitive. ("Spill still there. Except larger.") You might as well call it olds. Thank you, Joe Bageant, for bringing it back into focus for me. It might be a brief mention in a blog post - a one paragraph withering slam at the inattention of his fellow Americans [1] - but "Oil Spill" is back in my memory banks for now.
The problem with the slick - no, a problem with the slick (articles are important, kids!) is that it is hard to feel the magnitude of the thing if you don't live near it. When a ship leaked 30 tonnes of oil onto Moreton Island and the Sunshine Coast, it was easy for me to visualize the size of the disaster. It was only 100 or so kms away from me. But I've never been to the Gulf. The nearest I've been is Dallas, I was only 11 at the time, and it was just for a week. What do you do to get your empathy on for Gulf-deprived individuals like myself?