Fingerprinting to prove ID online

I hope they will not introduce fingerprinting recognition system as described here as I have yet to encounter one that worked reliability on me - from immigration to notebook. This part is true:

"The public is sending an important message to governments and the private sector that they are willing and ready to use sophisticated technology in order to protect themselves against these types of threats."

But that does not mean systems out there are "sophisticated". I am willing to be their beta tester anytime.

Difference between expert programmer and novice

Very succinctly put:

An expert can tell a non-expert to check for such conditions, and with those specifications, the non-expert can probably code them, but only the expert anticipates them. Just like driving, what makes a good programmer is not only the ability to solve the problems that occur, but the ability to foresee (and avoid) problems that haven't occurred yet. Unfortunately, experts learn how to do that by making mistakes. It's a sad commentary on the human condition. Each generation acquires expertise primarily by repeating the mistakes of the past generations. To paraphrase Neils Bohr, "An expert is someone who has made all the possible mistakes in a very narrow field."

But when you're riding in a car with a novice driver, you'll probably appreciate P. J. Plauger's version more, "My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared."

Comments:
Unfortunately, many novice developers or ones that have just acquired a taste of a new technology immediately delude into writing something only an expert is capable. It does not matter if it is just to store data in a file as illustrated by the example used. Or using COM, C++ framework such as ATL/STL, .Net or Java.

Many development managers lacking the experience and expertise fail to distinguish between act of stupidity and stroke of an expert, thus concur blindly allowing novice to use their product as the training ground, often leading to failure to exploit opportunities and creating laughable products.

Often these managers confuse the expert's time and effort to "foresee (and avoid) problems that haven't occurred yet" as being a case of gold plating and then wondering why they are having recurring problems, lack of respect and trust from their customers, and complaints.

Tools to help you to make your code secure

Microsoft has released two tools BinScope and MiniFuss.

these tools to show you how easy it is to use them to improve the security of your software. BinScope Binary Analyzer is a Microsoft verification tool that analyzes binaries on a project-wide level to ensure that they have been built in compliance with the requirements and recommendations of the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL). At Microsoft, use of BinScope is a requirement of the Verification Phase of the SDL.

The best way to learn them is to start from this article.

Does NBN guarantees high adoption of Internet?

Is it a futile exercise to equate speed of Internet with high adoption? This is a question recently asked in US when confronted with this issue. According the newspaper article:

And maybe that won’t change, no matter how many social workers knock at their doors, and no matter how many years pass after Internet service has come to be accepted by their neighbors as a utility as essential as water and electricity. South Korea’s experience as a broadband pioneer is suggestive. The task force looked at 22 countries with broadband plans, seeking best practices that were well suited to the United States, and South Korea’s broadband initiative was of particular interest.

In 1999, South Korea began to help low-income and elderly households get PCs and become connected, and the outcome could be described as quite successful: “Today, 83 percent of households in Korea have adopted broadband access,” the report says. But one can also look at the remaining 17 percent and wonder what has prevented those households from getting online, despite the strenuous efforts of a government that has been a world leader in the broadband race.

A worthy lesson for promoter of NBN (National Broadband Network).

Amateurs at work

This is funny. Looks like someone does not even the basic physics.

Unfortunately Siemens trains draw more power than they're getting and they've been unable to move, so other trains can't get through to move all those people

Doh!

I just love this quote...

Some times ago, I by accident came across this quote by a Poet Janet Minor:

"I have a spelling checker
It came with my PC;
It plainly marks four my revue
Mistakes I cannot sea.
I've run this poem threw it,
I'm sure your pleased too no,
Its letter perfect in its weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.

I frequently come across code that resembles something like this passage; all syntactically correct but full of runtime error.