Overheard: Advantage of agile development

“One of the truly great advantages agile development has over traditional waterfall projects is in team dynamics. There is far more interaction and communication between disciplines. Just being on the project at the same time is an advantage over “throw it over the wall” processes.” Jeremy D. Miller, A Taxonomy of Tests

Overheard: DBAs and developers

“That we DBAs and Oracle developers frequently come across as grumpy old men (and women) who oppose change and who want the IT world to remain the same as it was in the 1980s is partly our fault. And honestly, isn’t there some truth to it?” Sandy Mamoli (Nomad8), Bridging the gap between DBAs and developers

Sandy writes: One of the things I have learnt from the development community are agile methods which certainly aren’t the answer to all problems but which represent an honest and intelligent attempt to improve our systems by applying an empiric approach which is based on reality rather than wishful thinking about how things should be. For me those methods are worth to be looked into and to be tried in real life.

Overheard: Any “Guy” can be mistaken for an IT expert

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/zWAvHnfJsOQ" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Remember when the BBC interviewed “the cab driver” instead of the IT expert by mistake? Here’s the story behind this YouTube classic. (Wikipedia)

Overheard: Window of opportunity – health care

“HealthVault Search is a search engine specifically tuned to return only health-related web results through a variety of trusted and credible sources, including notably Wikipedia articles where available.” Long Zheng Dr. Microsoft is now ready to see you

Overheard: Network security is like a door…

“Teaching network security for the SANS Institute, I am frequently asked, “Will our networks ever be secure and safe for all to use?” My simple answer is: No. We will never be able to achieve total network security. I tend to use real “doors” as an analogy to make my point. Doors have been built and refined for thousands of years. Nevertheless, burglaries occur daily, even though we know how to build safe, burglar-proof doors.” Johannes Ullrich, The Disillusionment of Network Security

Overheard: You have a dominant hand, dominant eye and even a dominant foot. Why not a dominant side of the brain?

Which way is this dancer spinning? A: Clockwise (to the right) B: Counterclockwise (to the left)

Continued »

Overheard: Web 3.0? Those are fighting words, Mister!

“One great way to start a fight in a crowded Silicon Valley cocktail party (and there are a lot of them these days) is to mention Web 3.0.” John Markof, What I Meant to Say Was Semantic Web

Overheard: Definition for Web 3.0

“Web 3.0, in my opinion is best defined as the third-decade of the Web (2010 – 2020), during which time several key technologies will become widely used. Chief among them will be RDF and the technologies of the emerging Semantic Web. Essentially, the Semantic Web enables the gradual transformation of the Web into a database. Web 3.0 is an era in which we will upgrade the back-end of the Web, after a decade of focus on the front-end (Web 2.0 has mainly been about AJAX, tagging, and other front-end user-experience innovations.)” Nova Spivack, Web 3.0 — The Best Official Definition Imaginable

Overheard: Old-fashioned desktop phones

“Ten years from now, when people see a movie with an old desktop phone, you’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, we used to have things like that.” Bill Gates, A Bold Yet Bland Plan For Communications Domination

Overheard: Tech acquisitions psychic predictions

“My money would go on IBM buying SUN at this point. But again, at the end of the day, Sun is a hardware company, despite noise to the contrary by pony-tail boy.” Marc Fleury, To consolidate or not to consolidate