This morning, I stumbled across this:

bq. From the following while reading the otherwise straight-laced README release notes in a README file for a project the SubEthaSMTP library, which had Mavenized its build a few versions ago, only to abandon it apparently change their minds in a more recent release:

bq. "Remove Maven pom.xml crap. Its a pile of dog shit. Don't ever use it."

I knew I wasn't the world's biggest Maven fan. That I have such eloquent competition in my smallness is wonderful.

Some references on cache coherency and memory models, that recently

came up on the Java concurrency mailing list. The below is based on

the original list is by Jaroslav Sevcik with slight additions...

*Intel Itanium:* "A Formal Specification of Intel Itanium Processor Family Memory Ordering":http://www.intel.com/design/itanium/downloads/25142901.pdf

*Intel IA-64 (x86), AMD:*

* "Intel 64 Architecture Memory Ordering White Paper":http://www.intel.com/products/processor/manuals/318147.pdf

* "Richard Hudson's talk on IA memory ordering":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUfvvFD5tAA.

*Sparc TSO:* "The SPARC Architecture Manual, Version v9":http://www.sparc.org/standards/SPARCV9.pdf

*Java Memory Model:*

* "Java Language Specification, Third Edition, chapter 17, Memory Model":http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/third_edition/html/memory.html

* "Doug Lea's JSR-133 Cookbook":http://g.oswego.edu/dl/jmm/cookbook.html

*Miscellaneous:*

* PhD dissertation of Jalal Kawash: "Limitations and Capabilities of Weak Memory Consistency Systems":http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~kawash/papers/dissertation.pdf Systems" http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~kawash/papers/dissertation.pdf

* Shavit and Herlihy: "The Art of Multiprocessor Programming":http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0123705916/ref=s9_asin_title_2_subs_c5_29_26_17_16_13-qvfp_p-2785_g1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0H07DVEQN6HW88J6ZW0Y&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=278240301&pf_rd_i=507846

Some references on cache coherency and memory models, that recently

came up on the Java concurrency mailing list. The below is based on

the original list is by Jaroslav Sevcik with slight additions...

*Intel Itanium:* "A Formal Specification of Intel Itanium Processor Family Memory Ordering":http://www.intel.com/design/itanium/downloads/25142901.pdf

*Intel IA-64 (x86), AMD:*

* "Intel 64 Architecture Memory Ordering White Paper":http://www.intel.com/products/processor/manuals/318147.pdf

* "Richard Hudson's talk on IA memory ordering":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUfvvFD5tAA.

*Sparc TSO:* "The SPARC Architecture Manual, Version v9":http://www.sparc.org/standards/SPARCV9.pdf

*Java Memory Model:*

* "Java Language Specification, Third Edition, chapter 17, Memory Model":http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/third_edition/html/memory.html

* "Doug Lea's JSR-133 Cookbook":http://g.oswego.edu/dl/jmm/cookbook.html

*Miscellaneous:*

* PhD dissertation of Jalal Kawash: "Limitations and Capabilities of Weak Memory Consistency Systems" http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~kawash/papers/dissertation.pdf Systems:"http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~kawash/papers/dissertation.pdf

* Shavit and Herlihy: "The Art of Multiprocessor Programming":http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0123705916/ref=s9_asin_title_2_subs_c5_29_26_17_16_13-qvfp_p-2785_g1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0H07DVEQN6HW88J6ZW0Y&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=278240301&pf_rd_i=507846

Some references on cache coherency and memory models, that recently

came up on the Java concurrency mailing list. The below is based on

the original list is by Jaroslav Sevcik with slight additions...

*Intel Itanium:* "A Formal Specification of Intel Itanium Processor Family Memory Ordering":http://www.intel.com/design/itanium/downloads/25142901.pdf

*Intel IA-64 (x86), AMD:*

* "Intel 64 Architecture Memory Ordering White Paper":http://www.intel.com/products/processor/manuals/318147.pdf

* "Richard Hudson's talk on IA memory ordering":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUfvvFD5tAA.

*Sparc TSO:* "The SPARC Architecture Manual, Version v9":http://www.sparc.org/standards/SPARCV9.pdf

*Java Memory Model:*

* "Java Language Specification, Third Edition, chapter 17, Memory Model":http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/third_edition/html/memory.html

* "Doug Lea's JSR-133 Cookbook":http://g.oswego.edu/dl/jmm/cookbook.html

*Miscellaneous:*

* PhD dissertation of Jalal Kawash: "Limitations and Capabilities of Weak Memory Consistency Systems:"http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~kawash/papers/dissertation.pdf Systems""http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~kawash/papers/dissertation.pdf

* Shavit and Herlihy: "The Art of Multiprocessor Programming":http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0123705916/ref=s9_asin_title_2_subs_c5_29_26_17_16_13-qvfp_p-2785_g1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0H07DVEQN6HW88J6ZW0Y&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=278240301&pf_rd_i=507846

Some references on cache coherency and memory models, that recently

came up on the Java concurrency mailing list. The below is based on

the original list is by Jaroslav Sevcik with slight additions...

*Intel Itanium:* "A Formal Specification of Intel Itanium Processor Family Memory Ordering":http://www.intel.com/design/itanium/downloads/25142901.pdf

*Intel IA-64 (x86), AMD:*

* "Intel 64 Architecture Memory Ordering White Paper":http://www.intel.com/products/processor/manuals/318147.pdf

* "Richard Hudson's talk on IA memory ordering":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUfvvFD5tAA.

*Sparc TSO:* "The SPARC Architecture Manual, Version v9":http://www.sparc.org/standards/SPARCV9.pdf

*Java Memory Model:*

* "Java Language Specification, Third Edition, chapter 17, Memory Model":http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/third_edition/html/memory.html

* "Doug Lea's JSR-133 Cookbook":http://g.oswego.edu/dl/jmm/cookbook.html

*Miscellaneous:*

* PhD dissertation of Jalal Kawash: "Limitations and Capabilities of Weak Memory Consistency Systems""http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~kawash/papers/dissertation.pdf

* Shavit and Herlihy: "The Art of Multiprocessor Programming":http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0123705916/ref=s9_asin_title_2_subs_c5_29_26_17_16_13-qvfp_p-2785_g1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0H07DVEQN6HW88J6ZW0Y&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=278240301&pf_rd_i=507846

Some references on cache coherency and memory models, that recently

came up on the Java concurrency mailing list. The below is based on

the original list is by Jaroslav Sevcik with slight additions...

*Intel Itanium:* "A Formal Specification of Intel Itanium Processor Family Memory Ordering":http://www.intel.com/design/itanium/downloads/25142901.pdf

*Intel IA-64 (x86), AMD:*

* "Intel 64 Architecture Memory Ordering White Paper":http://www.intel.com/products/processor/manuals/318147.pdf

* "Richard Hudson's talk on IA memory ordering":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUfvvFD5tAA.

*Sparc TSO:* "The SPARC Architecture Manual, Version v9":http://www.sparc.org/standards/SPARCV9.pdf

*Java Memory Model:*

* "Java Language Specification, Third Edition, chapter 17, Memory Model":http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/third_edition/html/memory.html

* "Doug Lea's JSR-133 Cookbook":http://g.oswego.edu/dl/jmm/cookbook.html

*Miscellaneous:*

* PhD dissertation of Jalal Kawash: "Limitations and Capabilities of Weak Memory Consistency Systems""http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~kawash/papers/dissertation.pdf

* Shavit and Herlihy: "The Art of Multiprocessor Programming":http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0123705916/ref=s9_asin_title_2_subs_c5_29_26_17_16_13-qvfp_p-2785_g1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0H07DVEQN6HW88J6ZW0Y&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=278240301&pf_rd_i=507846

From a recent Roughly Drafted article:

bq. Spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt by spewing ignorance and false information are efforts to keep the world stuck in the tech rut of the 90s, where no critical thinking was required. Lazy pundits like no possibility of being wrong, so working to keep the technology world enslaved to Microsoft helps them appear to be insightful when they prophesy that Microsoft will eventually come out with a copycat version of whatever anyone else is doing. Sure enough, it happens.

bq. The same Mike Elgan wrote in Computerworld last fall that Microsoft’s Zune “scares Apple to the core,” and announced that Microsoft would “leverage the collective power of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Soapbox (Microsoft's new "YouTube killer") and the Xbox 360” to push Zune adoption. What a celebration of half decade old decrepitude and three new but clearly dismal failures!

It's amazing how much lip service still gets paid to the interlocking Microsoft monopolies in spite of the fact that just about every one of their ballyhooed announcements of the last few years has floundered even with the potential lock-in and network effects that MS managed to exploit so successfully in the past. The old myth that "Microsoft always ships plague-infested rat turd in versions 1 and 2, and then it gets it right and conquers the world with version 3.0" that our management used to reassure us with internally seems to have become progressively more invalid as time has passed.

Unfortunately, from the inside, what the absorption of that myth seemed to me to produce was an intellectually slovenly and unimaginative engineering culture that assumed that pinching off a version 3.0 of something was a necessary and sufficient condition for market domination. This leaves the question of what the company is left with today? A horde of zombie troopers-based product development organization that strains and labors to produce a sub-mediocre product like Vista even after repeated delays and massive cuts of features, the feasibility and usefulness of which were often in doubt from the outset? An "enter new markets by acquisition" business development machine that shows up late to every game, buying the 4th or 5th place not-quite-also-run and then managing to use its boundless resources to make a market loser even more mediocre? An internal corporate culture of partners and plebeians where the latter are either disgruntled malcontents or naive and feckless n00bs, while the former continue to evolve into the near-looting kleptocracy that marks a large company that has passed from vigorous adolesence into senescence with only the briefest stopover at maturity?

In the beginning "they":http://www.starwars.com/episode-iv/bts/article/f20030502/indexp3.html didn't even have names, except for Greedo...

...and then George Lucas went unto Hasbro. And Hasbro begat the action figures. And the action figures begat the filthy lucre. And the filthy lucre was good.

!http://www.starwars.com/episode-iv/bts/article/f20030502/img/feltiperrn_sm.jpg!

And then they needed names... And so unto the production assistants a call for creativity was made... "Action Figure Man From Cantina #59" would not do. And so were born Feltipern Trevagg, M'iiyoom Onith, Smeggy Pupik, Leesub Sirln, and Nabrun Leids (exercise for the reader: guess which one I just made up).

!http://www.starwars.com/episode-iv/bts/article/f20030502/img/miiyoom_sm.jpg!

This morning while building the R math libraries standalone, I found a new way to generate cantina alien names: Randomly concatenate the mangled names from the math library!

!http://www.starwars.com/databank/character/pondababa/img/movie_sm.jpg! !http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pondababa.JPG!

By no means are these names BLAS bad, where the 7 character Fortran identifier length limit required every name to be hideous, unpronounceable and baffling (although it's unclear why this led to a total prohibition on the use of _vowels_), but many of them work well enough to yield Lucasian products like these:

* Snorm Unif

* Rpois Wilcox

* Qweibull Sexp

* Stirlerror Rnbinom

Give it a try with your favorite bad API names!

In the beginning "they":http://www.starwars.com/episode-iv/bts/article/f20030502/indexp3.html didn't even have names, except for Greedo...

...and then George Lucas went unto Hasbro. And Hasbro begat the action figures. And the action figures begat the filthy lucre. And the filthy lucre was good.

!http://www.starwars.com/episode-iv/bts/article/f20030502/img/feltiperrn_sm.jpg!

And then they needed names... And so unto the production assistants a call for creativity was made... "Action Figure Man From Cantina #59" would not do. And so were born Feltipern Trevagg, M'iiyoom Onith, Smeggy Pupik, Leesub Sirln, and Nabrun Leids (exercise for the reader: guess which one I just made up).

!http://www.starwars.com/episode-iv/bts/article/f20030502/img/miiyoom_sm.jpg!

This morning while building the R math libraries standalone, I found a new way to generate cantina alien names: Randomly concatenate the mangled names from the math library!

!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pondababa.JPG!

By no means are these names BLAS bad, where the 7 character Fortran identifier length limit required every name to be hideous, unpronounceable and baffling (although it's unclear why this led to a total prohibition on the use of _vowels_), but many of them work well enough to yield Lucasian products like these:

* Snorm Unif

* Rpois Wilcox

* Qweibull Sexp

* Stirlerror Rnbinom

Give it a try with your favorite bad API names!

So, so tired...

Especially when they can be spackled over any chunk-laden, foul-smelling puddle worthy of "Proverbs 26:11":http://bible.cc/proverbs/26-11.htm

So here's a couple of revised ones:

* "One Piece At a Time and It Didn't Cost Me a Dime":http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/cash-johnny/one-piece-at-a-time-2214.html

* Ass with a Tattoo of an Ass with a Tattoo of an Ass Tattooed On It

* Recursion Means Having A Static Number of Slots to Capture Nested Structure (three should be sufficient in all cases, unless you need ten, then use ten)

* Hermaphroditic Hobby Night

* Half Blind, Toothless Ouroboros

* State Fair Fun House Hall of Mirrors

* Big Balloon of Shit and Filth

* Big Pile of Agile Jacksmack

* All Process No Progress

* Maximize Generality when Something Only Applies to Two Cases

* Gets Treated Like Something It's Not And Doesn't Even Act Like

* Horror Beyond Horrors

* Nucleus of Undreamable Hideousness

* Accursed Ancient Burial Ground

* Mannysaurus Rex Manny Vellon "Elegant" Exit Continuation

* Small Mechanism with Horrible and Sprawling Consequences

* Byzantine Clockwork of Crap

Without pretense of originality, I point out that "Byzantine Clockwork of Crap" is a 2002 invention of Chris Rude. "Horror beyond horrors" and "nucleus of undreamable hideousness" were inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, who managed to coin __both__ of them in a single sentence in ??"The Shunned House"??. "One Piece At a Time and It Didn't Cost Me a Dime" is from Turing Award winning computer systems designer Johnny Cash.

Definitions may follow as mood, available free time, and gall bladder function permit.

So, so tired...

Especially when they can be spackled over any chunk-laden, foul-smelling puddle worthy of "Proverbs 26:11":http://bible.cc/proverbs/26-11.htm

So here's a couple of revised ones:

* "One Piece At a Time and It Didn't Cost Me a Dime":http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/cash-johnny/one-piece-at-a-time-2214.html

* Ass with a Tattoo of an Ass with a Tattoo of an Ass Tattooed On It

* Recursion Means Having A Static Number of Slots to Capture Nested Structure (three should be sufficient in all cases, unless you need ten, then use ten)

* Hermaphroditic Hobby Night

* Half Blind, Toothless Ouroboros

* State Fair Fun House Hall of Mirrors

* Big Balloon of Shit and Filth

* Big Pile of Agile Jacksmack

* All Process No Progress

* Maximize Generality when Something Only Applies to Two Cases

* Gets Treated Like Something It's Not And Doesn't Even Act Like

* Horror Beyond Horrors

* Nucleus of Undreamable Hideousness

* Accursed Ancient Burial Ground

* Manny Vellon "Elegant" Exit Continuation

* Small Mechanism with Horrible and Sprawling Consequences

* Byzantine Clockwork of Crap

Without pretense of originality, I point out that "Byzantine Clockwork of Crap" is a 2002 invention of Chris Rude. "Horror beyond horrors" and "nucleus of undreamable hideousness" were inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, who managed to coin __both__ of them in a single sentence in ??"The Shunned House"??. "One Piece At a Time and It Didn't Cost Me a Dime" is from Turing Award winning computer systems designer Johnny Cash.

Definitions may follow as mood, available free time, and gall bladder function permit.

"From the Register...":http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/05/microsoft_mvp_threats/ "Wow":http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/05/microsoft_mvp_threats/

I haven't set foot there in years, and won't pretend to understand the intricacies of what it takes to peddle Visual Studio these days, but I have to wonder...

What revenue or strategic business turf was obtained or protected with the useless, passive aggressive twaddle that pervades the mail threads linked to from the article? Is this stuff for real? Or is this just what Program Managers do these days to keep their cross group visibility sufficiently "fluffed":http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Fluffer that at review time they can claw their way from level 63 to level 64 or some other similarly meaningless increment?

So, so tired...

Especially when they can be spackled over any chunk-laden, foul-smelling puddle worthy of "Proverbs 26:11":http://bible.cc/proverbs/26-11.htm

So here's a couple of revised ones:

* "One Piece At a Time and It Didn't Cost Me a Dime":http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/cash-johnny/one-piece-at-a-time-2214.html

* Ass with a Tattoo of an Ass with a Tattoo of an Ass Tattooed On It

* Recursion Means Having A Static Number of Slots to Capture Nested Structure (three should be sufficient in all cases, unless you need ten, then use ten)

* Hermaphroditic Hobby Night

* Half Blind, Toothless Ouroboros

* State Fair Fun House Hall of Mirrors

* Big Balloon of Shit and Filth

* Big Pile of Agile Jacksmack

* All Process No Progress

* Maximize Generality when Something Only Applies to Two Cases

* Gets Treated Like Something It's Not And Doesn't Even Act Like

* Horror Beyond Horrors

* Nucleus of Undreamable Hideousness

* Accursed Ancient Burial Ground

* Small Mechanism with Horrible and Sprawling Consequences

* Byzantine Clockwork of Crap

Without pretense of originality, I point out that "Byzantine Clockwork of Crap" is a 2002 invention of Chris Rude. "Horror beyond horrors" and "nucleus of undreamable hideousness" were inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, who managed to coin __both__ of them in a single sentence in ??"The Shunned House"??. "One Piece At a Time and It Didn't Cost Me a Dime" is from Turing Award winning computer systems designer Johnny Cash.

Definitions may follow as mood, available free time, and gall bladder function permit.

So, so tired...

Especially when they can be spackled over any chunk-laden, foul-smelling puddle worthy of "Proverbs 26:11":http://bible.cc/proverbs/26-11.htm

So here's a couple of revised ones:

* "One Piece At a Time and It Didn't Cost Me a Dime":http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/cash-johnny/one-piece-at-a-time-2214.html

* Ass with a Tattoo of an Ass with a Tattoo of an Ass Tattooed On It

* Recursion Means Having A Static Number of Slots to Capture Nested Structure (three should be sufficient in all cases, unless you need ten, then use ten)

* Hermaphroditic Hobby Night

* Half Blind, Toothless Ouroboros

* State Fair Fun House Hall of Mirrors

* Big Balloon of Shit and Filth

* Big Pile of Agile Jacksmack

* All Process No Progress

* Maximize Generality when Something Only Applies to Two Cases

* Gets Treated Like Something It's Not And Doesn't Even Act Like

* Horror Beyond Horrors

* Nucleus of Undreamable Hideousness

* Accursed Ancient Burial Ground

* Small Mechanism with Horrible and Sprawling Consequences

* Byzantine Clockwork of Crap

Without pretense of originality, I point out that "Byzantine Clockwork of Crap" is a 2002 invention of Chris Rude. "Horror beyond horrors" and "nucleus of undreamable hideousness" were inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, who managed to coin __both__ of them in a single sentence in ??"The Shunned House"??. "One Piece At a Time and It Didn't Cost Me a Dime" is from Turing Award winning systems designer Johnny Cash.

Definitions may follow as mood, available free time, and gall bladder function permit.