Disqus - Latest Comments for mckoss

Re: Enigma Machine Simulator

mckoss — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 18:18:40 -0000

GLSR URYJFCX!

Re: Metaprogramming

mckoss — Sat, 04 Feb 2017 17:47:06 -0000

I worked with Charles in the early days of Office (then called the "Multi-tool" series, believe it or not). While Charles espoused the concept of the meta-programmer in his doctoral thesis, it did not really fly at Microsoft. The predominant model of work, was to break up the problem (like, "create a great graphical spreadsheet program" - Excel), into many largely independent tasks, and give them to the quite capable, though young and lightly experienced, programmers they were hiring. Charles, and other senior managers at MS then coordinated this work by divvying up tasks to those that were capable of solving them.

Charles did experiment with a form of pair-programming in the early days; the developers that were paired with him largely found the process intimidating and stressful; after a few days working like this, most reverted to working independently.

I think the predominant work style of the day was more collegial; developers would bounce ideas off each other when they ran into tricky problems, but would then go back to their (private) offices to pound out the code.

The original Excel team also had our programming "stars" (Doug Klunder, in particular); but each of the developers I worked with created high quality and often elegant solutions in each of their assigned feature areas.

Re: Introducing the Bolt Compiler - Firebase

mckoss — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 03:01:17 -0000

You can write rules that require two values mirror each other, and use the multi-location update from a client to update them atomically.

https://www.firebase.com/bl...

Otherwise you currently need a server to do that sort of value copying when a value is changed.

Re: Introducing the Bolt Compiler - Firebase

mckoss — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 02:56:39 -0000

You can use a custom with token from your server to access your whole database and circumvent the normal user-security (or, even better, make a purpose built token for your server process and define rules to restrict what you need it to do).

https://www.firebase.com/do...

Re: Introducing the Bolt Compiler - Firebase

mckoss — Thu, 12 Nov 2015 17:29:37 -0000

I provide more info on another comment thread (above).

Re: Introducing the Bolt Compiler - Firebase

mckoss — Wed, 11 Nov 2015 20:14:31 -0000

Glad you like it!

Re: Introducing the Bolt Compiler - Firebase

mckoss — Wed, 11 Nov 2015 20:13:10 -0000

Hi David,

There are some examples of using this in the Bolt repo on Github. It's not that well documented there, however, so I can explain a little more here.

The test environment is written in node.js (just as firebase-bolt is). It uses the mocha test framework. If you check out the Bolt repo, it's pretty easy to get everything working there, and try running the tests I have there (see the README for the couple of commands you need to execute to configure and run the tests).

There is a little magic in the tools/configure-project bash script. It will prompt you to choose the name of the firebase-app you want to use as your testing sandbox. It will then guide you through the steps of copying your application secret to a auth-secrets.js file in your local project.

This is needed so that the test harness can do things like reset the rules in that app, and overwrite the data during a test setup. It is also used to create transient user-authentication tokens so your test can simulate access by different users.

You can copy some of the helper functions out of the Bolt repo (like tools/ensure_secret.py) that can be used in your own workflow to help setup you test.

Feel free to ping me if you have more questions (or post an issue in the Bolt project) getting this setup for your own database.

Re: Introducing the Bolt Compiler - Firebase

mckoss — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 18:11:53 -0000

write() = this == null;

in Bolt.

Re: Enigma Machine Simulator

mckoss — Sun, 30 Nov 2014 15:58:12 -0000

XNBZX LXY, JNDVEF.

Re: Enigma Machine Simulator

mckoss — Sun, 30 Nov 2014 15:56:35 -0000

HDOLQF!

Re: Why Every Language Needs Its Underscore

mckoss — Sun, 22 Jun 2014 10:22:21 -0000

I can't read your low contrast code samples. If you care that other people can actually read your post, I recommend you ditch the code coloring.

Re: Carlos Burle saves Maya Gabeira’s life, surfs biggest wave ever

mckoss — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 14:51:39 -0000

First rule of rescue - do no harm. Carlos ran over her with his ski the first pass, then dragged her through the surf at high speed when all she had was a rope to hang on to. It's fortunate they were close enough to shore to ride the surf in when he went back for the third time. But it's not so clear from the video that he didn't cause as much harm to her as he provided "help".

Re: Just Press Print

mckoss — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 22:15:25 -0000

My 3D printed winglet-based surf fin is still going strong (printed of 100% solid PLA).

http://www.thingiverse.com/...

Re: Video: Here’s our inside take on Steve Ballmer’s exit (and potential successors)

mckoss — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 16:05:50 -0000

This is a great opportunity to end the era of a single monolithic Microsoft. Rather than finding one uber-CEO, why not break up the company into more readily managed units, each with the best-aligned leader in that area?

I would love to hear from an analyst about total valuation of the individual parts of Microsoft as compared to the integrated valuation we have today. Would "wall street" like to see a break-up at this point?

Re: 'Most popular' metrics in App Engine - Nick's Blog

mckoss — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 20:22:01 -0000

I did receive a patent for TimeScore: https://www.google.com/pate...

Re: http://docs-next.angularjs.org/api/angular.Module

mckoss — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 20:16:51 -0000

Isn't there an option to use this form of the module's controller function:

module.controller({name: constructor,
name2: constructor2, ...});

This is only documented as:

module.controller(name, constructor);

Re: Updated: 777 crash at SFO, 2 reported dead, 181 taken to hospital, 1 still unaccounted for

mckoss — Sat, 06 Jul 2013 18:51:02 -0000

This woman should go to jail. She is evacuating a burning plane in an emergency. There are many people behind her in a burning plane, and she TAKES HER CARRY ON LUGGAGE WITH HER!

She deprived the people behind her of 60+ seconds of evacuation time, waiting for her to retrieve her luggage from the overhead compartment. Two people are reported to have died in the fire on this plane.

Shame on her! Somebody please prosecute her!

Re: I have seen the future (while breaking the rules of the game). SW Maker Edition

mckoss — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 15:30:53 -0000

The full post (on Google Docs) has a nice animated GIF of the train in action on a backpack.

https://docs.google.com/a/m...

Re: Bridge span collapses over I-5 near Mount Vernon

mckoss — Fri, 24 May 2013 00:09:45 -0000

Seems like an oversize truck hit the bridge girders, causing the collapse.

Re: This sonic-powered vibrator is faster and quieter than traditional sex toys

mckoss — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 02:46:15 -0000

Congrats to Robin. I know he's been working on this for a long time - since our first meeting at Alliance of Angels where his first response to "what do you do?" yields a somewhat cagey "I'm working in the personal electronics industry". If you're really interested, and not just making small talk, further probing usually reveals his very focused product development work on this somewhat underground market.

Really glad to hear that things are coming together for his company!

Re: How is Fargo Working?

mckoss — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 18:45:02 -0000

I would love for the publish function create a link to an HTML-rendered version of the outline, not the raw OPML file.

Re: Why Does a Meteor Explode in the Air?

mckoss — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:56:53 -0000

This mis-interpretation of meteor "explosions" is all over the place. I wrote about this bugging me recently (and only afterward found this comment thread).
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https://plus.google.com/u/1...

Re: Time to Go

mckoss — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:59:04 -0000

Woah! Time for your own "Golfing on the moon" adventure, eh? Have a great time! We're cruising from Amsterdam, through Germany, to Budapest in Sept 2013 - looks like we'll just miss you.

P.S. You MUST add Australia to your list.

Re: Paper Enigma Machine

mckoss — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 00:05:11 -0000

Once you have the start position of the rotors, shift the strips up an additional 9,10, and 20 positions, respectively to get the correct starting position. The notch will also be displaced by that many steps as well.

Re: How geeks do charity: Use your GPU to churn out goats

mckoss — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 12:03:23 -0000

I don't think "waste" is accurate. These computers are being used to create something of value by securing Bitcoin transactions. We are consuming fewer resources than value we are creating (at least according to the free-market's determination of the relative value of electricity and Bitcoins).

We try to be transparent by displaying how much a player is earning per day or hour directly in the client so they can make an informed decision on whether to continue to use the program.