williamaadams

Joined 14 years ago

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Dec 19
williamaadams.wordpress.com
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Comment · 5 years ago
I came all the back from my Thanksgiving slumber just to say; really?

I love this library, and have made a C++ friendly version of the same.

What you get for a few hundred lines of code far outweighs any of the shortcomings it might have. It's a great starting point. If someone wants to make a full on format, they'll probably be better off just using the new JPEG XL, rather than trying to shape this thing.

It's a good exploration of what can be done with run-length encoding.

Comment · 5 years ago
Just came here to say, good job. I was doing my own run-length encoding thing using the TGA format, but this is nicer. It's good enough that I am able to run a little screencast thing using it.
Comment · 5 years ago
Depends on the community of course. Sub-Saharan Africa leap-frogged copper and went to 4g/5G. Probably same for broader band.

Not too long ago 10 mbits was ‘broadband’, so, maybe various forms of wireless will be just fine. Certainly more flexible in terms of long term options

Comment · 5 years ago
And yet, without any analysis, anyone I've talked to was moved by the poem, and thought it was the best part of the inauguration. I think the moment, the black young girl standing at the pulpit of power, the collective relief, the joy of seeing a female (black/asian) as VP, culminated in an emotional uplifting, which the words did not capture at 100%. It had meaning in the context of 4 years of trump, of 400 years of oppression, of a summer of outcry for justice. Reading later will leave you flat I think. I thought it was perfect for the moment.
Comment · 7 years ago
Comment · 7 years ago
ok, so it is exactly the move of someone trying to kill it all from the inside...

But really, it's something easily judged over time. Everyone will be able to judge how our open source attitude is in coming years.

And hay, look, there's more absorption of Linux into Windows... Is that embrace extend, or recognize reality? Or hold on for dear life? From my perspective, it's evolution, and nothing but good.

Comment · 7 years ago
I've worked for MS for 20 years. I sat in one of those Steve Ballmer meetings where he decried OpenSource. But, more soberingly at the time was that he said "we won't sell on Linux because we simply don't know now", in answer to the question "when will SQL Server be available on Linux"?

Times have changed. I mean look, we bought GitHub. That's not a move of someone that's trying to destroy from the inside. If it were, we would have immediately just slow rolled it, but we're actually making improvements.

I don't think we're collectively smart enough (nor are most orgs) to pull off grand conspiracies. Just a bunch of humans trying to do what's right for the company and customers.

So, I agree with your assessment. Lots of good, still bad actors, modern times have changed.

Comment · 7 years ago
There was quite a lot of openscad replacement going on in 2011. I even made a lua based alternative.
Comment · 7 years ago
Ive worked for Kevin during his tenure at MS. Ads have not been the focus, so I'm not sure the innuendo means much.
Comment · 8 years ago
I work for Microsoft, and the back of my employee badge says: Our Mission; Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

To me, this implies that our engineering organizations, and entire company, need to have an appropriate amount of empathy across a broad spectrum of geographies, cultures, experiences, perspectives, and the like. You only get that by having a diversity of talent, and more importantly, inclusion in your engineering practices.

When I talk about diversity, I usually say; "There are two forms of diversity, DNA diversity, the stuff we usually talk about in terms of color, sex, etc, things you can see, and then there's diversity of perspectives and experiences. You need the diversity of experiences and perspectives. In some cases that's conveniently wrapped in some forms of DNA diversity, but is not exclusive to that".

I don't think the question is at all controversial, and we should not be afraid to openly talk about it.

Comment · 8 years ago
I think it's more interesting than that. This is a mixture of C and Lua code!

Looking at it, I can imagine redoing it as LuaJIT and using ljsyscall to deal with the system calls on all platforms. Might be even more snappy.

Comment · 9 years ago
...and, this guy being fired has nothing to do with political correctness or any of the other inane arguments people are rallying around. It's simple corporate calculation.

He release something that turned into a fire storm. Google no doubt did a law suit calculation and figured firing him was cheaper than the inevitable "hostile work environment" lawsuits they figured would be filed if they didn't take such action.

If the goal was to not get fired, but still have the dialog, he probably could have found a forum to do it. Instead, he blasted into their internal interweb, and here's the outcome.

Most large companies would probably end up doing the same thing, regardless of what they might believe about what was actually written.

Comment · 9 years ago
Comment · 9 years ago
"worse before better"... It's all a matter of perspective. For anyone who's been the "minority", things have always been 'worse'. Things can only get better.

If you can truly embrace that perspective, you'll discover a profound truth.

The transition might cause some discomfort for those who've been on the privileged side of things for a while.

Comment · 9 years ago
"diversity" and "inclusion" often go hand in hand. Throw in some "unconscious bias" training, and you begin marching down a path. I think it's something only time and a diverse gene pool will heal. Relevance to the job is a key thing, as simple as it sounds. You always want "the best", and in tech, that often means "people like me", which necessarily means "not people like them", and we find ourselves where we are today.

It's a journey.

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