The CADT Model

20 years ago
In February 2003, a bunch of the outstanding bugs I'd reported against various GNOME programs over the previous couple of years were all closed as follows:

Because of the release of GNOME 2.0 and 2.2, and the lack of interest in maintainership of GNOME 1.4, the gnome-core product is being closed. If you feel your bug is still of relevance to GNOME 2, please reopen it and refile it against a more appropriate component. Thanks...

This is, I think, the most common way for my bug reports to open source software projects to ever become closed. I report bugs; they go unread for a year, sometimes two; and then (surprise!) that module is rewritten from scratch -- and the new maintainer can't be bothered to check whether his new version has actually solved any of the known problems that existed in the previous version.

I'm so totally impressed at this Way New Development Paradigm. Let's call it the "Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers" model, or "CADT" for short.

It hardly seems worth even having a bug system if the frequency of from-scratch rewrites always outstrips the pace of bug fixing. Why not be honest and resign yourself to the fact that version 0.8 is followed by version 0.8, which is then followed by version 0.8?

But that's what happens when there is no incentive for people to do the parts of programming that aren't fun. Fixing bugs isn't fun; going through the bug list isn't fun; but rewriting everything from scratch is fun (because "this time it will be done right", ha ha) and so that's what happens, over and over again.

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Current Music: Battery -- Gangsta's Paradise ♬

I, for one, welcome our new woolly masters

20 years ago
New breath of life for extinct mammoths

Cells taken from the well-preserved legs of a mammoth found last summer in Russia's far-northern Yakutia region are ''conditionally alive'', said Mr Vladimir Repin of the Vektor Research Centre for Virology and Biotechnology.

The inner structure of the cells, fixed in formalin immediately after the finding, is undamaged, ''so we suggest that the rest of the frozen tissues contain similar cell layers which could be unfrozen'', he explained, as quoted by the Informscience news agency.

He said that the living cells with intact nuclei found in the subcutaneous cellular tissue could prove to be good for cloning purposes. ''The cell material is unique because it contains not just intact mammoth DNA but whole cells which have been perfectly preserved for 10,000 years,'' the Vektor press service said. The number of cells suitable for cloning was sufficient to enable the cloning experiment to be attempted more than once, it said.

[...] Eventually, he believes the resurrected mammoths could be released into a sanctuary in an uninhabited area in the north of the remote, frozen Kamchatka peninsula in Russia's far east, where present conditions resemble their original habitat.

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Current Music: Babes in Toyland -- Bluebell ♬

[insert cynical ClearChannel dig here]

20 years ago
Instant live CDs of a concert

Clear Channel Concerts, the nation's largest concert promoter, has ambitious plans to record live CDs of its shows and sell them to patrons within five minutes after those shows end. Clear Channel is targeting Boston as the first site for the new plan, according to sources within the organization.

Multiple CD burners would be brought in, and the live CDs would probably sell for around $15 in the same way that T-shirts and other merchandise can be purchased after concerts. No one knows what the demand would be, but the project is expected to begin at club shows within a couple of months, then be refined and work its way up to the amphitheater level, though that may not happen until next year, sources say. [..]

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Current Music: Peter Gabriel -- The Rhythm of the Heat ♬

crane

20 years ago

The boom on a 65-ton crane crashed onto the roof of a house Friday when the machine tipped, taking down power lines and leaving about 400 residents without electricity, authorities said. [...] The 185-foot crane, which had been erecting poles for the Anaheim Public Utility, tore a long, deep hole through the middle of the roof, Fire Department spokeswoman Maria Sabol said. The end of the boom landed in the back yard of a second home. All four tires supporting the crane's deck were off the ground as the machine balanced on two extended legs and the roof of the single-story house.

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Current Music: Trance to the Sun -- Exhibition III ♬