Kyoshii

I released this a few years ago for the Power PC (PPC). It is tload for Darwin/OSX, like the one in FreeBSD, updated as a Universal binary. I really do not understand why Apple has not included tload in Darwin/OSX. It is one of those “low tech” utilities that make using UNIX systems nice.

tload shows a scrolling ncurses graph of system load. So you can ssh to a system an get a visual representation of what is going on inside a server. tload helps those of us who run OSX headless as servers keep an eye one things, and it uses a lot fewer resources than top. I guess we don’t have enough of us running Darwin/OSX as a server.

I usually run a copy on my app server. I can just glance at a terminal window and see how the system is handling the load.

This release is a Universal command line binary, so it will play nice on your IntelMac. I did not include an installer, so just copy the binary to a place in your path such as /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin

Download tload 2.0.7 here.

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I had been wanting to write about LIFA for a while, but I have just been too busy. Luckily for me, someone else did. Professional Certification Programs Josee from Singapore wrote about it. Thanks Josee.

In my opinion, the LIFA is either a SCAM or just crap. Either way , I would stay away from it. Stick with safer / better certifications, like FRM, CAIA and CFA.

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If you have used coverity, klocwork in a agile development work, what were your opinions ? How many false positives did you find. Is it a waste of time of helpfull?

Just leave a comment below. I want to hear what you guys think.

I am thinking about using it in a continuous integration environment. Putting it in our build system, so it will run tests on a much more regular basis.

Here is a definition of CI copied from the AgileJournal

Continuous Integration. Maintaining an error free and functional code base is critical. Teams must synchronize changes with a source code repository and integrate modifications incrementally to ensure that the application is always functional. Adding changes to an already broken code base provides no value. When agile developers encounter a compile error or a failed unit test, they fix the problem immediately. This practice ensures that small issues are resolved before they become large. Initially, it may seem this approach impedes progress since development appears to move along at a slower pace. But delaying integration is delaying risk, and so continuously integrating code promotes a more sustainable rate of progress over time. An automated and repeatable build is the cornerstone of a robust continuous integration strategy.

And any thoughts on using tools such as PMD and emma would be greatly appreciated.

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[Edit: After I purchased the books, I thought sitting for the CAIA was a good investment of time, so I registered for the fall test. After you register, the CAIA gives you links to buy the books directly, which is pretty nice.  When I originally wrote this I had not registered.] 

I am taking a little lee way from my normal techie stuff to post about how to get near out of print books and a decent price. When I say “near” out of print, I mean within the last two or three years.

I am sitting for the CAIA Level one exam this fall. ( The CAIA is sort of a CFA for hedgies, although I think quite a few people would dis agree with me. ) And one of the books on the reading list is “near” out of print. Or at least it seems that way. It was published in 2004, and maybe they are waiting for a new edition of something. I could not find the book on the usual sites, Amazon, Barnes & Noble except from out-of-print book sellers. The prices were pretty high for a $125 book. Personally , $125 is a lot for a book, so I guess it is a damn good book. The reseller prices were from $299 to $315. At least they were consistent.

The book I need is called “Real Estate Finance & Investments: Risks and Opportunities (Hardcover)
by PHD Peter Linneman”.In detail , here is the book information.• Hardcover
• Publisher: Peter Linneman (2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0974451835

Now, I do not mind capitalism at all. I wish him all the luck. However, and it is a big however, I would really not like to be on the other end of his capitalism. And something just bothers me about paying $300 for a used copy of a $125 book. Call me old fashioned.

So here is the question. Why would some one spend more than twice the cover price for a book? The answer is that they do not know where to look, or they just have way too much money to care about it. Well, just because Amazon does not stock a book , does not mean you have to go to an “Out of print” bookseller.

So here are three ways to find a “near” out-of -print book, like the Linneman book.

1 Start with a meta search engine

Book meta-search engines search other book seller sites for the book you are looking to find. Yes, you could search each site yourself, but why go to 20 book sellers when you can go to one website?

bookfinder is a good place to start. It searches other online books stores, besides Amazon. Like Biblio, Abebooks, as well as Amazon. Bookfinder found 4 copies all USED for between $288 and $299.

cheapassbooksearch is another meta search site with a very good web site name. It found the book for $302 and $303.

campusbooks found the book, found the Linneman book for between 299 and $303.

So the meta-search engines are good, but they were all picking up on the same books, for about the same price. So not much of an advantage.

2 Go the collage route.

This textbook is used by several college courses, and as such if you do not NEED to have a book in new condition, you can pick one up used for a bargain. So first i need to know which classes used the book in question. So I started a search on Google for “Real Estate Finance & Investments: Risks and Opportunities site:.edu” ( The “site:.edu” will restrict it to the educational domains, but I am sure you already knew that )

The first hit was a Columbia University course that used it. If i had not already found a new copy of the book, I would have just made a few calls to bookstores around Columbia with the class number, jumped on the ‘A’ train and I probably would have found it.

3 Try the specialty Shops
I finally bought the book from IREI ( Institutional Real Estate Inc. ) for the list price of $125 NEW !!! . irei.com , and go to their bookstore. Specialty shop order a lot of these books and sell them over time. There is a good chance if your book is not too far out of print and is a speciality book, you will be able to find it.

I googled a few combinations of Real Estate and bookstore until I came across the IREI site, they had the book in stock and I ordered it. So i ended up with getting the book for list price.

Now I know what you are thinking. I could buy up all the copies from irei, and sell them as an out of print bookseller. So why am I publishing this on the web? First, I am too busy , and second I am not in the business of selling books. But if you are a out-of-print bookseller, you might want to make a call to irei and make a volume purchase as you will find a lot of CAIA candidates looking for this book in a couple of months.

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Too many people think that some magical transformation will happen when they outsource their code development. The air will smell fresher, the water will be cleaner, and suddenly you will meet all your budget and milestones. Well, as my uncle would say “a’int gonna happen”.

Outsourcing is a tool. Nothing more and nothing less. And like any tool, it is only as good as the people who use it. For an example, take my tennis ability. I once bought the same racquet that Andre Agassi used to win the Australian Open. For some unknown reason, when I used that racquet, still sucked at tennis. ( Must have been a defective racquet. )

Which leads me to my newly favorite quote from Guy Kawasaki.

Somehow we’ve got it in our heads that every programmer in India is good, fast, and cheap, and every programmer in the United States is lousy, slow, and expensive. My theory is that for version 1.0 of a product, the maximum allowable distance between the engineers and marketers is thirty feet.

Which then leads me to two of my favorite rules you need when you are outsourcing.

Keep your idea people close.
Outsourcing the grey matter parts of a company is not possible. If you are going to do that, why not outsource the entire company. Now if your PHB wants to pack your entire company into a shipping crate and send it on a slow boat to Elbonia, you have a lot more to worry about than this article you are reading right now.

The further your creative people and decision makers are from the people cutting the code, the more generic the code must be given the same amount of management. Note, I said “amount of management”. This is of particular importance to a certain manager who shall remain nameless. Dave. Here is a general rule of thumb, if you cannot manage a programmer who who is sitting about 10 feet away from you, how can you manage a programmer that requires a 26 hour flight , four bad airline meals, and three plane changes to have a face-to-face meeting. Dave.

Bad Code can be written anywhere.
Just because something is written overseas, does not mean it is good. So when we get things from overseas, we have to treat the code like it just got off a boat full of bird flu infected chiropractors from Hong Kong. When you get the code back, you should test it with your in-house people. That is a job that CANNOT be outsourced. Trust me on this one, if you allow the people writing the code to do their own QA, the QA will start to slip when the going gets tough. So check the code yourself, and let the people writing the code know you are watching.

Use tools to check the code coming back. There are several tools like Coverity, McCabe QA and Polyspace for code coverage and static analysis. Coverage and static analysis tools , if not overused to the point of being dogma, will find defects. Your offshore coders are usually making sure that the code they write can make it past the acceptance test. You really do not want the coders doing the coverage tests. Coverage tests are easily abused and they may lead the coder to start writing JUST to make the coverage analysis clean. The reason we have acceptance tests is to check functionality, the reason we use code coverage is to find defects in the code. Finding the line between the two is sometimes not an easy thing, and it is best done at home.

Now , just because your coverage tool says that your code is defect free, does not mean you can be 100% sure it is ok. Code analysis tools have to keep the number of false positives low so developers are not sent chasing down non-bugs. It may not be perfect, but is is good start.

So how does this relate to my Guy Kawasaki quote? Well, the moral of this story is that when outsourcing, remember that it is a tool that produces code that you need to design and manage just like code you write in house. Design in house and outsource the code you want. When it comes back, quarantine it, run your code analysis , run the acceptance tests and THEN let it in to your house.

As a footnote, for those of you who seem to relish in finding spelling errors and grammar errors, I intentionally leave them in for your reading pleasure.

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