The Patriots are probably the luckiest post-cap team in the NFL. They managed to fill the most expensive, hardest to fill, position by a sixth round draft pick that is unselfish. The biggest reason for the Patriot's dominance over the past seven years or so is Tom Brady. Don't give me the nonsense that Belichick is some sort of genius. If that is the case, he'd have draft Brady earlier than the sixth round to ensure that no one else got him. Being able to draft your starting quarterback in the six round is an advantage of epic propotions. Even if Brady were only good instead of great, it would still be a huge advantage. On top of that Brady is not (as) selfish. He should be the highest paid player in football and yet he realizes that in order to win Super Bowls he can't be. The worst possible situation is having to draft your starting quarterback #1 overall like the Raiders and Colts. Sure, Manning is great but the biggest reason for the Colts struggle is that they cannot consistently assemble a running game and now are lacking receivers and that is a direct result of having to pay an enormous chunk for Manning.

The NFL really must address rookie salaries. They need a one or two year set salary schedule for rookies based on draft position and play position. That would enable struggling teams to actually improve. As it is now, drafting in the top 10 is only good for every pick after the first round.

So, today Al decided to sign DeAngelo Hall for $70 million with $24.5 million guaranteed. Potentially, it could give the Raiders the best corners in football. However, I think it is more likely to expose their swiss cheese run defense in addition to showing that Hall, while serviceable, is not one of the best corners in football. What incentive does Hall have to play at peak performance? He's bagged his pie in the sky. He's damn near as rich as Russell.

The modern NFL is all about maximizing value. The pre-cap NFL was about maximizing talent. In the pre-cap days, you could afford to pool talent and potential talent and take time to develop it. The days of say the 1970's Cowboys with a starting quarterback like Staubach and backup like White are gone. In the post-cap NFL, you must do more than maximize talent. You must maximize value. You must get the most for the least because you are limited in what you can pay. Want the best quarterback in the NFL? The price is money, less team talent and and less depth. The only exception to the rule is a "big push." It works by selling your soul (your franchise's future) to the Devil and getting as much talent in a short period of time in the hopes of making a run at the Super Bowl. Whether you make it or not, the fall out is that you lose draft picks and cap room and end up decimating your franchise for four or five years. 

It looks like Al is making a big push. He's 80 and it looks like he's using the new money infusion he got by selling a stake of the Raiders to stock the Raiders with more than enough talent to make a run at the big show. IMO, if the Raiders do not get the Super Bowl in the next two years, they'll fall lower than they are now.

I've seen more than a couple of mock drafts that predict the Raiders will take McFadden with the #4 pick. The logic is entirely based on the assumption that Davis still thinks it is 1977 instead of 2007 (I'll concede all points regarding the sweatsuits and hairdo) and that you should always draft speed regardless of whether they fit into your system. This of course ignores many years of Davis drafts.

The Raiders currently have four backs on their roster all of which could probably start or share starting time for most NFL teams (Vargas, Jordan, Rhodes, Bush). IMO, drafting McFadden, beyond his extensive off the field issues, would be a galactic mistake.

The Raiders just lost Sapp. They desperately need linemen both offensive and defensive. If Dorsey is not available, then they should take Sedric Ellis.  Forget all of the USC relations and such, Ellis is the first or second best defensive lineman in the draft. I can see arguments for trading down, but if they cannot and Dorsey is taken, then Ellis is the right fit.

  

Dallas' red light cameras may face changes as revenue estimate drops Dallas' system works too well, eating into revenues, fueling possible changes. 

The Dallas Morning News

 

Municipalities should not depend on fines to generate revenue. It creates an obvious conflict of interest and this article is a clear example of those unintended consequences that derive from such a mistake. What are organizations such as the California Highway Patrol going to do if everyone actually obeys the speed limit? It may become possible in the future to devise means by which the populace does not break obvious revenue generating laws such as speeding and that will put a serious damper on their revenue stream.

Some of us have use password managers such as Roboform to manage passwords. Since Roboform allows me to generate a random password of any length, I want to know how many characters to make my password when I create a user for a site. Unfortunately, most sites do not tell you the characters allowed much less the the maximum number of characters allowed. When it is a newspaper that does this, I do not care as much but when it is a bank or financial institution it is a true annoyance.

The worst type of annoyance is the site that not only does not tell you the maximum password length nor which characters are allowed, they quietly accept whatever you give them and shove your round peg entry into their square hole system leaving you without the ability to login. For example, I encountered a site recently where they did not set the MaxLength property on their textbox entry. When I entered my randomly generated password, it accepted it and saved it to their database which promply truncated it at its maximum number of characters, also without throwing an error. Logout. Login. Bad Monkey. On having them send me my password (also a bad policy, it should reset to a random password, send that to me and require I change it but that is another rant) and having encountered this problem enough, it was clear what had happened.

I have come to accept that most sites will accept passwords of 10 alphanumeric characters. If they are kind enough to tell me the actual length and characters accepted, then I adjust Roboform accordingly.

Thanks to Scott for finding this.

public static string SayHello(string name)
{
    return String.Format("Hello, {0}!", name);
} 

 

You can read more about it here.

Most websites are deployed to a single location. Even in a load balanced scenario, we still think of it as a single site. However, it is much rarer to find developers that have developed web sites where the same code is installed to multiple locations for multiple customers. These types of sites are truly web applications and they are a different beast than websites.

Web applications present substantially more complex design decisions that do websites. For example, you can longer “just change a label’s text” and re-deploy. You have to think about the implications of every change against all other clients. Generally, any and all customizations must be controllable via some entity outside the site such as a database or client-specific config file.

Perhaps the most useful skill a developer can learn to this end is to design all their sites to run in a directory as opposed to assuming they are running at the root of the site. This was a chore in classic ASP (one of the many reasons for everyone to stop using it). In ASP.NET, this means that all paths must be prefixed with a tilde (e.g. ~/). In some cases, you must still jump through a couple of hoops to make this work.  In .NET, with web applications, designing your applications to run in a directory gives you the ability to create a client-specific config file above the application config file like so:

/ (site root)
    Web.config  - client specific settings
    /MyApp
        Web.config - application and client-agnostic settings

A key feature in designing web applications is to ensure a "fire-and-forget" type of deployment which makes turn around on your bug fixes substantially quicker. When you post a fix, you want to be able to blow out the application directory and completely replace its contents. That means that no client specific settings can be stored within the application either in code or in its web.config file. Thanks to .NET's ability to "roll up" config files, the "only" requirement on the developer is to ensure they develop their sites with no assumptions about what is above their site's directory.

Developers should write their code with the assumption of a handoff. In other words, developers should write any and all code with the assumption that someone else will need to modify and support that code in the future. Sadly most developers do not realize the merits of this goal until they are required to work on spaghetti code which was clearly not written with a handoff in mind. Perhaps the worst task given to a developer is to support a pooly written application or site.

One the rarest and yet most valuable attributes a developer can possess is knowledge about all systems involved in their solutions. Most developers unfortunately, think they posses such knowledge but rarely do.

Let’s take the case of a simple ASP.NET website. To get such a site to the web, a developer must obviously know ASP.NET and some language to code therein. However, they should also know of a means to push their files (FTP); how to configure their site and/or virtual directories; how to setup application pools; how to setup permissions; the credentials under which sites normally run and if different under which their own must run. Then there a host of other technologies such as DNS and routing not to mention load balancing and how it might affect their site. Saying that this is a simple ASP.NET site implies that there is no data store behind the site which adds a host of other applications and technologies that the developer should know.

In short, developers should strive to know about every system from the end user’s software through to the server that touches or affects their code.

In Southern CA, the HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle or Carpool Lanes) are setup with double yellow lines and intermittent breaking white lines which allow for entry and exit. You can only enter and exit carpool lanes during these breaks.

Why restrict when drivers can enter and exit? Who cares when a driver with multiple passengers enters or exits the carpool lane? How is it any different from someone using the lane next to them to pass? If anything, these restrictions add angst to drivers who worry whether they will legally be able to exit the carpool lane before their exit. The rule should be simple: you can enter or exit a HOV lane if you qualify to be in the lane. If you have enough passengers, then use it as you wish. If you don't, you cannot use it under any circumstances barring an emergency. CA spend millions on painting double yellow and in some cases quadruple yellow lines for the perceived worry that cars might use it for a passing lane which ought to be treated no different than any other lane.

By contrast, the Bay Area is far more intelligent about carpool lanes. Their carpool lanes allow for entry and exit by qualifying vehicles whenever they wish. In many cases, they also have time limits on the HOV lanes so that if it is the middle of the day on a Saturday for example, anyone can use the HOV lane.

The second problem with carpool lanes is that their primary purpose is not being served. The primary reason for HOV lanes was to encourage people to carpool and take drivers off the road thus easing conjestion. However, in no way does it serve this purpose if the other passengers are not legally permitted to drive. In other words, the rule should be two or more licensed drivers not just passengers. Thus, soccer moms ferreting their minions should not qualify for the carpool lane.