tekHedd – the blog

I am pleased to see that the new SOPA legislation sets the precedent for silencing speech without due process. Combined with the new “extended detention” laws, this should make it much easier for me to control dissent when I am made emperor of the world.

Relax and enjoy your new rules, or be disappeared and silenced. It’s for your own good. I said so.

Once I am appointed, these sites in particular will be silenced immediately. (And any sites that link to them, of course):

• Google’s petition that everybody seems to be signing will force me to shut down Google entirely
• SOPA explained. With profanity. While funny and educational, I will regrettably have to silence it.
• Wikipedia’s anti-SOPA drivel is as bad as their rabble-rousing blackout.
• Get Your Censor On
• Uncyclopedia seems to be on my side. Too bad. Under my reign there will be no exceptions for parody, comedy, or other frivolous reasons!

And, of course, those responsible for these sites will be imprisoned. Sometimes a little censorship and imprisonment are necessary for the good of all. Due process only gets in the way. Perhaps you only say that you agree because you’re afraid of disappearing, but that’s fine with me.

You might think that because I am linking to these sites, this site will also be shut down, and I will have to detain myself. I will not. Selective enforcement is what makes laws like SOPA and “indefinite detention” useful.

Sometimes, the word stupid is not enough. Today I learned some of the terminology used to describe parts of Agile software development. Agile is a popular “methodology” adopted by software companies as an alternative to admitting that they are incapable of putting together a development process that works. It is essentially the same as having no process whatsoever, but with the subtle difference that your CEO can tell investors and large customers that you “have a process.” And he’ll be taken seriously.

Agile: a flowery way to say Out Of Control

Agile allows developers to maintain the illusion of software process, while allowing developers to do whatever they want with no process or plan. How? Agile accomplishes this through the use of Flowery Terms. Each step in software development at a company with no process is documented and given a Flowery Name.

For example, when collecting product requirements, a developer who follows a process would normally document Use Cases. Agile’s Flowery Name for this is  “User Stories.” I am not making this up! And the important difference between Use Cases and User Stories is that with Agile you are encouraged to be half-assed and never finish them. Well, officially, you are encouraged to do “just enough” and come back and “finish them later,” but we all know that this never happens. With Agile, we do things just like we always have in the past, except that now it’s our process, and it has an investor-friendly name.

So I guess I’ve always been Agile. And here I thought that we were “winging it” at some of those companies!

Surely there is a better way to say this

But enough about Agile. Where I work, we have processes and we follow them. They are not overly burdensome and we get a lot of work done. I’ll be damned before I use the name “User Stories” to describe how we define requirements. That term is completely, it’s totally… something.

I can only describe “User Stories” in one way: that name is Totally Gay. And now I have a problem. Because I’m not a homophobe–but I feel about “User Stories” the same way a homophobe feels about gays. Isn’t there a non-bigoted word that means the same thing? “Stupid” is not a good substitute–it isn’t even part of my definition. Another word that implies all these things at once:

• lame
• laughable
• contemptible, even
• slightly offensive

The phrase “laughably lame” works, but “laughably” is intellectual and “lame” is anti-intellectual, resulting in a phrase that nobody will use and is hard to say.

I want a simple phrase that means the same thing as “totally gay”, but which doesn’t imply that I’m a complete douche. (If you use the phrase “totally gay” without apologizing, you are a douche.) Google turns up nothing.

I’m wasting your time

This should all be unnecessary. This whole blog post would fit in one Tweet if I could just say “Agile software development is totally gay” in a way that wasn’t, you know, totally gay…or something.