It is a staple of Science Fiction that once a computer (or computer network) becomes sufficiently complex, sentience is inevitable. And big sentient computers can be bad news.
As both the owner of what is almost certainly the world’s largest general purpose computing cluster, and our self-nominated bastion against evil, I really hope someone at Google is keeping an eye on this.
Yeah, so I was hoping for a rant/reply to Spolsky, but this will have to do... I guess.
I don't speak for my employer, and I tend to avoid talking too much about them on my blog because I want The Fishbowl to have its own identity distinct from Atlassian.
I'd much rather people say “Hey, Charles’ blog used to be really good, but he needs to post more.” than “Charles’ blog used to be really good, now it’s just ConfluenceConfluenceConfluenceJIRAConfluence.”
When I have something to say about Atlassian, I'll generally post it here:
http://blogs.atlassian.com/developer/
Alan, I hope you're earning your keep…
When you eventually welcome your new Robot Overlords, I will be one of those robots. #uploadmenow
I'm pretty sure they have a couple of groups on that.
The largest botnets consist of million of machines. Just sayin'
You don't wanna know what our cluster management software is called...