August 31, 2003
Maintaining an Election
I have come to the conclusion over the years, that the worst possible way to run any kind of volunteer online community is through democracy. Democracy is a high-overhead compromise that rarely works in the small- to medium- purpose-oriented communities that tend to arise online. And yet, people keep trying it.read... (1011 words. Posted to nerd, stories at 12:45 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 0)
August 30, 2003
Announcing: Cat Pictures Day
In honour of a recent comments thread on Hani's blog, I hereby declare Monday, September 1st to be "Post pictures of your cat to Javablogs" day. All are invited. If you don't have a cat, find one!read... (78 words. Posted to nerd at 02:37 AM. Trackbacks: 2 Comments: 4)
August 29, 2003
In Trusted Computing We.. er.. Trust?
The assumption of the OS security model is that all actions a user takes should be considered equal, and the user's authority is delegated infinitely and unchecked through software. This is the deadly assumption that causes almost all malware to spread. We should not assume that the user trusts the software he or she is running.read... (1033 words. Posted to nerd, security, stories at 02:45 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 3)
Weblog Exile
I've been on holiday most of this week anyway, hence the remarkable lack of updates. I just haven't engaged my brain sufficiently for the past five days to write a coherent post. So what have I been up to?read... (430 words. Posted to personal at 11:09 AM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 1)
August 22, 2003
Sendmail Configuration for Mummies
To enable sender-validation in sendmail, enable this option: bird, squiggley line, sideways man, fish.read... (94 words. Posted to nerd at 05:33 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 0)
August 18, 2003
Beware Regular Expressions
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I’ll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems. ---Jamie Zawinski, in comp.lang.emacsread... (331 words. Posted to nerd, stories at 11:46 PM. Trackbacks: 2 Comments: 2)
RedHat is Even More Brain-Damaged Than I Thought
It turns out the bug that sapped a day of my productivity has been known since April, and nothing concrete was done about it. Go RedHat.read... (141 words. Posted to nerd at 11:20 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 3)
RedHat is Brain Damaged
Debian is a volunteer project, so the people who put the packages together do it for free. RedHat is a commercial organisation, so they need to pay their packagers, and in turn that cost needs to be transferred back to us, the user. It also doesn't help that compared to apt/dselect, RHN is pretty clunky.read... (773 words. Posted to nerd, stories at 03:04 PM. Trackbacks: 2 Comments: 8)
Charles Audio-blogs
Yes, I've momentarily jumped on the audio-blogging bandwagon. Fear.read... (10 words. Posted to personal at 01:21 AM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 6)
August 14, 2003
Trust and Non-Public Members
It's tempting to try to make it impossible for people to write bad code. It's also often a waste of time: what you want is to make it impossible for people to write bad code when they should know better.read... (273 words. Posted to java, nerd at 07:48 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 0)
About the Fishbowl Quick-Links
Introducing quicklinks: a new section of the Fishbowl (with its own RSS feed).read... (191 words. Posted to nerd at 06:08 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 4)
Fred Grott: Which meial?
Despite what comments in some blogs have said, I have not retracted my previous comments on Marc Fleury.read... (233 words. Posted to nerd at 12:43 AM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 3)
August 12, 2003
Gosling on Java
James Gosling recently weighed into a discussion on Apple's java-dev mailing-list. Here are a few choice quotes.read... (447 words. Posted to java, nerd at 09:05 PM. Trackbacks: 1 Comments: 0)
MSBlaster Windows RPC/DCOM Worm
Are you running Microsoft Windows 2000 or XP? Are you not completely up-to-date with the latest patches? Are you connected to the Internet? If you just answered 'yes' to all three, chances are you're already fucked.read... (89 words. Posted to nerd, security at 12:43 PM. Trackbacks: 3 Comments: 1)
August 11, 2003
Defending Wheel-Reinvention
The accepted, and often unquestioned wisdom is that reinventing the wheel is bad. I attempt to redress the balance by providing a few situations where such reinvention is a good idea.read... (528 words. Posted to nerd, stories at 04:56 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 3)
August 08, 2003
Unintentionally Amusing
Mildly amusing: A complete stranger accusing you of having"no balls" in a comment to your blog. Amusing: That the comment was a perfect example of the sort of nonsense your post was being critical of in the first place. Just plain funny: The next paragraph starts:"Don't want to be rude but..."read... (94 words. Posted to personal at 12:27 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 1)
August 07, 2003
Could Marc Fleury be Any Worse at PR?
Marc Fleury once again demonstrates that Public Relations is... not his strong point.read... (278 words. Posted to nerd at 12:19 PM. Trackbacks: 1 Comments: 10)
August 06, 2003
Insomnia
I am afflicted with occasional bouts of insomnia. They are nothing serious, they just manifest as me finding myself at 1:30 in the morning thinking: "Wow. I'm not at all tired, am I" when I have to be at work the next day.read... (344 words. Posted to personal at 02:42 AM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 12)
August 05, 2003
Mophun Sucks
Mophun looked like a promising platform for developing nifty mobile applications... until I read the instructions.read... (164 words. Posted to java, nerd at 10:53 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 24)
August 03, 2003
Rent-A-Girlfriend
Maybe I'm being a neanderthal here, a historical throwback due to my life as a computer nerd. Maybe the modern-day Metrosexual man scoffs at my inability to work out if that jacket really makes me look like a prat or not. I doubt it, though. After all, the archetypal Metrosexual is David Beckham, and I bet Posh picks out his clothes.read... (569 words. Posted to personal, stories at 04:39 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 9)
August 01, 2003
The Placebo Mini-Pattern
Some long-running processing is occurring in your program. You really have no idea how long this event is going to take, but you want to keep the user as happy as possible while it is running.read... (336 words. Posted to nerd, stories at 12:35 PM. Trackbacks: 1 Comments: 11)
IP Address Changes
Unfortunately, I run my own DNS, and I wasn't told what the timetable for the IP address change was until after it happened. So if you can't read this, it's because your DNS server still has the old address in the cache.read... (209 words. Posted to blogging, nerd at 12:09 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 1)