Too many software developers just can't bring themselves to implement completely invisible features. They need to show off about what a great feature they just implemented, even at the cost of confusing people. Really great UI design disappears. →

The problem that Namespaces were introduced into RSS to solve was: lots of different people want to add their own custom extensions to RSS. Since RSS is such a small domain, the chances of two people coming up with identical tags with different semantics is actually quite high. →

Mid-2002, Apple release an update to their Mail app that catches 90% of spam. A year later, Bill Gates has a revelation: "Hey! Let's do something about spam!" →

Cocoa hacking reminds me just how much I dislike Swing. It took me longer to post this blog entry than it did to write the above "My First WebKit App". If only Objective-C had automatic memory management... →

I'm sure the Cancer Council of Australia</a> think they're making a really incisive point here. But why, oh why, oh why did they pick Pulp Fiction as the movie to parody? I suppose it was just because it's a well-recognised poster, but it rather kills the message. →

Random picture →

Then, of course, I realised just how recent 1999 was. I started thinking "Do things change that fast?" Then I realised, no they don't. Things still changed slowly, but if you only see the back end of the exponential adoption curve, it looks a lot faster. →

The linking patterns of weblogs did not subvert or corrupt PageRank, they simply altered the web in such a way that PageRank became less relevant, and no longer answered that question. Rather than taking the negative approach, working against the new shape of the web, patching the problem by marking down a certain class of page, Google needs to find a new positive approach, to adapt to the new shape of the WWW and work with that to once again find the answers. →

As a courtesy, I'd like to ask anyone commenting on this site to leave their real name with the comment. That is, unless you're someone I've known online for so long under an alias that I wouldn't recognise your real name. →

Penetration Testing is a security practice during which some trusted party attempts to detect and exploit weaknesses in a system's security. It is possibly one of the more fun aspects of security work, as it is the closest a legitimate 'white-hat' hacker can get to the sort of fun the black-hats get up to. →

List of various Dr Who and Anime references from Star Trek TNG →

I just closed one bug... and then as a result of closing it, opened six new bugs. (Well, five new bugs, and one umbrella-bug to link them all to). Ever feel like you're digging a hole, and eventually it'll be too deep to climb out of? →

This is why the BileBlog quickly bored me. Most of the criticisms are, indeed, accurate. Some are trivial, some are not. But each individual criticism is only dealt with in the most superficial of possible ways. Root causes aren't investigated. Improvements aren't suggested beyond "don't do things that suck". →

I phoned support to question this requirement, and was flatly told that there would be no negotiation entered into. Their reasoning was that they had some kind of fiduciary responsibility to make sure that whatever got typed in as the card number got sent verbatim to the bank. So I shrugged, and did what I was told. →

One day last weekend, I had nothing to do. I was visiting my old Radio weblog, and started wondering how many others had jumped ship like myself. 98 lines of Ruby later, I had a set of totally useless statistics. →

The languages that an interested soul could download and learn today are so much more advanced than we had back then. Now, programming is no longer a ubiquitous part of the computing environment It isn't the default mode the computer starts up in any more. Its an option you must seek out. →

Fish can be turned on by an aquatic equivalent of pornography, according to research revealed yesterday. →

It's pretty much impossible to walk from the office to the shops where I buy lunch without going past, and being accosted by at least one person soliciting for a charity. →

What are the needs of the users, however, are up to the developers to determine from all the evidence, and a bug-tracking database is a very bad measure of what is important across the whole range of users. →

For about a week we had been noticing a pretty bad smell in the kitchen. A sort of rotting-animal smell. As we leaned over to look behind the oven, the smell got stronger. →

Choosing a slogan can be tough... →

Splashscreen n. An excuse for not optimising your application's start-up time. →

I have a rather painful history of having to throw out toasters for various reasons I'd rather not go into at breakfast. Yesterday, I finally overcame my toaster phobia and bought a new one. →

I consider skinnability to be a good reason not to use a program. →

Enforcing J2EE compliance is important, because IT buyers care about being able to move Java applications to different systems, said Ted Schadler, an analyst at Forrester Research. ... →

I'm suffering from horrendous Mozilla beta-fatigue. I've been supporting the browser, using it regularly since the single-digit milestone releases (Well, M9 anyway). It had about a year of useability and stability, and then... another radical change of direction lands us in beta-country again. →