 |
::: Friday, May 30 ::: |
OMG: barenaked ladies blog
I can't believe I didn't know about this. Thank you Jen for showing me the light.
Update: Ok. It's great to have access to this sort of thing, but why don't any of these guys use frelling carriage returns? It's like swimming upstream with a 35mph current of words attempting to drown you at every stroke.
3:23 PM CST ::
|
|
Update: Sony PSX
More details about the Sony PSX including a couple of mpeg's of the menu screens. The original version is in Japanese. The link above will pipe the page through Babelfish which seems to think that Sony's Hisashi "is good wooden vice president".
I'm still not sold on the idea, but Dan is right, it certainly is shiny.
2:48 PM CST ::
|
|
Hmm: Microsoft pays $750 million AOL tax
As long as this deal doesn't endanger Mozilla, I could really care less. But thinking realistically, why would AOL continue to pump money into Mozilla development when they no longer need it as insurance against Microsoft? They are likely to shelve it for now, but maintain their ownership. That way they could restoke the engines when their 7-year contract with M$ expires.
I'll never really understand why they feel the need to coddle Microsoft though. Mozilla is more than capable of replacing IE in the AOL client software. I suppose in the long run it's never a good idea to burn bridges. Even if they only lead to your enemy's house.
2:36 PM CST ::
|
|
::: Thursday, May 29 ::: |
Wonderful: CIA Avoiding Creative IT Use
You can bet your bottom dollar that, regardless of how bassackwards the CIA decides to be, terrorists will have no qualms whatsoever about leveraging every possible technology to their advantage. Security concerns are understandable, but fighting high-tech crime requires high-tech tools.
Although I have no concrete evidence, my guess is that the CIA doesn't differ that much from your average business fifteen or so years ago. They like staying in the analog world because the currency of human contacts makes it easy for entrenched operatives to remain in high demand. Take that away and the younger, cheaper agents become increasingly valuable at the expense of the "good ole boy" network.
3:26 PM CST ::
|
|
Whatever: Sony PSX
Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to buy devices which serve and single purpose and do it very well. In my experience, multi-purpose devices don't do any one thing particularly well. Perhaps Sony will be able to reverse this trend.
It's also rather confusing that Sony chose to use the PSX name since most folks (including Sony themselves) used that name for the PS1 up until the PS2 was released.
2:42 PM CST ::
|
|
::: Tuesday, May 27 ::: |
Amen: Understanding the Psychology of Programming
Csikszentmihalyi says: "For original ideas to come about, you have to let them percolate under the level of consciousness, in a place where we have no way to make them obey our own desires or our own direction. So they find their way, [through] random combinations that are driven by forces we don't know about. It's through this recombination that something new may come up
I couldn't agree more. Read the whole article, it's worth it.
[thanks to Mike for the link]
4:45 PM CST ::
|
|
Take your pick: ATi or NVidea
As I've said before, there are lies, damn lies, and benchmarks. Any time you try to quantify something as nebulous as graphical performance you are openly inviting such trickery. That said, as long as consumers care about benchmarks then GP manufacturers will cheat to win better numbers.
[update: AMD and Intel are apparently in a similar battle over numbers]
11:44 AM CST ::
|
|
::: Friday, May 23 ::: |
|
|
Whoa: House panel: Net tax ban is forever
Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Chris Cannon said the two issues should be dealt with separately.
"I think we've come to a point where we understand what we're doing with the moratorium, and we want to make it permanent," the Utah Republican said.
I didn't think that sort of thing was still possible for our lawmakers. Kudos to Mr. Cannon, even if he is a republican.
10:27 AM CST ::
|
|
::: Wednesday, May 21 ::: |
|
|
Ugh: David Nelson, could you step aside for a few moments?
Some more detail on the government's "No Fly List" and how it's affecting commercial flights. I hate to play Devil's advocate with this issue, but, short of DNA, fingerprint, or ocular scanning, I'm not sure there is a better method available. Any piece of identification you can name can be easily counterfeited.
Of course assuming an actual terrorist would use the same alias for any length of time is likely sheer folly, so this measure is not apt to accomplish much more than the occasional harrassment of the innocent David Nelson's of the world.
11:26 AM CST ::
|
|
::: Tuesday, May 20 ::: |
Thppt: Testers angry over spam-blocking fees
Cloudmark should be free to charge whatever premiums they like for their products. That is one of the few guarantees provided to companies in our enlightened capitalist society. However, the flip side of that same coin applies as well. Namely, that if your core customer base feels swindled by you then no amount of spin or lawyering will return that goodwill.
11:37 AM CST ::
|
|
Hmm: Fizzer worm more interesting than harmful
This is an interesting debate. Should admins be allowed to issue an "uninstall" command to a worm embedded in your PC? The obvious argument against such behavior is that the admin is running code on the user's machine without their knowledge or consent. Generally this is a Bad Thing and, in most cases, is illegal.
In this case, however, I think it could be legal. Replace the PC owner with a dog owner. If that dog bites someone or destroys someone else's property, then Animal Control can make a decision to terminate the animal without the owner's knowledge or consent. I can't see why terminating a rogue process on someone's PC would be considered in a different light.
Then again, that's almost too logical a premise to be applied by our legal system.
10:56 AM CST ::
|
|
::: Monday, May 19 ::: |
|
|
::: Friday, May 16 ::: |
Mmm: Gran Turismo 4
I was just commenting to Chele last night that the PS2 price cut from $199 to $179 isn't quite enough to get me to take the plunge. Given this new information about GT4, I may be forced to reconsider. There's still an outside chance that Sony will take another decrease for Christmas and GT4 doesn't arrive until December.
On a semi-related note, the screen shots for Mario Kart: Double Dash look somewhat promising. I hate the fact they ditched the original design of the karts from prior versions, but I suppose the "two characters per car" concept forced their hand.
2:02 PM CST ::
|
|
::: Thursday, May 15 ::: |
|
|
Ouch: Doom III has no multiplayer
Given that the only reasonable use for Quake was LAN parties, I find it nearly unbelievable that Doom III will lack multi-player capabilities. Unless the environment is truly mesmerizing (think Myst) their "60 man years" of development may well go straight down the dumper.
That doesn't mean that the engine won't survive, of course. It's likely that some intrepid developer will leverage the D3 engine to create the next HalfLife or Counterstrike.
1:19 PM CST ::
|
|
Hmm: Networking start-up plugs into cable
Coaxsys purports that their PureSpeed network system can pipe 100Mbps over standard household RG6 coax. Considering the trouble we used to have getting 10Mbps to flow reliably over the much higher grade RG-58/U cabling, I'm a bit skeptical to say the least. Perhaps error correction really has advanced that far in the last five years or so.
11:49 AM CST ::
|
|
::: Wednesday, May 14 ::: |
|
|
Whatever: Microsoft's 64-bit software needs 1GB DRAM minimum
This article is intended to be inflammatory. Realistically speaking, however, it is unlikely anyone would deploy even a 32-bit Windows-based server with less than 1GB of DRAM these days. Memory is far too cheap to allow it to become a roadblock to higher performance. In fact, the last two servers I deployed had 2GB and 4GB respectively.
4:49 PM CST ::
|
|
Doubtful: Small hard-drive MP3 players
CNet has a brief summary of a few portable MP3 players. The interesting thing is that, if taken at face value, the comparison seems to indicate that the as-yet-unreleased 60GB Nomad Zen does not support WMA whereas its readily available 20GB sibling does. If that is indeed true, then Creative is standing up to Microsoft for the first time in recent memory.
[thanks to Gizmodo for the link]
4:38 PM CST ::
|
|
::: Tuesday, May 13 ::: |
Eh: What’s wrong with the Matrix?
I'm not sure, but somehow a critic writing a 4,000 word review which barely touches on the movie he's reviewing seems like a worse sin than the Wachowski's cashing in on their billion-dollar franchise by making "a campy conventional comic-book movie". That doesn't mean I don't fervently hope he is wrong.
[thanks to Ceej for the link]
2:09 PM CST ::
|
|
::: Friday, May 9 ::: |
|
|
Thppt: Mobile phone controls TV's
My only problem with this is that my phone's battery dies every two days. My remote control has had the same battery for well over a year. Not a very good trade-off if you ask me
[thanks to Gizmodo for the link]
12:32 PM CST ::
|
|
Interesting: I, Cringely [5/8/03]
Here was my response to Bob:
Bob,
I'm sure you're tired of hearing about it by now, but I think I have an angle you may not have considered. I refactor code any time I have to touch it. Most of the time my refactoring is for performance reasons, but I admit to occasionally refactoring something just because the way it was originally written was ugly as sin.
The problem with refactoring for performance, as you mentioned, is that people inevitably wonder why you just didn't write it the fast way to begin with. That sort of statement generally comes from a non-programmer (or as they are traditionally known, a "manager") and stems from their view that a programmer's abilities are a constant. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Any programmer worth their salt knows more now than they knew last month or even last week.
I think the best expression of this fact is this quote:
"The ugliest code I ever saw was the junk I wrote two months ago. The greatest code I ever saw is the stuff I'm writing today. This statement will still be true two months from now."
-- John Norstad
My only addition would be to add that when you are working with Microsoft languages, which are notoriously under documented, the two month time frame shortens up a bit. I learn hidden tricks nearly every day which improve speed or decrease the footprint, sometimes both.
The last point I'd like to make is in regard to this statement:
"If you spend an hour refactoring some code, will you save more than an hour in future code maintenance? If not, then the refactoring is simply not justified on any level."
Which is true from a code reuse stand-point, but, if you are refactoring to boost performance, a savings of 1 second per iteration could save hours of processing time over as short a period as a month. Over the lifespan of the codebase you could end up saving the company hundreds of hours. Still think it's not worth an hour of refactoring?
Great articles, by the way. I wish you would write for your more technical audience more often. I think we might be a little larger group than than you suspect.
12:26 PM CST ::
|
|
::: Thursday, May 8 ::: |
|
|
Damn: Sony 'very comfortable' with PS2 price point
That's a shame. I think $149 is much more reasonable. Actually, considering that the games are where the real money is made, I find it hard to understand why Nintendo and Sony don't nearly give the consoles away. Xbox is clearly a different story since MS is eating anywhere from $200 to $300 per sale as it stands.
1:40 PM CST ::
|
|
::: Wednesday, May 7 ::: |
Heh: Media Player flaw peels open PC security
Apparently ZDnet jumped the gun on this one. MS hasn't actually released the MS03-017 security bulletin quite yet. Either that or they yanked it since the article was published.
Regardless, why not take a hint and grab WinAmp instead? It's likely to be smaller than the MediaPlayer patch.
4:39 PM CST ::
|
|
Yep: PvP Rants
Scott Kurtz, of PvP fame, talks about X2. I didn't notice the parallels to Wrath of Kahn myself, but after having them spelled out they seem almost too exact to be coincidental.
3:27 PM CST ::
|
|
::: Monday, May 5 ::: |
|
|
Whoa: Blogging vs. Writing
Fascinating stuff. I'd love to find a little "Being William Gibson" door someday. Seeing the world through his filters would be mind-blowing.
9:49 AM CST ::
|
|
::: Friday, May 2 ::: |
Thppt: No rush to new Windows
"It's hard to have a meaningful discussion about install base," said Bob O'Brien, Microsoft's group product manager for Windows Server.
<Jon Stewart>He went on to say, "It's hard because the numbers really don't support what Microsoft wants you to believe."</Jon Stewart>
4:15 PM CST ::
|
|
::: Thursday, May 1 ::: |
Damn: Server 2003: Incompatible, Fast & Confusing
More details on just exactly how little software will run on Win2k3. The performance jump is tempting, but if all it's good for is file and print serving then that makes it a "single use server" for all practical purposes. Single user servers have no place in my IT infrastructure.
4:54 PM CST ::
|
|
|
dinoneil[at]newdream[dot]net
|
|
|
|
|
