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This Isn't The Jetpack I Ordered!

2010-07-12T13:10:00.002-04:00

This isn't the kind of science fiction we want to become reality. Parts of Canada are being infested by six foot tall, venomous weeds.

In other words, it's been invaded by triffids.

Deeply Entrenched In The Gutter

2010-01-27T19:10:00.002-05:00

So, Apple unveiled a new tablet computer.

I see I'm not the only one who had this thought.

Headlines by Shakespear?

2009-11-04T22:21:00.003-05:00

It makes it sound like they found corpses.

Nostalgia and Brimstone

2009-08-20T23:06:00.001-04:00

This is officially awesome. The first episode of the original Doom, converted to Doom 3.

Missing Most Of The Point

2009-07-15T12:31:00.003-04:00

Dear Code::Blocks,

What's the point in having a split view feature if you can't view different files in each pane?

In my experience, most of the utility of a split view comes from being able to see both files in a source/header pair at the same time, or comparing two different revisions of the same file.

The number of times I've wanted to look at two different parts of one file -- well, I've never wanted to do that.

Yes Please!

2009-07-09T03:58:00.004-04:00

STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP!
MechWarrior 5!
It's a new developer though, so hopefully they don't screw it up. (edit: one of the developers involved was co-founded by MechWarrior's creator. This bodes well.)
In the meantime, I've ordered the MechWarrior 4 compilation from Amazon. I need to catch up!

They Can't Leave It Alone

2009-06-25T12:24:00.004-04:00

I'm too old to change! :[

Giant Robots And Gas Powered Guitars

2009-05-25T19:46:00.004-04:00

I just finished watching FLCL on youtube. I think my brain melted.

That's pronounced "fooly cooly," by the way. Don't ask. It'll just make it hurt more.

It follows a 12-year-old boy, who despite his assertion that "nothing out of the ordinary happens here," ends up getting run over by a cute, psychotic alien girl riding a supersonic Vespa, and has his head turned into a transdimensional gateway that spews out giant robots. And guitars. With which to smash the aforementioned robots.

It's hilarious, a bit poignant, and very very strange. I recommend it, but you may want to put some newspaper down first.

Postcards From The Apocalypse

2009-05-20T11:42:00.002-04:00

Not your usual tourist destination.

You Are Made Of F4il

2009-05-12T12:51:00.002-04:00

Thief 4 was just announced. I might, in a cautious optimism sort of way, consider this a good thing, except...

Well, just look.

First fail: serious use of 1337-5p34|<.
Second fail: 4 = A, so this renders the title as "Thiaf."

It is just a "working" title so hopefully sanity will prevail in the end.

The Unfinished Symphony

2009-05-07T00:15:00.003-04:00

The 12 year development of 3D Realms' magnum opus, Duke Nukem Forever, has finally come to a close.

Unfortunately, it's not because they finished the blasted thing and shipped it.

It's because 3D Realms has just officially tanked.

:(

The Connection Is Obvious

2009-04-13T09:44:00.004-04:00

Netflix's recommendation system's shortcomings are well known, but I thought I'd toss these out there.
Peep finds... a katana, and uses it to mercilessly dismember the yakuza that have taken over the barnyard!

And a Herbie Hancock concert featuring special guests Robocop and The Terminator!

Creepy And Inconvenient

2009-03-10T16:29:00.005-04:00

USB flash drive, installed in a prosthetic finger. So if you plug it in, you have to type one-handed. If you're going to go all Ghost In The Shell with your prosthetic, you might put it to a use that would tie up your hand anyway.

Built-in wireless optical mouse?

Edit: This shows pictures of the actual item (not the Yanko "You-SB" concept design) in use, and it is in fact detachable. Which makes it both more useful, and more creepy. Nothing like having what looks like a severed finger sticking out of your rig.

It still has to be pretty annoying trying to type minus one finger though.
Well, even a prosthetic would likely screw up your touch typing anyway (no tactile feedback) so it probably doesn't matter.

A Recurring Theme

2009-03-02T11:13:00.003-05:00

Here now, is another example of Google News serving up something weird:
The headline isn't surprising. The Liberals did just choose a new leader. The weirdness is in the summary paragraph. Stephane Dion is NOT the new leader. He's the guy they just replaced. The article is from December 3 2006. Talk about old news.

In the time it took me to write this, it's disappeared. Why it was there in the first place remains a mystery...

A Good Question

2009-02-13T12:51:00.000-05:00

This just about made me fall off my chair.

It Shoots Shurikens. And Lightning.

2009-02-02T12:30:00.004-05:00

So, having built myself a new gaming rig, I need to get some games, right? Ironically, I've been getting most of my games from here. Games that would have run flawlessly on my old rig. Up until recently, when they released Painkiller.

Painkiller is made of pure, distilled awesome.

Every weapon is impossibly cool, starting with the token melee weapon. It's like running bad guys through a Blendtec. Demonic skeleton warriors? Yes, they blend!

The shotgun can also freeze guys solid. Because sometimes, just blowing them across the room isn't enough.

There's a gun that launches large wooden stakes. So you can nail monsters to the wall Or floor. Or ceiling. Or each other. To top it off, if the stakes are in flight long enough they inexplicably catch fire.

They also took the two most devastating weapons common to most fps games, and fused them together. Yes, Painkiller's rocket launcher comes with a built-in minigun.

The game itself is closest to Serious Sam. Stupid things in large numbers. Some of the AIs have cool tricks up their sleeves, too. Some use their fellow monsters as meat shields, others are telekinetic and will hurl any loose debris (including corpses of slain monsters) at you.

The soundtrack during battles is heavy metal. Very listenable all on its own.

Ridiculously fun, and only $10, but the download is huge -- 3.6 GB.

Science Fail

2009-01-12T08:31:00.003-05:00

It seems Google News has a very loose definition of "science."

The Good Times Are Over

2008-11-16T15:47:00.003-05:00

It snowed.

Clearly I need to move further south. Somewhere near the equator should suffice.

It's Alive. Aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!!!

2008-10-21T09:33:00.003-04:00

I bought myself a birthday present on Friday. A new computer. Not that there was anything wrong with the old one, aside from being seven years old. Basically an internet-and-email box by today's standards, not capable of running any game that's come out since about 2003 or 2004.

I wanted a new gaming rig. I wanted a machine that would handle modern games well, as well as being upgradeable. Two things that are increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to find in off-the-shelf OEM rigs. OEM rigs designed for gaming tend toward excess, with quad core processors, and multiple graphics cards. A lot of extra money for under-utilized silicon.

Only one choice then. Off I went to MicroCenter, to get parts, and put the thing together myself. Pretty easy, actually. The only hitch was the cooling.

The case I bought, a Cooler Master CM 690, comes with 3 fans built in, with space to add in 4 more. The ~~flux capacitor~~ video card I installed, an ATI Radeon 4870, runs hot enough to cook ramen. The CPU on the other hand, has to stay below a comparatively chilly 38°C. Putting them in the same box? Bad news. Three fans don't cut it. It ran for about 30 minutes that way. Seven fans -- much better. Only now I have to anchor it to the ground to keep it from flying around the room.

Enlightenment, Strength, Elegance, The Universe, and The Void

2008-09-05T13:55:00.003-04:00

You know that awesome Ubiquity thing?

The guy who made that, also made this.

It's much the same thing, but for your whole computer, not just your web browser.

Everywhere At Once

2008-09-03T16:53:00.004-04:00

As if Firefox wasn't awesome enough already.

Mozilla Labs has unleashed a Firefox extension called Ubiquity.
It's kind of a command line interface, only the commands interact with websites. It's a short-hand way to get at useful web services, like Google, Gmail, Google Maps, Wikipedia, Google Translate, etc., without having to go through the trouble of opening a new tab, navigating to the site, and copy&pasting the thing you want to look up.

Not What You Think It Is

2008-08-28T13:16:00.003-04:00

The local Giant Eagle grocery store is selling Menage A Trois. There's a special this week, it's only $9.99. What a deal!

It's actually a brand of wine. I'm not sure whether this is a brilliant marketing manoeuvre, or an unbelievably stupid one.

vbNo Means No

2008-08-04T13:53:00.005-04:00

I was tinkering in a MS Access database the other day, and wrote VBA code like the following. This pops up a message box with "Yes" and "No" buttons, then does something if the user responded by clicking "Yes."

DIM result AS BOOLEAN
result = MsgBox ("Some Question", vbYesNo)
IF result = vbYes THEN
   'do stuff
END IF

It didn't work. Strangely however, this did:

IF result <> vbNo THEN
   'do stuff
END IF

The lesson: VBA is weird. Don't use it.

Bachelor's Degree In Felony?

2008-07-18T12:29:00.004-04:00

Google News served up this gem today:I don't think the article is referring to that kind of immigrant. Or that kind of "work."

No User Servicible Parts Inside

2008-07-17T08:56:00.004-04:00

While we're on the subject of warning labels, this comes courtesy of The Fail Blog:I really, really, REALLY don't want to know. Seriously. Sometimes ignorance actually is bliss.

Edit: Ah, it turns out this is a photoshop from Something Awful. Explains a lot, really. Plagiarism Fail!

Refreshing Fruit Flavour With No Waxy Build-up!

2008-07-15T08:54:00.004-04:00

If there's a warning label on something, telling you not to do something, it's there because some idiot has done it.

Sometimes though, you have to wonder what the people in marketing were thinking. Case in point, Fabuloso floor cleaner. I picked a bottle of this stuff up because it was cheap, and because when I moved into my apartment, the kitchen floor was like the floor of a movie theatre.

Fabuloso comes in a small, clear bottle. The label depicts something to do with the fragrance (often fruit), as well as a bucket and mop. The cleaning fluid is itself dyed in bright kool-aid colours.

The warning on the back states "DO NOT DRINK."

Hey, maybe if you didn't package it like a beverage, you know?

It turns out, the axiom holds true. The warning is there because some people mistook it for a beverage. Apparently, it didn't have have a child safety cap originally either. Good job!

There's no preventing all the types of stupid out there, but you should still have sense not to give stupidity an invitation.

Skip this. In Fact, Never Play This Again.

2008-07-01T12:33:00.004-04:00

I have just discovered iRate. It is most succinctly described as StumbleUpon for music. It downloads a bunch of random music (free -- creative commons license, or similar) which you can then rate (hence the name). It uses your ratings as a basis for pulling down new music.

It is still a beta (v0.5 as of this writing), so there are some issues. In particular, picking the next song to play is a bit buggy, as it will often play an already rated track, even if you set it to only play unrated songs. Sometimes it will repeat a track instead of going on to the next one. So you have to baby-sit the playlist a bit. However, considering you have to keep going back to it to rate the songs, this isn't too burdensome.

It has its limitations. It's a discovery tool, not a media library, so don't expect any advanced playlist options. You'll have to dump the downloaded files into WinAmp (or whatever) if you want that.

Carefully Cultivated Uselessness

2008-06-26T12:44:00.004-04:00

Word of the day: misfeature.
Grisoft recently rolled out version 8 of their anti-virus software, AVG. Unfortunately, AVG 8 has a brutal misfeature. LinkScanner. On the surface it seems reasonable. AVG plugs into your web browser and scans all the links on any web page you visit, looking for any nasty ones that will give you a virus if you click them.
There are two major problems with this. First, this causes performance issues with web browsing. In order to scan a link, AVG has to download the website itself, then scan it. It scans all links, all search results, even websites you manually type into the address bar, or access via bookmarks. All links. Even if you have absolutely no intention of clicking it. Heaven help you if you're on dial-up.
Secondly, this gives you absolutely no added protection. AVG contains an on-access scanner, which scans all programs on your computer before they are run, and all files before they are opened. This means that even if a nasty website manages to dump a virus onto your computer, the on-access scanner will catch it before it can do any damage. Every last CPU cycle, every bit of network bandwidth that LinkScanner uses, all of it is entirely wasted.
You can install AVG without this useless pile of dog-dirt provided you can perform the necessary incantations. Apparently, future installers will give you the option to leave it out -- if you choose to do a custom install. Non-technical users are still screwed.

We hope that this new option gives our valued customers the "choice" that they have requested. Those who have experienced genuine problems with web surfing speed can de-select the linkscanner.
However the default "standard installation" will continue to install this valuable security tool to protect users while they surf.

I love how they put choice in quotation marks. They may find that their "valued customers" preferred "choice" is switch to a different anti-virus. Like this one, or this one.

Safety First!

2008-06-09T12:44:00.011-04:00

Since I've worked here for over a year, I had to retake all the safety training/tests. They are all web-based, complete with goofy computer generated pictures, and low budget videos. The hazard communication (HAZCOM) one in particular has some ... interesting ... pictures.
Ah, HAZCOM training! Here we see two students actively engaged in the learning experience. This is actually an accurate depiction of what HAZCOM training is like.

HAZCOM is all about learning to read Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) and chemical warning labels.

Chemical Name: Trichloro-nonexistum sulfate
Common Name: CGI Green GooPhysical Characteristics: Viscous, green liquid. Spontaneously knocks over and un-bungs any drum it's contained in.

I'm baffled at the choice of graphic here. If I was staring at a thick green liquid pouring out of a barrel with a skull-and-crossbones label, "physical characteristics" is NOT the section of the MSDS I would be most concerned with. Health hazards, safe handling, emergency procedure, sure. But at this point, I can see the physical characteristics. I don't need to look them up.

Also, I think I'd be looking for some turtles (preferably four of them) to dunk in the stuff, because outside of cartoons and video games, how common are barrels full of toxic green goo?

Here's another baffling image.
It's computer generated. We could arrange to take a picture of employees sleeping through their HAZCOM training, but couldn't find three random jars of chemicals and and erlenmeyer flask? Not even at the local high-school chemistry lab? Sheesh.

This image made (almost) perfect sense in context. It was on a page talking about how some chemicals may affect your ability to have children with the proper number of fingers and toes.
And yet... we see an image of a container of something poisonous, alongside a picture of an apparently healthy, prosperous family. It kind of sends the opposite message.

Health Hazards: Hyperfertility.
Safe Handling and Storage: Keep away from mailman.

This poor guy is being attacked by a swarm of rogue lens flares. Don't you hate when that happens? Also, he's purple. I don't think that's an option on the company EEO survey.

Here we see a member of blue man group. He's apparently found one of the poison gas barrels from Deus Ex. Perhaps he's getting ready to power up his Microfibril Muscle augmentation so he can pick it up and toss it off a ledge, so it will fall three floors down, hit the concrete floor and shatter, releasing noxious green gas everywhere, killing all the bad guys in the room. Or maybe he'll just place it in the doorway and set off the alarm, so the bad guys will try to run into the room to get him. But that steaming barrel will be in the way, and they'll just run blindly into it, gassing themselves.

Wired Weird Part Deux

2008-05-21T12:47:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I decided to break out my new vacuum cleaner. I looked for a place to plug it in to do the hallway. The hall is all of 4' long, and the cord is ridiculously long, so I probably could have plugged it in anywhere in the apartment. I ended up choosing the bathroom GFCI outlet for its proximity. Plug in, turn on... nothing. I know the vacuum isn't at fault, I just used it to do the living room. It's a GFCI, so maybe it was off, like the one in the kitchen was. I turn on the bathroom lights to get a better look. I tap the reset button a couple times. No clicky, so it's apparently already on. I go back and try the vacuum again anyway. It starts. OK, maybe the GFCI was off after all. Content that all is now as it should be, I turn the bathroom lights back off.

And the vacuum dies.

Oh. NO.

Turn the lights back on, the vacuum starts.

The GFCI outlet in the bathroom is controlled by the light switch.

I think the maintenance guys' names are Curly, Larry, and Moe. It would certainly explain a lot.

In Which We Poke Fun At Vegans

2008-05-16T12:47:00.007-04:00

One aspect of vegetarian/vegan cuisine I find amusing is the preoccupation with aping non-vegetarian food. As if, on some level, vegetarians are ashamed of tofu. Either that, or it tastes so bad that it becomes necessary to pretend you're eating something else in order to convince yourself to stick it in your mouth.

There needs to be a line drawn somewhere though. Consider "The Elegant Eggless Omelet" found on RecipeZaar.

3/4 cup flour (whole wheat, white or a combination)
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 pinch ground turmeric
1 cup milk, scant (rice, soy, almond)
1/2 teaspoon vegetable oil

Wow, that's inspiring. I think I'll create my own eggless egg dish -- the eggless fried egg! Behold:
Pick up a dictionary you hippie, and learn the subtle difference between an omelet and bread.

Wired Weird

2008-05-05T14:07:00.003-04:00

Instinct, gut feeling, hunch, intuition. Your brain, working in the background, making decisions without you. When something is discovered this way, you might call it an "Ah-ha!" moment. Or, if you're not thrilled about the discovery, you might call it an "Oh-no" moment. And if it's somebody else's fault, an "Oh no you di-int" moment.

I just moved into an apartment. All the major kitchen appliances are furnished with it. The refrigerator was humming along, and obviously cold. The stove and garbage disposal were demonstrated by the lease agent. The dishwasher, I was assured, had been tested, and it worked. In support of this claim, the interior of the dishwasher was wet, as though recently used.

Thus assured, and having a few dishes with which to try it out, I loaded it up, added the soap, turned the dial...
and nothing.

Imagine my surprise.

I re-read the instructions such as they were. I pushed buttons, twiddled the latch, span the dial, all to no effect.

I was almost at the point of giving up when the dark force of intuition inexplicably drew my attention to the GFCI outlet just above the counter top.

"Oh no you di-int..."

Like a character in a zombie movie reaching out to poke a recently deceased companion, I reached for the reset button, not really sure I was ok with either outcome. If it didn't work, I now had yet another work order to submit. If it did work, it meant a drop in the overall sanity of the universe.

click.

Instantly, the dishwasher started. One mystery solved. Apparently my dishwasher is wired through my counter top GFCI Outlet.

Now however, I'm troubled by the question: "What else did I turn on?"

Because It's More Fun To Die From Cholesterol Than From Stress

2008-04-29T13:00:00.006-04:00

Eat Dangerously has got to be the single most awesome cookbook in existence. If you require proof, look at the Turkey From Hell recipe.

Knee Deep In The Dead

2008-04-18T13:09:00.003-04:00

I watched the DooM movie recently. Which led to replaying the original game. Which led to looking for the game's background music in something other than plinkity-plunkety midi. Which led to the discovery of The Dark Side Of Phobos. Which is awesome.

The Ohio BMV: Tougher Than INS

2008-04-16T16:00:00.005-04:00

If you're anything but a green-card carrying immigrant, or a U.S. citizen, getting an Ohio driver's license is a circus of ridiculousness.

It starts with Senate Bill 184.
To amend sections [snip long list of numbers] of the Revised Code to create the offenses of terrorism, soliciting or providing support for an act of terrorism, and making a terroristic threat...
Due to SB184 section 4507.09, temporary residents are issued special nontransferable, nonrenewable licenses. Because apparently, if they don't make it more difficult for innocent people to get (and keep) driver's licenses, the terrorists will win. Or something.

That wouldn't be so bad by itself, except the BMV took the baton hand-off in this relay of bureaucratic absurdity like pros, and ran for all they were worth.

SB184 leaves it up to the BMV to determine what they will accept as documentation of legal presence. Their list of required documents is almost reasonable. Almost. The two problems: They require that I show a U.S. visa, and a letter from my employer (on company letterhead), stating that I am in fact working for them.

Here's what's wrong with these. Firstly, INS doesn't require every foreign worker to get a visa. Canadians are exempt. Other nationalities can have the requirement waived if the proper paperwork is filed. You still have to apply for, and be granted, the proper status, but visas -- the official little pieces of paper with your mugshot on them -- are not required. The BMV is therefore stricter on foreigners than INS. INS, whose job it is to decide who actually gets to live/work in the U.S.A.
Secondly, If you think for one minute that anyone at the BMV is going to actually check on that employer letter...
Anyone could pull a company's logo off their website, hack together a convincing letterhead in any word processor, write the letter and make up a signature or have their cousin Bob sign it. It's proof of nothing.

I got my social security number with no hassle, and far less documentation, so it isn't like this rigamarole is at all necessary. But I suppose the BMV has a reputation to uphold.

Version Check Failure

2008-04-03T16:50:00.004-04:00

I have on my to-do list, the creation of an interactive tutorial/manual for the software I'm creating. I looked into a couple of likely candidates. One of them is apparently just an HTML editor. The other pulled this maneuver on me when I tried to install it:
Yep. That's an installer asking me to install the Microsoft .NET Framework, version 1.1.4322 when I clearly have version 3.0 installed.

Hint: Use greater-than, not equals when checking version numbers.

FAIL.

Why Do You Need It?

2008-03-26T12:54:00.001-04:00

At a certain point, you should probably just throw the leftovers away.

Remember, We Don't Have Apt, YUM, or Emerge

2008-03-11T12:50:00.004-04:00

A pet peeve. I haz one.

Here's the situation: You're looking for a good open-source alternative to some ludicrously expensive proprietary software. Your need it for MS Windows. You find a likely candidate, something relatively stable, with the features and compatibility you need, and it's cross-platform, so it will work on Linux, Windows or Mac. You download the convenient Windows binary installer. You run it. It installs. You try and run the program.

It fails. Missing DLLs.

The program requires about seven other open-source libraries, but the developers were too lazy to package the DLLs in the installer!
Now as the user, you have to hunt them down.

Personally, for a program to be worth that kind of effort, it had better cure my allergies and get me a date with that hot brunette next Friday. If I wanted the some-assembly-required version, I would have downloaded and compiled the source.

This is the out-of-box-experience equivalent of a swift kick in the nuts. As a developer, you are effectively telling a large segment of your potential users "We don't give a(n) [explitive of your choice] about your platform, or why you choose to/have to use it. Go away."

Case study: The Flame Project.
The Flame Project has a Windows binary installer. It includes none of the DLL files it requires. The website helpfully lists all of them and provides links to their web pages.

Of these, only Glib/GTK+ and libxml2 have Windows binaries readily available. Pango and Ming have links to pages they claim have Win32 versions, but none of the linked pages actually does. One only has instructions (under "howto") on how to get the Win32 DLL -- from other projects that actually include it in their installers!

You had to have had the DLLs in order to build and test the Windows version of your software. How much more effort would it have taken to package them in the installer?

So That's The New Word For It?

2008-03-05T13:31:00.005-05:00

Found in the iGoogle feed for Allrecipes.com (<3 iGoogle )

Burgers: Guacamole Cilantro Lime Cheeseburger
Melted Monterey Jack cheese lends an added zing to these spiced up hamburgers. A dollop of fresh guacamole sends it over the top.

"To send over the top" is a euphemism for vomiting that I was not previously aware of.

"I'm not feeling so good today. I feel like I'm going to send my lunch over the top." Or "could we please not discuss this subject at dinner? You're going to send it over the top."

I love the internet. You learn such interesting new things.

Full recipe here, for the curious.

Hey, it might actually be good. Somebody obviously likes it. It's just the name makes it sound like a culinary train-wreck. Like Toss-Three-Random-Things-Together Cheeseburger. Maple Syrup Rutabaga Nutmeg Cheeseburger? You don't have to explicitly state everything that's in it. "Guacamole Cheeseburger" would have been sufficient.

Still, it's a more appetizing description than "Garbage Quiche."

[Edit] Another example of Don't-Enumerate-The-Ingredients just came to mind. Haggis. Sounds a lot better than "Sheep's Heart Liver And Lungs Boiled In Its Own Stomach" doesn't it?

Won't Somebody Think Of The Children?

2008-03-03T12:46:00.003-05:00

Here in Ohio, retailers are required to check ID whenever you purchase any items with significant fumage, like spray-paint, or rubber cement. It's to try and stop "huffing." If you try and run such an item through the self-checkout, it will halt until an employee enters a code.

On Sunday, we made a stop at Wal-mart, and since I was running low on a couple items, I took the opportunity to restock. Included in the purchase was a 100-pack of Diphenhydramine, better known by the brand name Benadryl.

I found an empty self-checkout, scanned, paid, and then waited for everyone else to catch up.

And as I walked away from the check-out with my items, it occurred to me: I just bought an hallucinogen, and didn't get carded.

Wait, what?

I can buy actual drugs from Wal-mart, and not be challenged, but I can't buy glue unless I show ID.

I've never been carded by gas stations either, even though gasoline is huffable. Maybe nobody does gas anymore because it's too expensive?

Microsoft Windows: Viral Edition

2008-02-15T12:27:00.003-05:00

I saw this article on slashdot and felt compelled to say something about it. This sums it up well:

I'm no security expert, but this looks like an incredibly bad idea. How long before some black-hat forges a bogus update, compromising every internet connected Windows machine?
One of the benefits of the current, traditional method of distribution is that the source can be verified. If you connect to the Microsoft server, you get a real Microsoft patch, not a forgery. Guaranteed. A totally decentralized peer-to-peer system doesn't give you that assurance.

I chose the above graphic for a reason. Besides being a classic "FAIL!" image, it perfectly describes what these researches are doing -- reinventing the wheel. As slashdot user mhall119 sarcastically pointed out:

If only it were possible to provide a list of other servers that somehow mirrored the data available on the central server....

Or, even better, a way to send requests to the same domain name to physically different servers...

I think I may be on to something here.

But if Microsoft really prefers the peer-to-peer method, there is a perfectly good alternative. Bittorrent anyone?
In fact, having Windows Update use the bittorrent protocol might not be such a bad idea. It would certainly put pressure on ISPs to stop traffic shaping.

My Advice? Delete!

2008-01-18T12:34:00.000-05:00

The other day, I was using my brother's computer to play some Unreal Tournament 3 instant action matches, when I noticed everything was kind of jerky and slow. That aroused my curiosity, since nothing seemed out of the ordinary when I started UT3, and it usually runs smoothly. I quit UT3, and opened Task Manager and took a look at what was going on. One process stood out. It was on my sister-in-law's account (which was logged in, but not the account I was using), and it was using ~75% of the CPU time. The offending process? HP Advisor:

A mere toolbar was hogging up three quarters of the CPU resources. On an account that wasn't in use! There's only one thing to do with a piece of software this bad.

WTF?

2007-12-21T11:17:00.000-05:00

Here's something I got while testing an application:

As much of a WTF as that message is by itself, The underlying cause is pretty WTFish also. It turns out that the Win32 API is only capable of creating
one
directory
at
a
time.
Which is why the attempt to create an entire path in one go failed. But wait, there's MORE! The application uses the wxWidgets framework. Since wxWidgets is a layer on top of the Win32 API, they could have added in what might be considered "sane" functionality -- splitting the path, testing for the existence of each directory, and creating it if it doesn't exist. Instead they chose to keep the weird limitations of the Win32 API. So I have to do all that gruntwork myself. The kicker is, I can do this much easier, with less code, by using
system("mkdir .\\dir1\\dir2\\dir3\\");
You see, the mkdir command can create an entire multi-directory path in one shot.

The moral of the story:
If you design a cross-platform library to abstract operating system functions, make sure you do it in such a way that your users aren't tempted to resort to shell-scripting.

Miscelllaneous Coolness

2007-10-29T13:46:00.000-04:00

Firstly, a cool movie:
Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War. This is an excellent film about the Korean war.

Secondly, a cool piece of software:
Chaoscope is a program for rendering 3D strange attractors and fractals. You can create some cool looking abstract desktop wallpaper, even if you have no skills of an artist. The image below is an "unravel" attractor generated by Chaoscope.

Introduction

2007-10-26T12:50:00.000-04:00

I have decided to create a blog, because the internet clearly doesn't have enough random useless garbage in it already. A personal dumping ground for whatever junk happens to fall out of my brain on any given day. There will be a lot of technical computer related stuff, since that's what I do for a living, but it won't be limited to that. Anything goes. I'll try to keep it interesting, because you never know -- someone might actually read this crap!