LeBron

Yo, the LeBron ads are the bomb.

A Double Whammy

Original Story

You see, this is an example of how the Bush government sucks and how Google sucks. Clearly the lesser evil is Google. But still all of this could be avoided if they simply didn't maintain all of that data. Bush's government on the other hand is once again trying to have the 'truth' win out over the facts. Of course, the easy technological fix -- introducing the .xxx domain suffix -- is being blocked by the government. Don't be fooled, web surfers, Bush doesn't want to control porn; he wants to appeal to those who want it eliminated.

Dr. MLK Jr.

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous
than sincere ignorance
and conscientious stupidity."

Are you reading this people who voted for Bush? Actually, are you reading this President Bush? Y'all stop bein' dorks. Step up to the teachings and not just takin' a day off.

Pittsburgh v. Indianapolis

Wow, what a crazy game. Let's hope we continue to get such exciting games for the rest of the playoffs.

Matt Hasselbeck...

is a stud! I'm like freaking out.

Steve Gibson

Original Story

There is definitely a non-zero correlation between paranoid weirdos and computer security experts. For instance, Steve Gibson. He has decided that since you have to do some pretty strange stuff to exploit that Windows MetaFile issue, that it clearly was not something that was accidentally added by Microsoft. Instead, we clearly added it on purpose for some reason. Like if you decided to turn off ActiveX and all sorts of other stuff that Microsoft could still run code on your machine. Now, who knows why Microsoft would want to do that. Apparently paranoid delusion only provides you with so much insight. He goes on to argue how since Windows is "closed source" that we'll never know the truth or whatever. Of course there are thousands on people outside of Microsoft with access to Windows source. In fact, there was a big leak where some random dude posted all the Windows source. Go look at it you bumbling, paranoid weirdo. Perhaps you'll learn something.

Banal

The word to use when something is so ass that you need to combine 'butt' and 'anal' to describe it properly.

Xbox 360

Yo, I actually played a 360 a little earlier tonight. We spent most of the time playing the Fight Night Round 3 demo. Yes, the graphics on the 360 are totally ridiculous. Yes, that game needs some tweaks before it will be totally awesome. No, I was not able to win against either of my friends. Clearly Roy Jones Jr. totally sucks in the game. Actually, the fact that the demo includes Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr. is kinda funny. As far as I know they are unlikely to ever fight professionally again. Of course, they are the two great fighters of the 90s and rank amongst the great all-time fighters. I like to digress. I looked at Geometry Wars for like 2 minutes. Lots of colors and lights. Like electronic, controllable fireworks. Not something to be taken lightly if you happen to be trippin' I suppose, but nothing to write home about if you are not. But its like $4 or something, so I dig it.

The Bit....

is a squeeze. Ha, ha!

setup.exe

I managed to actually make one today. It is way weirder that one might expect. The UI in VS 2005 looks like nobody cared at all about the feature. Its strange how much setup technology sucks. Some of it surely is based on having to deal with the st00pid decisions of yester year. I'm sure like happens all too often at The Soft that some moron justified some horribly retarded feature by using some misguided argument about performance or schedule. Let's say this particular retarded feature was creating a global registry of COM objects in the registry. Only later did people start figuring out how many frickin' planets you have to get to align to make get all that stupid COM shit to work. What the Goddamn fuck?! That polemic aside, setup really isn't nearly as slick as you want it to be given that everyone has to do it. Actually, ClickOnce seems to have turned out pretty well. I'd like to take some credit for it, but I jumped ship on Whidbey 2 years before it shipped. But ClickOnce is a unfortunately a dead end if you want to do anything interested during setup. That's bad.

No Bit

I am at the home, but there is no bit.

Coffee + Donut

I bought a coffee and a donut for a pseudo-homeless guy today. I'm convinced that there are part-time homeless people in Seattle: people who ask for change by day, but go home at night. I don't know what the story about this guy is, but I hope he enjoyed his donut.

Snails Like to Go

http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/2005/12/snailio_flipboo.html

Joel On Software

I don't read Joel's blog too much, but people point me at in on occasion and I take a gander. I usually find myself half agreeing with him. So now I've decided to record my partial agreement.

Joel's entire post: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html

Joel: "Instead what I'd like to claim is that Java is not, generally, a hard enough programming language that it can be used to discriminate between great programmers and mediocre programmers. "

He doesn't go on to explain this and I'm at a loss. Presumably based on his earlier comments he believes that C is hard enough to make such a determination. Why? If a person remembers to guard all their allocated resources and recover them on errors, does that indicate they are great rather than mediocre? There is definitely more to take care of in implementing most algorithms in C over Java. However, I don't see how getting all those details correct in an interview is an indication of very much. But if you want to see some details implemented correctly, why don't you ask a question that has algorithmic details to get right?

Joel: "You used to start out in college with a course in data structures, with linked lists and hash tables and whatnot, with extensive use of pointers."

Yes, but for those data structures the pointer manipulation is identical to the reference manipulation you'll do in Java.

Joel: "Now, I freely admit that programming with pointers is not needed in 90% of the code written today, and in fact, it's downright dangerous in production code. OK. That's fine. And functional programming is just not used much in practice. Agreed."

See, I agree with him sometimes.

Joel: "But beyond the prima-facie importance of pointers and recursion, their real value is that building big systems requires the kind of mental flexibility you get from learning about them, and the mental aptitude you need to avoid being weeded out of the courses in which they are taught."

I agree again, but I think Joel has blinders on. Most programmers don't make big systems. They make interdepartmental apps. And there is nothing wrong with that. There is way more demand/need for people to write those apps than to write big systems. Get some perspective, yo. You have to remember that even before Java became the rage at universities that Visual Basic was the most popular programming language. The schools aren't making people stupid. They are taking people who were never going to be great at programming and making them at least capable of creating "Yet Another Accounting Application".

Joel mentions MIT several times. I think MIT is an interesting school to hire from. There are a lot of very smart, very talented computer scientists coming out of that school. Most of them have done so little real programming that they are basically useless for that task. The kids from Carnegie-Mellon seem to more often be very skilled at both.

You Know What They Say

If you argue with an idiot, you become one.