tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-149041572011-12-13T22:58:01.079-05:00A place to rant.Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.comBlogger181100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-15673735501043451532009-01-06T22:10:00.004-05:002009-01-06T22:22:57.490-05:00

I'm always amused when advertisements present a tagline that reads well in one way, but doesn't make sense (or means something bad) in another way. I'm especially surprised when the unfavorable reading is the more likely one, because I find it hard to imagine a group of highly paid professional advertisement writers not thinking about the other readings of their lines (or just deciding that they

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-54132065403451251512008-03-06T01:09:00.013-05:002008-03-06T12:04:40.304-05:00

I finally took the plunge: I bought an iPhone. I mainly just wanted a phone with a reasonable user interface, where "Calculator" wasn't under the "Planner" section and I could easily sync my contacts with my laptop. But if I'm going through the pain and expense of a new phone, I thought I'd get a sweet one that would let me check NextMuni and such, too.I'd been debating it for along time: is it

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-28428843945453695932007-10-17T02:13:00.000-04:002007-10-17T02:13:57.381-04:00

I was trying to convince a friend of mine to implement a new widget in Javascript. Of course, he was reluctant. Who can blame him? Who likes to deal with "silent errors" and "browser incompatibilities"?Indeed, the first ten minutes of writing Javascript will make you want to punch yourself in the face to stop the pain. After all, javascript errors do often pass by silently by default (or else

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-56230211383367443962007-01-03T12:30:00.000-05:002007-01-03T12:23:48.575-05:00

Anyone paying attention to the usual sources knows that virtualization has become the next best thing since virtual memory, before which multiple programs on your computer used to stomp all over each other. One thing I don't understand is: why virtualization?Here are some of the benefits commonly cited for virtualization:Server consolidation (moving applications that used to run on several

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-15615954014901637002006-12-26T14:05:00.000-05:002006-12-26T15:01:21.965-05:00

The Economist has an interesting article on why Windows rules the world. Much of the article discusses whether it's worth upgrading to Vista and the state of code bloat in Vista, MacOS, and GNU/Linux, etc. But the ultimate conclusion is that Windows favors simplicity, in design and functionality, sometimes at the expense of performance and customizability. And that consumers care most about

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-29450940405775288052006-11-21T22:44:00.000-05:002006-11-21T22:47:15.129-05:00

So, when coming home for Thanksgiving break, what else would I decide to do but write a useful utility I've been wanting to use for a while? And then host it on Google:http://code.google.com/p/ctimer/Programmers might find this useful for finding out how long certain parts of their programs take (in real time, system time, and user time).

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-48048450759570383212006-10-27T16:18:00.000-04:002006-10-27T16:23:37.794-04:00

In my last post, I mentioned an article comparing Solaris and Windows performance. Many people who commented on that article (as well as myself) really wanted to see a comparison between Solaris and GNU/Linux. Well, that's just what the author did.The overall result was that Solaris was faster than Linux, but it's a much more even matchup than it was with Windows. In many cases, Linux was

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-81411369441097665212006-10-24T16:04:00.000-04:002006-10-24T16:07:18.980-04:00

Is anybody really that surprised?Although, it could be a little unfair to be using Sun hardware to benchmark Solaris and Windows. It's not that not legit, but Sun has the advantage of being able to coordinate their hardware and software teams to optimize one for the other, when appropriate.

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-1156562917998349032006-08-25T23:01:00.000-04:002006-08-26T00:17:23.100-04:00

While working this summer a long way from my home bank, I opened an account at Bank of America so I could deposit my paychecks. Before I could do my banking online, though, I had to learn all about their authentication system called SiteKey.BoA is quite proud of this system, which is designed to avoid phishing attacks, in which some malicious guy (affectionately dubbed Mallory) creates a web site

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-1156108152529757802006-08-20T20:45:00.000-04:002006-08-20T18:26:51.620-04:00

Excited from my recently-completed internship on Sun's Solaris Kernel Group, and desperately needing to reinstall something on my Toshiba A75 laptop, I decided to go ahead and try installing Nexenta Alpha 5.Why Nexenta?I've been a Debian (or Debian-based-distro) user for a while. First I used stock Debian, but Kubuntu quickly became my distro-of-choice after I installed it over year ago. To me,

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-1151864537199774832006-07-02T14:05:00.000-04:002006-07-02T14:22:17.216-04:00

So, I was excited for Ubuntu's Dapper Drake, the newest release of their GNU/Linux distribution. Some programs of mine were getting stale, and I was eager to get newer but stable versions.Despite that, I've had lots of problems with upgrades in the past (not necessarily with Ubuntu), so I was a little cautious. Like many disillusioned upgraders, I didn't upgrade the day the release came out. I

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-1151533139672394662006-06-28T17:58:00.000-04:002006-06-28T18:18:59.706-04:00

So I'm interning at Sun Microsystems this summer, and maintaining an active blog on blogs.sun.com. I advise you to check it out.

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-1141023165056269522006-02-27T01:36:00.000-05:002006-02-27T01:59:08.526-05:00

The keywords continue and break are used by many programmers for "easy" flow control. But they make code harder for humans to read.The problem with them is that they interrupt the flow of control in a strange way. Of course, that's the whole point, but while it makes lots of sense when you're writing it, it's surprisingly counter-intuitive for people reading your code.When you're scanning code,

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-1132081004450833602005-11-15T13:32:00.000-05:002005-11-15T14:01:07.110-05:00

Last week, Free Software Foundation President Richard Stallman came to visit Brown University to give a talk about (you guessed it) free software. In it he outlined four freedoms with respect to software which he believes to be central for a just society. I won't detail them here (you can find them described by the GNU project), but I'll give a brief description of them:Freedom 0: freedom to

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-1123614235499333982005-08-09T15:00:00.000-04:002005-08-09T15:03:55.506-04:00

I've heard a lot of people complaining about loud cell phone users lately. They don't like hearing other people's cell phone conversations on the bus, in a store, etc. One group of people have even organized a movement against it. My question is: why?What's the difference between somebody having a personal conversation about "the game" or "last night" on their cell phone, and somebody else having

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-1123567536408255182005-08-09T02:05:00.000-04:002005-08-09T02:05:36.413-04:00

So I've been thinking about the idea of using public keys instead of passwords to gain entry into web sites. It has the advantage that users don't have to remember anything but their email address (if that!). I think it's also more secure. I've written a semi-informal paper about it, and I'd appreciate comments from both the tech-savvy (who can speak to the security) and not-so-sophisticated (who

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-1122960962603957852005-08-02T01:33:00.000-04:002005-08-02T01:49:34.960-04:00

I just finished reading Ender's Shadow (Orson Scott Card). This great book ends with a Biblical quote from the parable of the prodigal son: "Drink and be merry. for my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found." It made me realize that this book, primarily the story of a somewhat cold-hearted but super-intelligent child, is littered with these Biblical references. How funny it is,

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14904157.post-1122576670107121922005-07-28T14:47:00.000-04:002005-07-28T14:51:10.110-04:00

Welcome to my new blog. Why does the world need a new blog? I don't know. It probably doesn't. But I wanted somewhere to write down some thoughts, and why not share them?Why tubthumping? Because that's what I intend to do here.

Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16995096272302640918noreply@blogger.com0