Monthly Archives: April 2004

Hmmm… hankering to play DOOM II on Windows XP with sound?

It’s been a slog, but finally, 400pp in, Stephenson’s Quicksilver is starting to come to life. It’s about time, considering that the second book is out already, and I hate getting lapped by the paperback of a novel. I still … Continue reading →

People use subclassing too much. The is-a relationship is a powerful one. All too often I see subclassing being used to save typing, rather than to express that an object really is a refinement of another. If you have a … Continue reading →

Just a quick report: I’m getting about 500 pieces of spam a day now. This is a huge improvement over the 300 or so that I was getting before the Can Spam act was passed. I’m also grateful for the … Continue reading →

Some asshole has done a “Joe Job” on fyyff.com, using random return addresses pointing to my domain. Death and destruction. Partial defenestration, slow torture, a public hanging, and the mailing of body parts to the other spammers. More later. God, … Continue reading →

About 200 brits were mistakenly tagged as crooks due to a “clerical error.” If anything, this is what the database-driven police state is going to look like. It will collect information from inaccurate credit reports, public records scanned-in by bored … Continue reading →

When you tell a lie, be sure to tell it big and deny, deny, deny. Of course the only reason we want to put RFID tags in every car is that it’s for your safety. Range, up to a mile. … Continue reading →

Vernor Vinge is a computer science professor and science fiction writer whose work I admire (actually, he’s recently retired from CS to write full time). I like his writing because he brings a computer-centric view of technology to the genre, … Continue reading →

More on the multi-author SFWA book-signing here in Seattle.

According to The Register, Sun is killing off its UltraSparc V project, code-named Eagle. I guess this is a shame (maybe they have something better in the pipeline?). I’ve never been a fan of Sparc (basically, register windows suck), and … Continue reading →