The profit of turning thugs into programmers
The Economist reports on a Milwaukee priest (who gave away the $10 million he earned as a developer before taking the vows) who is trying to curb street crime by teaching errant ne'er-do-wells computer programming:
Would-be programmers enter Homeboyz Interactive for a period of technical training, costing about $7,000 per student. They then move across to HBI Consulting to gain work experience. From there, they graduate to employment, sometimes with a corporate giant. Of HBI's 72 clients, 25 are in the Fortune 500. Companies such as GE Medical, Toyota Forklift, Northwestern Mutual Life, Verizon Wireless and BP have all used HBI to develop their websites.
The results are impressive. Of the 150 or so graduates from Brother Holub's programme, not one has been sacked. Instead, HBI graduates earn an average of $40,000 a year, and more than $63,000 after two years.
Via Rini.org.
Work Name Generator
So what do your co-workers call you behind your back? Or what should you call them? Find out (some names not suitable for whatever passes for mixed company these days).
Via Linkfilter.
11/01/01
A programmer's lament
Joel Spolsky is part of a team developing some new software package. He's been documenting the art of programming in the new millennium. After spending several frustrating hours trying to work around a bug in some Microsoft code library, he concludes:Ten years ago, to write code, you needed to know a programming language, and you needed to know a library of maybe 50 functions that you used regularly. And those functions worked, every time, although some of them (gets) could not be used without creating security bugs.
Today, you need to know how to work with libraries of thousands of functions, representing buggy code written by other people. You can't possibly learn them all, and the documentation is never good enough to write solid code, so you learn to use online resources like Google, DejaOpinion MSDN.
The world's best ATM
Not far from our office, there's an ATM that talks to you. OK, that's sort of cool in a 1980s "your door is ajar" kind of way. What's odd, though, is that it talks with a British accent, some 3,000 miles across the ocean from London.
But this ATM has nothing on this beauty designed to look like something out of an Egyptian tomb (the easily offended should avert their eyes at the side view).
10/31/01
Are anti-spammers killing people?
The award for the most ludicrous press release of the week goes to SafeSurf, a content-filtering vendor, which claims that an anti-spam group could be killing people.
SafeSurf doesn't like the Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS) and its Realtime Blackhole List. They're hardly alone in disliking MAPS (alhthough there's a certain pot/kettle aspect to the story of a company that makes software to censor Web sites complaining about a group that blocks access to Web sites).
What wins SafeSurf the award is its assertion in this press release that MAPS should be held liable for people's deaths:
Imagine trying to connect to a crisis assistance site after a devastating earthquake, only to find its among a vast IP group being blocked by RBL. People can die as the result of their blind imprecision. They MUST be regulated.
Does SafeSurf really think somebody who's just lived through a devastating earthquake is going to be calling up a Web site for emergency information?
Via Politech.
Web services and storage
When you read about Web services, chances are the articles are all about things like SOAP and UDDI - the middleware that connects all those different applications out there.
But what about the actual data? Dan Bricklin examines storage as it relates to Web services. Many people are concerned not so much about how their data will be used by Web services but how and where it will be stored (think about all the controversy over Microsoft's Passport). And what happens if you do entrust your data to a Web-service-enabled site and it disappears?
We won't hesitate much to let services work with our data, but we think of the data as a "thing" we should "own" and control. If a change in someone else's business model could block our access to our data, that is a very bad thing. We want the option to use the "our" data at a later time in a way we choose. To me, the implications are that services must be structured so that people feel they have independent full access and control of their data.
10/30/01
This barebones catalog shows what's for sale in a dot-com bankruptcy sale. Among the items: Lots of 3Com hubs and switches, HP laptops, 17-inch monitors, a technician's bench, black and gray "rolling-task chairs," a hot-pink round coffee table and a "Snow White" refrigerator. And, of course, the obligatory Aeron chairs.
Via Boing Boing.
10/29/01
Perl for the XXI-imum century
Lingua::Romana::Perligata is a Perl module that lets you write applications in Latin.
Why? Why not? Damian Conway of Monash University's School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, came up with the module. He's intrigued by the fact that, unlike in English or, for the most part, Perl, the location of a word or variable in a sentence or statement doesn't matter in Latin because of its extensive use of inflexion:
There is no reason why programming languages could not also use inflexions, rather than position, to denote lexical roles. Perl already makes some use of this idea by requiring different prefixes to denote differing types of symbols: $ to denote a scalar, @ to denote an array, & to denote a subroutine, etc.
Hokay, not quite as bizarre as var'aq, the Klingon programming language, but still, one gets back to the original question: quianam?
Via Weblog Wannabe.
Microsoft's blocking of non-IE browsers
Only Microsoft could screw up a celebration of a new OS (Windows XP) this way: The same week it was launching XP, it decided to block certain browsers from its MSN Web sites. The explanation was laughable (Microsoft claimed it only wanted standards-compliant browsers visiting its site; the main problem being that the site itself didn't comply with those standards). But was it a novel act? Hardly. Indeed, in the early days of the Web, some sites blocked access to non-Netscape browsers - which Microsoft got around by embedding a Mozilla string in the text its browser sent in response to interrogations by servers. Lawrence's Notebook has more.
RELATED LINKS
Compendium archive: Week of 01/21/02 Week of 01/14/02 Week of 01/07/02 Week of 01/02/02 Week of 12/03/01 Week of 11/26/01 Week of 11/19/01 Week of 11/12/01 Week of 11/05/01 Week of 10/29/01 Week of 10/22/01 Week of 10/15/01 Week of 10/08/01 Week of 10/01/01 Week of 9/24/01 Weeks of 9/10/01 - 9/17/01 Week of 9/3/01 Week of 8/27/01 Week of 8/20/01 Week of 8/13/01 Week of 8/6/01 Note: Compendium's entire staff took the week of 7/30 off. Week of 7/23/01 Week of 7/16/01 Week of 7/9/01 Week of 7/2/01 Week of 6/25/01 Week of 6/18/01 Week of 6/11/01 Week of 6/4/01
Tracking down a stolen Mac; Dead C Scrolls; Googlewhacking; How bad is it in the Valley?; Storage lessons from the Wayback Machine; The pub-seeking handheld; Internet gang wars; Outlook XP breaks MIME.
Why should iMac owners have all the eye candy?; Luxo Redux; So you think your job is bad; Google as a DNS replacement? Not so fast; Nokia exec cites stock plunge in speeding-fine appeal; The tragedy of the .coms; The Google parlor game; Some people *like* Steve the Dell Guy; Ban all Microsoft attachments?
Dot-com to bare all; iMac Dance; Wendy's remembers Dave; Search engine bites the dust; Wendy's Web site ignores Dave's death; Geek comic strip; Youngest security expert ever; Spam poetry; Confessions of a hacker; Breathless Apple; Dave Barry does Windows XP.
Dropping everything to vote; The best Apple rumors, ever; Guess Steve Case isn't getting into Harvard; Make your own O'Reilly cover; Boosting your wireless juice; Telnet lives!
This space intentionally left blank (vacation).
The most useless software ever; Is Microsoft getting ready to squash PC vendors?; Excite@Home: The Watergate of the New Economy?; No more 3Com Park. Is CMGI Field next?; Are you an e-bore?; This site'll have you coming and going; Entertainment Weekly's loss of innocence; Ensign Crusher as Entertainer of the Year; Oh, for the old days.
The Museum of Broken Packets; Just in time for Thanksgiving; Tourist Guy found; Why virtual offices suck; A domain ruling that sucks; Hacking the iPod.
Why you shouldn't ship computers via UPS; When .Net requires Java; High-tech grafitti artists; Spam from beyond the grave; New group tries to oversee the whole Internet; Paging Dick Tracy; Students use PDAs to cheat; Windaz for Aussies, Newfies; Another alternative to Passport; A virtual honeynet
Bill Gates: Father of open source; Verizon exec: Monopoly is good; Weird molecule names; E-mail: too much of a good thing?; A cluster of one; More woes for dot-bombers; Spam as weapon in the war on crime; Just when you think the Web can't get any better; Just when you think the Web can't get any worse; More proof I shouldn't be a wiseass; Using your Web logs to ID hacker attacks; Help save the FAQs; Who do you trust, baby?; Powerpuff Girls powerless against virus; Big IP pipe between US, Europe.
The profit of turning thugs into programmers; Work Name Generator; A programmer's lament; The world's best ATM; Are anti-spammers killing people?; Web services and storage; Get your Aerons here; Perl for the XXI-imum century; Microsoft's blocking of non-IE browsers.
Government info taken off the Web since 9/11; Beware hackers who talk too much; A contest you can enter sitting down; Now don't try this in the office; Bob Patterson must die; Finally, a useful 404 page; Tech calls from hell; Teletubbies XP; More XP fun; Anthrax and e-mail; Larry's ID card; World's longest gum-wrapper chain.
Let's drop PDAs on Afghanistan; Voice control? Try grunt control; Spam gets back to business; A content-management portal; Share your system tray with the world; Would you let the recording industry onto your network?; Al Queda's low-tech high tech; 9/11 archive; Shoe company gets open source after all; Pod people, coming soon to a cube near you.
Larry and Scott's dueling ID cards; Cringely: Broadband is dead; The dangers of Photoshop; The dangers of copy protection; Microsoft mining whois for telephone solicitations?; How to REALLY throw a LAN party; Good fences don't make good 'Net neighbors; How Google adapted to 9/11 news; Web services as over-hyped hooey; Why shoe guys shouldn't do open source; Online air hockey.
AT&T waives 9/11 wireless charges for some; Shifting gears; Craig Burton on the Novell/Microsoft suit; In search of the post-PC interface; Vibrating PDAs and wearable phones; Gary Condit's Web site; No, that isn't a real photo of a WTC tourist; How to throw a LAN party; How sucky is your intranet?
For grizzled 'Net veterans; UK ISP forced to pull deceptive ads; Pretty Good encryption controversy; Are you as smart as Miss America?; Really securing your computer; Still lots of insecure IIS servers; Kids, don't try this at home; Anthrax Kills; Larry's national database; Nimda hysteria?
Attack and post-attack items.
999,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall; Finally, a wind-up cell phone; Enough with the ringing!; The VoIP calculator; 802.11b insecurity; Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf explains IOS DHCP; Is ENUM the mark of the devil?; AOL gives user permanent demerit; The Ballmer music video; Cleveland news flash: Y2K was last year.
Re-routing around censorship; Us vs. them in scripting; The boss button; Fighting off the hackers for fun; Peer computing as a weapon of war; Unix poetry; The Windows Fatal Exception Decoder; New Fusion widget: Getting rid of spyware; The sound of 200 cell phones going off at once; Taleban Web site hacked; Hey, sysadmin, remember Sircam?
On the importance of flame wars; Bill Gates sees dead people?; A markup language for grunts and groans; Is Microsoft leaking those Ballmer dance videos?; Good Samaritan not so good?; Steve Ballmer works up a sweat; Open-source wireless cracking; When technology goes too far; Another dumb computer arrest?; Is Cisco Communist?
Moron marketers threaten 'Net users; Finding free wireless access; Complete wastes of time; OS holy war flares in North Carolina; Are programmers weird?; Somebody actually buys an X10 camera; We're number, uh, two!; Those after-hours computer discussions; An entire city running on Linux; Distributed spam fighter under development; Could a Warhol virus infect the entire 'Net in 15 minutes?; Tell AOL what to do with its CDs.
Fusion shatters a myth; Bridging .Net and Java?; AT&T Broadband cuts off non-IIS servers to fight Code Red; Bluetoothless; Tennessee town bites into Apple; And you thought TI-99/4A fans were over the edge; Biometrics coming to your local supermarket; Steve Ballmer a-hootin' and a-hollerin'; Speaking of Web images; Just how far PC prices have fallen; Does Starbucks' CEO get his own wireless strategy?
Crackers getting more sophisticated; Sex and Microsoft Office; The wonders of science, part MXXII; Finally, a useful virus; A shocking game controller; Big Ball of Mud school of programming; Two vitally important new resources; Adobe: Ooops; Eudora Welty, dead at 92; Centralizing Unix administration in Perl; Spellchecking the entire Web.
Worm turns on Microsoft Web servers; The day the ISP died; Cell-phone users have no shame; Even Internet consultants can screw up the 'Net; Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers; The ultimate cup of coffee; The solar-powered ISP; Everhost; Internet VCer: Oops; The Lego Palm and the pink fuzzy laptop; The Microsoft-English dictionary; Putting a loved one in the home.
Saving those all important VoIP calls; This site is a bright idea; Could wireless end messy divorces?; How much will that software really cost you?; Ghosts of failed dot-coms; The spy's guide to securing your Cisco routers; Oprah for Internet czarina?; What's Microsoft doing at an open-source conference?; Like a big pizza pi; Cyber-bullies; Better check your phone bill; Have some birthday pi.
How HP wastes energy to save energy; New toy for the bored and lonely; Weird programming languages; When sponsors are speakers; The case of the disturbing backwards monitor; Congress to ICANN: Drop dead; Yet another video game made into a movie; Smile, you're on Candid (Police) Camera; High-speed hotels; Network Solutions blocking name transfers?
One of the fathers of Usenet dead at 45; Are you ready for insta-spam?; Diary of a site collapse; Skirting the issue; Assimiliating the Web; Trolling for help; Software wars; Rating the rater; True tales from the help desk; How about spam embedded in your mail?
Unix diapers; A beautiful waste of time; A P2P taxonomy; This page is too stupid; Homeless dot-commer bogus?; Whee, Linux is fun!; Blue Screens everywhere; Forget viruses: This fungus eats CDs; Microsoft revises Smart Tags a bit; Homeless dot-commers.
Slashdot crashes the NSA; They may be Smart Tags, but they're not Original Tags; What open source and California wines have in common; Jakob Nielsen no tyro; How to make Windows 2000 really, really secure; Where the Internet begins; A useful computer bug; The clothes make the geek; The end of the Internet; Why PDF bites; Novel use of a wireless phone; Hidden info; When Web sites tell too much.
DSL modems are so '90s; Bye-bye Netscape; Get ready to upgrade those mail servers; The anti-.Net; The real reason to buy a Palm; Anatomy of a DDoS attack; Pain is good.
