Archive for January, 2005
January 14, 2005 at 11:42 pm · Filed under General
It’s been a while and I’ve been meaning to cut off the main Slashdot feed that I read. I read the Main, Developer, Apple, BSD and Science feeds. For the last year I’ve felt as though the quality of the posts have just gone further and further down. I did an experiment and cut off the main feed for a while and I’ve found that I haven’t missed a thing. I’m also cutting the Science feed as well.
So that is the reason I mention the ‘kinda’ in the title. I do still read the Developer, Apple, and BSD feeds, but those usually get only about 1 - 5 posts on a good day. I can tolerate that for now and the titles are less misleading.
January 13, 2005 at 12:34 pm · Filed under General
I’ve started using an open-source cmd.exe replacement called Console. It’s open source and living over at sourceforge (here). I was looking for a cmd.exe window replacement that would allow me to resize the window on the fly like an xterm. I didn’t find one, but this replacement looked so good that I kept it.
The only problems I’ve had with it are that it doesn’t allow you to resize and that it doesn’t handle being on a second monitor very well. Otherwise, it is pretty cool looking and it does transparency right.
I recommend it.
January 12, 2005 at 5:30 pm · Filed under General
I’ve been thinking about Garbage Collection (GC) lately. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about reference counting. Before I start, lets review the state of the world.
GC systems are still a sticking point between different camps of programmers.
There is the performance camp, and they never see GC as a viable option. (OS, Embedded, and Game Engine writers)
Then there is the, ‘why must we suffer these inessential’ details group. (Everybody else).
Both groups have their individuals that don’t quite understand … that they really don’t understand. For example, there are probably quite a few C++ guys who don’t know how bad their allocators perform, or are using them incorrectly, or for a difference of a few microseconds. There are probably also the pro GC people who think that something is acceptable, when a normal user would be quick to unintall.
Right now, the GC group is winning. When you look at java, perl, python, C#, php, Visual Basic, etc, those languages are growing much faster than others. Even the C++ camp is moving to a reference counted GC world.
So, my question is this. Is there a middle ground? Can we do better? What if I want to mix languages… what if they all have to play together? If that is a design goal, then we should start thinking about this differently.
So far, from my experiences, the common solution to the problem has been the use of reference counting systems. I know that reference counting systems have their issues (the inability to free circular references), but at a certain granularity, they work really well. They are used all over the place in OS’s and component systems. Many advanced GC researchers can prove that the overall cost of a reference counting system is higher or not as good, but they cannot argue with their interactive performance.
Maybe it is time again to look at code sharing between different languages, and see if there is a way to build systems that can make both camps happy. Maybe it is time to look at computer architecture again and see if we can’t throw some hardware at the problem.
January 12, 2005 at 3:15 pm · Filed under General
If you ignore the lack of elevation, the computer is just like the cube motif that jobs loves.
Cubes are cool.
January 11, 2005 at 11:23 pm · Filed under General
Today I turned on a filter on my incoming SMTP connections. I use qmail, so I used an old program that I wrote called qmfilt. (You can get it over at sourceforge).
I already got rid of my old email addresses with friends. However, if email gets sent to one of those old addresses, it still gets into my mail system, queues, try’s to send a bounce, which then goes to some bogus address. This then ‘double bounces’ and ends up in my ‘postmaster’ queue which I get in my inbox…. Joy.
So, I turned on qmfilt and hand coded a more restrictive pattern matcher on the envelope. If an email matches that filter, I cause a ‘hard bounce’… or ‘Sorry, no thanks, and don’t try again’ right at the end of the SMTP transaction. So far it has been working like a charm. I’ve blocked 1574 spam emails so far and they didn’t even get a chance to hit my disk. Much better.
January 11, 2005 at 5:50 pm · Filed under General
I think Apple scored a home run with the new Mini Mac. They finally have something that is priced low yet capable of decently running OS-X. I can’t determine if the unit has a fan or not, but I think the design is just awesome. It is so small and clean. I find myself convinced that I will have one of these machines in the near future!
Way to go Apple!
January 9, 2005 at 11:49 am · Filed under General
eBay has gotten together with some other manufacturers and started ‘Rethink’. Frankly, it’s an old idea started by some smaller companies, but the the Computer/IT/Electronic Press tends to just regurgitate what has been fed to them. I mean, the only observation they can come up with is “where is Dell, they are conspicuosly absent”.
Well, the good news, is that it is still a good idea, and I’m sure there is a lot of old computer crap out there. I know I have quite a bit 
So here is the link: http://pages.ebay.com/rethink/
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