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I Am Absolutely Serious When I Point Out That Just A Few Days Ago I Tried The Following New Busker's Schtick:

MAD DOCTOR MIKE

ASK ME A QUESTION

Before I go on, let me point out that I really am a Solar Astronomer. It's just that Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

So some cute young thing tools up on her Velocipede to ask:

"What would happen if the Sun went out?"

The happy news is that I got a bus ticket out of it. That would be like me asking modus how to be a CyberStalker.

Anyway, a good three solid hours after I stepped away from my own table, I pointed out to Kuro5hin's Almost But Not Quite Yet Newest Member:

"Now you too have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder."

The reason I am Homeless Like Me is not because I am in any way symptomatic, but because I am Swimming to Patagonia because that is The Land Where the Penguin Knows Her Name.

Yes, Really: Penguins really do know their names, just like cats and dogs do.

I figure naming all of Patagonia's penguins might - just might - be a far better use of my time than spending the rest of my days sweating the fact that the roads and streets all over the Pacific Northwest really don't run from Northwest to Southwest, or from Northeast to Southwest as all the streetsigns assert they do.

It's just that borking all your traffic signs is just what you need to also bork an armed insurrection.

Go Look At Google Maps If You Don't Believe Me.

Occupy WHAT Now?

FUCK THAT!

The President's Analyst starring The Immortal James Coburn will set you back just nine and a half bucks on DVD. C'mon, you'd spend half that much on an unprotected buttfuck from one of my many newfound friends down at the Rescue Mission.

"Would you like to watch a movie?" asked Tani, then a graduate student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

"I have The President's Analyst."

"NO SHIT?!?!"

"That's my all-time favorite movie!"

"Is it because it speaks to your paranoia?"

I found myself quite puzzled, because while The President's Analyst sinks it to the Paranoia-Laden Hilt, strangeley that has never been the reason.

I know now the reason:

Coburn's Psychoanalyst character knew too much.

So do I right now.

Everybody else will as well, but only if they learn to use Search Engines the way I learned to use Search Engines.

Now that she has her PhD, while strictly speaking she is "Doctor Newell", she still prefers to be referred to as "Tani".

Tani was one of the very first people with whom I correspended regularly after publishing my first explanation of Suicide Cults shortly after the Heaven's Gate Mass Suicide in San Diego in the Spring of 1997.

The entire world recoiled in horror as it tried to contemplate how it could possibly be that more than thirty talented young web designers could be duped into eating Phenobarbital-laced Applesauce and Pudding, then washing their dessert down with hard liquor, shortly after having dropped their - l

I Am Absolutely Serious When I Point Out That Just A Few Days Ago I Tried The Following New Busker's Schtick:

MAD DOCTOR MIKE

ASK ME A QUESTION

Before I go on, let me point out that I really am a Solar Astronomer. It's just that Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

So some cute young thing tools up on her Velocipede to ask:

"What would happen if the Sun went out?"

The happy news is that I got a bus ticket out of it. That would be like me asking modus how to be a CyberStalker.

Anyway, a good three solid hours after I stepped away from my own table, I pointed out to Kuro5hin's Almost But Not Quite Yet Newest Member:

"Now you too have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder."

The reason I am Homeless Like Me is not because I am in any way symptomatic, but because I am Swimming to Patagonia because that is The Land Where the Penguin Knows Her Name.

Yes, Really: Penguins really do know their names, just like cats and dogs do.

I figure naming all of Patagonia's penguins might - just might - be a far better use of my time than spending the rest of my days sweating the fact that the roads and streets all over the Pacific Northwest really don't run from Northwest to Southwest, or from Northeast to Southwest as all the streetsigns assert they do.

It's just that borking all your traffic signs is just what you need to also bork an armed insurrection.

Go Look At Google Maps If You Don't Believe Me.

Occupy WHAT Now?

FUCK THAT!

The President's Analyst starring The Immortal James Coburn will set you back just nine and a half bucks on DVD. C'mon, you'd spend half that much on an unprotected buttfuck from one of my many newfound friends down at the Rescue Mission.

"Would you like to watch a movie?" asked Tani, then a graduate student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

"I have The President's Analyst."

"NO SHIT?!?!"

"That's my all-time favorite movie!"

"Is it because it speaks to your paranoia?"

I found myself quite puzzled, because while The President's Analyst sinks it to the Paranoia-Laden Hilt, strangeley that has never been the reason.

I know now the reason:

Coburn's Psychoanalyst character knew too much.

So do I right now.

Everybody else will as well, but only if they learn to use Search Engines the way I learned to use Search Engines.

Now that she has her PhD, while strictly speaking she is "Doctor Newell", she still prefers to be referred to as "Tani".

Tani was one of the very first people with whom I correspended regularly after publishing my first explanation of Suicide Cults shortly after the Heaven's Gate Mass Suicide in San Diego in the Spring of 1997.

The entire world recoiled in horror as it tried to contemplate how it could possibly be that more than thirty talented young web designers could be duped into eating Phenobarbital-laced Applesauce and Pudding, then washing their dessert down with hard liquor, shortly after having dropped their - l

I Am Absolutely Serious When I Point Out That Just A Few Days Ago I Tried The Following New Busker's Schtick:

MAD DOCTOR MIKE

ASK ME A QUESTION

Before I go on, let me point out that I really am a Solar Astronomer. It's just that Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

So some cute young thing tools up on her Velocipede to ask:

"What would happen if the Sun went out?"

The happy news is that I got a bus ticket out of it. That would be like me asking modus how to be a CyberStalker.

Anyway, a good three solid hours after I stepped away from my own table, I pointed out to Kuro5hin's Almost But Not Quite Yet Newest Member:

"Now you too have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder."

The reason I am Homeless Like Me is not because I am in any way symptomatic, but because I am Swimming to Patagonia because that is The Land Where the Penguin Knows Her Name.

Yes, Really: Penguins really do know their names, just like cats and dogs do.

I figure naming all of Patagonia's penguins might - just might - be a far better use of my time than spending the rest of my days sweating the fact that the roads and streets all over the Pacific Northwest really don't run from Northwest to Southwest, or from Northeast to Southwest as all the streetsigns assert they do.

It's just that borking all your traffic signs is just what you need to also bork an armed insurrection.

Go Look At Google Maps If You Don't Believe Me.

Occupy WHAT Now?

FUCK THAT!

The President's Analyst starring The Immortal James Coburn will set you back just nine and a half bucks on DVD. C'mon, you'd spend half that much on an unprotected buttfuck from one of my many newfound friends down at the Rescue Mission.

"Would you like to watch a movie?" asked Tani, then a graduate student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

"I have The President's Analyst."

"NO SHIT?!?!"

"That's my all-time favorite movie!"

"Is it because it speaks to your paranoia?"

I found myself quite puzzled, because while The President's Analyst sinks it to the Paranoia-Laden Hilt, strangeley that has never been the reason.

I know now the reason:

Coburn's Psychoanalyst character knew too much.

So do I right now.

Everybody else will as well, but only if they learn to use Search Engines the way I learned to use Search Engines.

Now that she has her PhD, while strictly speaking she is "Doctor Newell", she still prefers to be referred to as "Tani".

Tani was one of the very first people with whom I correspended regularly after publishing my first explanation of Suicide Cults shortly after the Heaven's Gate Mass Suicide in San Diego in the Spring of 1997.

The entire world recoiled in horror as it tried to contemplate how it could possibly be that more than thirty talented young web designers could be duped into eating Phenobarbital-laced Applesauce and Pudding, then washing their dessert down with hard liquor, shortly after having dropped their - l

Granted, Heroin, Crack and Methamphetamine will do more damage faster, but far more people are hooked on Alcohol.

I myself am quite severely Mentally Ill, but for the most part I manage to do alright, for example I "Make Money Working At Home" as a Custom Software Developer, which readily enables me to take time off when I start Hallucinating.

I'd say over half of the other patients I've met in Psychiatric Inpatient Units are dependent on some manner of chemical, and that more than half of those are Alcoholics.

Do you know what "The D.T.'s" are? Delirium Tremens?

Most people think that it's Alcohol Withdrawal, but it's actually far, far more serious than that: Delirium Tremens can kill you. It will certainly fuck you up with all manner of Neurological damage.

Our nerve bundles are surrounded and protected by a lipid - or fatty - sheath made of this stuff called "Myelin". It has much the same effect on our nerves as plastic or rubber insulation has electrical wire.

But fats and oils are readily soluble in Alcohol. That's why I use Methyl Alcohol to clean my Telescope Mirrors. If you drink enough alcohol often enough and for a long enough time, the Alcohol will dissolve away and so largely destroy the Myelin Sheaths of all the nerve bundles in your entire body.

For reasons I don't fully understand, this doesn't seem to cause a noticeable problem until the Drinker is denied his Liquor. I don't think it's that they're just too drunk to notice. It just has to be something more complex than that.

My father was an Officer in the United States Navy. One day he explained to me all about Delirium Tremens, by telling me about an Enlisted Man aboard one of his ships that had been thrown in the Brig for being Drunk on Duty.

My father said that for days on end, you could hear that Poor Fucker screaming in agony all over the entire ship.

-- Mike the Teetotaler

Granted, Heroin, Crack and Methamphetamine will do more damage faster, but far more people are hooked on Alcohol.

I myself am quite severely Mentally Ill, but for the most part I manage to do alright, for example I "Make Money Working At Home" as a Custom Software Developer, which readily enables me to take time off when I start Hallucinating.

I'd say over half of the other patients I've met in Psychiatric Inpatient Units are dependent on some manner of chemical, and that more than half of those are Alcoholics.

Do you know what "The D.T.'s" are? Delirium Tremens?

Most people think that it's Alcohol Withdrawal, but it's actually far, far more serious than that: Delirium Tremens can kill you. It will certainly fuck you up with all manner of Neurological damage.

Our nerve bundles are surrounded and protected by a lipid - or fatty - sheath made of this stuff called "Myelin". It has much the same effect on our nerves as plastic or rubber insulation has electrical wire.

But fats and oils are readily soluble in Alcohol. That's why I use Methyl Alcohol to clean my Telescope Mirrors. If you drink enough alcohol often enough and for a long enough time, the Alcohol will dissolve away and so largely destroy the Myelin Sheaths of all the nerve bundles in your entire body.

For reasons I don't fully understand, this doesn't seem to cause a noticeable problem until the Drinker is denied his Liquor. I don't think it's that they're just too drunk to notice. It just has to be something more complex than that.

My father was an Officer in the United States Navy. One day he explained to me all about Delirium Tremens, by telling me about an Enlisted Man aboard one of his ships that had been thrown in the Brig for being Drunk on Duty.

My father said that for days on end, you could hear that Poor Fucker screaming in agony all over the entire ship.

-- Mike the Teetotaler

October 28, 2005

I am working on a project with three young programmers and a manager. The oldest of the programmers is more than ten years younger than I. The manager is older, but does not know much about programming beyond how to check our code out of Subversion and type "make" to check our progress.

I was talking to my buddy Leo Baschy yesterday about it. Leo's around the same age I am. He is a Rocket Scientist: he wrote MacsBug 6.2 when he worked for Apple, and spent several years writing an access control application that he is just now bringing to market. Leo Does Things Right.
I told Leo I really enjoyed talking shop with someone who had a clue. But I said:

"When I talk to those guys about how to write better code I have the sense that their experience of me is like going to church.

"Many go to church. How many are without Sin?"

"But I didn't learn to preach because I studied at the seminary. It's because I was a derelict on Skid Row until I was saved by..."

"... smart pointers and automated testing."

Many - but definitely not all - security flaws that leave one's code or one's box vulnerable to exploits are nothing other than simple bugs.

Most insidiously, storing an input buffer on the runtime stack, then reading an element from a file or network connection without validating that the size of that element complies strictly with the file format or network protocol specification, enables one to prepare a "Specially Crafted Document" or Network Packet that overflows the buffer, overwrites the proper return address on the stack with one of its own, then when that subroutine returns, instead of control returning to the caller, control is passed to malware code that is included with that too-big file or network element.

It's a little tricky to actually craft these documents, but I assure you that if you read Learn Java in 21 Days, you will learn absolutely all you require to enable Stack Smashing Buffer Overflows for your users.

Don't think that Plain Text File Formats like HTML, or Text Network Protocols like HTTP or POP are any manner of protection!

Just now I had a look through the Failure Report produced by the Analog Web Server Log File Analyzer. Here are some choice tidbits:

$ grep ajax_create_folder access.log | sed 's+^.*"GET+GET+' | sed 's+HTTP/1\.1".*$+HTTP/1.1+' | wc
184 552 16980

$ grep ajax_create_folder access.log | sed 's+^.*"GET+GET+' | sed 's+HTTP/1\.1".*$+HTTP/1.1+' | sort | uniq | wc
102 306 9466

$ grep ajax_create_folder access.log | sed 's+^.*"GET+GET+' | sed 's+HTTP/1\.1".*$+HTTP/1.1+' | sort | uniq | head
GET //ajax_create_folder.php HTTP/1.1
GET /Gallery/zenphoto/zp-core/zp-extensions/tiny_mce/plugins/ajaxfilemanager/ajax_create_folder.php HTTP/1.1
GET /Gallery/zp-core/zp-extensions/tiny_mce/plugins/ajaxfilemanager/ajax_create_folder.php HTTP/1.1
GET /Photo/zp-core/zp-extensions/tiny_mce/plugins/ajaxfilemanager/ajax_create_folder.php HTTP/1.1
GET /Photos/zp-core/zp-extensions/tiny_mce/plugins/ajaxfilemanager/ajax_create_folder.php HTTP/1.1
GET /Pics/zp-core/plugins/tiny_mce/plugins/ajaxfilemanager/ajax_create_folder.php HTTP/1.1
GET /Scripts/tiny_mce/plugins/ajaxfilemanager/ajax_create_folder.php HTTP/1.1
GET /ZenPhoto/zp-core/zp-extensions/tiny_mce/plugins/ajaxfilemanager/ajax_create_folder.php HTTP/1.1
GET /Zenphoto/zp-core/zp-extensions/tiny_mce/plugins/ajaxfilemanager/ajax_creat

That's why operating system kernels that are writing by clueful coders validate DMA commands from target Firewire devices.

I've done a whole lot of Firewire storage firmware, mostly for Wiebetech. The way Firewire drives work is that the Initiator - your PC - transmits SCSI Command Descriptor Blocks - CDBs - the Target - the disk - via the Serial Bus Protocol 2 - SBP-2. (There was an SBP protocol at first but it was withdrawn for some reason).

After that the Initiator sits quietly by until the Target informs the initiator that the CDB has been processed.

I think they designed it this way in part because Targets have limited processing capacity, so allowing the Target to drive the protocol also allows it to control the rate at which work is performed. But you're also trusting your Target to deliver the file the user just double-clicked, rather than overwriting the buffer cache entries that contain /etc/shadow.

One of the very best hacks ever at the MacHack conference was that some guy wrote a FireWire applicaiton that would display an animation of a fire burning in a brick fireplace on the screen of any other Macintoh is was connected to.

The Mac whose screen would show that heart-warming image did not have any extra software installed on it at all. Instead the Mac with the Hack installed would DMA it directly into the other Mac's video memory!

Michael David Crawford, who is available for storage, embedded systems and driver consulting.

• libmdc: Mike Crawford's C++ Memory Management and Testing Library (Boost v1.0)
• Warp Life for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch (Affero GPLv3) - Coming Real Soon Now
• Manic Depressive Geeks
• Living with Schizoaffective Disorder
• Is There a Cause for Which You Would Give Your Life?
• My Deepest Fear
• Why I'm Proud to to be a Dirty GNU Hippy - Got me banned when I posted it to Webmasterworld

And your point is?

"Mania" is no joke. A symptom of my own Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder, Mania is a euphoric state of mind that, while it can feel good, is very very dangerous. Manic people are extremely creative, but when manic, have no way of distinguishing really good ideas from really bad ones.

For example, a man with Bipolar Affective Disorder - Manic Depression - drank eighteen beers one day then knocked over a bank. He carried his loot across the street, sat under a bush then quietly waited for the police to arrive.

I pull stunts like that myself from time to time, but fortunately for me Mania is quite rare. I'm the opposite kind, in that I spend much of my life contemplating suicide.

Good Day.

Michael David Crawford, who invites his critics to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

• libmdc: Mike Crawford's C++ Memory Management and Testing Library (Boost v1.0)
• Warp Life for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch (Affero GPLv3) - Coming Real Soon Now
• Manic Depressive Geeks
• Living with Schizoaffective Disorder
• Is There a Cause for Which You Would Give Your Life?
• My Deepest Fear
• Why I'm Proud to to be a Dirty GNU Hippy - Got me banned when I posted it to Webmasterworld

And your point is?

"Mania" is no joke. A symptom of my own Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder, Mania is a euphoric state of mind that, while it can feel good, is very very dangerous. Manic people are extremely creative, but when manic, have no way of distinguishing really good ideas from really bad ones.

For example, a man with Bipolar Affective Disorder - Manic Depression - drank eighteen beers one day then knocked over a bank. He carried his loot across the street, sat under a bush then quietly waited for the police to arrive.

I pull stunts like that myself from time to time, but fortunately for me Mania is quite rare. I'm the opposite kind, in that I spend much of my life contemplating suicide.

Good Day.

Michael David Crawford, who invites his critics to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

• libmdc: Mike Crawford's C++ Memory Management and Testing Library (Boost v1.0)
• Warp Life for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch (Affero GPLv3) - Coming Real Soon Now
• Manic Depressive Geeks
• Living with Schizoaffective Disorder
• Is There a Cause for Which You Would Give Your Life?
• My Deepest Fear
• Why I'm Proud to to be a Dirty GNU Hippy - Got me banned when I posted it to Webmasterworld

And your point is?

"Mania" is no joke. A symptom of my own Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder, Mania is a euphoric state of mind that, while it can feel good, is very very dangerous. Manic people are extremely creative, but when manic, have no way of distinguishing really good ideas from really bad ones.

For example, a man with Bipolar Affective Disorder - Manic Depression - drank eighteen beers one day then knocked over a bank. He carried his loot across the street, sat under a bush then quietly waited for the police to arrive.

I pull stunts like that myself from time to time, but fortunately for me Mania is quite rare. I'm the opposite kind, in that I spend much of my life contemplating suicide.

Good Day.

Michael David Crawford, who invites his critics to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

I'd make a great Mafioso if I weren't so squeamish about Cement Overshoes. :-D

A little bird lit on my windowsill as I was having my morning coffee today to explain Barbados Bearer Bond Corporations.

I don't know the procedure for actually incorporating, but I expect there are services in Barbados that will handle it for you for a reasonable price.

Barbados Bearer Bond Corporations are Legal People just like the United States Disney and Heartst corporations, but when one incorporates one, one is issued a bond by the Government of Barbados.

Whoever physically posseses that bond owns the corporation, so be sure to keep it in a safe place.

ProTip: don't put it in a safe deposit box; The Man can legally drill out your lock if they obtain a search warrant. Instead, when you don't actively need to use it, pack it securely in a strong, leakproof container, then bury it three feet underground out in the woods somewhere, while noting your location with a GPS.

Once you have incorporated, your Bearer Bond Corporation can be the legal holder of a bank account. I suggest you don't open that account in the United States. I don't know about Barbados in particular, but many Caribbean nations have strict bank secrecy laws. They don't have taxes either. I understand Lichtenstein is that way if you live in Europe.

Once you have that bank account, you can receive wire transfers, EFTs and paypals.

Now you need to find a way to register a domain name anonymously. I looked into that a while back, and found some registrars that pointed out they were not beholden to United States Legal Authorities, but those registrars were in law-abiding nations, and so would be vulnerable were they to be served with a warrant by their own government. One way to do it would be to set up a second bearer bond corporation, so it could be the registrant. Slashdot once reported that Turkey permits anonymous registration, but I haven't yet looked into it.

Now you need an anonymous web hosting service. There are lots of those; they will accept payment by international money order. Just be careful not to get your fingerprints on the money order, its envelope or your cover letter. I recommend PRQ of Sweden; they will host anything that's legal in Sweden, and have their own full-time legal staff to fight takedown orders; I've been doing business with PRQ - under my real name - since 2010 and cannot recommend them highly enough.

Now you set up a completely legitimate website that monetizes itself in some way that doesn't require disclosing your true identity. A real good way would be to post Software Engineering Tutorials, then get Slashdotted once you build out your site. It's not that your Slashdotting will bring your site revenue, but that all the "organic links" that result will boost the SEO of your site, so that at a later time, it will actually get more visits every day as a result of search engine referrals than it did from your Slashdotting.

So don't be in a hurry to monetize your site. If you really are in a hurry to hide your assets, fly over to Amsterdam, buy a bunch of diamonds, then leave them deeply buried underground somewhere within the European Community - so you don't face customs inspection with a pocket full of Rocks, you see. Whenever you need some cash, dig them back up, keep a few with you then sell them for cash in Amsterdam.

You would do well to build several different sites, each on a widely different topic. Each will attract a distinctly different clientele, and its hard to know ahead of time what topic for a site will pay off. Whatever you do, you want a low-maintenance site, because you don't want to have to hire a webmaster to look after your money laundering operation. Every single one of my own sites consists entirely of static documents; the closest thing I come to a web application is that I now u

... like a sieve.

If I leave my MacBook Pro - the early 2006 Core Duo 32-Bit model, not one of the later 64-Bit Core 2 Duos - it will eventually run my unit completely out of swap space, so that most of the processes hang. Just killing processes won't get the other ones to resume, which I think is an OS X kernel bug.

I was all set to post a detailed Bugzilla report when I saw this article. I had not realized I was so far behind the current release.

But how the Hell can they go through two major revision levels in just a few months? That sounds just like when I was working for Microport Systems, and I started unexpectedly getting support calls about how we skipped a whole bunch of major releases. Well it turned out they just wanted to be at the same version number as SCO was.

While Microport SystemV/AT was real AT&T Unix for the 286 and 386 PCs, whereas SCO Xenix was developed completely independenly of Unix, Xenix was a far more mature product. Thus its higher version number led our potential users to think Xenix was the better choice.

Anyway, try this on your own Firefox, on any platform. Let me know whether you get a memory leak.

On Mac OS X, you can use /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app to look at the "Real Mem" used by a process. That's the amount of Virtual Memory which the process has actually allocated, not just its total virtual space.

I think the Windows task list that you can bring up with Ctrl-Alt-Delete will show you memory for Windows processes. On *NIX you can use "ps -ef".

Launch Firefox. Think of some event that made headlines all over the worl back in the Nineties. Open a few of the results in tabs. Open the pages they link from in new tabs. Open a few windows as well.

When you have a half dozen or so windows with maybe two or three hundred tabs, minimize all the windows, or on OS X, hide Firefox entirely, then watch its memory consumption.

In my case - again this is with 11.0 so maybe they've fixed in in version 13 - it grows by about a hundred megabytes per hour. I have all manner of crap on my drive, and OS X creates backing store files as needed, so after a while Firefox's memory leak will also fill up my filesystem. Once the filesystem is completely full, no process can allocate new VM anymore, so a bunch of them get suspended. I'm then presented with a window that won't go away until I terminate all the suspended processes.

Just quitting the tasks that I don't really need running, or throwing away files will help.

Michael David Crawford, who can't be bothered to recover his password.

• Michael David Crawford

I'm all over The Series of Tubes as I published my first site in 1994, and was on Usenet and mailing lists long before that.

out of 27,300,000 total hits we have at Number Ten and so stil on the first page:

Startup Weekend entrepreneurial event on alert after man threatens explosions, guns
by Molly Young, The Oregonian

More than 150 people at the Startup Weekend entrepreneurial event at Portland State University are on what event organizers described as a "lockdown" after a man who was asked to leave this morning later made threats of violence.

Six police officers were at the PSU Business Accelerator building on 2828 S.W. Corbett Ave. this afternoon.

After the man, Michael David Crawford, was removed this morning, he apparently threatened violence, explosions and guns, co-organizer Jeff Martens told participants at an afternoon meeting announcing the "lockdown." The threats were made on a Twitter account using the hashtag of the event, though the tweets appear to have been deleted.

Participants are allowed to enter and leave through one entrance, and Portland police said the event was not on an official lockdown.

Is British Airways going to treat me like family after they read that?

Here's What Really Happened.

The reason I haven't sued the Startup Weekend corporation, The Oregonian and, because they deleted exculpatory evidence from their site, Twitter for defamation is not because I don't want to or because I don't think I'd win metric boatloads of damages, but because I've been busy fixing up my websites. They were, at least for a whiile, a multitude of sins.

What I was really referring to on Twitter when I reported that I knew a straightforward way that I myself, from the comfort of my own home, could "make a large industrial facility detonate like a Bunker Buster Bomb" is lucidly explained in Jonathan Swift Sticks it to the Man.

ProTip: Obama and whoever the Prime Minister of Israel fucked up royally when they authorized StuxNet. Just you wait until the Iranians download their free eval copy of the Trihedral Engineering VTS - Visual Tag System - Human Machine Interface / Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition industrial control system software.

HMI / SCADA just about has to be the single most human-life critical software known to man. Wouldn't you think they'd Read The FIne Manual before - at the time I was hired - writing a half million lines of what Trihedral founder Glenn Wadden, a brilliant industrial engineer but an incompetent coder, described as a million line program that's only half complete?

Michael David Crawford, who looks forward to lighting smuggled Cuban cigars with burning hundred dollar bills.

• Gumstix the Company
• Gumstix Open Source Linux

I have a Gumstix Overo Fire COM - "Computer On Module". It really is about a size of a stick of chewing gum, however the I/O board it mounts on is much bigger. I'm heavily into woodworking, so I'm planning to make a real nice hardwood case for my Gumstix Android Tablet.

Gumstix sells individual units to hobbyists, but most of us have commercial products in mind, at which point Gumstix offers volume discounts.

The schematics of the I/O boards are Open Source.

Michael David Crawford, who can't be bothered to recover his password.

There have been a whole bunch of bugs filed against a "feature" of the new Ubuntu UI, which Ubuntu refuses to fix. I was considering writing a patch myself but then decided to just go with a different distro. I'm just about to evaluate the available new choices.

If one enlarges any one window so that it is more then I think 80% of the total size of the screen, from then on all new windows from that same application appear maximized. The even cover up the menu bar on the top and the dock on the left.

What that means to me is that I cannot use most of the screen on my laptop, because after that any new windows will obscure all the other windows that I wanted to be able to view in the background.

Michael David Crawford, who can't be bothered to recover his password.

While the ancient and crufty version of Skype that I run on my iPhone 4 does have a completely reproducible hard crash, I am at least able to avoid triggering it if I am careful.

But never versions of Skype have appeared in the Apple App Store a whole bunch of times since I downloaded the version I've got. Have a look at the end-user reviews; you don't need a device or iTunes, a web browser will do. Damn near every last one of them reports reproducible crashes. It's plainly apparent to me that the newer versions are far buggier than the one I've got.

Look man, Xcode and the iOS SDK is a damn dream to use. It's not like you need to hire a bunch of rocket scientists to get all the bugs out, and it's not like Skype doesn't have the cash to pay for code that wasn't written by Infinitely Many Monkeys.

In hopes of putting an end to nonsense like this, I'm working on the following technical articles. These articles would actually help every coder, not just those employed by Skype:

• assert() is the Documentation that Keeps on Testing
• Stress-Testing Software with Error Injection

I'll be having quite a lot more to say about code quality, testing and debugging over the coming months. Most of it will be posted somewhere within http://www.dulcineatech.com/tips/code/

I've been posting as AC because I'm having some trouble recovering my /. password. I'm an old-time slashdot user by the name of MichaelCrawford

While the ancient and crufty version of Skype that I run on my iPhone 4 does have a completely reproducible hard crash, I am at least able to avoid triggering it if I am careful.

But never versions of Skype have appeared in the Apple App Store a whole bunch of times since I downloaded the version I've got. Have a look at the end-user reviews; you don't need a device or iTunes, a web browser will do. Damn near every last one of them reports reproducible crashes. It's plainly apparent to me that the newer versions are far buggier than the one I've got.

Look man, Xcode and the iOS SDK is a damn dream to use. It's not like you need to hire a bunch of rocket scientists to get all the bugs out, and it's not like Skype doesn't have the cash to pay for code that wasn't written by Infinitely Many Monkeys.

In hopes of putting an end to nonsense like this, I'm working on the following technical articles. These articles would actually help every coder, not just those employed by Skype:

• assert() is the Documentation that Keeps on Testing
• Stress-Testing Software with Error Injection

I'll be having quite a lot more to say about code quality, testing and debugging over the coming months. Most of it will be posted somewhere within http://www.dulcineatech.com/tips/code/

I've been posting as AC because I'm having some trouble recovering my /. password. I'm an old-time slashdot user by the name of MichaelCrawford

From time to time I would post a link to the Beta Testing announcment for my iOS App. After a while Facebook would not allow me to post the link anymore, claiming that it was abusive.

A friend of mine who uses Facebook quite a lot had to sign up for a second account because her first account kept getting censored. She was not doing anything the least bit abusive, just using Facebook a lot to keep in touch with her friends.

Both Java and Objective-C are easy to learn and work with.

I've been searching for a mobile app programming job for a while. No one even wants to interview you unless you can provide the name of at least one App that is already in the App store.

I'm working on an implementation of Conway's Game of Life for the iPhone. Here is the manual. Here is my call for beta testers.

It's going to Alpha in a few days as it is stable and nearly feature-complete. I'll finish writing the manual during Alpha and Beta test, then as soon as I submit to the App Store, I'll write the whole thing over again in Java for Android.

Both systems have limited resources and tiny screens. You often have to solve the same UI problems for both systems, but there are some differences that mean your UI solutions will be different between the two platforms.

Android App Development is to be distinguished from Android Platform Development.

Android Apps are written in Java, are directly visible to the user and are user-installable.

The Android Platform includes the Linux kernel, the Dalvik Java VM and the various userspace middleware libraries. The kernel is written in C and assembly code. The middleware is written in C and C++. The Android API includes libraries written in Java.

If you're going to develop for Android, you should learn both App and Platform development. Which one you do in the long run depends on your personal abilities and preferences, but even if you only develop Apps, it's useful and helpful to understand the Platform.

As for documentation... Apple has always had the best developer doc. They also have very good developer mailing lists with active participation by Apple engineers. Thus if you have never done any mobile development at all, I'd start with the iPhone.

However, iPhone development requires an Intel Mac. Android can be done on Mac or Linux. If you don't have a lot of money and don't own a Mac, start with Android while you save up the money for an Intel Mac.

A Mac Mini works just fine for iPhone Development, but to sell yourself as a developer, especially if you want to do independent consulting, you'll need a MacBook Pro laptop. Those are way expensive.

Both Java and Objective-C are easy to learn and work with.

I've been searching for a mobile app programming job for a while. No one even wants to interview you unless you can provide the name of at least one App that is already in the App store.

I'm working on an implementation of Conway's Game of Life for the iPhone. Here is the manual. Here is my call for beta testers.

It's going to Alpha in a few days as it is stable and nearly feature-complete. I'll finish writing the manual during Alpha and Beta test, then as soon as I submit to the App Store, I'll write the whole thing over again in Java for Android.

Both systems have limited resources and tiny screens. You often have to solve the same UI problems for both systems, but there are some differences that mean your UI solutions will be different between the two platforms.

Android App Development is to be distinguished from Android Platform Development.

Android Apps are written in Java, are directly visible to the user and are user-installable.

The Android Platform includes the Linux kernel, the Dalvik Java VM and the various userspace middleware libraries. The kernel is written in C and assembly code. The middleware is written in C and C++. The Android API includes libraries written in Java.

If you're going to develop for Android, you should learn both App and Platform development. Which one you do in the long run depends on your personal abilities and preferences, but even if you only develop Apps, it's useful and helpful to understand the Platform.

As for documentation... Apple has always had the best developer doc. They also have very good developer mailing lists with active participation by Apple engineers. Thus if you have never done any mobile development at all, I'd start with the iPhone.

However, iPhone development requires an Intel Mac. Android can be done on Mac or Linux. If you don't have a lot of money and don't own a Mac, start with Android while you save up the money for an Intel Mac.

A Mac Mini works just fine for iPhone Development, but to sell yourself as a developer, especially if you want to do independent consulting, you'll need a MacBook Pro laptop. Those are way expensive.