Category: tech

Incompetent Spammer

Look, if you really insist on wasting my time with offers that I am never going to fall for, I would suggest that you first learn to configure the spam software correctly.

From: “Barney Gorman” < %CUSTOM_FINANCIAL_TERMSgestapo@gmail.com>
Subject: Darion Herrera
X-Mailer: Opera7.23/Win32 M2 build 3227
Received: from %RND_HOST
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 06:40:08 -0600

Lynda,

%CUSTOM_LINK

Barney Gorman

Now I will never know what random CUSTOM_FINANCIAL_TERM (+gestapo!?!?) that was supposed to catch my attention in this email from RND_HOST, as to make me click on CUSTOM_LINK. Such loss!

Sincerely, %RND_NAME

PS. My guess is that you need to add a % to terminate the special strings, like this: %CUSTOM_LINK%. Good luck.

Windows Vista and OSX Intel: Threats to Gaming History

A sizable portion of video game history is going to be rendered inaccessible to the average user within the next few years:

According to Eweek, Windows Vista will not be able to run 16-bit programs, so Windows 3.1 programs, and many DOS programs (most? all?) will cease to work once you install upgrade to Vista.

Apple’s switch to Intel chips also means the end of OS 9 support, so all your pre-2001 Mac games are not going to work anymore.

We will still be able to play old games in the future by running various emulators and virtual machines, but it will be out of reach for most users.

11 years from the release of Windows’95 to not supporting Windows 3.1 is a very short time in culture, but 5 years from the release of OSX to not supporting OS9 is the blink of an eye.

These are corporate decisions that could be reversed. Somebody should stage a campaign. Any takers?

Programming as a Game: Google Code Jam & Topcoder

Registration for the Google Code Jam 2005 ends August 22nd.

The event is hosted by Topcoder, who has done impressive work creating automated online multiuser programming competitions.

The basic format is this:

  • You register and download the Topcoder client program.
  • The actual competition is in real time. You are placed in a group with perhaps 25-50 other users and are given three programming tasks of varying difficulty (make a program that given this input, returns this output etc…) which you can then solve in a number of different programming languages.
  • After having submitted your programs, there is a brief pause where you can go over the programming of your competitors and find flaws for extra points.
  • The Topcoder system then runs your program with a number of test cases. If your program fails, you get 0 points, otherwise your score depends on how quickly you solved the task.

The actual challenges seem to be mostly standard computer science “hard problems” – problems that are easy to solve if you have an infinitely big computer, but very hard if they have to be run in a few seconds. Find the shortest path through a changing graph, that sort of thing. (Which certainly favors people who have actually studied computer science.)

Programming is a strange activity, but kudos to Topcoder for using it as a game.

Call me a hopeless romantic. I’ll miss the PowerPC.

No, not me.

I was about to write about how the reactions to Apple’s switching to Intel are deeply irrational and emotional. If you don’t program in assembler, who cares what chip it is?
And yet, even to a non-Mac person like me, the PowerPC chip always had a strange allure… something vague about elegance of design, lots of registers, something stylish, cool even.

But at Ars Technica, John Siracusa has written something way better that what I was coming up with it, a deeply honest article about his feelings for the PowerPC.

Oh, I fully realize the market realities that conspire to make all of this x86 effort worthwhile, but this is about emotion, not reason. And if I didn’t give significant weight to my feelings when it comes to my platform choice, would I really have been a Mac user for the past 21 years?

And so I’ll tell you what I think: Macs look cool, that’s it. The GUI is identifical to Windows XP, but better looking. The PowerPC was a great sell – it’s just a chip, but people cared. Breaking up is hard to do. Move on.

[More]
Aside from the tech details – how much hassle is it going to be to deal with two processor architectures at the same time and how fast will the emulation be – here’s a question: What part of Apple’s market share comes from the fact that Macs are perceived as different/alternative? How much of that perception will disappear with Macs running (more) mainstream chips? How much will this hurt sales?

Blogging at 10,000 Feet

Something new – the airline (SAS) finally got around to providing wireles internet on long-haul flights, so I am blogging this over the ocean northwest of Denmark. Good thing on a 9-hour flight.

I don’t think it will add significantly to the quality of blogging in general, but it turns plane trips into something actually useful.

The ping to back home is 650ms, so no Counter-Strike for today.