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… threads are a bad substitute for lightweight processes with their own address spaces; the idea of threads is native to operating systems with expensive process-spawning and weak IPC facilities. htt…
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We are here in part, because this is probably the best we can do with today’s technology and, in part, because of historical accident. The accident is that we have adapted a general-purpose technology…
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The sad reality is that the realm of legitimate IT only has room for a small fraction of the community currently working in it. The difference between user expectations and reality, the gap between pr…
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We are reaching the software event horizon. Somehow we have employed more and more people to write software of less and less quality to satisfy an insatiable market for computer programs. As these pro…
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In 1989 they had a small exhibit on the New York World’s Fair site in Queens called “Remembering the Future” where they celebrated the futuristic visions of 1939 and 1964. The 1939 future mostly came…
Audio-bookery
I read books very rarely these days, or rather very slowly, sometimes just a page or two a day. One of the ways I do "read" regularly is orally rather than visually, by listening to 10-15 mi…
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That is the sorry reality of the bazaar Raymond praised in his book: a pile of old festering hacks, endlessly copied and pasted by a clueless generation of IT “professionals” who wouldn’t recognize so…
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I think the usual theory is that good data will overwhelm bad data. The problem is that assumes that the people entering bad data are outnumbered by folks willing to put in the effort to put in good d…
Experiences in framing
There was a painting we bought during December 2013 in New Orleans that had been lying around in a roll in the trunk of my car. A year and half later, it's finally up. I've hung up photograph…
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From a usenet posting little less than a decade ago, something that explains a common pattern in "high-level flame wars" on the internet ... the intelligence is being perverted in the servi…
A weekly recap of reading ...
... would be a great idea! Here is something I found from ten years ago on The Rad Geek People's Daily: It should be a matter of one or a few paragraphs. There’s no commentary above and beyond…
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In 2015, cryptocurrencies will stop being viewed as having “one bad year” — and start being viewed for what they are: modern-day Beanie Babies for ultra-libertarian math nerds. It’s stunning to me how…