Archive for the 'This blog' Category

Even more Hello Worlds

Saturday, March 11th, 2006

I posted something similar before: The worst possible Hello World. in that post, I presented a completely awful implementation of Hello World, which I wrote to disprove the notion that more lines of code == more productive coder.

I got to thinking about it yesterday, and decided that a new post was in order because a 50-line Hello World probably won’t look like much to a non-coder (e.g. boss) without some point of reference. so I wrote a webpage on the topic: Hello World, cut four ways. I present four different Hello Worlds (including the original Worst Possible Hello World), and explain why the first three are bad and the last one is the Best Possible Hello World.

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Regarding Apple Bug Friday

Saturday, March 11th, 2006

I’ve developed quite a backlog of bugs and feature requests to file. so I’m going to do ABF differently, at least for awhile.

You’re used to seeing my ABF posts titled “Report-an-Apple-bug Friday! N” (for N = 1–∞). Henceforth, a post so titled means that the bug was filed with Apple that day (which is consistent with all my ABFs so far). But, starting today, I’ll also file bugs on days other than Friday, so as to whittle down my backlog and give Apple that much extra lead time to fix these. Blog posts for such bug reports will be titled “Apple Bug Friday! N”. This tells you that the bug was filed previously, and is only now being blogged because today is a Friday.

The “Apple bug Friday!” posts will come at a rate of one per week, except when two or more bugs are similar (for example, I have a couple of kevent bugs to report that will be doubled up on next Friday). And if I find a new bug, and it happens to be on a Friday, I’ll do another “Report-an-Apple-bug Friday!” post.

Comments are now moderated.

Monday, January 23rd, 2006

I wish all blog-spammers imprisonment.

henceforth, when you try to comment on my blog, it will be sent to me to be moderated. I promise I’ll be judicious, only deleting spam and never editing a legitimate comment.

UPDATE 2006-08-27: The above applies to the old Blogger blog, not here (yet).

Audio version of ‘Compression and archive formats’

Monday, January 16th, 2006

I made my earlier blog post into a podcast. It’s just under ten minutes long, and in chaptered AAC format. Have a listen.

I used ChapterToolMe to do the chapters. It’s nice.

Run from DreamHost

Friday, January 13th, 2006

so I’ve been pursuing new webspace (but not very much, I admit — flipping through hosting providers’ websites all day is not my idea of fun). Colin turned me onto a provider called DreamHost, during their ‘777’ promotion — an entire year of shared hosting for under $10 (following which year, the price went up to the regular price of $9.99/month). sounded like a good deal, so I investigated.

I found a couple of clauses in their TOS and their domain registration agreement that concerned me. so I emailed them, one issue per email, and got replies stating that they would fix the problems. that was in November 2005.

this month, seeing that neither issue had been fixed (I had been checking from time to time during that span), I emailed them again. following is the email I got back from them, in full, unedited (except that I HTMLised it and removed their sales address). it includes my email, quoted in full, which provides all the details.

continued…

Hello,

On Wed, 11 Jan 2006, you wrote:

I emailed you on 2005-11-15 or 2005-11-16 (I’m not sure which, as I used the website form) regarding two issues with your agreements:

  1. the TOS says that there is a $49.95 set-up fee for all shared hosting packages. the shared hosting packages comparison page says that several of the packages have no set-up fee. one or the other needs to be changed.

  2. the domain-registration agreement says:

    22. GOVERNING LAW

    THIS AGREEMENT SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND INTERPRETED AND ENFORCED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF PROVINCE OF ONTARIO AND THE FEDERAL LAWS OF CANADA APPLICABLE THEREIN WITHOUT REFERENCE TO RULES GOVERNING CHOICE OF LAWS. ANY ACTION RELATING TO THIS AGREEMENT MUST BE BROUGHT IN ONTARIO AND YOU IRREVOCABLY CONSENT TO THE JURISDICTION OF SUCH COURTS.

when I emailed you about this previously, ‘Jeff’ replied:

We’re actually based in Los Angeles, California.

when I challenged this statement by citing the above quote, ‘Micki’ replied:

Thank you for pointing that out becasue at one time we did have canadian empolyees I will go ahead and have the devlopers edit that.

when will these issues be fixed?

I have passed this information along to our Abuse team for you.

Thanks,

John


DreamHost Sales Team   +   [sales email address deleted]
“We host your dreams”   https://panel.dreamhost.com/signup/
http://www.dreamhost.com/

run from them. (btw, in case it’s not clear: I am not, nor have I ever been, a DreamHost customer. but I was planning to be.)


UPDATE 2006-01-27: I just checked, and they have fixed their domain-registration agreement. it now says the State of California and the ‘Federal laws of United States of America’. still no progress on the TOS, though.

Fie on spam

Thursday, January 12th, 2006

I had to delete a couple of spam comments on the previous post. So if you’re wondering why there are two deleted comments there, that’s why.

If this keeps up, I’m going to enable word verification, which I don’t like because it’s a barrier to screen-reader users. Spammers begone!

UPDATE 2006-08-27: Note that this refers to the old Blogger blog, not the current blog.