Forehead-palm Worthy
Posted by Christopher Smith
Welcome to Southern California, cyclists!
I've Been Robbed.
Posted by Christopher Smith
So, tonight I was robbed. At gun point. Fortunately I was not physically harmed, and all that was stolen was my wallet. I was robbed right outside my house which is more than a bit frightening. I don’t much want to go through the details of the incident itself as I haven’t really been able to digest it yet. Indeed, while the whole thing was going on, I was thinking to myself: “I have a gun pointed at me, and I know this is a really dangerous situation and I could die if things go sideways, but I really can’t process that fact right now. Right now I need to focus on remaining calm, not doing anything to surprise or agitate this guy, and giving him my wallet.” I still haven’t really processed the “you could die right now” or the “this really drives home just how vulnerable we all are” aspect of it.
What I have had a wonderful chance to experience is the joy of trying to report all your credit cards, bank cards, etc. are stolen. I think I was able to remember most of what was in my wallet, but that was where the fun started. Without exception, every credit card company I called put me on hold, typically for 5 minutes, once as long as 15 minutes. Just finding the numbers to call was a PITA in a lot of cases. Sure there are numbers on the back of your card, but are their numbers on the company website? Not really. Searching on “stolen card” on the company website wasn’t too useful either. The “contact us” links frequently didn’t have a 24hr number to call to report a lost or stolen card. A lot of the companies I ended up contacting through automated services that first wanted… my card number (hmm… let me get it out of my wallet here… oh yeah, I don’t have that because it was stolen!!!). Eventually I was able to navigate to all of them except my HELOC. Get this: my HELOC card apparently does NOT have a 24hr number I can call to report a lost or stolen card. My ATM card, and my credit card (both with the same company) do, but my HELOC card, which is tied to a MUCH larger credit line than anything else, doesn’t. WTF?
What I don’t get is why there isn’t a button somewhere on all these websites where I can just deactivate my card online. It would save the credit card companies a lot of money in customer service time, and it doesn’t seem nearly as likely to be subject to abuse as most anything else you can do already on these web sites.
The Pilot Is Expecting Some Turbulence Ahead
Posted by Christopher Smith
Unfortunately, the server this blog is hosted on is getting a wee bit flaky (for definitions of “wee bit” that involve “several times an hour”). While it isn’t crashing, it is hanging for several minutes at a time. This appears to be a UML bug, and probably an old one that has long since been fixed at that, but we have limited options in a addressing it for a host of reasons that you truly want to hear nothing about. To further complicate things, my DSL at home has become “intermittent” (the best kind, because it always comes up when you call tech support), so I can’t even host the blog there to achieve better uptimes.
The good news is, new hardware should be arriving soon, and with it an entirely new platform (built on OpenVZ). Cross your fingers and hope that all goes well, and maybe you’ll be able to read more mindless drivel from yours truly Really Soon Now.
Back In The Saddle Again
Posted by Christopher Smith
So, xman.org accidentally was left to expire. Any of you domain parkers out there will be disappointed to learn that I’ve now locked it away for the next decade. I kind of feel sorry for Network Solutions given how much spam must have been routed their way. I’m sure mail and other services will continue as per normal shortly.
Sometimes a Picture Is Worth More Than 1000 Words
Posted by Christopher Smith
Normally I’m not a big fan of Valleywag, but days like today are the ones they really suit up for. Without further ado, let me summarize today’s tech news:
Dum da dum da dum!
Posted by Christopher Smith
I swear, only in Canada can you have controversies like this, and in particular have them end like this.
Word to the wise: three things you don’t mess with in Canada: Hockey, Beer, and National Health Care. Despite what you’ve heard elsewhere, the Apocalypse will happen when hockey players use private insurance that won’t let them drink beer.
The Raw and The Cooked: C++0x Extensible Literals
Posted by Christopher Smith
When I look at C++, and squint a certain way, it appears to be a heroic attempt to retrofit a real type system on top of C’s terribly weak one. C’s weak typing is, for the most part (because we can’t possibly break backwards compatibility… except for when we do), augmented with C++’s strong typing. C’s typeless preprocessor is augmented with C++’s so-thoughtful-about-types-it-is-sentient template system. C’s structs are augmented with C++ objects and operator overloading. C’s weak typing and don’t-ask-me-why-just-cast-it operator are augmented with the far stricter, precise, and admittedly verbose static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>, reinterpret_cast<>. C’s unfortunate format string and varargs oriented I/O functions are augmented with C++’s strongly typed std::iostreams. Retrofits can sometimes be stronger and more powerful than other approaches, but they are almost inevitably more complex, less elegant, and generally less lovable than “from scratch” solutions. I think many programmers feel the C++ committee was engaged in an academic exercise to demonstrate just how true this principle could be. Looking over the C++0x proposals, it appears as though a strong sentiment on the C++ committee’s part, was that C++98 was too limited a case study and they could go further to produce more spectacular results, an opinion that has been greeted by jeers and cheers (seems like mostly jeers on the blogosphere, but then… it’s the blogosphere).
One of the benefits of all this effort is that in C++ user defined types are practically first class citizens in C++’s type system, largely indistinguishable from primitive types (Java has also realized they missed this boat and is attempting to correct it, albeit through an alternative trajectory more consistent with its nature with things like autoboxing). I say “largely”, because there are some subtle differences (well, in true C++ fashion, they are only subtle until you encounter them, at which point they are as subtle as a punch in the face) that continue to annoy, and the C++0x committee’s holy quest is leading them to find new ways to address this. Perhaps one of the more interesting efforts to bridge the remaining gaps between user-defined types and primitive types in C++ is the Extensible Literals proposal.
Read more...CSI: Dialog Written By Millions of Monkeys Copying Tech Manuals
Posted by Christopher Smith
Just let me whip up a Python script here to recursively query the root server for the host name of that IP address… wait, even that isn’t as bad.