Older blog entries for haruspex (starting at number 245)

gilbou, It's not Google's problem. It's the way whois greps the database that allows entries from non-Google domains (read from the right) to appear in the results.

nutella, The pithiest remark I've read on VSS is this one:

Here's a quote I once heard from someone who works at Microsoft:

"Visual SourceSafe? It would be safer to print out all your code, run it through a shredder, and set it on fire."

Also see this page.

johnnyb, I can perhaps explain the true/false one, having investigated this recently. The database client libs typically don't report a BOOLEAN column as a Boolean type to the client. It will be reported as TINYINT 0/1 (MySQL), CHAR(1) 't'/'f' (PgSQL), or perhaps other things. This can make it difficult to write a portable schema.

bi, fzort, I'm not sure why you're so excited about that population count function. If you're going to loop 32 times there are simpler expressions. But there are also non-looping solutions, which actually are clever. (Also see Wikipedia.)

tan, To install the MinGW cross-development system for Win32 on Linux, just emerge mingw (or equivalent).

vicious, put it this way: That might be the last chance you get to sit in a café and doodle, for a while. Enjoy it while you can. :)

titus, when it comes to external filesystem handling not all the points are in Wind'z' favour. For instance, on OS X a WebDAV mount is a first class filesystem, unlike WinXP. You're right that FTP is not one of OS X's supported external filesystems. WebDAV is arguably more useful anyway (especially over https).

ravidgemole, The idea has long been part of modern systems. See man random , egd, wikipedia on hardware RNG, Yarrow, etc. BSD and OS X even has a library function to seed from /dev/random, sranddev() .

oubiwann, Cory Doctorow also has some good notes of Shirky's talk (that page links both to the 2006 talk and a 2003 one I also found interesting).

Australia? A civilised democracy? You must be kidding. Web censorship without the support of law: That's life under little Johnny. Read the mea culpa speech you'll never hear at richardneville.com.