to break down Slashdot. Actually, they were semi-prepared for this, only made a small mistake which caused a 3-hour outage. (via Digg)
Windows Vista
So much is being said these days about Windows Vista, Microsoft’s new version of its operating system, which will be released at the end of this month, that I decided I have nothing to add. Hopefully, I won’t upgrade to Vista any time soon and my next desktop will be a Linux machine. I wouldn’t have written all this unless this promotional video for Windows Vista hadn’t showed up. I have 3 words to sum it up, and I quote: “Coming October 2003”. (via Digg)
How to know your kid is a hacker
“Generic GM sedans cruise your neighborhood” is one of my favorites is this 31 items list. (via Digg)
I don’t know why anyone would want to do this…
… but if you have an illegal version of Windows and you really Really REALLY want to install the all new Internet Explorer 7, there are instructions here.
Disclaimer: This procedure messes with system files. I did not try it for two reasons: I use Firefox and I have a legal copy of Windows so I don’t have to do this even if I decide to install IE7 someday (probably out of curiosity and the need to see if my website functions properly).
(via Digg)
p.s.
Use Firefox, use Opera. Both are free and better the Internet Explorer, and anyway, I gave you a good reason to use Firefox a long time ago.
I suck at explaining computer-related issues to other people
When I try to explain computer-related things to other people I usually fail at bringing them to the understanding level that I hope they will have following the explanation. The problem is that I can’t figure out what’s wrong with what I say.
I guess one thing is that I want people to understand what they’re doing instead of just following my instructions until the next time they need to do the same thing again. It’s hard for me to accept the fact that sometimes people simply don’t want to understand what they’re doing with a computer but just get it done. Surprisingly I was the same with math – although I wanted to understand things when I studied math, many times I gave up and just asked for a way to solve problems without understanding.
Another reason is that things seem pretty obvious to me. Of course they weren’t so obvious when I first had to learn them, but now I find it hard to explain because I can’t recreate in my mind the learning process that I had to go through. It’s probably a different process for me and for others, anyway. I guess I’m not such a good teacher – good teachers can relate to the student’s state of mind to see how they can bring the student to a level of understanding.
Anyway, the outcome of all this is usually that I get upset as things I say don’t help the person I’m supposed to help and it becomes very apparent, making the entire process a pain for both me and the other side.
So to anyone I tried to help and made it into an unpleasant experience – I’m sorry.
Linux Crashes Top 10
OK, so that was expected: after the Windows Blue Screen Of Death Top 10 (previous post link), now comes the Linux Crash Top 10 equivalent. I have two observations:
- It’s surprising how many devices are running Linux.
- Imagine you’re on a plane and the screen in front of you goes into kernel panic. Don’t you start praying that the airplane’s computers have a different system? I would.
(via Digg)
Blue Screen of Death Top 10
Most of us have seen the blue screen of death (Wikipedia entry) on our home computer. But have you ever seen it on a scrolling billboard? This list mentions the top 10 sightings of the Blue Screen Of Death.
The Daily WTF and The Hidden Network
The people at The Daily WTF decided to start a job board, HiddenNetwork.com, with the stated mission to “put top-talent within the reach of employers by advertising high-quality job opportunities”. The job board is not the first attempt at this. For example, Joel Spolsky (of Joel On Software) has his own niche job board with similar goals.
What I found interesting about the new job board announcement was this observation:
Have you ever noticed how, out of all the people you work with, the ones who read tech blogs are the strongest employees? It’s not that reading blogs inherently makes you smarter, but in order to read tech blogs, you need to deeply care about technology and have a passion to improve yourself and learn more.
When people ask me how I can afford reading one hour of tech-related news every day as part of my working hours, I say that as far as I’m concerned this is part of my job. I’m a better programmer thanks to reading about new software at freshmeat.net or even reading about new Web 2.0 start-ups although my job has no relation to the world wide web. Knowing what’s going on in the tech world is a good way of keeping my mind sharp and learning new things.
How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot in Any Programming Language
I once had a teacher (Dr. Yechiel Kimchi, who taught me so much of what I know today) who said that in C++ it’s harder to shoot yourself in the foot than it is in C, but when you manage to do it – the foot is completely gone.
A funny tutorial was published, which describes how to shoot yourself in the foot in any programming language. If you know a few languages (even superficially) this will make you laugh. (via Digg)
Finally… Google Code Search
For all you developers looking for code samples, Google Code Search lets you, well… search for code. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m pretty sure it will do better than my own “filetype:c” searches in the regular Google search. (via CNET News)