Geeking

It occured to me that if you were trying to remove the Connection header from in the middle of a char * buffer, the absolute fastest way to do it would be to use strstr() to get a pointer to it, then do a byte swap to change the token from “Connection” to “Cneonction”. If you choose to optimize for CPU cycles and not bandwidth, that’s a valid optimization. The question is, who would be motivated to optimize like that? A content provider pays for their bandwidth. If I caught one of my developers pulling a trick like that, I’d walk over to his desk and wack him up side the head with the 2x4 Of Justice. CPU cycles (especially the 20,000 or so it would take to excise the string correcetly) are cheap compared to bandwidth. I suppose, in fairness, I’d have to make a spreadsheet proving my point before I won the right to whack the developer. But my gut instinct is so strong on this, I’d probably at least shoot them with a Nerf gun before I went to do the spreadsheet. ...

Hpaul turned me on to Mulberry when I was bitching and moaning about something stupid Outlook Express did the other day. I decided to give it a try, and I’m delighted. In addition to being much faster than Outlook Express, it also supports server-side address books via IMSP. I set up an IMSP server, which was not as easy as one would like, but not too bad either. I arranged for it to run inside of stunnel, so no passwords in the clear. ...

Paolo makes a great observation about how accurate ad profiling can get when the advertiser is reading your weblog.

This sounds important. Humans now have the ability to make materials with properties never before seen in the universe. That’s a big deal. You can get semi-conducting behavior out of natural substances (search for “crystal radio” and “razor blade” for an example). But you’ be hard pressed to find anything on the planet outside of an IBM lab that can switch optical energy using magnetic fields. Always a bit behind the curve, I’m finally understanding why nanotech is a big deal. ...

Seen in Information Week: “My impression is that [SCO’s claim] is credible,” says Laura DiDio, a Yankee Group analyst who was shown the evidence by SCO Group earlier this week. Who is this chick? Here’s her bio, from the ITF2003 speaker list. Laura DiDio, Senior Analyst, The Yankee Group Laura DiDio is a senior analyst for the Yankee Group’s Application Infrastructure & Software Platforms Planning Service, which is closely aligned with the Enterprise Computing & Networking Planning Service. In this capacity, Ms. DiDio focuses on desktop and server operating systems, with a particular emphasis on Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Active Directory, and Novell, Inc.’s NetWare. Additional areas of coverage are Web services platforms and standards including Microsoft’s emerging .NET services and the rival J2EE. She also covers the directory services arena and interoperability and migration issues associated with Active Directory, eDirectory, and Sun’s iPlanet, as well as desktop and server operating system security, software distribution, and third-party performance monitoring and management tools. ...

Another interesting Joel note is about using VMWare on servers. When VMWare came out years ago, smart sysadmins I hung out with realized that it would be useful this way. But it hasn’t really taken off among folks I know. At Tellme there are a couple reasons why we don’t use it. First, it doesn’t run on the Solaris x86 servers. Second, we are very price sensitive, since our business model calls for us to deliver a complex and potentially very expensive service via a large set of very cheap systems. So, when we consider a change that involves putting new commercial software on all those little machines, the costs can add up quickly and overwhelm the benefit. I haven’t done a specific investigation at Tellme, but my gut instinct is that it wouldn’t fly. ...

Mozilla Firebird is almost ready to replace IE on my desktop. It is fast, and almost all of my habits from IE carry over. Joel’s review of it is what got me to try again. I’ve tried Mozilla several times in the past and just given up because it was such a pig. I have two complaints. First, the middle-click and drag scrolling behavior of IE is not supported. Second, the Moveable Type entry body editing box does not have the useful little “make link” button, which I use a lot. ...

Google’s HTTP replies have headers like this in them: Cneonction: Close NnCoection: Close The first one happens for responses with result code 200. The second one happens with responses of 403. (If you are asking yourself how I got Google to give me a 403, try http://google.com/wml with a user agent that does not include “Mozilla” in it. Weird.) Google is too smart of a company to do this by mistake. But what crazy bug could they possibly be working around with this? ...

SF Bay Bloggers is a website for bloggers in the SF Bay Area that some geeky chick put together. Congrats Courtney!

You should be seeing better spelling on this weblog from now on, since I added MTSpeling.pl to my MoveableType installation. Unfortunately, you have to patch MT itself to integrate it, but it was no big deal. There’s no way to add words to your personal dictionary on the server side, but I have an idea for how to do it, which I might try out. If I get it figured out, I’ll post it here. Basically, I’ll write a CGI script called “add-word.cgi” or something. Then I’ll arrange for every potentially misspelled word to be a link to a javascript function which submits the word to the CGI, and possibly even makes changes using the DOM so that the word is no longer a link, and no longer marked as misspelled. ...