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  January 2004

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If you write a lot of programs, and you’re used to squeezing them all the time, you find that it’s easy to write a program that’s simple. A lot of it is having a clear sense of what you want to say—writing the proof by choosing what to prove, and being clear about that. In [...]

Windows Update has found 1 critical updates for your computer.
Sigh.

I’ve been using bogofilter against my spam for about a month now, and the results are looking good.
It’s catching a much higher percentage of my spam than SpamAssassin was, and I’ve only had one false positive. Although any amount of false positives is a major problem, this doesn’t concern me for two reasons.
Firstly, SpamAssassin was [...]

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark cellar at midnight looking for a black cat that isn’t there. He is distinguished from a theologian, in that the theologian finds the cat. He is also distinguished from a lawyer, who smuggles in a cat in his overcoat pocket, and emerges to produce it in [...]

There are many sites on the internet carrying the lyrics to Lou Reed and John Cale’s “Song for Drella” album. Interestingly it seems that the vast majority of them are wrong.
There’s a wonderful couplet in “Faces in Names”: People who want to meet the name I have / Are always disappointed in me. But almost [...]

Note to self:
Although the Abacus Chinese Restraurant on the corner of Eglantine Avenue and Malone Road does really good food really cheaply, remember that it pulls the nasty trick of pouring its soft drinks from 2-litre bottles that have been sitting around and have probably gone stale. (They do 500ml bottles of Ballygowan though which [...]

If you just blatantly ignore a situation that a future programmer needs to deal with, they will come in to the code and discover that you blatantly ignored the situation. That means they have the freedom to do whatever is required. But if you tried to account for the situation, they will come in and [...]

Once upon a time lots of singles would be released with lots of extra B-Sides. It was quite common that a single release would comprise of 2 CD singles, each with 3 bonus tracks, a 12″ with another 3, and a 7″/cassingle with yet another, thus hooking fans and collectors into purchasing all 4, but [...]

I would like to nominate the Student Loans Company as having the worst phone interface either.
I got a letter from them last week stating that I have overpaid my loan, and that I “may” be entitled to a refund, and should call them.
You are presented with 3 options: “If you are calling on behalf of [...]

Thomas Watson Sr. was one of the extraordinary people in business history. The company he created - IBM - is testimony to his exceptional capabilities as an entrepreneur, visionary, and manager.
Interestingly, when people think of the creation of IBM, and the global behemoth it became, their thoughts turn first to the company’s technological prowess. Although [...]

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