Security And The Starving Kitten Problem

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I am known to be extremely pedantic when it comes to security. Why? I help to safe guard personally identifiable information. I’ve often said that proper security can almost never be convenient. In some instances, not following proper practices is effectively breaking the law (HIPAA). Yet, some users – in particular non technical managers, can [...]

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How To Get Out Of Talking

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It happens to all of us. Sooner or later, you will be forced to compose audible grunts into meaningful sequences and transmit them over the slower than snail speed of sound. Additionally, you must block until receiving an ACK over the same medium, often requesting even more transformation of thoughts into similar mutually understood grunts. [...]

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How To Be A Software Architect

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I noticed a rather subjective question on Stack Overflow today, someone wanted to know the ‘best way’ of moving away from being a software developer and in to being a software architect. I was about to reply, but the first answer I saw really said it all: Stop doing anything that might be misconstrued as [...]

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Load “Twitter” ,8 ,1

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I’m not sure why he did it, but someone has created a Twitter client for my favorite personal computer of all time, the Commodore 64. In the video below, you will see a C-128D running in C64 emulation mode. When I see people do things like this, I feel happy inside. No, Twitter is not [...]

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Linux’s inner child is a serial killer

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No, not Linus’ (though I do wonder about that guy sometimes). I’m talking about the Linux OOM (out of memory) killer which I am highly considering classifying as sentient. I’m finishing up some Xen related programs, one of them is a special watchdog daemon that runs on Xen guests and exports system vitals via Xenbus. [...]

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A joke that came true – diet water

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About a year ago, I posted a joke announcing “diet water”. I did not think that any company in their right mind would try to come up with such a product. Last week I saw diet water on grocery store shelves, made by some company in China. I hate to think that my sense of [...]

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Senior, Junior And The Programmer

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The job: A server with a 1.2 TB SATA RAID-5 is housing 15 paravirtualized Xen guests via local storage. Each one has at least one LV of 100 – 400 GB. Move them to an identical server with a more sensibly configured RAID without pissing off each user for more than 30 – 40 minutes. [...]

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