Defining "proceeds": Harder than it looks (2013/04/30)
So, there were bombs in Boston recently. You may have heard. And there are people in Boston, and a lot of them feel that this is sort of a thing which affects them. It may in fact affect them significantly. And if they run, say, a company, one of the obvious things to do would be to collect some money and donate it to a charity.
[read more...]Making OS X a little smarter: Conditional network configuration (2013/04/16)
So, I have ethernet, but I don’t always use it. If I’m not plugged in, I want my laptop to use the wireless. If I am, I want it to not use the wireless.
[read more...]The difference between doubts and questions. (2013/04/14)
There is a fascinating dialect quirk which has caused occasional confusions, which I think ought to get talked about. Many people who learned English in India tend to use the word “doubt” where most other English speakers would use “question”. I have been told that this is because, in one of the common languages around there, there’s a single word which is the best translation for both “doubt” and “question”, and people get told to translate it to “doubt”.
[read more...]I can't help but think this is intentionally misleading... (2013/02/24)
So, I like rainbowy things and bright lights. There are a lot of modern keyboards, mice, and such which have color controls for what color they glow.
[read more...]The Swartz case appears to be turning more disturbing. (2013/01/26)
Well, that’s not quite fair. I mean, everyone already knew that the only reason serious charges were ever considered was because Carmen Ortiz wanted to make an example of some guy. But it’s one thing for everyone to “know” that, and another entirely to find the paper trail confirming it.
[read more...]Why automation exists (2013/01/20)
Rift (an MMO I quite like) has recently been plagued by people using bots to automate gameplay. Obviously, they do it because it’s more efficient than playing (this is sort of stupid, if you think about it; the purpose of playing is not to be efficient). The developer has introduced some automated measures to try to detect bots, which are having some initial problems, and some posters have started fussing about how this is a waste of time and money, and they should just hire “minimum-wage” gamemasters to manually investigate.
[read more...]The mystery of my bad writing and debate skills (2013/01/11)
Sometimes, when I am in an argument with some random person on the Internet, a thing happens which has always sort of mystified me. What will happen is, around the time that I conclude that someone is genuinely incapable of even basic logical coherence, they’ll turn to a variety of personal attacks. And what makes it mysterious is, the attacks are pulled from a small pool of things like “nothing you say makes any sense” or “you are too dogmatic” or “you are so authoritarian”, and…
[read more...]Technological solutions to social problems don't work... (2012/12/25)
General observation: Most of the time, a social problem can’t be effectively solved by technology.
[read more...]What you search for twice, exists (2012/12/24)
Long ago, I used to run a lot of D&D games. I still play on and off, as time allows. But back then, I used to run these gigantic, sprawling, dungeon adventures, with basically no preparation. And you know, the thing is, I’m not super organized, and I don’t have a great memory. And yet, no one ever seemed to find anything out of place; the verisimilitude was, by all accounts, exceptional most of the time.
[read more...]Pinkie Pie advises you about programming (2012/12/19)
My usual response to particularly ill-considered ideas is to warn people that if they do these things, we will have to point at them and laugh while Oompa Loompas sing about how their downfall was the result of their own poor decisions. But after I got a compiler bug report where the test case wouldn’t even compile, and yielded warnings about 35% larger than the program source… Well. Time to step it up.
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