tail -f /dev/mind > blog
You pass an empty array to the method, which will be filled with Thread objects. The method then returns the number of threads it placed in the array. If the array is not long enough to accept all the threads, the overflow will be silently discarded. →
If I'm ever famous, I suspect this photo will come back to haunt me. →
Maven 2 performs a difficult task. But there has to be something fundamentally wrong with any tool that, whenever I use it, seems to have at least a 50% chance of completely fucking up my day. →
SCENE: Somewhere deep in the bowels of 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino... →
From a discussion on an internal Atlassian blog about Java web server security... →
And people wonder why I'm so picky about the garbage-collection question in tech interviews... →
Things I learned in the last 24 hours. →
I ran out of shampoo last week. No big deal, I thought, I'll just run down to the supermarket and grab another bottle. Unfortunately, the trickster gods of consumerism had something else in mind. There must have been fifty different varieties on display, arrayed across both sides of the aisle... →
I have no idea whether I should donate money to Wikipedia or not, or what they'd spend it on if I did. →
{undef $day} →
Most developers never have to deal with maintaining public APIs. Even in the open source world there are very few projects that give it more than lip-service, the attitude is too often: "just recompile against the new version and fix whatever breaks." →
Jesus loves me, yes I know, because the Facebook tells me so. →
A good story to keep in mind next time you hear the record labels crying foul over the fact that Apple won't institute variable pricing on iTunes. →
There’s some deep part of your brain that instinctively wants to make connections with other human beings. Even when you do something as superficial as click a button on a website to confirm that somebody you’ve already known for ten years is your friend, that bit of your brain experiences a little ‘ping’ of happiness. →
What started as the opinion of a small number of commenters on a medium-traffic Australian forum site is now a portrait of a corporate bully trying to silence critics, splashed over the entire Internet. →
The media narrative of the moment is that John Howard, Australia's Prime Minister for the last eleven years, is seeing his leadership of the party challenged in the face of opinion polls predicting a crushing election defeat. What seems to be being missed in all the analysis is that you'd have to be nuts to take the Liberal leadership right now. →
I have an iPod Nano because the tiny form-factor makes up for it not holding all my music. I also have an iPod Classic for those times I want to have all my music with me, form-factor be damned. The Touch combines the worst of those worlds, and hopes to make up for it by adding cool new Internetty features. →
Dear Asia-Pacific. You can have your world leaders back now, we don't want them. →
Really, the residents of New South Wales are spending millions of dollars in tax money so that John Howard can get his photo taken next to George Bush (in whatever funny outfit we decide is this year's theme) a month or so before the general election. →
I hope Lyons can continue to use the character of Fake Steve to "speak truth to power" in the tradition of satire. I hope he can stay outrageous now that people can point fingers directly back at the author. I hope Fake Steve can overcome the handicap of suddenly being a real person. It'll just be an uphill battle. →
The runner-up does half an hour or so of post-eviction interview, after which they pull out the winner into some big procession between the house and the stage, interview the winner, give out the cash prize, and usually finish the show about half an hour over-time. This year it didn't go to plan. →
Indexing the entire World Wide Web and providing relevant search results in millisecond response times is a Very Hard problem. Breaking commercial-grade encryption within practical hardware and time limitations is a Very Hard problem. Peace in the Middle East is a Very Hard problem. →
In traditional, folder-based mail clients; new messages appear in your inbox and are moved into some storage folder (or deleted) after you read them, while messages that you send go into a third, unrelated folder. This design almost seems deliberately tooled not to show you messages in the context of their conversation. →
I noticed these adverts in my local train station largely because the not-so-small print included a link back to the Flickr page from which the photograph was obtained. Obviously, this is a logical move on the part of the advertising firm. There's so much free stuff out there, why pay when you don't have to? →
The problem is that since I'm rarely the first person into the office (no laughing at the back, please!) or the last person to leave, the time lag between me being told the new codes and actually having to use them is pretty long. Short of writing them on a piece of paper in my wallet, how to remember them? →
This puts Apple behind Sun (duh), on a par with IBM, slightly ahead of the remainder of Unix-land and, it's worth mentioning in passing, light-years ahead of Microsoft and the Linux vendors who don't even maintain their own JDKs any more. →
My favourite Wikipedia foible, one that amuses me almost every time I look something up on the site, is the assumption on the part of its editors that relevance is a symmetrical relationship. →
I'm spreading my eggs across too many baskets. The more of these services that have my data, the more I'm bringing forward the day that I'll have to waste a weekend migrating from one to another because the service has started to suck, or something better has come along, or they've just gone out of business. Worse, I'm increasing the likelihood that some of my data just vanishes altogether →
The problem with saying you'll spend the morning working from home, is that by midday you're even more reluctant to go to work than you were when you woke up. →
I mean, really. Was a comic-book representation of an atom the best anyone could come up with to represent the mystery and majesty of a natural, godless universe? →
In The Two Things about the Two Things, it's noted that people are unlikely to agree what the two things are, especially when it comes to computing. So I'm going to cheat. →
Having a clock in your phone is a useful, valuable feature. It saves you from having to wear a watch. But if you don't want to make phone calls, Nokia isn't going to chase you as a customer. →
On the occasion of the changing of my job title from "Lead Developer" to "Product Architect", as posted to my internal Atlassian weblog. →
I shall be seeking redress for the lost time at both ends of my life. →
A few gripes aside, the Apple TV works exactly as advertised. It's a tiny grey box that finds your iTunes library over a wireless network and plays it on your TV. Which is almost exactly what I wanted. Almost. →
The irony, though, is that if it weren't for the frequency and publicity of vulnerability disclosures, few people would bother to listen to advice on building more secure systems. Before the advent of full disclosure, there was barely sufficient incentive for vendors to patch known bugs, let alone fundamentally change their development practices so as to stop introducing new ones. →
Ordering a sandwich is a flow control problem. →
Pictures →
They're called "scare quotes" for a reason. →
Bruce Tognazzini demonstrates how a website might drive viewers away. →
I'm not sure what I find funniest about Conservapedia. →
The Hammer Challenge comes to Atlassian. →
Someone on my livejournal friends list recently asked, "are there actually people out there who enjoy their job?" I felt obliged to answer that I do. Like most people I'll probably complain about work after a few beers, but on the whole I enjoy what I do. →
When I hear the muffled beep that signals someone else coming in on the line, I experience a mild form of panic. I can pretty much work out from the display what button I need to press to put my current caller on hold, but I know from bitter experience that this is no guarantee I'll be able to get them back again later. →
I spent all Christmas telling everyone why there wouldn't be an iPhone. Boy do I look like an idiot now. →
You're in trouble because (a) all our tools are predicated on tests that start green and stay green, and (b) how do you tell that the test still works? It can't exactly go more red than it is now. →
Charles briefly turns into one of those MX letters-to-the-editor writers. →