So, after my post on ground-truth documents, one of my commenters argued eloquently that I ought to clean it up and submit it to a journal read by people who manage programming projects. He suggested Software Practice and Experience. This seemed like a pretty good idea, until I read SP&E’s submission procedures and was reminded… Continue reading A shout to the world’s technical journals
coverity-submit 1.2 is released
Coverity simplified their remote-submission procedure. Because of this, I have been able to remove the ugliest bits of configuration cruft from coverity-submit; you no longer have to specify either a public drop directory for your results tarball or a URL that advertises it. Get your remote-static-checking goodness here.
This is a tease.
Yesterday I applied for allocation of a new public port number from IANA. It’s 6659. When the allocation is confirmed, I’ll publish the source code for a reference implementation of the server. It’s a bit over 300 lines of Python. Let the speculation begin. :-)
Ground-truth documents
Sometimes good terminology, by making a distinction that wasn’t easily articulated before, can be very clarifying. I was in an IRC conversation about software engineering with A&D regular HedgeMage earlier today and found myself inventing a term that I think may be useful: the ground-truth document.
Shopping for a martial-arts school: the adventure continues
A few days ago I posted “A martial-arts trilemma” about Cathy’s and my search for a new school to train with following the demise of our MMA program. We’ve since gotten one nice surprise and struck two alternatives off our list. And thereby hangs a tale.
Defense Distributed
I suppose it was inevitable, in a good way. Some friends of freedom have begun a project dedicated to developing and sharing open-source designs for firearms that can be manufactured with a 3D printer. Read about it here at Defense Distributed. I approve, of course. I approve of any development that makes it more difficult… Continue reading Defense Distributed
ciabot for git version 3.5 is released
I shipped an updated version of the ciabot hook scripts for git to the git maintainers this morning. The cool new thing in this release is that the script no longer needs to be modified for installation as a hook. You can install one copy where any number of git repositories can see it; when… Continue reading ciabot for git version 3.5 is released
How To Choose A Martial-Arts School
The responses to my progress report on searching for a new martial-arts school made it clear that many people are interested in advice on this topic. The problem is especially difficult for new students choosing a first school, as they have yet to develop the kind of trained eye that can evaluate technique. I have… Continue reading How To Choose A Martial-Arts School
The Smartphone Wars: The Limits of Lawfare
It’s beginning to look like Apple’s legal offensive against Android might backfire on it big-time. Comes the news that Judge Koh has declined to suppress evidence that Apple may have copied crucial elements of the iPad design from prototypes developed by Knight-Ridder and the University of Missouri in the mid-1990s.
A martial-arts trilemma
So, nine days ago the Mixed Martial Arts program my wife and I had been training in was canceled, and we’ve been shopping for a new school in our area. We’re serious students, twenty years deep in empty-hand and weapons, so the general run of strip-mall karate and TKD joints just isn’t going to do… Continue reading A martial-arts trilemma
Shopping for a new martial-arts school
For some months now my wife Cathy and myself had been the only regulars showing up for the MMA classes at our local dojo, Iron Circle. While this meant we got a lot of quality instructor time, I did wonder how the school could afford to run classes fotr two students. Well, it turns out… Continue reading Shopping for a new martial-arts school
An open letter to The Economist
In “Who’s Afraid of Huawei?” you point out the need for the telecoms industry to adopt transparency guidelines to head off risks from kill switches, spyware, and back doors covertly installed in their equipment. One minimum necessary condition of such transparency is that all software and firmware in these devices must be open source, with… Continue reading An open letter to The Economist
doclifter 2.9 is released
I’ve released doclifter 2.9, and as part of that process I’ve been testing it on the entire collection of manual pages on my system again. Because doclifter does mechanical translation of troff-based markups to DocBook-XML, one of the side effects of testing it is that I find lots of broken markup. I’ll ship over 700… Continue reading doclifter 2.9 is released
The Smartphone Wars: The iPhone Design Was Inspired by Sony
Wired magazine brings us a fascinating revelation from the Apple-vs.-Samsung brouhaha.
The strategy behind the Nexus 7
The Nexus 7 I ordered for my wife last week arrived two days ago. That’s been enough time for Cathy and me to look it over closely and get a good feel for its capabilities. It’s a very interesting device not just for what it does but what it doesn’t do. There’s a strategy here,… Continue reading The strategy behind the Nexus 7
Gun-free fantasy zones
After the Aurora theater shooting, it was of course inevitable that the jackals at the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy vendor would be trying to make a political meal from the victims’ corpses before they had even had time to cool to room temperature. The usual round of inane honking about “common-sense gun control”… Continue reading Gun-free fantasy zones
Feline health update
This one is for the surprisingly large number of my blog readers who have sent inquiries about the health of Sugar, Cathy’s and my cat, following her near-death experience late last year. The rest of you can proceed about your business…
Saga Iceland and “thar”
In the comments on my previous post, someone linked to Steven Dutch’s essay The World’s Most Toxic Value System, in which he discusses the many evils that flow from a complex of values that he labels with the Arabic word “thar” (blood vengeance). Dutch’s essay is in many ways insightful, and a welcome corrective to… Continue reading Saga Iceland and “thar”
Napier’s Lesson
In the 1840s, Hindu priests complained to Charles James Napier (then Commander-in-Chief of British forces in India) about the prohibition of suttee by British authorities. Suttee was the custom of burning widows alive on the funeral pyre of their husbands. According to Napier’s brother William, this is how he replied: “Be it so. This burning… Continue reading Napier’s Lesson
The Smartphone Wars: Tomi Ahonen carpet-bombs Stephen Elop
The best strategic analysis of Nokia’s parlous position I’ve ever seen comes to us from ex-Nokia-executive and longtime company-watcher Tomi Ahonen: The Sun Tzu of Nokisoftian Microkia. It’s thorough, entertainingly written, and includes some instructive diversions into military history.