Why do spammers bother being clever? Isn't the set of "people who buy from spam" a subset of "people who aren't trying to defeat spam"?

Here's an article from Sun that describes a working group that achieved more transparency. The way that Java evolves (the JCP: nice in theory, clumsy in practice) is one of that platform's biggest problems. The article is a bit of a puff piece, but at least it acknowledges that major …

Is there some facility in XP Pro that filters UDP or HTTP messages on a zone-based, machine-wide basis? My network connectivity issues (can't use Mozilla, Opera, or .NET programs at all, IE works on HTTP but not HTTPS) fail on both wired and wireless adapters, but I can access sites …

Debugging the sudden lack of network connectivity:

Symptoms: I first noticed that my IE couldn't connect to secure Websites in Hawaii,when I was connecting via Tom's WAP. When I got home, I noticed that also redirects weren't working. I installed Mozilla and Opera and was alarmed to find that …

Oh, that's nice -- Mozilla and Opera cannot connect to anything and even a .NET HttpWebRequest fails; IE works on http connections, but not https. But, I can connect to secure sites from within a VMWare session!

Sigh. I've deleted my network adapter and it got automatically re-installed when I rebooted …

The weirdest thing has happened: Internet Explorer has lost its ability to access https and URL redirects don't work. Is this a symptom of a known worm / virus / exploit?

My latest article in SD Times reflects on the lack of traction for dynamic languages in .NET.

Just back from Kailua-Kona and the ECMA Working Groups on the standardization of C# and C++/CLI. Boy, is that fun stuff for a language geek, plus I got to see some friends from the ol' days: P.J. Plauger, Rex Jaeschke, and Thomas Plum, who was the host of …

Ignoring the Scripts

ECMA Technical Group 5 is charged with standardizing C++ bindings to the CLI. Progress has been slowed by the lack of 200-watt backlights for the laptops.