Huge Uptick in PDF File-Attachment Spam

Is everyone else seeing a sudden increase in spam with PDF attachments? I'm not sure if they are payload-bearing virii or just stock spam (many seem to have "investor alert" nonsense in their title). It's just amazing to me the level of idiot on which these apparently-profitable scams are built …

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Broad Patent on Shared-Memory Parallel Processing Basis for Suit Against Sony (Tip of the Pyramid?)

The owners of Patent 5,056,000 have whacked Sony with a suit, on the basis that the Cell processor in the PS3 is a violator. The claims seem center on the idea of an "interconnection switch" that locks the access of a single processor to a particular bank of …

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"GonnaNeedIt" Annotation

I think programming languages need the complement to "deprecated." It's for those moments when "YAGNI" conflicts with "But I just know I will..." Less imperative than a TODO, but more than a mental note.

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Do Kids Still Build Models?

Revell models. With the plastic trees that you twisted every numbered part out of? Rubber glue, Testor paint? If I were to make a reference to this experience as a metaphor, would anyone under the age of 40 know what I was talking about?

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Virtualized TaskBar: A Utility I'd Like

Is there any utility that displays on your task bar all the applications running within your Virtual PC / VMWare / Remote Desktop Session? I'd really like such a utility. It ought to be possible, at least if the virtual machine is network-reachable. If I felt that I could sell more than …

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Coming To The Big Island This Week? The Helicopter Tour Might Be Worth It

\<a href="http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/kilauea/update/archive/2007/Jul/DSCN1003_L.jpg"" target="_blank" atomicselection="true" rel="noopener noreferrer">Since I blogged the pause and restart of Pu'u O'o, for completeness I will report that the eruption on The Big Island of Hawai'i has not only returned …

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BS On Rails

Kurt Schrader wonders if he's the first person to hit a point in a Rails app where he wonders if he's "finally hit the point where the cost of maintaining our code in Ruby is higher than the savings by writing it in Ruby in the first place?"

He says …

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Dr. Dobb's Goes Flash-Based

Huh. I just received a link in email to "my" August issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal. I'm not going to post the link I got, since it's undoubtedly linked to me, but can anyone access http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/cmp/ddj0807/index.php?

It's a Flash-based interface, but even …

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Turing Award Boosted to $250K: Put On Your Thinking Caps!

Google is joining Intel in putting more cash into the kitty for the Turing Award. To me, \\(250K is nonsensical -- you should either go for the million (Who Wants To Be A CS Millionaire?) or maintain the super-coolness of the \<a href="http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/aboutus/jcfields/fields …

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VSTS 2008 Beta 2 VPC Available for Download

Come and get it

P.S. I really, really like this use of VPCs.

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