George Sudarkoff

The Da Vinci Code

I just finished reading "The Da Vinci Code" (Dan Brown), among the last people on this planet, I guess; and I should tell you - if you are hesitating whether to read it or not - do not hesitate! I have been enjoying the book for three nights in a row, unable to put it aside. I must confess that I never thought highly of the Christian Church, or any kind of church for that matter, I believe that true faith does not need an institution. In fact, some ten years ago I was a member of a [not so secret] society of sorts which Russian Orthodox Church despises and considers to be a cult, no less. But regardless of whether you believe the facts laid out in the book are accurate, the novel itself is a very well crafted piece of writing! And a fair amount of controversy makes it even better.

iPod glove

My version of an iPod sock - iPod glove. Cleanroom approved.

A new kind of spam

A new kind of spam stroke my website yesterday -- a wiki-spam. ACL doesn't help very much (although I am making everything I can unmutable right now), because it forces a more restrictive setup which goes against the very idea of Wiki - anyone can modify pages. So far the assumption was that "anyone" includes only humans and that it is much easier to restore the site's content than to destroy it. Spam-bots just entered the picture and it changes everything!

Agrrrrr...

How many factual errors could you spot in the following excerpt:

Your temporary 6 digit PIN has been set to your Date of Birth (MMDDY); for example, if your DOB is February 6, 1964, your PIN will be 020564.

And although you might think that despite the number of errors in this instruction the correct way of composing the PIN is still quite obvious, let me assure you it is not true. Apparently, they made another error while implementing all this:

Error: Invalid Login Attempt, Please Try Again...

And so I tried a few more times and after five unsuccessfull logins, my account was blocked and I had to call Help Desk, submit the ticket and wait. Agrrrrr...

Evolution

While listening to Jerry Fiddler on ITConversations I thought: The real world evolves by implementing millions of changes at a time and then seeing which ones survive. This is almost the opposite of what we think of evolution in software development. Is there a value in adopting the real-life approach to software and how do we do it?

Email server maintenance

Next Wednesday, 1/12/05, beginning at 8PM GMT-8 and concluding at 4AM GMT-8 on Thursday, 1/13/05, our mail server will be transitioned to a new data center.

You may experience a brief interruption in your email services during the maintenance window, and any email sent during the previous 24 hours will be unavailable for the duration of the maintenance. You will have access to all email older than 24 hours and any new email received after the maintenance commences will be available by 9PM GMT-8.

Our mail server will continue to accept email and no email will be lost during this transition.