AVG is a pig of a software - because it makes background accesses to search results during search queries, in order to set its own silly malware scanners on them, before the user even decides whether to visit one of the links. And it blows up the web traffic - and then also disguises these accesses as normal user accesses - fake weblogs, distorted access statistics, web traffic up - and all just for the sale of some digital snake oil ...
Archive 27. June 2008
Chuck Moore's Wonderful colorForth Programming Language and Operating System - "Rather than a string of 8-bit characters, colorForth interprets pre-parsed words. A word starts with 4 bits that indicate its color and function - text, number, etc. Then 28 bits of left-justified, Huffman-coded characters, averaging 5.2 bits each. Numbers are stored in binary. Each word occupies 1 or more 32-bit memory locations." - ok, und die 2GB Hauptspeicher sitzen da und langweilen sich, weil der Programmierer sich Gedanken über Huffman-codierung von Befehlswörtern gemacht hat, um auch noch das letzte Bit zu sparen. Schon ein ziemlicher Anachronismus - aber ein sympathischer.
Keylogger in JavaScript with IE up to version 8beta - ouch. That hurts. And I wonder again why one has to install such essential functions as NoScript via extension even with Firefox. Such things belong as basic tools directly into every browser. And no, the simple on/off for JavaScript, which is offered, is no alternative - in times of Ajax interfaces you need JavaScript again and again.
"You can't handle nuclear waste like this" - but nuclear power is just so great and disposal is no problem at all, as is often mentioned in the CO2 debate. Will we humans ever learn to learn from our mistakes?
The A-Z of Programming Languages: Forth - "I think it behooves new programmers to sample all the languages available. Forth is the only one that's fun. The satisfaction of finding a neat representation cannot be equaled in Fortran, C or even Lisp. (And mentioning those languages surely dates me). Try it, you'll like it."