Entries from Code and cars tagged with 'Commentary'
PEBKAC
We all know the old saying about 7 different eskimo words for snow, and the implications that items that are important in a culture tend to have more words about it in a language. Anyone who's knowledgeable with computers, especially...
Viral Market Share
The most debated factor in the Mac's relatively low malware (Including spyware, viruses, worms and trojans) count versus the waves of Windows malware has been market share. With Windows market share in the 90 percentile, and Mac OS only in...
Artie MacStrawman's Revenge
Good old Artie. For those not in the know, Artie MacStrawman is the legacy of the recently discontinued Crazy Apple Rumors, the name given to the stereotype of a rabid Mac user. While such people do exist, they should be...
Lost leaders
Daring Fireball linked to an article a while back about The Myth of Market Share. The site is now locked behind a login, but Google is to the rescue. The article discusses business practices that view the market as a...
Dear music industry execs:
The war is over. Let's face it. You lost. Things will never be like it used to be. But it's not all doom and gloom. There's still a spot for you in the new world order. Pessimistically, I expect not...
On Mentor Systems
A while back, the company switched out the data terminals in the trucks. These are the computers that display things about the calls - who, what, where, and when. The old ones were MDCs, and they more or less worked....
The one-button mouse is dead! Long live the single button!
My desktop machine is an upgraded, yet still old Blue and White G3 mac. For the longest time, I used the tried and true ADB Mouse II, with simple curves and a single button covering the entire top. Currently, however,...
Moving targets
One of the mixed blessings about developing software for the mac is that there's high user interface standards. And, more or less, a push for consistency. This is good in one way. Any good framework will already handle drawing of...
Warning: false icons
Cars are primitive things. Sure, newer models have more features, with bright, fancy displays and microprocessor-controlled ignitions. But at its heart, a car is simply a series of controlled explosions, and everything around it to harness them. More to the...
How to secure your Ford
This article series has gone on longer than I expected, but in retrospect, it might be useful to cover car security for its own sake. I don't intend to scare anyone away from a car, as car security should be...
MacOS 10.5: The Return of Buster
In a long time ago (Has it really been a decade?) in a chip-set far, far away, there lived an operating system. It lacked some advanced things, like memory protection, and preemptive multitasking. But what it lacked in architecture, it...
How to secure your code while breaking into a Ford, conclusion
I must admit, I started writing "You are not their customer" after beginning "How to secure your code." And I haven't exactly made this into securing code. So what do all these bits on breaking into cars mean? On the...
How to secure your code while breaking into a Ford, part 2
This is part two of "How to secure your code while breaking into a Ford." So far, the lessons have been that physical access is 80% of total access and even then, there's such a thing as too secure when...
How to secure your code while breaking into a Ford, part 1
Some people think that, when keys are locked in the car, we'll bring a master key to unlock the door. Personally, the idea that each tow company would have unfettered access to keys for millions of cars is not only...
You are not their customer
A while back, I was towing a car away from an impound yard. The manager of the yard was there, and noticed that I used paper to protect the car's paint from the tow light magnets. He lamented about how...
Reinventing Hungarian
I've been putting off posting some of these thoughts for a long while (longer than this site has been up, really), wanting to make it sound just right. But better is the enemy of good, and the lack of traffic...
Feed Subscription
If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to a feed of all future entries tagged 'Commentary'. [What is this?]
