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I recently described the pleasure available to anyone attempting to watch DVDs on a computer. Then I went out and purchased Star Trek. The media industry has been very reluctant to face facts, and it really seems they're completely out of touch or just belligerent.

Let me explain:   read more >>

Kids love to watch movies, but they are not kind to equipment. Some of the older media, such as VHS tapes, might be technically inferior to DVDs but they certainly were more durable. We have tried to get our kids to carefully handle DVDs, but it just doesn't happen. A few were destroyed before I learned my lesson.

It turns out that most geeks with kids have realized the same thing: you just can't give kids DVDs. All the films and videos they love can be stored on your hard drive with much better results: no more messing with scratched discs, no more fumbling for the right video case, instant access to whichever video they want to watch, and you won't have to replace broken DVDs over and over (something which will make our corporate overlords very unhappy).

This had been working well for us until I tried to save the new Pixar film Up. A quick bit of googling revealed that movie studios have attempted a new form of disc copy protection: ship broken discs.   read more >>

I have always been a big fan of the guys running Vendetta Online. They are one of the only indie teams I'm aware of that have successfully built an MMO game and turned a profit. What's more, they seem to use the right tools for the job, know what they are doing, built a solid game and interact very well with the user community. I guess those are the keys to success for an indie MMO.

I'm at the stage where really I just need to use the right tools for the job. In most respects, I believe that good games are timeless (1 2) - I'm not concerned about a decade of development time. So I can take all the time I want and I've spent the last few years researching the right tools for scalable game development. Like the developers of Vendetta discovered, all roads lead to Erlang. It seems to have become the de-facto standard for highly-available, scalable, reliable applications. Engineers building an MMO would be foolish to not strongly consider Erlang for their backend. And all of Erlang's strengths are based on a single premise: components should be simple, well separated and communicate through messages.   read more >>

I've been dabbling with computer game design for half a decade (I had crazy dreams about making games way before that, but didn't write code back then). It's been strictly a part-time hobby, but for the amount of time I've spent I don't have much visual evidence of my work.

Compared to coders who churn out games in a couple weeks, it's fairly embarrassing. This seems to be a common joke among game creators, as everyone on the net claims to have the "best" idea for their game and none are ever produced. I'd bet most game ideas don't even turn into a single line of code, and those that do are soon abandoned. I'm trying to rationalize how this doesn't apply to me...   read more >>

When working on high performance supercomputers, network latency and bandwidth are of utmost importance. If messages cannot be sent quickly enough between compute nodes, a supercomputer may actually perform more poorly than a standard server or workstation. So much time is spent waiting for input from other locations that nothing is actually accomplished. These days, more time is spent optimizing latency than bandwidth since most clusters have all the bandwidth they need (2-4GB/sec).

I've discovered that an analogy can be made with traffic on the highway. Computers keep getting faster, and now maybe traffic can too. I promise you'll notice this the next time you head out on the road.   read more >>

I think acronyms used to change less frequently. With the Internet's rapid development of new memes, it can be quite difficult to keep up with the latest fads. Older, slower institutions (particularly government) are unable to keep up. There have been many instances of "offensive" license plates being revoked after being issued. But for something I little lighter, I give you LOL Cheese.   read more >>

I'm thankful to work in one of the most Linux dominated fields in the industry. But the rest of the world still uses Windows all over the place, so I do have to use it as part of my job. I recently made my life much better by installing Windows under Ubuntu Linux using VMware. Now the couple Windows apps I have to use are relegated to one virtual desktop on my Linux box.

The setup was mostly painless, but I did run across some very frustrating behavior with a couple of the Windows applications.   read more >>

There are a lot of user interface inefficiencies that we've all been forced to get used to. Moving and resizing windows is definitely one of them, as you have to carefully position the mouse cursor over a tiny section of a window.

However, there's no need for Linux users to do this. X-Windows supports moving and resizing windows by clicking and dragging on any portion of a window - the mouse cursor can be over any portion of the window, no matter what's underneath.

Here's how:

• To move: Hold down ALT while clicking and dragging with the left mouse button
• To resize: Hold down ALT while clicking and dragging with the right mouse button

You'll find that even though it's a small tip, your work will be just a little more efficient.

You may not often think about it, but the appliances/tools/toys/etc that we think of as hardware have many software components - and almost all software has bugs or idiosyncrasies. If the manufacturer fulfilled their duty and properly tested the device, you hopefully won't find a bug. But humans are ingenious - through malice or ignorance, a user will likely try something "out of the box". When this happens, the results vary: a bug in your microwave can hurt you, a bug in your car can kill you, and a bug in your ATM will cost you money.   read more >>

You may know of Moore's law, which predicts that electronic transistor density will double every 2 years. This prediction has been accurate for decades, and is often taken as a law of nature. The results: cheaper, faster computers every year are a staple of modern technology and life. We expect constant improvement will continue indefinitely. But how long can this continue, and what should we expect to see years down the road?   read more >>