Computer Science

Rule One: Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

Rule Two: In MS-SQL the Execution Plan is your friend... sometimes. The actual Execution plan isn’t necessarily any more accurate than the estimated.

Rule Three: Remember the definitions. I never do so I’m writing them here.

• Table Scan – Does what it says on the tin. Scans the table for matches. This is the most basic operation and is usually bad.


• Index Scan – A scan of the whole index of a table. This is efficient if the index is small.


• Index Seek – A scan of a certain range of the index. Seeks are good, usually because you’re not going over the whole table. However they can lead to Lookups, which is bad.


• Clustered Index – A clustered index means similar values are grouped near each other. A clustered index is an organisation of the table itself into an ordered format. Think of it as a page number. You can only have one clustered index at a time.


• Non-Clustered Index – A non-clustered index is a reference lookup, separate to the table it’s built on. You can have any number of non-clustered indices but they have to update when the table does.


• RID Lookup – A lookup is done on a table after an index seek has been performed but the query requires columns not in the index. Essentially they’re selects based on the index seek results. These are bad.


• Key Lookup – A lookup is done on a clustered index after an index seek has been performed but the query requires columns not in the index. Essentially they’re selects based on the index seek results. These are still bad.

I broke the headphone jack again. Worse still, my years of IT support have afforded me an arrogance in my actions. So as I was dissassembling I damaged the keyboard connector port on the motherboard. This post brought to you without access to the letter i or numbers 1, 2 and 4.

The 8943g has gotten a good two years of life so there's no shame in retiring it. Also unlike my XPS it can continue on as a support model. I might even stick it on a rack as a makeshift server. Now let's take a moment to remember it at its finest.

...Yeah, no. It's just a bloody computer.

Ever had to recover from a change disappearing from your repository with the result that it only exists in your assemblies?

Well I have!

Handy dandy Reflector let me open up my dlls and retrieve the lost code. You can browse through your methods just like they were in visual studio. Supposedly the paid version integrates with visual studio. Trial was enough for me. I retrieved my errant code and, having cursed my cvs long enough, damn well made sure it checked in this time.

So I was thinking of getting a server.

There's a whole can of worms opened up by this little sentence. RAID? Virtualised Windows? Knoppix with lemons? In truth I'm still not settled on the whats, that's why I'm formalising thoughts here.
The plan would two virtualised servers
-Stable. Any services and Dedicated Servers I run off the shelf woud go here. This would probably be a Windows Server because running a virtual Windows inside a virtual Linux is madness!
-Experimental. This would give me more of a playground for the experimental applications I want to set up. I've wanted a testbed for server/client architecture for a long time now. I could run things like Mangos or take apart SS. This would definitely be a linux distro.

Of course no matter how many virtual machines you have sooner or later you have to deal with hardware. Now I know everyone talks about Solid State but I'm not made of money. 4 solid states will leave me eating dried bread for a year.
The other issue is the whole 'redundancy' of RAID 5. It was the in thing when I was doing IT Support that people were moving to RAID 6. However it always felt like a scam to me. The problem is I just don't know enough about RAID arrays to say for certain. Besides if I do go RAID I'll cheap out on RAID 1.

The British Government has come up with another plan for collecting people's data online. Labour tried the same thing a few years ago. Now, I'm no fan of facebook and most people tend to leave their profile public anyway. People have the right to be anonymous though. Using facebook to to spy on you seems a bit much, eavesdropping on your calls and texts without so much as a warrant? Ah, but those spies are clever people aren't they? They'll only spy on criminals surely! You and me we're not criminals. So why should we worry about these types of laws? If you've nothing to hide you've nothing to fear, right?

Let's engage in a little exercise. I want you to post in the comments:
Date of Birth
Phone Number
Home Address
Sexual Orientation
Criminal Record
Full medical history, including those genital warts
That time you broke into the abandoned house on a dare because you were 14
That time you went into the back field, had a few cans and then got into a fight and had to be picked up by your mom with a bloody nose
The bestiality porn you downloaded, just to see what it was like
A receipt for every mp3 on your computer right now
The amount of illegal or controlled substances in your house, including your schizophrenia medication
That time you got too much change at the supermarket but couldn't be bothered going back with it
Your Credit Card Number

It comes as some surprise that two of the people charged with being Lulzsec are Irish. I knew about the Fine Gael hack but never made the connection that they might be lulzsec.

Not that lulzsec are relevant anymore. While the FBI have done a lot of wonderful detective work they're a hundred internet years too late. lulzsec shut down mid 2011. Why? Because their identities were outed by another hacker group. Now hackers quarrelling with each other is nothing new. The internet is full of big egos. lulzsec were well known for their bragging. Which is exactly why they were targeted by other hackers and exactly why they were going to be targeted by the authorities. Illegal hacking, as with any criminal enterprise, is nothing to brag about. This isn't a moral viewpoint. Most hackers are caught because they bragged. Once someone knows that message passes on and on the internet until it lands into some detective's inbox.

Putting aside that word of warning let's take a moment to remember the fallen.

When it comes to programming I’ve always been an advocate of control over security. So it’s surprising that I’m an advocate of XNA. XNA is essentially a wrapper for DirectX. It hides all those big scary graphics interfaces and gives you a safe, non-toxic crayon to have fun with. And fun I have. Sure I don’t have the sharp objects OpenGL gives you or the raw hot power DirectX libraries have but I’m not about to build another Skyrim here.

Anyway this is all just a subtle lead-up to the fact that I’ve gotten back into the games design groove. After the disaster that sank my last project I’m determined to make this work. So this time I’ve taken three backups!

Hyperbole can be good for getting attention. While minister Sherlock's plans do not extend to the reach that the SOPA/PIPA bills had for America they are still a hot issue. Recently Stop SOPA Ireland has cropped up http://stopsopaireland.com. I would encourage everyone to browse their website and listen to what they have to say. Google the issue and learn more about the court case that led to this. Get involved, or who knows what may happen to [CENSORED]

My employers have announced in recent days that they are looking for up to 100 technology graduates and experienced specialists in areas such as Java, SAP, cloud computing, mobility and workplace collaboration technologies. If you came here from MiNDS then you should definitely take a look.

(And if you want my advice go learn SAP)

Spam is an interesting thing. For instance did you know that right now this website is receiving at least 10 spam comments a day? It's a small fry compared to larger sites. Often spam rarely makes sense at all? Why post spam comments to old entries on a blog no one reads? There's not even a pagerank argument there. Regardless spam it is and dutifully I have been deleting the comments and configuring the anti-spam filters each day.

What's interesting is how an arms race develops. I block their names and they change them. I block them on the text of comments and they mutate them. I block by their website url and behold, those adapt. So I add a time limit on new comments. The same number of comments appear but spaced out. I block comments from the same person for more than an hour. The spam appears posted by different people. They say about 90% of the internet is spam(or was it porn) and most of it appears nonsensical. How are random comments a good business model?

Yet someone falls for scams. Someone buys herbal viagra. I'm availing of this brilliant offer for a brand new PC if I just send a cheque in the mail.

For every fool a con.