A log message format mistake that I've made

As an illustrated example of how not to do log messages, here is amistake of mine that I recently had my nose rubbed in. Suppose that youhave a service that authenticates requests in various ways; sometimesthe request has enough information to grant approval right away, butother times you need to do a callback of some sort. Of course you wantto log the success or failure of these requests so that when somethingis going wrong you can rule out the authentication system.

When I was doing this, I


[電影]-我 19歲(Me, 19)

【我,19歲】

故事簡介
19 歲,對於你我是個什麼樣的歲月?
大提琴手 宋巳州 被視為明日之星的演奏家、舞者 小郁 則努力追求自己的留學夢想,兩條停留在 19 歲的平行線,卻因為一首不知名的樂曲,交織出最璀璨的生命樂章
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Happy Birthday Jasmine

On the same afternoon in 2009, I was reading What to Expect the First Year , eager to set the stage for Jasmine's arrival. One year later, I brought Jasmine to her first preschool playing class today, carrying with me the special TimeFrames issue. That's an issue devoted to looking back at the stories of the past decade (and what it might presage about the future).

After taking a quick look at the Time magazine's content, I began to realize that quite

科學至上主義?

有些人自己不懂科學,又或因宗教理由對科學有所顧忌,在與別人討論問題時,一見對方引用科學知識、標榜科學方法,便立刻扣對方帽子,指責對方是盲目崇拜科學、接受科學至上主義(scientism,也有譯作「科學主義」或「唯科學

心事

( 原刊  AV Magazine 03-12-2010)

人生音像城

心事

看了《半個好心男》( The Good Heart ),非常喜歡,一部很窩心的電影。

影片的格局很少,主要發生在紐約市街角一間版破舊酒吧。故事開始時,露宿街頭,在破紙皮箱搭建的家棲身


當作家的四個條件

開始寫作以後,經常被人問到: 「成為作家須具備什麼條件?」我認為首要條件,是受得住被人誤解。

關於這點,講多無謂。明白的人,盡在不言中;不明白者,說一萬句也不會明白,反會加深誤解。有句話叫「人蠢無藥可醫」

宗教虐兒

Richard Dawkins 認為 在兒童還未有獨立思考能力時以「洗腦」方式向他們灌輸宗教信念,是一種虐兒行為,屬於精神虐待。這是個有爭議的看法,但我不打算在這裏討論;我只是想以此為引子,介紹一套頗舊的紀錄片,相信很多人都未看過

Asking users questions never increases security

Here is something that I've more or less written about before, but Iwant to reinforce by saying explicitly:

Asking users questions never increases security.

Never ever. Really.

(See SecurityChoiceProblem for a discussion of why.)

What this means is simple. Every time you design a system where part ofthe design is 'if something questionable happens, we will ask the userif they approve it', assume that at least half of your users will makethe wrong choice. Ask yourself what this does to


Why https was a mistake, but an inevitable one

As I alluded to in a comment here ,one reason that we can't expect people to understand that 'low qualityencryption' is basically 'no encryption' is that browsers don't. In factthe issue shows why having a distinct and specially marked 'https' isultimately a terrible mistake; it has trained programmers and users thathttps means security, when in fact it doesn't.

What would have been much better is if browsers hid the differencebetween the raw protocol being used and instead showed


Using the Plextor PX-B120U Blu-Ray BDROM Drive with a Mac

A few notes from my initial use of the Plextor PX-B120U external USB BD-ROM

drive (you can pick it up for under $100!