The perfection trap: a lesson drawn from Worse is Better

I've mentioned Richard Gabriel's famous The Rise of "Worse is Better" before (back here ), but only recently did oneof its important lessons coalesce in my thoughts.

"Worse is Better" contrasts what Gabriel calls the MIT approach , with the cornerstoneof 'the right thing', against the New Jersey approach , with a 'worseis better' minimalism (this is a simplified summary). Gabriel arguedthat despite its flaws, the New Jersey approach had significantly bettersurvival characteristics than the


The difficulty of punishing people at universities

One of the quiet little secrets of university computing is just howdifficult it is to actually punish people for doing bad stuff withcomputing resources. Really bad stuff, things that are criminal orhave serious civil liabilities, can be punished. But mere violations ofpolicies or bad network behavior (including spamming) can run into aseries of problems.

Tenured professors might as well be the left hand of God, of course,especially if they get grant money . But evenstudents (grad and undergrad both) are heavily protected


案內人 – 醉翁之意?

inside man clive owen

Spoiler Alert!

去看《案內人》除了是卡士夠吸引外,也想看看鬥智鬥力的警匪片,刺激一下大腦活動。一宗設計精妙的銀行劫案,背後的驚天大陰謀又是什麼?

影片內劫匪所使用的手法,非常乾淨俐落,每一步都考慮得很週詳,掌握了


再說一次我揷你


揷,在港澳人口中,有另一種姿態。有關這方面的學問,我們一般儲備在辦公場合,不少人在辦公室把揷人的技術發揚光大,更多人在同一個地方練就一身任揷唔嬲的本領。口中無揷,心中有揷,揷或者不揷,眞是一種藝術。


縫隙中的悶聲

(周某說,獄中札記。)

這是一種愈來愈強烈的傾向:無線在報導泰國大型示威的時候,引用反對派領袖的說法:「如果能將一個腐敗的政權趕下台,那麼曼谷塞車一個月,又有什麼所謂?」然後電視再報導商業區癱瘓每日損失

一些生活

懶和勤力

北京回來之後,都在忙公司的事,也刻意不去想寫稿和文學的問題,我知道我下個月要出書,我知道我編的文學雜誌還有一些後期工作要跟進,我還有小說計劃要完成,可是做人總需要一段放任的時間。

在公司專注做一

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What disk IO stats you get from the Linux kernel

To follow up my previous entry on iostat problems ,here's a rundown of the information you actually get from the Linuxkernel.

First off, you only get this from 2.6 kernels, or 2.4 kernels with theRed Hat disk stats patch (such as Red Hat Enterprise 3). In 2.6 thisinformation appears in /proc/diskstats ; in Red Hat's 2.4, it appearsin /proc/partitions with slightly more fields.

/proc/diskstats fields for


巴里島好味道

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便衣.靈魂

論文期間不免收縮——不談法國工運,不談泰國示威,都總要為一個地鐵站之隔的深水埗小販講句話。深水埗有便衣食環署人員,追捕已開檔多年的小販,導致有人被車撞傷。受到在場市民圍罵。 詳情。

另一便衣事件

世貿固然有