more

It’s a common refrain that our electronics are always getting smaller. While there may be some up-and-down fluctuation between one phone release and the next, the broader trend is clear: From speakers, to laptops, to home appliances, we can pack a lot more power into a lot less space these days.

This trend leads to some near-fantastical speculation about where tech can go from here. For instance, Quartz posted about limits in processing power back in 2017, and speculated that light could be built into processing chips as a substitute for what we’d now think ...

Click to get this printer on Amazon.com where I'm an affiliate.

Not too long ago, I ordered a new color drump for my old printer and replaced it. Not very long after that the print simply decided to not print at all anymore. Literally, it would pass the page through just fine but it had nothing on the page. I know it was working since it was printing just fine the day before and there was still plenty of black ink (it would have had the light on if the black was not enough.)

I'm thinking that may have been a ploy by the manufacturer to push me to buy a new printer...

In any event, ...

For a very long time now, we have been using languages that support having functions that one can call. That was not always the case, although even really old versions of BASIC had a GOSUB instruction, which it had no concept of local variables so it was rather difficult to use safely.

Functions allow you to avoid repetition. You write a small snippet of code (or maybe not that small) within a function and then you call that function to reuse that snippet over and over again. Good programmers tend to do that even with one liners. However, many others often think: well, it's just one line, why don't I return copy & paste that wherever I need it, it's going to be faster.

Doug and I have always thought that Linux would become the primary OS of today.

We've seen it go up and down, but now it's really becoming powerful, between OpenOffice, Chrome, The Gimp, Krita, Audacity, and many other tools, you can do so much that it more and more renders the expense of running MS-Windows less and less viable for most.

Now there is this new company offering a thumb drive with an optimized version of Linux called Xtra-PC which boots really fast and offers all the basics that one needs to run a computer. There is nothing to install, the OS will automatically detect ...

Click on picture to see on Amazon.com (which I'm an affiliate of).

Computer Stick

Looking at Mini Computers, I found this Fanless Mini PC based on the Intel Atom Z8350 processor by SmallRT. The picture includes a mouse to give you an idea of the size of that thing. It's tiny! Maybe not what you want, but you can already do a lot with that little one.

The connector on the left side is an HDMI plug which spits out 4K of video graphics. It's just totally amazing to me. Of course, we had the Pi3 and now we have the Pi4... but those are computers for hackers. Here we're ...

What is a Queue

In software a queue is a container which is used to add items on one side and remove them on the other in a very efficient manner.

Sorted Queues

When used by a Journal, a queue is often going to support some kind of sorted order. Some jobs are more important than others and these should be built sooner. In other words, we give those jobs a higher priority and we sort the queue by priority first then using the time at which the job gets inserted.

Note that the C++ std::queue and std::unque containers do not offer anyway to support a priority. Instead you have to use ...

iptables -I DOCKER-USER -i eth0 ! -s 192.168.1.0/24 -j DROP

*filter
:DOCKER-USER - [0:0]

-A DOCKER-USER -j early_forward
-A DOCKER-USER -i eno1 -p tcp -m conntrack --ctorigdstport 80 --ctdir ORIGINAL -j DROP
-A DOCKER-USER -i eno1 -p tcp -m conntrack --ctorigdstport 8080 --ctdir ORIGINAL -j DROP
-A DOCKER-USER -i eno1 -p tcp -m conntrack --ctorigdstport 8081 --ctdir ORIGINAL -j DROP

Docker

As we are helping various customers, we encounter new technologies.

In the old days, we used chroot to create a separate environment where you could have your own installation and prevent the software from within that environment access to everything on your computer. This is particularly useful for publicly facing services liek Apache, Bind, etc.

I like technology, but I think that at times, it just goes too far.

Today I found out that a company is actually selling an Ice Cream Lock. Yes! A lock so people can't easily open your ice cream, at least not without either picking the lock or breaking the ice cream box.

It's a simple lock with a combination and if you don't know that combination, you just won't be able to open the ice cream box. Here are some pictures:

Click the image to see more on Amazon.com
(Note that I'm an affiliate)

Now, I really think technology is going too far!

Enjoy!
Alexis

Once in a while someone will ask me which book is best to start learning programming. The fact is that I do not know because I'm already an advanced programmer and it's rather difficult for me to get back to the basics (it feels like a waste of my time, sorry...)

That being said, at Made to Order Software, we've mainly been a C++ shop. We also do a lot of C, PHP, JavaScript and touch many other languages as required by the tasks we perform (bash, cmake, perl, C#, Java, etc.)

That being said, I wanted to underline some of the best C++ books available today. Especially, in the last ...

The CRISC, also known as Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control, is a vendor-neutral certification that validates a professional’s knowledge and experience in the fields of information system control & risk management. The certificate is developed and administered by ISACA and designed for the individuals who work with organizations in mitigating business risks and implement information system controls.

Organizations in today’s world must consistently enhance their infrastructure so that they can survive and thrive in today’s competitive environment. It is a ...