A professor claims that Stalin was not a mass murderer. Is there a charitable explanation here, or is this further proof of Orwell's admonition that there exist ideas so foolish that only an intellectual could believe them?
Exactly The Wrong Way
Why are Republicans in secret negotiations with President Obama? Actually, I should rephrase that: why is John Boehner (seemingly alone) in secret negotiations with President Obama? Secret negotiations are a fool's game here. Republicans should be forthright and open in discussion, given the importance of this issue and the fact that they tend to get…
Invalid length parameter passed to the LEFT or SUBSTRING function
An interesting question showed up on Ask SQL Server Central last week, and I wanted to blog my answer, mostly so I can show pretty pictures and get credit for actually having a DBA-related post once in a while... The poster had a relatively simple problem: a view was returning an error which read "Invalid…
Hacker News On The Election
There's a series at the Hacker News on the election. My favorite line from the first article: "The government worker has become the new aristocracy in the United States."
The Repudiation Problem In Bug Bounties
Mohit Kumar rants about bug bounty programs. Done correctly, a bug bounty can be a great incentive for finding problems with software. But there is a repudiation problem inherent in the system. Here's a stylized example to show the problem. Suppose we have a company X, which releases a software product. Company X's management decides…
Scripting SSIS Deployments
Chad Miller shows us how to script SSIS deployments via Powershell. One of the two depressing things about integrating SSIS packages into an automated build process was just how difficult it was to automate deployment (the other was that source control is effectively meaningless when it comes to determining changes). Chad's solution is a pretty…
Certification Exam #1 Completed
I have taken my first certification exam in my current plan. The result is that I now have my first Microsoft-related certification. From here, my eight-month plan is pretty hectic but fairly well filled-out: November through January: study for LPIC-1 101. It doesn't directly relate to my job, but I'd like to get some Linux certifications in…
A Bogus Class-Action Suit
Hopefully this gets thrown out quickly enough that the lawyers don't get paid megabucks. Blizzard does not force you to buy a token. Blizzard allows you to do stupid things with your password and allows you not to use two-factor authentication. The only thing that would be legit in the suit is that Blizzard was…
Upcoming Recessionary Threat
Ironman is looking at dividends and sees that we might be headed toward another recession soon.
The Results Of Socialized Medicine
Another round of notes regarding socialized medicine: Job loss in the medical innovation field. Job loss in general. Even if you keep your job, because Obamacare considers 30 hours a week to be full-time, expect to see a lot more 29-hour workers and people with two jobs to allow companies to get around increasing health…
36 Chambers - The Legendary Journeys: Execution to the max! 