One of my favorite authors is talking about one of my favorite shows. Orson Scott Card was interviewed by the Firefly Talk netcast. Card is the author of such books at Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, and Ender's Shadow. All of which are excellent...

I've been interested in ReadyBoost for a while now but it's hard to find out which devices will work and which will not. Performance specs do not provide enough information to tell because often they list speeds in only bursty situations. Some manufacturers...

Today I attended the Alliance Music Partnership's AMP Summit. This was the 2nd annual gathering of audio people from Microsoft and the PC industry. We met at the Experience Music Project (EMP) here in Seattle. There were people from all parts of the industry...

This is some advice I gave my team regarding code reviews recently. There are certainly many ways of doing something that are wrong and we must avoid them. On the other hand, there is rarely only one way of doing something that is right. All too often...

I decided to take a class this summer. It looks to be an interesting one. It is object oriented design. I've read the Gang of Four book before, taken the NetObjectives classes on the subject, and used it quite a bit in my programming. The subject matter...

Interesting article over at Audioholics covering the subject of HDMI and what's wrong with it. They bring up the legacy of DVI which has a confusing number of options and doesn't handle distance runs well. "Most computer displays are mounted at...

Many people have hoped for the end of DRM'd music ever since the first download services. When EMI announced that they going to sell unencrypted AAC files via Apple's iTunes Music Store, the first crack appeared in the dike. Today Amazon is announcing...

In my mind there are three different types of programs you might find when looking for CS or CS-related degrees. When choosing a school to attend, it is important to understand what their focus is going to be. If what you want out of a program doesn't...

HD-Photo is a new image format coming from Microsoft. It is intended as a replacement for JPG. Bill Crow , the program manager for HD Photo, took the time to hang out with the guys from This Week in Media. The netcast covers a lot of interesting ground...

This morning at 8:00 I took the final for my Computer Security class. It feels good to have that behind me. I enjoy taking classes (which is good as I have 4 more left) but they push out so many other things from life. There are books I've wanted to read...

Here's an interesting article from AnandTech talking about the new GeForce 8600's video acceleration features. It features H.264 acceleration. The article analyzes the performance win from doing acceleration in hardware. It also gives some statistics...