Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

The best part of dating a geek: “Most frequent bars as often as slugs frequent salt mines.” We do drink too much caffeine though…

This is a brilliant meta-photo of me that Wendy took in the British Museum!

I’m getting somewhat annoyed with Rojo, the web-aggregator and personalized search engine, who are copying my content:

This would be ok if they used javascript to dynamically pull and parse my feed, but no, they write it into a page that’s publicly viewable. This means they’re essentially making their site run off the stolen content of millions of bloggers. Since I’m opposed to content-theft, copyright-infringement, etc, I sent them an email:

ATTN: Rojo

Several of your pages, including but not limited to:

www.rojo.com/feed/zZrv8kvc19zskDnK

contain copies of intellectual property belonging to the Elliott Back Blog Network. Please remove these and any other pages copying content from elliottback.com or any of its subdomains, and cease and desist any future copying.

Guess what I got back from Rojo, almost at once:

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you have sent could not be delivered to one or more
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address failed:

copyrightnotice @rojo.com: 550 5.7.0

So Rojo can’t be contacted at the address they list for copyright issues. What to do next? I think I’ll call someone high up there.

If you’re looking for a one-stop-programming guide for beginners, Dream In Code has it all. Forums, blogs, tutorials, and a code sample repository combine to make 10,000s of pages about the programming topics you’re having trouble with. The look ‘n feel is nostalgic of MSDN, with an orange banner across the top:

A lot of the stuff floating around the forums is “help me do my homework that I don’t understand at all” or “I should not be allowed to write code ever again”, but there are some “this is really good help for a beginner java programmer” posts as well. Like any unmoderated programming forum, you’re going to find good and bad. However, if you’re learning Java, C++, or another language, and need help, Dream In Code is probably a good place for your question. If you’re an expert in IT, either help the beginners or leave–you won’t find much here.

The snippets don’t get any better. Since they can be written up and rated by anyone, they’re typically awful code. Take a look at this example for sleeping in a C++ program:

#include <time.h>

void sleep(unsigned int mseconds)
{
    clock_t goal = mseconds + clock();
    while (goal > clock());
}

This code will spin the CPU at 100% until the time has elapsed. What a C++ programming actually wants is something that will stop the running process and schedule it for later. I believe including windows.h has a sleep(…) function, and likewise in unistd.h if you’re on Unix, either of which will be much more efficient than the code snippet above.

As a paid review for ReviewMe, I will rate Dream In Code as follows:

• For all audiences: 40% - The blogs are interesting to read?
• To the beginner: 75% - Useful for its interactive forums, but extremely hard to seperate good information from bad.
• For an expert: 10% - Shield your eyes! This is not the place for you.

If you’re interested in Dream In Code, check out the webmaster’s blog for more information.

Hi I’m a speeding law breaking cop, but catch me and I’ll arrest you for “stalking” me from your front yard. WHERE IS JUSTICE?