http://boykin.acis.ufl.edu Science, Programming, Politics. Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:41:01 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Summary: I describe a pattern for fast code, which is logically easy to understand, and can help avoid deadlocks in concurrent C# programs. I like to avoid using the lock statement in C# for short bits of code that don't block. This is partly based on an only loosely supported ... http://boykin.acis.ufl.edu/?p=162 If you know what's good for you, you've probably already signed up for my queueing theory course. If so, you'll also want to follow the previous link to see all kinds of information about the course. I'm trying something new this semester. I'm going to actually try use the ... http://boykin.acis.ufl.edu/?p=156 Welcome to the fifth installment of Academic School Years, featuring me, Professor Boykin. In this exciting episode, I'll be teaching EEL 4834, Programming for Engineers. The 4834 course web page is on my wiki. As the above XKCD comic depicts, Python is more fun than perhaps any programming language ... http://boykin.acis.ufl.edu/?p=154 I often get automatic email messages with the reply-to address set to some kind of "noreply". This is lame. For instance, Facebook sends notifications using such a noreply reply-to address. To me, this seems like lazy programming. If someone sends me a message on facebook, if ... http://boykin.acis.ufl.edu/?p=153 Emusic seems to be fooling with the format they deliver to their downloader clients. It seemed to switch to an XML format, then go back to the obfuscated format. In any case, I updated Dromanova to handle both cases: You can see the mercurial repository here, or download the ... http://boykin.acis.ufl.edu/?p=152 The paper I presented at the COPS 2008 Workshop, "Social VPNs: Integrating Overlay and Social Networks for Seamless P2P Networking" won the workshop's best paper award. This was joint work with Renato Figueiredo, Pierre St. Juste, and David Wolinsky. The SocialVPN project uses social networking to build P2P VPNs. ... http://boykin.acis.ufl.edu/?p=151 Recently I suffered a logorrheic episode about Free Software. In the mean time two things have changed: I have installed Rockbox on my iPod. Amazon has released a non-free GNU/Linux client for their MP3 store. With Rockbox, I'm using free software when I use my iPod, but there are other benefits than ... http://boykin.acis.ufl.edu/?p=150 On January 19th, I ran Florida Track Club's Newnan's Lake 15. The full results are online as well as pictures from Richard Ritari. I came in 20th (out of 167) overall, and 3rd in my age group. I should say I was really fourth in my age ... http://boykin.acis.ufl.edu/?p=149 I was asked by Brendan I. Koerner why spam filters suck. An excerpt from my answer appears in this month's Wired magazine. One thing they didn't mention which I think bears repeating is why spam filtering is so hard. Here is what I said: Spam filtering is an adversarial problem. ... http://boykin.acis.ufl.edu/?p=148 Starring you!! (pretend there is a little graphic of a finger pointing at the screen in the place of this momentum stopping text). I extend a very warm welcome back to school to our fine University of Florida students. This semester, some of you will have the dubious honor ... http://boykin.acis.ufl.edu/?p=147