The challenge-response spam-filter troubles me lately. If you don’t know it, here is how it works if both parties have a challenge-response spam-filter:

1. I write an email to someone@domain
2. The address gets whitelisted on my machine
3. The receiver doesn’t get my message
4. I get a message from the receivers mail-server to which I should reply
5. I reply to the automatic message
6. The receivers mail-server whitelists my address and delivers my initial mail

So far so good. Three questions pop up:

• What if the spammer uses my whitelisted email address to send his spam?
• What if only one of the two has a challenge-response spam-filter?
• What if spammers start to automatically reply to those messages?

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You probably heard about MacFUSE (announcement). MacFUSE is an OS X implementation of the popular FUSE project (well known to Linux enthusiasts).

I just found a tech-demo video showing some really interesting features and possibilities of FUSE (of course it’s not limited to MacFUSE).

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Today I’ve got my brand new MacBook Pro, so I thought I share some observations for those who are tempted to buy one too.

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One of my colleagues keeps asking my why I prefer Darcs over Subversion.

The question isn’t easy to answer. I think it’s mostly because of personal preferences and not because of objective advantages. Anyway I’ll try to explain it in this article.

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Wow, that’s a great book! I own over 80 non-fiction books but only few of them excite me that much. The Pragmatic Programmer from journeyman to master from Andrew Hunt and David Thomas is one of those. It’s stuffed full with practical wisdom and tips you can start using from the moment you read it.

They discuss all relevant topics of programming and software development, starting from text editors, IDEs, code generation, command line versus GUI etc… to estimation, handling requirements and documentation. It’s fantastic and really fun to read, too sad it has only 300 pages.

Usually the quotes on the back-flap of any book should be handled with care, but Ward Cunninghams quote If I’m putting together a project, it’s the authors of this book that I want. … And failing that I’d settle for people who’ve read their book. doesn’t really surprise me after reading just a few chapters.

(The second one equally full of wisdom, but with another focus, is Robert C. Martins Agile Software Development. Principles, Patterns, and Practices. Before buying several books on Design Patterns, Agile Methodologies and Software Development guidelines buy this one.)

Even if these books are from programmers for programmers, they’re extremely well written (meaning they don’t use nested parentheses (like me))!