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Apple bans an iPhone e-reader because it provides access to the Kama Sutra
Eucalyptus is an iPhone application that that lets you download and read books from the expansive Project Gutenberg library of free public-domain works. Judging from its Web site, it's more or less comparable to Amazon's Kindle application--except all the content is free, and the interface looks to
A Life that Added Up to Something: Paul Erdos (1996)
WASHINGTON - One of the most extraordinary minds of our time has "left." "Left" is the word Paul Erdos, a prodigiously gifted and productive mathematician, used for "died." "Died" is the word he used to signify "stopped doing math." Erdos never died. He continued doing math, notoriously a young person's field, right…
Google Calculating Which Employees Are About to Quit
[Google] recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit.
Djng - a Django powered microframework
djng is nearly two weeks old now, so it’s about time I wrote a bit about the project. I presented a keynote at EuroDjangoCon in Prague earlier this month entitled …
Django tip: Caching and two-phased template rendering
We've launched user accounts at EveryBlock , and we faced the interesting problem of needing to cache entire pages except for the "You're logged in as [username] " bit at the top of the page. For example, the Chicago homepage takes a nontrivial amount of time to generate and doesn't change often -- which means we want…
The Git Parable (building a Git-like system from the ground up)
Git is a simple, but extremely powerful system. Most people try to teach Git by demonstrating a few dozen commands and then yelling “tadaaaaa.” I believe this method is flawed. Such a treatment may leave you with the ability to use Git to perform simple tasks, but the Git commands will still feel like magical…
A Life Offline
I have literally had a computer since birth; the Internet came not long after that: I still remember email addresses supplemented by UUCP bang-paths. Hardly a day has gone by in which I haven’t checked my email for what must be a decade.
Top Programming Fonts
Technologist, podcaster, and inventor. Founder of the 5by5 podcast network and Fireside.
JSONPath - XPath for JSON
A frequently emphasized advantage of XML is the availability of plenty tools to analyse, transform and selectively extract data out of XML documents. XPath is one of these powerful tools.
The Death of Richard Dawkins: A short story by Steve Yegge
I bet you think of other stuff that needs saying after these articles. I'm sure they aren't the end. After all, you do enjoy a good rant.
PHYS771 Quantum Computing Since Democritus
University of Waterloo, Fall 2006 Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:00-2:30pm BFG Building, 2nd floor seminar room (BFG2125)
A year with Python
Almost exactly a year ago I wrote here about giving Python a try as my main programming language. Before that I was mainly writing in Perl, and eying Ruby from time to time as the replacement.
Schneier on Security: Software Problems with a Breath Alcohol Detector
This is an excellent lesson in the security problems inherent in trusting proprietary software: After two years of attempting to get the computer based source code for the Alcotest 7110 MKIII-C, defense counsel in State v. Chun were successful in obtaining the code, and had it analyzed by Base One Technologies, Inc…
Obama proposes no capital gains tax on qualified small business stock
This week, the Obama Administration released the first comprehensive summary of its budget proposal. The budget proposal is wide ranging, and includes, for example, proposed changes with respect to…
Steve Blank: Gravity Will be Turned Off
Part of marketing is the ability to communicate a message to thousands of people and convince them to believe your version of reality. When I was 19 I accidentally had a test run of my ability to d…