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Our Kindle Fire impressions and why Amazon is destined to dominate
Amazon's Kindle Fire is a fine device, to be sure, but Amazon's real genius lies in its broader plans for world domination.
I saw the Kindle Fire in action yesterday at Amazon’s big product announcement in New York. I didn’t get to hold it, but I like what I saw at the different demo stations. Today, I’ve been reading articles around the web. Some claim it lacks flexibility, while others applaud its focus; some claim it’s no “iPad killer,” but think it will be a good wing man to Apple’s famed tablet. I believe it’s in a category all its own. The Kindle category.
Friday, September 30, 2011
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Thursday, September 29, 2011
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OpenVim : Learn Vim in your browser (openvim.com)submitted 1 day ago by sidcool1234154 commentssharesavehidereport
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Genetic algorithm evolving locomotion in "creatures" inspired by BoxCar 2D using box2d-js so use Chrome (cambrianexplosion.com)submitted 12 hours ago by dbilenkin91 commentssharesavehidereport
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:,( (i.imgur.com)submitted 18 hours ago by toysif260 commentssharesavehidereport
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3. Los Angeles – Long Beach – Santa Ana
In the past, L.A. was usually No. 1 for traffic congestion. But the recession has kept some Los Angelenos off the road. Nevertheless, the area still has some of the worst traffic jams in America – and not just at rush hour, says the Automobile Club of Southern California.
“We have a lot of middle-of-the-day and evening traffic, when people are going shopping or going to restaurants,” says Stephen Finnegan, manager of government affairs for the AAA affiliate. “In southern California, it’s not unusual to see traffic backed up in every direction on every highway.”
The area’s drivers, he says, face two challenges: geographic b -
Sly Stone homeless in Los Angeles - CSMonitor.com
Yes, Sly Stone, the famous lead singer for the funkadelic R&B band Sly & the Family Stone, is living in a white van Los Angeles.
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The singer, songwriter, and record producer, soared to success in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The multi-racial, multi-gender band become one of the most influential of its era. The band's first big hit was "Dance to the Music" and that was followed by "Everyday People" in 1969. But Stone and his band reportedly became heavy illegal drug users after their success, and the band eventually broke up.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
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SF Signal: FLOWCHART: Navigating NPR's Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books
Over the summer, NPR solicited the input of its listeners to rank the top science fiction and fantasy books of all time. Over 60,000 people voted for the top picks which were then compiled into a list by their panel of experts. The result? This list of 100 books with a wide range of styles, little context, and absolutely no pithy commentary to help readers actually choose something to read from it.
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Your Picks: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books : NPR
August 11, 2011
More than 5,000 of you nominated. More than 60,000 of you voted. And now the results are in. The winners of NPR's Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy survey are an intriguing mix of classic and contemporary titles. Over on NPR's pop culture blog, Monkey See, you can find one fan's thoughts on how the list shaped up, get our experts' take, and have the chance to share your own.
A quick word about what's here, and what's not: Our panel of experts reviewed hundreds of the most popular nominations and tossed out those that didn't fit the survey's criteria (after — we assure you — much passionate, thoughtful, gleefully nerdy discussion). You'll notice there are no young adult or horror books on this list, but sit tight, dear reader, we're saving those genres for summers yet to come.
So, at last, here are your favorite science-fiction and fantasy novels. (And a printable version, to take with you to the bookstore.) -
Palantir Technologies » Blog Archive » How to Rock an Algorithms Interview
We do a lot of interviewing at Palantir, and let me tell you: it’s hard. I don’t mean that we ask tough questions (although we do). I mean that the task of evaluating a candidate is hard.
The problem? Given a whiteboard and one hour, determine whether the person across from you is someone you’d like to work with, in the trenches, for the next n years. A candidate’s performance during an interview is only weakly correlated with his or her true potential, but we’re stuck with the problem of turning the chickenscratch on the whiteboard into an ‘aye’ or ‘nay’. Sometimes it feels like a high-stakes game of reading tea leaves. Believe me we’re doing our best, but we’re often left the nagging worry that we’re passing up brilliant people who just had a bad day or who didn’t click with a particular problem.
In an effort to improve this situation, we wanted to write up a guide that will help candidates make sense of this process, or at least the part known as an Algorithms Interview. At Palantir we ask questions that test for a lot of different skills — coding, design, systems knowledge, etc. — but one of our staple interviews is to ask you to design an algorithm to solve a particular problem.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
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Consensual Hallucination : The Last Word On Nothing
When William Gibson coined the term cyberspace in 1984 in the book Neuromancer, he described it as “a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators in every nation.”
Decades later, Gibson declared that cyberspace was everting. Which is to say, entering the next phase of its evolution by creeping out of the virtual boundaries that once defined it and into what we consider “real life.” Sure enough, about 5 minutes later, the world proved him right, again, and the Internet of Things began to erode the distinction between the virtual and the real. -
Objology: One of the Best Bits of Programming Advice I ever Got
One of the Best Bits of Programming Advice I ever Got
Years ago (early 1992), I attached myself to this crazy skunkworks project that was using this weird language called Smalltalk. "Object Oriented" was in its infancy as a "hot" item. High paid consultants. Lots of people laying claim to what this new object religion was all about. This was 5 years before Alan Kay would make the statement "I invented the term 'Object Oriented Programming' and this {Java and C++} is not what I had in mind."
Shortly after hooking up with this whacky group with the whacky language, still confused about what the difference was between an instance variable, a class variable, and a class instance variable, I found myself in a training course taught by Russ Pencin, of ParcPlace. Russ would say something that I didn't really appreciate at the time. Despite not understanding the point behind this sage advice, I endeavored to follow it. It would take years of experience and exposure to appreciate it's value. The advice?
Don't make objects that end with 'er'. -
A deep dive into Windows 8 Developer Preview - Computerworld
omputerworld - After spending several days with the Developer Preview of Windows 8 on a PC, it's clear that Microsoft's new operating system -- which offers two separate interfaces, Metro and Desktop -- is a transitional one between traditional computers and mobile devices. All of Microsoft's energy and creativity has been devoted to the new Metro interface; there's very little new of note for the old-fashioned Desktop.
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OmnesViae: Tabula Peutingeriana - Itinerarium Romanum
Salve! Do you have trouble finding your way from Brindisium to Antium or planning a vacation at your villa in the Appenines because no one produces an online map with directions in good Latin these days? Well, be of good cheer, friend, OmnesViae has what you need. [more inside]posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:56 AM - 17 comments
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BBC News - Virtual monkeys write Shakespeare
A few million virtual monkeys are close to re-creating the complete works of Shakespeare by randomly mashing keys on virtual typewriters.
A running total of how well they are doing shows that the re-creation is 99.990% complete.
The first single work to be completed was the poem A Lover's Complaint. -
How Doctor Who Became My Religion | Cracked.com
Recently, my son started watching Doctor Who on Netflix and after a few months of hearing about time vortexes and sonic screwdrivers, I decided to check it out for myself. For those who don't know: Doctor Who is a British program that has been running almost continually since its 1963 debut. It involves a 900-year-old Time Lord from the destroyed planet of Gallifrey who travels through time and space inside the TARDIS -- a sentient spacecraft shaped like an old UK police call box. He also has the ability to regenerate, taking on new forms and new personalities which also has conveniently allowed for new actors to assume the role over the last fifty years.
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From the man who discovered Stuxnet, dire warnings one year later - CSMonitor.com
One year ago a malicious software program called Stuxnet exploded onto the world stage as the first publicly confirmed cyber superweapon – a digital guided missile that could emerge from cyber space to destroy a physical target in the real world.
Monday, September 26, 2011
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This is just a hobby of mine, that I thought might be interesting to a lot of people. Some people collect stamps. Others collect coins. I collect dialects. Please let me know what you think of this page. - Rick Aschmann (Last updated: September 22, 2011.)
Oops! My computer crashed, and I may have lost some e-mails between June 25 and June 29. If you sent one in this period, please resend it! New! 12-July-2011
Please be patient! I have worked through well over half of the e-mails I have received since the huge jump in popularity of this site over the Christmas break, due to a number of new web forums about it! Thanks to all of you who have written expressing appreciation for the page! I don’t promise to respond to every e-mail, but I will try to answer all those who sent in a sample or other information, or even a complaint. 22- -
What does a geek's car around the University of California look like?? (i.imgur.com)submitted 17 hours ago by adanoopdixith370 commentssharesavehidereport
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Reamde - By Neal Stephenson - Book Review - NYTimes.com
Let us say that novelists are like unannounced visitors. While Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow pound manfully on the door, Jonathan Franzen and Zadie Smith knock politely, little preparing you for the emotional ferociousness with which they plan on making themselves at home. Neal Stephenson, on the other hand, shows up smelling vaguely of weed, with a bunch of suitcases. Maybe he can crash for a couple of days? Two weeks later he is still there. And you cannot get rid of him. Not because he is unpleasant but because he is so interesting. Then one morning you wake up and find him gone. You are relieved, a little, but you also miss him. And you wish he’d left behind whatever it was he was smoking, because anything that allows a human being to write six 1,000-page novels in 12 years is worth the health and imprisonment risk.
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Scientists Disarm AIDS Virus’ Attack on Immune System | Health | English
Scientists say they have found a way to disarm the AIDS virus in research that could lead to a vaccine. Researchers have discovered that if they eliminate a cholesterol membrane surrounding the virus, HIV cannot disrupt communication among disease-fighting cells and the immune system returns to normal.
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Ten Things Only Bad Managers Say - BusinessWeek
We know the kinds of things good managers say: They say “Attaboy” or “Attagirl,” “Let me know if you run into any roadblocks, and I’ll try to get rid of them for you,” and “You’ve been killing yourself—why don’t you take off at noon on Friday?”
Bad managers don’t say these things. Helpful, encouraging, and trust-based words and phrases don’t occur to them.
Crappy bosses say completely different things. For your enjoyment, we’ve gathered together 10 of the most heinous, bad-manager warhorse sayings. Do any of them sound like something a manager in your company might say (or might have said this week)? -
Reddit, what is the most offensive, off-colour, disgusting joke you know? I'll start. : AskReddit
Reddit now has over 2700 comments answering the question what is the most offensive, off-colour, disgusting joke you know?. These are NSFW, by definition. posted by twoleftfeet at 2:50 AM - 53 comments
Sunday, September 25, 2011
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http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4186469/rust-all-hands-w2011.pdf
Rust language writeup
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Write More Tests: Test-Driven Development? Give me a break...
Some things programmers say can be massive red flags. When I hear someone start advocating Test-Driven Development as the One True Programming Methodology, that's a red flag, and I start to assume you're either a shitty (or inexperienced) programmer, or some kind of Agile Testing Consultant (which normally implies the former).
Testing is a tool for helping you, not for using to engage in a "more pious than thou" dick-swinging my Cucumber is bigger than yours idiocy. Testing is about giving you the developer useful and quick feedback about if you're on the right path, and if you've broken something, and for warning people who come after you if they've broken something. It's not an arcane methodology that somehow has some magical "making your code better" side-effect... -
Europe's debt crisis: 5 key issues - Sep. 8, 2011
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- It's been about 18 months since the sovereign debt crisis in Europe began attracting attention in global financial circles.
In that time, the crisis has grown into the biggest challenge the European Union has faced since the adoption of the euro as its single currency 12 years ago. -
Obama links education reform to economic recovery | Reuters
(Reuters) - Young people in the United States are falling behind their overseas peers in reading, math and science, President Barack Obama said on Saturday, calling education reform an essential part of economic recovery.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
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Hunger in America, Visible if You Look for It - NYTimes.com
James Warren writes a column for the Chicago News Cooperative.
A nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization providing local coverage of Chicago and the surrounding area for The New York Times.
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The growing army of hidden hungry is such that you may miss them, indistinguishable from other commuters on a well-lit el platform.
I thought about that after Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Forrest Claypool, head of the Chicago Transit Authority, on Tuesday unveiled a $25 million touch-up to improve the look, feel and safety of stations at a time when there is little money for the central problems of aging tracks, century-old maintenance facilities, subpar power stations and poor signaling equipment. -
At UBS, It’s the Culture That’s Rogue - NYTimes.com
When Kweku Adoboli was arrested for an illicit trading scheme that cost his employer, the global bank UBS, $2.3 billion in losses, he was instantly labeled a “rogue trader,” suggesting he was an unprincipled scoundrel acting alone.
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Joseph Nair/The Straits Times, via Reuters
The UBS board is meeting in Singapore to deal with a trading scandal, and may decide the fate of Oswald Grübel, its chief.
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UBS moved swiftly to distance itself. Mr. Adoboli had engaged in “unauthorized” and “fictitious” trades that “violated UBS’s risk limits,” the bank claimed in a statement. -
Bloomberg’s Computer Project for Personnel Data Leads to Waste - NYTimes.com
oon after becoming mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg announced a plan to modernize the computer system that handles personnel information for New York City’s vast work force. The $66 million project was to be one of the signature technological innovations of his tenure.
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The Big Mud Puddle: Tricky Programming Concepts Aren’t
What Teachers do Wrong
Teachers use subversive language. They say things like “this is a bit tricky” before introducing a concept. It’s intended to remind you to pay attention, but mostly it turns students off—it says “this is hard; I don’t expect you to understand it”.
Frankly, that’s bullshit, and it has appeared—and caused problems—in nearly every class I’ve ever taken. It’s especially visible in mathematics and the sciences, but foreign language, social studies, literature, and even drafting are not immune. -
Open Core MySQL - Simon Says...
Oracle has finally done what the business management at MySQL had been asymptotically approaching for years. It’s taking MySQL open core. It’s interesting to read the views of the founder of MySQL (as well as the comments). Monty says:
What is most important to understand about an Open Core project is that it has nothing to do with an open source project. If you are depending on a single closed source component then you have to regard the whole project as a closed source project as you lose all the benefits of open source
The comments suggest Monty may be interpreting the facts a little more than is instantly obvious, but it’s still educational. My own view of the “open core” model is the same; once your business depends on something where the four software freedoms are not available, you no longer benefit from their derivatives. -
Patient dies after Lap-Band surgery - latimes.com
An Orange County woman has died after weight-loss surgery at a West Hills outpatient clinic, the fifth person to die shortly after Lap-Band procedures at clinics affiliated with the 1-800-GET-THIN advertising campaign since 2009, according to lawsuits, coroner's records and interviews.
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Motorola insider tells all about the fall of a technology icon -- Engadget
Last month we were contacted by the late Geoffrey Frost's personal adviser at Motorola; until Frost's death in 2005, Numair Faraz worked under the Motorola's former CMO -- the man widely regarded as the father of the RAZR. Like many (ourselves included), over the years Numair has become increasingly disenfranchised with the company's direction -- enough so that he compelled us to publish his letter to Motorola, its board of directors, and MOT investors everywhere regarding the company's egregious missteps and mismanagement.
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Numair Faraz: I was once a Facebook fool
I Was Once A Facebook Fool (public.numair.com)submitted 12 minutes ago by jerhewetcommentsharesavehidereport
Friday, September 23, 2011
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Yesterday, two new comic books from the "New 52" relaunch of DC Comics provoked some online controversy: Catwoman and Red Hood and the Outlaws. They were controversial in particular because of the way they depicted women, notably with the aggressively fanfictiony on-panel sex between Batman and Catwoman, and Starfire's transformation into a promiscuous tabula rasa who can't even remember the names of the men she sleeps with, and seeks out emotionless sex with both of the two male main characters while they essentially high five about it.
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Making a mobile connection | High Performance Web Sites
I just returned from Breaking Development Conference, an amazing gathering of many of the brightest minds in mobile web development. On the flight home I watched the video ($$) and slides from Rajiv Vijayakumar’s talk on Understanding Mobile Web Browser Performance at Velocity 2011. Rajiv works at Qualcomm where his team has done extensive performance analysis of the Android browser. Some of their findings include:
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The American Scholar: Dubya and Me - Walt Harrington
They still called him Junior when we first met, in forlorn Midland, Texas, back in July 1986. He was known then for being the son of the vice president of the United States, the agonizingly named George Herbert Walker Bush. As a young staff writer at The Washington Post Magazine, I was trying to persuade Vice President Bush to let me spend several months with him for an in-depth profile I intended to write. But the veep was skeptical, and he left it up to Junior to pass judgment on me and my request.
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OpenCOBOL is an open-source COBOL compiler. OpenCOBOL implements a substantial part of the COBOL 85 and COBOL 2002 standards, as well as many extensions of the existent COBOL compilers.
OpenCOBOL translates COBOL into C and compiles the translated code using the native C compiler. You can build your COBOL programs on various platforms, including Unix/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
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Autism: Putting Ezra first - latimes.com
As the father of a teenage son with autism, I have coped with many challenges: finding the right school for a boy who can't sit still and has trouble connecting with peers; managing medications to help tame his anxiety and other symptoms; learning to negotiate endless one-sided conversations about my son's two obsessions — animated movies and animals.
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Record-low SAT scores a wake-up call - CNN.com
(CNN) -- Last week, the College Board dealt parents, teachers and the education world a serious blow. According to its latest test results, "SAT reading scores for the high school class of 2011 were the lowest on record, and combined reading and math scores fell to their lowest point since 1995."
The reading scores, which stand at 497, are noticeably lower than just six years ago, when they stood at 508. And it's just the second time in the last 20 years that reading scores have dropped so precipitously in a single year. -
Battlestar Galactica 2003 | Fan Fiction Archive
not bad (general) stories
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I spent about a month in my spare time reading the source code of Quake II. It was a wonderful learning experience since one major improvement in idTech3 engine was to unify Quake 1, Quake World and QuakeGL into one beautiful code architecture. The way modularity was achieved even though the C programming language doesn't feature polymorphism was especially interesting.
In a lot of regards Quake II is a shining piece of software history since it is the most popular (in term of licensing) 3D engine of all time. Powering more than 30 games but also marking the gaming industry's departure from software/8bits color system to hardware/24bits color system that occured around 1997.
For all those reasons, I highly recommend anyone that appreciate programming to dive into it. As usual I took numerous notes, cleaned them up and publish them as it may save a few hours to someone.
I got a bit carried away with the "cleanup" process since there is more than 40MB of videos,screenshots and drawings in this article. In the end I am not sure it was worth it and I may just publish my raw ASCII notes in the future (I am thinking of Quake3 and Doom3 source), let me know what you think.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
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Samuel L Ipsum | Alternative Lorem Ipsum Generator
AN ALTERNATIVE LOREM IPSUM GENERATOR. [NSFW LANGUAGE] [MORE INSIDE]POSTED BY CHAVENET AT 11:00 PM - 7 COMMENTS
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Study: patent trolls have cost innovators half a trillion dollars
By now, the story of patent trolls has become well-known: a small company with no products of its own threatens lawsuits against larger companies who inadvertently infringe its portfolio of broad patents. The scenario has become so common that we don't even try to cover all the cases here at Ars. If we did, we'd have little time to write about much else.
But anecdotal evidence is one thing. Data is another. Three Boston University researchers have produced a rigorous empirical estimate of the cost of patent trolling. And the number is breath-taking: patent trolls ("non-practicing entity" is the clinical term) have cost publicly traded defendants $500 billion since 1990. And the problem has become most severe in recent years. In the last four years, the costs have averaged $83 billion per year. The study says this is more than a quarter of US industrial research and development spending during those years. -
One Statement from Bachmann, Two Steps Back for HPV Vaccine - NYTimes.com
During a debate last week for Republican presidential candidates and in interviews after it, Representative Michele Bachmann called the vaccine to prevent cervical cancer “dangerous.” Medical experts fired back quickly. Her statements were false, they said, emphasizing that the vaccine is safe and can save lives. Mrs. Bachmann was soon on the defensive, acknowledging that she was not a doctor or a scientist.
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Dan Wagner/Sarasota Herald-Tribune, via Associated Press
NO DEBATE Representative Michele Bachmann called the vaccine to prevent cervical cancer “dangerous.” Experts disagreed.
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But the harm to public health may have already been done. When politicians or celebrities raise alarms about vaccines, even false alarms, vaccination rates drop. -
Small-Town Gossip Moves to the Web, Anonymous and Vicious - NYTimes.com
MOUNTAIN GROVE, Mo. — In the small towns nestled throughout the Ozarks, people like to say that everybody knows everybody’s business — and if they do not, they feel free to offer an educated guess.
Here are some examples of anonymous exchanges on popular Topix forums around the country:
FROM PARAGOULD, ARK. (POPULATION 26,113)
“I met a girl who at Wal-mart the other day, she was bragging that she was getting 1200 dollars a month from the state for having 4 kids! She doesn’t work and doesn’t want to. Bragging that she also getting child support from 3 different men! Oh my god! Why would anyone brag about being a total drain on society?”
“i think when these girls have one child ok maybe an accident. but when it gets to two of them. i think the law should be pasted that they have to get fixed so there isn’t a third child. sorry just my thought.
FROM LONDON, KY. (POPULATION 7,993)
“does anyone know anything about him, i know that a close family member of mine has been hanging out over there a lot with her child, and i was just wanting to know what kind of guy he is and if its a safe place for them, she has had a drug problem in the past and i am just concerned about the childs safety i have heard a lot of bad things about him and that place, just wondering if it was true ...”
“HE is a BIG TIME dopehead! If your friend is there, so is she!”
“I agree. He is a deadbeat dad and stays to high to see them! I heard she is already hooked”
FROM ALTON, MO. (POPULATION 871)
“Has anyone noticed she is shaped like a penguin. She looks like that penguin character on batman. Id hate to wake up next to that every morning. Fat slobbery cow. I feel sorry for fred.”
“You people are horrible and hurtful. I bet you don’t have any room to talk about others. Take a good look at your self BEAUTY QUEEN I bet your not that great yourself.”
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Steve Hebert for The New York Times
Jennifer James, who says she was a victim of an online smear.
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Steve Hebert for The New York Times
At Dee's Place, a sign hangs over a table reserved for the "Old Farts Club".
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One of the established places here for trading the gossip of the day is Dee’s Place, a country diner where a dozen longtime residents gather each morning around a table permanently reserved with a members-only sign for the “Old Farts Club,” as they call themselves, to talk about weather, politics and, of course, their neighbors. -
Brown Says California G.O.P. Is Harder to Work With Decades Later - NYTimes.com
SACRAMENTO — Jerry Brown ran for governor on the argument that his age and experience — the son of a governor, he has spent a lifetime in politics, including two terms as governor himself 30 years ago — was what California needed to rescue it from a spiral of partisanship and financial decline as destructive as anywhere in the nation.
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Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Gov. Jerry Brown of California, his wife and advisers studied legislation at his office courtyard.
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But 10 months after his return here, a time when Mr. Brown might have hoped to move beyond struggling with the budget crisis that has dragged down this state, his associates say he appears bewildered and stunned by how much Sacramento has changed since he first served. -
Some advice I wish I'd been given when I was younger. (i.imgur.com)submitted 2 hours ago by Weequay2178 commentssharesavehidereport
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How to prevent a depression | The Great Debate
AMSTERDAM – The latest economic data suggests that recession is returning to most advanced economies, with financial markets now reaching levels of stress unseen since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. The risks of an economic and financial crisis even worse than the previous one – now involving not just the private sector, but also near-insolvent sovereigns – are significant. So, what can be done to minimize the fallout of another economic contraction and prevent a deeper depression and financial meltdown?
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How to Stop the Drop in Verbal Scores - NYTimes.com
THE latest bad but unsurprising news on education is that reading and writing scores on the SAT have once again declined. The language competence of our high schoolers fell steeply in the 1970s and has never recovered.
This is very worrisome, because the best single measure of the overall quality of our primary and secondary schools is the average verbal score of 17-year-olds. This score correlates with the ability to learn new things readily, to communicate with others and to hold down a job. It also predicts future income. -
Layoff Fears Rise as the Economy Sputters - NYTimes.com
Not again. That is the plea of many Americans fearful about their jobs as the economy falters.
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Monica Almeida/The New York Times
Terrance and Briana Myricks. He was laid off Sept. 1 for the second time in three years and she was laid off in January.
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Terrance and Briana Myricks. He was laid off Sept. 1 for the second time in three years and she was laid off in January.
“I don’t have any more savings or anything like that,” said Terrance Myricks, 21, who was dismissed for the second time in less than three years on Sept. 1. “I’ll probably have to rely on unemployment, which I’d really rather not do. And that’s assuming I can even get it.”
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
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Map: U.S. Ranks Near Bottom on Income Inequality - Max Fisher - International - The Atlantic
Perhaps the most politically contentious aspect of President Barack Obama's new proposed legislation, aimed to revive the still-struggling U.S. economy, is $1.5 trillion in tax increases, much of it aimed at wealthy Americans. The White House is calling this "the Buffett rule." Named for super-investor Warren Buffett's complaint that he pays a lower tax rate than some of his most menial wage employees, the legislation would be designed to ensure that anyone making more than $1 million per year will pay at least the same rate as middle-income taxpayers.
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My paradigm is better than your paradigm « Luke Palmer
On twitter I participated in the short snarky exchange:
@stevedekorte – Threads sharing state by default is like variables being global by default.
@luqui – state is like globals :-)
@stevedekorte – @luqui only shared state – which is why FP ultimately fails – it trades comprehensibility for shared state optimizations
@luqui – @stevedekorte, wow, sneaking “FP ultimately fails” as if an obvious truth in a reply to a Haskell programmer
@stevedekorte – @luqui, a bit like sneaking in “[all] state is like globals” to an OO programmer? :-)
@stevedekorte – @psnively @luqui my only issue with FP is the decision to trade expressivity and reusability for less state while calling it progress
The conversation goes on (and on) between many twitterites, having a fun but serious argument about this and that benefit of this and that style. Dynamic/static types come up, OO vs. functional, usefulness, mathematical foundation, learning curves; none of the standard artillery is spared. What irritates me about this style of argument is all the sweeping adjectives (1) used with no definition, thus impossible to support with evidence, and (2) synonymized with better.
In this post, I will draw attention to this irritating vocabulary, so that the next time you use it you can realize how little you are saying. -
JavaScript Garden is a growing collection of documentation about the most quirky parts of the JavaScript programming language. It gives advice to avoid common mistakes, subtle bugs, as well as performance issues and bad practices that non-expert JavaScript programmers may encounter on their endeavours into the depths of the language.
JavaScript Garden does not aim to teach you JavaScript. Former knowledge of the language is strongly recommended in order to understand the topics covered in this guide. In order to learn the basics of the language, please head over to the excellent guide on the Mozilla Developer Network. -
Gamers, Not Scientists, Solve AIDS Enzyme Puzzle | ITProPortal.com
Online gamers have successfully solved a puzzle that has baffled scientists for years by putting together the structure of a retrovirus enzyme.
Scientists believe that the structure of the AIDS like retrovirus enzyme holds the key to creating medicine for the dreaded AIDS disease.
Monday, September 19, 2011
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Online ID Verification Plan Carries Risks - NYTimes.com
WHO’S afraid of Internet fraud?
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Consumers who still pay bills via snail mail. Hospitals leery of making treatment records available online to their patients. Some state motor vehicle registries that require car owners to appear in person — or to mail back license plates — in order to transfer vehicle ownership. -
New York City photos by Charles W. Cushman reveal 1940s life in the Big Apple | Mail Online
It’s been 70 years since an Indiana photographer visited New York City and returned home with an amazing collection of holiday snaps.
But Charles Weever Cushman’s pictures are even more impressive today, as they were taken on pricey colour Kodachrome and look far more recent than they actually are.
He went around the city taking photos of architecture such as the Brooklyn Bridge and other parts of the Manhattan skyline - and it’s hard to believe they were taken while World War Two was going on. -
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This is the true story of the app that was fixed by a crash. We travel back to join fish mid-debugging:
I'm dumbfounded. The thread is just gone. And not just any thread: the main thread.
I don't even know how you make the main thread go away. exit() gets rid of the whole app. Will pthread_exit() do it? Maybe it's some crazy exception thing?
See, I've got a bug report. Surf's Up: Epic Waves doesn't work on this prelease OS. Last year, the game giddily ran through its half-dozen splash screens before landing on its main menu, full of surf boards and power chords. Today, it just sits there silently, showing nothing but black, getting all aggro. The game hasn't changed, but the OS did, and I've got to figure out what's different.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
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Microsoft Cracks Live Migration Problem | PCWorld Business Center
With the next release of Windows Server operating system, Microsoft has conquered one of the thorniest problems in virtualization: moving an operational virtual machine (VM) across a wide area network (WAN).
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Windows 8 Start Menu Shows Metro User Interface Creeping In
Microsoft unveiled this new feature at the Microsoft BUILD conference, being held this week in Anaheim, California. It will be available in Microsoft's Hyper-V version 3 hypervisor, included in Microsoft's next server operating system, Windows Server 8. -
What do sheepherders do when they are bored? (wimp.com)submitted 9 hours ago by JSTARR35697 commentssharesavehidereport
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For Jobs, It’s War - NYTimes.com
The American political discussion has finally turned to the right target: jobs.
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Even so, the president’s jobs bill is already being nickeled and dimed from the right — and the left — even though it is only throwing nickels and dimes at the problem to begin with. But at least it’s a start, even if a long-overdue one. -
California unemployment rate hits 12.1% as employers slash jobs - latimes.com
Unsettled by signs that the recovery is stumbling, California employers in August cut jobs for the second month in a row, helping push the unemployment rate to 12.1% from 12% in July.
Payrolls fell by 8,400 positions last month, according to figures released Friday by the state Employment Development Department.
It's a worrisome sign for California's labor market, which has all but ground to halt. California has gained 98,500 jobs in 2011, but almost all of that hiring came early in the year. The state's employers have added just 11,000 jobs since March. -
In China, what you eat tells who you are - latimes.com
Reporting from Beijing— At a glance, it is clear this is no run-of-the-mill farm: A 6-foot spiked fence hems the meticulously planted vegetables and security guards control a cantilevered gate that glides open only to select cars.
"It is for officials only. They produce organic vegetables, peppers, onions, beans, cauliflowers, but they don't sell to the public," said Li Xiuqin, 68, a lifelong Shunyi village resident who lives directly across the street from the farm but has never been inside. "Ordinary people can't go in there."
Saturday, September 17, 2011
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350 students sue school for torture--including being sexually abused, locked inside cages, held in isolation, bound by hands and feet, forced to eat their own vomit. Some of them are Redditors, please show some love! (self.reddit.com)
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I spotted this today at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. - Imgur
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The Most Racist Thing That Ever Happened to Me - Touré - National - The Atlantic
There's a Chris Rock joke that is emblematic of modern racism. It's from his 2008 standup routine "Kill the Messenger," and it's about Alpine, New Jersey, the posh town where he lives in a multi-million dollar home. His neighbors include Mary J. Blige, Patrick Ewing, and Eddie Murphy. Rock says Blige, Ewing, Murphy, and he are (or were) among the best in the world at their professions, legends in their line of work. They're also the only four black homeowners in town.
Friday, September 16, 2011
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Misstatements Shadow Bachmann in Republican Presidential Race - NYTimes.com
In the pugilism of this week’s Republican presidential debate, Representative Michele Bachmann seemed to have landed a clean blow against Gov. Rick Perry over an order he issued requiring Texas schoolgirls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus.
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But then in follow-up interviews, Mrs. Bachmann suggested the vaccine was linked to “mental retardation.” -
What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? - NYTimes.com
Dominic Randolph can seem a little out of place at Riverdale Country School — which is odd, because he’s the headmaster. Riverdale is one of New York City’s most prestigious private schools, with a 104-year-old campus that looks down grandly on Van Cortlandt Park from the top of a steep hill in the richest part of the Bronx. On the discussion boards of UrbanBaby.com, worked-up moms from the Upper East Side argue over whether Riverdale sends enough seniors to Harvard, Yale and Princeton to be considered truly “TT” (top-tier, in UrbanBabyese), or whether it is more accurately labeled “2T” (second-tier), but it is, certainly, part of the city’s private-school elite, a place members of the establishment send their kids to learn to be members of the establishment. Tuition starts at $38,500 a year, and that’s for prekindergarten.
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Imagination: Creating the Future of Education & Work
In February 2011, every teacher in Providence, Rhode Island was pink slipped. Not all 1,926 of them got fired, of course, but with the district facing a $40 million deficit, anything is possible. The district says it needs flexibility, just in case. Every school district in the United States faces its own version of what’s happening in Providence. However, “IMAGINATION: Creating the Future of Education and Work” is focused not on how we got here but rather how we can move forward from here immediately even as the education system continues to struggle. [more inside]posted by netbros at 11:03 AM - 35 comments
Thursday, September 15, 2011
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First look: Windows Server 8 improves scalability and scope - Computerworld
Computerworld - Every once in a while, you get a glimpse of something in the tech world that takes your breath away. For consumers, the iPad's eye candy and extreme usability, for instance, have the power to change the way they relate to computers. For enterprise administrators, data center managers and system managers, the features and improvements in Windows Server 8 are right up there in significance. It's really a game-changer in the world of server operating systems.
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Nightmares & Dreamscapes - Google Books
(page 259 n my hardcopy)
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Wednesday, September 14, 2011
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Daily Kos: That was my brother's death you were cheering, you a$$holes Updated
To all of those tea-jadist assholes at last night’s GOP debate: I don’t generally like to use profanity, but I fear that English is above your comprehension level, so in terms you might better understand, may God damn your worthless souls to hell for all eternity.
I had not planned on watching the debate because it conflicted with more important activities, like a new episode of The Closer. But even more importantly, it was being held at a time when I had committed to posting a diary for The Grieving Room. That diary was about the death of my brother from a very painful, uninsured struggle against metastatic cancer. -
Google Dart to “ultimately ... replace JavaScript”
The following keynote will be held at the GOTO Aarhus 2011 Conference on Monday, Oct. 10, 2011:
“Dart, a new programming language for structured web programming”
This post explains what Dart is all about and how it relates to JavaScript.
Google’s strategy for JavaScript
Unless another source is mentioned, all of the following quotes come from a Google email that was written in November 2010. It summarized a Google-internal discussion:
On November 10th and 11th, a number of Google teams representing a variety of viewpoints on client-side languages met to agree on a common vision for the future of Javascript.
The agreed-upon “common vision” was to develop a new programming language called “Dash” (which was later renamed to “Dart”).
The goal of the Dash effort is ultimately to replace JavaScript as the lingua franca of web development on the open web platform. -
The Associated Press: Google to offer location opt-out to Wi-Fi owners
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google Inc. is going to let people with home wireless networks decide whether they want to be lumped into a system that helps pinpoint the locations of people on cell phones.
The concession announced Tuesday will give wireless, or Wi-Fi, networks the right to forbid Google from listing them in a vast database that the company has been building in the past few years. -
Sadly...as true today as it was when it was spoken. (i.imgur.com)submitted 5 hours ago by Cincylogic766 commentssharesavehidereport
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California State Controller's Office : Unclaimed Property Main Page
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There are two types of HPV vaccines approved for use in Canada, Gardasil® and Cervarix ®. The Gardasil® vaccine was approved in Canada in July 2006. The vaccine is effective in preventing the types of HPV that are responsible for 70 per cent of cervical cancer. It is approved for males and females aged 9 to 26. The Cervarix® vaccine was approved for use in Canada in February 2010 for females aged 10 to 25, and is effective in preventing the same types of HPV responsible for 70 per cent of cervical cancer. HPV is one of the most common sexually transmitted infections in Canada, and the majority of cervical cancers are caused by this infection. Despite the effectiveness of HPV vaccination, vaccinated females must continue to have regular cervical cancer screening.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
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There is…a myth about America to which we are clinging which has nothing to do with the lives we lead…this collision between one’s image of oneself and what one actually is is always very painful and there are two things you can do about it, you can meet the collision head-on and try and become what you really are or you can retreat and try to remain what you thought you were, which is a fantasy, in which you will certainly perish.
–James Baldwin, (Nobody Knows My Name, 1961)
1
You know something very bizarre is going on in Hollywood when the movie “Rise of Planet of the Apes” tells more about the black experience in America than “The Help.”
I went to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes because it’s summer, the time for escapist movies, and right now there is a lot I want to escape from. I’m tired of hearing about the Tea Party and debt ceilings; Christine O’Donnell, pampered and indulged by Fox News, just walked off Piers Morgan’s talk show because he had the nerve to ask her as a politician about her views on gay marriage and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: the Bush insanity is making a comeback. I go back and forth between being outraged and disappointed with Obama and feeling genuinely sorry for him. Having not run for president as a black person, he can’t play the “discrimination” card against John Boehner & Co. now when he needs it most. (Whether he has the most powerful position in the world or works at McDonald’s, Obama’s black in America, which means he has to deal with at least one racist white person at his job.) -
The Three Little Pigs (Reprise) (1.bp.blogspot.com)submitted 11 hours ago by LaurieCheers88 commentssharesavehidereport
Monday, September 12, 2011
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The Digital Antiquarian | MetaFilter
The Digital Antiquarian discusses ludic narrative and has been filling in by bits and pieces an amazing history of recreational computing and adventure gaming. The Rise of Experiential Games traces the development of Wargames from H.G. Wells' (!) wargame for toy soldiers, Little Wars, to Avalon Hill's Squad Leader; he discusses the development of Dungeons and Dragons (part 2, 3) led to the first CRPGs on PLATO. He'll tell you things you didn't know about Oregon Trail (part 2, 3, 4, 5, postscript, the 1975 source code!), Hunt the Wumpus (part 2), Colossal Cave Adventure (part 2, 3, 4, 5), Eliza (part 2, 3), Scott Adams' games (part 2, 3, 4, 5), the TRS-80 (part 2, 3), the 2 adventuring cultures of university minicomputers and home PCs, and their unlikely bridging.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
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Cartoonists Gather to Reflect
On a day when the entire world was reflecting on the events of September 11, 2001, the comics community joined forces to honor the occasion with a moving display of solidarity and remembrance. -
HTML5 Game Dev: HTML5 Game Development Tutorial
If you want to make a HTML5 game and just want a nice reference page you can go back to, or if you are a complete beginner and need to learn as much as possible step-by-step, then you're at the right place.
I also have a guide split into multiple pages here, if you prefer that: HTML5 Game Development Guide.
There's also a video tutorial for the basics of HTML5 game development: Video Intro to HTML5 Game Dev
If you don't know much about JavaScript, then have a look at the Introduction to JavaScript.
If you want to know how to make money from your games, have a look at this article:
How to Make Money From Your Games -
Remembering the audacity of the twin towers - CSMonitor.com
They were too large, too sterile, and too indifferent to their surroundings. But the World Trade Center towers were also a reminder of what America could achieve. Conceived at the same time President Kennedy committed to putting Americans on the moon, they would become an affirmation of the value of thinking large.
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Baby Giraffe. (i.imgur.com)submitted 9 hours ago by MovieDude18 commentssharesavehidereport
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-= 10 Technical Papers Every Programmer Should Read (At Least Twice) =-
Inspired by a fabulous post by Michael Feathers along a similar vein, I’ve composed this post as a sequel to the original. That is, while I agree almost wholly with Mr. Feather’s1 choices, I tend to think that his choices are design-oriented2 and/or philosophical. In no way, do I disparage that approach, instead I think that there is room for another list that is more technical in nature, but the question remains, where to go next? In this post I will offer some guidance based on my own readings. The papers chosen herein are not intended to act as a C.S. hall of fame, but instead hope to accomplish the following:
All papers are freely available online (i.e. not pay-walled)
They are technical (at times highly so)
They cover a wide-range of topics
The form the basis of knowledge that every great programmer should know, and may already -
The jobs proposal ignores economics | The Great Debate
By David Callahan
The opinions expressed are his own.
It’s a cruel fact for millions of unemployed Americans that the jobs plan President Obama unveiled last night will never be fully enacted by Congress. What’s even crueler, though, is that the least effective elements of the plan have the best chance of passage. New direct federal spending, the most powerful form of stimulus, is widely considered DOA on Capitol Hill – while weaker tax cut options will get a real hearing.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
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Software’s Receding Hairline - raganwald's posterous
The news is out that the Java Programming Language is going to have a clean, simple syntax for lambdas Real Soon Now. It seems that after two or three or maybe even five years of wrangling, the various committees have decided on a syntax, mostly.
Obviously, I'm less than impressed. But let's cut the designers a little slack. There are factors I don't understand that go into a feature like this. It must be carefully considered not just for its functionality, but for the subtle way a revised compiler would interact with billions of lines of existing code. The new feature would interact with thousands of existing features in weird ways. Each and every one of those interactions needs to be carefully considered before adding a new feature. Under the circumstances, it's kind of amazing the feature go added at all. -
Technolog - Can Windows 8 save the PC?
Last weekend I accompanied my 20-something sister-in-law to a Best Buy to purchase an iPad 2. She previously considered buying a Windows laptop, but as it turns out Apple’s tablet does everything that she needs. And that’s a pretty scary thing for the PC industry. Cash-strapped consumers aren’t choosing tablets merely as complementary devices. Increasingly, it’s an either/or decision — and Windows is losing.
Friday, September 9, 2011
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Betty Ong - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Betty Ann Ong (traditional Chinese: 鄧月薇; simplified Chinese: 邓月薇; February 5, 1956 – September 11, 2001), born in San Francisco, was an American flight attendant onboard American Airlines Flight 11 when it was flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center as part of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.[1]
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Stanford Hospital Patients’ Private Data Was Posted Online - NYTimes.com
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Tamales, Los Angeles' first street food - latimes.com
Southern California's latest foodie trend has the region atwitter. Lines form long into the night at the latest hot spot for edible treasures, while wily entrepreneurs outdo each other by parking at the best spots. But not everyone is happy. Brick-and-mortar restaurant owners fume that their pop-up rivals take away business; county health officials quickly enact regulations, and politicians push laws to regulate or even ban the vendors from city limits — but not without sparking a public uproar.
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In China, Wang Lihong sentenced for protest supporting bloggers - latimes.com
Reporting from Beijing— A retired Chinese businesswoman was given a nine-month prison sentence Friday for obstructing traffic and "stirring up trouble" in what had become a test case for freedom of expression in China.
The charges against Wang Lihong, 56, stem from her protest in 2010 in eastern China's Fujian province in support of three bloggers. The three were charged with defamation after they tried to help a mother investigating her daughter's death. -
Borderline Personality Disorder: Mental Illness on Rise? -- Printout -- TIME
Doctors used to have poetic names for diseases. A physician would speak of consumption because the illness seemed to eat you from within. Now we just use the name of the bacterium that causes the illness: tuberculosis. Psychology, though, remains a profession practiced partly as science and partly as linguistic art.
Because our knowledge of the mind's afflictions remains so limited, psychologists — even when writing in academic publications — still deploy metaphors to understand difficult disorders. And possibly the most difficult of all to fathom — and thus one of the most creatively named — is the mysterious-sounding borderline personality disorder (BPD). University of Washington psychologist Marsha Linehan, one of the world's leading experts on BPD, describes it this way: "Borderline individuals are the psychological equivalent of third-degree-burn patients. They simply have, so to speak, no emotional skin. Even the slightest touch or movement can create immense suffering." -
New Android Phones, from the Potent to the Pennywise - TIME
Something for everybody. That's the business strategy behind Google's Android mobile operating system, and in many ways it's a marvelous thing. You can get an Android handset on the carrier of your choice, from a variety of manufacturers. You can pick one with or without a physical keyboard. Big spenders can spring for a phone with the latest technologies; bargain hunters who are willing to commit to a contract can get a less cutting-edge handset for free. It's a radically different situation than with Apple's iPhone 4, which is just one phone — albeit a pretty spectacular one — and which is available only on AT&T and Verizon Wireless.
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