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Aplus Language   25 Sep 04
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A+ is a descendant of APL (AplLanguage) and a predecessor of K (KayLanguage). Arthur Whitney developed A+ in the late ‘80s in response to employer Morgan Stanley’s need to move their APL applications from mainframes to Sun workstations. He later left Morgan Stanley and wrote K.

A+ is open source. link

Why Parrot Matters   25 Sep 04
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(Source: Manny Swedberg; ruby-talk-ML) The Parrot team’s firm intention is to have Parrot run Python and Ruby just as well as Perl6. This is helped(?) by the fact that the plans for Perl6 are so feature-rich (not to say -bloated ;) that supporting everything in it basically means supporting everything in Ruby. Things that are in Ruby, but not Perl6, like continuations are slatted to be added to Parrot anyways out of sheer good-neighborliness. It should, in fact, be possible to compile any dynamic scripting language into Parrot code: scheme, integer basic, befunge…whatever.

Because Perl6 is so far away, support for Ruby and Python is probably actually going to come first. A big test, the first major public showing of Parrot, is going to come at this year’s O’Reilly convention. Python/Parrot is going head to head benchmarking with CPython. The loser gets a pie in the face; watch for it.

Parrot matters. To scripting-language hackers generally, to Ruby hackers specifically, and to the Open Source movement as a whole.

Parrot promises to furnish a fast, portable environment for every major scripting language. This will remove one of the big obstacles to more widespread deployment: speed. Moreover, if I download a Parrot VM to run someone’s PyGame program on my machine, I already have what I need to run your Ruby or Perl program without further dependency worries: viral portability. Fast Ruby means more Ruby hackers. Fast Python and Perl means more hackers in those languages and thus more people who might take a look at Ruby; a common runtime would make the transition even easier.

For OSS as a whole, Parrot promises a rival to Java or .Net without corporate ownership, developed as open source, for languages that are open source and in which tons of open source code is already written. As the Gnome project considers a new development language, a timely Parrot implementation could mean an in for Python, maybe even Ruby. That would be awesome.

Parrot is a respectable ways along. Not by any means done, but more than vaporware. Support for objects was recently added.

Parrot page

Parrot frontend

ruvi 0.4.11   25 Sep 04
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 in the very near future i'll be releasing ruvi 0.4.11.
 its a fairly complete vi(m) reimplementation in ruby
 thats getting to be fairly mature.
link
 includes stuff like:
   auto indent
   ruby highlighting
   curses interface
   macro support (new in .11)
   undo / redo
   class/module/method selector (major speedup in .11)
   word/filename completion in buffer (new for .11)
   rrb refactoring

eBay buys Indian auction site   25 Sep 04
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(Source: The Register) eBay is buying India’s biggest auction site, Baazee.com, for $50m and some post-acquisition costs. Based in Mumbai, Baazee.com has one million registered users, who flog stuff just like they do on eBay.

India lags far behind China in Internet numbers - just 17 million people are online, according to IDC. But it is a growth market - Internet subscribers are expected to reach 30 million in 2006. link

Waging War   25 Sep 04
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(Source: University of Maine News) I especially liked:
 'We may have nuclear technology, but we still have stone-age brains"
 -- Anthropologist Paul Roscoe.

article

Completely Automatic Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart   25 Sep 04
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As the latest trend by spammers seems to be to spam wikis, one can setup the same sort of "enter the number in the image" process as network solutions, ebay, etc, do. CAPTCHA below is one possible solution.

A simple CAPTCHA ("Completely Automatic Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart") written in Ruby. This will dynamically create an image containing a key displayed on a noisy background, which the user must enter into a text box. link

Alternatively, as Ari has pointed out in ruby-talk:

 Alter the engine so that external URLs go to a non-indexed-by-
 search-engines "leaving the site" page. It effectively kills any
 pagerank that adding a link would add to the linkee. That's both good
 and bad, but it's a short-term solution.

 It may be that a simple HTTP redirect script would work, too, but I'm
 not sure.

Stand up meetings ..   25 Sep 04
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Check out this Dilbert comic

Googlism.com   25 Sep 04
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Thanks to Valerie for the link
 have a look at googlism.com and type bush or chirac or armin roehrl :-)

How I became a code fascist   25 Sep 04
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Superb post by the batman.

A good marketing beer add: "The ideal wife"   25 Sep 04
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A friend sent me this funny beer ad this morning. It is not politically correct, but enjoy it. www.approximity.com/~armin/Idealwife.mpg

more ads

Watching the Net's background radiation   25 Sep 04
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(Source: The Register) When the city sleeps, it’s never completely silent. But when the Internet sleeps, what kind of static does it make? What does it sound like? Like the weird warbles astronomers claim to hear from outer space?

We’d like to share what the Internet sounds like when it sleeps, and in its current highly agitated state, we think it’s worth sharing. www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/34227.html

More and more female athletes pose nude   25 Sep 04
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This entry is politically incorrect, but I decided to post it anyhow, as
  • it seems to become more and more of a trend in the last 5 years: for the EM the wives and girl-friends of the Russian team took a nude photo session, for olympic games 2000, Australia’s women soccer team, the Dutch tean, Katie Vermeulen in the August Playboy, etc.
  • I really liked the words on Bridgette Starrs photo. Yes, I like the photo, too :-), as two friends have commented at once.
  • Yes, sex sells. It is really sad if the female athletes feel the necessity to pose nude for raising money.

It’s sad if the athletes feel it necessary to pose nude to raise money.

Make sure you read the motto on the picture.

A Quick Guide to SQLite and Ruby   25 Sep 04
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why the lucky stiff has written a nice introduction to SQLite.

So, lets talk about SQLites handsome features:

  • SQLite is swift. In my own testing, I have found it to be speedy. Some speed comparisons with MySQL and PostgreSQL are here.
  • SQLite is not a large database server, such as MySQL. You dont connect to the database. Using SQLite, you access a database file. Everything happens in-process.
  • SQLite is an ACID database. Supports transactions, triggers.
  • SQLite is public domain. Absolutely no licensing issues.
  • SQLite is typeless. Any type or length of data may be stored in a column, regardless of the declared type. This allows extreme flexibility and avoidance of type errors.
  • SQLite allows custom functions and aggregates. This is my favorite feature of SQLite, which we will explore shortly.

link

Google - Quo vadis?   25 Sep 04
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Interesting blurb what Google will do next.

Summary:

  • Advertisement market has limits
  • the cash from the IPO is the emergecy fund to reinvent themselves
  • only buy small companies with interesting technology
  • take on Yahoo and Microsoft, but not directly
  • Amazon, ebay, etc. are there to lose .. The key to making money in search is to get between people and what they are searching for, and that’s where Google is on a collision course not only with Microsoft and Yahoo, but also with Amazon and eBay
  • expect GoogleMedia taking on iTunes and entire new market places of intellectual property
  • whatever Google will do will be incredibly technical

Nice posting on Human Resources   25 Sep 04
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(Source: pragprog-ML, Michael L. Royle)
 >I work for ThoughtWorks (TW) and would be happy to tell you about it.  TW
 >was founded on the idea that if you put together the best and brightest
 >people and give them a challenging environment then only great things can
 >happen.  This has been and continues to be the main criteria by which we
 >hire people and is the one of the reasons we are so successful.  As such,
 >the recruitment process is a series of flaming hurdles, but well worth it.
 >I just can't bring myself to leave the company even after 5 years :-)

Beat Takeshi   25 Sep 04
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If you want to relax after too much work .. and are sick of the normal Hollywood movies, check out Beat Takeshi.

Excellent page about Beat Takeshi.

Takeshi Kitano on the question: What’s you’re coolest moment?

 "In Japan, there is a broadcasting station called NHK,
  like BBC, but much, much stricter. When I was a rising
  star in comedy I appeared on a live program, and the director specifically
  said you can't say such-and-such, if you use these words you'll
  be finished. So of course I couldn't resist. I said 'shit'
  12 times in a row. I said, 'I saw a shit-like substance on the street.
  So I went over and I picked it up and smelled it, and it smelled like
  shit. Then I felt it and it felt like shit, and I liked it, and
  it tasted like shit, so I put it away. Thank god I didn't step in it!'
  That was my coolest moment, because it was a tremendous risk. They could have
  cut me off but they didn't. The director was fired and the producer was moved
  to another program, far away from Tokyo."

[ANN] Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby: Expansion Pak I: The Tiger's Vest (with a Basic Introduction to Irb)   25 Sep 04
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Yes, I’ve been taking forever. Well, what can I say? Answering threats is quite consuming. (But apologies to those of you whose threats have been too jarring for me to reply or breathe.)

Today I’m passing on to you the first fruits of a big batch of material forthcoming. The Tiger’s Vest (with a Basic Introduction to Irb.)

poignantguide.net/ruby/expansion-pak-1.html

Stick around. Picture a man with a balloon, pinching the air out slowly, cats tied to his leg. If you can do that, then you’re all prepped for chapter 5.

Thank you, -talkers.

_why

ri bug in latest ruby 1.8.2 source   25 Sep 04
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James Britt came to rescue:
 I grabbed the latest 1.8.2 source.
 I ran the usual: autoconf, configure, make, make install.
 ri failed.
 I looked inside Makefile and see the target install-doc.
 I ran make install-doc.
 ri worked.

 Not the most obvious path for me, but there you go

Why are monster-movie zombies so horrifying and talking animals so fascinating?   25 Sep 04
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(Source: Dave Bryant) Japanese roboticist Doctor Masahiro Mori is not exactly a household name but, for the speculative fiction community at least, he could prove to be an important one. The reason why can be summed up in a simple, strangely elegant phrase that translates into English as the uncanny valley. Though originally intended to provide an insight into human psychological reaction to robotic design, the concept expressed by this phrase is equally applicable to interactions with nearly any nonhuman entity. Stated simply, the idea is that if one were to plot emotional response against similarity to human appearance and movement, the curve is not a sure, steady upward trend. Instead, there is a peak shortly before one reaches a completely human look . . . but then a deep chasm plunges below neutrality into a strongly negative response before rebounding to a second peak where resemblance to humanity is complete. This chasm the uncanny valley of Doctor Moris thesis represents the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees something that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or disquieting. The first peak, moreover, is where that same individual would see something that is human enough to arouse some empathy, yet at the same time is clearly enough not human to avoid the sense of wrongness. The slope leading up to this first peak is a province of relative emotional detachment affection, perhaps, but rarely more than that. [www.arclight.net/~pdb/glimpses/valley.html]

Brown table strategy   25 Sep 04
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(Source: Dilbert) Today's Dilbert fits in wonderfully with the current outsourcing mania. link

 

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