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.

 have a look at googlism.com and type bush or chirac or armin roehrl :-)

more ads

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

• 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.

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

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

 >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 :-)

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."

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

 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

Just in case you do not know what to buy me as my next birthday present .. I saw this monster on Gizmodo.

As Stefan has sent me many new quotes, I did finally update my quote collection again.

Rails is an open source web-application framework for Ruby. It ships with an answer for every letter in MVC: Action Pack for the Controller and View, Active Record for the Model.

Everything needed to build real-world applications in less lines of code than other frameworks spend setting up their XML configuration files. Like Basecamp, which was launched after 4 KLOCs and two months of developement by a single programmer.

Enjoy the Show, dont tell! 10 minute setup video (22MB).

Have fun with Ruby .. says a tired Armin right now coding simple cgi-stuff without any frameworks :-)

If uncertain about the dress code, also enjoy today’s Dilbert

What’s a day without Dilbert and UF?

The auto industrys number is almost up.

The 17-digit codes that identify the origin, make, model and attributes of cars, trucks, buses even trailers worldwide will be exhausted by the end of the decade.

And like an odometer that returns to zero and starts over again, a Vehicle Identification Number or VIN could be duplicated.

Experts say duplicated VINs would cause havoc for repair shops, state license offices, insurance agencies, law enforcement and other groups that use VINs to process warranty claims, investigate accident claims and recover stolen vehicles.

Weve been brainwashing law enforcement and the insurance community and virtually everybody that a VIN is like DNA theres one for any one vehicle, said Ed Sparkman, spokesman for the Chicago-based National Insurance Crime Bureau.

At the root of the impending shortage is the explosion of vehicle production in recent decades. Automakers build 60 million cars and trucks every year and each one needs a unique VIN in the same way a newborn is given a Social Security number. And that doesnt count heavy trucks, motorcycles and other vehicles that require VINs.

link