|Can we use ruby for commercial
 |application?

 Yes.

 |Do we need to distribte our application with sources?

 No.  If you're using regex.c comes with 1.8.2, you have to allow
 re-linking the binary (via supplying object files or dynamic linking),
 because it's LGPL.  If you are using Oniguruma new regex engine, you
 have no such restriction.

 Gabriele Renzi added:
  IIRC 1.9 in the cvs already has oniguruma as the standard regex lib.

Bypass compulsory web registration via Firefox’s right-click context menu. Compatibile with Mozilla and current Firefox releases that use the new extension manager. Visit bugmenot for full details of their service.

link

Try a System

If you’d like to have a chance to try out an application that uses CMU Sphinx, try the Communicator, an experimental system that helps you plan air travel. You can reach it at the toll-free number 1-877-CMU-PLAN (1-877-268-7526) or at +1 412 268 1084.. The system will provide real flight information. The system may be sensitive to loud background noises, especially over cell phones.

(Source: Paul Graham) I had a front row seat for the Internet Bubble, because I worked at Yahoo during 1998 and 1999. One day, when the stock was trading around $200, I sat down and calculated what I thought the price should be. The answer I got was $12. I went to the next cubicle and told my friend Trevor. "Twelve!" he said. He tried to sound indignant, but he didn’t quite manage it. He knew as well as I did that our valuation was crazy.

Yahoo was a special case. It was not just our price to earnings ratio that was bogus. Half our earnings were too. Not in the Enron way, of course. The finance guys seemed scrupulous about reporting earnings. What made our earnings bogus was that Yahoo was, in effect, the center of a pyramid scheme. Investors looked at Yahoo’s earnings and said to themselves, here is proof that Internet companies can make money. So they invested in new startups that promised to be the next Yahoo. And as soon as these startups got the money, what did they do with it? Buy millions of dollars worth of advertising on Yahoo to promote their brand. Result: a capital investment in a startup this quarter shows up as Yahoo earnings next quarter— stimulating another round of investments in startups.

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I especially like this part: Nerds don’t just happen to dress informally. They do it too consistently. Consciously or not, they dress informally as a prophylactic measure against stupidity.

 Whoa, say what?
 ---
 Rubydium is aiming to become an optimising reimplementation
 of the Ruby 1.8 interpreter, currently its as good as vapourware
 however the key mechanism has been prototyped, thusly before
 commencing a major rewrite I thought i'd release the
 current state of the art.

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www.xprogramming.com/xpmag/jatAsYouWere.htm

This hurts the ruby experience a little bit, because among those characters are {}[]~\| …

and the solution

I thought the sessions went well, considering that we were in a room off in a corner on a floor completely separate from the other conference events. Quite a lot of people showed up at the sessions I saw (standing-room only), and people seemed interested.