How American Health Care Killed My Father - The Atlantic (September 2009)

How American Health Care Killed My Father - The Atlantic (September 2009): "After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing problem."

assertTrue( ): The UNIX Way

assertTrue( ): The UNIX Way: "
1. Small is beautiful.
2. Make each program do one thing well.
3. Build a prototype as soon as possible.
4. Choose portability over efficiency.
5. Store data in flat text files.
6. Use software leverage to your advantage.
7. Use shell scripts to increase leverage and portability.
8. Avoid captive user interfaces.
9. Make every program a filter
"

機械式駐車場が超カッコいい - ひろゆ記

機械式駐車場が超カッコいい - ひろゆ記: "人がでてからどうなってるのかなと昔から気になってたけど、そうかカメラを置いて行けばよかったのか！！！"

Appy framework

Appy framework: "pod (python open document) is a library that allows to easily generate documents whose content is dynamic. The principle is simple: you create an ODF (Open Document Format) text document (with OpenOffice Writer 2.0 or higher for example), you insert some Python code at some places inside it, and from any program written in Python, you can call pod with, as input, the OpenDocument file and a bunch of Python objects. pod generates another ODF text document (ODT) that contains the desired result. If you prefer to get the result in another format, pod can call OpenOffice in server mode to generate the result in PDF, DOC, RTF or TXT format."

Love is a Fallacy

Love is a Fallacy
by Max Shulman

"Cool was I and logical. Keen, calculating, perspicacious, acute and astute—I was all of these. My brain was as powerful as a dynamo, precise as a chemist’s scales, as penetrating as a scalpel. And—think of it!—I only eighteen.

It is not often that one so young has such a giant intellect...."

Althouse: "[T]he inspiring figure progressives thought they had elected comes across, far too often, as a dry technocrat..."

Althouse:
"Saw a recent show with author Jim Collins on his book How The Mighty Fall

He lists 5 stages:

Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success
Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More
Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril
Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation
Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death"

COMPUTERS: THEIR BUILT-IN LIMITATIONS

COMPUTERS: THEIR BUILT-IN LIMITATIONS: "Computer programing is self-inflicted torture. The problem is to make a mindless machine behave rationally. Before you can tell the machine how to solve a problem, you must first figure out how your own brain solves it—every step, every detail. You watch your brain as it effortlessly snakes its way along some line of reasoning that loops back through itself, and then you try to draw a diagram showing how your brain did it, and you discover that your brain couldn’t possibly have done it—yet you know it did. And there sits the computer. If you can’t explain to yourself, how are you ever going to explain to it"

COMPUTERS: THEIR BUILT-IN LIMITATIONS

COMPUTERS: THEIR BUILT-IN LIMITATIONS: "The computer rooms disintegrated in panic. Engineers leaped with trembling screwdrivers at the machine’s intestines. The director stared fish-eyed at a mathematician. A key-punch girl yattered terrified questions at a programmer. Young Madison Avenue types rushed in and out, uttering shrill cries. And the computer just sat there."

SkillBuilders: Oracle10g PL/SQL Programming Workshop Outline

SkillBuilders: Oracle10g PL/SQL Programming Workshop Outline: "Topic Summary

* Introduction to PL/SQL
o What is PL/SQL?
o Why Use PL /SQL?
o PL/SQL Program Structure
o Anonymous Blocks
o Compile Errors
o Sending Output to SQL*Plus
o Introduction to Procedures
o Procedure Compile Errors
o Procedure Compile Warnings (10g)
o Introduction to Functions
o Introduction to Packages
o Querying the Data Dictionary
o Introduction to Triggers
o Tools for PL/SQL Development
o Working in SQL*Plus"

Oracle 10g Flashback Versions Query, Drop Table and Recyclebin Management � H.Tongu�Yılmaz – Oracle Blog

Oracle 10g Flashback Versions Query, Drop Table and Recyclebin Management � H.Tongu�Yılmaz – Oracle Blog: "Oracle Flashback Versions Query is an extension to SQL that can be used to retrieve the versions of rows in a given table that existed in a specific time interval. Oracle Flashback Versions Query returns a row for each version of the row that existed in the specified time interval. For any given table, a new row version is created each time the COMMIT statement is executed."

Pixar’s Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation

Pixar’s Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation: "Steve Jobs hired him, says Bird, because after three successes (Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, and Toy Story 2) he was worried Pixar might struggle to stay innovative. Jobs told him: “The only thing we’re afraid of is complacency—feeling like we have it all figured out,” Bird quotes his boss as saying “…We want you to come shake things up.” Bird explains to McKinsey how he did it — and why, for “imagination-based companies to succeed in the long run, making money can’t be the focus.”

The piece is behind McKinsey’s pay wall, but we extract its 9 key lessons below."

Skulpt

Skulpt: "Python. Client side.

Skulpt is an entirely in-browser implementation of Python."

Obama Press Conference Videos - How to Answer Questions Like Obama - Esquire

Obama Press Conference Videos - How to Answer Questions Like Obama - Esquire: "Because sometimes life can feel like a White House press conference — or, worse, a town-hall shouting match about health care. And if there's anything Barack Obama has mastered in the last 200-or-so days — and the last week in particular — it's maneuvering his way through almost any inquisition."

2276 Compound Words

2276 Compound Words: "2276 Compound Words"

Lessons Learned: A new version of the Joel Test (draft)

Lessons Learned: A new version of the Joel Test (draft): "I have been thinking a lot about what a new version of this test would look like, given what I've seen work and not work in startups. Like many forms of progress, most of the items on the new test don't replace items from Joel's - they either supplement or extend the ideas on which the original is based."

glasses for computer use

If you want glasses simply for helping other programmers, get a pair
of single-vision glasses for the over-the-shoulder distance. Here are
two ways to figure out what prescription you need. You'll need to know
about how far it is from your eyes to the screens you can't read, and
you'll need your "driving" prescription.

Method 1. Use the following guideline: If the screens you have to read
are 3 feet away, add +1.00 diopter to your driving glasses
prescription's spherical correction. If the screens are 2 feet away,
add +1.50 diopters. If they are 1.5 feet away, add +2.00 diopters.
Most likely they are no closer than that, given that your computer
glasses aren't working for this.

Method 2. Put on your driving glasses and visit the reading glasses
section of your local drug store. With luck, they will have glasses in
every strength from +1.25 to +2.50 (in increments of 0.25). Try on
various strength reading glasses *over* your driving glasses until you
can read at the over-the-shoulder distance. Whatever works is what you
need to add to the spherical correction of your driving glasses.

IMPORTANT: Be sure you're adding a positive number to your driving
prescription, not a negative number. You're a programmer, so I'm sure
you know that when you add +1.00 to the number -2.25, you get -1.25,
*not* -3.25!

If you want a single pair of glasses that will allow you to help
others, but also to see your own screen, for days when you're back and
forth a lot, I suggest getting a pair of "monovision" glasses, with
one lens optimized for over-the-shoulder and one lens optimized for
your own screen. In other words, add +1.5 (or whatever you got above)
to the spherical correction of your driving prescription for one eye
only. Choose the eye based on which eye has the best view of the
screen when you're doing the over-the-shoulder thing.

For the record, I teach Computer Science and have to do a lot of over-
the-shoulder myself, but I also have to see students from the front of
the classroom. So my monovision glasses have one lens of "driving"
prescription and one lens of "over-the-shoulder" prescription. My
guess is that you want one over-the-shoulder lens and one "your own
computer" lens.

If your two prescriptions have slightly different PD values, don't
worry about it. Either will work - my pick would be the larger of the
two (probably the driving prescription).

Another great speaker at Fool HQ

Another great speaker at Fool HQ: "Adding to our recent string of great speakers visiting Fool HQ, Randy Nelson, the former dean of Pixar University, spoke with us today. Basically, he was in charge of in-house education efforts at Pixar (now part of Disney), the creators of Toy Story, Ratatouille, etc.

Short summary: Amazing speaker."

OmniGraffle Pro Insists on Saving .graffle as a Directory

OmniGraffle Pro Insists on Saving .graffle as a Directory:

>Always flat:
>defaults write com.omnigroup.OmniGraffle PrivateGraffleFlatFile 0
>
>Flat unless there are images (the normal behavior):
>defaults write com.omnigroup.OmniGraffle PrivateGraffleFlatFile 1
>
>Always as a package:
>defaults write com.omnigroup.OmniGraffle PrivateGraffleFlatFile 2

(Use "OmniGraffle" or "OmniGrafflePro" as appropriate.)

Oracle deadlocks - what happens?

Oracle deadlocks - what happens?:

"# Oracle does not kill the session.
# Oracle does not kill the transaction.
# Oracle only kills the statement.
# Oracle does not rollback the statement.
# PMON (Process Monitor) does not clear out the locks.

It is the responsibility of the session that detects the “ORA-00060 deadlock detected while waiting for resource” error to trap and handle the error by issuing a rollback (or a commit) command. Only once this has been done will the other session be able to continue."

Using Python to detect the most frequent words in a file | Zen and the Art of Programming

Using Python to detect the most frequent words in a file | Zen and the Art of Programming: "Let’s consider the small task of printing a list of the N most frequent words within a given file:"

mr boss' design lair: Everything I Learned About Game Design I Learned From Disneyland

mr boss' design lair: Everything I Learned About Game Design I Learned From Disneyland: "As promised, here are the slides from my GDC talk. We had a 'sold out' crowd and I got to meet lots of nice people after the talk. Please share these with your friends and co-workers. According to show officials, video and audio will be available after the show. I'll post more info when I know it. Enjoy!"

PaperBack

PaperBack: "PaperBack is a free application that allows you to back up your precious files on the ordinary paper in the form of the oversized bitmaps. If you have a good laser printer with the 600 dpi resolution, you can save up to 500,000 bytes of uncompressed data on the single A4/Letter sheet."

Why I am Not a Professor

Why I am Not a Professor: "OR
The Decline and Fall of the British University"

Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) Support - Urban Airship

Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) Support - Urban Airship: "We deliver a scalable, easy-to-implement solution that allows you incorporate Apple Push Notification Service into an existing app. Best of all, instead of taking weeks, it takes minutes. Using our open source libraries, you’ll be up and running within hours. And integration? Our RESTful APIs makes it a snap. With Urban Airship, you’ll be pushing messages to your apps and engaging with your users as never before—without all of the headaches."