The Answer Factory: Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell | Magazine

The Answer Factory: Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell | Magazine: "By next summer, according to founder and CEO Richard Rosenblatt, Demand will be publishing 1 million items a month, the equivalent of four English-language Wikipedias a year. Demand is already one of the largest suppliers of content to YouTube, where its 170,000 videos make up more than twice the content of CBS, the Associated Press, Al Jazeera English, Universal Music Group, CollegeHumor, and Soulja Boy combined. Demand also posts its material to its network of 45 B-list sites — ranging from eHow and Livestrong.com to the little-known doggy-photo site TheDailyPuppy.com — that manage to pull in more traffic than ESPN, NBC Universal, and Time Warner’s online properties (excluding AOL) put together."

Introducing oraddlscript � devioblog

Introducing oraddlscript � devioblog: "The answers directed me to the DBMS_METADATA package (9i documentation, 10g documentation)."

David's Favourite Captain Haddock Curses

David's Favourite Captain Haddock Curses: "From the simple ('dogs!', 'rats!') to the scientific ('pithecanthropuses!') to the sublime ('vegetarian!'), you've just gotta love Captain Haddock of Tintin fame for his unique turn of phrase. I've tried to capture as many of his idiocyncratic curses as possible."

Woot : Wootcasts from the Past: Magellan Like a Felon Edition

Woot : Wootcasts from the Past: Magellan Like a Felon Edition: "After over three and a half years of our daily podcast, we sure have a lot of episodes in the can. (It’s where we do our best thinking.) Have you noticed how certain themes recur? We have! For example, grab hold of the common thread running through these moldy oldies, which are all about Ferdinand Magellan’s trip ‘round the globe. Well, mostly about that."

7 Lessons from Startup School - mediabistro.com: BayNewser

7 Lessons from Startup School - mediabistro.com: BayNewser: "On Friday, we told you about the day-long 'Startup School' held at the University of California, Berkeley on Saturday. Given the caliber of speakers, we thought it might be a good place for journalism entrepreneurs to learn a few tips and tricks.

Here are seven lessons from the sessions:"

ClickToFlash

ClickToFlash: "Flash only when you want it."

A geeky introduction to cheap remote control helicopters and planes - Boing Boing

A geeky introduction to cheap remote control helicopters and planes - Boing Boing: "All these parts came from www.hobbycity.com:

HXT900 9g / 1.6kg / .12sec Micro Servo $10.95
T1000.3S.25 - Turnigy 1000mAh 3S 25C Lipo Pack $16.58
Turnigy-3S - Turnigy balancer & Charger 2S-3S $4.49
HK-SS30A - Hobbyking SS Series 25-30A ESC $9.25
TP2410-12T - TowerPro BL Outrunner TP2410-12T(Y) $5.99
TP_11x4.7 - TP Slow Fly propeller 11x4.7 $2.40
HK-T4A-M2 - Hobby King 2.4Ghz 4Ch Tx & Rx $29.99
Total: $79.65"

YouTube - Park Zone Vapor Slow fly mod

YouTube - Park Zone Vapor Slow fly mod: "The lightest slowest vapor yet. 1 gram 0 mph"

E-Sky 4 CH Flight Simulator Training Kit For Airplanes and Helicopters w/ USB Port

E-Sky 4 CH Flight Simulator Training Kit For Airplanes and Helicopters w/ USB Port: "If you find flying helicopter is much harder than you think, then try our RC flight simulator! You don't have to waste money on over-rated software that cost hundreds of dollars when you can just pay $24.95 to get one of the best-rated flight simulator program in the world. You will receive a complete kit with both hardware and software included. All that is required for you to do is installed the software and connect the USB cable from the supplied transmitter to your computer and off you go!"

A geeky introduction to cheap remote control helicopters and planes - Boing Boing

A geeky introduction to cheap remote control helicopters and planes - Boing Boing:

"Here's Dan Shapiro's geeky, fun, and inspiring five-minute Ignite talk about becoming a remote control hobbyist for under $100."

The Corner on National Review Online

The Corner on National Review Online: "My favorite insight about humor and the divine comes from the poet Galway Kinnell, who wrote that “laughter is our stuttering in a language we can’t speak yet.” What he’s talking about is the language of transcendence, of what C. S. Lewis called the state of being “surprised by joy.”"

The Volokh Conspiracy

The Volokh Conspiracy: "As an aside, my daughter points me to a very beautifully and subtly astute novel, Never Let Me Go, by the great Kazuo Ishiguro, who also gave us The Remains of the Day."

argparse - Project Hosting on Google Code

argparse - Project Hosting on Google Code: "The argparse module improves on the standard library optparse module in a number of ways including:

* handling positional arguments
* supporting sub-commands
* allowing alternative option prefixes like and /
* handling zero-or-more and one-or-more style arguments
* producing more informative usage messages
* providing a much simpler interface for custom types and actions"

PEP 20 -- The Zen of Python

PEP 20 -- The Zen of Python: "
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!"

Shaolin Monks - Photo Gallery

Shaolin Monks - Photo Gallery: "The Shaolin Monastery was founded at the foot of Mount Song in Henan Province, China in 477 A.D.

Although Buddhist tenets emphasize peace and non-harming, the monks of Shaolin found themselves called upon to defend themselves and their neighbors many times during China's tumultuous history.

As a result, they developed a world-renowned form of martial arts technique, known as Shaolin kung fu."

Principles of the Phase Contrast (Electron) Microscopy

Principles of the Phase Contrast (Electron) Microscopy: "Fritz Zernike (1888-1966) with one of first phase-contrast microscopes were not built until 1941."

Hematology - 56 - Microscope Row, Laboratory Medicine: Yale School of Medicine

Hematology - 56 - Microscope Row, Laboratory Medicine: Yale School of Medicine: "In addition to single head light microscopes, where the majority of technical work is performed, the Hematology Lab also utilizes multiheaded microscopes for training and consultations."

The Bureau of Communication - Fill-in-the-blank Correspondence

The Bureau of Communication - Fill-in-the-blank Correspondence

"Let that which is unsaid be said"

AFCPE | Home

AFCPE | Home: "AFCPE is the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education. We’re a nonprofit, professional organization dedicated to educating, training, and certifying financial counselors and educators."

Corporatism: A Love Story - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

Corporatism: A Love Story - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine: "Michael Moore recently visited George Washington University to do some capitalist-style promotion for his new flick Capitalism: A Love Story and got a little more than he bargained for during the audience Q&A. Check out the clip below where college libertarian Chad Swarthout gets Moore to admit that the real problem is “corporatism” and “giving too much power to government.”"

John Graham-Cumming: Damn the torpedoes

John Graham-Cumming: Damn the torpedoes: "

three torpedos that need to be damned:

You Can't
I Can't
They Won't

PS And while you are being single-minded and purposeful, don't forget to be joyful."

Allround Automations

Allround Automations
PL/SQL Developer is an Integrated Development Environment that is specifically targeted at the development of stored program units for Oracle Databases. Over time we have seen more and more business logic and application logic move into the Oracle Server, so that PL/SQL programming has become a significant part of the total development process. PL/SQL Developer focuses on ease of use, code quality and productivity, key advantages during Oracle application development.

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn - Telegraph

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn - Telegraph:
"* Unlucky people often fail to follow their intuition when making a choice, whereas lucky people tend to respect hunches. Lucky people are interested in how they both think and feel about the various options, rather than simply looking at the rational side of the situation. I think this helps them because gut feelings act as an alarm bell - a reason to consider a decision carefully.

* Unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety.

* Lucky people tend to see the positive side of their ill fortune. They imagine how things could have been worse. In one interview, a lucky volunteer arrived with his leg in a plaster cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheerfully explained that he felt luckier than before. As he pointed out, he could have broken his neck."

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn - Telegraph

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn - Telegraph: "My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

I wondered whether these four principles could be used to increase the amount of good luck that people encounter in their lives. To find out, I created a 'luck school' - a simple experiment that examined whether people's luck can be enhanced by getting them to think and behave like a lucky person."

The Little Book of Semaphores

The Little Book of Semaphores: "The Little Book of Semaphores is a free (in both senses of the word) textbook that introduces the principles of synchronization for concurrent programming."

Property Values - Office of the Assessor - Alameda County

Property Values - Office of the Assessor - Alameda County

Motivational Posters: Winston Churchill Edition (Part I) | The Art of Manliness

Motivational Posters: Winston Churchill Edition (Part I) | The Art of Manliness: "“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.”"

Time Out's 50 Greatest Animated Films with added commentary by Terry Gilliam – Time Out Film - Time Out London

Time Out's 50 Greatest Animated Films with added commentary by Terry Gilliam – Time Out Film - Time Out London: "In celebration of the release of Pixar's 'Up' and Wes Anderson's beautiful stop-motion rendering of Roald Dahl's 'The Fantastic Mr Fox', Time Out ushers in the help of master animator Terry Gilliam – whose own partially animated 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus' opens in cinemas this month – to run down 50 of the greatest animated features of all time"

An inteview with Brian Kernighan, co-developer of AWK and AMPL - AMPL, AWK, a-z of programming languages, Brian Kernighan - Computerworld

An inteview with Brian Kernighan, co-developer of AWK and AMPL - AMPL, AWK, a-z of programming languages, Brian Kernighan - Computerworld: "No matter what, the way to learn to program is to write code, and rewrite it, and see it used, and rewrite again."

Carsonified � 9 Ways to Take Your Site from One to One Million Users

Carsonified � 9 Ways to Take Your Site from One to One Million Users: "In this video from The Future of Web Apps London (FOWA), Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, WeFollow and Revision3, shares 9 things he did to increase his users to 1,000,000 and beyond.

Here’s a quick bullet-point summary. You can watch the video for the complete presentation or view the presentation slides here. We’ll be uploading just the audio for you to listen to soon."

Stossel in the Classroom

Stossel in the Classroom: "Join the nearly 100,000 teachers across the country who have experienced the benefits of using these educational and engaging segments from John Stossel and ABC News' 20/20 in their classrooms. Get your FREE DVDs and supplemental materials from STOSSEL IN THE CLASSROOM!"

Paul Graham at Startup School 08 | Omnisio

Paul Graham at Startup School 08 | Omnisio: "Paul Graham, founder of YCombinator, speaks at Startup School 08 about how to create a successful startup."

“Jia Junpeng, Your Mom Wants You To Go Home To Eat!” | chinaSMACK

“Jia Junpeng, Your Mom Wants You To Go Home To Eat!” | chinaSMACK: "[What I am posting is not a post, I am posting loneliness.]"

django guys let us understand python *args and **kwargs : Dpeepul Blog

django guys let us understand python *args and **kwargs : Dpeepul Blog: "As many new django developers often confuse between *args and **kwargs i planned to write the below post which clearly explains the difference between *args and **kwargs."

Palantir Technologies � Blog Archive � The Palantir Technologies Demo Reel: screenshots, round 3

Palantir Technologies � Blog Archive � The Palantir Technologies Demo Reel: screenshots, round 3: "The Palantir family of products is much more that just pretty pictures; we have the underlying intelligence infrastructure to make those realtime animations possible and (more importantly) meaningful. That said, we sure do think they’re pretty.

By the way, if you’re interested in the progression of our interfaces, this not the first time we’ve posted eye candy: we posted a set of updated screenshots a little over a year ago; think of this as the next installment in the series.

And yes, it’s really all Java Swing."

How The Owner Of “Fail Blog” And “I Can Has Cheezburger” Keeps Racking Up Wins – With Ben Huh

How The Owner Of “Fail Blog” And “I Can Has Cheezburger” Keeps Racking Up Wins – With Ben Huh: "Ben Huh came to Mixergy to talk about how he raised money to buy a blog about LOL cats, called 'I Can Has Cheezburger,' and how he turned it into a growing publishing company that own over 20 sites, including Fail Blog and This is Photo Bomb. His network has over 11 million users and 218 million monthly page views.

I asked him how he did it and, more importantly, what YOU can learn about building a publishing company, based on his experience."

Amazon Web Services Blog: Don't Forget: You Can Use Amazon SimpleDB For Free!

Amazon Web Services Blog: Don't Forget: You Can Use Amazon SimpleDB For Free!: "You can keep up to 1 gigabyte of data in SimpleDB without paying any storage fees. You can transfer 1 GB of data and use up to 25 Machine Hours to process your queries each month. This should be sufficient to allow you to issue about 2 million PutAttribute or Select calls per month."

Lisp Book Home Page

Lisp Book Home Page: "Civilized Software is making available a book entitled Interpreting Lisp which presents how LISP works and how to build a LISP interpreter."

Gloss: a Pygame OpenGL wrapper | TuxRadar

Gloss: a Pygame OpenGL wrapper | TuxRadar: "Gloss is a high-performance graphics wrapper around Pygame that lets you take advantage of OpenGL without having to delve into the murky depths of 3D programming. Gloss lets you build 2D games where you can rotate, scale and recolor sprites on the fly, and also includes a selection of helpful mathematics functions to make the life of games coders easier."

Let's Discuss the Matter Further � Google Earth and Middle-earth

Let's Discuss the Matter Further � Google Earth and Middle-earth: "I wanted to measure distances in Tolkien's Middle-earth. While a flat map distorts such measurements, it occured to me that Google Earth can correctly measure both lines and paths across the curved surface of the globe. I soon found excellent documentation for using image overlays with Google Earth, so I downloaded a map of Middle-earth and tried placing it on the globe."

David MacKay: Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms: The Book

David MacKay: Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms: The Book: "You may download The book in one file (640 pages):"

Code Monkeyism: The dark side of NoSQL

Code Monkeyism: The dark side of NoSQL:

- ad hoc data fixing – either no query language available or no skills
- ad hoc reporting – either no query language available or no in-house skills
- data export – sometimes no API way to access all data

WEBPAGE of DENNIS HAVLENA - W8MI Mackinac Straits, MI

WEBPAGE of DENNIS HAVLENA - W8MI Mackinac Straits, MI: "Articles here include how-to-build simple but nice sounding/playing folk instruments."

Getting started with online glasses

I first learned about this via GlassyEyes. He has some good introductory articles here and here. There are some discount links there as well. I learned a lot from the GlassyEyes forum. There is a flickr channel as well.

I've bought my glasses from EyeBuyDirect. It's convenient to be a repeat customer because they keep your prescription for you.

Lost Garden: Flash Love Letter (2009) Part 1

Lost Garden: Flash Love Letter (2009) Part 1: "Flash games are currently the ghetto of the game development industry. Compared to the number of players it serves, the Flash game ecosystem makes little money, launches few careers, and sustains few developer owned businesses. Despite the vast potential of the ecosystem, Flash games contribute surprisingly little to the advancement of game design as an art or a craft.
In order to understand why this promising game platform is such a surprising dissapointment, we'll look at Flash games from three perspectives:

* Chapter 2 - Making money: How do Flash developers currently make money.
* Chapter 3 - Generating value: How Flash developers currently create 'valuable' game for their players?
* Chapter 4 - Reaching customers: How developers currently reach their players.
* Chapter 5 - Premium Flash games as a service: A mental model for understanding the new world of web gaming.

For each step, I'll cover alternative techniques that give you, the game developer, make even better games."

Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp

Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp: "Just fifty years ago, John McCarthy circulated a notice that he would be giving an informal talk that he thought would be of interest. I drove up to MIT from New Jersey to attend this seminar of typical length in a typical classroom. But the seminar was anything but typical. It was a revelation. In one session at the blackboard, John introduced Lisp—all you could do with car, cdr, cons, cond, lambda, and recursion."

4 People Who Faced Disaster—And How They Made it Out Alive - Rules to Survive Fire, Tornado, Blizzard and Hurricanes - Popular Mechanics

4 People Who Faced Disaster—And How They Made it Out Alive - Rules to Survive Fire, Tornado, Blizzard and Hurricanes - Popular Mechanics: "Some disasters are simply not survivable. But most are, and research on human behavior suggests that the difference between life and death often comes down to the simple—yet surprisingly difficult—task of recognizing threats before they overwhelm you, then working through them as discrete challenges. The people who survive disasters tend to be better prepared and more capable of making smart decisions under pressure. Not everyone is born with these traits, but almost anyone can learn them. Here’s how to wire your brain for survival."

Dean Kamen Quotes About Health Care Debate - Interview With Inventor Dean Kamen - Popular Mechanics

Dean Kamen Quotes About Health Care Debate - Interview With Inventor Dean Kamen - Popular Mechanics: "n an interview with PM, Dean Kamen, one of the world's most prolific inventors of healthcare technologies, challenges the notion that the U.S. has a healthcare crisis. Rather than slowing the pace of medical progress in order to cut healthcare costs, he argues, America should be encouraging more innovation in life-saving drugs and technologies."

Lucian’s blog� Blog Archive � Me this trust thing = dog juicy bone

Lucian’s blog� Blog Archive � Me this trust thing = dog juicy bone: "On the upside, at least on this occasion I’m offering you some new thoughts on the subject, not just recycling that “As far as I’m concerned, trust in this country received its mortal wound, along with 60,000 soldiers in the British Army, on the first day of the First Battle of the Somme on 1st July 1916″ soapbox stuff that you’ve heard from me a million times already.

My theme today is that when we talk about consumers’ “trust” in financial services, we’re actually wrapping up about four or five different kinds of trust within that one single word - and on closer examination there are significant differences in the current status of each kind."

ORA-02437: cannot validate - primary key violated - Stack Overflow

ORA-02437: cannot validate <name> - primary key violated - Stack Overflow:

SQL>@%ORACLE_HOME%\rdbms\admin\utlexpt1.sql

Table created.

SQL> ALTER TABLE MY_TABLE ADD CONSTRAINT PK_FOO PRIMARY KEY (MY_ID)
2 exceptions into exceptions
3 /

Using DBMS_SYS_SQL to Execute Statements as Another User | Pythian Group Blog

Using DBMS_SYS_SQL to Execute Statements as Another User | Pythian Group Blog: "Sometimes you need to execute SQL (or PL/SQL) as some other user. Say you need to remove a job residing in some other user’s schema. Or you need to create a database link in a different schema. You can’t do things like these without becoming the other user. If you don’t know the other user’s password then you basically have two choices"

Online Name Generator

Online Name Generator: "Cool online names with a single click! - Free and cool name generator! - Cool nicknames and project names!"

Notes from the Metalevel

Notes from the Metalevel: "Notes from the Metalevel
An Introduction to Computer Composition"

"The Principia Discordia"

Toledo Nanochess and Toledo Picochess

Toledo Nanochess and Toledo Picochess: "Although Toledo Nanochess is smaller, it manages to beat gracefully Micromax v1.6,"

Micro-Max

Micro-Max: "As far as I am aware, this still makes micro-Max the smallest C Chess program in existence. A close competitor for this honor, Toledo, measures 2168 characters. Despite its smaller size, micro-Max seems to beat Toledo easily."

BashForth - Kwiki

BashForth - Kwiki: "BashForth is a ForthInterpreter, written entirely in the bash scripting language."

Tiny Code: Floppy booting, Open Firmware, Bitlash, more Movizt.

Tiny Code: Floppy booting, Open Firmware, Bitlash, more Movizt.: "There is a certain appeal in closing the meta-loop of minimalism in programming. Writing simple, efficient code in languages which themselves are simple and efficient. To that end, I've collected programming environments which are small and self contained, while still useful."

Speechification: Confessions of a Crap Artist

Speechification: Confessions of a Crap Artist: "Here’s some more from the (no doubt extraordinary) archives of Mr Ken Hollings – a show he made in 2006 about, well, er, Philip K Dick certainly. And tape-recorders and typewriters. And the divine. And madness, machines and mass suicide. Including contributions from Kim Stanley Robinson, Ray Nelson, Brian Aldiss, Tim Powers and James Blaylock. This is brilliant stuff."

Boing Boing

Boing Boing: "Seth Roberts made a list of 11 observations while shopping at a Wal-Mart in China. Here are the first four.

1. They sell live turtles.
2. A whole display case is devoted to sea cucumbers.
3. Like any upscale American or Beijing supermarket, they have a sushi case. The prices are half what they’d be in America, but the pieces of fish are much thinner.
4. They cut up meat in front of you. A whole pig was being butchered on a table. A roast duck was being sliced for packaging."

Analytic functions by Example | Oracle FAQ

Analytic functions by Example | Oracle FAQ: "This article provides a clear, thorough concept of analytic functions and its various options by a series of simple yet concept building examples."

Oracle Tip: Create functions to join and split strings in SQL

Oracle Tip: Create functions to join and split strings in SQL: "A common task when selecting data from a database is to take a set of values a query returns and format it as a comma delimited list. Another task that's almost as common is the need to do the reverse: Take a comma delimited list of values in a single string and use it as a table of values."

Google File System II: Dawn of the Multiplying Master Nodes • The Register

Google File System II: Dawn of the Multiplying Master Nodes • The Register: "There are places in the design where we've tried to optimize for throughput by dumping thousands of operations into a queue and then just processing through them,' he continues. 'That leads to fine throughput, but it's not great for latency. You can easily get into situations where you might be stuck for seconds at a time in a queue just waiting to get to the head of the queue."

Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society | Library of Economics and Liberty

Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society | Library of Economics and Liberty: "If we possess all the relevant information, if we can start out from a given system of preferences, and if we command complete knowledge of available means, the problem which remains is purely one of logic."

InfoQ: Facebook: Science and the Social Graph

InfoQ: Facebook: Science and the Social Graph: "In this presentation filmed during QCon SF 2008, Aditya Agarwal discusses Facebook’s architecture, more exactly the software stack used, presenting the advantages and disadvantages of its major components: LAMP (PHP, MySQL), Memcache, Thrift, Scribe."

Play Infocom Games Online

Play Infocom Games Online: "Here you can find and play online every known version of every Infocom adventure."

HR 3200 from a systems design perspective (Part I) : Bruce F. Webster

HR 3200 from a systems design perspective (Part I) : Bruce F. Webster: "On the occasions where I have reviewed the actual text of major legislation, I have been struck by the parallels between legislation and software, particularly in terms of the pitfalls and issues with architecture, design, implementation, testing, and deployment. Some of the tradeoffs are even the same, such as trading off the risk of “analysis paralysis” (never moving beyond the research and analysis phase) and the risks of unintended consequences from rushing ill-formed software into production. Yet another similarity is that both software and legislation tend to leverage off of, interact with, call upon, extend, and/or replace existing software and legislation. Finally, the more complex a given system or piece of legislation is, the less likely that it will achieve the original intent."

Northwest Montana Daily Inter Lake > Archives > Opinion > Columns > Charity and the good ol' Constitution

Northwest Montana Daily Inter Lake > Archives > Opinion > Columns > Charity and the good ol' Constitution: "'Where do you find in the Constitution any authority to give away the public money in charity?'

That question was asked not of President Obama nor of Sen. Max Baucus or Rep. Nancy Pelosi, but of the less well-known Tennessee congressman, David Crockett."

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."

AC Power Control through USB

AC Power Control through USB: "Second Implementation: User space

* libusb library
* usb_control_msg: USB_PORT_FEAT_POWER"

"THE YEAR OF SPAGHETTI by HARUKI MURAKAMI

Nineteen-seventy-one was the Year of Spaghetti.

In 1971, I cooked spaghetti to live, and lived to cook spaghetti.

Steam rising from the pot was my pride and joy, tomato sauce bubbling up in the saucepan my one great hope in life."

Python Module of the Week - Python Module of the Week

Python Module of the Week - Python Module of the Week: "The Python Module of the Week series, or PyMOTW, is a tour of the Python standard library through short examples."

Conway's Game of Life - Experiment Garden

Conway's Game of Life - Experiment Garden: "Finally, I recorded an amazing video of a complex spaceship construction device running in Conway's Game of Life. The device is made up hundreds of modified Gosper guns synchronized so that they shoot the right gliders and spaceships at just the right time such that when they collide it creates a larger traveling spaceship."

Blunt warning about greens under the bed | Antonia Senior - Times Online

Blunt warning about greens under the bed | Antonia Senior - Times Online: "Britain is, thankfully, an ideologically barren land. The split between Right and Left is no longer ideological, but tribal. Are you a nice social liberal who believes in markets, or a nasty social liberal who believes in markets? Anthony Blunt’s memoirs, published this week, reveal a different age, one in which fascism and communism were locked in a seemingly definitive battle for souls.

Blunt talks of “the religious quality” of the enthusiasm for the Left among the students of Cambridge. There is only one ideology in today’s developed world that exercises a similar grip. If Blunt were young today, he would not be red; he would be green."

Installing Oracle 11g on CentOS under VMWare on a Macbook - Oracle Wiki

Installing Oracle 11g on CentOS under VMWare on a Macbook - Oracle Wiki: "Here is how I’ve set up my Macbook to be my DBA Playground. You can have Oracle 11gR1 and 10gR2 installed on two operating systems, Red Hat Linux 4 and Solaris 10. Both are 64bit and both can be running simultaneously for easy comparisons. This guide shows you how to install Oracle 11g on CentOS under VMWare Fusion on a Macbook."

Booklets by Professor Solomon

Booklets by Professor Solomon: "Free Download:
Flying Saucer Travel Tips"

Instapundit � Blog Archive � INDEED: “A rule we can rely on to be unfailingly applied is this: No matter how much the government…

Instapundit � Blog Archive � INDEED: "A rule we can rely on to be unfailingly applied is this: No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of freedom that remains.”"