by Scott Aaronson. I have an ingenious idea for a company... My company will be the one that packages ... in 25-cent cardboard boxes, then resells the boxes for up to $300 apiece.
Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium."Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,"
...you should be cautious about including C hackers in your projects, as they are often the ones who have the most trouble adapting to the abstraction-based form of software development that object technology embodies... Bertrand Meyer
This story is also the story of the decline and fall of the British university and the corruption of the academic ideal . That is why this essay carries two titles - a personal one and a social one.
A PAL -- a "Permissive Action Link" -- is the box that is supposed to prevent unauthorized use of a nuclear weapon. It's supposed to be impossible to "hot-wire" a nuclear weapon. Is it?
A simple test of whether something is only incidentally sci-fi, or not sci-fi at all despite being in a sci-fi setting, is whether the story could take place in a known society without changing its message.
Our society is organized around a scarcity economy to such an extent that many people believe 'scarcity' and 'economy' mean the same thing. Even if it were true, different economies deal with differently scarce things.
"As any die-hard Trekkie knows, if you are wearing a red shirt and beam to the planet with Captain Kirk, you're gonna die. That's the common thinking, but I decided to put this to the test."
highlight of twelve of the most important US laws when it comes to blogging and provides some simple and straightforward tips for safely navigating them.
A single ant or bee isn't smart, but their colonies are. The study of swarm intelligence is providing insights that can help humans manage complex systems, from truck routing to military robots.
In a room of just 23 people there’s a 50-50 chance of two people having the same birthday. In a room of 75 there’s a 99.9% chance of two people matching.
None of us can know the answers for sure until our own time comes, but the few individuals who have their brush with death interrupted by a last-minute reprieve can offer some intriguing insights.
Israel as being the United States’ “cop on the beat” in the Middle East. - Why do you hate America? - Have you ever been to a Wal-Mart? - immediate withdrawal? (Iraq)
"If you’ve interviewed for programmer jobs a few times you will probably recognize some of these patterns. If you are just beginning your career as a programmer learn these patterns to prepare yourself."
Guy Steele's keynote at the 1998 ACM OOPSLA conference on "Growing a Language" (mostly about JAVA) discusses the importance of and issues associated with designing a programming language that can be grown by its users.
Math can be terrifying for many people. This lists will hopefully improve your general knowledge of mathematical tricks and your speed when you need to do math in your head.
Timothy Gowers is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambirdge (UK) and a recipient of the prestigious Fields Medal. Professor Gowers gave the Keynote Address at the historic Millennium Meeting of the Clay Mathematics Institute.
CHDK, the Canon Hacker's Development Kit, is an open-source software project that can be loaded on cameras using Canon's DIGIC II or DIGIC III firmware platforms.
explores the apparent madness at the heart of US military intelligence. With first-hand access to the leading players in the story, Jon Ronson examines the extraordinary - and plain bizarre - national secrets at the core of George W Bush's war on terror.
Weekend Project Podcast: Make simple radios to listen too. These were made with materials that they could get their hands on and were small enough to carry around in a big pocket.
As complements to the core set of OpenGL functions, the OpenGL Utility Library (GLU) and the OpenGL Extension to the X Window System[tm] (GLX) provide useful supporting features.
by Robert L Read - To be a good programmer is difficult and noble. The hardest part of making real a collective vision of a software project is dealing with one's coworkers and customers.
Cambridge University Press by Paul Taylor - Practical Foundations collects the methods of construction of the objects of twentieth century mathematics, teasing out the logical structure that underpins the informal way in which mathematicians actually do
by Alan Green - These checklists are a tool for helping you focus attention on the critical aspects of your project at the different stages of its lifecycle.
The age-old practice of turning the soil before planting a new crop is a leading cause of farmland degradation. Many farmers are thus looking to make plowing a thing of the past
2.4GHz parabolic mesh dishes from Chinese cookware scoops & a USB WiFi adaptor! Called "WIFRY","WOKFI" or "WOKTENNA" (12"= 300mm diam) shows 12-15dB gain (enough for a LOS range extension to 3-5km)
by Erik Demaine. Take a piece of paper, fold it into any flat origami, and make one complete straight cut (i.e., a cut along a line). Now unfold the pieces, and see what you get. Are all shapes possible? Refering back to the original sheet of paper, what patterns of cuts can be achieved by this process?
a digital signal processing (DSP) technique for identifying frequency components of a signal, published by Dr. Gerald Goertzel in 1958. While the general Fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm computes evenly across the bandwidth of the incoming signal, the Goertzel algorithm looks at specific, predetermined frequency.
blog entry about static code analyzers such as Checkstyle, PMD, FindBugs etc. and focuses on some of the issues that they spot in code. (PDM is great also for C++)
created by David Rex. The goal of the Toolbox is to provide entrepreneurs with the tools and assistance necessary to help achieve their desired goals as well as to provide a forum for the exploration of entrepreneurial ideas and issues.
This guide was mainly distilled from On Writing Well by William Zinsser and The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. Other sources are listed. Compiled by Joshua Sowin
Before you start working with photo images on your computer (or even view them), you should really make sure that your video subsystem is capable and is displaying things correctly. These pages will assist you in adjusting your monitor by providing various test patterns. They also give a brief introduction to issues involved in calibrating a monitor
nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux. Founded in 2007, the Linux Foundation sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and is supported by leading Linux and open source companies and developers from around the world.
Made use of this info since my PSU did not support PCI-e, still have some strange behaviors that I blame on this mod but it has been working so I really don't care...
diversas áreas temáticas com informação relevante e útil para as operações financeiras do cliente bancário, além da principal legislação que enquadra a oferta de produtos e serviços bancários, um glossário de termos financeiros e um conjunto de respostas a perguntas frequentes.
a different approach to image optimization, based on how image data is stored in different formats. Let’s start with the JPEG format and a simple technique called the eight-pixel grid.
Whether you’re a novice or a seasoned professional, sometimes we all need our memory jogged. It’s never a bad idea to have some convenient references handy just in case. I have listed what I think are some helpful cheat sheets to keep in your camera bag.
First introduced by George Spafford in this article, the law states that the more the user is presented with false or erroneous alerts, the more they will ignore real alerts in the system.
Attributed to Bruce Beiser, the law states that every method you use to prevent or find bugs leaves a residue of subtler bugs against which those methods are ineffectual.
Her sinking with the loss of almost 1,200 lives caused such outrage that it propelled the U.S. into the First World War. But now divers have revealed a dark secret about the cargo carried by the Lusitania on its final journey in May 1915. Munitions they found in the hold suggest that the Germans had been right all along in claiming the ship was carrying war materials and was a legitimate military target.
a manual clothes washer that does a load of laundry in about 20 minutes using no power other than muscle. It’s portable, so you can carry or wheel it to a water source, and if you wash with biodegradable soap, the wash water can easily go to a garden afterward.