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POPSA New Kind of Science - Stephen Wolfram (Lecture) worth watching, on cellular automata, complexity, randomness, nature, mathematics, science, biology, natural selection, networks, space-time, physics, causality, relativity, determinism, quantum mechanics, computational irreducibility, ... (not necessarily in that order) His book is freely available online: http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/toc.html (see also The Nature of Code )
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POPSProgramming Cheat Sheet Round-up. I use the term programming very very loosely. I clipped the topic headings, visit the source for the links to the cheat sheets, each topic has quite a few cheat sheets. Very useful.
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POPSProgrammers say the craziest things in their code With the new Google Code Search tool suddenly exposing millions of lines of previously obscure code to the public, I decided to try to find the most embarrassing comments possible that are now out in the open for all to see. Even knowing what types of comments developers leave in their code, I was still a bit mortified to find out just what shameful secrets Google has exposed overnight. (And you should see the R-rated examples.) One blogger compared Google Code Search to reading the great "bathroom wall" of programming. Feel dirty? embryo-0.9.0/src/bin/embryo_main.c 3: /* This is ugly code! don't look at it please! i am embarrassed! i need to */ /* cleanit up! */
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POPSA great links page from a freeware programmer Just a few clips from Apps Apps Links page from the Useful Links list. App is a programmer on whose website you will find a number of little free, useful apps. (Links on the left side of the above page.) On the Links page, you will find tons of links to spirit you away to all kinds of interesting places. Some of the link topics are: Favorite Software, Programming Links, Funny Programming Links, Other Funny Links, Useful Links, Fun & Games, and Just Plain Cool. Re-posted now that I have learned to clip better.
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POPSFOX forced to apologise for THIRD TIME in TWO Weeks The apology comes just over a week after one of Fox's anchormen expressed regret for a comment on the night that Obama won the Democratic nomination. Obama, in a show of affection, lightly touched his fist against Michelle's and the anchorwoman referred to it as a "terrorist fist jab". Previously, a Fox contributor Liz Trotta had to apologise after making a joke about Obama being assassinated. The trio of apologies is embarrassing for Fox. Murdoch last month praised Obama but stopped short of endorsing him, though his New York Post came out for Obama in January.
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POPSGood Agile, Bad Agile (or Why Google is Unstoppable) Steve Yegge on the benefits and mostly drawbacks of agile programming. Probably the most interesting portion is his insider's look into the development atmosphere at Google, where a controlled type of agile programming runs rampant, with huge results. Oh and did he menion the perks? And there are still other incentives; the list goes on and ON and ON ; the perks are over the top, and the rewards are over the top, and everything there is so comically over the top that you have no choice, as an outsider, but to assume that everything the recruiter is telling you is a baldfaced lie, because there's no possible way a company could be that generous to all of its employees, all of them, I mean even the contractors who clean the micro-kitchens, they get these totally awesome "Google Micro-Kitchen Staff" shirts and fleeces.
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POPSGoodbye To Faulty Software? The program that performs the computation is equivalent to the proof of the theorem. By proving the theorem the program is guaranteed to be correct. It is not that simple, of course, but so promising is type theory that since 1989 the EU has been funding a string of projects to develop it under the Future and Emerging Technologies programme. That style of working is going to change so that we spend more effort on actually writing programs than testing them.
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POPSPray Away Gay "What, if anything do you think Ted Haggard will say publicly about his experience? Certainly if the evangelical former pastor has not truly reclaimed his heterosexuality after the very strict re-programming, it would be a serious blow to the ex-gay industry if he were to come forward and say that he now realizes that his same-sex desires are neither evil or wrong and that these cures have nothing to do with getting right with God."