Writings of a techie wizard
 
Archive: 2012 - Page 2
Fri, 27 Jul 2012

(Note: there is a good discussion of this post and the Knuth-McIlroy exchange on Hacker News.)

The other day I came across a blog post about an interesting exchange between two world-class programmers, Donald Knuth and Doug McIlroy. I talked about McIlroy in my last nerd interlude. To briefly summarize what happened (the article goes into more detail and is worth reading, at least if you're into this sort of thing), Knuth was asked by a computer magazine to write a program that illustrated "literate programming", a technique that Knuth had spent much time developing, and McIlroy was asked to critique what Knuth did.

Read more...

Posted at 23:59   |   Category: opinions   |   Tags: computers   |   Permalink
Thu, 28 Jun 2012

Today's great news story is that the US Supreme Court has upheld the "individual mandate" portion of the Affordable Care Act. I won't bother linking to any particular stories since it's everywhere by now. I also won't comment here on whether or not the individual mandate (or indeed the act itself) is a good idea; that would be a much longer post than I want to write right now. Instead, I want to look at the Court's opinion from the viewpoint I have posted about before, that the Court has turned what Chief Justice Marshall called the power "to say what the law is" into something very different from what Marshall's opinion in Marbury v. Madison was arguing for.

Read more...

Posted at 23:02   |   Category: opinions   |   Tags: politics   |   Permalink
Tue, 24 Apr 2012

In my last post I mentioned that global warming would get its own post sometime soon; it appears that now is the time.

Read more...

Posted at 23:19   |   Category: opinions   |   Tags: politics, science   |   Permalink
Thu, 19 Apr 2012

Along with a lot of other people, I watched Discovery fly over Washington, DC on its way to Dulles Airport. A good sequence of pictures is here. I lamented a while back that today's NASA seems to have fallen far from the NASA of the Apollo missions, but obviously there's not much to be done about that except to move on (see below for more on that), and anyway, that's not Discovery's fault. The Shuttle deserves a good retirement, and will get one; I plan to go see it in its new home.

Read more...

Posted at 23:07   |   Category: opinions   |   Tags: economics, politics, science   |   Permalink
Thu, 08 Mar 2012

A while back I explained why I use Python, not Lisp. However, after reading this review of Go, I realized that I left out something important, something that sets Python apart from pretty much every other language out there, and certainly from every "C-oid" language, which is all that the author of the review seems able to find himself wishing for.

Read more...

Posted at 23:28   |   Category: rants   |   Tags: computers   |   Permalink
Sat, 03 Mar 2012

Cary Sherman, the CEO of the RIAA, is upset. He says those mean and nasty Internet companies shut down SOPA and PIPA by spreading misinformation and claiming it was fact. Well, after reading his recent op-ed in the New York Times, I will certainly concede that Mr. Sherman ought to know about that sort of thing, since he is evidently an expert at it. Just for fun, I thought I would post some examples.

Read more...

Posted at 20:50   |   Category: rants   |   Tags: computers, politics   |   Permalink
Sat, 25 Feb 2012

Eric Raymond has published an Open Letter to Chris Dodd in response to Dodd's recent speech. Any comments from me would be superfluous (and if you've read my previous posts on this subject you'll know where I'm coming from anyway); just read Eric's post. It's worth it.

Posted at 00:56   |   Category: opinions   |   Tags: computers, politics   |   Permalink
Thu, 19 Jan 2012

Many sites on the Internet (including this blog) were "blacked out" yesterday as part of a protest against SOPA/PIPA. Opposition to these bills has been mounting for some time, and a few days ago it appeared that SOPA, at least, had been shelved by the House, but it turned out that it had only been delayed until February. (Even if does eventually get "shelved", the cynical read on that, which would be mine, will be that Congress is simply taking it off the radar, knowing how short the public's attention span is, and will try to slip it in later as an amendment to some other bill that is expected to pass without much scrutiny. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.)

Read more...

Posted at 19:56   |   Category: opinions   |   Tags: computers, politics   |   Permalink
Mon, 09 Jan 2012

This is just a quick update to my previous posts on SOPA to collect a few more links of interest.

Read more...

Posted at 22:58   |   Category: rants   |   Tags: computers, politics   |   Permalink
Wizard Projects
Site Links
Open Source Projects
simpleblog3
dev release
plib3.stdlib
dev release
plib3.classes
dev release
plib3.dbtools
dev release
plib3.io
dev release
plib3.gui
dev release
setuputils3
dev release
simpleblog
dev release
plib.stdlib
dev release
plib.classes
dev release
plib.dbtools
dev release
plib.io
dev release
plib.gui
dev release
setuputils
dev release
Old Open Source Projects
Python Recipes
Fun Stuff
Shameless Plugs
Copyright © 2011-2015
by Peter A. Donis
All Rights Reserved