Many good posts about programming, coding, business, aesthetics, with nice touch of wisdom, If you are into programming languages, do not miss this one, this and this. If you are more into process and management, try this and this or this. There also deeper and lighter stuff :-)
As Reg says about popular bloposts
One model for popular writing is that it panders to the reader's prejudices. Plain and simple. People like writing that validates them and especially their ideas.
Every software developer will tell you how frustrating it is to trace problem in your application up to the point of third party library call (jar file or .dll / .so - make your choice) - and then have to resort to trial and error exploration, because you have no source code for that particular library module. For this very reason, most developers always prefer working with libraries or toolkits that comes with source code attached - if they have a choice. As a side benefit, these libraries are often free as a beer as well - but being able to understand the module is much more important as whether you have to pay license fee ...
Thanks to sudden memory jump in my iPod (from 4GB Nano 2gen to 8 GB iPod touch) I have enough space to load some books in addition to podcasts. I normally do not like abridged versions, but the weather is getting worse so I do not get enough walking time for full versions. These two were both 3-4 disc long audio books.
The Google Story is interesting if you are into history of computing - because it describes the probably the largest transition in computing history - the evolution of World Wide Web to a platform and the evolution of the company that made the Web actually useful. I still remember how much time did it take in 1997/1998 to find anything relevant when the best way how to do this were directories (in early Yahoo! style) or AltaVista and hours and hours of paging through the irrelevant results. Then in early 1998 my friend Rajeeva (I was working in New Jersey at Merrill Lynch) made me aware of that company with funny empty looking page and strange name Google :). And now, 9 years later the shareprice of GOOG is well over $600 - just unbelievable.
Can you imagine a database table with 25000 (twenty five thousands) columns ? No, not rows, COLUMNS ! Now if you can do that, can you imagine displaying these columns in a datagrid (spreadsheet) on a screen ?
This is exactly what this guy is describing to be his requirements. I hope he did misunderstood or misread the requirements, because displaying 25000 columns on a screen is not only impossible - it is absolutely useless. How would the user interaction look like ? As one of the guys in the discussion pointed out, the table would be few hundred meters wide (assuming 1 cm cell and 19 inch monitor) ....
So, I have finally got it. Only the 8 GB version as the 16 GB were sold out, but I just could not wait for another week :-). After playing with it for about 1.5 hour, I like it even more. The readability of Safari Web sites is excellent - I started to put together some links. Did not try too many sites yet, but the Dzone reads OK :-). Also the PDF book reading is very good - but that is no news. I guess I will have to put up some internal Apache access to my PDF eBooks from my bed :-).
No, I have not bought it yet, to big disappointment of Gabo and Shane - sorry guys. I wanted to buy it but all FutureShop stores in Ottawa are hopelessly sold out and on-line delivery is 7-10 business days - which I hope I will beat if these guys get new shipment (maybe tomorrow ?).
I played with two demo pieces though for about 30 minutes, and here are the first impressions:
Gerd Leonhard, co-author of the Future of Music book is making an experiment with his new book - The End of Control. He is publishing the chapters of the book as they appear in PDF format as well as MP3's on his website. First two chapters - "Attention is the new currency" and "Copyright in the Age of Uncontrolled distribution" are currently available for download / reading / listening.
The books tries to address very important questions on how will the new media business function in environment with little control over the distribution channel. Attempts to enforce control with technical tools were not very successful - just recall the Sony rootkit fiasco's, hacking the HD-DVD and others. Currently, there is strong movement away from DRM and towards non-crippledrestricted content.
and similar plague (for some reason they were pretty active last few days):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un_PjRXV5l8
I wish I could pull similar stunt - but I am not really a good actor and my accent would make it hard to believe. But it is hilarious anyway (video is a recording of phone call and contains text transcription ...). Enjoy.
Thanks to Peter M. for the link. I would link his blog or home page, if he had one :-).
Look how creatively did French government - more specifically Ministère de la culture et de la communication - approach even such mundane subject as the 404 page :-).
It is all about deep questions and problems computer science. Including the question whether such thing as computer science actually exists. I thing it does, but have occasional moments of doubts - mostly when I read something related to real science :-).
What does Andreas Zwinkau (it is read as ts-win-cow, my anglophone friends ;-)) think about it, can be found http://focs.wordpress.com/
His comments are amazingly deep for such a young guy. I wish when I was getting my comp-sci degree (1981-1986) we have had the same wonderful things these young fellas have now: ubiquitous internet and really world wide web with Google that actually makes it useful, Linux and many other wonderful open source projects (Apache, Jakarta, Firefox, Eclipse - you name it). Can you imagine studying computer science in a world where the Web does not exist (yet) ?