Monday, November 20, 2006 Essays and Articles

Java in The Land of Make Believe

What the GPL could have accomplished (and may well still).

To java foss coding gpl gnu ... on Mon November 20, 2006 at 12:45 AM

XML Templating in Python Evolves

A brief history of the Kid templating language and an endorsement for the next generation of XML-based templating: Genshi.

To web python kid genshi ... on Sat November 11, 2006 at 09:58 PM

Vox Populi

A paper by Sir Francis Galton first published in the March 7, 1907 issue of the scientific journal, NATURE. The paper provides what appears to be the first solid explanation for why Google's ranking algorithm, not to mention the form of government we've come to know as "democracy", are so capable.

To statistics interesting democracy google science ... on Fri October 27, 2006 at 04:36 PM

Top.app

MacOS X: How to turn textmode tools into first class applications. Mutt.app, Vim.app, Irssi.app, Top.app, etc.

To tools unix osx ... on Sun September 10, 2006 at 04:44 AM

The Zen of Microformats

How to understand what those barbarians are doing over there and why your going to keep on hearing about it.

To microformats html coding ... on Fri October 28, 2005 at 12:00 AM

Motherhood and Apple Pie

The axioms of web architecture and an invitation for big vendors to understand them.

To philosophy architecture web lamp foss coding ... on Thu July 21, 2005 at 12:00 AM

IBM Poopheads say LAMP Users Need to "grow up"

That is to say, they don't get it. This started out as a simple rant and turned into a decent sized essay on basic shared-nothing architecture and scaling down.

To coding python php lamp web ibm architecture ramblings ... on Sat May 28, 2005 at 01:29 AM

OS X Network Location support from the command line

How to get command line apps to respect the OS X network location. A neat little hack exploiting symlinks and $0.

To osx tools bash unix ... on Wed May 11, 2005 at 05:50 PM

On HTTP Abuse

And why we need more three-legged stools.

To coding http rest python web ... on Fri April 22, 2005 at 10:55 PM

Insects and Entropy

How complexity killed the best bug ever created in the whole world.

To python ramblings theory coding ... on Sat April 02, 2005 at 05:44 AM

The Tool Vendor's Dilemma

A theory on why big vendors, big analyst houses, and the tech press want to sell you the worst possible solutions to your problems.

To ws rest soap opposition coding web ... on Fri February 18, 2005 at 05:23 PM

Web Dominated by J2EE?

The web as currently imagined by the tech. industry is quite different from the web that actually exists.

To web ruby python coding ... on Fri February 18, 2005 at 03:51 AM

Tools for Democracy / Distributed Journalism

On using the web to co-ordinate massive grass-roots efforts quickly.

To essays politics foss coding freeculture journalism python ... on Wed February 02, 2005 at 11:01 AM

Cats

What the War In Iraq is really about.

To ramblings diversions war iraq ... on Sat January 29, 2005 at 10:31 AM

No Rails for Python?

What does Ruby on Rails have that we don't and why?

To coding python ruby web ... on Sun January 23, 2005 at 11:48 AM

Getters/Setters/Fuxors

Python's attributes are not Java's getters/setters and why that's a good thing.

To coding python not java theory ... on Thu January 20, 2005 at 08:43 AM

Disproving Backward Time Travel (kind of)

If it is ever discovered, we would have known about it a long time ago.

To science theory ramblings ... on Thu January 20, 2005 at 06:55 AM

The Static Method Thing

A comparison of Java's static methods and Python's class methods.

To java not python coding ... on Wed December 15, 2004 at 01:41 PM

How I Explained REST to My Wife

It's not a robot thing.

To xml soap rest ws web coding ... on Sun December 12, 2004 at 12:30 PM

Is BoingBoing a Legal Honeypot?

BoingBoing as tractor-beam for litigation. Xeni says I'm on crack.

To essays freeculture copyright ... on Fri December 03, 2004 at 10:20 AM

Java and Open Source

Why Java won't even be considered for most types of F/OSS applications until they ease up on the license.

To java coding linux ... on Mon November 15, 2004 at 05:18 AM

Web Antipatterns

A look at various ways people misunderstand the value of the web. If it's not useful, don't use it.

To essays web ... on Mon November 08, 2004 at 07:02 AM

Who Owns Your Browser?

Are there restrictions on how local content can be modified (e.g. user stylesheets)? Should there be?

To web css ramblings ... on Sat July 24, 2004 at 01:31 AM

IP Costs Millions of Information

How protecting "intellectual property" ends up destroying it.

To freeculture ... on Sun February 22, 2004 at 05:28 AM

Minimal System Backups with rdiff-backup and Yum

Some thoughts about a simple backup system that takes advantage of a package management system.

To yum tools linux ... on Sun November 16, 2003 at 01:46 AM