The O'Reilly history of programming langauges
Check out this history of computer languges (up to 2004). It's really interesting! (Referenced from Dr Dobbs magazine...)
10/29/2005 10:31:00 am: permalink
GM crop creates herbicide-resistant "superweed"
Modified genes from crops in a GM crop trial have transferred into local wild plants, creating a form of herbicide-resistant "superweed", the Guardian can reveal.
The cross-fertilisation between GM oilseed rape, a brassica, and a distantly related plant, charlock, had been discounted as virtually impossible by scientists with the environment department. It was found during a follow up to the government's three-year trials of GM crops which ended two years ago... The scientists also collected seeds from other weeds in the oilseed rape field and grew them in the laboratory. They found that two - both wild turnips - were herbicide resistant. The five scientists from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the government research station at Winfrith in Dorset, placed their findings on the department's website last week.
The cross-fertilisation between GM oilseed rape, a brassica, and a distantly related plant, charlock, had been discounted as virtually impossible by scientists with the environment department. It was found during a follow up to the government's three-year trials of GM crops which ended two years ago... The scientists also collected seeds from other weeds in the oilseed rape field and grew them in the laboratory. They found that two - both wild turnips - were herbicide resistant. The five scientists from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the government research station at Winfrith in Dorset, placed their findings on the department's website last week.
7/27/2005 09:34:00 pm: permalink
Carbon Neutral Flying
One single shorthaul flight produces roughly the same amount of the global warming gas as 3 months worth of driving a 1.4 litre car. And we're all flying more. You can't do much about the fuel efficiency of aircraft, but if you need a holiday or if you're travelling on business, you can help reduce your personal contribution to global warming by making your flight CarbonNeutral. That means we organise for the CO2 associated with your flight to be ‘balanced out’ by forestry and climate friendly energy projects which save equivalent amounts of CO2. From FutureForests.com
7/27/2005 09:31:00 pm: permalink
Diving into Greasemonkey and thence to Microformats
Dive into Greasemonkey lists the many and various ways in which Greasemonkey can be useful. While browsing through its chapters I followed a link and took a detour to MicroFormats. These look even more useful :-)
microformats are:
* a way of thinking about data
* design principles for formats
* adapted to current behaviors and usage patterns (“Pave the cow paths.”)
* highly correlated with semantic XHTML, AKA the real world semantics, AKA lowercase semantic web, AKA lossless XHTML
* a set of simple open data format standards that many are actively developing and implementing for more/better structured blogging and web microcontent publishing in general.
* “An evolutionary revolution”
* all the above.
microformats are not:
* a new language
* infinitely extensible and open-ended
* an attempt to get everyone to change their behavior and rewrite their tools
* a whole new approach that throws away what already works today
* a panacea for all taxonomies, ontologies, and other such abstractions
* defining the whole world, or even just boiling the ocean
* any of the above
Thing of it as a structured way to embed semantic information (e.g. calendaring details) into into standard HTML4 markup and you're half way there. More background info available at Phil Windley's Technometria.
microformats are:
* a way of thinking about data
* design principles for formats
* adapted to current behaviors and usage patterns (“Pave the cow paths.”)
* highly correlated with semantic XHTML, AKA the real world semantics, AKA lowercase semantic web, AKA lossless XHTML
* a set of simple open data format standards that many are actively developing and implementing for more/better structured blogging and web microcontent publishing in general.
* “An evolutionary revolution”
* all the above.
microformats are not:
* a new language
* infinitely extensible and open-ended
* an attempt to get everyone to change their behavior and rewrite their tools
* a whole new approach that throws away what already works today
* a panacea for all taxonomies, ontologies, and other such abstractions
* defining the whole world, or even just boiling the ocean
* any of the above
Thing of it as a structured way to embed semantic information (e.g. calendaring details) into into standard HTML4 markup and you're half way there. More background info available at Phil Windley's Technometria.
7/27/2005 07:44:00 pm: permalink
Greasemonkey - Firefox extension
Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML ("user scripts") to any web page to change its behavior. In much the same way that user CSS lets you take control of a web page's style, user scripts let you easily control any aspect of a web page's design or interaction. Greasemonkey was referenced by this fascinating article on Secure RSS Syndication.
7/27/2005 07:32:00 pm: permalink
Suits are back (again and again)
"Suits make a corporate comeback," says the New
York Times. Why does this sound familiar? Maybe because
the suit was also back in February 2005, September 2004, June 2004, March 2004, September 2003, November 2002, April 2002, and February 2002.
From Paul Graham.
York Times. Why does this sound familiar? Maybe because
the suit was also back in February 2005, September 2004, June 2004, March 2004, September 2003, November 2002, April 2002, and February 2002.
From Paul Graham.
6/24/2005 10:45:00 pm: permalink
GeoShell
Omniscient Debugging
Rat Park: why happiness matters?
Alexander's findings - that deprived rats seek solace in opiates, while contented rats avoid them - dramatically contradict our currently held beliefs about addiction. So, how might society benefit if his results were applied to human addicts? Nobody seemed to care.
6/07/2005 01:33:00 am: permalink
