Month: July 2008
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Reading Code
The two best ways of learning how to program are writing code and reading (good) code. I read a lot of code in my younger days, and I think it helped me. Programming courses give students plenty of practice in writing code. I wonder how many give students an opportunity to read good code. There…
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Telecom Immunity
The telecom companies helped the Bush administration in wiretapping people without a warrant. The wiretapping was illegal by any reasonable reading of the law (the law was written after the last burst of questionable government wiretapping during the 60s). There has been a strong push by some people to sue the telecom companies for their…
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Wanted
Wanted was a fun if brutal comic book written by Mark Millar and illustrated by J.G. Jones. It came out at a time when Millar was finding his own voice after doing a lot of work with Grant Morrison. It tells the story of a general loser, Wesley Gibson, who discovers that he is the…
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Reducing Oil Consumption
The New York Time had a big article on Sunday on missed opportunities to cut oil consumption. The article covers various ideas, but it focuses on automobile fuel standards. I think that is a mistake. I do think that the automobile fuel standards should be higher. Historically the American car companies have argued against this,…
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Two Problems
We are most likely facing two significant problems in this century. The first is climate change due to increased greenhouse gases. The second is the loss of our major energy source due to oil depletion. I think it’s interesting that solving one problem is likely to solve the other one at the same time. The…