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When Titans Clash
I didn’t expect to like the recent remake of Clash of the Titans much, but I was pleasantly surprised. Most movies of this sort have a simple underlying theme. For this movie the theme was going to be that humans could stand on their own and did not need help from the gods. But, due…
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Blackberry
I spent several hours this weekend pruning back the blackberry bushes in our back yard. It’s not really a yard, as our house backs onto a hillside too steep to build on. We hardly ever go there ourselves, so it’s covered by plants fighting for their little bit of sun, nature green in thorn and…
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Container Models
A long time ago a friend of mine pointed out a sign of trouble in any program: defining a new container model. If you are working in a language that provides containers in the standard library, then use them. If you need a container with specific behaviour, then make it look like the standard containers.…
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Elder Con
A friend (I’ll call him John) recently told me about a con that was run on his parents. The con artist called his parents home and pretended to be John. This was apparently done with a little social engineering: “Hello?” “Hi, Mom?” “Is this John?” “Yes, it’s John.” The caller excused the fact that he…
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Goldman
I have no idea whether the recent SEC lawsuit against Goldman Sachs will prevail in the courts. Goldman’s defense sounds pretty good to me: the investors were presumed to be sophisticated, and they should have been able to figure out what was going on. What ought to collapse, though, is Goldman’s reputation for putting their…