• Casino

    A New York Times op-ed column by Edward E. Kaufman Jr. and Carl M. Levin warns that if steps are not taken, “our stock markets will have become a casino.” It seems a bit late for that. While there may still be some predictability to the market in the long-term, in the short-term it is…

  • Interviews

    I’ve interviewed a lot of people looking for jobs at places where I work. I don’t think I’m a particularly good interviewer, but I have developed a few rules of thumb. The purpose of an interview is to see whether somebody can do the job. In my case, the job is programming. Past experience by…

  • Salvation By Works

    Now, a cute kid story. My daughter asked me why some people used to wear hair shirts and the like. I tried to explain about mortification of the flesh as a way to improve the spirit, how people tried to ignore their physical body to pursue a closer relationship with God. This naturally led to…

  • Debt and Taxes

    During the Reagan administration, the U.S. reduced tax rates and increased defense spending. The national debt as a percentage of overall GDP increased from 32.5% to 53.1% (Reagan called this increase in debt the “greatest disappointment” of his presidency). During the first Bush administration, it continued to rise, reaching 66.1%. During the Clinton administration, the…

  • DejaGNU

    Sorry for the long delay. Anyhow, I wrote that so that I could write this. DejaGNU is the test harness used by gcc, gdb, the GNU binutils, and probably other programs as well. Frankly, it’s a disaster. The documentation is weak, the implementation is complex and confusing, it’s slow, it does not support running tests…