In this day and age, it seems insane that so common a program would have such a bug. Arbitrary code execution, just by opening a tar archive?
It’s time to rewrite gnu in a real programming language!
ocaml wish
Let’s say I have a function with some optional arguments and some mandatory ones:
let f ?a ?b c = ...
And let’s say the b argument should only be used inside this module. It would be nice to be able to just put
val f : ?a : 'a -> c -> 'b -> 'c
in my mli, to restrict the outside world from seeing the optional b argument. It seems that this might be tricky to implement from the standpoint of separate compilation.
Right now the best workaround I can come up with is to make a separate function to export to the outside world which simply calls the internal one appropriately.
tax season strikes again
H&R Block, a company whose primary business is preparing people’s tax returns, screwed up their own taxes! The income tax is so confusing that even tax experts don’t understand it. One more reason to support fundamental tax reform, such as the fairtax.
Oh well, back to H&R Block’s website to work on my taxes..
Wired’s hollywood affliction
What’s the deal with Wired magazine becoming an advertisement for the movies? Over the past 8 months or so, I feel like 4 cover stories have been about the movies or hollywood, and every issue has at least one hollywood-related article. What gives, mateys?
how to make a gazillion in the market
It’s easy! This ad makes it plain as day:
20.28% omfg!!! Over 7 years!!! and the last 3 years are way better than that! Since we all know that the past 3 years’ performance is the best indication of future performance, this is a clear buy.
And they use fancy industry terms like “Basis Points” and “Sharpe ratio”.. clearly they know what they doing!
All this for a measly 1% of my money! I’m sold!
This ad appeared in a magazine for financial professionals. Does that not seem completely insane?
zillow
Potentially a neat idea:
This site lets you look at home values in your area. It already surprised me to see how prices were in my area.
Needs work on the map interface and the firefox support.
And what a wierd name.. wtf is a zillow?
Ah, here we go:
Why “Zillow”?
Once they hatched their idea, they needed a name. “Zillow” evolved from the desire to make zillions of data points for homes accessible to everyone. But a home is about more than data – it is where you lay your head to rest at night, like a pillow. Thus, “Zillow” was born. They knew they had a winning name when employees began talking in Z-language and newly-minted words starting with “Z” popped up everywhere (e.g., Zestimate?, Zindex?).
cartoons about cartoons
The Sketch Guide
Super geeky, and highly entertaining:
the (final fantasy iii/vi) sketch guide!
This guy makes an entire FAQ devoted to what is basically the worst ability in the game. And he isn’t afraid to admit it. In fact, he talks about it like it’s a red-headed step child.
Here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite:
See, if Blitz is the popular jock all shallow people love, if SwdTech is the bitch without any real qualities who is adored for her looks and if Rage is the scrawny kid with glasses few people like to talk to who’ll later make more money than the rest of class ’96 combined, Sketch is the poor kid who, besides being lactose-intolerant, suffering from asthma AND having the worst case of acne known to Western science, lacks any kind of charm, quality or potential.
why the cartoons and their reaction are good for america
If the world didn’t understand before how screwed up the fundamentalists
are, they should now. The torching of the Danish embassy is so far from a
reasonable reaction that only the truly whacko could have done it.
If the world didn’t understand before how screwed up the fundamentalists are, they should now. The torching of the Danish embassy is so far from a reasonable reaction that only the truly whacko could have done it.
I never really believed GW when he stood up and said that the terrorists fundamentally opposed our way of life–and I’m still not certain, but it seems that at best they fundamentally don’t understand it.
The world is now exposed to a refreshing debate about freedom of speech and religion. Newspapers are rightfully publishing the controversy just because they can. People who really don’t get it are being exposed, e.g. this random guy who wrote an editorial in the local paper:
We understand the concept of freedom of expression, but that does not mean it is a chance to hurt the feelings of millions of people.
Actually that’s exactly what it is; or at least, it’s the chance to say stuff without worrying whether or not it will offend someone. A big chunk of the world is showing the rest of us just how poor they are at basic tolerance.
And I think all this is good for the world and for America. It makes what America is doing look better. It helps the rest of the western world separate the good guys from the barbarians.
Hopefully the West will not respond to the violence by caving in. In fact, I think the most beneficial response would be to continue publishing the cartoons in more promininent places, and simply wait until the crazies discover that the sky isn’t falling as a result.
..in other news, it’s been a profitable week for flag peddlers!
if you can’t beat ’em..
Enough crappy perl script blog (blosxom). I’m moving on up, to a crappy php script blog!
It’s a shame that the state of web programming is still as bad as it is. Perhaps the problem is that people who are good at/enjoy web development aren’t really good programmers, and vice versa.