Yearly Archives: 2007
ODF vs. OOXML in New York State
New York State’s Office for Technology released a Request for Public Comment on selecting an XML-based office data format. The choices are OASIS’ ODF and Microsoft’s OOXML. Responses were due by 5 p.m. today, Dec. 28. My response is below, … Continue reading
Tagged AltLaw, New York, ODF, Office Technology, OOXML, Open-Source Software, XML
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Critical Mass
Dan Weinreb posted common Complaints About Common Lisp. My personal complaint is in there — the lack of libraries that are well-documented and regularly updated. I think it’s a critical mass problem: so few people are using Common Lisp in … Continue reading
XO-1 Laptop: Second Impressions
Further thoughts on my new XO-1 Laptop: It is possible to type on it, albeit not as fast as on a regular keyboard. It’s a real Linux installation — Redhat — on an x86-compatible processor. You can run “yum” in … Continue reading
Blogging XO Style
Just got my XO-1 laptop today, and I’m using it to write this post. First impressions: It’s light–weighs about as much as a hardback book. The screen is sharp and readable, with or without the backlight. The built-in rubber keyboard … Continue reading
Tagged Hardware
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The Definition of Scripting
Larry Wall writes about scripting, “I can’t define it, but I’ll know it when I see it.” So I thought I’d throw out my idea of a definition. A scripting language is a programming language that relies on and is … Continue reading
Posted in Programming
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Clojure: A Lisp Worth Talking About
A couple nights ago I walked down to LispNYC in the East Village to hear Rich Hickey talk about Clojure, his new Lisp-like language. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much. Another Lisp? Ho hum. I’m sure it’s very clever … Continue reading
When You Have a Hammer, Everything Looks Like Rails
AltLaw.org began life as a Ruby on Rails project. I was enamored of Rails at the time (who wasn’t?) and rapid-prototyping helped me get it up and running in just a few months. The problem is that I’ve been trying … Continue reading
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Easterbrook on GPL, Presages AltLaw
While playing with my current all-consuming project, AltLaw.org, I came across this case: Wallace v. IBM. In 2006 a man named Daniel Wallace sued various distributors of GNU/Linux, including IBM, Red Hat, and Novell, for “price-fixing.” Since the GPL ensures … Continue reading
Parsing Complex Comparisons
An interesting tidbit: can your programming language parse a < b < c? Perl can’t. Ruby can, but returns an error “undefined method `>’ for false:FalseClass.” Interestingly, Python accepts it, and even gives the correct result. Something clever must be going on in … Continue reading
code.nytimes.com
A cool new site, with the best possible slogan, “All the code that’s fit to printf().” Nice to see a giant media company getting into this.