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, submitted just in time to meet the deadline. I didn’t have [...]
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 their day-to-day work that there’s not enough momentum to keep the libraries going [...]
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 a root shell to install any package you want.
The hardware/software integration needs some more work. [...]
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 is difficult for an adult to touch-type on. I’m hoping I’ll get used to it.
It comes with [...]
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 designed to run within an ecosystem based on other languages. So Perl [...]