As I realize that open source is going to define my professional life (and likely my personal one as well), my tolerance for assholes gets smaller and smaller. Unlike Rusty, I won’t simply stand by and allow these people to run amok. I will call out antisocial behavior, enforce professionalism in the communities where I have the power to do, and leave the communities that cannot at least offer civility.

via I refuse to tolerate assholes.

There shall not be any self-modifying code. F=35 C++ [PDF]

Aside from the slightly scary prospect that one of the worlds "best" fighter jet's, control code is written in C++. Its an interesting read for anybody who writes C++ or pseudo-C++.

Yahoo’s embattled CEO Scott Thompson is set to step down from his job at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in what will be dramatic end to a controversy over a fake computer science degree that he had on his bio, according to multiple sources close to the situation.

via Yahoo's Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb - Kara Swisher - News - AllThingsD.

A massive trading bet boomeranged on J.P. Morgan Chase JPM  & Co., leaving the bank with at least $2 billion in trading losses and its chief executive, James Dimon, with a rare black eye following a long run as what some called the "King of Wall Street."

via J.P. Morgan Flags $2 Billion Trading Loss - WSJ.com.

The SYRIZAS five point plan laid out by Tsipras isn’t going to go down well in Berlin-sur-Brussels:

* The immediate cancellation of all impending measures that will impoverish Greeks further, such as cuts to pensions and salaries.

* The immediate cancellation of all impending measures that undermine fundamental workers’ rights, such as the abolition of collective labour agreements.

* The immediate abolition of a law granting MPs immunity from prosecution, reform of the electoral law and a general overhaul of the political system.

* An investigation into Greek banks, and the immediate publication of the audit performed on the Greek banking sector by BlackRock.

* The setting up of an international auditing committee to investigate the causes of Greece’s public deficit, with a moratorium on all debt servicing until the findings of the audit are published.

via GREEK COALITION TALKS: Tsipras clinches deal with Democratic Left, lays out bold anti-Troika plan | A diary of deception and distortion.

I’m just old enough to remember the Great Depression. After the first few years, by the mid-1930s — although the situation was objectively much harsher than it is today — nevertheless, the spirit was quite different. There was a sense that “we’re gonna get out of it,” even among unemployed people, including a lot of my relatives, a sense that “it will get better.”

via Chomsky: “Jobs aren’t coming back” - Salon.com.

Drinking alcohol may enhance a person’s problem solving skills, according to a new study.Scientists found that men who either drank two pints of beer or two glasses of wine before solving brain teasers not only got more questions right, they also were quicker in delivering correct answers, compared to men who answered the questions sober.

via Medical Daily: Drinking Alcohol May Significantly Enhance Problem Solving Skills.

Your Mac is beautiful, so why should your webserver be just an ugly black box? We use the power of the new MacBook Air to deliver your website on time and in style

via HIPSTERHOST.

Heres what he's done. Last month he and a student released a Facebook plug-in called EnemyGraph, which users can install free and name their enemies, which then show up in their profiles.

via College 2.0: Social-Media Blasphemy: An Academic Adds Enemy Feature to Facebook - College 2.0 - The Chronicle of Higher Education.

"In the areas where we come at the market, we think we are a coveted brand."

via With "Coveted Brand," Dell Will Breach Tablet Market - John Paczkowski - News - AllThingsD.

Its scary Dells lack of context and self-awareness. Everybody know Dell is the company to goto for cheap PCs that aren't that great.

“On the commercial side there are a lot of concerns about security, interoperability, systems and device management, and I think Dell is in the best position to meet those.”

See: http://www.apple.com/uk/support/ipad/enterprise/

If Dell can do End-To-End like Apple can even in Enterprise I will eat a hat.

Modernization takes years decades, sometimes and nobody wants to do all this work and have to do it again next year just because Java is “too verbose” or because Node.js is hot shit.

via blargh: Why I like lots of languages, and Go is pretty neat too.

TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

via Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs - NYTimes.com.

AT&T plans to offer app developers and other mobile content providers the ability to pay for its customer's data usage on the carrier,

via AT&T Working on System to Allow App Devs to Pay for Customers' Data Usage - Mac Rumors.

"Were no longer a PC company, were an IT company."

via Dell: were no longer a PC company | News | PC Pro.

Steve Jobs FBI files

via Steve Jobs FBI files | Muckrock.

Groupon reports unexpected loss

via BBC News - Groupon reports unexpected loss.

Everybody's talking about how programming is the skill that we all are going to need. [Except those folks who might feel that most programming could be turned into wizard-like tools. Insert long discussion about Strong AI.]

But what's a programmer? Is the guy who set up his own Apache Web Server a programmer? How about the guy who created a complex Excel spreadsheet? The guy who made his own RPG level? Minecraft players? When we say "Everybody is going to have to know programming" what, exactly, does that mean?

via What Level Programmer Are You?.

Wilson Miner - When We Build from Build on Vimeo.

The EU Creed - "Try and Try again there is no do"

The negotiations have gone on for months. If you truly believe that it's about making Greece's' debts more affordable you're mad, this is about setting targets that are impossible to meet, thus creating a situation wherein Greece becomes a third world country outside the EU, and all the unelected eurocrats cry "We did our best, we spent months working on a plan". We already know its win, win for the bondholders anyway link , link, and the US is heavily leaning on Germany to do what ever is possible to stop the inevitable default bleeding the fed dry.

Saturday 4th February 2012

Euro zone finance ministers told Greece it could not go ahead with an agreed deal to restructure privately held debt until it guaranteed to implement reforms to secure a second financing package from the euro zone and the IMF.

via Euro zone insists no Greek rescue without reforms | Reuters.

Sunday 5th February 2012

Greece's prime minister scrambled Sunday to convince lenders and politicians to sign off on a 130 billion euro rescue, after his finance minister said just hours remained to clinch a deal to avoid a messy default.

Via Greece on "knife edge" in push to agree bailout

Analysis 24 January 2012

So, they’re going through a drawn-out step-by-step procedure of demands for reforms, promises, failed implementations, rebukes, withheld bailout transfers that then might still be made, and so on. The idea is to keep markets from panicking, give governments time to prepare for the inevitable, and render politicians blameless for Greece’s exit from the monetary union.

Via Paying Lip Service To Saving The Eurozone

If you really are using prolog, the data you get from prolog and its database (I had the mis-fortune of studying this 3 times) aren't really congruent with mySQL.

One is highly structured tabular, the other is derived and organised in a hierarchy, if you need storage for you'd probably be better dumping text files, or get with the hipsters in the NoSQL camp.

Prolog in Python (pt. 2) : ryePDX.

tl;dr