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rbanffy
194,606karma·63,760submissions·March 12, 2008
about
Seasoned software developer, proficient in Python, Java. Less proficient in Ruby and Lisp. A bit rusty in C and C++. Learning Erlang very slowly. Also a computer collector and restorer, lover of 8-bit computers, mainframes and interesting Unix workstations.
email: username at that google mail thing
http://about.me/rbanffy
https://linkedin.com/in/ricardobanffy
[ my public key: https://keybase.io/rbanffy; my proof: https://keybase.io/rbanffy/sigs/HtF1uAf_RNpwIkNP1-YGWP_-3doWV6S5Cc1KywXeLYo ]
recent activity (63,760 total)
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I feel obligated to say that Computer Science is not about the machines that do the computation but about the computation process itself. If we are talking about the physical devices that do the compu…
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"and their love affair with XML." You just gave me an idea for an excellent April's Fools prank.
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I took the liberty of pointing folks at WTF to your link. Hope you don't mind. It's a wonderful interview.
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Sadly, the onky consequence that springs to mind is that there will be no devices above the spec. As much as the hardware makers may want to sell devices, they will want to maximize the number of unit…
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Having about 3 meetings created per day on average since launch would not qualify this app as a success by any count. For this amount of usage, a shared account on a cheap web hosting service would pr…
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"-- You need money to finance your expensive drug habit, so you got another gig that pays $150 per hour. Unfortunately, it takes up most of your time." I like the way you think.
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I would point out that a Django developer that can't show something in 14 minutes is incompetent ;-) Yes. It's really that easy.
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Oh. Please. Post the three words.
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"MySQL has simply bitten the tail off my data and happily stored the rest without any errors or warnings. OK, I should have RTFM but still, the idea of a database corrupting my data without any warnin…
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A hack, but not in a good way? /me ducks
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Zope, Grok, Plone and Django, mostly. Python is a very good language: easy to learn, powerful and fast enough (provided you understand how to make its various frameworks scale).
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Hand in your geek black belt when you leave. This GLS is Guy L. Steele (also a creator of Scheme). Gery Sussman is Gerald J. Sussman. You may keep the geek card.
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Why? They should have dumped their stock when the offer was first floated (and stocks reached about the same premium MS was offering). Yahoo's management never said it would accept that first offer an…
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I am an equal opportunity cringer. I cringe at .NET, Java and Windows. I don't like OSX's lack of package management but, apart from that, I'm OK with it. Hackers are clever people. It pays to observe…
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Well... Bill promised Windows 7 by mid 2009. If it fails as completely as Vista, there won't before much long-term value for Microsoft out of the corporate high-inertia market. Either way, it will be …
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bzip2 it. It will slash the size to a fraction of its current size.
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I truly miss those times. Well... my computer is much more powerful now, but, still, those heroic days when I could fully understand the Apple II ROM will not be forgotten. At least, not by me ;-)
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Well. Just wait until Theo's wife goes missing.
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As a kid, I had a few years of Judo training and I have never learned how to choke a person. From my experience, Judo is about catching or throwing opponents off-balance (often with their unwilling he…
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"While they worked feverishly at overcoming the technical challenges" is an incredibly optimistic depiction of the challenges of exploding a string of 4 kiloton nuclear bombs to propel a spacecraft to…
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I wish I could download them in an iPod-friendly form (I watch a lot of stuff while flying). Even better, a podcast, TED-style. That would be great.
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I wish I could download them in an iPod-friendly form (I watch a lot of stuff while flying). Even better, a podcast, TED-style. That would be great.
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I really don't think that duplicating libraries (a requirement for OSX-like .App bundles with no external dependencies) or apps checking and self-updating by app-specific methods is a good solution ei…
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Your Macbook must have some serious problem. May be some overheat condition that clocks it down. My wife's Macbook (white, Core Duo) is not sluggish no matter what I throw at it. The ATI thing may exp…
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Pierre... From what you say, it is glaringly obvious you never spent any time either with a Mac or with a modern Linux. True the monitors stuff is not mature, but multi-monitor machines are just now b…
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I don't trust Microsoft. ;-)
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Package management goes way beyond installing and uninstalling stuff. A good package manager, like apt or yum, will help your computer self-update (not only the core OS but every program you installed…
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What would be the main advantages switchpipe has over the conventional mod_rewrite solution under Apache?
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"There will always be a huge market of MBAs wasting money on overpriced tech advice!" Hey! Be careful. It's my main income source you are talking about!
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Care to tell what did you build in ST?