Popular computing

I am interested in High-performance computing exploration and research, comparison of algorithms and platforms and tools. Example applications are optimization algorithms are Monte Carlo Simulations of Lattice QCD.

Linux Tracking

I am “smolten” with Linux!
Jack Wallen: “Linux isn’t sold generally. The majority of Linux users download a copy or get a copy burned from a friend or pick up their copy from the local LUG. You can’t really count those copies among Linux installations because there’s no way to track them. Until now… .”

Web 2.0

Is RSS the Best of Web 2.0?
RSS is the most valuable Web 2.0 application, a survey says. Social network and blog proponents may feel differently.
Full Article

and or python

4.6. The Peculiar Nature of and and or

 

• 4.6.1. Using the and-or Trick

In Python, and and or perform boolean logic as you would expect, but they do not return boolean values; instead, they return one of the actual values they are comparing.

This trick may seem like more trouble than it’s worth. You could, after all, accomplish the same thing with an if statement, so why go through all this fuss? Well, in many cases, you are choosing between two constant values, so you can use the simpler syntax and not worry, because you know that the a value will always be true. And even if you need to use the more complicated safe form, there are good reasons to do so. For example, there are some cases in Python where if statements are not allowed, such as in lambda functions.

 

Further Reading on the and-or Trick

• Python Cookbook discusses alternatives to the and-or trick.

Online Office

Can tiny Zoho beat Microsoft and Google in online office apps?
Google recently admitted that it is competing with Microsoft Office, but the biggest threat to Microsoft Office may be from tiny startup Zoho, which has an online office suite with better features than Google and more Web savvy than Microsoft. TechRepublic’s Jason Hiner looks at whether Zoho’s challenge can succeed where IBM, Sun, and open source have failed.

Security News

Network World Daily News: AM, 07/16/07

SWI-Prolog

SWI-Prolog offers a comprehensive Free Software Prolog environment, licensed under the Lesser GNU Public License. Together with its graphics toolkit XPCE, its development started in 1987 and has been driven by the needs for real-world applications.

Dreamworld

Good ideas pave the road to hell

Jobs in Canada

Software Development, Eh? Canada Seeks Foreign Tech Workers
Computerworld (07/11/07) Thibodeau, Patrick

Virii

Really the first one is the pakistani antipiracy trick