• Imagine that you have a hierarchical object graph:

hierarchy

And you want to merge two instances. Some elements should combine elements from both, some must take their value from the master. My example scenario is artificial, so please don't say 'well, if all you have to do is number pages …

After the 3rd or 4th "Year of the Network" everyone in business finally all got network cards in their computers, discovered email and the "Respond to all..." button and the world hasn't been the same since.

I understood Novell back in those days, but since, it's been harder. The idea …

Making it stick.: This is not the one: On Lisp.

Dr Dobbs - Q&A: Martin Fowler and Rebecca Parsons on DSLs.

I just received Fowler's DSL book in the mail and look forward to reading it. In the meantime, here's a brief interview at Dr. Dobb's on the subject.

The Price Is Always Right – MITs Real-Time Inflation Index.

There's a lot of criticism of the Consumer Price Index, including suspicion that it's intentionally gamed to further political agenda. Instead, MIT has created an index that uses Internet purchases to measure inflation.

...using the same reporting and writing techniques as more traditional journalists.

via Internet Evolution - CMO Clan Editors Blog - Why Intel Went Into the Journalism Business.

Time to bite the hands that have fed me, but this is important: When a Marketing/PR department has editorial control over a technical article …

In my most recent column for SD Times, I discuss recent disappointing events in the world of the DLR and suggest that Microsoft's internal competitiveness is creating too much chaos.

Resolver Systems: News.

I love Resolver One (I just wish it ran on systems under than Windows!), the Python-powered spreadsheet that allows you to combine spreadsheet-style computing with Python code.

Now, Resolver Systems has moved the concept up towards grid computing. If you've got some Big Data challenges, it might …

Paul Graham once suggested that startups pose their mission statement as a question. Google's question might have been "Will the PageRank algorithm deliver results that are so good that they lure users away from Altavista?"

via 2010/09/concept.md at master from raganwald's homoiconic - GitHub.

My great lesson from …

There's a pretty good comet visible near the easy-to-find constellation Cassiopeia (the big "M" or "W" in the Northern sky). It's brightness is listed as magnitude 5.7, which ought to be visible with binoculars if you aren't too close to bright lights. (If you have really dark skies and …