Category Archives: Software

Turing Machine in Bare Bones

Posted on March 3, 2008 by Eric

The most recent release of my Bare Bones interpreter made identifiers case-insensitive, and added an optional peephole optimizer that recognizes a common idiom: while N not 0 do;   decr N;   incr X; end; Such a loop adds N … Continue reading →

Posted in Bare Bones, Computer Science | 3 Comments

Bare Bones interpreter

Posted on February 11, 2008 by Eric

Over the weekend I finished the homework assignment for the “Theory of Computation” chapter of Computer Science: An Overview, Ninth Edition, by J. Glenn Brookshear. Brookshear defines a very minimal programming language called Bare Bones, in which variables may contain … Continue reading →

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I have the greatest enthusiasm for the mission, Dave.

Posted on January 20, 2008 by Eric

University of East Anglia researchers have received a grant of half a million dollars to develop lip reading software.  [h/t Slashdot Science]

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New software development methodologies

Posted on August 24, 2007 by Eric

Scott Berkun points out that the software industry invents an amazing number of new development methodologies, and proposes a few new ones.  Actually he’s just documenting existing practices.  More are listed in the comments.

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SCO loses!

Posted on August 10, 2007 by Eric

The wheels of justice grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine! Judge Kimball has ruled in SCO v. Novell that SCO does not own the Unix copyrights, and therefore most of SCO’s claims against Novell are dismissed. SCO has to … Continue reading →

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World’s oldest vaporware finally shipped

Posted on June 20, 2007 by Eric

You might think that vaporware is a relatively new thing. Perhaps the best known example is Duke Nukem Forever, which was announced in 1997 but still has not shipped. It received Wired News’ Vaporware Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. Vaporwear … Continue reading →

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Skype and Teamspeak finally coexisting

Posted on June 4, 2007 by Eric

I use Skype for telephony, and Teamspeak for some online games (mostly Ticket to Ride). Until now, I’ve never gotten them to peacefully coexist on my 64-bit Linux system, despite the use of the ALSA OSS emulation library. Now, with … Continue reading →

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Fedora 7 Rhythmbox install is brain-damaged

Posted on June 4, 2007 by Eric

The update to Fedora 7 installed Rhythmbox.  Perhaps it was already installed with Fedora Core 6, but I didn’t use it, and it hadn’t caused me any grief.  But in Fedora 7, Rhythmbox registered itself as the default player for … Continue reading →

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Upgraded one system to Fedora 7

Posted on June 1, 2007 by Eric

After making a backup, I upgraded one of my computers to Fedora 7.  The upgrade went smoothly, and I haven’t noticed any problems.   The balloon theme is nicer that then Fedora Core 6 DNA theme.. GutenPrint 5.0 (formerly GimpPrint) has … Continue reading →

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od hac

Posted on May 31, 2007 by Eric

Originally a spoonerism I inadvertently used in a business meeting.  Someone proposed a kludgy solution to a problem, and I meant to say that we should use a better, more general approach rather than an ad hoc fix. od hac … Continue reading →

Posted in Portmanteaus, Neologisms, and Sniglets, Software | Leave a comment