I’ve just finished reading Phillip Greenspun’s experience report, Teaching Software Engineering, which details a project course in building Web Services. Even though I personally, hate the Web’s architecture (but that’s a rant for some other time), it still remains as…

When I was writing last post about information flow terminology, I noticed something interesting: when knowledge of control flows are used to determine the values of variables, some branches yield more information than others. Previously, I had only considered the…

A Configurable Keyboard

For a long time, I have hated the layout on all keyboards I’ve ever laid hands on. It’s not just that I prefer Dvorak to Qwerty; it’s that the slanting of the rows causes an awkward bending of the left…

Merovingian Neckwear

Somehow, I feel that I betray my cyberpunk heritage because I’ve recently found it entertaining to don extravagant neckwear. But, my recently conducted anthropological expedition has revealed evidence that I am in fact upholding a veritably geek tradition.

Information flow is about tracking the flows of information within a computer program, i.e. what values influence other values as the program executes. Denning and Denning looked at this problem in the late 1970’s [1, 2] and distinguished between flows…

Interesting lecture, put out by the Adam Smith Institute, about The Lessons of Public Choice Theory. It turns out that democracy is a less efficient system than the free market. For example, voters rationally remain ignorant because their input in…

From Coding Horror: Separating Programming Sheep from Non-Programming Goats I learned of a paper, The camel has two humps, which describes a test that allows teachers to differentiate students likely to do well studying computer science from those who will…

“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” — Milton Friedman. First, we should observe the circumstances under which hyperinflation can occur. Hard Specie A government using a hard specie such as gold and silver coins, still tends, as a…