I like the Unix DBM file format (a.k.a BerkeleyDB). I use it for static data (like the zip code-to-latitude/longitude database for the Hebcal Interactive Jewish Calendar) and for dynamic data (such as the subscriber database for the Mountain View High School Alumni Internet Directory). BerkeleyDB is also great because it has many language interfaces. I […]
Some entertainment industry heavies will be testifying at UCLA on exemptions from the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA: U.S. Copyright Office, Anticircumvention Rulemaking Hearings Schedule The hearing is in the Moot Court room, 1310, on the first floor of the law school.
A superb idea today from Yahoo! alumnus Mikel Maron: Reactive Links. Anytime someone click-thrus on these redirect links, the service records that action… more active links could be big and red and quiet links could small and blue, or whatever you like. These links change their character depending on their usage. [Brain Off] It reminds […]
At lunch today we were talking about trademarks and whether Yahoo! is a brand name or a generic term. Since it’s used in Chapter 1 of Gulliver’s Travels, it clearly pre-dates the web company. And the first use with an exclamation point probably comes from the Erasure song which was released in 1988 on The […]
We’re thinking about buying a Mac. One of the things that has been holding us up is lack of support for Hebrew software. Until Mac OS X 10.2 was released, the operating system didn’t even offer native support for Hebrew. However, we’re still waiting for some important applications (such as NisusWriter) to come out with […]
I’ve just started using The Webalizer to do logfile analysis for radwin.org and hebcal.com. Back in 1998 when I first started hosting my own domain name, I wanted to see where people were coming from and what they were viewing, so I set up the wwwstat script as a cron job to generate statistics. I’ve […]
Dave Jeske, one the many brilliant Yahoo! alumni I know, is new to the blogging world. Here’s his second entry: Linux on the Desktop is a long way off, here’s why. I’m a UNIX developer and proud of it. I love the stability, scriptability, and remote administration capabilities of UNIX. I’ve built everything from small […]
Ariel Rogson from Marger Johnson & McCollom spoke at last night’s Los Angeles ACM meeting on software patents. Here’s a brief outline of the main topics he covered: What is a patent? Patents vs. Copyright 4 Requirements for a patent Is software patentable? Should I bother with a patent? “Patent Pending” Audience for the text […]
It drives me crazy when I read a headline that says “3 die in bombing” and it turns out that one of the three people was the suicide bomber himself. Instead, how about “2 killed,” or better yet, “2 murdered?” The press often writes headlines in a way that imply that the suicide bomber just […]
Rachel has discovered that Minnesotans play “Duck, duck, gray duck” instead of the traditional “Duck, duck, goose.” She’s been thinking more about it recently, too. James Lileks of the Minneapolis Star & Tribune even wrote an article about the phenomenon. Wow. It’s a compilcated world we live in.