Aaron Sherman's shared items in Google Reader

Fresh Sriracha (aka, home made 'Rooster')

2010-09-02T16:00:00Z

Fresh Sriracha (aka "Homemade Rooster")

Fresh Sriracha (aka "Homemade Rooster") by edamame2003

Warning: once you make edamame2003's version, you may never be able to go back to commercial sriracha again. The vibrant color and piquancy of the fresh fresno peppers, combined with plenty of garlic and a boost of vinegar, make for a zippy, versatile condiment that would be great with anything from banh mi to scrambled eggs. We'd never used palm sugar before and were intrigued by its gentle sweetness, which helps to round out the heat of the sriracha. - A&M

Serious business.

You must wear gloves or wrap your fingers in plastic wrap while cutting these peppers! They are HOT!

This palm sugar comes in a plastic bag, inside a container. Yep, it's that sticky.

The peppers and garlic macerate overnight in white vinegar and a little salt.

In goes the palm sugar. You'll need to wash your hands after digging it out of the measuring spoon!

A mere 5 minutes on the stove keeps the peppers fresh and vibrant.

After they're cool, edamame2003 has you puree the peppers for a full 5 minutes in a blender. We were skeptical, but the sauce really does change in color and texture over that time.

Who knows what's going on here. Better not to ask, really.

Pressing the sauce through a fine sieve is surprisingly quick, and worth the extra dishes.

Who would choose the store-bought stuff over this?

Warner Bros Making an Attempt at Sandman TV Series

2010-09-03T13:43:59Z

Shared by Aaron Sherman
Obviously, this will most likely suck, but a couple points:

1: if you do it right, Morpheus would have one primary actor and several alternates, depending on who is interacting with him.

2: Death should be an unknown, but having just watched Girl With the Dragon Tatoo, I can't help but think of her for the role.

Oh, and the real casting nightmare is Delirium...

The Heat Vision column over at The Hollywood Reporter reported late yesterday that Warner Bros. is in discussions with its subsidiary company, DC Entertainment to obtain television rights to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic series.

[More information from the article below the cut]

From the article:

Up until a few months ago, DC was in talks with HBO and James Mangold to develop a show minus WBTV’s involvement, but that never coalesced.

Gaiman was not officially involved with the HBO attempt, though he and Mangold held several rounds of talks surrounding characters and story. The author is not involved in the new developments, though since it is early in the process, that may change. In fact, securing Gaiman will prove key for the project to go forward.

io9 reports on the story (along with past efforts to bring the comic to the screen) and offers one simple caveat to a Sandman TV series: Not Without Neil. A sentiment that fans of the comic series would undoubtedly support. (Neil himself has not yet commented.)

Even given the expanded format of a television series, one wonders how Sandman would be handled. The level of detail in the comics is staggering and the structure of the story and art is very deliberate. (Here’s a short primer regarding that.) Duplicating that structure for the screen would be a tremendous task.

Would the entire series be covered? Or would producers pick and choose storylines to fit, say, five to seven seasons? Who would be ageless yet charismatic enough to play Morpheus? What about Death?

A TV series for Sandman, if done right, would be a defining epic for television. The Heat Vision article reports that high on the wish list of potential producers for the series is Supernatural creator Eric Kripke. Would he be able to pull it off? If not him, then who?

Cisco Planning To Acquire Skype

2010-09-02T16:56:00Z

rexjoec writes "Cisco is making a bid for Skype. The deal, if successful, would derail a planned initial public offering from Skype and redraw the battle lines in the lucrative market of video communications." The rumored price is $5B.

A Story of O

2010-08-31T19:00:00Z

In recent days I’ve been thinking of JavaOne, as we kicked it around and decided we just couldn’t send speakers; and of Oracle OpenWorld, to which JavaOne will now serve as an appendage. It reminded me of a conversation I had last year about Oracle.

[Update: I reported this conversation, which I thought was instructive, carefully avoiding any conclusions. The commenters on the piece, however, drew lots of conclusions, which I enjoyed reading, and you might too. In particular, I thought some of the guesses as to my un-shared opinion on all this were quite illuminating.]

The conversation involved myself and a person with a convincing title who, as they’d say in the paper, was “familiar with the situation”.

My question was: “OpenWorld is this totally all-about-business conference. The Oracle Develop meeting is just a second-rate sidebar. Where does Oracle go about building developer mindshare?”

I’ll try to reproduce the answer in full as best as I can remember it:

“You don’t get it. The central relationship between Oracle and its customers is a business relationship, between an Oracle business expert and a customer business leader. The issues that come up in their conversations are business issues.

“The concerns of developers are just not material at the level of that conversation; in fact, they’re apt to be dangerous distractions. ‘Developer mindshare’... what’s that, and why would Oracle care?”

'The Sandman' Meets 'Inception' in Ojisan Hunter's 'Cities of Sand' - Comics Alliance

2010-08-31T22:54:46Z

Shared by Aaron Sherman
I have to agree that, in retrospect, it's a blindingly obvious mashup.

'The Sandman' Meets 'Inception' in Ojisan Hunter's 'Cities of Sand'
Comics Alliance
... elegant web-comic that fuses the fictional worlds of Christopher Nolan's "Inception" film and Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman" graphic novel series. ...

Google and Skype face India ban

2010-08-31T21:06:50Z

Shared by Aaron Sherman
And banning individual VoIP services is going to get them what, exactly?

Following tough action against Blackberry, security forces in India turn their attention to Google and Skype.

Cheapest Time To Book A Flight Is 8 Weeks Before Travelling

2010-08-31T21:05:26Z

Shared by Aaron Sherman
Sadly, it's not that simple. In fact, one of the parameters in when tickets are cheapest is when people book tickets, so Mr. Watanabe has just changed the dynamic.

Economist Makoto Watanabe worked out a formula designed to calculate the best time to buy an airline ticket if you’re looking for the lowest prices. The answer, according to his formula: eight weeks before your flight. (more…)

REMAKE/REMODEL: The Thirteenth Doctor

2010-08-31T17:38:23Z

Every week at my message board, I set artists a redesign challenge. Because artists need to be tormented. This week, I said this to them:

A Time Lord can regenerate twelve times before dying. Thirteen incarnations in all.

Design the thirteenth incarnation of the Doctor.

You may additionally redesign the DOCTOR WHO logo, the TARDIS and other elements of the property should you so wish.

And then Ben Templesmith sort of committed an airstrike:

The good Doctor is now in a vague military type jacket with a T-shirt underneath, that ideally changes logo/style each episode, showing off something cool and British or, I don’t know, Sciency.

And he’s addicted to sucking on lollipops.

K9 is now a know-it-all cyborg Pomeranian.

The Thirteenth Doctor Remake/Remodel runs until Sunday.

How to script git with perl and Git::Wrapper

2010-08-31T03:17:41Z

If you work with git, eventually you will want to script something that git doesn't do already and can't be accomplished with an alias. If you use Perl, the Git::Wrapper module makes scripting git easy.

The big advantage of Git::Wrapper is that it wraps the binary version of git, which keeps your perl and git independent. Upgrade perl and not git? Add Git::Wrapper and you're done. Upgrade git while keeping your existing perl? No problem. If you get your git from an OS distribution package, but roll your own perl, then Git::Wrapper is for you!

Git::Wrapper just makes it really easy to pass git commands and get back useful data. It really shines on "git log" commands, as it parses each commit message into Git::Wrapper::Log objects with accessors for id, author, date, and message. For everything else, it's not much more than a wrapper around qx(), but it returns arrays of lines and throws exceptions when things go wrong, which just saves a little time and code.

Here is a short example that I whipped up recently to automate the process of adding a github repository remote for someone when they send me a pull request. (It also uses my Getopt::Lucid module, but as the name suggests, it should be clear what that does.)

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use 5.010;
use strict;
use warnings;
use autodie;
use Git::Wrapper;
use Getopt::Lucid qw/:all/;

# USAGE: github-remote [-r REPO] [NAME]
#     NAME -- a github user name (or defaults to 'dagolden')
#     REPO -- a github repository path (or is parsed out of my private origin repo)

my $opts = Getopt::Lucid->getopt([
  Param('repo|r'),
]);

my $who = shift @ARGV;

# Get a wrapper for the current directory
my $git = Git::Wrapper->new(".");

# Locate the origin repository URL
my ($origin) = grep { /origin/ } $git->remote("-v");
die "Couldn't determine origin\n" unless $origin;
$origin =~ s/^origin\s+//;
$origin =~ s/\s+\(.*$//;

# Parse out the repository path
my $repo = $opts->get_repo;
unless ( $repo ) {
  # me@git.example.com:my-repo-name.git
  ($repo) = $origin =~ m/^[^:]+:(.+)$/;
}

# Set up someone else's github repo
if ( $who ) {
  $git->remote("add", $who, "git://github.com/${who}/${repo}");
}
# Or set up my own github mirror
else {
  $git->remote("add", "github", "git\@github.com:dagolden/${repo}");
}

That's it. I admit the program is a little crufty because of how I manage my repositories with a private origin that I mirror to a github repository, but there's almost no cruft around interactions with git. Consider this:

  $git->remote("add", $who, "git://github.com/${who}/${repo}");

If the command fails (if there's already $who as a remote name), an exception will be thrown. That means I don't have to write any error handling myself, which is perfect for a simple automation program like this one.

Pirate Bay Movie Fully Funded In Three Days

2010-08-31T14:39:52Z

Just three days after filmmaker Simon Klose started a fundraiser to complete his upcoming Pirate Bay documentary, the seed funding goal of $25,000 has already been reached. The Pirate audience has been extremely generous, with a full 27 days left the counter currently sits at $28,099.

A few days ago we reported that Swedish filmmaker and producer Simon Klose had begun to raise money for his upcoming documentary about the founders of the site titled ‘TPB-AFK’.

“TPB AFK is not a fan movie about the Pirate Bay, neither is it a journalistic piece on copyright conflict,” said Klose when describing his film. “It’s an observational, character driven film about three guys whose hobby homepage became the embryo of a global political movement.”

Although the three Pirate Bay founders who star in the documentary are no longer affiliated with the site, it appears that the new Pirate Bay owners would also like to see the documentary released.

Over the past days the fundraiser has enjoyed a prominent link on the Pirate Bay homepage, which in part explains the success of the campaign – the required $25,000 was raised in just three days.

At the time of writing, a massive $28,099 has been pledged and this figure is increasing by the hour.

TPB-AFK Trailer

Now that the funding is in, Klose can hire a professional editor and studio to complete the film. That said, the final premiere date depends on several other factors, most importantly how the upcoming appeal of The Pirate Bay trial plays out.

“The process of documenting processes is unpredictible. If the Swedish court process doesn’t miraculously speed up in The Pirate Bay trials, we’re at least a year away from the opening night of TPB AFK,” Klose comments in a blog post.

In other words, you can expect TPB-AFK to be released sometime in the coming years. Those who want to support Klose and TPB-AFK can still pledge their donation at Kickstarter, as there are 27 days left.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Prologue to The Towers of Midnight available for pre-order now!

2010-08-30T19:47:39Z

Shared by Aaron Sherman
Really? They're going to sell the prologue? I'm so glad I gave up on that series around book 7 when I found myself reading the first and last chapters only in anticipation that that's the only places anything would happen (I was right).

As with previous volumes in the Wheel of Time^® series, Macmillan is making the prologue for Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderon’s The Towers of Midnight available for purchase on September 21st, more than a month before the hardcover is released on November 2, 2010.

In the prologue, titled “Distinctions,” Lan Mandragoran rides on toward death; Perrin Aybara, Lord Goldeneyes, has a disturbing dream; Galad leads the Whitecloaks into harm’s way; one who has left humanity behind creeps through the Blight; and the Blight border faces invasion.

“Distinctions” will be available for $2.99 as either an ebook or an audio download. You can pre-order the ebook now, and it will be compatible with nearly all e-reading devices, including the Sony Reader and the Kindle.

International Kindle users: here's how Amazon is screwing you

2010-08-30T19:38:16Z

Shared by Aaron Sherman
I like Amazon in general, but this really needs to be looked into by the EU. Amazon is engaging in some pretty amazingly deceptive marketing, here!

Filed under: Business

I am the proud owner of a brand-spanking-new WiFi-only Kindle. The coveted device is currently en route, and I can't wait to be reading off its crisp E-Ink screen in all of its greyscale glory.

Since I'm so anxious to start using it, I decided to get a head start on building up my electronic library. I decided to start with the classics - for example, Moby Dick. Yes, I know it's available for free online, but this edition is typeset for the Kindle so I figured it must be worth the modest sum Amazon asks for it ($2.95, as you see in the screenshot above).

When I sent the link to my friend, who has an Amazon account with a Canadian billing address, we were amazed to discover that Amazon list the same exact item at $0.95 when she's looking at it.

This two-dollar difference holds across the boards - for all Kindle titles. It is most noticeable on the cheap ones (for Moby Dick, it's actually a 200% markup!), but it's there also for the more expensive ones.

Next to the jacked-up price, it says "International shipping included". In plain English, this means "roaming charges for 3G". Okay ... but:

1) Amazon constantly touts its 3G kindle as "Free 3G" - here, it's right in the product name - Kindle 3G Wireless Reading Device, Free 3G + Wi-Fi, 6" Display, Graphite, 3G Works Globally - Latest Generation!

2) I bought a WiFi-only device. So even if international 3G users do have to pay some sort of a roaming charge (which is very underhanded in itself), surely there should no be such charge for WiFi-only users!

Thinking this must be some mistake, I called Amazon up (Thanks, GetHuman.com).

The first service rep got gave me an optimistic prediction - she said they could probably fix this, and she's putting me through to the Kindle department. Great.

That's where the "nice" part of the call ended, pretty much. Upon holding for another five minutes, I finally got to the Kindle department. There, the rep told me that the price mark-up is due to roaming charges. I patiently explained that my device is technically incapable of incurring any roaming charges, since it's WiFi only.

The rep said, "yes, I understand it is WiFi only, but there are roaming charges because AT&T is the service provider". Upon which I proceeded to explain yet again that I do not have a 3G chip in my device, physically. This intelligent exchange went on for a few minutes, until I finally asked to speak to her manager.

Upon getting the team leader, he basically told me the same thing. I would be required to pay for a roaming charge, even though Amazon advertises its 3G as free and that my device is WiFi only.

I then emailed them to kindle-feedback@amazon.com, and got the same exact reply. I am attaching the complete exchange below, just so you see how much Amazon (doesn't) care about this at the moment.

Bottom line: International Kindle users, caveat emptor. Amazon is basically charging you for services you're not using, don't want to use, and explicitly opted out of, and it can come to a 200% markup for some books. Way to go, Amazon!

Email exchange follows:

-- Original message: --

Hello,

I have recently purchased a WiFi-only Kindle.

I am located in Israel, and was amazed to discover all Kindle titles cost $2.00 extra for my account, as compared with an account that has a Canadian billing address.

Upon calling Amazon, I discovered that this is due to 3G roaming charges. That would make sense, only my Kindle does not support 3G at all (It's the WiFi-only model, as I said).

Thus, Amazon is effectively charging me $2.00 extra per each book, for service it is not delivering (and which I explicitly opted out from, by ordering a WiFi-only device).

Will this be remedied? If so, when?

I would appreciate a prompt response as I intend to cover this for AOL's Download Squad within the coming week, and would like to have a complete picture.

Best regards, Erez Zukerman, DownloadSquad.com

Hello, Thanks for writing about the pricing of Kindle content for International Customers.

All items available in the Kindle Store are listed in U.S. dollars (USD), and the availability and pricing of titles from the Kindle Store varies by your home country or region.

Availability and pricing of titles from the Kindle Store varies by your country or region. If you're browsing in the Kindle Store and the country or region displayed doesn't match your actual home country or region, you may see a different price during checkout that is specific to your home country or region.

You'll also find helpful information on our Using Kindle If You Live Outside the United States Help page (http://www.amazon.com/kindleinternationalsupport).

Customer feedback like yours helps us continue to improve the service we provide, and we're glad you took time to write to us. The Kindle Team will carefully review your comments.

I hope this information helps. We look forward to seeing you again soon.

Did I solve your problem?

If yes, please click here

If no, please click here

Please note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept incoming e-mail.

To contact us about an unrelated issue, please visit the Help section of our web site.

Best regards,

Aditya M Amazon.com Your feedback is helping us build Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company. http://www.amazon.com/your-account

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International Kindle users: here's how Amazon is screwing you originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Are You An Accidental Movie and TV Show Pirate?

2010-08-30T16:36:34Z

Shared by Aaron Sherman
The idea that a business model (like TV distribution) can rely on the scarcity of data is becoming increasingly absurd. Expect the tone of this "discussion" to become increasingly shrill. I'll say again for anyone who hasn't heard the rant: "Information wants to be free," isn't a statement of an ideal. It's the data physics equivalent of "a gas expands to fill its container." You will suffer diminishing returns on any attempt to thwart the distribution of data with an increasingly harsh drop-off as the technology improves. I'll note that some TV distributors are starting to understand this, but the BBC for one is still hopelessly stuck in 1998.

Another day, another anti-piracy campaign. This one, from the MPA and AFACT-backed Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation, is trying a slightly different approach. Instead of accusing people outright of being movie and TV show pirates, it cuts them some slack and treats them like children instead. It seems that some people just don't know they are pirates.

The relatively new Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation (IPAF) was created by the Australian movie and TV industries to “promote the value of the industry by raising awareness, understanding and appreciation of intellectual property, and its role and value in society.”

Members of IPAF include Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), Motion Picture Association (MPA), Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia, Australian Visual Software Distributors Association and various cinema owners and DVD rental outlets such as Blockbuster.

Last year IPAF embarked on a campaign to educate Australia’s children on the evils of copyright infringement in an attempt to “motivate a change in attitudes and behavior to reduce public demand for illegal copies of film and television programs.”

While many anti-piracy groups take a fairly aggressive angle when sending their message, IPAF take a more softly-softly approach. If AFACT is bad cop, IPAF is his gentler, more reasonable-sounding counterpart.

Good cop has just launched his new nationwide anti-piracy campaign with the unusual title of ‘Accidental Pirate’.

“New research, released just today, revealed that 34% of Aussies see piracy as stealing or theft but then regularly do it by burning, buying or downloading illegal or unauthorised copies of films or TV programs,” explains IPAF. “In other words, 1 in 3 of us do something that we don’t agree with. So to describe this disconnection between actions and beliefs, we coined the phrase ‘Accidental Pirate’.”

Right. So people know piracy is ‘wrong’ but because they still carry on it’s an ‘accident’? That doesn’t seem to fit very well does it?

You can see what IPAF are trying to do though, it’s just badly executed. If you’re going to educate people on the premise that they didn’t know that their actions were ‘wrong’ in the first place (so as not to immediately antagonize them), at least don’t patronize them. “There, there, you know it’s wrong but let’s just pretend it was an accident, eh?” Please.

So what does the campaign have to say. Well, it’s pretty much standard stuff. The campaign’s homepage is running a Flash questionnaire with five questions that readers have the chance to answer. Getting a question right gets a round of applause from the assembled cinema audience, but getting one wrong gets a big X and a short lesson in copyright.

Questions 2, 3 and 5 all involve copying or buying pirated copies of real DVDs and the legalities of that. People don’t ‘accidentally’ believe that pirate DVDs are legal – do they?

Questions 1 and 4 involve file-sharing but if the industry IPAF claims to protect would simply get their act together, these questions wouldn’t even be necessary.

Question 1: Your favorite TV show has just aired overseas. It won’t be shown here for months. While browsing the web you notice it’s available for download for free. Do you download it?

Every time TV-show downloaders in Australia are asked why they do what they do, one of the top answers is always because they are treated like second-class citizens when it comes to release dates. Why do their favorite series take months to appear officially down under? Whatever the reason, it’s a very, very poor one, and no surprise people turn to BitTorrent.

Question 4: You’re browsing the Internet and come across a free download site. You notice a movie that’s just hit the cinemas here. Do you download it?

If people find those then, yes, they probably would. The movie industry is always very clear – if you see a brand new movie on the Internet it’s illegal, because we (stubbornly) don’t offer this service. This type of piracy could be all but wiped out by offering people a legal alternative at a reasonable price in their own homes.

Quiz aside, it’s all pretty much standard stuff. Movie industry people and actors rolled out to make ‘accidental’ pirates feel sorry for the little guy in the film-making world.

You can take the questionnaire for yourself. If you get any ‘wrong’ move directly to the back of the class, put you hands on your head and please try to do better in the future. And stop accidentally downloading torrents. The movie industry depends on it.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

NASA, Internet Archive And Flickr Launch Historic Image Collection

2010-08-30T04:00:00Z

NASA, Internet Archive And Flickr Launch Historic Image Collection

Weird Science votes all the useful people off the island

2010-08-29T19:00:27Z

You've been extremely helpful, so bugger off: What started out as a routine study of group behavior ended up turning a bit surreal. According to the authors of a new paper, they started out trying to find out how long a group would tolerate members that abused the common good. In the process, they found that members who put the most into the common good were quickly expelled from the group. Not entirely believing it, they replicated the findings—twice. Some of the hate comes from the overly officious group members, who viewed those who gave more than they needed to as breaking the rules. But some of it also comes from people who think that altruistic behavior like this simply raises expectations unnecessarily.

Bonus points go to the people who put the press release together for the best two opening sentences I've probably read all year: "You know those goody-two-shoes who volunteer for every task and thanklessly take on the annoying details nobody else wants to deal with? That's right: Other people really can't stand them."

Read the comments on this post

Paul Allen Files Patent Lawsuits Against Entire Web … Except Microsoft | Epicenter | Wired.com

2010-08-30T15:08:48Z

Shared by Aaron Sherman
This is a smart move. If Microsoft sued Google and Apple, they'd counter-sue with their arsenal of patents. But if Paul Allen sues on his own, a counter-suit against Microsoft is far less effective. Can we reform patent law NOW please?

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has filed far-reaching patent lawsuits against Google, Apple, Yahoo, Netflix, Facebook, AOL and eBay, among others, alleging the companies violated patents owned by his now-defunct idea lab Interval Research.

The four patents at issue allegedly cover basics of online commerce, including recommending products to a user based on what they are currently looking at, and allowing readers of a news story to see other stories based on the current one. Two other patents relate to showing other information on a web page, such as news updates or stock quotes.

The lawsuit also alleges that Interval Research was one of four funders of Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s research that eventually became Google. The suit includes a screenshot of a 1998 Google webpage, crediting Allen’s company.

Notably missing from the list of targets are Amazon.com and Microsoft, which Allen left in 1983. Allen made tens of billions from his Microsoft shares, and recently pledged to donate most of his estimated $13.5 billion fortune to charity. Allen also owns the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks and the NBA’s Portland Trailblazers.

Interval Licensing owns most of the 300 patents from Allen’s Interval Research, and the suit comes just a week after Oracle decided to sue Google for patent violations over the open source Java programming language in relation to Google’s mobile phone operating system Android.

Let Me In

2010-08-30T13:29:41Z

Shared by Aaron Sherman
I assume this is the American remake of Let the Right One In, which was good, but I can't imagine a remake for US audiences... it was glacially slow.

Chloe Moretz (Hit Girl from Kick-Ass) stars as Abby, a mysterious 12-year old girl, who moves next door to Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Road). Owen is a social outcast who is viciously bullied at school and in his loneliness, forms a profound bond...

The Series Operator and Memoization

2010-08-28T12:07:34Z

Masak recently posted on the series operator solution to Pascal’s Triangle. I’d like to focus on an important property of his final solution that hasn’t been much discussed yet.

But first, let me back up and consider another well-known problem with similar properties: the Fibonacci series. A straightforward recursive solution looks like this in Perl 6:

sub Fibonacci($n) {
    return $n if $n == 0 | 1;
    Fibonacci($n - 1) + Fibonacci($n - 2);
}

This nicely implements the definition, but it has one critical problem — it is incredibly inefficient. (And not just in Rakudo — in any language!) The reason is that calculating Fibonacci(N) requires all the work of calculating Fibonacci(N-1) and Fibonacci(N-2). The number of subroutine calls involved grows as fast as the series does.

The standard recursive technique for dealing with this problem is called memoization. Basically, you cache the values which have already been computed somewhere, so you only need to compute them once. That’s a bit awkward to implement by hand — it roughly doubles the complexity of the routine, I’d say. Luckily, lots of languages have automatic ways to apply memoization. Perl 6 is supposed to, with the “is cached” modifier to a subroutine definition, but Rakudo doesn’t have it implemented yet.

That’s okay, because there is more than one way to do it, and there is a great way which is available already in Rakudo.

> my @Fibonacci := (0, 1, -> $a, $b { $a + $b } ... *); 1;
1
> say @Fibonacci[5]
5
> say @Fibonacci[10]
55
> say @Fibonacci[30]
832040

(I’ve used parentheses instead of do because that’s how I roll, but otherwise this is exactly the same idea as Masak’s solution. The additional 1; is needed only because I typed this into the REPL, and without it the REPL will try to evaluate the entire infinite series so it can print it out.)

You can’t see it here, of course, but calculating these numbers was very quick. That’s because this solution using the series operator is equivalent to writing a very smart memoization. Infinite lists in Perl 6 are implemented (roughly speaking) with an array of values that have been already calculated, and an iterator which knows how to calculate further values as needed.

So when you say @Fibonacci[5] the first time, the list calls the iterator generated by the series operator to get the first six values, storing them in @Fibonacci[0] through @Fibonacci[5]. (Those values are generated in a straightforward iterative way, so it is very efficient.) When you then say @Fibonacci[10] those first six values are still there, and only the next five values must be calculated. If at that point you said @Fibonacci[8], that is just a simple array lookup of the already calculated value!

Think about it. It would take a very smart automatic memoizer to somehow figure out that the function would only be called when $n was a non-negative integer, so that an array could be used to efficiently cache the results. Using a series operator this way gets you that kind of performance automatically already in Rakudo.

So it’s a double win. Using the series operator is not only the most succinct way to express this series in Perl 6. It’s also an extremely efficient way of calculating the series.

Dirk Deimeke: Programmer Hierarchy ...

2010-08-24T18:42:00Z

via Chrissss

Call phones from Gmail

2010-08-25T16:40:00Z

Posted by Robin Schriebman, Software Engineer

Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer’s microphone and speakers. But until now, this required both people to be at their computers, signed into Gmail at the same time. Given that most of us don’t spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, “wouldn’t it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?”

Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail.

Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates. We worked hard to make these rates really cheap (see comparison table) with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan—and many more countries—for as little as $0.02 per minute.

Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name.

We’ve been testing this feature internally and have found it to be useful in a lot of situations, ranging from making a quick call to a restaurant to placing a call when you’re in an area with bad reception.

If you have a Google Voice phone number, calls made from Gmail will display this number as the outbound caller ID. And if you decide to, you can receive calls made to this number right inside Gmail (see instructions).

We’re rolling out this feature to U.S. based Gmail users over the next few days, so you’ll be ready to get started once “Call Phones” shows up in your chat list (you will need to install the voice and video plug-in if you haven’t already). If you’re using Google Apps for your school or business, then you won’t see it quite yet. We’re working on making this available more broadly - so stay tuned!

For more information, visit gmail.com/call.

Update (8/26): This has now been rolled out to everyone in the U.S. If you don't see the feature yet, try logging out of Gmail and signing back in.