Jeff Bezos Hawks the Kindle

It’s still not clear whether electronic books are the wave of the future or a consumer products cul-de-sac. Technology continues to improve, and there are certainly lots of good reasons for a device like Amazon’s Kindle to be the leading edge of a major wave of adoption. A few of the […]

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Jerome Kerviel is (or by the time you read this, was) a stock trader for French bank Societe Generale. Jerome is supposed to execute stock trades, probably according to some very specific programs, in order to keep the bank’s assets humming along.
But like any of us, Jerome had a rough day or two. His trades […]

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If you’re going to use the web to perform a survey of your customer base, this report on a similar project from American Express should serve as a cautionary tale.

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For the last few months I’ve been up to my eyeballs in algorithms - school, work, writing, you name it.
In honor of the often puzzling topics I’ve been working on, here’s a little crossword with an algorithms theme.
The java applet that lets you solve online has a bit of lameness, but it’s not […]

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Hi loyal readers,
I’m doing a little background research for an article on music downloads, and as a result, need some people to fill out a survey.
The goal of the survey is to get a little background on people’s attitudes, plus a comparison of differences in attitudes between old people (me) and young people (?).
The […]

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Yes, the New York Times is with it. So much so that they can pull off an ironic headline in full belief that they and their equally hip readers will all get the joke when they read this article.
Patent Owner Sues the Internet

We salute you, Gray Lady!
Actually
Well, it’s always fun to take a big shot […]

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Angie’s List is a web site that allows consumers to see ratings on local service companies, such as plumbers, remodelers, electricians, and so on. All ratings are subscriber driven, and Angie’s List seems to make most of their revenue from the $5.95/month subscriber fee they charge - an anomalous revenue model in today’s web.
I subscribed […]

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Exceptions are a necessary part of the C++ language, but for most programmers they are worse than worthless - they are unusable. When exceptions were first added to the language back in the days before standardization, they were seen as a brilliant improvement over the hideous setjmp/longjmp facility from ANSI C. Because exceptions unwind […]

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Dr. Dobb’s PortalNovember, 2007
Article on DDJ site

As I’ve confessed in the past, I’m a sucker for word puzzles. My recent post on a Will Shortz puzzle from NPR Morning Edition ended up provoking a surprising amount of comment, much of it in the vein […]

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Visa’s web advertising is sadly misguided - it seemed to be aimed at investment bankers and executives. I’d like to think that the majority of the people actively using the web are from a different category - one I’ll call the Z-axis.

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