Free Requirements Analysis Tool

Check out NASA's Automated Requirements Measurement tool which is free for download @ http://satc.gsfc.nasa.gov/tools/download/.

Please be advised however that I could not get this tool to work on Windows XP SP2.

Simulationg Star Formation

Naoki Yoshida (Department of Physics, Nagoya University) Kazuyuki Omukai (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan) and Lars Hernquist ((Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) have developed an ab initio computer simulation of the formation of primordial stars that follows the relevant atomic and molecular processes in a primordial gas in an expanding universe.

Learn more about this huge effort (8 years to date - running on 70 linked computer processors) @ http://www.a.phys.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~nyoshida/protostar.html

Robots in Pittsburgh

Check-out the Robot250, a city-wide community art and technology program @ http://robot250.org/index.php

Carlos Aguilar Mares Home Page

Carlos Aguilar Mares Home Page @ http://www.carlosag.net/ which contains many interesting applications for .Net.

Animals

.Net Reflector

.NET Reflector enables you to easily view, navigate, and search through the class hierarchies of .NET assemblies even if you don't have the code for them. With it, you can decompile and analyze .NET assemblies in C#, Visual Basic and IL. Find it @ http://www.red-gate.com/products/reflector/

2008 Top 100 Government IT Contractors

http://www.washingtontechnology.com/top-100/2008/

Visual Alert

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-GaRKDsz-Y

So...

http://www.cleanthescreen.com/screenclean.swf

Capturing the Moment...

Checking Up

http://pages.suddenlink.net/baraboo57/checkingonu.html

Program Management @ Microsoft

From The Computer World magazine:

"... a program manager's function is "partnering with development and working through the entire product cycle as the advocate for end-users and customers," he wrote. PMs "focus on the big picture...and on the details of the user experience."

Where The Best People Work

Lousy service. Me-too products. That's what consumers are getting from Goliath companies because the best people no longer work there, argues global trends forecaster and big-business escapee Babs Ryan in the new biz book "America's Corporate Brain Drain." Check out the related Yahoo article @ http://news.yahoo.com/s/prweb/20080822/bs_prweb/prweb1231314_2

Introduction to Data Mining

Very brief introduction to data mining - a presentation by Kurt Thearling - @ http://www.cs.odu.edu/~mukka/cs795dm/Lecturenotes/Day1/dmintro.pdf.

His thesis may be found @ http://www.thearling.com/text/thearling_thesis.pdf

Online Journal of Object Technology

The Online Journal of Object Technology, published by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, may be found @ http://www.jot.fm/issues/

Refactoring Presentation

Martin Fowler's Java One presentation on Refactoring @ http://codecourse.sourceforge.net/materials/Refactoring-Presentation-from-JavaOne.pdf

Free .Net Deadlock Debugging Tool

Corneliu, creator of the GUI debugging tool HawkEye, has a debugging tool that works against most .NET programs, without recompiling them. The follwoing are its features:

1. The tool does not require to have the code re-compiled in any way or form, with any external dependencies, nor reference any external library or have you modify your code to use any special type of locks inside your code.
2. It works on release builds with no PDB files.
3. It works on running processes or previously captured memory dumps.
4. It detects deadlocks across multiple threads and returns detailed call-stack and lock usage information.
5. It only detect deadlocks in which threads are actively waiting for locks acquired by other threads.
6. It does not detect the dining philosophers problem or deadlocks created in combination of time waits + wake/check + lock.
7. It has an external dependency on the cdb.exe (part of the the free Debugging Tools for Windows package from Microsoft).
8. It requires absolutely no installation. It an xcopy deployment.
9. And best of all it’s free (source code to be published soon)

The tool is discussed @ http://www.acorns.com.au/blog/?p=129 and may be obtained @ http://www.acorns.com.au/files/ACorns.Debugging.DeadlockTests.1.0.1.zip

Scribd

Check out the world's largest document sharing community @ http://www.scribd.com/

Scribd supports the following formats

1. Adobe PDF (.pdf)
2. Adobe PostScript (.ps)
3. Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
4. Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps, .pptx)
5. Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx)
6. OpenOffice Text Document (.odt, .sxw)
7. OpenOffice Presentation Document (.odp, .sxi)
8. OpenOffice Spreadsheet (.ods, .sxc)
9. All OpenDocument formats
10. StarOffice Documents
11. Plain text (.txt)
12. Rich text format (.rtf)

ChaCha

ChaCha is a human-powered search service where a use can text any question to 242242 (ChaCha) and receive a text message answer on their cell phones, usually within 5 minutes.

There is also a voice-based system@ 1-800-2Cha-Cha where one can ask a question and then hang-up. One then gets a text message confirming the question and then, within a few minutes, another text message with the answer.

Example:

Question: What is the current commute time on the Interstate 90 from O'Hare airport to downtown Chicago?

Answer: It is slow (20-30 mph) until Edens Kennedy junctions, then it is a parking lot. Take Rand to Northwest HWY, to Elson Ave.

Displaying Information

Compelling way of displaying quantitative (and qualitative) information - better than any pie-chart....

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

Erik Demaine

Erik Demaine, who works in the area of computational geometry (BS at age 14, MIT Professor at age 20) has an interesting web site @ http://www.erikdemaine.org/ and a book, "Geometric Folding Algorithms" supported by another web site @ http://www.gfalop.org/; both of which are worth pursuing further.

The Gameframe Guild

From the IEEE Spectrum:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aug08/6518

US Engineering Salary Survey

From IEEE Spectrum magazine:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/6481

and the data:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aug08/6491/dataf1

Google, XML, and IDL

Google has stated that XML is not efficient enough to encode all data formats. To wit, it has resurrected the Interface Definition Language and binary format for data inter-change.

Googel-made code is available @ http://tinyurl.com/5d4bs5.

The product is called Protocol Buffers and is released under the Apache 2.0 open-source license.

Developers can define data structures using the definition language, producing .proto class files. Current language support is limited to C++. See Kenton Varda @ https://tinyurl.com/5hlyd9

Stick Figures

Top 10 Indie Free Games

Rescue: The Bagles: is a retro-styled game the object of which is to rescue beagles from evil researchers. Find it @ www.16x16.org/category/rescue-the-beagles

Psychosomnium: is a colorful dream world filled with surreal characters. Find it @ http://64digits.com/users/cactus/psycho1.zip

Karoshi2: is a puzzle game; killing the hero instead of saving the world or rescuing the princess. Find it @ www.venbrux.com/index.php?page=games&content=karoshi

ROM Check Fail: with lots of ripped sprites and game play rules from mashed arcade games. Find it @ www.farbs.org/games.html

Virtual Silence: is an action game where the player takes control of boy called Jason that must overcome a series of experimental tests in a virtual world.. Find it @ http://koti.mbnet.fi/erkkavir/VirtualSilence.zip

Dirty Split: is a point-and-click adventure game with lovely art work. Find it @ http://www.dreamagination.org/

Samurai Railroad Mansion: is an action game which is similar to Nintendo’s Hogan’s Alley. Find it @ http://host-a.net/lurk/SRM_02.zip

Dyson: is a real-time strategy game, like Gallcon. Find it @ http://www.deadrock-game.com/files/Dyson.rar

Mighty Jill Off: is a tribute to Bomb Jack series of games. Find it @ http://www.mightyjilloff.dessgeea.com/

Harpooned: is propaganda game in which a Japanese scientist is performing explosive and bloody research on whales. Find it @ http://harpooned.org/

Large Hadron Collider

The largest machine on Earth:

https://uspl.webmail.eds.com/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/the_large_hadron_collider.html