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

Pleo Robot

Pleo is UGOBE’s first robot and is based on the Camarasaurus dinosaur. It is made up of a large number of sensors and motors, with an ARM-7 processor. Its official site is @ http://www.pleoworld.com/.

A tear-down is available @ http://www.eetimes.com/news/design/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=209401107

Free Data Cleansing Tool

Talend has released its Open Profiler 1.0.0RC1 under GPL 2.0 open source license. It is a GUI-based tool for Linux, Unix, and Windows that offers peek inside data sources they are about to work with to verify that those data sources adhere to project quality goal or metrics.

You can download it @ http://www.talend.com/download.php at the bottom of the page.

Resignation Letter

Check out the Yahoo Resignation Letter generator @ http://yahoorezinr.com

3 Brainy Video Games

For your amusement (Ithink they all use Flash):

Open Doors @ http://www.kongregate.com/games/soapaintnice/open-doors

Hoshi Saga (Star Hunt ) @ www.tinyurl.com/3944cq

Hoshi Saga 2 @ www.tinyurl.com/2mtklw

Complexity Tool for MS Excel

Ontonix is providing an online service which can transform MS Excel files and produce Risk and Complexity Maps.

Lilly Science Grid

Eli Lilly has made its Discovery IT platform, known internally as the Lilly Science Grid (LSG), open source.

LSG is a plug-in hosting and deployment framework that sits on top of Microsoft’s Composite Application Block. It is a rich client that requires .NET 2.0 or higher.

The framework simplifies the task of creating new plug-ins by providing a Visual Studio template from which developers can quickly learn and expand. Users can choose which applications and plug-ins to use within an integrated environment.

Find it @ http://sourceforge.net/projects/lsg