Author of In Defense of Food Michael Pollan explained his "eater's manifesto" at Google last month. Watch the video to hear Pollan discuss his seven word philosopy ("Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.")—or download the hour-long clip to your iPod to watch later.
A List Apart: Articles: Zebra Striping: Does it Really Help?
Topic: Technology
2:53 am EDT, May 12, 2008
So there’s no point in zebra striping?
This experiment yielded no evidence that zebra striping consistently improves the accuracy or speed of tasks. This would seem to suggest that we shouldn’t bother with zebra striping anymore.
However, there are a few arguments against tossing zebra striping out altogether.
Firstly, in this study there was a subjective preference for striped tables over plain. My reading and discussions with others suggest a number of people find zebra-striped tables more aesthetically pleasing. If many users like zebra striping (and another large group aren’t fussed either way), then why not apply it?
Secondly, this was just one experiment, with one dataset. It is possible that the particular design of this experiment meant that zebra striping had little effect. In other cases, particularly when there is considerable space between columns and/or the user is required to scroll horizontally, a more pronounced effect may have been observed.
Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, a number of participants in the study spontaneously reported using their finger, on or over the computer screen, to follow down columns and across rows. Other participants used their mouse to highlight rows of interest. These people were, in effect, creating their own “temporary” zebra striping. So we may be reducing the burden on our users if we do the zebra striping for them.
The global surge in food and energy prices is being driven primarily by fundamental market conditions, rather than an investment bubble, say the majority of economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey.
The predominant view is currently biased to commodities as an investment hedge against inflation...
Unfortunately, this thinking is a self-fulfilling prophecy which ultimately may feed into a negative economic cycle where legitimate commercials are squeezed out of business thereby reducing supply, protectionism gains traction, trade breaks down, hoarding ensues, riots occur and wars erupt over access.
This may sound alarmist, but industry insiders are not buying into the one-size fits all answer that emerging economies are the primary factor driving up prices from the demand side, reinforced by supply-side shocks and peak production fears. In a slowing global economy hit by a major credit crisis and reeling from a falling dollar, it is likely that money flows seeking safe haven in hard assets is the key driver of recent volatility.....
YAPC is "Yet Another Perl Conference", with apologies to The Perl Conference. YAPC is a high-quality inexpensive conference with its roots in the Perl Mongers Perl user groups. The conference is meant to be accessible to anyone, yet valuable to even the most experienced of programmers. Each year the conference attracts hundreds of programmers from around the world including luminaries such as Larry Wall, Randal Schwartz, and Damian Conway.
A new city is selected to host the conference each year. After being selected to host YAPC::NA in 2006, Chicago was once again selected as the host city this year. YAPC::NA 2008 will be held June 16th-18th on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Herman Hall, conveniently located at 33rd Street, between State Street and Interstate 90/94 (the Dan Ryan Expressway). This location is accessible to by both the Green and Red 'L' lines, as well as stops on several CTA bus routes.
In keeping with the theme of a conference for everyone, full YAPC registration costs only $100. This rate is meant to be affordable by students and programmers without corporate backing, who struggle with the thousands of dollars that typical conferences cost. However, the technical content that you will find at YAPC rivals that available at even the most expensive conference on the market. Be sure to purchase your ticket today.
In addition to the standard conference content, YAPC::NA also offers "Master Classes" after the conference. These 2-day classes, conducted by leading players in the industry, are provided at deeply discounted rates. The classes offer many programmers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to receive top-notch training from some of the most recognizable names in the Perl community.
Moose - A postmodern object system for Perl 5 - search.cpan.org
Topic: Technology
3:42 am EDT, May 9, 2008
Moose is an extension of the Perl 5 object system. Another object system!?!?
Yes, I know there has been an explosion recently of new ways to build object's in Perl 5, most of them based on inside-out objects and other such things. Moose is different because it is not a new object system for Perl 5, but instead an extension of the existing object system.
Moose is built on top of Class::MOP, which is a metaclass system for Perl 5. This means that Moose not only makes building normal Perl 5 objects better, but it also provides the power of metaclass programming.
