After experiencing floating-point errors over and over again - mainly at topcoder - decided I'd learn a bit about floating-point arithmetic.
I found a manual called "What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic" and I'll try to read ittransdiagonally.
Problems with NaN's, rounding errors and floating-point standards are the main aspects focused in this 74-page long paper.

There is an endless number of XForms implementations around the Web. I found this little IE 6 plugin that allows it to interpret XForms code.
You can download FormsPlayer and try the examples at their website.

It seems pretty simple. I liked the possibility to bind an XML file to a XForms element (a dropdown) and create relations between dropdowns.

Slashdot notices that XForms is now a Proposed Recommendation by W3C.

From Slashdot:

XForms is the next generation of forms for the Web, and uses an XML-based three-layer model: data model, data, and user interface. XForms uses CSS for device independencence and is designed for integration into XHTML 2, SVG, and other XML-based markup languages.

Here is a list of implementations of XForms.

Isn't light beautifull ?

About a week ago MIT and Boston College denied to give out information about their students due to incorrectly submitted subpoenas by RIAA. Now SBC, a North American ISP denied giving the names of their users mainly for 2 reasons: all subpoenas were filled in Washington and SBC is in California and each subpoena includes hundreds of names whereas it should be individual.

"Pac Bell is simply recycling many of the same arguments already raised and twice rebutted by a federal court,"

an RIAA official said.

"It's unfortunate that they have chosen to litigate this, unlike every other ISP (Internet service provider) which has complied with their obligations under the law."

I really disagree with RIAA's attitude to personally prosecute individuals. Arresting a person for downloading a music? As a friend of mine would say "This doesn't fit my concept of world"

Microsoft Java Language Conversion Assistant 2.0 is a tool that allows you to convert java code into c# code and offers integration with Visual Studio.

One can convert entire projects, applets into user controls, etc. Going to try it sometime.

Ace's Hardware has an article comparing the performance of a Pentium II 350 with a Radeon 9700 PRO, a celeron 1.4 and a P4 2.8.
The thing is that in 3dMark the Pentium II is able to surpass the others leading to the idea that 3dMark is really based on the performance of the graphics card.
Enough said, take a look at the article: 3DMark03 Performance Factors

An article at Wired focuses on the problems of anti-spam methods when compared with spam itself.

Electronic Frontier Foundation's head counsel Cindy Cohn, for instance, argues that antispam crusaders are forgetting the Internet's first principle -- information flows freely from end to end. Cohn fears that the Internet's openness will be collateral damage in the war against unwanted e-mail.

The stuation is that nobody enjoys getting tons of junk mail but the risk of filtering a wrong e-mail may be big enough to start us thinking about alternative ways to stop spam.

E-mail isn't a toy anymore. If I don't get an e-mailed notice from the federal district court mailing list, it's malpractice

This article also provides a little insight to different kinds of anti-spam programs available namely those based on Bayesian Algorithm's.

I've been (slowly) reading "Algorithms" by Robert Sedgewick and I can say I'm enjoying it.
After getting my degree a few weeks ago, I started wondering what level of competence I had solving problems (not necessarly real-world problems). The result was that I felt I missed some theoretical basis in Algorithms as well in numerical analisys, probability theory, vectors, etc.

Sedgewick's book (he has an entire series of Algorithm books in C/C++/Java) covers most of the classical problems and solutions, namely: Mathematical algorithms, sorting, searching, geometric algorithms, graph algorithms and some advanced topics (Dynamic programming, NP-complete problems, etc.). The book is illustrated by example code in pascal (simple enough so everyone understands) and it is a good reference manual.

Now all I've got to do is finish reading it and practice a little bit at topcoder.

I'm sick and tired of the entire Open Source Movement. Not because of it's objectives but why just be anti-M$?
I don't support Open Source, I support using the most apropriate technology for a given task ... just that. Now, don't put a sticker in my forehead saying "M$'s Bitch!".

ArsTechnica has published two articles about IBM's latest processor. You can read ther first here and the second here.

I noticed that portuguese is the second most spoken language in blogs around the world.

Just look at the thief's face at The Sacramento Bee.

Read it in UpGrade: RIAA levaria 2191,78 anos a processar todos os utilizadores de serviços de partilha de ficheiros. (portuguese)
Yes! If they star at 'A' I'm not worried ...

Take an in depth view at PHP5. A great article by Harry Fuecks.

I've been attending for the last month or so to Topcoder's competitions - with a rather weak performance may I say - and it is a great way to improve a programmer's coding abilities. Try it, specially if you're portuguese. Only 5 portuguese coder are ranked and our country sits in the last position of the ranking. This is probably because the matches start after 2 AM in Portugal.

Internet Explorer has a 95.4% market share according to WinInfo. Long live Opera and Mozilla Firebird !

This is kind of interesting (maybe not :)).

Quake II's code was ported to managed C++ code in .NET by Vertigo Software and it might be interesting to look to. You can download the code from Vertigo's homepage and they've published an article explaining possible problems during compilation of the project at CodeProject.com.

I'm developing blog comunity application - I think i'll call it "We Blog!" - totally developed in Microsoft .NET and c#. My idea is to offer a closed comunity based application with an imensa expansion capacity. It will include a plug-in systen as well as all normal functionalities of a standard blog - multiple user with assigned permissions in a specific blog, comments, RSS feeds, link categories and other stuff.
I will initially develop a limited number of plug-in's, namely a calendar, the ability to show excerpts of other blog's feeds, news rankings based on comments and votes, etc.

Furthermore, the frontpage of the system will allow a tight coupling of the blogs and give information about recent posts and whatever comes to my mind (ideas and help would be very apreciated).

I will deploy this in an autp-installable executable, as simple as possible - but it's goiong to take a while 'cause I'm still in a design phase and all I've got is a bunch of ideas on how to construct the skeleton of the system.

This is my blog and this is my first post. As you may be wondering, YottaSniglet is a mix of "Yotta" and "Sniglet". Yotta is a prefix of quantity meaning 10^24 and Sniglet is word that should be in a dictionary but isn't. I leave to your understanding the meaning of the complete word.