The USPS ZIP codes have a multi-part structure. The first three digits are a prefix that defines a sectional center facility.
The USPS table L005 3-Digit ZIP Code Prefix Groups—SCF Sortation maps clusters of ZIP3 prefixes to Facility and State codes. The following URL has this table.
A co-worker has mistakenly cloned a directory tree rather than link to it. Then they made some number of changes to files in that directory.
Your job is to compute a directory-level difference between an official copy and the changes they made. Sadly, you can't trivially …
Good stuff in ComputerWorld: Partnerships can Go Too Far.
"Consider vendor innovation. As companies become large and entrenched, they typically become more risk-averse and less creative, often rejecting ideas that challenge conventional wisdom."
This is really only half the story.
Programming is hard -- really hard. Read EWD …
Upgraded a VM to Fedora 11 recently.
This -- it turns out -- comes with Python 2.6 installed.
It is, however, an incomplete build. To do anything, I had to install a some additional Python packages. Specifically, the "libraries and header files needed for Python development". Also, IIRC, the tkinter package …
more ...I cannot believe that people still consider top-down, uni-dimensional, taxonomic hierarchies useful.
This Stack Overflow question (REST: How to Create a Resource That Depends on Three or More Resources of Different Types?) repeats an assumption. Essentially the confusion comes from assuming that "URI's map directly to a hierarchy".
I think …
more ...See this in Boing Boing: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/11/hairy-type.html
They're talking about NodeBox, something I'd never heard of before.
"NodeBox is a Mac OS X application that lets you create 2D visuals (static, animated or interactive) using Python programming code and export them as a …
more ...A recent request for an API quality check sent me into a paroxysm.
The request seemed simple enough. They had two varieties of API design: varietal M had a lot of methods, each with relatively few parameters. Varietal P had a few methods, but each had a boat-load of parameters …
more ...Check out this blog post: http://cacm.acm.org/browse-by-subject/data-storage-and-retrieval/32212-the-end-of-a-dbms-era-might-be-upon-us/fulltext
The first issue is that the RDBMS code base in ancient. The second issue is that we keep pushing the envelope on the RDBMS model; examples include OLAP and RDF triple-stores.
Some folks want to say "reports …
more ...A handy CNET review site: http://reviews.cnet.com/macfixit/
more ...This is an amazing quote: "We see SQL injection as the top attack technique on the Web".
See ComputerWorld's SQL Injection Attacks Lead to Heartland, Hannaford Breaches for more on this topic.
I'm amazed because SQL injection is entirely a preventable bug. Yet, it's the top attack technique.
That's an …
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