Sunday, October 31, 2010

October 31, 2010 - Happy Halloween !




Google has a nice Scooby Halloween theme. Good contrast to the updated Zombie Hunter.



In my library, a good read. Reminded this morning that he died on Halloween, October 31, 1926.



51 Random Facts About William Shakespeare.



Today's NYT Magazine On Language references a Jargon Dictionary of Hacker's Terms, Circa 1991. Fascinating reading, I got a kick out of this one:

cargo-cult programming: n. A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. A cargo-cult programmer will usually explain the extra code as a way of working around some bug encountered in the past, but usually neither the bug nor the reason the code avoided the bug were ever fully understood (compare {shotgun debugging}). The term cargo-cult is a reference to aboriginal religions that grew up in the South Pacific after World War II. The practices of these cults center on building elaborate mockups of airplanes and military style landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of the god-like airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war. Hackish usage probably derives from Richard Feynman's characterization of certain practices as "cargo-cult science" in his book `Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman' (W. W Norton & Co, New York 1985, ISBN 0-393-01921-7).

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