Monthly Archives: February 2010

First Impressions

Posted on February 28, 2010 by MXH

Mark Twain famously wrote: Give a man a reputation as an early riser, and that man can sleep till noon. Which, if you can get the former, is all well and good. But what if you’re unlucky, and have to … Continue reading →

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Six Word Stories: Manual

Posted on February 27, 2010 by MXH

Frustrated, Tom finally read the manual.

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Keeping the User Waiting

Posted on February 26, 2010 by MXH

In a perfect world, we could create software that gave instant responses to user input. Unfortunately, this is not always feasible; some things take time, and so we have to keep the user waiting. There are some broadly-accepted conventions as … Continue reading →

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Cost Containment

Posted on February 25, 2010 by MXH

From Arnold Kling, via The Corner: There are two ways to approach reducing the use of high-cost, low-benefit procedures. You can have the government tell people what they can and cannot have. Or you can have individuals pay for a … Continue reading →

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The Big Con: Chapter 5

Posted on February 24, 2010 by MXH

Chapter 5 of David Maurer’s “The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man” (TBC) consists of a discussion of “The Mob”. This chapter describes the internal organization (such as it was) of a big-con mob in the early 1900’s. … Continue reading →

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Six Word Stories: Sleeping

Posted on February 23, 2010 by MXH

Sleeping late seemed the best revenge.

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Greed

Posted on February 22, 2010 by MXH

There’s an interesting line in this Slate article, discussing the Austin kamikaze: Sure, it may look like greed to keep 100 percent of your paycheck, but Stack was doing it all for us! This little remark is in the service … Continue reading →

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Full-Text Search (Page)

Posted on February 21, 2010 by MXH

I pulled together all my Full-Text Search articles into a single page. And lest you think that I’m just padding out the blog with recycled content, let me add that I fixed a bug in the demo project. (It used … Continue reading →

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Six Word Stories: Girlfriend

Posted on February 20, 2010 by MXH

Robert’s girlfriend quickly searched his phone.

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File System Access

Posted on February 19, 2010 by MXH

I don’t know how to access the filesystem on my iPhone from my desktop. I can write apps that talk to their sandboxed parts of the filesystem just fine, but I don’t know how to reach into arbitrary parts of … Continue reading →

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