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Blame the extensions (comic)
Posted 15 years ago
Yes, You Absolutely Might Possibly Need an EIN to Sell Software to the US
After many months, your software sale is complete! You've got a purchase order, sent the invoice, delivered the software. You're already handling some support issues from users at BigCorp. Then BANG! Martha from Procurement emails back, as a favour, just to let you know that BigCorp has not received your W8 form with a valid tax id, and therefore will be withholding 30% of the purchase price of your multi-thousand dollar product for taxes.
Fun with Colour Difference
Are you looking for a nifty way to choose colours that stand out? Are you the type of person who is not satisfied until you have mathematically proven that your choice is optimal?
Regular Expression Matching can be Ugly and Slow
If you open the first few pages of O'Reilly's Beautiful Code, you will find a well written chapter by Brian Kernighan (Personal motto: "No, I didn't invent C. Who told you that?"). The non-C inventing professor describes how a limited form of regular expressions can be implemented elegantly in only a few lines of C code.
The PenIsland Problem: Text-to-speech for domain names
Recently, I was contracted to run a list of domain names through the custom-built pronunciation engine that powers my rhyming web site. On the first attempt, I found that the results were embarrassingly bad. A quick inspection revealed the problem: most domain names are severalwordsstucktogether.
Compress your JSON with automatic type extraction
JSON is horribly inefficient data format for data exchange between a web server and a browser. Here's how you can fix it.
Email Etiquette
If you begin your emails with "Hi, <name>!" then they will seem less rude.
Keeping Abreast of Pornographic Research in Computer Science
Burgeoning numbers of Ph.D's and grad students are choosing to study pornography. Techniques for the analysis of "objectionable images" are gaining increased attention (and grant money) from governments and research institutions around the world, as well as Google. But what, exactly, does computer science have to do with porn? In the name of academic persuit, let's roll up our sleeves and plunge deeply into this often hidden area that lies between the covers of top-shelf research journals.
Why you should go to the Business of Software Conference Next Year
Most people, having already paid $2000.00 of their hard earned money, and then having flown, driven, or otherwise travelled to Boston to attend a conference, and then having paid an additional $250/night plus $33/night parking and "tourism taxes" to the Seaport Hotel -- most people, after all this, are unlikely to say that it was a waste of time and they should have stayed home watching the remaining salvaged episodes of
Doctor Who on Netflix.
In fact, I found it quite useful.
