CVS is extremely popular for configuration management (with Subversion quickly gaining speed).  It uses “optimistic locking” in which multiple users can work on the same file at the same time, and any conflicts are resolved when the file is “checked-in”. …

TinyMCE is a powerful JavaScript-based WYSIWYG HTML editor that you can embed into TEXTAREA fields of your Web forms.  In addition, a PHP based spell checking system called Spellchecker allows TinyMCE to highlight unknown words (using aspell or Google’s spelling Web service).…

So high-definition video discs are hitting the stores now and yet again the electronics industry has shot itself (and early adopters) in the foot. Only, I think this is a lot worse than the Betamax-versus-VHS nonsense we all suffered through, or did…

In 1931, the mathematician Kurt Godel showed that any axiomatic system in natural number theory that is “complete” (can prove every postulate that is true) will not be “consistent” (it will prove a postulate that is false).  While having an impact…

MIT’s media lab has created “Metaphor”, a facinating tool that parses standard English into a programmatic pseudo-code.  Take a look at: http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2005/032305/Tool_turns_English_to_code_032305.html.  Metaphor seems very cool, but to deal with the ambiguities of its English parser, it ends up with non-working pseudo-code.  They…

I have a lot of folders in my Thunderbird install, to track projects, people, companies, and so on. When I receive mail, most of it is filtered out into the appropriate folders but that leaves plenty of others that are not caught by…