…is the SPhere Online Judge, which consists of a set of programming exercises, and a system for automatically judging the correctness of submitted answers (which may be written in any of a very large number of languages; they even have one of my favorites—PostScript®!).
After a quick scan, a couple projects that caught my eye were Hotline and The Next Palindrome.
Discovered via Digg.
Found this brief PDF essay to be an interesting read. I feel that the title is a bit of a misnomer, though, as it doesn’t really answer that question. It does a good job of defining some sometimes-confusing software QA terminology, and identifies common testing paradigms that are used to define test cases.
Why are so many Evangelical Christians not content simply to believe what they believe, and let others believe as they will, but instead feel compelled to share and spread their beliefs to all others? Why is it such an important goal to Christians that everyone they encounter be urged to pray the “sinner’s prayer” and accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior? Why are they so driven?
The answer to these questions are pretty clear to most folks who are or have been Evangelical Christians, but can be somewhat puzzling to others.
The key, of course, is that Evangelical Christians believe absolutely in the words of the Bible, that the Bible is an absolute authority on all things, and that (at least in its original version) it contains no falsehood. Consider what your own behavior would be if you found yourself in the following scenario:
Suppose that someone were to prove absolutely to you, one-hundred-percent and beyond any reasonable doubt, that there is a God, that this God is all-knowing and all-powerful, that he is incapable of error or deception, and that every word written in the Bible was placed there by this all-knowing and inerrant Being, for our edification and instruction.
Now, given this, what would you do if you discovered that the Bible states, very simply, that everyone who does not believe in and dedicate their lives to Jesus Christ will, after their physical death, continue to exist, but be made to endure unimaginably severe pain and torture for eternity without end? Continue reading
Sierra Entertainment has just released compilation sets of all the old King’s Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry games, updated to run on modern Windows systems.
Holy. Freaking. Crap.
They are making a sequel to one of the best fantasy movies ever made, Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal. Brian Froud, the conceptual artist from the original (and really, the reason why The Dark Crystal ever existed in the first place), and David Odell, the writer of the original, are back to work their magic in The Power of the Dark Crystal, joined by the director behind all of the shows on Cartoon Network that are at all decent, Genndy Tartakovsky, and of course Jim Henson’s daughter, Lisa Henson.
These guys are going to totally make my quarter-century. Now, if only someone would pick up the live-action remake of The Last Unicorn, I could die a happy man.
Some good T-shirts and things, with 80s video-games themes.
MKR on irc.freenode.net gave this link.
It’s a video presentation of how the world would look if the entire world’s population was 100, but the population was still statistically proportional to what it is now.
PDFs of Ross Anderson’s Security Engineering, with foreword written by Bruce Schneier (my computer security idol), are now available for free. Found via Bruce’s blog, Schneier on Security.
Someone on IRC (#ubuntu-offtopic on irc.freenode.net) sent a link to the following delightful little 1988 IOCCC winner, written by Brian Westley:
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#define _ F-->00||-F-OO--; int F=00,OO=00;main(){F_OO();printf("%1.3f\n",4.*-F/OO/OO);}F_OO() { _-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_ } |
The functionality of the above program is to print the value of the constant π (“pi”, ∼3.14). The beauty of it is: the larger you make the circle, the more accurate the value (but you’d need to adjust the precision of the printf() format string).
A very sobering story of the complete and utter abuse of the rights of a couple and their friends, because an overly sensitive photo-shop employee called the police when he saw pictures of the couple’s children, playing naked on a campground, and playing with beer bottles as musical instruments. Seen at digg.