Tyler Clemons

*It appears the petition may have worked*

http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page20571

Alan Turing is considered to be the father of modern computer science.  Turing is also partly responsible for designing the “bombe,” a machine used to crack the German Enigma machine yielding invaluable German military Intelligence to the Allied forces.

Unfortunately, instead of being revered by his government for his services rendered, he was criminally prosecuted for being a homosexual because homosexuality was illegal in Great Britain in 1952.  Having seen the end of his career and having undergone the subsequent drug treatment administered by the government to cure his homosexuality, he committed suicide via a cyanide induced apple.

Since then, the scientific community has embraced his achievements and ignored his lifestyle decision (as they should).  With great pleasure, I have stumbled upon an online petition urging the British PM to apologize to Alan Turing.  It is shame that only British citizens can sign it.  This petition can be found:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/turing/

For more information about Alan Turing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

Lastly, what would this be without a plug for gay rights in today’s society:

http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/index.html

Something that I stumbled on awhile back.

http://www.websiteoutlook.com/

It is no surprise that the most popular pages are adult websites.

I have been using this service for awhile now and I just thought I would formally recommend it.  OpenDNS is usually a faster alternative to the default DNS provided by your ISP.  It protects against phising automatically and can be adjusted to automatically block adult material aka porn.  AND you can travel with your settings by creating an account.

Click here

Back in undergrad, the majority of our classes taught us sound software engineering principles using Python, C++, and sometimes Java.  The first two were used quite extensively.  The resource I used was invaluable to my success in mastering data structures, learning OOP, and granting me proper exposure to Python and C++.  Data Structures and Algorithms Using Python and C++ is a great resource and I wanted to share it here.  I believe it is great for beginners of both Python and C++ and those entering a data structures course.  Click HERE to order a copy.

The Ohio State Buckeye Football Program is ranked #3 in all time Prestige by ESPN.  All time is a tad misleading because the scoring was in the range of 1936-2008.  This is still impressive considering that there are 119 football programs and the Buckeyes have received a bad rap for their recent big game performance.  Go Buckeyes! Also, congrats to the Sooner nation.  Oklahoma is at the top of the polls despite their recent stumbles.  It is nice to see that prestige is not only judged upon the success of recent years.

The following is from ESPN.COM:

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http://www.infoworld.com/article/09/01/12/02NF-ruby-on-rails-merb_1.html

Rails will add some new features and enhancements by merging with MERB.  Should be interesting.

I use a Macbook that I purchased last year.  It has OS X 10.4.5, or Tiger, installed.  It’s a pretty good machine.  So I decided to upgrade to 10.5.4, or Leopard.  Yea, it has been about a year and yea, 10.6 is coming next year, but that’s beside the point.

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Ran into this problem a few times, 3 actually.  Sometimes Windows Automatic Update fails, not the best thing that could happen obviously.  Searched around and found this good article by Microsoft.

Click HERE.

I use Adium and iTunes frequently. One of the cool things about the OS X environment is the integration between applications. For instance, Adium contacts can be linked to Address Book accounts. One of my personal favorites is the integration of Adium and iTunes. Adium can display details of what is currently playing on iTunes such as the name of the song and the artist. The trick is customizing these messages so that they can be presented as suitable away or status messages.
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So much fun open source applications are.  Adium allows tons of customization.  The best part is that it does not take an extensive knowledge of Objective-C, Adium’s primary language, to customize some if it’s features.  One customizable feature is the emoticon set.  Emoticons, Emotion Icons, are the combination of characters that resemble faces.  In some web browsers and most chat programs, such as Firefox and Adium, emoticons are automatically translated into pictures.  But there are so many emoticons that some clients do not include every combination.  Good thing we can create our own.

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