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His post made the rounds on the expected social news sites like programming.reddit and Hacker News, where I was amused to note that my blog is now being used as an example of silly REST dogma by REST skeptics in such discussions. From reading the Damien’s post and the various comments in response, it seems clear that there are several misconceptions as to what constitutes REST and what its benefits are from a practical perspective.
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MathDL | The Linear Algebra Behind Search Engines
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The Boolean information retrieval model considers which keywords are present or absent in a document or title. Thus, a document is judged as relevant or irrelevant — there is no concept of a “partial match” between documents and queries. The inability to identify partial matches can lead to poor performance (Baeza-Yates & Ribeiro-Neto, 1999). Other more advanced set theoretic techniques, such as the so-called “fuzzy sets”, try to remedy this black-white Boolean logic by introducing shades of gray. For example, a title search for car AND maintenance on a Boolean engine causes the virtual machine to return all documents that have both words in the title. As a result, an apparently relevant document entitled “Automobile Maintenance” will not be returned. Fuzzy Boolean engines use fuzzy logic to categorize this document as somewhat relevant and return it to the user.
- Many Boolean search engines also require the user to be familiar with Boolean operators and the specialized syntax of the engine. For example, to find information about the phrase iron curtain, many engines require quotation marks around the phrase, which tell the search engine that the entire phrase should be searched as if it were just one keyword. A user who forgets this syntax requirement would be surprised to find retrieved documents about interior decorating and mining for iron ore. – post by joel
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Many Boolean search engines also require the user to be familiar with Boolean operators and the specialized syntax of the engine. For example, to find information about the phrase iron curtain, many engines require quotation marks around the phrase, which tell the search engine that the entire phrase should be searched as if it were just one keyword. A user who forgets this syntax requirement would be surprised to find retrieved documents about interior decorating and mining for iron ore.
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Day of the Crocodile: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com
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Mugabe was chairing the meeting himself, in a dark suit and polka-dotted tie. On Mugabe’s flanks were the men and women who fought victoriously with him 28 years ago to transform white-ruled Rhodesia into black-ruled Zimbabwe. Now, six days after elections for parliament and president, this group was facing certain defeat. Although the government had not yet officially announced the results, and despite strenuous efforts to rig the election, it was clear that Mugabe’s zanu-P.F. party had lost not only its parliamentary majority but the presidency as well. The purpose of the meeting was to decide whether to accept the loss gracefully and relinquish power to Mugabe’s bitter rival, the Movement for Democratic Change (M.D.C.), led by Morgan Tsvangirai (pronounced Chahn-gur-eye), or to fight on, manipulating the results so as to force a second round of voting for the presidency.
- hi – post by joel
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I grew up and was educated in Zimbabwe, served as a conscript, and maintain close ties to the country. Because of these roots I have been able to live and travel there even at times, such as the present, when other foreign journalists have been expelled. In Harare that afternoon I spent time with friends as the hours wore on. Finally an old school chum called to say that “the General”—his uncle, a politburo member and a former guerrilla commander—had at last emerged from Jongwe House, and that the meeting was over.
- second hi – post by joel
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Hacker News | Poll: Would you like to see this site become CS/Startup related only?
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10 Futuristic User Interfaces | Monday Inspiration | Smashing Magazine
Good user interfaces are crucial for good user experience. It doesn’t matter how good a technology is — if we, designers, don’t manage to make user interface as intuitive and attractive as possible, the technology will hardly reach a breakthrough. To gain
