Ehmm... MongoDB is not open source.
833 karma · joined October 10, 2013
Back then the code in various pieces of software had hand-written exceptions for domain processing. The joke was that all Computer Science departments in the UK (uk.ac.university-name.cs) ended up in Czechoslovakia.
This is extremely useful for configuration files: they can use some functions you have defined, but may also include arbitrary code. In order to load them, you simply fire up a safe slave interpreter to execute the code and you're done!
Imagine a config file like:
host machine.example.org
port 9000
dbhost server.example.org
set mydomain example.org
set type prod
host machine.$mydomain
dbhost server.$mydomain
if {$type == prod} {
port 9000
} else {
port 9999
}
I'm writing much more Python than Tcl these days, but this is a feature I sorely miss. I keep looking for similar functionality in Python, but I am always disappointed. Starlark has been proposed in the past, but unfortunately it means you have to work with something different than Python (in developing, in deploying, etc.), doubling your dependencies.
It was originally a French game show (Des chiffres et des lettres), it has been adapted in many countries, and in the UK has spawn off the comedy show "8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown".
I usually play the Countdown variant, where a letter cannot be re-used. But it starts with 9 letters and one can have multiple instances of the same letter in the starting set.
It would be fun if you could implement this, as well. An initial switch might determine what rules are in effect.
I have trouble coming up with any other example of total domination of a market segment. Maybe Photoshop in its glory days, or Quark Xpress before that, but even in those cases, there were alternatives in (minor) use.
To the point that I have to ask: what other alternatives are there?
Remains to be seen whether history will repeat itself: when the tax breaks/ free AI use stops, will anyone keep doing this?
Disclaimer: I have had nothing to do with this initiative, and was not consulted on the name.
I can also recommend a book from my library: Typoésie by Jérôme Peignot (Imprimerie nationale editions, Paris, 1993), ISBN 2-11-081272-9 (or newer edition 9782742757985).
From the book description: The works of the great typographers of the 20th century are featured: Maximilien Vox, Cassandre’s “Bifur,” Piet Zwart, the Americans Martin Solomon and Herb Lubalin, Raymond Gid, and Guy Levis Mano. The book also showcases the visual poetry of the Germans Gomringer, Mon, and Rühm; the Brazilians de Campos and Pignatari; Emmet Williams; Christian Dotremont; and Jacques Roubaud; and the “typoems” by painters such as Matisse, Magritte, Duchamp, Lissitzky, Raymond Hains, Jiri Kollar, Jasper Johns, and Valerio Adami. Even mathematics and musical notation are included.
As it usually happens in this kind of "check your vocabulary" tests in English, being Greek gives you an advantage in higher levels ;-)
This offer need to somehow include something like $160M.
The comment you're replying to pointed out that there is no explanation how this money will be raised. "50 people, $2200 each" does not cover it.
On the other hand, I've been in a company where there were long discussions about whether the extra day on leap years is a working day or a vacation day...
"For your birthday, I wanted to get you a pocket calculator ... but then I thought you'd already know how many pockets you have."
Surely Karow's Ikarus was earlier than that.
One of the main innovations of Metafont was the use of "pen"s, so that one would describe a single path and the software would trace it and imitate the use of one or more pens, to end with an outline of something with thickness, and essentially more curves. It mimics how drawing and writing actually happens.
AFAIK, Zapf did not like this approach at all, as he was used to design typefaces the traditional way, by specifying all the curves. Richard Southall embraced the new paradigm and used Metafont as it was supposed to be used, but produced only a couple of demo typefaces (mainly the nmt family) and a handful of commercial ones (I can now only remember Colorado, with Ladislas Mandel, used in the phone directories of US West). I think he also implemented Melior, but of course this was never distributed as it was a proprietary Zapf design.
Note: all the above are based on recollections of my discussions with Zapf, Southall, and Knuth, in the distant past. All my relevant printed materials are in a different country right now, and I don't have easy access to them.
I met him in a few conferences, back in the day. We ended up talking more about linguistics than Unix history, somehow.