S Anand

Classic texts in computer science. Worth reading for the sheer insight. Update: The link didn’t seem to work in Feb 2007. Here’s the list. An axiomatic basis for computer programming by C. A. R. Hoare Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) by C. A. R. Hoare Call-by-name, call-by-value, and the lambda calculus by Gordon Plotkin Towards a theory of type structure by John C. Reynolds Definitional interpreters for higher-order programming languages by John C. Reynolds An APL Machine 1970 by Philip S. Abrams Henry Baker’s Archive of Research Papers (many classic Lisp papers) The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engin by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering by Frederic P. Brooks, Jr. A Mathematical Theory of Communication by Claude Shannon Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems by Claude Shannon Bayesian Networks without Tears by Eugene Charniak A Universal Algorithm for Sequential Data Compression by Jacob Ziv and Abraham Lempel A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks 1970 by Edgar F. Codd Let’s Build a Compiler 1988-1995 by Jack Crenshaw Gauging Similarity via N-Grams: Language-Independent Sorting, Categorization, and Retrieval of Text by Marc Damashek Worse Is Better by Richard P. Gabriel Hints on Programming Language Design by C.A.R. Hoare Why Functional Programming Matters by John Hughes The Design of APL by Kenneth E. Iverson The Early History Of Smalltalk by Alan Kay Computer Programming as an Art by Donald E. Knuth The next 700 programming languages by Peter J. Landin Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and their Computation by Machine (Part I) 1960 by John McCarthy FORTH - A Language for Interactive Computing by Charles H.Moore Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years 2001 by Peter Norvig Parenthetically Speaking, a collection of essays from the 1990s by Kent M. Pitman The Definition and Implementation of a Computer Language based on constraints by Guy Lewis Steele Jr. Growing a Language by Guy Lewis Steele Jr. Epigrams on Programming by Alan J. Perlis The Complexity of Theorem Proving Procedures by Stephen A. Cook Steps Toward Artificial Intelligence by Marvin Minsky The Original ‘Lambda Papers’ by Guy Steele and Gerald Sussman A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems by R.L. Rivest, A. Shamir, and L. Adleman The UNIX Time-Sharing System by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson Comments jawahar 6 Feb 2007 5:52 am: anand this link is not working !! Classic-texts-in-computer-science – maxviv 5 Jun 2016 7:15 pm (pingback): […] Classic texts in computer science […]

Cut and paste has become easier. So we make less effort to understand. We don’t need to. Like when we pay less attention if we’re recording a lecture. Solution? I suggest the Tunnel in the Sky strategy. Rod Walker is going for survival training on an alien planet, and asks his sister, Captain Walker… “Uh, Sis, what sort of gun should I carry?” “Huh? Why the deuce do you want a gun?” ...

According to the hygiene hypothesis, exposure early in life to infections from household dust, germy siblings or surfaces may reduce the risk of developing disease in adulthood.

Mathematics, marriage and finding somewhere to eat has a simple solution to all these problems. Whether you’re hiring someone, or picking a partner, or finding a house – or any problem that requires you to pick the best among N choices – here’s the rule. Scan the first 37% of choices. Then pick the first one that’s better than anything you’ve seen so far.

New in Picasa’s beta: geotagging (place photos on the map) search by colour (find photos with red and yellow) hide pictures: that’s useful, sometimes… upload to Google video and to Picasa Web FTP your photos Comments Anand 15 Jun 2006 11:39 am: I got an invitation from Google to try Picasa Web Albums. How does one selectively share some photos and not all in an album ? I do not want to mail these photos instead would like to make only some public. Could you highlight the major differences between this service and that from Flickr ? S Anand 15 Jun 2006 8:51 pm: You can select photos from your Picasa album to upload – you don’t need to upload all of them. When compared with Flickr, PWA is more for sharing with friends and family than for photo discovery. So no tagging, no groups, no top-10 photos now browsing for other users. Anand 16 Jun 2006 1:52 pm: I know I can selectively upload photos from Picasa to web albums. I may want to recover space on my PC by uploading all the photos from my hard disk to web albums. from that collection of photos online i may want to share only some publicly. I suppose then I have to create a pair of albums online for every album in Picasa so that one album online can have the private pictures and the other can have the public pictures S Anand 17 Jun 2006 10:25 am: Yes - you can’t mark individual photos as private. Actually, PicasaWeb doesn’t have any such thing as private. Even if you mark an album as unlisted, if a person knows its URL, they can always access it. Anand Srini 17 Jun 2006 4:33 pm: If a user has not chosent to make any album public then knowing the URL does not reveal those pictures. try it out. make all your albums unlisted and see for yourself what you can see using your URL.I have tested it. the only solution to my problem is to move private pictures from one album to another album and make it unlisted S Anand 25 Jun 2006 8:54 am: Oh, OK. But looks like privacy problems will continue to plague Picasa Web Albums for a while. Just do a google search for site:picasaweb.google.com

Google has released Picasa Web Albums and I managed to sign up. See my web albums. The bad part about Picasa Web is that it’s a long way from Flickr in terms of tagging and sharing. But it probably wasn’t built for that. The good part is that it’s integrated with Picasa (integration with Flickr was my top wishlist item for Picasa) and best of all, with Google Earth. You can geotag photos on the new Beta version of Picasa. ...

Teenagers use it in classes, to avoid detection by teachers. Shopkeepers use the same technology to drive away rowdy teenagers, by creating a loud sound that doesn’t affect adults. This works because adults gradually lose the ability to hear high-pitched sounds. (via NY Times) Comments Livy 12 Nov 2006 5:33 pm: I can here the sounds up to about 18KHz.

I almost fell for this piece of spam.

If you’ve forgotten your Windows password, but you’re still logged in as an administrator, you can change your Windows password without confirmation of the old password. If you’re forgotten your Windows password, and not logged in, you can still access your system using a little known hole in Windows XP. Check Vic Ferri’s article on I Forgot My Administrator Password. Comments windows 7 Mar 2009 2:51 am: Forgot Your Windows Password? A lot of people think that after having lost their Windows admin password, they absolutely have to reinstall their OS. Let me tell you something: They are wrong! Here I’m posting a few methods / utilities which can be used to recover Windows password: 1st Method: The first thing which you check if you forget login password. When we install Windows, it automatically creates an account “Administrator” and sets its password to blank. So if you have forget your user account password then try this: Start system and when you see Windows Welcome screen / Login screen, press + and Del keys twice and it’ll show Classic Login box. Now type “Administrator” (without quotes) in Username and leave Password field blank. Now press Enter and you should be able to log in Windows. Now you can reset your account password from “Control Panel -> User Accounts”. Same thing can be done using Safe Mode. In Safe Mode Windows will show this in-built Administrator account in Login screen. 2th Method: There are many 3rd party utilities which claim to recover forgotten Windows password: Windows Password Recovery Tool Service: windowspasswordsrecovery.com Windows Password Recovery Tool is a program that works instantly to remove any lost or forgotten password. Simply boot your PC from the supplied Boot CD, and get access to forgotten Windows and administrator passwords in just seconds. Their method is so much faster/easier, and works great! http://windowspasswordsrecovery.com zhuismile 13 Jun 2010 8:36 am: Can’t remember your windows xp admin password?Windows password key 8.0 has a neat trick that will get you back in.This method is easy for everyone to follow. Download the utility from http://sn.im/xd5sa and install it then burn the software to a CD/USB drive,then insert the newly created CD/USB drive to your locked pc and reboot your computer,then press “F2” to enter your BIOS setup,following the instruction to reset your lost windows password.

Using the Google Browser Sync extension for Firefox, you can access your bookmarks, tabs, history, saved passwords and cookies from any machine. You can browse from office, go back home, and continue browsing where you left off. Gina Trapani of Lifehacker says Google Browser Sync is not a privacy risk after all.

I got an invite for Google Spreadsheets. Very impressive AJAX interface. Comments Dhar 9 Jun 2006 11:36 am: Tried Google Spreadsheets. Love the concept, but I seem to be missing the Grand Picture. How is Google going to integrate things like Calendar, Spreadsheets, Notebook, Browser Sync to give us an “Aha” moment? The glue that should hold these applications together seems to be missing. Quite a few of them are very average and scratch the itch for a small section of web population. Nothing earthshaking like Gmail or search. :( S Anand 9 Jun 2006 2:31 pm: Funnily, the very apps you mentioned (Calendar, Notebook, Spreadsheets and Browser Sync) are the ones I use the most – as much as GMail and search! You’re right, there isn’t much integration, except perhaps between Calendar and GMail. Maybe it’s coming. But even as standalone apps, I’m surprised at how much I use them. I’ll write about how I’m using these sometime… Madhu 12 Jun 2006 7:03 pm: Its more when than how i think

How to feed a family of 4 for $45. These recipes are nutritious and healthy. They are low in fat and cholesterol, high in protein and rich in fibre.

Gap Minder – an excellent dynamic interface to world economic indicators.

Taglines. A timeline of Flickr tags. I can’t describe this one. Just see it.

Why your boss is overpaid. The ugly truth is that your boss is probably overpaid–and it’s for your benefit, not his. We work our socks off in underpaying jobs in the hope that one day we’ll win the rat race and become overpaid fat cats ourselves. Economists call this “tournament theory.” The second, and more counterintuitive, prediction of tournament theory is that the more luck is involved in work, the larger the pay gaps should be between the winners and the losers. If Jack’s promotion is 90% luck and 10% effort, Jack may be inclined to goof off–unless, of course, the rewards for promotion are absolutely astronomical. And they sometimes are. ...

These are stills from Tamil movies. Each link points to a different movie. I have jumbled the images. You can move the jumbled blocks around, like a jigsaw. Can you guess the movie? Comments Guru 31 May 2006 3:42 am: Cool Stuff! sangi 31 May 2006 12:20 pm: this took me quite some time to crack. Had fun though. saranya 20 Sep 2006 9:13 am: ya sangi i solved only one out of 5 hahaha but was nice kan 13 Oct 2006 8:46 am: 3rd was the harder but found…. sabari 26 Dec 2006 10:23 am: this is really nice senthil 26 May 2006 12:00 pm: wats da 3rd movie.. its very hard.. i found da rest madhu 26 May 2006 12:00 pm: all are easy GMK 26 May 2006 12:00 pm: Got all ash 25 Oct 2008 12:41 am: cool!!!!!!!!!!1 rami 4 Nov 2010 8:32 am: coolll!!!! interesting found all.. nirmala 18 Dec 2010 10:36 am: couldnt find d third one help pls sneha 25 Mar 2012 6:50 pm: yippie!!! got all 5 correct. grt quiz anand :) priya 29 Sep 2011 4:48 pm: 3rd is very hard. :( .. clues pls. Ranjani 7 Aug 2011 2:11 pm: 3/5

Timeline of trends and events from 1750 to 2100 (yes, that’s next century).

Where does dust come from? Inside the house, it’s mostly from our skin. Short of vacuuming the carpet regularly, there’s little you can do about it.

Why we all sell code with bugs. All the reasons are tied up in one truth: every time you fix a bug, you risk introducing another. Don’t we all start out with the belief that software only gets better as we work on it? Nobody on our team intentionally creates new bugs. Yet we have done accidentally.

I've jumbled up some stills from movies. You can move the jumbled blocks around, like a jigsaw. Can you guess the movie? Comments Ravi Karthik 25 May 2006 8:18 am: Pirates of the Caribbean - Your ex-VM classmate from Chennai S Anand 25 May 2006 7:34 pm: Hi Ravi, where are you these days? Anonymous 26 May 2006 9:47 am: the images keep loading and changing even when they’ve fully loaded. I think its a bug. Can you fix it? Otherwise the puzzle is brilliant! S Anand 26 May 2006 12:08 pm: Thanks! This may not be a bug, though. each jigsaw has 3 images from the same movie. Even after loading fully, the jigsaw will loop through images.