Patterns: Non-Software Examples of Software Design Patterns - AGCS... Software design patterns have roots in the architectural patterns of Christopher Alexander, and in the object movement. According to Alexander, patterns repeat themselves, since they are a generic solution to a given system of forces. The object movement looks to the real world for insights into modeling software relationships. With these dual roots, it seems reasonable that software design patterns should be repeated in real world objects. This paper presents a real world, non software instance of each design pattern from the book, Design Patterns - Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software [13]. The paper also discusses the implications of non-software examples on the communicative power of a pattern language, and on design pattern training.

Faking It: The Internet Revolution Has Nothing to Do With the Nasdaq... The instant message has fast become a staple of European corporate communication. The technique spread from Finnish children to businessmen because the kids taught their parents. Nokia employed anthropologists to tell them this. Finland has become the first nation on earth to acknowledge formally the childcentric model of economic development: if you wanted a fast-growing economy, you needed to promote rapid technical change, and if you intended to promote rapid technical change, you needed to cede to children a strange measure of authority.

The Parking Meter Page - History... The world's first installed parking meter was in Oklahoma City, on July 16, 1935. Mr. Magee had been appointed to the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce traffic committee, and was assigned the task of solving the parking problems in downtown Oklahoma City. Apparently, folks who worked in the area were parking on downtown streets, staying all day, and leaving few spaces for shoppers and others who visited the central business district.

IBM: Web services : A Primer for HTTPR... Reliable HTTP (HTTPR) is a new protocol that offers the reliable delivery of HTTP packets between the server and client. This solves a number of issues that are evident in current HTTP and opens the way to reliable messaging between Web services.

Top VC Doerr apologizes for helping fuel dot-com frenzy (7/15/2001)... Silicon Valley's highest-profile venture capitalist, John Doerr, publicly apologized Sunday for his famous statement that characterized the Internet as ``the largest legal creation of wealth in the history of the planet.''

From blackholebrain - an interesting article on libraries in the internet age:... But why aren't writers suing the public libraries? Maybe the more important question is why do people still buy books? I believe the library system still works for many obvious reasons, but the primary reason libraries exist today is the same as *forever ago* when the first libraries were established: love of the craft. Writers love to write... and they love to read... and they want as many other people doing the same.

Zoom in on Los Angeles, California -- The image shows the Hollywood sign above Los Angeles, California. It is the final frame in an animation that demonstrates the wide range of spatial resolutions viewed by current state-of-the-art sensors.

Watching the Creation of Southern California's Largest Reservoir ...The new Diamond Valley Lake Reservoir east of Temecula is billed as the largest earthworks construction project in U.S. history. Construction began in 1995 and involved 31 million cubic meters of foundation excavation and 84 million cubic meters of embankment construction. See it from space courtesy of NASA's Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR).

Summer Friday Nights - Old Town Temecula... July 6th through September 28th - every Friday Night (5:00pm- 9:00pm) - it's HOT SUMMER NIGHTS IN OLD TOWN TEMECULA - bands, singing, carraige rides and more(909) 694-6412.

Roy Rogers (Leonard Franklin Slye) -- Encyclopædia Britannica Article -- American cowboy actor-singer (b. Nov. 5, 1911/12, Cincinnati, Ohio--d. July 6, 1998, Apple Valley, Calif.), starred in some 90 motion pictures and over 100 episodes of a weekly television show from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s and reigned as king of the cowboys...

OpinionJournal - Court Ruling Was No Victory For Microsoft -- King Pyrrhus, meet Bill Gates. BY ROBERT H. BORK AND KENNETH W. STARR -- While trumpeting last week's "victory" in the Court of Appeals, Microsoft executives would do well to recall the words of King Pyrrhus after his famous battle with the Romans: "One more such victory and we are lost." ...

Who would call this a win for Microsoft?... Thomas Madsen-Mygdal has excerpted and annotated the decision, showing text that affirms the lower court rulings. Microsoft hasn't won. It's just that a different judge will determine the punishment.

Noted in one of this week's Infoworld columns: "If you were supposed to understand it, we wouldn't call it code."

Extreme Programming: A Gentle Introduction. A simple design always takes less time to finish than a complex one. So always do the simplest thing that could possibly work. If you find something that is complex replace it with something simple. It's always faster and cheaper to replace complex code now, before you waste a lot more time on it. Keep things as simple as possible as long as possible by never adding functionality before it is scheduled. Beware though, keeping a design simple is hard work.

Australian IT on WEBLOGS - BLOGGING is an unfortunate word. It sounds like some worthy, rather dull activity, yet keeping a weblog, at its best, is nimble and quick-witted, hard to capture in old media prose.

Andrea's Weblog: Fried Rice Recipe - TRADITIONAL MANDARIN FRIED RICE Recipe Courtesy of Ming Tsai, (modified by Al Hawkins)

Inheriting Physics, By Susan Kitchens on her gandfather's 100th Birthday - - ... Susan writes: I'm so glad to be able to come here and hear stories about your growing-up years and your working years and to learn all manner of things that took place before my time. And grandpa, a love of learning is just one of the many things that you've demonstrated that is part of a rich intangible inheritance. I rejoice in the vitality of your mind and heart. I'm so proud to have a grandfather who has reached such a splendid great age. Even now you are still learning, and I gladly claim that as a thing I have inherited from you. Happy Birthday!

You should follow the link and read the entire essay.

Arabs See Jewish Conspiracy in Pokemon - - Oh boy! What's that saying? . . . Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you. Some Mullah obviously has too much time on his hands.

Copyright tempest over `The Wind Done Gone' is outrageous - - BY DAN GILLMOR, Mercury News : In the war raging over ``intellectual property,'' the news from the front hasn't been encouraging, as corporate interests slaughter the public good in case after case. But a lawsuit involving the work of a famous American author could help put at least one issue in front of a public that remains remarkably oblivious. On Friday, a federal judge blocked the publishing of a novel called ``The Wind Done Gone'' -- a retelling of the 1936 saga ``Gone With the Wind'' from the perspective of a slave, a half-sister of Scarlett O'Hara. The estate of Margaret Mitchell, the ``Gone With the Wind'' author, had sued on the grounds that the book violated copyright protections.

It is generally agreed that the loudest sound ever produced (in recorded history) was the volcanic eruption on Krakatoa in 1883. The blast created a sound wave that sent a tidal wave halfway across the world. The wave was so strong that it blew a Dutch warship 30 feet onto the land in the Harbor of Batavia (now Djakarta). - - - - - Joe Burns, Ph.D.

Greeting Cards - Java Lake effect greeting cards from Lake Cards Java Lake Effects Greeting Cards. Send these beautiful Java Lake effect greeting cards to your friends and loved ones for free!

My Daughter, Megan, sent me one of these with hot air balloons over a lake. It's sooooooo cool! Note: Greeting cards require that Java be enabled.

Dave Winer, Scripting News -- Reminder, it's Tuesday and that means only one thing. Take a programmer to lunch. Give your friend the programmer a hug, a meal, some fresh air, and listen. Ask how it's going. What do you think of this or that. How could it all work better. Listen. There's a mind in there. Don't be afraid. Programmers can be friendly if you just give them a chance.

BTW, all programmers want to tell you How It Works. In excruciating detail. As if you cared. Try to be patient.

The WIZ Project -- It starts with the creation of a new race of creatures, little guys called WIZes. And it follows through with how they will change the way the Human race relates to the material universe and to each other. Physically, a WIZ is a small piece of electronics, perhaps the size of a pea. It is self-powered, and in radio communication with all other WIZes. Electrically, a WIZ is a general purpose electronic circuit which will replace just about every other electronic circuit on the planet. Look at anything that has electronics in it today. A single pea-sized WIZ replaces it. And functionally, a WIZ is a bit of a "mind". A WIZ-mind is a communication and control system between a human and a WIZ-object. A WIZ-mind is able to sense its environment, make recordings of its environment, compare the current environment to previously recorded environments, and make decisions which produce the best chance of success. I see the WIZ as operating mainly in two spheres of existence. One, as a mind in all material, electrical, or mechanical objects. And secondly, as the pure beingness of a "communicator".

DaveNet : The Web is a Writing Environment -- Just as typewriters fell by the wayside as word processors and inexpensive printers came online, the big brand names of journalism are relatively slow and dilutive, and don't deliver enough flow. Amazingly the print publishers are pulling back from the Web, as if to say "Whew glad that's over." Fundamental mistake. When their point of view is no longer on the Web, there will be no more barrier to entry. What follows? Explosive deconstruction of the brand names of journalism. What's said outside the barriers is already more interesting. Eventually we will shed our need for approval from the brand names of journalism. Today they look for teddy bears and warm-fuzzies, the cute stories that mask the real one -- writers who work for others have less integrity to offer than those who do it for love. Dave Winer

Tech Workers' Stock Options Turn Into Tax Nightmares - By LIZ PULLIAM WESTON, P.J. HUFFSTUTTER, JON HEALEY, Times Staff Writers

Thousands of technology workers are facing huge tax bills by Monday's income tax filing deadline because of company stock they purchased last year that has since plummeted in value. Accountants and politicians from Silicon Valley to Boston say they have been inundated with horror stories about shares purchased with employee options that workers once had hoped would make them rich. Instead, the shares saddled them with big tax bills on profit they never saw. Many of these workers now owe far more in taxes than their stock is worth. Former Cisco engineer Jeffrey Chou, 32, owes $2.5 million in taxes on company stock he purchased last year that has since withered in value. Chou figures that if he were to sell everything he owns, including the three-bedroom townhouse that he shares with his wife and 8-month-old daughter, the family still could not pay the bill. Chou used incentive options to buy, in one transaction, about 100,000 Cisco shares in March 2000, paying 5 cents to 10 cents a share. At the time, Cisco shares were trading for $62 to $63 each. The difference between the price he paid and what the shares were worth--a total of about $7 million--is taxable to him as profit. Chou could sell his shares now, but it wouldn't solve his problem. Cisco closed Thursday at $17.98, which means that his entire stake is worth about $1.8 million. To pay his state and federal tax bills, he needs $700,000 more.

Firms underestimate power of 'blogging' - There's an Internet application that few people have heard about, although it is gaining popularity and will likely become a regular part of our working lives. It's called a Web log, or "blog." And yet, for a technology that is so useful, Web logs are surprisingly absent from corporate intranets. That's because, as with e-mail 10 years ago, few in the corporate sector understand their power -- until they begin using them regularly.

Java-enabled air conditioners - Carrier, in Farmington, Conn., is one of the leading consumer and commercial providers of heating, ventilating, and refrigeration systems. The company inked a deal this week with IBM that will put Java-enabled microchips inside carrier air conditioners to allow air conditioner owners to remotely set the temperature or to switch on or off their air conditioners. The system will also send fault code and diagnostic alerts in real time to a service technician's cell phones or PDAs. Alerts can also be sent via e-mail or fax.

Harness the excess power in your PC to fight Cancer - I'm a fan and supporter of Seti@home but here's something new. Computer owners have the opportunity to use their personal computing resources to perform scientific research, such as searching for improved treatments and potential cures for cancer and other diseases, by downloading a computer program to their PCs from the Internet. It is projected that the resulting "virtual supercomputer" will ultimately be capable of more than 50 teraflops (trillions of operations per second) of computational power and involve millions of participants, and will be ten times more powerful than today's highest performing supercomputers. In many ways this is even more appealing than Seti@home.