Fortnightly Mailing

SpeedyFeed - getting RSS feeds into one place

SpeedyFeed (via Jay Cross) seems to provide an easy way to get a set of RSS feeds into one place. There is no limit to the number, but as you can see from this example - which contains some of the RSS feeds I keep an eye on - plus my own, any more than 6 and you have to scroll down to see all of them. If someone more fluent than I am knows how to grab the relevant bits of the source code from the SpeedyFeed page, and edit it so that it can be dropped into a web page of choice, I would like to hear from them.

The war (sic) over software patents in the European Union

No Lobbyists As Such is 400 page electronic book by Florian Mueller, founder of the NoSoftwarePatents campaign, published in June 2006, telling the story of how the EU software patent directive was defeated:       

"Relive the ups and downs, the moments of joy, the setbacks, and the intensity of one of the most bitterly contested fights in EU history. Understand the background to the dramatic turns of events in the process. Get a look behind the scenes of political decision-making and lobbying. Meet the key opponents and proponents of software patents. Read about the motivations they had, the methods they employed, and the arguments they exchanged."

No need to use email. If your role is to be on the bottom of things.

In 1977 the eminent Stanford mathematician Donald Knuth took 10 years out from writing the multi-volume Art of Computer Programming to develop TeX, an Open Source typesetting programme, and METAFONT, an Open Source font design programme. As a result, subsequent volumes of the Art of Computer Programming (and many of the rest of the world's computer-set technical publications) look nearly as good as work set in hot metal by a skilled monotype or linotype machine operator. (My dad, who died in 1985, and had trained as a compositor before becoming a typographer, would have been pleased about the development of TeX and METAFONT: he used to fulminate about what he saw as the poor quality of the best computer set printing that was available in the early 1980s.)

In 1990 Knuth decided to stop using email. Here is an extract from his  quirky (but tempting!) commentary on the decision:

"Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration."

Knuth does accept faxes. But these he deals with roughly every six months.

2006 article about Knuth.