Recent Dilbert favorites

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Recent Doonesbury favorites

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Critical thinking

Nearly everyone is in favor of critical thinking. This is evidence that the term is in danger of becoming meaningless. Skeptics should spearhead the effort to clarify what critical thinking is-and what it is not. The stakes are high.

I live in North America. I have no idea how phone dialing works anywhere else. Fortunately, there is a website that takes all the guessing out of it.

[International Dialects of English Archive]

All recordings are in English, are of native speakers, and include both English language dialects and English spoken in the accents of other languages.

[Cheat sheet roundup]

Cheat sheets for lots of developer topics:

• Web Development
• Databases / SQL
• Language
• Version Control

I've seen the RSI formula many times but never seen this algebraic simplification that makes the measure intuitive.

Substitute y = U / D
 
RSI = 100 - [100 / [ 1 + y] ]
RSI = 100 * [1 - 1 / [ 1 + y] ] (factor out 100)
RSI = 100 * [1 + y - 1] / [ 1 + y] (common denom of 1 + y)
RSI = 100 * y / [ 1 + y] (reduce)
RSI = 100 * [U / D] / [ 1 + U / D] (substitute y)
RSI = 100 * [U / D] / [ [D + U] / D] (common denom)
RSI = 100 * U / [D + U] (elim div by D)

esignallearning.com comments on this:

The RSI is a fairly simple formula, but is difficult to explain without pages of examples.

Clearly this is not so. RSI is the ratio of up-moves to the sum of all moves scaled onto the range 0 to 100. That's really simple to explain.

Marshalling/interop

• Call Unmanaged DLLs from C#, Killing Processes Cleanly
• .NET interop marshaling made easier

Stolen SideKick telephone recovered

• New York Times
• Blog

Reporting software

Excerpted from another email group I follow -- can't remember where I saw this.

I suggest using SQL Server Reporting Services and authoring all you reports in RDL format. Then, if you don't like how SSRS is working, or don't like the licensing, you can pop over to FYIReporting and get their open-source version and is RDL compliant...

C5 generic collection library
C5 is a library of generic collection classes for C# and other CLI languages, as found in Microsoft .Net version 2.0 and Mono version 1.2.

New York Hack
New York taxi driver's blog

CartoonRetro
Los Angeles cartoonist posts doodles with commentary