How to remove the "welcome" page in emacs

As simple as adding to your .emacs :

(setq inhibit-startup-message t)

Read on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/744672/unable-to-hide-welcome-screen-in-emacs

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All watched over by machines of loving grace

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

Richard Brautigan

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Of space shuttles and software

Today I found this article in News Ycombinator:

http://www.spinellis.gr/blog/20111030/

I subscribe everything said in it as it's inline with my experience in software. Engineers are most of the times too ambitious in their asumptions and Space Races has been a very good testbed for different ways of understanding engineering.

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«We Really Don't Know How To Compute!»

Really interesting and eye opener talk by one of the greatest computers scientist of all times (in my modest p.o.v), Gerald Jay Sussman:

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know-How-To-Compute

If I'm still a developer and still find programming an intellectual experiences is thanks to him. Lisp and Scheme make me discover that programming could be a really interesting experience. Maybe it's time to take a look at clojure 😉

 

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IPython, ubuntu, pip and readline

So, you installed PIP in your Ubuntu system and then decided to install IPython using PIP (for example inside a virtualenv), just to discover that after installing ipython does not support autocomplete?

The solution is to install the package libreadline-dev and reinstall IPython 🙂

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Book: Mining of Massive Datasets

Mining Massive Datasets

I've downloaded the book «Mining of Massive Datasets», a free book on data mining and machine learning. You can download the book too in:

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/mmds.html

 

I'm really enjoying studying this book because it will not try to show you the most simple techniques, as does for example Collective Intelligence, but concentrate in real techniques used by real companies. The book is all the time telling war histories of real projects, which is a refreshing thing. This field can be very harsh and theorical and it's nice to remember why Data Mining is one of the hottest disciples now.

As part of my study of this book I'm going to write a series of posts explaining (for you and more important... for me!) some of the most interesting concepts.

As an example of the utility of these techniques the authors write the following:

Cambridge Press does, however, retain copyright on the work, and we expect that you will acknowledge our authorship if you republish parts or all of it. We are sorry to have to mention this point, but we have evidence that other items we have published on the Web have been appropriated and republished under other names. It is easy to detect such misuse, by the way, as you will learn in Chapter 3.

Yes, to stole Intellectual Property from Data Mining experts can be a dangerous business 😉

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New books: Artificial Intelligence (a modern approach) and Reamde

Well, now I've my book for Stanford's AI Class and it's heavy as hell. As a bonus I've bought the new book by Neal Stephenson "Reamde". Someone has to tell Mr. Stephenson that it's possible to write a novel in less than 1000 pages!

Artificial Intelligence: a modern approach Reamde

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Enrolled in Machine Learning Stanford… too!

Yes, I've enrolled in the Machine Learning Course of Stanford University. The thing is that I've studied Artificial Intelligence before and the AI class is like a refresher for things I've learnt before. But I've never took classes on Machine Learning and I'm excited about that course 🙂

AI class

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Android, Imap, SSL and self-signed certs

So, today I needed to access one of my emails accounts from my Android smartphone.

I though it will be easy to configure it and tried many times but never worked. I was getting crazy until I found that: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1016 Yes, that's another case of "it's not a bug but a feature". It seems that the Android email app doesn't accept SSL self-signed certs by default and you can't do anything for forcing it to accept them. Seriously, who was the brillant mind who thought this could be a good idea?

Epic fail

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New books: Data Analysis and Calculus Made Easy

Two new books arrived from Bookdepository.

Data AnalysisCalculus made easy

Data Analysis Calculus made easy My story with "Calculus made easy" is a bit special. I was computing teacher for old people in a Spanish foundation years ago. One of my students was a retired civil engineer with which I spend long hours talking about science and maths.

One day he told me that he was looking for an old book he used in the 1950's to learn Calculus, a book written by Sylvanus P. Thomson that was inscredible. After searching for it in Google and Amazon we found the title and he was thrilled when we found the book. I was curious about that book and found it one of the best books for learning maths. Now, finally, I've my own copy of the great work of Sylvanus P. Thomson: Calculus made easy.

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