K e n n e t h T u c k e r . C O M

Merb was started two years ago by Ezra Zygmuntowicz as a tiny framework to serve ERb templates from Mongrel. This quickly grew into much more and carved out a niche as an alternative Rails stack. Merbists focused on among other things a small speedy core, being ORM/JavaScript agnostic, and having a rigorous API for extensions.

MIT researchers have demonstrated the first laser built from germanium that can produce wavelengths of light useful for optical communication. It’s also the first germanium laser to operate at room temperature.

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XML to DDL is a set of Python programs that converts an XML representation of a database into a set of SQL or DDL (Data Definition Language) commands. In addition, it can examine the difference between two XML files and output a sequence of SQL statements (normally ALTER statements) to bring one database up-to-date with the XML schema. You can also download the XML schema directly from the database. Finally, there's a tool to convert your schema into HTML for documentation purposes. XML to DDL currently supports the most recent versions of PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, and Firebird databases. source...

Webmasterpro has published a study that analyzes the install base of various office packages among German users. While Microsoft Office comes out top (72%), open source rival OpenOffice is already installed on 21.5% of all PCs and growing.

Malware writers are rational, as are botnet herders. They would far rather attack Windows PCs as there are lots more of them. So you are much less likely to be bothered by malware if you use a Mac, or run Linux on your PC.

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The NY Times reports that China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world's largest maker of wind turbines

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Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, explained that users of the social networking site are reacting to a mystery application that may or may not be spying on them. Facebook users are passing around a message, warning each other about the application, called the 'Unnamed app', and unwittingly creating an opportunity for hackers.

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