January 2015 Archives

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On February 25, 2010, two female doctors were in a car accident in Russia. They were traveling in the middle lane, reserved for emergency vehicles (such as theirs) when another car entered the lane as well.


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Pictured above is something called a CAPTCHA — a “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.


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During World War II, the UK and U.S. focused their air warfare plans on the use of strategic bombing, employing long- and short-range aircraft to lead the way and provide ground infantry with an upper hand.


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In 1963, France and West Germany placed a tariff on the importation of chicken. For the United States this was a significant tax — chickens were a large American export at the time, and exports of the poultry fell dramatically soon after.


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With rare exception, American involvement in World War II was focused in Europe and the Pacific. Few acts of war took place on the North American continent, a function primarily of the United States’ geographic isolation.


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You’re making dinner plans with a group of friends. The group is divided between two choices of similar price — that is, the cost of the meals isn’t an issue — and is at an impasse. Some prefer the 3-star restaurant about five minutes away with a reputation for quick service.


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Thomas Edward Jones was born in 1824 in England, the son of a tailor from Westminster. The last time his name made the newspaper, save for his obituary, was in 1844, when he fell off a boat traveling between Tunis and Algeirs.


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Abraham Lincoln, at 6’4″, is the tallest President in American history (tied with Lyndon B. Johnson). And while being tall can’t hurt for those aspiring to a career in politics, it probably was not a core reason for his rise to fame.


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Last weekend I met up with a few friends and continued my hike a few miles farther north along the Appalachian Trail.


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On June 15, 1985, Ken Allen — the age 13 or 14 — was found walking around the San Diego Zoo unattended. Zoo workers managed to return Allen to his home, but only temporarily.


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On January 25, 1848, a man named James W. Marshall discovered gold in Coloma, California. As news spread, as many as 300,000 people came to the greater San Francisco area in search of similar fortunes; the California Gold Rush was in full force.


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See the speck inside the glowing area in the picture above? It’s a person, standing in a cave called Son Doong. Son Doong is in Vietnam, near the Laos border, in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park.


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The U-boat was a German submarine from World War II, one which at the time went unrivaled by the rest of the world. The German U-boat strategy, especially at the beginning of the war, involved targeting British cargo ships.


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The history of the written word, tautologically, extends back to the beginning of non-oral history itself.   It predates books, certainly.  But it also predates paper.  Paper was first developed by the Chinese nearly 2000 years ago but was not manufactured by Europeans until the 14th century.


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A focus on social media engagement metrics — the likes, re-tweets, favorites, re-blogs, pins, comments, shares, followers, fans and friends — could be holding companies back from realizing social's full potential.


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On Christmas Eve, the legend goes, Santa Claus travels the globe leaving presents for good little boys and girls, under their Christmas trees and in their ornamental fireplace-hung stockings.


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These days, it seems like everybody is talking about microservices. You can read a lot about it in hundreds of articles and blog posts, but my recommended starting point would be this article by Martin Fowler, which initiated the huge discussion about this new architectural concept.


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As I've written before, the new functional features in Java 8 is a game changer. It’s a new world for the Java developer and it's time to adjust to it. In this post we’ll look at some alternative solutions to the traditional loop.


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Make your desk much bigger. You need 30 square feet of desk space in your office. Not 30 squares in one desk, but 30 squares locally available. Get your desk completely clutter free from the surface of the desk up to 6″ off the desk. Only exception should be a monitor arm.


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For the past few days, I’ve been reading a lot of different perspectives on the tragedy that left 17 dead over a period of three days in Paris, France. 12 were killed during the first attack at the Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly) magazine offices.


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Apple Inc. (AAPL) changed the prices of software applications from Canada to Europe last week, in one of the company’s broadest global responses to currency fluctuations in recent years. With the U.S.


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The Bahamas is made up of roughly 700 islands scattered southeast of Florida and north of Cuba.  One of those islands, Staniel Cay, is a sand-covered reef in the center of the Bahama’s Exuma island chain; it is one of the few Exuma islands with a permanent population.


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In 1993, the chancellor of the National University of Colombia, Antanas Mockus, addressed a crowd of students — a few thousand, by some estimations — only to find the student body hostile.  Mockus was the subject of booing and the occasional thrown item, so he reacted.


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Two hundred Ugandan children, dead. Roughly 4,000 more harmed, many rendered incapable of living full lives as adults. All since 2009 — and with no end in sight. If you think the killer here is Joseph Kony, you’re wrong.


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o9’s Co-founder and Chairman was recently profiled by D CEO magazine where he talks about his vision, leadership, passion and what drove him to launch his second act with o9 Solutions. Here are some excerpts from the article.


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A stand-up meeting (or simply "stand-up") is "a daily team-meeting held to provide a status update to the team members", according to Wikipedia.


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In 2006, a report published in Inc.com concluded — ridiculously — that productivity losses cost U.S. employers more than half a trillion dollars — $544,000,000,000, to be a little more precise. The report found that in an eight-hour day, employers spent an average of 1.


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The city of Banos de Agua Santa is located in central Ecuador and, because of its proximity to the Amazon River basin, is a major tourist center in the region.


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When archaeologists began digging below an abandoned building in Jerusalem’s Old City 15 years ago as part of an effort to expand a museum there, they likely had no idea what they were about to stumble upon.


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It’s crunch time at work. You have five projects all due within the next few days, your big holiday campaign is only a few weeks away, you’re monitoring Facebook, Twitter and Instagram on the go and you have two co-workers out with the flu.


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A year ago, my boss announced that our large New York ad agency would be moving to an open office. After nine years as a senior writer, I was forced to trade in my private office for a seat at a long, shared table. It felt like my boss had ripped off my clothes and left me standing in my skivvies.


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On May 2, 2011, a team of United States special forces infiltrated Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and killed the al-Qaeda founder. His death was the result of a decade-long hunt throughout the region and part of greater anti-terrorism efforts over that period.


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Margarine — sometimes called oleo — isn’t butter. While butter is made from butterfat (from milk), margarine comes from plant oils and often contains no dairy at all.


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FreshDirect is an online grocer in New York City. It serves one of the more expensive places in the world. A pound chevre — goat cheese – sells on FreshDirect for $24.99 a pound.


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Lina Medina’s parents were worried.  Lina, one of nine children in this poor family of the Peruvian Andes, had a seemingly inexplicable abdominal growth — which was growing larger by the week.  Fearing she had cancer, Lina’s parents brought her to the doctor.


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