Wednesday, March 27, 2002

Share the Source! Microsoft has released (beta) source code to a version of the Common Language Infrastructure.  The license restricts it to "non-commercial use," but includes "personal experimentation" as one of the possibilities.  My favorite sentence from the license agreement: "You may use any information in intangible form that you remember after accessing the Software," so that seems to me (a non-lawyer) to remove some of the fear of being "contaminated" by studying the source. [Later: the consensus is that it is a poison pill.  A good starting point for the this discussion is Sam Ruby's Radio Weblog.] 10:30:49 AM

But for the web... I wouldn't know the meaning of "far niente," an Italian phrase I ran across in my reading this morning.  The Google translator says "to make nothing," but obviously this is an idiom that means something slightly different.  A Google search on the phrase produces a site that gives the "romantic translation"--"without a care".  This is obviously the meaning intended in what I'm was reading--Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence. 9:03:56 AM

NCAA probabilities revisited My tournament calculator predicts an Oklahoma-Kansas final game, with the Sooners favored over Indiana 57.5% to 42.5% and the Jayhawks over Maryland 57% to 43%.  If that works out, Kansas is a 3.5 point favorite.  The probabilities of each team winning the championship are: Kansas 37.17% Maryland 25.22% Oklahoma 23.35% Indiana 14.24% 8:54:07 AM

© Copyright 2003 Jim Klopfenstein. Last update: 3/14/2003; 11:41:20 AM.