Autarchy of the Private Cave

Today in mail:

AdaCore is pleased to announce the launch of the new Ada Gems series. The Gems will cover a wide-range of Ada programming topics and will often include executable source code and other related resources to help understand and discover the Ada programming language. The first Gem, written by Bob Duff entitled “Limited Aggregates in Ada 2005”, is available at:

adacore.com/category/developers-center/gems

I’m planning to reconstruct (based on literature and some original research) a specific cellular regulatory network. For this I decided to use some specialized biological modelling software. The requirements I had were pretty simple:

• must have SBML support. SBML appears de-facto standard for biological model notation;
• must be fairly frequently updated;
• should be feature-packed and easy to use. However, this requirement can only be checked after some use, and I was pre-selecting, not reviewing.

Software put into the title of the post was found to be the most mature and interesting from the usage perspective. However, there are more than those mentioned software tools reviewed. Reviews are based primarily on the information from official websites and documentation; some tools (like VirtualCell) are reviewed somewhat more thoroughly.
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This is a rather old method, applicable to magnetic-stripe cards. This is also a good warning/reminder for any card holders – do not let the card out of your sight even for a second.

And do not forget, that simple photocopy of your card’s both sides is sufficient to buy anything on the internet (anything *your card* can handle, that is). It might not be funny do discover that your card was used to buy a motorbike in Africa, though you never traveled outside the US

Update: video (http://www.youtube.com/v/sexUus0igWs) was removed from Youtube due to copyright claims.

came across this photo at Flickr. Must-see for any StarWars-lovers!
(“read more” for the photo here…)
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I think Sequoia View is a must-have utility program.
“Why?” – you may ask.

Because it lets you actually see you hard disk hogs. With this program you will know exactly which files/folders occupy too much hard disk space to keep them any longer.

The program is free, latest version is 1.3 and it was released in November 2002. However, WinXP is supported (don’t know about Vista).

See this page for more information and the download link.

Alternatively, contact me and I’ll try to mail you the setup program (which is circa 500KB).

Update: SequoiaView appears to ignore files larger than or equal to 4 GiB. Please comment to prove or disprove.

Update 2: here’s a KDirStat-based alternative, WinDirStat.

Nonanticipatory (system or predictor) is a (system or predictor) where the output y(t) at some specific instant t₀ only depends on the input x(t) for values of t less than or equal to t₀. Therefore these kinds of (systems or predictors) have outputs and internal states that depend only on the current and previous input values.

In simpler words, nonanticipatory systems can “take into account” only past and present, and cannot base their behaviour/decisions on future expectations.

Nonanticipatory systems are also known as causal systems.

BamBook is a Kyiv-based internet shop.

On the 28th of February, 2007, I ordered a book from them, and paid for it with a credit card at the time of order. Soon I had a confirmation email, which said that the book will be delivered not later than the 16th of March (they promise 10-working-days delivery, so the date looked fine).

At the end of March, after writing several emails to BamBook, they responded with an official-looking “sorry for delay” and “we’ll do our best to deliver soon”.

After calling them on the 3rd of April I came to know that they at the moment actually do not have the book I ordered. They asked if I’m willing to wait for around two weeks, so that they “try” to order that book and then (add 10 working days) deliver it to me. I said NO, I WANT MY MONEY BACK with that kind of service you have! OK, they said.

Nothing changed until April, 23. So I called them again. They promised to return money again.

Another call was on the 3rd of May. They said that “refund is being processed”. I hope you imagine what kind of a company they are, if a simple refund processing requires whole month to be complete… or not complete, as nothing changed as of today, the 5th of May.

Update: as of May, 27, there are no changes, despite some more efforts put into getting anything from this real crappy Bambook internet-shop.

Conclusion: avoid BamBook internet-shop at all costs. Better go give your money to the beggar on the street – faster, with no troubles, and no waiting for anything.