LaTeX Coffee Stains is a new LaTeX style by Hanno Rein that will add coffee stains to LaTeX documents, in case you’re too hip to do it the old fashioned way.

This is a great summary of the low-level API differences between Windows and Linux file systems.

Windows vs. Unix File System Semantics – Conifer Systems.

Starting with a simple shell script, Don Stewart shows how Haskell can be readable, safe, and robust in this slide show.

Practical Haskell: scripting with types « Control.Monad.Writer.

Two easy introductions to monad transformers in Haskell.

The first is a PDF, Monad Transformers Step by Step, that builds up complex functionality step by step using monad transformers.  It shows in detail how to combine transformers, and why you would want to, two things which had thoroughly confused me.

The second is another brief post from A Neighborhood of Infinity, Grok Haskell Monad Transformers.  This shows how to work with a stack of monad transformers using lift.

Here’s a great, understandable introduction to monads.  He builds up monads as solutions to common problems.  I love explanations like that!

A Neighborhood of Infinity: You Could Have Invented Monads! (And Maybe You Already Have.).

I totally agree with this Wired article. All of the valid arguments by music pirates have been satisfied by the music industry.  There’s no excuse anymore. If you insist on pirating music, it’s because you want to take things you didn’t pay for, commonly called stealing.

Two great points in Dave Winer’s post: Twitter is not a public utility, even if it’s been acting like one; and spend less money on advertising and more money on making your website easier to use.

Ted Dzuiba makes some pretty good points in this post, but once you have to scale past one server things start to break down.

Taco Bell Programming

Dave Winer is doing some interesting work towards a new real-time content protocol he’s calling FeedHose. It’s like a feed aggregator combined with a subscription hub. It’s similar to the PubSubHubBub/rssCloud to XMPP bridge I made last year, but better. He’s pretty good at forming communities around his protocols, so hopefully this will gain some traction. We need some progress in open, real-time content distribution.

A mob destroyed a wildlife sanctuary in Belize after a “psychic” claims that two missing children were fed to the crocodiles there. Disgraceful. Read more: Psychic destruction in Belize : Pharyngula.