This is Ingvar Mattsson's essays archive. The essays currently available are:
- A brief digression of annual "divorces per marriage" statistics for Sweden,
- for both same-sex and opposite-sex unions.
- Time and space complexity
- A brief look at algorithmical complexity, with a few examples of trade-offs.
- Data structures and their approximate time complexity for some common
- operations.
- KOM, USENET and...
- A brief review of electronic fora from 1974 onwards, lumping thingsinto broad, rough categories.
- Moral outrages
- Some general waffling on moral outrages and more specific mumblingsabout one specific instance of moral outrage. WARNING: contents maycause anger in readers.
- Lisp software pckaging
- A small comment on the state of lisp library packaging.
- Perception of ethical and non-ethical behaviours in non-profits
- A brief elocution on how trust can be managed, broken and possibly repaired, illustrated by the early 2008 allegations of inappropriate behaviour by Jimbo Wales.
- Terrorism
- Reflections on the London bombings of 2005-07-07.
- Syliva-letter
- An open letter (probably still unread) to Sylvia Browne.
- Skepticism
- A few notes on thoughts about skepticism and faith.
- Obvious and non-obvious security problems
- A short list of some obvious and non-obvious security problems, will be expanded in the fullness of time.
- Science and technology
- An essay probing the distinction between "science" and "technology" and how this relates to an assortment of things.
- Interactive development
- A small piece on why I like interactive development environments. Will probably get a companion piece on why I like incremental development environments too.
- Phorm, what is it and what can you do?
- A rantlet on in-pipe advertising generation, as exemplified by Phorm/WebWise.
- Non-metric systems of measure
- This essay is an attempt to collect assorted non-metric systems of measure, at the moment primarily concentrating on the pre-decimalised, standardised Swedish measures and UK/US imperial measures.
- NOC tools
- A brief definition of system/network status monitoring problem space(s)and proposed possible solutions.
- On names and databases
- A small essay on the perils of names and other truths.
- Mangling input
- A short rant as regards mangling input and when you, maybe, should trust that your users are actually giving you what you want.
- Mailman Day
- A light-hearted look at this duodecimal occurence in the year.
- Left behind?
- A brief discussions with the risks of trying to make life good for those you leave behind as Rapture takes you bodily into Heaven.
- Incremental development
- A brief tale of interactive development, taking place over three daysand maybe five to ten hours of actual coding.
- Computer games and DRM
- A very slanted view as to why the current trend in PC game anti-piracy is making me much less likely to buy games.
- Is emacs large?
- A short comparison of installed sinze between nvi, vim and emacs.
- Swedish manual voting process
- A description of how the Swedish paper ballot system works.
- Documents and workflow
- A brief note on document management, roughly broken down into "document storage" and "workflow processing".
- Copyright and linking
- A short essay on copyright and linking. Needs fleshing out but does, at the moment, at least present arguments for and against "linking is derivation" and there are good arguments both for and against.
- CGI script security
- A short essay on CGI script security and (specifically) one method of increasing it. Not by vast amounts and mostly from automated CGI execution and parameter feeding.
- Binary numbers
- A look at binary numbers, boolean functions and cryptography.
- Bi-linguality
- A whine, exploring the advantages (obvious) and disadvantages of bi-linguality, especially when one's native tounge isn't widely spoken in the immediate area.