Breaking News: Google Claims Everything is Dangerous, Shuts Down the Internet


Update: this is the Google explanation (thanks Ofer).

While casually indulging in my favorite Saturday afternoon pass-time of Googling for… myself, I was rather surprised by the unusual results:

What? pashabitz.com may harm my computer? *My* computer? How? Wait. Every single result there seems to hold the power of hurting my computer. Do you have something against Pasha Bitz, Google? Or are you just trying to protect me from a severe case of Narcissism? And what happens when you do take the horrible risk and click the deadly link?

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Why Did People Wear Toilet Seat Covers During the Renaissance??


Left: Rembrandt, A Scholar, 1631, Oil on canvas.
Right: Me, picture by Aviel Lazar, 2009.

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The Right Place


All I could think of for the first two minutes was…CSS! :)

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Logging Tips for Serenity Now


There are few reasons to have your code log extensive error/debug messages. One of them is to help with debugging issues on a remote (or worse, production) environment. Here are some tips to help you get the most out of this kind of logging:

Log Actual Values

With a well placed log message you will be able to easily pinpoint the line of code where the problem occurred. Now you’re left staring at that line of code and trying to guess what caused the error. This will be so much easier if you include in the log message the actual run-time values that your code worked with. This includes stuff like the parameters to the method, fields of the class, session values etc.

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Movie Review: Body of Lies


The good: Leonardo DiCaprio is “star power” defined. Holding the movie up in the air all by himself. Even though, a hint of one-sidedness is noticeable (Danny Archer from “Blood Diamond”, Billy Costigan from “The Departed” and Roger Ferris from “Body of Lies” are all the same guy, really).

The bad: Alon Abutbul is the ultimate in Israeli terrorist-portraying technology.

Comic relief: Simon McBurney as the one-man-show homosexual secret black-ops branch of the CIA run out of the woods (the C-I-Gay).

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Useful Math - Why the FIFA Ranking System Sucks


The FIFA ranking system is used to determine the seeding of national teams for various international competitions. It is considered absolutely broken by every football fan. For example, the Israeli national team is currently ranked 15th(1) in the world, while Sweden, for example, is only 29th. Enough said.

I decided to look into the method used by FIFA to determine the rankings, in order to understand why the system is so obviously broken and whether it can be fixed. To save you reading the detailed explanation in the Wikipedia article above, the method, in broad terms, goes like this:
1. For each game played by a given team, award the team a point amount using the formula:
Amount = [result points] X [match status] X [opposition strength] X [regional strength].
We’ll look into the specifics soon.
2. Take then average of all the Amount values for all the games played by the team in the last year. This average is the score used to determine the rankings.
(In fact, the last four years are taken into account, but this isn’t important to our discussion)

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Continuous Integration


Made with toondoo

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Writing for rest.co.il


Yes, forgot to mention, I can now be seen pimping my writing to Israel’s leading online restaurants site, rest.co.il.
(Hebrew only)
Some examples are here and here.

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My First Comic Strip!


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Yes, I Want to Date a Gorsky!


Being a long-time and proud member of the “Russian Jews United” group on Facebook, I have found the following message waiting in my inbox today:

Single? Need a fresh start?

Try:
http://www.rajeusa.com/rajemate/survey.php

Nice service for nice people.

Gary Linkov

Well, Gary, I don’t believe we’ve met, but that’s really…nice. Thank you.

“I am single! I do need a fresh start!”, I thought.
Nice people?? That is me!!

With thoughts of beautiful Jewish girls with rich daddies, I immediately clicked on the link and landed on the “RAJE” homepage:

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