Ruby 1.9 character encoding field notes · Fingertips
The biggest problem with receiving data from external sources is trust. Sources can lie about their encoding or provide broken data. Sometimes it gets mangled accidentally and sometimes someone is attacking your application with a carefully crafted payload.
Any software project is a collaborative project. It has at least two developers, the original developer and the original developer a few weeks or months later when the train of thought has long left the station. This later self needs to reestablish the context of a particular piece of code each time a new bug occurs or a new feature needs to be implemented.
Publishers Lunch - To: All Macmillan authors/illustrators and the literary agent community
Letter from macmillan to their authors on how they want to market ebooks. Direct publisher to retailer sales, even playing field for all retailers (same price, no exclusive deals for kindle etc). Exciting times for consumers, worrying for distributors. The book industry is flattening out, less room for middlemen.