Document Centric isabout the disconnect between relational databases and regular users, andwhy people keep stuffing data into spreadsheets and the like instead of'real' databases.

(They do. Joel Spolsky has written about the Excel team's surpriseat finding this out about how real users used Excel.)

(From Carlos de la Guardia .)

One of the things I like about the Python interpreter is thatit is just about right for doing little system behavior tests,like how various systems handled a TCP port binding issue . This is because Python islow level enough to be relatively close to the actual system, so you canbe pretty sure that what you're seeing isn't Python-specific behavior,while at the same time being high level enough that you can do the testsin a couple of lines.

Strictly speaking you don't need

Years and years ago, I bound a function key in my window manager tostart xlock and then carefully trained myself to hit F10 (theaforementioned function key) the moment I got up from my chair toleave my cubicle-office. It didn't matter how trivial the errand or howshort it would be; I'd hit F10 and locked the screen. By now I havethis habit so ingrained that it's become one of my little twitches .

We have an access-

A while back I wrote, about TCP portbinding:

Unfortunately, you can't bind a port to the generic wildcard addressif anyone is using the port on a specific IP address, hence the Apacherestart problem. (Why this port binding limitation is a sensibleis beyond the scope of this margin, but it is, however annoying itperiodically is.)

Today I feel like explaining why. The core problem is deciding whogets handed a new connection (or for UDP, a new packet); if