Living in code

http://ixazon.dynip.com/~cmeclax/nilsimsa.html

Check this out. I was pointed towards this the other day by a colleague of mine. A nilsimsa code is very similar to a hash with one key difference. The key attribute of a nilsimsa code is that when a small change occurs in the source data, only a small change occurs in the nilsimsa. This is the opposite of what you'd expect in a good hash function.

How is this useful? Well take anti-spam for instance. Two peices of text that are mostly the same but contain a few minor differences can be detected as being from the same origin with nilsimsa codes. This way you could have a single code for an email that could detect a whole slew of auto-munged versions of the same mail.

Challenge to the reader... How else could you use nilsimsa codes? I can think of some cool applications...

I spent the past week out of town at an internal developer's conference for work. I can't tell you how awesome it is to meet people who are passionate about what they do. I got to meet the best and brightest at the company. I took it as a tremendous learning opportunity, a chance to network, and also as a challenge to see how far I myself can take myself and just how good I can become.

Some people write code for a living, but most of the people I met this week would be writing code even if they weren't getting paid for it. Great stuff.