money transfer

I'm trying to solve the puzzle of sending money between different accounts, without the use of checks and snailmail.

I use my Washington Mutual account to deposit checks (and, rarely, take cash). Then I send money from there to pay my bills. That works perfectly; not very fast, but perfectly.
I have a HELOC with Wachovia. With all their stupidity and bureaucracy, the conditions are good. To manage money transfers, I also have a bank account with Wachovia. But sending money to that account or from that account takes over a week in most cases, and they can randomly cancel a transaction, pronouncing it "unusual". Say, to pay off $12k, I have to cut this into $1.5k pieces and send them day after day, or else Wachovia would cancel it.
I also have an etrade account. This is the most efficient - I'm supposed to be able to use it to transfer money back and forth, to and from my WAMU and Wachovia accounts. Theoretically.

So, every time I need to send money from one place to another, it takes days. Where, I wonder, are those tricks that I've seen in the movies since 10 years ago - a click, and the money miraculously appear on another account? Which century is it?

new java keyword suggestion

You know that while in an instance method you can reference the instance using this, in a static method there is no way to reference the class. I suggest to use the word here

public class AllTests extends TestSuite {
  public static Test suite() {
    TestSuite result = new TestSuite(here.class.getName());
    ...

moon hoax got me

The photograph:

and the explanation: You can see in this photograph that the astronaut on the right is much longer and at a different angle to the one on the left. This isn't at all strange if you consider the slopes on the landscape. There is a dip in the surface between the two figures. The shadow on the right is sloping downhill, the shadow on the left uphill.

I think it makes sense for someone to go ahead and try to reproduce this kind of photograph, somewhere on the beach. I know, they are not such idiots in NASA to produce so poorly made fake photographs to public, but this one is really amazing.

Intelligent Design Patterns

Could you name any? I wonder if we could come up with a decent set of such patterns, in three groups, of course - creational, structural and behavioral.

Say, like this:

Creational

• Separate light from darkness
  When creating the unverse, it is important to separate light matter from dark matter. Light matter is observable (see "Observer" pattern), and consists of particles, such as quarks and bozons. Dark matter consists of unknown things and shows only in equations.
  


• Separate water from earth
  Water penetrates every hole, and so it is good for running unittests on things - roofs, vessels. Beer is a subclass of water. Earth should be used for creating all other things, including humans.

(Sorry, I'm too lazy - please proceed.)

Ruby vs Java

A very interesting article: Ruby off the Rails

"As you've seen, Ruby's syntax is quite different from that of the Java language, but it's amazingly easy to pick up. Moreover, some things are just plain easier to do in Ruby than they are in the Java language.

The nice thing about learning new languages, as programming language polyglots will tell you, is that nothing says they can't play together. Being able to code in multiple languages will make you more versatile in the face of both humdrum programming tasks and more complicated ones. It will also greatly increase your appreciation for the programming language you call home."

Ajax on Rails

One more great link on Ajax and Rails (and Ruby in the background): http://www.onlamp.com/lpt/a/5944

"In a few short months, Ajax has moved from an obscure and rarely used technology to the hottest thing since sliced bread. This article introduces the incredibly easy-to-use Ajax support that is part of the Ruby on Rails web application framework."

(by the way, it is not a theory - a rails/ajax app is currently running on my laptop)

Anton, could you concoct an ajax framework in Haskell? Might be 10k times cooler, no?