I think we can't have a web today without JavaScript. We keep trying to go back to what things were, instead of moving forward and excepting the web for what it is.
1.You are correct about the potential for a SQL injection. User input should be checked before entered into a SQL statement. However, for learning purposes it was skipped.
2. There are free apps that wee allow you to take a web page and turn it into a kiosk app. Specifically in iOS6 you can block the home button and limit browsing to what ever website you want. The whole point is for low budget company who doe not want to invest the time or the money into an iOS or Android app.
In all truth, if the government wants your emails, they will get them. Emails can be subpoenaed by court. You can run your own secure mail server and all, but the communication can always be intercepted by a middle man. If you have the need for a truly secure email, encrypt the message, it doesn't really matter what service you use.
Wouldn't you consider that a very extreme situation? Also, I am not aware of a MAX_INT in python. As far as I know it is the limits of your memory. If you are trying to work with such big numbers you should really use something a little more than Python and Bisection.
I think anything above 2.6 is fair game. Then again, it depends on the system. I have been forced before to develop in python 2.4 and less for specific platforms.
All good valid points. The article gives a high overview but lacks on the detail. All these points are valid and some mentioned in the article. The author mentioned a few times that the for-loops should be replaced with while-loops based on convergence tolerance. As for the bisection interval, I am not sure the basic c=(a+b)/2 is not enough. Can you provide an example where it fails?
If it was more focused on math I would agree. However, the focus is on the solution rather the technique. It is a nice refresher to those who have seen the information before.
The easy way to solve the equation is to send it to wolfram alpha and wait for a result. I think the intention was to not use anything beside standard library. Using the R language is equivalent to using NumPy, SciPy or any other tool. As for the Python version, I have no clue why he uses 2.6. I found that all the code runs perfectly well on 2.7. That is something you should point out to the author.
I don't think that qualifies. I think fixing bugs in open source is a good way to become a better programmer, but if you are fixing those bugs you are a good programmer already. Fixing bugs in open source project is really not trivial. I wouldn't know where to even begin looking at the source code of some of the open source I use, for example Firefox.
Both versions will work just fine. And number mod 7 will give an index of 0 to 6, which covers any color index from the colors tuple. Also, I tested it out just in case.
EDIT: The only issue is that if the string has a repeated letter it will be the same color.