Zed Shaw, “expert” programmer and “master” profanitist (see: Rails is a Ghetto), bangs out this hysterical gem in a paper about his XUL experimentation, an interesting take on that awkward, fuzzy space between desktop and web apps…
I see now that XUL has a distinct disadvantage as people don’t know whether to think of it as […]
>>> from __future__ import braces
SyntaxError: not a chance (<console>, line 1)
I love you, Python!
As often as I rail against intellectual property, it’s stories like this that serve to demonstrate the necessity of copyright in certain circumstances. What a trainwreck — and yet, even in this seemingly Pentopticonian age of IP enforcement, this poor girl has little recourse. These laws aren’t made for people…and that’s the real crime!
“Linux is not communism, Vendor lock-in is.”
Via /.
So here I am, on hold with Sprint. I just reupped my contract last night and got myself a new fangled, craptastic phone — yeah, they don’t offer any normal phones anymore. What thanks do I get for signing on for another two years? They cut service off to my current phone…brilliant. No wonder they’re […]
Unmotherfuckinbelievable…
I just randomly came across this interesting post about rethinking the structure of the filesystem. I’ve been beating around a similar idea in my head — though a little more abstractly. I’ve been enamored with the idea of a pseudo-filesystem for some time, and I think I finally figured out how to do it. Before […]
In case anyone had any doubt that AT&T would find a way to fuck up the Apple Experience™…
For starters, although I signed up for what iTunes told me was a $60 plan (450 minutes, unlimited Internet), the bill says I have a $40 voice plan and a $20 Internet plan, and lists them on separate […]
Web Worker Daily asks about good ways to use your laptop in the summer sun…
The answer, apparently — the Techno Privacy Scarf. But it’s not just for outdoor use, folks — if there’s a better way to surf porn in your cube, I’d love to hear it!
Yet another reason to make the switch to Ubuntu now…
The application, filed in 2006, describes a multi-faceted, robust ad-delivering system that lives on a “user computer, whether it’s part of the OS, an application or integrated within applications.”
“Applications, tools, or utilities may use an application program interface to report context data tags such as key […]
According to Gartner, France’s famed 35 hour workweek (finally being loosened up by Sarkozy) may yet look like a miserable slog to us all in a few short years. Hell, it’s almost possible today, though the choice may be between bike or bus rather than of Benz or Beamer…
It’s all about choice, though. As self-sustenance […]
LinuxWorld has a breakdown of the difference between hackers and think-tankers and why software patents look so different depending on who you know…
To the ‘think tank’ types, lawyers are basically free and software innovation is hard to get. Most of the think tanks are in Washington, DC, where you can’t swing a cat without […]
Doc Searls (hater of surveys), in response to an SAP survey:
Web 2.0 is what we’ll call the next crash.
Amen, Doc!
The more useful distinction is between the Live Web and the Static Web. The Live Web today is branching off of the Static Web. Much of what we call ’social’ happens there, though I dislike the […]
So the weekend of the iPhone has come and gone. The reviews are in and, as expected, mixed — but mostly positive…
Honestly, I was half-expecting a flop — I couldn’t see them doing much volume (500,000 units when all was said and done), and not just because of the extortionist price ($2K minimum over two […]
It’s been a little bit since I’ve posted anything of substance. Work’s been a bitch and I’ve been trying to polish up an article for publication with my free time. At some point I’ll post the that pain in my ass, but in the meantime, I’ve come up with a devilishly simple scheme for an […]
The best I can tell, Dave Winer’s been pretty close to the mark with his predictions (here’s a golden oldie from the around turn of the century). So I was surprised to see such a brazen little called shot so depressingly wrong…
Ponzi: “How do we decide how many social networks is enough? Are there any […]
Found this interesting:
The Wii is beating the PS3 and Xbox 360 to pulps in the market place. In May, they sold 338K units — more than Sony (82K) and MS (155K) could manage together. In Japan it’s even more dominating, selling 5:1 against the PS3.
And while both of the super-advanced consoles from competitors are losing […]
I just finished reading Hacking Matter by Wil McCarthy — interesting read, about quantum dots and their potential — but a passing reference to super conductors as batteries really knocked me on my ass.
I’ve read for years about the constant search for room temperature super conduction, but it always seemed like such a quaint […]
A friend from class sent along this little gem: Google Wins Appeal on Copyright of Nude Images…
Giggity giggity giggity goo…
But forgetting all the glorious breasts that shall be liberated, it’s always nice to see a higher court come down with a ruling strengthening fair use. Though this is a little concerning:
The appeals court instructed the […]
In an insane stretch of the DMCA, a new kind of copyright troll is appearing, filing suit to make DRM mandatory…
Media Rights Technologies (MRT) and BlueBeat.com have issued cease and desist letters to both companies and to Adobe Systems Inc (nasdaq: […]
Another day, another ridiculous “fool proof” phishing solution proposed. This time, with the added benefit of another bogus TLD. Not just any old TLD, though — a scamtastic $50,000 per registration TLD that puts the .mobi and .xxx debacles to shame! This time, it’s .bank being proposed. And why won’t it work? The same reason […]
Some days…
The AACS crack story, not itself substantively interesting, does have pretty fascinating societal undertones. The free speech flag, nothing more than a pure isomorphism of a big ass number, perfectly encodes the now famous encryption key into colors. Is this infringement? If so, how so? Can you even copyright a number; a fact?
I’m shocked, utterly stunned to learn this:
Telephia’s Total Communications Survey for Q4 2006 shows that 49% of households moving during the fourth quarter of 2006 migrated away from a traditional telephone line with 25% choosing to go wireless only.
I haven’t had a landline in years (since backing into one in college when Verizon wouldn’t let […]
I just learned of the push for POSH over at Standardzilla — short for Plain Old Semantic HTML. Why the hell do we need another idiomatic acronym clogging web2.0’s tubes? I certainly agree microformats are the future, but why go with something that sounds even more ridiculous than AJAX? What we need are more entertaining […]