John writes about the news that Johnny Depp might be in the new Willy Wonka movie...#

``Which is Johnny Depp would be an inspired choice; there's no real point of comedic contact between him and Wilder. Depp wouldn't have the burden of trying to recreate a character, but could just make it up himself. Aside from Depp, I'm itchin' to see how Burton handles Wonka's factory and the Oompa-Loompas. Boy, I'm just giggly about this. On the other hand, I wonder if they're planning to leave it as a musical. I actually hope not; aside from the Oompa Loompa songs, the musical score was kind of irritating. And aside from that I found that "Candyman" song six different flavors of creepy, even as kid.

The article notes that Burton had been considering rockstar Marilyn Manson for the role of Willie Wonka. *Let us never speak of this again.* ''

Shannon Campbell on temp jobs...#

``So yes, I did get that temp job. Turned out to be glorified telemarketing (or, Telemarketing For a Good Cause). Recruiting jailbirds for MDA Lock-Ups.

You in the back - shut up.

God bless my mother, who managed to find every highlight and positive point about my job when I called her and broke the news. We spent 30 minutes on the phone, I think, convincing each other this isn't the worst thing that's ever happened to me.''

Via Matrix Essays is an analysis of the conversation between Neo and the Architect. Neat formatting too!#

At Matrix Essays is one about the humans attached to the Matrix being used as "memory chips" in the giant computation of the Matrix...#

``And what do the Machines do with human brainpower? Other than perhaps for other possible data storage and computation needs, it is likely that what is mostly being processed is the Matrix itself. In that sense, the Matrix could be all in our collective minds. From my crusty knowledge of philosophy, I've an inkling that someone has already once pondered if reality is a joint, mutual dream of the masses. (If anyone knows exactly who, please educate.)

You must have noticed how the Matrix is a scenario that can be used to explain strange phenomena, such as deja-vus (glitches in the Matrix), telekinesis (there is no spoon), ghosts (rogue sentient programs) and the New York blackout (someone's trying to get to the Source). Well, it seems like we can also now explain why we use only 5% of our brains: the rest is being hijacked outside our awareness. Talk about slavery of the mind.''

Anothe comment on Widescreen NetNewsWire - I think it's great that you can do stuff like without the source of a program on Mac OS X.#

Via Kasia is Karl on "Bob" again...#

``Obviously hit a nerve with a lot of people who spend their days with Ben and Jerry stains on their jockey shorts, downloading porn vids off of Kazaa, then telling their wife "I looked really hard for a job today, honey," as she stumbles in the door half-dead from her 60 hour work week at the hospital.

It's bullshit. Your wife knows it. She's just under the misguided impression that if she doesn't say anything, she'll seem more supportive. She knows you're lazy. You know you're lazy. Let's stop fooling ourselves, eh Bob?

You mask your laziness in the half-assed pretense that you run some important stay at home business that has never made a dime; OR you're working on some dream website that you think will revolutionize the way people buy soup/ buy beer/ rate mustards. You keep your eye peeled for the latest unemployment stats so you can have fuel to justify your three hour naps and growing pot-belly. You leech off people around you and think the world owes you something.''

Via Don Park is this cool method of image rollovers with CSS. CSS is pretty clever like that.#

Don Park has been trying out SpamBayes. What he says is very funny...#

``SpamBayes is like my wife. Since my wife pays the bills, she also does the mail. Everyday, she checks the mail, throws out apparent junk mail, set aside bills, and brings me the rest. With her standing there, I separate junk out so she can recognize new types of junk next time. After ten years of this, she rarely has to bring me mail.

One key advantage my wife has over SpamBayes is that she can expect important mail like tax refund or my son's report card. She knows ahead of time when, from where, and how (i.e. FedEx or US Postal) mail will come. She also handles unexpected mail well. This is why I trust her and why I don't trust SpamBayes completely.

[...]

Message to my wife: Honey, you are so much prettier than SpamBabes, er, SpamBayes.''

James Robertson writes about how in Smalltalk it doesn't really make sense to talk about line noise because you don't look at the code in a textual sense much and all the "line-noisey" symbols carry semantic information.#

From Slashdot is this greatness, Dennis Ritchie has acknowledged he with Ken Thompson wrote the code cited as 'proof' by SCO.#

John Gruber writes about the MDJ Power 25 - the list of the most influential people in the Mac industry. Who he voted for and why is very interesting and says some greats things about why Jobs HAS to be #1.#

``I tend not to write much about Jobs, because there's not much about him to say or speculate. Despite the fact that he's the very public face of the company, he's almost pathologically secretive. But make no mistake, Jobs does not run Apple via hand-waving and delegation — he is a micro-manager with an unrivaled attention to detail.

[...]

The truth is, you could shuffle positions 2 through 25 just about any way you wanted, and the overall accuracy of the list would be equally valid. There's an old story (apocryphal, perhaps) from the early days of Apple, that when the company first assigned employee numbers, Woz ended up with #1. In response, Jobs assigned himself #0. ''

Jorrit Wiesma watched Solaris...#

``Yesterday we rented Solaris (which BTW is a remake of Solyaris). My verdict: very nice. I was quite tired when we watched (after a week of work, and Silke threw a tantrum when she had to go to bed) but I can't remember even yawning once even though the movie is very slow-paced. It's an interesting premise: weird stuff happens on a space station, but the crew is actually free to return to earth, it's just that they don't want to. It managed to captivate me through the questions that it raised such as What would you do in such a situation? What is reality, what is life, what is experience, what are memories? and at the same time one of the scenes seemed to mock this kind of coffee-table philosophy. The movie started out with exactly the kind of thing that I used to be so scared of as a kid: lying in bed, afraid that something inexplicable is behind you, and not daring to turn around.''

US Special Forces Hand Signals#

The Redhead was sent a letter recommending her for dating...#

``I have had the privilege of the acquaintance of The Redhead for the past four years, during which time we engaged in an exciting relationship, working together intimately for more than a year. During the course of this affectionate association, The Redhead handled a great many inter-personal responsibilities, including but not limited to flirtatious e-mail correspondence, effective couch-based cuddling, and, of course, stimulating carnal encounters. Without a doubt, I can say that The Redhead would make an excellent significant other for the foreseeable future.''

Jason Marshall doesn't like Scheme...#

``I went through the CS degree program during the Scheme Period. That's the time period during which MIT and all of its imitators were teaching Scheme as an introductory language. I hated Scheme and still do. I've never been able to fully articulate why I hated it, but two reasons stood out. First, I can't stand the syntax. Functional languages look like mathematical notation, and I feel that mathematical notation is needlessly exclusionary (One wonders why I no longer feel that programmer jargon is needlessly exclusionary, but I haven't gotten around to that bit of self-realization just yet). It's far past time for people to accept that programmers are no longer mathematicians! Secondly, I am a strong typing adherent, but I didn't know that yet at the time. As I started learning Java, this fact was starting to dawn on me. At the same time, I was taking a course that covered ML, and while I still wasn't having any fun coding in it, it was less contemptible than Scheme. I concluded that if someone pointed a gun at my head and forced me to do functional programming, it would be in ML, but I'd much rather write procedural or OO code.''

Karl brings commentary on a report of David Kelly's death...#

``What I'm enjoying while this drama plays out is watching the people who assume Western governments don't kill 'innocent' people. You tag something a "conspiracy theory", and it's the argumentative equivalent of playing peek-a-boo. "I can't see you!"

Let's see. His wife needed him because she was dying of cancer. His daughter was getting married. He recently fucked the British government in the ass by saying their pre-war "analysis" was total bullshit. He leaked information to the media, and potentially had more to tell. He was working on a book, all of his colleagues said he was looking forward to getting back to work. He had trucked around Iraq and the one-time USSR in a beat-up pickup prodding leaders for classified info yet couldn't handle pressure....''

The Ward -#

``Reducing women to sex objects is mighty easy. The only reason females have value other than reproduction is all thanks to society. Without society, I'd kill my neighbor for his car. Without society, I'd say what I thought quite more often. Without society, I'd trade bear skins and cougar teeth for food and clothing - no worrying about my green stuff. Without society, I'd have 10 wives. Without society, women could be kept in line with a swift backhand and some growling or grunting.

[...]

Girls usually get offended when you check them out. Like "oh.. my.. god.... I KNOW he did not just look me up." Can someone please explain to me the reasoning behind this? If some chick looks me up, I'm like "shit, I'm there." Or "thanks for the compliment." The last thing that crosses my mind is to get offended or disgusted. The girls that look me up have the beast inside them, and I'm all for the beast coming out (PMS does not count).''

Jonathan Rentzsch writes about "Widescreen NetNewsWire" - It would prefer it!#

The BEWB brings us the Character Within...#

``So many times, we find ourselves in difficult situations, stuck between a rock and a hard place, if you will. The question is how we handle those situations. The decisions you make, not only determine your fate, but also your character. I think too many times, we find ourselves taking the easy road, making the choice that raises the least red flags, causes the least damage, and calms a situation. I contend though, that although that may be easier in the short term, it can have serious impact on a person's character.''

Mena on Six Apart's philosophy...#

``At the Supernova conference, I spoke about Six Apart's "Philosophy of Yes." For the most part, we try to accommodate what our users want and have a hard time saying no to features. We support a number of protocols and formats because we feel it is important to err on the side of mass support. From day one of Movable Type to day one of TypePad, we have provided not just an import mechanism but also an export mechanism. We never wanted to hold content hostage in order to guarantee tool lock-in.

The "export" button in Six Apart's products keeps us on our toes. Knowing that you can leave at any time is our motivator to keep on developing stable, intuitive and flexible applications. We want you to stay because you like the product, not because you can't get out.''

Adam Curry wrote an essay, Email is Dead, Long Live Email! #

``My friend Dave once wrote that many protocols and internet applications look and function in similar manners, and that usually means it's good. Specifically I remembered this piece about enclosures in RSS that included the line: "... everything on the Internet is just like something else. Or if it's any good it's just like everything else."

How true!''

Via Scoble is Chris Prillo's Blogger Dictionary - ``Winerd - power user who has the ability to piss off the entire Internet in three sentences or less.''#

Also via Scoble is Oren's Laws of Microsoft#

``1. You can always see them coming.
2. They never get it right the first time.
3. They never go away (unless the market is proven not to exist).

A lot of truth there. It's fairly easy to predict where they will go, and that V1 (and V2, for that matter) will lag the market needs. That's actually their development methodology! Ship version 1, and see how customers like it. With version 2, fix the problems in version 1. And version 3 is the one to do the wide ranging exploration of the possibilities of a product. Excel 3, for instance, introduced the autosum feature.''

Al3x writes "Geek Culture, Geek Girls: Crippling Homogeneity"#

``Is a subculture doomed to die as soon as it can be identified and marketed to? That's usually the case with music- or art-driven subcultures, which eventually atrophy into the mainstream and fade into kitsch-death. Geek culture, such as it is, is different. It's not exclusively marketed to by outsiders. It's killing itself. And it's not worth saving.

[...]

Geek guys endlessly lament the lack of such girls [Geek Girls], girls who can really understand them, girls who are smart and interesting.

I think it's telling. What better demonstrates the narrow, obsessive quality of geek culture than prizing only mates within this limited spectrum and dismissing anyone different as stupid or silly? I don't want a (narrow) geek girl. I don't want to come home from a day of coding only to talk about coding. I want someone who will show me new things, expose me to ideas, art, music, and people I haven't yet encountered. And I think that can extrapolated to the geek community at large: the community, such as it is, is chock full of smart, capable people. Why not broaden our collective horizons rather than wallowing in a few limited cultural interests and practices, and searching only for similarly narrow partners?''

I totally agree with Al3x here too...#

`` Maybe I'm inexplicably old-fashioned. Maybe I already feel like I've sown my wild oats, and drunken sex with a half-unconscious sorority girl on a plastic single extra-long in a 6x6' dorm room doesn't sound like an inroad to self discovery, much less pleasure. Maybe I'm too judgmental, too full of presuppositions, too quick to dismiss people for the social setting in which I meet them. Maybe I need to loosen the fuck up if I'm going to enjoy this year back at school.''

Dienekes writes on Natural Selection versus Sexual Selection...#

``Evolution is driven by the fact that different individuals survive into adulthood with different rates, and of those that do find mates and produce offspring at different rates - based on their genetic background, and the environment (in the broadest sense) in which this is expressed.
The different rate of survival (natural selection), and the different rate of procreation (sexual selection) are often thought as complimentary factors of evolution. As an example, natural selection favors strong lungs in races living in high altitudes, while sexual selection favors the strong expression of such sexually dimorphic traits as e.g., beards that distinguish males from females.''

Don Park mentions "Asphalt Waves" - things on the center line that make noise if you cross them - There's this really creepy part of Route 2 that has patches of this just in the middle of the highway, I think another highway used to merge there and it was meant to get your attention but now it's just weird.#

Don Park is inspired by nature.#

Don Park writes, ``Expect to be held hostage by unionized IT workers of tommorrow''...#

``One solution I thought might work is encouraging unionization of IT workers in both India and US. Unionizing IT workers in India will increase labor cost there. Unionizing IT workers in America will discourage outsourcing here.

[...]

I am not talking about yesterday's unions. These days, unions are highly organized both internally and externally. In the near future, unions armed with cellphones, e-mail, IM, and socialwares, even small unions will weave themselves into larger networks of allied unions spanning nations and even continents. Massive long term conflicts between global union networks is not unimaginable either.''

Via Gene Expression is Shanti Magala commenting on a Reuters article about Gay Muslims in the USA...#

``Now, look at the third sentence in the passage quoted - why is it extra hard for gay Muslims after 9/11? If you read the rest of the article, you will see that these gay Muslims have a lot more to fear from fellow Muslims than from any other "average, ignorant American" (as they are known on that planet that is Reutersville). So what purpose do those quotes serve in the article except to use every freaking chance to bash America? I wouldn't know.''

Russell Beattie writes about the competition in the Mobile market between Microsoft and companies like Symbian...#

``It should be a Symbian mantra: "Remember Apple, Lotus and Netscape!" Every Symbian manager should say it three times before they go to sleep at night.''

Russell Beattie writes about developing phone applications...#

``Trying to educate myself on exactly what is going on in the Microsoft camp has been very interesting. Today I've been exploring how development is done on the PocketPC and Smartphone and it's been enlightening, especially learning how the .Net Compact framework fits in. For the launch of Windows Mobile 2003, Microsoft has cut down the .Net runtime into the .Net Compact the same way that Sun has cut down Java to J2ME. Both systems use lighter version of their respective APIs, but in general you program using the same language and the same environments. ''

On DaemonNews is a bit about Operating System Reliability with the sub title, "Does Anyone Care Any More?" -#

``Hume proposed the following definition of OS reliability: "[The OS] does what you ask, or it fails within a modest bounded time." He noted that FreeBSD has comparable functionality to Linux, better performance, and higher reliability, and he speculated that this might stem from BSD's (and other "clean, lean, effective systems") having been built using "a small set of principles extensively used, and a sense of taste of what is good practice, clearly articulated by a small team of mature, experienced people." Hume took Linux to task for not demonstrating these characteristics, in particular for being too bloated in terms of features, and for having been developed by too large a team. Further, he singled out the Carrier Grade Linux effort for special condemnation for "addressing zero of the [type of] problems" he has had. ''

Tony Pierce writes about his new sponsor#

``yes, Americans for War won the Sponsor the Busblog for a year auction.

they won fair and square.

their bid wasnt even that big.

i would like to say "this is what happens when you dont bid." but thats not my style.

i would like to say, "lets have a recall auction."

but im not a weasel like lots of people in my state.''

Tony Pierce is a lucky guy...#

``then karisa knocked on my door wearing a little black miniskirt, tall boots, with tube socks sticking out the top which only made her legs look longer, and a baseball shirt that matched the socks whose arms had been cut off and which was very tight and exposed the belly.

apparently we had a bowling challenge that she was not going to postpone for one additional day, no matter what.

and it was then that i knew what she was up to. she had worn that outfit to distract me while i bowled. i was on to her.

and she giggled and denied it saying that she hadnt done laundry and those were the only clothes that she had left that were clean.''

Ted Leung points to this post about Line Noise and languages... (check out this numbers... cool)#

``Linenoise will strip out all alphanumeric characters and white space, leaving only the "line noise" behind. Running linenoise on a series of small programs written in different languages produces this (edited slightly for line breaks)''

Ted Leung comments on a post of Kim's about good language design, he writes...#

``But the quote aside, there's a controversial (at least to me) idea in here, either that or I'm confused on terminology. Most of computer science is about applying indirection. The commonly held wisdom in language design is that we help people build bigger systems by finding new ways to hide the details from them. That's called abstraction, and has gotten us functions/procedures, objects, frameworks, etc. And I would put macros in the same category. When I use a macro, I don't have to know how its implemented (and its probably implemented with some of the aforementioned goop). So for me, macros increase the level of abstraction in a program...''

I don't think Kim is arguing against abstraction, but rather "indirection", in her post she writes, `` As soon as the data structure forgets where it came from (i.e. where it was created), it has become indirect.'' - This may be the difference to her.

Via Slashdot is a John Carmack interview...#

``Though he's widely regarded as an innovator, Carmack is a big fan of old-school arcade games. He's also an unlikely supporter of Nintendo's recently announced philosophy that games have become too difficult.

"I agree strongly with that point of view, but I'm in the minority in the PC space," he told me last week at QuakeCon — the annual Woodstock-like gathering of "Doom" and "Quake" fans. "I want a game you can sit down with, pick up and play. [Role playing games], for example, got to where they had to have a book ship with the game." ''