Just a Gwai Lo links an offbeat transcript of "cyber sex session" -#

``So some of you may not know much about cyber sex. Cyber sex seems to me (and honestly, I've never actually tried it) a kind of Instant Messenger service where two otherwise normal people get online to get it on.

They usually write kind of like what they're doing, what they're doing to each other; you know. Kind of like phone sex, if you ever heard of that.

To me, it's pretty strange, as I think I'd rather be in the same room with the person, but that's just me, and I've been called weird fairly often before. ''

schizmatic (at Gene Expression) writes about how any word can become an insult no matter what the initial meaning is,#

``It is a given that any term used to describe those whose cognitive ability falls below the norm will, no matter what the original intent of the apellation, eventually be turned into an term of abuse by schoolyard children. In the late nineteenth and early 20th century, children whose learning progress lagged behind that of their peers were said to be, "of 'retarded mental development'--terms corresponding to the 'Enfants arriérés' of French writers...and the 'Tardivi' of the Italians." The word eventually came to be applied to anyone whose I.Q. fell below the mean. Of course, the combination of two liquids and three dental stops rather lent itself to becoming a term of abuse, as the very sounding out of the word suggested the ill-formed stuttering of one who had trouble grasping basic speech.''

Razib at Gene Expression cites about how American don't take all their medication when they should. Interesting.#

`` I wouldn't have predicted this at all. I was wrong, though I've seen another article or two suggesting similar findings in Botswana, so I can't say I'm shocked and surprised. I'm glad I was wrong to some extent-but I wish the Americans weren't so stupid about their medications too. Though, one thing to note is that selection bias might be an issue here-a much bigger cross-section of the populations of these African countries are HIV positive than in the United States or Western Europe.''

Matt W. at Gene Expression, reports on a new silly Califlower law,#

``California is now one step closer to giving legal driver licenses to illegal aliens. In a near-party line vote (one Democrat voted against the bill), the Assembly passed the legislation 44-30, and Gray "Gumbi" Davis promises to sign the bill. [...] I can't believe that California is giving driver licenses to illegal aliens when the budget is already out of control thanks in large part to rampant illegal and unskilled immigration. California now may become an even bigger magnet for costly illegal aliens. The bill is also a major national security threat, since terrorists and criminals who are here illegally will now be able to have valid identification, making it easier for them to evade law enforcement and immigration authorities.''

Godless reports that Arnold would be against this sort of thing.

Peter Lindberg writes about planning some more,#

``I believe that my statement that software can't be planned is true, because of what most people think planning is about: something that takes place at the beginning of a project, and which produces a plan that should be deviated from as little as possible.

Plans are seen as anything but fluid: they are nailed down, frozen, formally agreed upon. Ambitious projects are very ambitious about planning. Troubled projects are seen as caused by not enough planning, so the suggested remedy is always to do more planning, often coupled with rigorous reporting and tracking of progress.''

Joi Ito writes about what is "Right", and it's not "Might"...#

``Plato thought a lot about the definition of what is Good and couldn't answer it. The idea was that if you could figure out what was Good you could determine what was Right. After you could judge what was Right, Justice could be rendered.

[...]

We discussed the relative merits and weaknesses of each of these ethical systems. Lou also pointed out that there were MANY more, but these eleven were a good place to start. The idea was to try to get to justice. Justice being defined as doing the right thing at the right time. Lou also pointed out that many people like the notion of doing the greatest good for the greatest number. Turing and other pointed out that this utilitarian method was inherently flawed because one can not maximize a problem for two variables. You could strive to cause the greatest good or strive to affect the greatest number, but not both. Interesting perspective...''

Charles Miller writes about the true value of Fight Club,#

``Dear world. Fight Club was not a grand endorsement of nihilism. It was not there to reassure you that it was OK to hate the world and your life. Fight Club was a satire!

A self-delusional man with a fractured personality spouts glib philosophy, and gathers to himself a band of incredibly stupid people to help overthrow the society that they feel they are the victims of. People band together in a pact of mutual self-destruction, and every time they assert their individuality, they're really just subsuming themselves into another fad that will rid them of the need to think for themselves.''

Charles Miller also writes about the idea of "voting" on fixing bugs in open source software,#

``Volunteers for Open Source projects will work first on problems that effect them directly, and then on problems that don't necessarily effect them, but that their pride won't let them leave unfixed. Votes are unlikely to change this schedule. Calls from users to have a bug fixed that none of the developers think is important will be met with replies of "if you think it's that important, we'll be happy to accept a patch". ''

Russell Beattie gives a warning about Microsoft, with regards to the Be settlement.#

``When I saw the news the first thing I thought was how pitiful a number it was. And not only is the number low, but Microsoft admitted no wrongdoing, even though we all know (and the anti-trust suit proved) that M$ used it's contracts with PC makers to make it economically stupid to install other OSes on their PCs because they paid MS per CPU they shipped whether it had Windows on it or not.

If you don't think you're company, your software, your phone operating system is next, you need to wake up. ''

Moxie isn't feeling so hot,#

``Me: a heartbroken, unmotivated mostly unemployed writer who can't seem to get shit done around the house. Open to electroshock therapy, liberal tongue lashings and moldy mayonnaise massages. ''

Tony Pierce is also in a funk, but his writing is still spot on.#

``im not really a hater. im a lover. i normally love everyone and everything. but lately ive been in the foulest of moods. i feel like im in purgatory. i dont know if im up or down. black is white. white is black, we're through the lookingglass people.''

Ted Leung - whose weblog actually looks good now - writes about Tom Coates' post about the "Mass Amateurisation of Nearly Everything" and it's relation to open source software,#

``The thing that bothers me the most about his post isn't really his fault at all. It's the categorization of amateur and professional. I hear this one a lot as a criticism of open source projects. I don't think that the labeling is particularly helpful. Just because someone gets paid to do something doesn't automatically make them better than someone who does the same thing as their hobby. There are lots of reasons why people choose not to perform a creative activity professionally. That shouldn't be taken as a knock on their abilities. I wish that we could find better terminology. After all, the software running 64% of the web servers on the Internet was written by "amateurs". ''

Via John Wiseman is Common Lisp, embedded in Quake 2#

James Robertson think Mark Watson is a little out of touch with reality when he suggests this:#

``I would like to see legislation passed in the U.S. that would prohibit the government from using any business related software that did not support an export to archive XML option. I would like to see mandated practices in government to call for saving to this easily readable format.''

James' comments - ``What schema in XML? What tags? XML can be every bit as proprietary as any other format. Even if the document is all human readable, there's no guarantee that the tags will have any semantic meaning to anyone in particular. Is he advocating a specific xml format? If so, which one? Is there a widely used xml schema for word processing type documents? This kind of suggestion sounds great on the surface, but it's just not that simple....''

Matt Moore has a little review of Dirty Pretty Things, not too revealing either if you haven't seen it...#

``This wasn't a great movie, but it was very good. The two lead characters are very well played, Tautou proves that she isn't just the cute and bouncy Amelie, she gives real grit to the over-worked and desperate immigrant who is trying to get to New York. I also enjoyed Onky's friend, a chess playing Chinese hospital porter.

I came away from this movie really appreciative about being an American. It's amazing the lengths that people will go to to move here, even illegally. I'm glad that all I had to do was be born.''

Neil talks about the different characteristics you can give a product you are designing,#

``One of the problems with building a software product is that you will generally have a particular kind of user that you are targeting your product to in mind, however, you won't generally have any control over what kind of users end up using your products. If you built your product for one kind of user, the others will complain that your product isn't adequate for their purposes. However, if you built your product to suit the second group, the first group will complain.

Some groups are more vocal than others, such that it often skews real overall opinion. For instance, technical end users are very vocal on newsgroups and weblogs such that their opinions may seem more important than others, despite that they may -- for a particular product -- be in the minority of users. ''

Clay Shirky writes about Micropayments and Free Content...#

`` The people pushing micropayments believe that the dollar cost of goods is the thing most responsible for deflecting readers from buying content, and that a reduction in price to micropayment levels will allow creators to begin charging for their work without deflecting readers.

This strategy doesn't work, because the act of buying anything, even if the price is very small, creates what Nick Szabo calls mental transaction costs, the energy required to decide whether something is worth buying or not, regardless of price. The only business model that delivers money from sender to receiver with no mental transaction costs is theft, and in many ways, theft is the unspoken inspiration for micropayment systems.

[...]

The fact that digital content can be distributed for no additional cost does not explain the huge number of creative people who make their work available for free. After all, they are still investing their time without being paid back. Why?

The answer is simple: creators are not publishers, and putting the power to publish directly into their hands does not make them publishers. It makes them artists with printing presses. This matters because creative people crave attention in a way publishers do not. Prior to the internet, this didn't make much difference. The expense of publishing and distributing printed material is too great for it to be given away freely and in unlimited quantities -- even vanity press books come with a price tag. Now, however, a single individual can serve an audience in the hundreds of thousands, as a hobby, with nary a publisher in sight.

Jack Bog says something funny about me,#

``Do you think you might be spending too much time getting absorbed in weblogs and other journals all over the internet?

Relax. I'll bet you can't hold a candle to the author of makeoutcity.com.

Don't let shock and awe prevent you from following some of his many fascinating links.''

On kuro5hin is a pretty ridiculous article,#

``Two 5-year-old boys who had been locked inside small roach infested cages for 4 months were discovered by authorities this week in Arizona. Their makeshift cage consisted of cribs wired together and sealed with plastic crates. The boys slept on a dirty mattress spattered with urine and feces and were fed through a small hole in the cage. The boys wore filthy pajamas and were covered in bedsores. Their parents confined the toddlers for 20 hours out of every day. Neither of the boys were toilet trained and they did not know how to speak.

Their mother explained to police that the boys were placed in cages for their own protection.

[...]

Despite the cruelty this abuse often adopts, the method is of less consequence than the reason. To make the claim something is for your own good is the worst invalidation of one's personhood, and perhaps the worst affront of one's human dignity that exists. Pain and torture masquerading as love is the most twisted abuse humanity has yet created. George Orwell's monolithic state in 1984 made this point chillingly clear when it tortured the main character, Winston, to the point where he accepted this was for his own good and he began to love Big Brother. Not only had his captors violated his body, but by passing this abuse off as love done for his own good they violated his very soul. It is this, most twisted of all abuses, which children suffer under today. ''

Screenshots of the River City Ransom Remake#