Raymond Chen writes about a bug report someone made at Microsoft. The new single serving milk containers are hard to open.#

This is a particularly software-oriented joke, because it highlights how hard it is to make bugfixes in software - by applying the software testing regimen to something that isn't software. You can't assume that a simple, local change like adjusting the amount of glue applied to the carton will result in a simple, local change in the final product (a more acceptable seal strength). Software is nonlinear. A simple change can have effects (some catastrophic, some subtle) far, far away from the point of change.

Richard, at Just A Gwai Lo, writes aobut how Voters outnumber Taxpayers.#

There are problems with taxing the rich more than the poor, but just as democracy is the least worst political system we've invented, progressive taxation is the least worst tax system there is. We Western democracies tax the rich more is for the very simple reason that voters outnumber taxpayers. All you need to vote is simple citizenship, age and residency requirements, and in some jurisdictions, not being in a prison. (Canadian prisoners are allowed to vote, and laws vary from state-to-state in the U.S.) No property requirements, no income-level requirements. So, taking the number of students, retired, unemployed or those between jobs, and those whose income is not high enough to pay taxes, and add that to the people who pay taxes, by definition, that number is larger than taxpayers. Also the number of "poor" taxpayers outnumber "rich" ones.

Dienekes continues talking about hair colour...#

If we can prove that it is more difficult for a blonde to maintain dark hair than for a brunette to maintain light hair, then we will have essentially shown that women prefer lightening their hair, rather than darkening it, not because there is some biological urge to do so, but because it takes less effort.

When a women lightens her hair, then it will eventually look "bad", due to the fact that it's roots will become darker and the result will eventually look unnatural. This is also why women don't dye their hair a single color, but rather use various shades, to ensure that the result won't be spoiled very quickly as it grows.

The same is true when a women darkens her hair: it will eventually look bad. But, it will look bad in an even worse way, since its roots will become light and its edges will become dark. This is a combination that looks unnatural immediately, since it is not found in nature -unlike the dark roots/light edges combination.

Matt Moore reviews "Once Upon A Time in Mexico"...#

I went into this movie with high hopes. Sure, it's gotten decidedly mixed reviews, but lots of great movies do. Johnny Depp really raised the bar earlier this summer with his amazing performance in The Pirates of the Caribbean, and Antonio Banderas is always a crack action film star, and Salma Hayek, well, Salma Hayek is proof of a benevolent God, as James Lileks said.

I read this book for a class, Computers in Society. Some parts of the book were very interesting and others not so much. Once the book gets past the 1960s it converged very rapidly to talking about things I already knew, versus the earlier part of the book which was very new to me.#

One of the most interesting parts of the book is the discussion of business and information processing and management before the computer. The majority of my favourite quotes are from this section.#

The first section of the book is called, "When Computers Were People", and it talks about De Prony's novel invention of the "computation factory" for making nautical, and other, tables of numbers.#

De Prony organized his table-making "factory" into three sections. The first section consisted of half a dozen eminent mathematicians-including Adrien Legendre and Lazare Carnot-who decided on the mathematical formulas to be used in the calculations. Beneath them was another small section-a kind of middle management-that, given the mathematical formulas to be used, organized the computations and compiled the results ready for printing. Finally, the third and largest section, which consisted of sixty to eighty human computers, did the actual computation. The computers used the "method of differences," which required only the two basic operations of addition and subtraction, and not the more demanding operations of multiplication and division. Hence the computers were not, and did not need to be, educated beyond basic numeracy and literacy. In fact, most of them were hairdressers who had lost their jobs because "one of the most hated symbols of the ancient regime was the hairstyles of the aristocracy." [pg. 12]

I was surprised to learn that the main desire to use a typewriter versus handwriting documents was not that it was faster to write, but that it was faster to read...#

Prior to the development of the inexpensive reliable typewriter, one of the most common office occupations was that of a "writer" or "copyist." These were clerks who wrote out documents in longhand. There were many attempts at inventing typewriters in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, but none of them was commercially successful because none could overcome both of the critical problems of document preparation: the difficult of reading handwritten documents and the time it took a clerk to write them. In the nineteenth century virtually all business documents were handwritten, and the busy executive spent countless hours deciphering them. Hence the major attraction of the typewriter was that typewritten documents could be read effortlessly at several times the speed of handwritten ones. [pg. 30]

There was a funny quote from Charles Babbage about how the English government was not interested in his inventions. Compare this criticism of blogs.#

"Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficult, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple." [pg. 58]

"It'll never work!" "It's not journalism so it's useless!"

There was also an interesting quote from an pioneer of the EDSAC computer about bugs.#

[...] Before people began to write real programs for real computers, it had always been assumed that there would be no particular difficult in getting programs to work. Consequently, there was a surprise in store for whichever group was the first to get a computer running. This of course was the Cambridge EDSAC, and the problems surfaced within a few weeks of the machine first operating. Wilkes later recalled:

By June 1949 people had begun to realize it was not so easy to get a program right as had at one time appeared. I well remember when this realization first came on me with full force. [...] I was trying to get working my first non-trivial program, which was one for the numerical integration of Airy's differential equations. It was on one of my journay's between the EDSAC room and the punching equipment that "hesitating at the angles of stairs" the realization came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs.

At first mistakes in program were simply called mistakes, or errors. But within a few years they were called "bugs" and the process of correcting them was called "debugging." [pg. 185]

Something funny about FORTRAN...#

The first programmer's manual for FORTRAN, handsomely printed between glossy IBM covers, announced that FORTRAN would be available in October 1956, which turn out to be "a euphemism for April 1957"-the date on which the system was finally released. [pg. 189]

The book talked a little bit about one of the first industry conferences about software engineering. Very little has changed...#

Although there were some serious academic and industrial papers presented at the conference, the real importance of the meeting was to act as a kind of encounter group for senior figures in the world of software to trade war stories. One participant from MIT confessed: "We build systems like the Wright brothers built airplanes-build the whole thing, push it off the cliff, let it crash, and start over again." [pg. 201]

Daniel Drezner writes about Eugene Volokh's post about how intellectual property is not so different from tangible property.#

The relevant Eugene quote,

The theory of intellectual property is... that giving people the right to exclude others from new works or inventions will give people an incentive to invest effort in creating and inventing. We would have less legal freedom of action -- you'll be more limited in what you can do in your own office or garage -- but we'd have more wealth, because there'll be a lot more works and inventions, albeit ones that it may cost you money to use.

Daniel's thoughts,

What Eugene failed to mention is what makes the conferral of intellectual property rights so difficult: the credible commitment problem.

Before a concept comes into existence, the incentive created by intellectual property rights is very strong. After a concept is invented, critics are correct in saying that society would be better off if those rights were revoked. Hence the need for a credible commitment, in the form of legal protections, to assure innovators that their intellectual efforts will yield tangible rewards.

Another Good Blog with no RSS feed. :( Via John Palfrey.#

Lance Arthur writes some of the best stuff I read,#

Anyway, what I'm thinking is that there should be a quick and easy way for two guys (or, I suppose, two gals) to signal mutual interest, or at least mutual "hey, if anyone starts to hassle you, I am totally on your side and together we'll be gay superheroes." Some hand signal or something. But as I thought about that, the less sense it made.

Because one intention here is that if you made the signal at the wrong person, it would need to be easily ignored or misinterpreted as, like, something anyone might do, right? Because otherwise it becomes like any other obvious and potentially dangerous gesture like, oh, rubbing your crotch with your right hand and pinching your nipple with your left and sticking out your tongue and making moaning sounds as you simultaneously wiggle your eyebrows and wink. So it has to be subtle, yet obvious.

Dan Cederholm is very funny.#

A few days ago I brought a banana with me to work and subsequently forgot that it was in my bag. Later, when I rediscovered it on the way home, I had a funny thought. What if I pretended to talk into the banana like I was on a cell phone while walking through the train station. A real conversation — and something possibly a bit louder than normal, [...] The key is to make it a legimate conversation without cracking a smile. I didn't actually try it, of course. I guess you'd have to be there.

Don Park responds to the very interesting NYT Article about the effects of Buddhist meditation.#

Don Park on the biological residue of meditation,

I believe that every action one takes, everything one sees, hear, smell and touch, every word one utters, and every thought one has changes us in body and mind. Hit someone in the face once, you change. Read Koran or Bible, you change. Look at a flower, you change. Everything changes us, but meditation can affect one as strongly as trauma or life long abuse can. Powerful stuff.

I think the research is a Good Thing because people will finally learn the real benefits as well as dangers of meditation.

Moxie doesn't understand all the trends of these kids,#

You know you are getting old when it's difficult to distinguish the latest and greatest men's cologne from simple but obvious body odor.

After conversing with a seemingly well groomed gentleman last weekend, I asked Smart Sara — was that cologne or deodorant-failure?

She wasn't sure either.

Tony Pierce got to interview George Bush!#

hi mr. president.

hi tony, thanks for granting me this interview.

but of course. what made you decide on doing this now, and with me?

well, my approval rating has dropped 40 points since two years ago and only the elderly watch larry king, so i figured i better start working on getting re-elected with the young people as soon as asap.

Tom Coates wonders who's fault the Flash/Plugin patent problem is.#

So what about all of those companies that have built sites using Flash in good faith? Who do they get to take to court? Could they sue Microsoft? I'm imagining they won't have that opportunity. It seems to me that means thousands of companies spending millions of dollars in rebuilding and future-proofing and an internet that's less accessible and useful than it was before. I just wish I had a better sense of whose fault it was? Is it Microsoft for breaking the rules, Eolas for pushing their patent or the patent system itself?

Tom Coates isn't about the traffic,#

Of course if all I cared about was traffic, then I wouldn't have bothered. I would have let my rhetoric fly free and wild. Facts? What facts! Logic? Who cares! I'd have stripped myself of the constraints of society (Arguing fairly - pah! Accepting when you're wrong - how retro! Looking to learn through debate rather than win through debate - ludicrous!) like I was shedding clothing, and I'd have run naked screaming through the fields of cheap attack, jingoism and name-calling! Who cares what I'm saying as long as it has the effect I desire? Who cares what tactics I use to get my point across? A win by a technicality - or a win by cheating - is still a win godammit...

If all I cared about was traffic, I'd write like James Lileks. I'd talk to people's guts, I'd talk to their pain. I'd do whatever I could to avoid their ears and their minds. Because otherwise how would I be able to argue that being the victim of a terrorist atrocity automatically made every decision of a country - past, present and future - purer than the driven snow...? How else would I be able to argue that the only response that would be unreasonable would be atomic war...? How else would I be able to argue that anyone who even questioned this position hated humanity and was insulting the families of victims?