the star wars kid. yea. news about him. apparently he is forever scarred. bummer.#

doctor frank reflects on what the public thinks of recordings of bands as opposed to what he thinks and how it really goes down. the way he puts it exchange one form of magical perfectness for another form of magical effort and preciseness. you listen to a sloppy sounding song and don't realize that it started out as many different recordings of each instrument that fought it out to be the best one to use in the song. stellar.#

al3x goes through what all of us developers have to at some point. we have to recognize the economics and realities of the environment for which we'll deal with - that is, that some times you can't use the best tool for the job if it alienates your target base. and furthermore that even though a steel wheel is better than a wooden wheel, being 5% better (or just one feature) isn't enough for someone to switch to your product. so your options become: stand on someone else's shoulders, and possibly not be recognized as much; make something no one will use; and maybe, make some different but with a very easy and none-volatile migration and regression path. i feel for al3x.#

charles miller's take on robert cringley's son of napster article. he points out that while the law may seem like code that can be used against itself, bent, and sometimes broken - it really isn't because it can change at anytime and is not run by a deterministic system, instead it run by a system that can change whenever it wants and where each execution node may interpret a piece different. so it's a nice thought exercise but with no utility.#

scott links statistics on the blogging community. the "results" are interesting although to compare "only 2% of the online community has created a blog" to about 3.9% of a webpages are blogs then that means something? i'm not a smarts so i don't know. but i think someone should send out a massive email survey to every person on the internet asking if they have a blog. good idea right?#

kevin kelly recommends a very neat ultra light backpack - i try to go hiking every weekend, although i don't go "camping" so the size of my pack does not bother me much but as i start to do it more i want to have a really light, streamlined gear system.#

pragmatic dave releases a new article. read it, it talks about the importance of verbs in the life of a programmer and a piece of software. it also talks about how the axiom of change of requirements and a system, and points out that many things that are thought to be "nouns" (like quality) are in fact features of a "verb" (quality is the general feel and result of a process.) it's very interesting, concise, and clear.#

the bewb asks for opinions on three designs. i like the 2nd one because i like really simple designs that don't clutter up the screen with flashy interfaces. but i live in a box, so what do i know?#

dive into mark can combine pregnancy, baby names, and web standards. bravo.#

i don't use python. but i like reading about people who do. because even though i'm a perl/scheme bigot i like to keep my mind open. so with that in mind i link russell's opinion of python after spending some time trying to use it. he comes from the java world and is let down by what he sees as a lack of professionalism and accountability, which can surely be seen with an product that is not commercially backed. any defensive of open source software in general could be put here, the only addition being that you have to consider that with an open source development platform you will often be pushing your decisions upon your customers (versus just using it in house and on web servers.) thanks for learning russell, so i don't have to.#

tony knows it always difficult to spend time someone who you used to get naked with but now no longer. especially if you're not sure that you really like that person at all anymore. i have that problem sometimes, because like most boys i think that (obviously) every girl who hangs out with me wants me, especially ex-girlfriends, but this is always never the case and i go back into the token boy bin.#

tony has strange reasons to not mind spam and he notes that if spam companies did what they say they did they wouldn't need to spam because everyone would be begging them to take their money.#

at kuro5hin is an article about how business is evil and greedy. quotes: ''Our society is caught up in so many technicalities that we tend to forget that humans aren't machines.'' - this happens with computer software too, developers think that they can just write arbitrary rules for using their interface and the human users will just deal with it; and this doosey about the law and capitalism: ''If you read the minds of all people who broke the law somehow, I guarantee you they wouldn't be worried about jail or fines. They'd be more worried about how this will affect their current employment, or possibly their future employment. Money is what keeps people to follow the rules, not the judicial system. Capitalism is more powerful than the law.'' - interesting, sad stories though#

this article at kuro5hin takes another article and runs with it. the basic idea is: the increased amount of sources of information in the world from the internet and different media has made it so people can look for a news/information source that matches their biases rather than creating a way for unbiased information to be aggregated and created. the author then points the discussion towards that of bias in general and how it can be changed and overcome.#

philip greenspun wonders why people who are not particularly notable on their own are discussed and mentioned so rabidly. hmm? of course, by writing about people writing and talking about them we just move the discussion to a meta-level that may or may not be better.#

from mobile entropy is the idea of usability terrorism (although if you want a more PC name how about "Grassroots Usability" or "The People's Popular Usability Volunteer Front"): the idea of finding a poorly designed site that you want to use and making a version that is more usable and giving it back. think of it like a micro-payment for the service, only instead of giving money it's more like barter. you give me a service, and i'll help you make it better. a trade, not a payment.#

from brian carnell is some insight on the process of taking out a dictator. also, the worst slashdot post ever#

details on xenosaga ii are out. new battle system. word. epic series games are the future. that is, if the epic story is actually good.#

darling girl thinks ''stripping is wasted on the ambitious'' and uses a story about a very serious, dedicated stripper to emphasis this point. #

boys, to chrystal, are oxymoronic they try to trick you into liking them and kissing them and then consistently attempt to confuse you by acting like they then are not interested in you. i can attest that i too am a "Bad Person" and like every other guy who attempts to look upon themselves from the outside can see that i only want what i can't have. actually not really for me, but i'd rather not act too high and mighty because pretty much everything else is wrong with me. so, to paraphrase mandy moore in "How To Deal", ''Haven't you ever noticed that whenever members of the opposite sex get together someone always ends up getting hurt?'' - we're mean to each other but for some reason we love it.#