[Original Link] Longish but interesting article by Paul Graham on whether hackers, normally classified amongst engineers & scientists, should be better described as artists…
Hackers and Painters
May 10th, 2003
A country boy comes home
May 5th, 2003
It’s 5 a.m. and I’m awake. Those who know me well will confirm that that’s a notable event. Ask any of the chaps at the Drones.
“Capital fellow”, they’ll tell you, “but not a bird given to catching the worm”.
It’s partly because I have 8 hours of jetlag to deal with, and partly because I’ve just been woken by a very loud dawn chorus. One blackbird, in particular, was singing for all he was worth about 3 feet away from my open window. I badly needed the sleep, but after 10 days in a city hotel where even opening windows wasn’t possible, I can’t think of many better ways to be woken up.
Small is beautiful
May 4th, 2003
A friend of mine said that mobile phones are the only thing about which men argue over whose is the smallest.
I know another topic for ‘inverse size envy’: email addresses. Until recently I was quentin @ att.com, which I thought was pretty good, but a friend who works for Electronic Arts told me at the weekend that he had two initials before the @ea.com. 9 characters in total. My shortest valid address at present is my 3 initials followed by @pobox.com. 13 characters. I feel suitably humbled.
Founders’ Copyright
May 3rd, 2003
[Original Link] If the copyright system is broken, then roll your own. That’s what Creative Commons are doing. And O’Reilly and others are using it.
OpenOffice Saves My Day, Again
May 2nd, 2003
[Original Link] A nice story by Jonathan Gennick.
Two sides to every coin
May 1st, 2003
My friend Martin King drew my attention to this wonderful example of journalistic differences. Even if you only read the headlines, have a look at the same talk by Alan Greenspan reported in the Seattle Times and the Economist.
Good news
April 29th, 2003
Two related recent announcements are both welcome:
A US court decision that file-swapping is not illegal.
“The ruling means that the labels and studios cannot ban 21st century technology in defence of their inefficient and outmoded 20th century distribution model,” said President of Grokster, Wayne Rosso.
And Apple’s very cool new music store means that people who wish to purchase music legally in a 21st-century way can do so. As long as they have a credit card with a U.S. billing address.
University finds innovative uses for iPods
April 28th, 2003
[Original Link] (from MacCentral)
Browsing is just the beginning
April 28th, 2003
[Original Link] John helps get RSS into the public consciousness.
Status-Q: Always on the bleeding edge…
April 22nd, 2003
[Original Link] Here’s a view of this weblog as seen in Chandler 0.1:
Good to know that it runs on Mac OS X. Even better to know that it’s mostly written in Python.
Taking Note of Journalism’s Worst
April 22nd, 2003
[Original Link] Richard Cohen: A Media Empire’s Injustices. “Since 1917 the Pulitzer Prizes — named for their creator, the 19th-century press baron Joseph Pulitzer — have been awarded to encourage excellence in journalism. I happen to think that more could be accomplished with a prize for the worst in journalism. It should be called the Murdoch….” [link from Dan Gillmor’s eJournal]
Vertical Keyboards
April 22nd, 2003
[Original Link] [link from the Guardian Online blog]
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