“The enlightened, disciplined mind is the holiest of holies, a wonder among wonders. Upon the Earth – a grain of sand in the Universe, man is on the order of one-billionth of the smallest magnitude… And yet this particle in your mind’s eye, that lives but for sixty or so trips of the Earth around […]
Three years ago, I predicted that publishers will inevitably declare war on book-lending: “Let’s pretend that a Nook book (or any similar DRM’d ebook) could be lent in exactly the same manner as a physical book: to whomever you like, whenever you like, for as long as you like – with the added benefit of […]
Computing pioneer Alan Kay tells us that a computer is “an instrument whose music is ideas.” This seems like a beautiful metaphor, until you realize that we have somehow ended up in a world where the profession of musician is nearly unknown. To continue with this analogy, let’s imagine that you were a child who […]
Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” Holmes: “That was the curious incident.” – “Silver Blaze” (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) Yesterday, I heard a lecture […]
Update: Click here if you would like to try HyperCard yourself. I was a Hypercard child – though our friendship was brief. Our seventh-grade class was led into a room full of brand-new Macintosh Performas. The day’s lesson was a crash course in the use of an uncomplicated yet marvelous program. With it, one might […]
Ah, Clojure. The nice, clean replacement for Common Lisp — as some would have you believe. I haven’t forgotten about you. Clojure is a nice, clean replacement for Common Lisp only if thumbs are nice, clean replacements for cars. But wait, we’re dealing with something more than a mere lightweight hitchhiker on the JVM: “…Clojure’s […]
In the past, I predicted that publishers will inevitably declare war on book-lending: “Let’s pretend that a Nook book (or any similar DRM’d ebook) could be lent in exactly the same manner as a physical book: to whomever you like, whenever you like, for as long as you like – with the added benefit of […]
Computer users are forever being misled, successfully lied to, sold “old wine in new bottles,” bamboozled in a myriad ways large and small. Why? Simply because we are, to use the technical term, suckers. Not always as individuals, but certainly collectively. The defining attribute of the sucker is, of course, an inability to learn from […]
Technological standards may be usefully divided into five basic types: 4 – Standards arrived at by consensus. Examples: Common Lisp. 3 – Standards imposed by dictatorial fiat. Examples: Russian railroad gauge. 2 – Standards imposed through sudden, overwhelming, and indisputable technological supremacy over the previous state of the art. Examples: Arabic numerals. Sildenafil. 1 – […]
Behold: “The rolling element is a sphere a foot or so across, the upper part of which fits into a cage equipped with motors and drive-wheels. The rider sits on a saddle projecting up from this framework. Should he begin to topple, accelerometers detect the movement instantly, and the onboard microprocessor commands the motors to […]
