Interplanetary Classified

Did I ever mention how much I love Craigslist?

I can't think of any other company/service which has maintained such a consistent committment to its core philosophy over the years.

Part of this is simply not-going-public, but the vast majority, I believe, can be traced back to Craig himself.

Other companies buy up superbowl ad-time for promotions. Craigslist sends their ads into outer-space.

Design Patterns...heh

Witness the latest in the head-first series.

Maybe they've run out of "19th century animal engravings from the Dover pictorial archive" ? Maybe they're trying to appeal to a younger/hipper (gen Y) programmer segment? Maybe this Qwen Stefani model look-a-like was in a career lull now that Qwen's gone all harajuku.

Mark my words, the next step is the annual O'Reilly swimsuit issue.

Don't get me wrong. I've consumed many an O'Reilly title over the years, have had wonderful corporate business dealing with O'Reilly publishing and a very entertaining personal conversation with Tim at a private post-OOS conference gathering 3 years ago. Mr. O'Reilly is one rightous dude. Heck, he even gives out free self-publishing advice (scroll about 50% down). Still, this cover somehow crosses an aesthetic line with me for a technical professonal book.

Adaptive Path's new product

Rumors are swirling regarding Adaptive Path's "super-secret" first product roll-out. Some time ago, the user experience partnership "retitled" leaving Wired alum Jeff Veen in charge of product development. I suspect his recent November posting on inadequate web CMS systems, yields some clues. Given that 37Signals seems to have captured the project management market for Web 2.0 apps, my guess is some sort of customer/editer/writer-friendly hosted CMS.

ACLU Pizza Movie

It's scary just how possible this sort of thing is right now. Granted this movie is pure political propoganda, but I don't see many legislative, cultural, and economic barriers preventing this reality from coming to fruition over the next decade.

And my phone company was 'mystified' why I asked them to remove my SSN from their database and replace it with a customer ID number.

Of coarse, they're required to keep archival copies of customer records and this legislation (pdf) is currently stalled in the Virginia house.

Given that the moronic idea of Real ID will definitely become federal law, I don't hold out much hope.

At least it appears I'll be able to buy some better wine online shortly.

*sigh* My tax dollars at work.

Enlightened Discourse

A wonderful set of correspondance between Roger Ebert and Daniel Woodburn on the offensive use of the term "midget". If only more people would engage in lengthy, informed, polite, and intelligent discourse in society these days.

This brightened my morning.