Jakob Nielsen getn' down

If there was any other more convincing argument for "fair use" expansion in copright law, I can't think of one.

High Stakes Poker

Wow, I've discovered good non-AdultSwim television again on, of all things, High Stakes Poker on the Game Show Network.

If you have any interest in poker this is the show to watch. A 'pure' cash game with all of its additional nuances such as straddles, insurance, double-runs, etc.

It's a subtle thing, but as much as they can, GSN tries to do the editing so you can really watch the nuances of how a player thinks through the hand.

The only downside is the "color" commentary by ex-tabloid reporter A.J. Benza

Keep Gabe "Welcome Back Kotter" Kaplan though. He actually knows what he's talking about.

Flickr prev/next image padding

I know I'm being picky, but I do wish Flickr would add a wee bit more <td> padding to their prev next picture preview images in the photostream.

For example, in these book pictures, it can be hard to see where the actual image boundaries are.

I'm not asking for much here .1em or 5px would be plenty.

David versus O'Reilly (goliath)

I great post by David of Ruby on Rails fame on the possibillities of self-publishing and great counter-points (in the comments section) by Tim O'Reilly.

I think the key things to keep in mind here is that the print publishing market is vast and newer technologies combined with a more educated consumer allow niche' long-tail digital-print successes like 'Getting Real' to be in the relm of possibility. David et al. definitely seem to be committing the fallacy of mis-leading vividness here.

Given Wil Wheaton's experience with O'Reilly, I'm curious if his forthcoming "You Want Kids with That?" book will be self-published.

MS Origami

Maybe it's just me, but every time I see shots of Microsoft's new mini-tablet PC (movie), I think Newton.

It's too big and expensive to support consumer PDA use cases and not compelling enough to shift away from laptops.

Until proper ultra-low-power paper-thin displays are more common-place (read cheap), I don't see the status-quo changing. There are currently five and only 5 form-factors for computing.

• Embedded/Appliance/Pervasive (watch, rfid tag, sensors)
• Hand-held (PDA/Phone/iPod)
• Desktop/Laptop (Keyboard + Monitor)
• Theatre (Media-PCs, Mac-Minis, DVD Players)
• Installation (super-computers, renderfarms, artistic exhibitions)

Unintended consequences of Ajax

One of the wonderful side-effects of the adoption of Ajax architectures for Web applications is the immense server-side API clean-ups. The server now has to support properly partitioned, modalized, and layered, interfaces which consume and emit XML. The absolutely wonderful aspect of this is the efforts are coming from within in order to support actual user demands rather than being forced from without due to compliance with some standards body or set of government regulations.

In the future, I believe that the true impact of Ajax will be felt more with easy server-side integrations and service federations rather than gee-wizzy new GUI widgets. The pressure presently coming from the new front-end interaction models will help to crystalize these APIs into gems of cohesive simplicity enabling emergent functionality at incredibly lowered integration costs.

Google + RFID + 20 years

So wonderfully succint. This reminds me of Dick Hardt's presentation style which was actually inspired by Lawrence Lessig.

Vancouver barista walkout

Via:Waiter Rant

It seems that 4 staff members of this coffee bar/bookstore in Vancouver had had enough and composed this rather descriptive note prior to their walk-out. Having visited Vancouver before and been very impressed by the politeness and 'Britishness' of the place (though even more so in Victoria, BC) I'm rather surprised.

Vancouver always struck me as a blend between London and Seattle. It's a subtle thing--kind'of like the taste of celery.

Why isn't William Gascoigne more famous?

William Gascoigne invented the micrometer.

Without the ability to consistently measure to thousandths of an inch, all modern industrial processes would not be possible. The whole of modern industry owes itself to this man yet, until today, I never heard his name spoken aloud and I took several mechanical engineering courses at my alma mater.

Hat tip Mr. Gascoigne.

Monday Quickies

Michael Crichton on patent reform.

Something sports-related happened in my home town.

The next version of Scheme is targeting non-hygenic macros as a feature.

Yeah, o.k. I'll give 'ya that the last one is just a wee bit more obscure than the others, but this is quite a role-reversal from the previous dictums of the language. Imagine when C++ started supporting the dynamic_cast operator or, god forbid, Python allowed some special set of tokens, other than whitespace, for lexical scoping of code blocks.

Banned from WOW for using his brain

Aside from the obvious issues as to exactly why one would wish to occupy one's time in such a fashion, this is exactly the sort of reason why I canceled my WOW account some time ago.

Blizzard is failing horribly at managing the natural issues which crop up anytime you enable a network client to run code. This user did nothing wrong, yet from Blizzard's perspective it's "cheating".

The WOW client interface is written in Lua. It's quite possible, and entirely "legal" from their present TOS to modify this code and the accompanying XML to achieve a variety of effects which are not possible in the plain vanila install.

This user gained much less from his actions than others gain from employing so-called "legal" custom clients which expose normally hidden event information such as stun-lock timers and current health/mana for all targets on-screen.

Blizzard needs to tighten their TOS and surveilance software to disallow such mods or open it up so that natural competative market forces will create a more level playing field "literally" for all involved.

The former is quite an undertaking and really is only a stop-gap measure. The server ultimately needs to trust the client and/or limit the client's actions using action-neutral throttling policies. John Carmack who has some measure of expertise in this space, had a few things to say on this quite some time ago. It's a shame Blizzard isn't listening.

Io, a new prototype-based language

At first glance Io looks like LiveScript and/or Rhino (a prototyping inheritance language JavaScript freed from the browser), but it goes much deeper. Veeery interesting. I'm curious if it borrows the same register-based VM architecture from Lua.

Juicey stuff to explore if only I had the time....

Siskel & Ebert keepn' it real

A series of out-takes from the classic PBS series. Roger Ebert once commented that the main reason for the success of the show was their "anti-chemistry". It clearly shows.

Amatuer Lightsaber Duel

A very, very well choreographed duel. What an amazing piece of work.

I've not been this impressed since watching the Grayson trailer a few years ago.

The Matrix plot explained...mostly

For those still wondering about the final plot point tie-ins vis-a-vis The Architect, The Oracle, etc. in matrix "Revolutions", here's the best explaination I've seen.

It still doesn't explain exactly 'why' the machines actually need the humans nor why exactly The Oracle has such a strong motivation to make a more sustainable Matrix. Still, it does offer a plausible working set of conjectures for everything. I still thing that the Wachowskies did a total action-movie-cop-out for Revolutions compared to the first two movies. All that plot potential was wasted on largely pointless, even somewhat cheesily done, action sequences and montages.