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Archive for November, 2003

The Web-standards compliant retooling of Slashdot.

Friday, November 21st, 2003

The Web-standards compliant retooling of Slashdot. This has the beginnings of a fascinating case study in going from HTML3+ cruft to XHTML/CSS elegance.

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Paul Krugman’s new book, The Great Unraveling, has a different subheading in the UK—”From Boom To Bust in Three Scandalous Years”—than in the US—”Losing Our…

Thursday, November 20th, 2003

Paul Krugman’s new book, The Great Unraveling, has a different subheading in the UK—“From Boom To Bust in Three Scandalous Years”—than in the US—“Losing Our Way in the New Century”. (There’s also a surfeit of ‘L’ in the European version.) But if that weren’t enough to convince you that the marketing message is a little different on opposite sides of the pond, take a look at the dust jackets (UK on the left, USA on the right … or did you not need the hint?):

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Linkspew.

Wednesday, November 19th, 2003

Linkspew.   Toxoplasmosis worse than we thought … “The Hebrew Hammer” has its own website (also: IMDb entry; my Hebrew Hammer entry from a year ago; Beth saw it at the Jewish Film Festival in Boston and enjoyed it) … tomorrow’s front-page Salon story is all about “Opus” … the Strong Bad Sings CD is now available … Jones Soda Co. launches Turkey & Gravy flavored soda (I’m pretty sure this is a joke—I think) … seriously, what is it with the British and their gay royalty scandals? … a very good trend continues with Midway Arcade Treasures, available in December for GameCube (classic Gauntlet anyone? Marble Madness?).

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New essay!

Tuesday, November 18th, 2003

New essay!   In which I invoke the unholy gods of ASCII art in the name of programmer education:

1100 0011 | 1010 1001  <= this is how it looks in the 
                          page content.
110x xxxx | 10xx xxxx  <= this is the UTF-8 template for
                          "character between 0x80 and 
                          0x7FF".
---0 0011 | --10 1001     To reconstruct the Unicode for 
   | || \_   || |  |     which character that is, take 
    \||  \_\  || |  |     all the x's and mush them together 
     \   \ || |  |     at the end of a 16-bit field.
0000 0000 | 1110 1001  <= Lo, it is Unicode 0x00E9, commonly 
                          written "U00E9", which is "é"

The full essay is here: “Why can’t Amar read (Unicode)?”

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<ctate> could have been worse; could have been Richard Simmons <pixelknave> That’s a tremendously versatile statement.

Monday, November 17th, 2003

<ctate> could have been worse; could have been Richard Simmons

<pixelknave> That’s a tremendously versatile statement.

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Slashdot covered Kasparov’s Game 3 win against X3D Fritz, tying the match at one win apiece (and one draw).

Sunday, November 16th, 2003

Slashdot covered Kasparov’s Game 3 win against X3D Fritz, tying the match at one win apiece (and one draw).

Human (Score:4, Funny)
by cfuse (657523) on Sun 16 Nov 04:35PM (#7490072)

Does Kasparov play human beings anymore? or is he too good for us?

Hee.

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<dsandler> Seriously, this is a shitty comic book.

Sunday, November 16th, 2003

<dsandler> Seriously, this is a shitty comic book. :-D

<pixelknave> Dude, high school.

<dsandler> I haven’t talked to any high school kids recently, so I have to assume that they’re actually as smart as I thought I was at the time.

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