Archive for January, 2005
Usually I put this kind of thing on del.icio.us, but this point by dan Bricklin is too good not to pull a long quote from:
Instead of making you feel bad for “only” doing 99%, a well designed system makes you feel good for doing 1%. People complain about systems that have lots of “freeloaders”. Systems that do well with lots of “freeloading” and make the best of periodic participation are good.
At IRIS we talked about this a bit. During the panel discussion at the end of the presentation day, we talked about freeloading vs. contributing, and where Joe Schmoe (or Joe User or Joe Schlemiel or Joe Q. Random, as he was variously referred to) falls on that axis. I argued that there’s a vein of willing contributors out there, and while it certainly doesn’t cover the entire user population for distributed software, there are enough (based on the Open Source movement, SETI@Home, etc.) of these “civil servants” to make the world go ’round. (As it is on Earth, so shall it be in software.)
[Link via Guilt Is Good (Many-to-Many).]
Delicious comix from last week that I’m just catching up on: Cat and Girl’s The Blue Comic; Jeffrey Rowland’s Enchanted Delight Breakfast Beer.
Update: So much more! Strong Sad: “Have you seen my Moleskine notebook?” And a vision of our children in Penny Arcade: The Next Generation.
… the two most cherished words in academia.
My talk about FeedTree, “Sharing Web micronews with peer-to-peer event notification,” has been scheduled for the last slot on day one of IPTPS ‘05. (I hope that doesn’t mean everyone will be exhausted and grumpy by that time in the afternoon.)
The new Google Video Search allows me to verify what Darryl claimed: that J. J. Abrams is crossing his shows over.
Alias | The Awful Truth
Sydney, consider the ramifications. She’s my sister. I need to tell her the truth. This isn’t about what you need, Sydney. No, apparently it’s out what you need. You don’t know how Nadia May react to that information. Which will be especially true If she finds out from another source. I needn’t remind you that your sister has sworn to kill the man responsible for your mother’s death. Hey. Hi. Syd, where are the candles? These guys want to do the cake. I’ll be right there. Okay. [ “You all, everybody” By driveshaft playing ] trust me, Dad, I don’t look forward to telling Nadia what you did or why you did it.

Steve, grinning like an idiot.
It’s been all over the place today, but just in case you hadn’t seen it, footage [Coralized link] has been uncovered of the introduction of the Macintosh at the January Apple shareholder’s meeting. Also read the story of how the video was recovered. Spass!
Two quick somewhat belabored points. First, I mentioned this over in my del.icio.us feed, but I think it demands the very-slightly-wider distribution of this page: USM, the Universal Subscription Mechanism, is a pretty simple idea that aims to patch a hole in the current RSS/Atom subscription scenario.
Not One More Damn Pseudo-Intellectual Poorly-Conceived Protest, Quote Unquote
≡ 2:36 pm ≡ poli
I never heard anything back from the Rice Coffeehouse about my suggestions for the renovation, but a recent visit to the site shows that they’ve developed a final concept that seems to share a few things with my sketch (including bar seating and a convenient coffee-condiment station).
I’m still not sure I like the partitions, but maybe they’ll look better in person than they do in my head.
GZY, a collection of all references and descriptions of the fable of King Solomon’s ring (or, “This Too Will Pass”). [via Boing Boing]
One day, Master Foo was browsing the Web, reading about optional typechecking on Guido’s blog.
A great multitude of static typing zealots arrived up the mountain from the town below and begged an audience with Master Foo.


Sydney, consider the ramifications. She’s my sister. I need to tell her the truth. This isn’t about what you need, Sydney. No, apparently it’s out what you need. You don’t know how Nadia May react to that information. Which will be especially true If she finds out from another source. I needn’t remind you that your sister has sworn to kill the man responsible for your mother’s death. Hey. Hi. Syd, where are the candles? These guys want to do the cake. I’ll be right there. Okay. [ “You all, everybody” By 




