Um, nothing to see here. Just experimenting a way to get some link blog action going. So far the results are ass. Stay tuned.
Archive for June, 2008
links for 2008-07-01
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On Obama
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MacFarlane is raking it in; see also other family guy story.
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Crawford teaches a well-like cyberlaw class at Cardozo
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pinning your dock to the left or right side, instead of centering it, so that it only grows in one direction
links for 2008-06-30
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a feed of amazon’s mp3 daily sales. whole albums for $2.99
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Google engineers with too much free time = intellectual property crusaders
point/counterpoint: Windows is a mess
Point: Randall Stross of NYTimes declares that Windows is an “obese monolith built on an ancient frame” and that “[t]he best solution to the multiple woes of Windows is starting over. Completely. Now.”
If Microsoft thinks it is too late to actually use Singularity or something like it, the company should take heart from Apple’s willingness to brave the wrath of its users when, in 2001, it introduced Mac OS X.
Counterpoint: Joel on Software: the “single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make: …[decide] to rewrite the code from scratch.”
The idea that new code is better than old is patently absurd. Old code has been used. It has been tested. Lots of bugs have been found, and they’ve been fixed. There’s nothing wrong with it. It doesn’t acquire bugs just by sitting around on your hard drive. Au contraire, baby! Is software supposed to be like an old Dodge Dart, that rusts just sitting in the garage? Is software like a teddy bear that’s kind of gross if it’s not made out of all new material? * * *
When you throw away code and start from scratch, you are throwing away all that knowledge. All those collected bug fixes. Years of programming work.
Stross’ work is vague, fast and loose on the details, and misleading:
Adding features, plugging security holes, fixing bugs, fixing the fixes that never worked properly, all while maintaining compatibility with older software and hardware — is there anything Windows doesn’t try to do? Painfully visible are the inherent design deficiencies of a foundation that was never intended to support such weight. * * *
Yawn, welcome to the world of maintaining a platform. This is what we do.
Vista is the equivalent, at a minimum, of Windows version 12 — preceded by 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, NT, 95, NT 4.0, 98, 2000, ME, XP. After six years of development, … long enough to permit Apple to bring out three new versions of Mac OS X, Vista was introduced to consumers in January 2007. * * *
As far as I know, the Windows dev team scrapped their XP code, and built Vista from the Windows Server 2003 codebase, a more secure and finely-combed code base. Stross’ recitation of “Windows version 12″ suggests that Vista must be crufty because, goddarn-it, look at how old it is! Twelve versions! Must be obsolete, ya see?
Lastly, Stross’ suggestion that Microsoft take a play out of Apple’s book, relaunch your operating system with an entire new architecture (i.e. Mac OS X), is unrealistic. Apple’s small market share permits it to make these nimble drastic moves (oh yeah don’t forget the G4/Intel switch too) and still keep its developers in the fold. Steve Jobs is also a pied piper that could lead developers into the ocean. Microsoft has to move MUCH lower, and has to work harder to gets its vast community of developer’s onboard.
i heart me some more apple
With great haste, Laptop 2.0 has arrived. Has happiness ever come so swiftly?
For the record, this was ’standard shipping.’
vampire weekend: then and now
Last year, east river park summer show:
One year later, at this weekend’s rainy show at SummerStage:
I should have taken Neeta’s offer a few years ago to check out a new Columbian band named Vampire Weekend. In general, sometimes you find a new band you like, have a few good shows together, and then it comes time to part ways. Judging from the crowd, and the source of the crowd, after one short album by Vampire Weekend, and now it’s time to let them go. Man, that crowd reminds me of a few Dashboard Confessional shows.
i went to see murakami
exchange: office, comparatively
From: selfish crab@nj-lawfirm.com
Date: Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 2:43 PM
To: V@nyc-lawfirm.com
Happy thursday!
There’s a mouse sneaking around and it has sent the office into a frenzy. The secretaries are consumed by the hunt for this thing. they’re putting cheese everywhere to try to draw it out. Also, today is Bagels Thursday.
how’s it going over there?
[crab]
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From: V
Date: Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 2:47 PM
To: selfish crab
A guy just scaled our building! So that’s pretty exciting. I’ve had a busy day. Going to negotiation training soon.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/man-scales-new-york-times-building/
———-
From: selfish crab
Date: Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 3:08 PM
To: V
show off.
tag you’re it
i gave a speech
Last week at my birthday dinner, I made a speech. I had decided to do so a few weeks ago out of neither solemnity nor ceremony, but rather out of the purest form of vanity that binds your friends to humor you for a finite moment. The speech was written over a few days, through a few drafts (yes, the void left by law schools is great), and the ending was left open to extemporaneous expression. By popular demand, here it is:
Twenty six. Twenty six. Twenty-six is not a fine age. It is bereft of societal milestones: freedom to drive or rent an automobile, freedom to purchase firearms, cigarettes, alcohol, pornography, registration for conscription in the armed forces. Twenty-six is an inelegant age, lacking even the distinction of being a prime number, or a square, or a cube. Twenty-six lies just past the peak of one’s on roaring twenties, signaling the inevitable descent into mortgages, compelled companionship, everyday chinos, and heaps and heaps of responsibility. And so, I think this time is worthy of a moment’s contemplation before we age any further.
If anything has dictated the tempo of my adult years, it has been fear of change. My old boss and mentor once advocated that I embrace change, not fear it. “Change is constancy, my boy,” he preached, “Change is a constancy.” Then he told us he was quitting the company and left us for greener pastures.
Change has ruled the past several years. Change in careers, change in romance, change in increasingly expensive apartments. Hmm. I suppose that is all. I’ll tell you what has not changed: an ever-present constellation of friends, fixed almost eternally in the sky. It is no stretch of the metaphor to say that they provide me guidance when I am lost, and light when all is dark.
These are friendships that have lasted through separation at high school, at college, those terminal points for most young friendships. They have lasted through long spans of time and geography. They have even survived when we moved and stayed on the west side.
Yet change, change– that locomotive of uncertainty and novelty– change is a-coming. Marriage arrives soon for the fortunate among us, and awaits the patient rest of us. Higher education in far away lands beckons yet more. I am uncertain what changes or effects of these changes lie ahead. I am even more uncertain what scant wisdom I have earned in my twenty-six years so far. However, I do know and cherish this: there is no greater sound on this earth than the sound of your friends’ laughter, joined in chorus by your own.
Thank you for being here, there, then, always, and forever. Now enjoy this melted ice cream dessert.
people, stop getting married
lounging
park bench
