26 Mar 2006, 14:11 p.m.

A Punker John Gilmore

Steve Schultz has moved from Tokyo to the Berkeley Hills, and has started a new blog. Obviously some [elided] bureaucrat in some badly lit room punched some buttons on a computer and now I am …

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26 Mar 2006, 13:18 p.m.

Frickin' Caitlin Flanagan

This week, my MC Masala column talks about the trouble with directness. In software development, you find certain pairs of goals are aligned, like localization and internationalization. And some are opposed, like permissions systems and …

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25 Mar 2006, 13:56 p.m.

Output of Conversations Yesterday And Today

Make (the magazine) could have sister publications Do and Think, with a yearly compilation entitled Be. I have a huge constellation of thoughts about initiative, harshness, arrogance, stereotypical geek qualities, and vulnerability rolling around in …

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24 Mar 2006, 7:52 a.m.

God Gave You Eyes, Plagiarize

The Domenech plagiarism scandal has been a field day for Salon, and a more hilarious one than its other recent scoop (censored torture photos from Abu Ghraib (in which they made efforts to protect the …

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24 Mar 2006, 7:44 a.m.

Insults

When you are insulting a piece of software in the "it is ugly" or "it sucks" manner, does it make sense to say "it has diabetes"? Or -- as a colleague suggested -- is mere …

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23 Mar 2006, 19:56 p.m.

Have A Laugh With UPCs

"Welcome to the Internet UPC Database! One reason this site exists is for me to practice my own web development & database skills, experiment with new things, and to get a good laugh."

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23 Mar 2006, 8:50 a.m.

Applying to Grad School

Not as tough as I'd feared. This is probably because I already took my GREs years ago, at my mom's and sister's insistence, and because I'm applying to various Executive Masters programs and not, say, …

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23 Mar 2006, 8:23 a.m.

A New Theodicy

"If you don't like it, file a bug with God." "That's it! The reason that bad things happen is that God doesn't have a copy of FogBugz."

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22 Mar 2006, 22:10 p.m.

Miscellany From The Last 36 Hours

"You could use Dissociated Press to generate the string and then reverse the tokens. Is 'tokens' the right word?" "Yes, it is." "YES!" "What's the singular of vermin?" Since people who arrive new and befuddled …

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22 Mar 2006, 12:25 p.m.

In Which I Ponder Joe's Amazement That I Watch Substantial TV

You know what's really depressing? When I could have been learning Lisp or Kannada or organic chemistry or the piano, I was watching multiple episodes of Full House Family Matters Punky Brewster Small Wonder Perfect …

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