By
anders pearson
29 Aug 2001
this weekend, i moved into my new apartment. a nice one-bedroom on amsterdam ave. between 106th and 107th st. lani drove up from DC to help me move my stuff (have i mentioned lately that lani kicks ass?).
<p>this is the first time in my entire life that i actually have my <em>own</em> kitchen and bathroom. until now, i’ve always lived with other people and had to share my space. no one leaving the sink full of dirty dishes, eating all my eggs, or using all soap on me. it is heaven.</p>
By
jp
22 Aug 2001
I wonder if the software pirating / file sharing community is a good model for evolution. so far it fits all criteria, with the code that makes it from one iteration to the next serving as the heritable material which conveys the advantage upon the subsequent trends.
<p>seriously, look at music, for example. posting mp3’s on web pages is quickly shut down, so <span class="caps">HTTP</span> is effectively “killed” by the selection pressure. however, mp3 is established as a better medium than .wav or .aiff. (though to be fair, .mp2 was okay at that point). then napster emerges and does well, until the applied selective pressures (law as the selective antibiotic) find a way to effectively kill it. </p>
<p>now with kazaa, gnutella clients finally becoming user friendly and peer to peer technologies taking over, the selective pressures have effectively selected against centralized, controllable file sharing and lead to the directional selection of multi-drug resistant clients. they’ve out-evolved the selection pressures, and what’s emerged is better, stronger, and more powerful than ever before. and still growing. if anything, attempts to shut it down just give the underground a kick in the pants to get better, by applying the do-or-die selection pressure.</p>
By
Matthias Dittgen
16 Aug 2001
Here it is! It is called appbattle. In the red corner there’s InternetExplorer, and in the blue corner Netscape. Or Linux vs. Windows? Who will become the champion? lol
By
anders pearson
15 Aug 2001
it took me a few years to get around to it and a few weeks to actually get through it, but i finally read Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter.
<p>it is definately one of the best books i’ve read in the last few years. it deals with the nature of self-awareness. as the author says in the preface: </p>
<p><p class="quote">“In a word, <span class="caps">GEB</span> is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self, and how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone or a puddle.”</p>
<p>his theories revolve around a concept of “strange loops” or “tangled hierarchies” which is not easily explained. in a roundabout attempt to make this evasive concept clear, <span class="caps">GEB</span> covers</p>
<p><p class="quote">fugues and canons, logic and truth, geometry, recursion, syntactic structures, the nature of meaning, Zen Buddhism, paradoxes, brain and mind, reductionism and holism, and colonies, concepts and mental representations, translation, computers and their languages, <span class="caps">DNA</span>, proteins, the genetic code, artificial intelligence, creativity, consciousness and free will.</p>
<p>the book is highly recommended if you have a passing interest in any of the above. furthermore, it serves as one of the most clearly written books on the mathematical underpinnings of computer science that i’ve ever read. it hits most of the important material and does it in a way that is accessible to people without a technical or math background. eg, although it doesn’t name it as such, it offers an amazingly lucid and elegant explanation of <a href="http://www.math.sc.edu/~sumner/numbertheory/induction/Induction.html">proof </a> by induction.<br />
since <span class=”caps”>GEB</span> was written in 1979, it more or less predated the discovery (or at least popularization) of fractals and chaos theory. since the focus of the book is self-referential systems, i’d really be interested in seeing how, if it were re-written today, chaos theory would be integrated into it. </p>
<p>anyway, if you haven’t read it yet, go read it.</p>
By
anders pearson
15 Aug 2001
god, i love mozilla.
<p>here’s a document describing how to <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/components/configPolicy.html">block all the annoying things that websites can do</a>. popup windows, resizing the browser, changing the status bar, etc. and the best part is that it can be done on a site by site basis. so you can block the annoying javascript on one site without having to turn javascript off globally.</p>
By
quiet
13 Aug 2001
I guess there’s always a way to get what you want. I’m seriously tempted to help this guy out.
By
anders pearson
13 Aug 2001
it doesn’t appear to be working at the moment, but the state of new york has set up a do not call registry which makes it illegal for telemarketers to call you. hopefully, other states and countries can set up something similar and enough people will find out about it and sign up that telemarketing will just go away.
<p>sure would be nice if we could do something similar with spam…</p>
By
tuck
13 Aug 2001
i know that opinions can change over time. likely these changes spring from a growth in “maturity” (whatever that word means) or education, or the turning of a page in the silly book of life. along with opinions and thoughts, tastes change as well. the best examples of this for me come from looking at my most revered heavy metal gods as they grow older and their musical styles curb towards pitter-pattering melodic stories reflecting their new paternity, or wrinkling dicks and graying hairs. watch dave mustane try to hang on; look at keith caputos self-labeled spiritual transformation; look at hevy devy (devin townsend) who once wrote a song called Oh My Fucking God which caused me to dig my fingernails into the back of a bus seat in rural china accidentally (while thinking to myself: oh my… fucking… god… this is intensely orgasmic while unknowingly mouthing the words: OH…….. .MY……… FUCK……. ING……GOD along with devin) now singing songs like Unity in which he simply repeats the soothing, graceful, gospel-esque words: Its alllll riiiiiiiiiight ten billion times.
<p>there is a point here… ah yes. somehow, over the past year, my taste, my opinion, my mind-for-sound has not only accepted a once loathed style of music, but has actually embraced it to the point of seeking it out when i can, and identifying it wherever it is. and (oh my fucking god) hearing it in my head when i sleep at night. </p>
<p>read on in the comment if you care to.<br />
By
jp
11 Aug 2001
well, it finally happened. clinical isolates of multi-drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus (yellowish and smells like old sweat socks, prominent human and bovine pathogen) have emerged that are resistant to the alamo drug (something that starts with a Z, I can’t recall off the top of my head).
<p>so, in our overuse of antibiotics, we’ve created the first all-hell resistant bug which is <i>completely unaffected</i> by all known antibiotics. </p>
<p>a little horizontal gene transfer, and popular pathogen, a nice widely-used body of water, and you’ve got the next plague of the new millenium. </p>
<p>shit.</p>
By
sarah
10 Aug 2001
French actor Belmondo suffers stroke. Ah, I’m breathless…