Glass Maze Every jumbled pile of person

Posts from October 2004

Why Software Sucks

Neal Stephenson gave Slashdot a great interview the other day, and his answers were vintage Stephenson: intelligent, funny, fascinating, and often-quite-long-without-really-needing-to-be-but-that’s-ok-because-it’s-Neal-Stephenson. Most of the questions were about the creative and practical aspects of being a novelist, but there were few techie ones in there as well — like Walter Mosely, Stephenson used to sling code [...]


The Dude in My Chair

When I arrived at Starbuck’s yesterday, I found an interloper, a man unfamiliar to me, sitting at my usual table. I walked past him, eyes narrowed, purchased my beverage, walked past him again, found another, wholly unsatisfactory, seat, and stared daggers at him. When this had no apparent effect, I tried staring stilettos, and when [...]


Gibson Returns!

William Gibson, another god in my personal pantheon (it’s getting crowded up there, actually; I’m going to have to lease some more godspace), has restarted his blog. This brings me great joy, especially since he has been devoting much Gibsion prose to the Horror That Is The Prospect of the Reelection of the Current Preznit. [...]


The Principle of Least Astonishment

When programmers sit down to write their code, many of them do so under the aegis of an axiom called The Principle of Least Astonishment. This axiom states that you should do your utmost to write stuff that is not going to astonish, dismay, or confuse the next person who has to look at it [...]


Hypocrisy Works

I’ll be honest. This Mary Cheney thing is scaring the crap out of me. The Republicans are jumping all over Kerry’s mention of Cheney’s daughter in his answer to a debate question about homosexuality; they’re claiming it was out of bounds, invasion of privacy, slimy and opportunistic, etc. Lynn Cheney says Kerry is not a [...]


Buzzwords

In order to do my job, I often have to read shit like this: SiteMinder® is the market-leading access management solution for web-based and enterprise applications. SiteMinder software creates a secure foundation for centralized, policy-based authentication and authorization management across heterogeneous environments, providing blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah [...]


Writers For Kerry (Mostly)

Slate asked a bunch of novelists who they’ll be voting for in November, and — not surprisingly — most came down on the side of Kerry (or Notbush, in some cases). A lot of their answers are pure gold: Amy Tan: I’m voting for Kerry, because I have a brain and so does he. Jonathan [...]


The Journey To Suck

At the risk of committing the blogular sin of over-earnestness, I feel the need to expound on the subject of hope. Because I’ve come to the conclusion, after much serious, brow-furrowed, chin-resting-on-fist rumination, that hope is the most important thing we have, the one essential item we can’t survive without. It trumps everything else, even [...]


Debate Thoughts

I have to admit, I wasn’t overwhelmed by Edward’s performance in the debate last night. He didn’t wilt under the perceived weight of Darth Cheney’s experience and “gravitas”, as a lot of the punditry seemed to think he would, but I was expecting more: there’s so much to hit these guys with, and Edwards is [...]