A philosophical look on programming languages

"At a very high level, all programming languages are similar. They all require you to describe a problem to solve. They all require similar skill sets — a good programmer in one language will find his or her skills will transfer to another language." This is the first setup by chromatic, techie at O'Reilly Network.

And then he is making a statement on
What I Hate About Your Programming Language. At a first glance this seem to be a geeky article but in the way he puts it one can understand more of the structure of the programming languages.

The Orwellian Time

There´s a lot talk in Sweden about the surveillance-cameras and the ever-continuing surveillance of our common space. In London there is 2,5 m cameras and now Sweden is going in the same direction. The critics is talking about an Orwellian state, the Big Brother-reality. But what they are forgetting is that in the novel "1984" the Big Brother is one, a state. The surveillancecams we are talking about is not controlled by one person or one organization - they´re mainly for safety or to make thiefs not willing to steal or rob.

I might think that the fright is in the picture of the Big Brother as always be able to know what a person is doing and that the cameras can't lie (well they can...) but they reality is both better and also maybe worse. Better since there's nothing that can be a Big Brother - no state in the modern world has both the technology and the state that would make it possible. But it might be worse since the possibility of control over the pictures is weak and on many hands; the pics of a wellknown person can be sold-out and the picture is maybe the most informationdense thing.

Pay back time

A pretty long article about one guy sues a telemarketer-firm (I simply love the name on the piece: How To Make A Telemarketer Cry (or, Suing Bozos for Fun & Profit)). And yes - the guy isn't the average white trash - he's a lawyer and knows how to work the system.

Who is Dr?

The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy might be one of the most well-known works in literature behind the Bible, Quaran and Donald Duck... but here is a BBC-piece where the HGTG's author left some pieces of his contributions to the serie Dr Who.

Techies play with train

Use your PDA and manage your model railroad. That's surely a continuance for the kid never to grow up. (TechTV)

Can a hacker be trusted?

"paying known ex-criminals to safeguard a company's intellectual property is like having the fox guard the henhouse", a interesting debate between Kevin Mitnick, the most-well-know-hacker of all and Christopher Painter who prosecuted Mitnick back in 1995. The theme was if a convicted hacker could be trusted in being hired for securitybiz. (SecurityFocus HOME News: Debate: Should You Hire a Hacker?).

R2D2 masssage?

Look at this - this one is never gonna say "now I'm tired". Instead you would have massage all the time. (tickle robot).

The perpetual museum

At the The Museum of Unworkable Devices you surely learn that the human is a never ending inventor with hope to succeed as the only award. The true perpetuum mobile might be the brains capacity to invent and try to make things never ever before seen or thought to work.

Boo they said

One of the biggest sharks in the Internet-Craziness in the late nineties was Boo.com, founded by two Swedish golddiggers de luxe: Ernst Malmsten and Kajsa Leander who did start the success Bokus.com in Sweden. But with Boo.com they surely did dive to deep and they did go bankrupt. They've spent nearly a billion dollars on the site which never worked. I just love the web elegy at Ghost Sites where boo.com's metatags are published. And there are several sites where disgruntled former employees and contractors tell what they think and on this one you can read Mr Malmstens farewell letter which somewhat shows how that guy totally lost every sense of reality or is totally lacking any feeling of empathy.

Deepest tone in universe

Astronomes is rather musical and now they have found that the black holes in universe is emanating the deepest note ever detected from an object in universe, a B flat but 57 octaves below the middle C.

What's the meaning of this? Well - the amounts of energy those waves of bass can solve a large amount of problems the astrophysics have faced.

A blog "from the other side"

At the Buzz I found this blog: Baghdad Burning from a woman who lives in Baghdad and do not like the americans.

I think this is one of the most fantastic features and best effects of the blogging-trend: the possibilities for everyone to tell about their life and their world and that others can read and hopefully get a broader view of life and other people. Cause things like this is a document of our time:
"They traced his route from his home to Al-Jami’a Quarter, where his parents lived, pausing at every burnt vehicle to examine it and asking the people in the surrounding areas whether they had seen a white 1985 Toyota being driven by a 40-year-old man? Maybe it had been fired at by a tank? Maybe it was hit by an Apache? People were sympathetic, but helpless. No white Toyota- a blue Kia with 6 passengers, a red Volkswagen with a mother, father and two kids… but no white Toyota. Every single time, they were referred to the makeshift graves along the main roads and highways. The temporary graves, for several weeks, lined the main roads of Baghdad. "

I am not against the war but somehow I hate the way which media tend to show it: as a shoot'em up-game. Everyone is a terrorist if iraquee and the good guys is the invaders. Life ain´t that simple. There's no black and white, rather different shades of gray.

Who do you gonna call?

The lawmen and -women of Shelbyville, Indiana had to call someon else rather than taking care of business themselves when their headquarters was haunted by things that wouldn't easy be put in the slammer.

They called the real Ghostbusters, S.I.G.H.T. who is specialized on prove false spokeries.

“Because the fear of the unknown is probably one of the biggest fears that humans have,” says one of the deputys.

Me myself I'm more concerned by the known things that human's should fear.

The coloured cube isn't dead

Did you think that the brain-wrecking and teasing toy of the Gen X-childhood was dead? Think again.

And some people even make videoclips of their fast fingering solution of Rubik's idea from hell.

Learn the society

Kids outsource summer homework blues - pretty strange but also really a kind of "learning-the-society". That not everything have to be done by yourself. This instance of eventing is surely educate the Japanese kids to be full-fledged consumers and in a world we're the ability to make the right consumer-decisions this is truly gold.