Joel weighs in again on the multitasking issue. More research seems to conclude that developers are unable to multitask. That doesn’t surprise me, but what’s interesting is that most people seem to believe that they can multitask, and in fact that they work better and get more done when they’re multitasking. They wear the fact that they have too many things going on as a badge of honor. (I’m as guilty of it as anyone.)

Larry Ellison has finally snapped. Don’t even bother to feign surprise.

James Cramer thinks Salon is going to make it. I don’t think that really means anything.

ECB 1.50 (the Emacs Code Browser) is out.

From the people who brought you America’s Dumbest Criminals, it’s The Beverly Hillbillies Bible Study. Sadly, I am not making this up, and it’s not a joke.

Ant 1.4 beta 1 is out. If you’re a Java developer and you haven’t started using Ant, check it out. It’s the best thing since sliced bread.

An entry on this page from August 10, 1999, mentioned that Salon’s revenues for the previous quarter were 1 million dollars. Now, here we are on August 10, 2001, and Salon reports their revenues for the previous quarter were 1 million dollars. In fairness to Salon, their first quarter revenues for 2000 were 1.5 million dollars.

I created a new list at Amazon.com today, Why Things Are the Way They Are. It includes several books that helped to shape my world view. The alternate title was “Corporate America is Out to Get You.”

Malice or stupidity, you be the judge. Verizon is prohibiting its DSL customers from relaying mail with a From: address that isn’t @verizon.com, presumably as some sort of misbegotten anti-spam measure. Not only is the system completely wrongheaded, but it’s poorly implemented as well. One of the great tragedies of the demise and consolidation of independent ISPs is the replacement of competent small-business owners with faceless corporate entities run by incompetents and morons. It pains me to get my Internet service from Time-Warner Cable, but it’s not like I’m going to dump my broadband service to go back to having a second phone line and a modem connection.

Today Salon is running an interview with Neil Young, the creator of the new game Majestic. Majestic has been getting a ton of press, because it’s completely different than other computer games. In fact, I don’t understand it well enough to really describe it (I haven’t played). Is anybody playing this game? How do you like it?