Posts

Armin Ronacher points out that in some aspects, Ruby is more sensitive to white space than Python. (Via Simon Willison.) What I can say with confidence is that I am more sensitive to white space than Python or Ruby, and I’ll also add that civilized developers adapt to the conventions of the language that they’re using. I guess what I’m saying is that arguments against Python or Ruby based on how they handle white space are fundamentally weak. In the end, they all seem to boil down to, “It doesn’t look enough like C for me to be comfortable.” ...

I’m thinking of trying a new experiment. Since I don’t have an anonymous blog, it’s rather difficult for me to post stories about what I work on, people at work, and other related topics. Once, a coworker posted at length about a conversation we’d had, and I found it slightly strange. I wouldn’t want someone I work with to learn what I thought of them through a blog post when I haven’t made those feelings clear to them in person. ...

Anil Dash puts the career of Bill Gates in a wonderful context: Bill Gates has pulled off one of the greatest hacks in technology and business history, by turning Microsoft’s success into a force for social responsibility. Imagine imposing a tax on every corporation in the developed world, collecting $100 per white-collar worker per year, and then directing one third of the proceeds to curing AIDS and malaria. That, effectively, is what Bill Gates has done. ...

Looks like one of the larger effects of globalization is to decrease the reliance of other countries on the US economy, relative to the overall pie.

One issue that’s been percolating in the Presidential election is the fact that John McCain isn’t an Internet user. For example, here’s former John Edwards blogger Tracy Russo questioning McCain aide Mark Soohoo yesterday on the subject. The original event that led people to start questioning the idea of having an Internet-illiterate President was McCain’s statement on this video from a few months ago that he doesn’t use a computer. Matthew Yglesias weighed in on this matter today. ...

Bruce Sterling’s Dead Media Project is a catalog of media formats that are no longer in use. In many cases, media stored in these dead formats can no longer be read because there aren’t readers are no longer available for them. The project came to mind when I read about some trouble my friend Andrew Brown ran into trying to access old archives of The Independent newspaper. The archives were distributed on CD (not yet a dead media format) and can only be accessed using a program that’s installed by a batch program that runs only under MS-DOS 5. ...

Andy Baio interviews Alan Taylor, the creator of The Big Picture, the new photography blog at Boston.com that lots of people are talking about. He explains how he got permission to build the blog and how he runs it on a day to day basis. One of the first entries that really demonstrated how the site is fundamentally different than most journalism and every other blog was Indigenous Brazilians Protest Dam. The photos themselves are stunning, and illustrate a topic that I knew absolutely nothing about. ...

Here’s something bloggers should probably be paying attention to. Rogers Cadenhead’s site The Drudge Retort ran afoul of the Associated Press by using headlines and excerpts of its stories and was rewarded with a DMCA takedown notice. In the process of responding to the AP’s demands, Rogers was put in touch with Robert Cox of the Media Bloggers Association, who volunteered to mediate on his behalf in the dispute based on prior experience working with the AP on something else. Until this week, I had never heard of the MBA, and apparently neither had Roger, who posts his own explanation of how Cox came to be involved in his dispute with the AP. ...

New York Times designer Khoi Vinh has a little advice for Google on the use of white space in Web design. I’m linking to it because I think a lot of Web developers would do well by taking it to heart. It is funny to me that all of Google’s applications have that “designed by a programmer” aesthetic. It sort of makes you wonder how Google is utilizing the talents of the brilliant Douglas Bowman. ...

The American Red Cross disaster relief fund is tapped out, and the organization is borrowing money to fund its response to the floods in the midwest. In other words, now’s a good time to donate. The Big Picture posted some astounding photos of the flood waters today.