sammyo

Yes, for certain approximations of Evil.

Thanks a bunch! Just what I needed to get my head around the current boundries of the release, and I'll get it running on my lap quicker. Now, if you'd just add an itty bitty little patch to implement Unicode... ;-)

But they could: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

Watch any good movie with the devil, he always presents himself as a really nice guy with just a really great deal for the world. Not that I'm going to stop using gmail or anything.

Bit of a slam on Viaweb and lisp here, but well meaning and has a point worth considering. The wrong abstraction or fantastically efficient highly optimized (and, er, undocumented) DSL, that only one person in the world can work with, perhaps should be considered a prototype rather than an application.

But then you miss the great photo op...

I wonder how Google tracks it's short term outages and what it does with that to maintain it's perception of 'always on'.

Bah, humbug. ;-)

I just can't believe that there isn't a forward thinking Angle/VC out there that wouldn't be willing to keep the servers hot for such a classic viral internet 'phenom' until, over time, a natural monetary use appears. Twitter (like youtube) maintains it's cool factor by not telegraphing how it hopes it'll make it's founders billions.

Do you know what kind of animal will be on the Oreilly cover?

Spooky, just made several (checked in, checked, released, reverted) fixes... this is a time of year of deep internal distractions. I know I just don't get as much exercises as other seasons, just a good walk can help.

Spooky that I was just at a chapter in Waitzkins' book (joshwaitzkin.com "The Art of Learning" - bit of a pretentious title but a fairly down to earth read about his struggles as a kid becoming a grand master) on keeping focus. Has some good ideas about re-focusing. Do programmers really have a monopoly on hyper-focus? I can't imagine now, let alone as a 10 yr old, being in a nine hour game that the (adult) opponent is dragging as a strategy to wear one down.

Posted over the sink!

Look at the Sony reader sometime. I remember seeing a single letter on a breadboard E-ink display years ago, and since then I've wanted a reader with that surface. It seems like everyone that handles one wants it. The ideal is an entire library of books in your back pocket, that 'feels/reads' like a regular book. It is getting closer, but the Kindle does seem like a baby step back from the Sony reader.

I for one am waiting for the gReader.

Andreessen forgets the PT Barnum effect. Movies are not like a business, they are a carny show. People go shows that grab them, not for something useful that they'll use day to day. H'wood sells vapor, really, literally vapor. That's the principle behind the summer blockbuster, get folks excited, pay $11 and into seats for a wild ride. They are often disappointed in the product, but can't return it and will continue to hope for better from the next preview.

It will change when the Charlie Chaplin of youtube arrives. Chaplin made a lot of movies, he eventually started Universal studios with the thought that the creators of the films should get the beneficiary. Two things matter in H'wood, owning the distribution channels and skill at hype. A youtube 'show' gets a certain amount of word of mouth hype but that 'youtube-house' has not seen a true impresario. One thing the impresario/producers need is the lure of the big payoff, that exists for VC's but not for producers. What will trigger massive change in the studio structure is when an investment in a youtube production can trigger a huge payoff to the frontman. Then he can dangle the costs of producing a single show in front of the gamblers. Right now the only big winner for a youtube 'show' is google and they will not front production costs.

Shows (movies, TV, Broadway, youtube) are structured very different than a business. They are big for a month, a day, or a few years, then on to the next big thing. Few want version 2.0 of say 'Rainman' (with rare exceptions). But even exceptions are really 'new companies' as opposed to an ongoing offering. There seems to be overlap with the spike of new ventures, but when the venture is sold, all the principals don't leave and go to the next show. After the wrap party, everyone is looking for work. There are support companies with continuation (prop rental, render farms) but the core business is show business.

Oil futures?

>And who likes pain?

Let me guess, you?

I remember seeing a 3D JS/DOM 1st person shooter and a raytracer in JS, wonderful intelectual excercises. Probably not products.

Remeber the 'Crazy Uncle Charlie' factor. There are folks that chase after one hairbrained scheme after another, never quite hitting the big time. Resilience is vital, yet not sufficient.

Sounds like the article is describing this guy that left here to pursue an amazing startup in genetic algorithms for financial yadda, but left shards of incredibly clever (wrote his own html parser) but largely unusable bits of applications.

Hmmm, most amusing, this community has a blind spot.

I use IE... once a week to submit my time to a lame corporate outsourced timesheet.

Ha, inbred are we? First link I clicked at random even had PG's photo!

Note that the list is in reverse order. We'll have true AI sometime before the semantic web. The Singularity will straighten out all the messy html.

I know what it was about instantly, but software geeks are not your customer. Your demographic probably needs some flash glitz but get to the point quicker.

One missing point: preparation

I've been trying to get into a small program I need to write and am a bit stuck. After glancing at the (great) list in the article and realizing I can roughly control most of those elements, I think 'now why am I still stuck'? Oh I need to get this data structure from X, how to call that sub element from Y. Grunt work, yet details that easily fit into gaps between all the other various day to day distractions. So get all the junk together before that 12-36 hour marathon.