Tuesday, January 22, 2002
How the Wayback Machine Works
[In Brewster] Kahle's vision, all of the streams of research commingle into a single purpose: The idea is to build a library of everything, and the opportunity is to build a great library that offers universal access to all of human knowledge.
Profiling in Radio
An incredible viewing port into the performance of the dynamic HTTP server.
No doubt this is way beyond me. But I'll try it out anyway...
Dave Winer
On one of the Radio weblogs someone wrote a complaint that if Radio were open source they'd get all their problems dealt with right away. Of course it's almost certainly not true, we're working as hard as we can, I don't know that if we had no hope of earning back our investment that we'd work any harder (this doesn't even make sense). But there's a bright spot. Two-three years ago a comment like that could have started a jihad. We just came through a period when commercial developers were vilified. I hope we never go back there.
Mises on Money
Because the free market always maximizes the utility of the existing money supply, changes in the money supply inescapably have the characteristic features of a zero-sum game. Some individuals are made better off by an increase in the money supply; others are made worse off. The existing money is an example of afixed pie of social value. Adding to the money supply does not add to its value.
Pilot Elwood Menear Is Hero Against FAA
Pilot Menear allegedly asked airport screeners,Why are you worried about tweezers when I could crash the plane?, and thereby pointed out that the government is brainlessly harassing law-abiding citizens. Now Menear is being prosecuted to shut him up about our stupid government.
Mac OS X: Breeds of Programs, Part 1
Mac OS X combines several earlier products into a new and modern operating system, and each brings its own identity and user community along. [ ... ] The end product is a surprisingly successful blend, but Mac OS X's mixed ancestry shows up in some interesting ways. Because each of the different elements includes its own interfaces, biases, and applications, it's impossible to get a good grasp of Mac OS X without keeping in mind the varied heritage of its programs.
Nice comparison of Classic, Carbon, and Cocoa.
A high price to pay
David Warsh
Forget, for the moment, about those rising turnpike tolls and other looming problems of paying for the Big Dig. Beset by a deeper-than-expected recession, Massachusetts is also facing a public health disaster of the first magnitude. ...nearly everybody involved in public policy understands that to fail to provide benefits to those who are desperate today statistically entails far greater expenditures down the road: Treat 'em now in the office or later in the emergency room, as physicians say.
Ivan Gaskell's fantastic voyage
What kind of curatorial mind installs a Rubens oil sketch, postcard reproductions of it, a Degas, a conch shell, and a murky Hiroshi Sugimoto photograph in the same gallery?
Hmm, next Saturday morning at the Fogg?
People of the church must take it back
John J. Geoghan is at the bar of justice, and Cardinal Bernard Law's reputation as the man responsible for the archdiocese - and its children - is battered. But a deeper church problem has yet to be addressed. Even if Geoghan is punished (likely), and even if Cardinal Law resigns (unlikely) - an underlying culture of Catholic dishonesty will still be in place.
Celluloid delusions
After decades of psycho-killers, split personalities and other stereotypes, Hollywood finally gets one of the toughest mental illnesses - schizophrenia - right.
