As everyone knows, LaTeX is the absolute best text formatting system ever created, ever. Well, Getting Started with TeX on Mac OS X tries to ease one into the strange universe of text markup. As I’ve mentioned, LaTeX is where it’s at.
04 February 2018: updated URL
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All I can say about TeX is this:
Knuth says that TeX is for producing beautiful documents, and he went to great lengths to build in a lot of typographic know-how. The hyphenation algorithm alone was the subject of a PhD thesis.
I credit LaTeX for my excellent grades as a senior in college. My writing hadn’t improved that much — ’twas all the text formatting. Great beautiful margin, footnotes like God meant them to be, mathematical equations Euler would kill for: LaTeX is where it’s at.
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DigiBarn claims that a working hypertext implementation was available in 1912. I rather think that they are pulling one’s leg, but OTOH I have read of 1930s-era fax machines, so who knows?
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In 1996, at CU Boulder, Roger Ebert devised the Boulder Pledge:
Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community.
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Seen recently on Slashdot:
Phase 1 Uncritical Acceptance Phase 2 Wild Enthusiasm Phase 3 Dejected Disillusionment Phase 4 Total Confusion Phase 5 Search for the Guilty Phase 6 Punishment of the Innocent Phase 7 Promotion of Nonparticipants Apparently it dates back to the ’70s. It’s true, too.
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The always-interesting Cory Doctorow some time ago wrote an article arguing that metadata will be unsuccessful. His points are several:
Man Lies His point is that folks will lie in their metadata, just as searching on an old-style search engine for just about any term these days turns up porn. True — but one of the cool things about RDF and the frameworks built upon it is that anyone can annotate anything, and thus I can choose to rank metadata providers, or choose someone else’s ranking.
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FOAF is a project which attempts to create a machine-readable web of pages describing people, their interests and their inter-relationships. That is, I’d have my FOAF file, describing who I am, where I live, what I’m interested in and whom I know; those people could in turn have their own pages with the same. As the inter-connections between people grow, pretty one can see how many degrees of separation connect one and anyone else on earth.
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You need Hamilton ’95, the OS of the future.
3 February 2018: update URL
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David Adams has a capitalist defence of free software and makes some excellent points. Yes, the rise of free software means that proprietary software producers will suffer — but software consumers will benefit. The rise of the automobile was bad news for buggy whip manufacturers, but it was great news for shipping and for anyone who wanted to travel a good distance in a day. Do read the article.
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Mark Pilgrim has written Dive into Python, a fine introduction to a fine programming language. Python’s a great language. The implementation could be a tad faster, but the syntax and libraries are just a joy to program in.
1 February 2018: updated URLs after Mark’s disappearance from the web
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Dave Fancella’s wife had more difficulty installing Windows than Linux. A good read, with some interesting points, most notably that the Windows install made her feel unintelligent, but the Mandrake Linux install made her happy.
07 February 2018: updated with new link
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As frequent readers know, I watch an amazing number of DVDs. In so doing, I’ve hit upon some common flaws in their presentation. These are all rooted in the hatred and disrespect which manufacturers have for their customers. Here’s a catalogue thereof.
Region coding Region coding is the means by which a manufacturer can prevent certain DVDs from being played in the US, or the UK, or Russia, or any of the other regions of the world.
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