antikoan

 |::| Wednesday, April 17, 2002

 |::| "You can't sell that! Karma can only be apportioned by the cosmos!"  7:14:53 PM 

Homer Simpson: "You want the truth? You want the truth? You can't hannnnndle the truth!" |::| [Scripting News]

Homer: Hello. My name is Mister Burns. I believe you have a letter for me.
Postal Clerk: I'll check on that for you. What's your first name?
Homer: [pauses] I don't know.

 |::| "Well, then, I guess I'll just have a sweet roll"  4:23:31 PM 

This is what the slavish boosters of certain communities sound like to me, sometimes:

WAITER: What would you like, sir?
CUSTOMER: I'd like a cup of coffee and a sweet roll.
WAITER: I'm sorry, sir, but we don't have any sweet rolls.
CUSTOMER: Well, then I'd like a cup of tea and a sweet roll.
WAITER: I'm sorry, sir, but we don't have any sweet rolls.
CUSTOMER: Well, then I'd like a glass of orange juice and a sweet roll.
WAITER: I'm sorry, sir, but we don't have any sweet rolls.
CUSTOMER: Well, then I'd like a glass of tomato juice and a sweet roll.
WAITER: I'm sorry, sir, but we don't have any sweet rolls.
CUSTOMER: Well, then I'd like a hot chocolate and a sweet roll.
WAITER: I'm sorry, sir, but we don't have any sweet rolls.
CUSTOMER: Well, then I'd like a glass of milk and a sweet roll.
[etc.]
-- Sesame Street, c. 1976

 |::| Small Is SEXY  1:50:58 PM 

Late to the punch on this one, but OQO has announced ship dates for something IBM has shown as a concept, and that I've been advocating since its earlier, clumsier incarnation as the old Briq 386sx portables. A beautiful concept, except for the fac tthat it seems bound to XP. No real reason it couldn't run Lineo. Of course, unless they've gotten a patent on it, there's no reason that someone couldn't do something similar with a linux system -- say, working off the Nano platform. Hell, with a little ingenuity, you could make a new Zaurus 5500 do a lot of this stuff.

In two years, this will all be old hat, and my PictureBook will be a big, clumsy monster...

 |::| Notes on the   1:30:38 PM 

I saw Tim Berners-Lee about a year and a half ago in New Orleans, and I thought I grokked the basic gist of the Semantic web. But some strange things that Dave Winer has been saying recently have been leading me to believe that I may have missed something. (I know I'm missing something from Winer's views -- they just don't make sense to me as he states them, though the concepts he uses to build them are all sound on their own.)

So I need to look into this some more. Unless I'm severely mistaken (and I seldom am), I'm missing something.

Jarrett says: "...if my system uses a semantic mark up that is available on the net and is mapped to the government’s system, I can send them a transaction marked up in my format and theirs will know how to interpret it without any extra coding." If I did understand Berners-Lee correctly, then Jarrett doesn't quite capture it -- instead, the semantic web shouldn't need to know about any existing, pre-defined mappings. It means that the documents contain or refer to the information needed in order to construct the mappings.

That is, the statement could be rephrased: If my system uses a semantic markup that is available on the net, and theirs does, too, and the two can be mapped, then they should be able to understand my format without extra coding. Short version: The grail that the semantic web hangs out there is the elimination of human-created mappings.

Dave thinks he's got it (Scripting News)
Semantic Web or not Semantic Web (Tim Jarrett takes a shot)

 |::|   1:00:06 PM 

So, what is this guy talking about? Sure, I've known people I'd call "architecture astronauts"; but I think he's confusing them with the Marketroids that they meet up there above the oxygen...

 |::| Userland Support Forums Go Ga-Ga For Google  3:57:26 AM 

Userland's strange fascination with Google has apparently led them to replace the search function on their forums with a Google search.

Two predictions:

1. Most of the responses will be positivistic rationalizations, most of which will simply parrot the party line that Page Rank always gives the most relevant results.
2. Those few who dare to criticize the move will be dealt with by either condecension or thinly-veiled hostility.

History teaches me, of course, that it would be foolish to suggest that usability would be better served if... well, if anything that a Myersian inventor (or architect, for that matter) thought of -- were done differently.

 |::|   3:35:46 AM 

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the Army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.

Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.

I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

Things continued in that state of suspended animation for weeks, although some things did happen. Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn't be too careful. They said that new elections would be held, but that it would take some time to prepare for them. The thing to do, they said, was to continue as usual.

-- Margaret Atwood, A Handmaid's Tale

 |::| Quote of the Moment  2:38:11 AM 

"That would be telling." -- Number 2