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William Gibson

William Gibson

In the night of 12/24/07, though sensors woven through the very fabric of the house had thus far registered a complete absence of sentient bio-activity, I found myself abruptly summoned from a rare, genuine and expensively induced examples of that most priceless of states, sleep.

Even as I hurriedly dressed, I knew that dozens of telepresent armed-response drones would already be sweeping in from the District, skimming mere inches above the chill surface of the Potomac. Vicious tri-lobed aeroforms that they were, they resembled nothing more than the Martian war machines of George Pal’s 1953 epic, “The War of the Worlds”.

And while, from somewhere far above, now, came that sound, that persistent clatter, as though gunships disgorged whole platoons of iron-shod mercenaries, I could only wonder: who? Was it my estranged wife, The Lady Betty-Jayne Motel-6 Hyatt, Chief Eco-trustee of the Free Duchy of Wyoming? Or was it Cleatus “Mainframe” Sinyard himself, President of the United States and perpetual co-chairman of the Concerned Smart People’s Northern Hemisphere Co-prosperity Sphere?

“You’re mumbling again, big guy,” said Memory, shivering into hallucinatorily clear focus on the rumpled sheets, her thighs warm and golden against the Royal Stewart flannel. She adjusted the nosecones of her chrome bustier. “Also, you’re on the verge of a major fashion crime.”

I froze, the starched white tails of an Elmore of Shinjuku evening shirt half-tucked into the waistband of a favorite pair of lovingly-mended calfskin jodhpurs. She was right. Pearl buttons scattered like a flock of miniscule flying saucers as I tore myself out of the offending Elmore. I swiftly chose a classic Gap t-shirt and a Ralph Lauren overshirt in shotgun-distressed ochre corduroy. The Gap t’s double-knit liquid crystal began to cycle sluggishly in response to body-heat, displaying crudely animated loops of once-famous televangelists of the previous century, their pallid flanks streaked with the sweat of illicit sexual exertion. Now that literally everything was digital, History and Image were no more than Silly putty in the hands of anyone with a BFA and a backer in Singapore. But that was just the nature of Postmodernity, and, frankly, it suited me right down to the ground.

“Visitors upstairs, chief,” she reminded me pointlessly, causing me to regret not getting that last chip-upgrade. “Like on the roof.”

“How many?” And this was Samsung-Sears’s idea of an “expert” system?

“Seventeen, assuming we’re talking bipeds.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That Nintendo-Dow micropore sensor-skin you had ‘em stretch over the Realistislate? After those Columbian bush ninjas from the Slunk Cartel tried to get in through the toilet-ventilators? Well, that stuff’s registering, like, hooves. Tiny ones. Unless this is some kind of major Jersey Devil infestation, I make it eight quadrupeds – plus one definite biped.”

“It can’t be Sinyard then.” I holstered a 3mm Honda and pocketed half a dozen spare ampules of gel. “He’d never come alone.”

“So maybe that’s the good news, but I gotta tell you, this guy weighs in at close to one-forty kilos. And wears size eleven-and-a-half boots. As an expert system, I’d advise you to use the Mossad & Wesson bullpup, the one with the subsonic witness protection nozzles—“ She broke off, as if listening to something only she could hear. “Uh-oh,” she said, “I think he’s coming down the chimney…”

Enemy of the State - Enterprise Integration Patterns

Enemy of the State - Enterprise Integration Patterns: "One of my favorite pastimes is to argue with people whether a solution is stateless, whether it should be stateless and what it means to be stateless in the first place. Ideally, the debate would involve alcoholic beverages and the other person would pick up the check. After 'loosely coupled', 'stateless' must be a close runner-up as the ultimate nirvana in buzzword-compliant architectures. It is also equally hotly debated. Today, I 'd like to share my view on state and lessness. If you disagree you are welcome to argue with me, but you are buying! :-)"

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs OpenCourseWare

MIT OpenCourseWare | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | 6.001 Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Fall 2002 | Home

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Video Lectures

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Video Lectures: "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
Video Lectures by Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman"

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs: "

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Goodbye, Bill G. Hello, Don G.

You know, a little bit of me is happy that the Slate-MS link is finally being severed, but I am afraid its too late.

Slate NEEDS to be changed... back to what it was 3 years ago.

With the departure of Michael Kinsley, Slate became... MSNified. Too often, stuff that would appear on the front of MSN seems to show up in Slate. Tales of Britney Spears' nuptual exploits are not what should be in the "Arts and Life" section of a grown-up magazine. Coverage of the Donald Trump perfume is not what should be in the "Business" section of a grown up magazine. Add to that bringing in idiotic hacks like Mickey Kaus to fill a magazine formerly written by people like Kinsley and Crowley is an insult.

And while we are de-Microsofting it, can we go back to a layout where "MSN" is a a small brand insert rather than a stench of front loaded graphics heavy clutter that permeates the entire site? I guess not. They only got halfway there with Newsweek. It's a shame since WaPo's site is one of the best newspaper sites out there. Why they don't realize there web crew is better than BillG's is beyond me.

Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One

Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One: "Abstract

The World Wide Web uses relatively simple technologies with sufficient scalability, efficiency and utility that they have resulted in a remarkable information space of interrelated resources, growing across languages, cultures, and media. In an effort to preserve these properties of the information space as the technologies evolve, this architecture document discusses the core design components of the Web. They are identification of resources, representation of resource state, and the protocols that support the interaction between agents and resources in the space. We relate core design components, constraints, and good practices to the principles and properties they support."

Jonathan Schwartz is full of it

Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog: "And then I asked about IBM. And apparently they'd just been with OSDL, who'd evangelized that with open source, there was no lock in. When I pointed out that OSDL was led by a 17-year IBM veteran who should know better, the CIO started laughing as if I was joking. So I suggested they read the OSDL website, and revisit some software basics. IBM told him they couldn't get locked in with linux. And I said, 'nice vision, but Red Hat has you locked already.' The CIO shrugged, 'nah, it's open source.' My response, 'Have you tried replacing what you're deploying?' He asked his lieutenant, who said 'we can't get vendors to qualify to any distribution other than Red Hat. We don't have a choice. He's right.' IBM, up to its old tricks again."

Horseshit. One, it's a lie. BEA, IBM and Oracle all support at least 2 Linux distributions (Usually RedHat and SuSE). Novell still ships most of their products as "everything but the metal" packages, but their "Linux" products are supported on every damned distro known to man. Even Sun's own Java Application Server 8 (formerly SunOne, iPlanet, Netscape) support RHEL and Sun's own Java Desktop System. Not to mention aside from Sun, everyone supports 2 Linux distros across 3 or more hardware platforms!

However, the second fact remains that a major point of Red Hat "lock in" is missed: if Red Hat closed their doors tomorrow, "Red Hat Linux" would continue nearly unphased. Whether it's After-Life support or Red Hat clones or the fact that migrating to another distro doesn't really mean anything -- certainly not like migrating to another *nix -- in terms of support from vendors.