The Ironism

Aaaand, I’m off to the Mountains. I’ll be back in a week.

Let it snow, let it snow…

On the subject of the bible, and improvements thereof:

You and I both know that it would take us five minutes to produce a book that offers a more coherent and compassionate morality than the Bible does. Did I say five minutes? Five seconds–just tear out Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Exodus, and 2 Samuel from the Old Testament, and 2 Thessalonians and Revelation from the New Testament. The book would be mightily improved. Would it then be the most profound book we have on morality (or cosmology, biology, psychology, etc.)? Not by a long shot. But it would be a much better book than it is at present.

He is speaking to Andrew Sullivan in a “blogalogue”, which you will find here. At the time of this post, they’re not finished but so far Mr. Harris is doing good. Go read it.

Ok, so I know this isn’t exactly new. But… This must be one of the best articles the Onion has ever made. At least it made me laugh hysterically.

I spent the Weekend at Torpshammar with St Jacobs Chamber Choir. And would you believe it? The proprietors were all whisky fanatics. Or sort of anyway. And they had this thing for Duncan Taylor & Co Ltd. Which is, of course, completely understandable. So, among other things I tasted:

• Invergordon, 39YO (Grain / Highland / Duncan Taylor)
• Bunnahabhain, 33YO (Malt / Islay / Duncan Taylor)
• Bruichladdich, 37YO (Malt / Islay / Duncan Taylor)
• Johnnie Walker Green Label (Vatted Malt)
• Duncan Taylor Regional Blended; Islay (Vatted Malt / Islay)
• Duncan Taylor “The Big Smoke” (Vatted Malt / Islay)

Whee!

If you don’t know who Mr Dennet is, don’t worry unless 1) you like philosofy, and in particular, the philosofy of mind; and/or 2) you happend to be a christian. Personally, I like him a lot. Here’s a short quote I found amusing, especially if applied to, say, pseudo-science and its likes:

Imagination is cheap, as long as you don’t have to worry about the details.

The Emmy Awards with Jon Stewards. Slightly old. But hey, enjoy!

I almost forgot. Everybody knows that DRM is soledly for fighting piracy. Right? Erhm… Wrong. Who would have thought it?! I’m chocked! Chocked I am…

So. Apple is releasing a phone. Whoho! Stop the presses! Everybody will want one! Form a queue! My god, I love Steve Jobs, what a genious! Hurrah!

Except… It doesn’t take long for you to remember what Apple is usually about. And if threatening bloggers isn’t bad enough: Hello Steve?! You do know that LG has already won a desing price for something quite iPhone like, don’t you?

Anybody home?

But we’re not through yet. As everybody knows Apple loves DRM (think iTunes) and DRM loves Apple (or at least almost, if it iTunes was just a bit more restrictive that is). So obviously the iPhone is going to be closed for 3rd party apps. I mean, why share when you can try to eat it all yourself? It must be perfectly ok to launch a device with no unique characteristics what so ever on an already mature market, and do so with closed specs. Obviously a smart move.

Which also means that of course it is not going to run Java, because, and here’s from the man himself:

Java’s not worth building in [the phone]. Nobody uses Java anymore. It’s this big heavyweight ball and chain.

Anybody home?!

What a reality distortion field the man must live in. Nobody uses Java anymore? You mean apart from the aprox. 4 billion devices that have it installed already? Of course, one can easily imagine that for someone from Apple, the number 4 biliion feels imaginary and completely unthinkable, and therefore Sun must be wrong…

Anybody home? Aparently not.

Look what happends when I don’t pay attention: Ada 2005 is almost finished! Whee!

I admit to having a soft spot for Ada. There were things I really liked, like type safety. But a couple of small things hit me hard, and I never really got into the language because of them. For example:

1. No “java-like” interfaces. Being a Java nerd I like those. I know you could use abstract tagged null records. But…
2. The subroutine (function) call syntax. Ada derives from Pascal, and the sytax is not what is considered OO “standard” today. That is: Ada uses the MyPackage.myFunction(myOject, …) variant.

And now? By damn, both the two issues above are gone. Now you can call myObject.myFunction(…) like you’d do in Java and C++. And you can have interfaces. And “not null” access types. And…

This seems neat. Here’s a rationale in PDF format for all you nerds. I havn’t read all yet. But so far it seems promising.

Hum… Maybe I should pick up that chess engine I started in Ada 95 a few years ago and give it a new whirl? Ho-hum…

We all have heard about Vista and its DRM features right? RIGHT? Erhm… No, at least I hadn’t really thought much about it. But… Things may get interesting soon if we don’t do something very drastic.

Some points to consider for you:

• High Definition (HD) content will be artificially downgraded (think “fuzzy”) with a significant loss of quality. At all times.
• Device drivers must adhere to a set of “hardware rubustness rules”. Which are dictade by… Hollywood.
• Closed source business is here again.
• Oh yes, and you will need new hardware to play HD content. Completely new and dictade my Micro$oft itself, otherwise it will not play at all.
• Micro$soft has the right to disable any of your hardware at any time.
• And of course you can’t just change any significant hardware (what ever that means) in your computer. It will lock down. Anti-piracy you see. Because we know all home system builders are all pirates. Yes! Mark my word!
• There’s a good chance your hardware will become less stable.
• Obviously there’s going to be AES encryption all over the place, which will eat CPU and GPU cycles for you.
• Do you like sotware encodings (like Ogg)? Kiss them godbye.

Read this for the entire story.