April, 4, 2005 archives

one of the great things about just setting itunes on party shuffle is that i get to hear things like tracks from the yellow album that i would almost never listen to otherwise. one of the not-so-great things is that if you happen to have an artist that is over-represented in your collection (perhaps because of various live albums), you really notice it.

singularity sky by charlie stross is one of those books that has a few really brilliant and clever ideas (like cellphones raining down on a willfully technologically backward and feudal society) that ends up being less than the sum of its parts. the characters just aren’t that compelling, and the story as a whole doesn’t really go anywhere unexpected.

maciej ceglowski very efficiently takes the piss out of paul graham and his hackers and painters metaphor. yowch.

oh yeah, and i almost forgot john gruber’s takedown of paul graham’s late arrival to the mac.)

does anyone else find it odd that nobody who is participating y!q for publishers beta has disclosed that they’re getting paid to put it on their site?

(and why do the results pop up in-page on the page i’ve linked to, but not on anybody’s blogs?)

wired says that it doesn’t matter which high-definition dvd becomes king, because online distribution will rule them all. that sounds about right. there’s also some comments about what this means for the neighborhood video store. the video store owner strikes me as the least optimistic. that says something.