The Daily WTF showcases badly written code. (Cited by Ned Batchelder, who found it from Bob Congdon.)

quoth Paul Graham:

But VCs are mistaken to look for the next Microsoft, because no startup can be the next Microsoft unless some other company is prepared to bend over at just the right moment and be the next IBM.

Tehee. In the same essay:

Because you can’t tell a great hacker except by working with him, hackers themselves can’t tell how good they are. This is true to a degree in most fields. I’ve found that people who are great at something are not so much convinced of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so incompetent. The people I’ve met who do great work rarely think that they’re doing great work. They generally feel that they’re stupid and lazy, that their brain only works properly one day out of ten, and that it’s only a matter of time until they’re found out.

Why, that’s just how I feel! Do you suppose . . . ?

(Perry Metzger pointed me to Graham’s essays.)

a cartoon against “smart” guns
(Bitter Bitch cites Clayton Cramer)

Does anyone make a car whose turn-signals expire after (say) a mile?

The question raised itself when, not for the first or tenth time, I politely hung back to let a truck into my lane . . . and found that the driver was oblivious.

Subject: The Concept of a Meta-Font
Date: Sat, 05 Jun 2004 03:18:42 -0700
From: Anton Sherwood
To: knuth-bug

Digital Typography page 312, near the middle of note [11]

759,499,667,966,482 [ = 2 * 19 * 3717809 * 5375971 ]

should be

759,499,667,166,482 [ = 2 * 11^14 ]

The same error is listed as corrected in Selected Papers page 41.

Today I received the coveted bounty. Woohoo!

Ted Rall, of all people, on Why Kerry Should Stand Up for the Second Amendment

The pointless “assault weapon” ban of 1994 is about to sunset, and the usual suspects are twitching.

The Violence Policy Center . . . notes the 1994 law does not cover new assault weapons that have entered the market place.
At the top of their list are the SKS assault rifles . . . .

Where have they been? My SKS was made in 1952.

Also about to be un-banned (knock wood) are 11-round magazines for the unbadged majority. I wonder how soon they will be available in fact.