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FiatDev Tumble Log

Nov 14
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Forwarded to me by a friend:

    In wine

There is wisdom;

    In beer

There is freedom;

    In water

There is bacteria.
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Some of us learn by doing, while others learn by following a strict regimen of carefully-planned activities that build skills systematically from the ground up. While the latter probably spent time at school using Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing on an Apple IIGS, the former spent the same time dying of dysentery behind the teacher’s back.
Oct 13
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Yet it was Mr. Sarkozy, speaking before Congress last November, who offered the most profound assessment of our nation’s gift to the world. “What made America great was her ability to transform her own dream into hope for all mankind,” he said. “America did not tell the millions of men and women who came from every country in the world and who — with their hands, their intelligence and their heart — built the greatest nation in the world: ‘Come, and everything will be given to you.’ She said: ‘Come, and the only limits to what you’ll be able to achieve will be your own courage and your own talent.’
Jul 10
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Beer is a health food. And you do not need to buy it from those wan, unhealthy-looking people who, peering disapprovingly at you through rimless Trotsky-style spectacles, seem to run all the health food stores.
Mar 24
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The user manual is a list of software design mistakes.
Mar 19
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Every revolutionary idea evokes three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) it’s completely impossible; (2) it’s possible but it’s not worth doing; (3) I said it was a good idea all along.
— Arthur C. Clarke
Mar 10
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There are the languages everyone complains about, and there are the languages no one uses.
Mar 05
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The fundamental lesson is that property rights are not—and never have been—created by Congressional fiat. Property rights emerge spontaneously from the social fabric of a community.
Feb 29
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[I]…said that I don’t need an IDE, he got mad and called me a name. It wasn’t even a particularly imaginative name, so perhaps he could get his IDE to automatically rename that name for him to turn it into a better insult.
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The passion is impressive but the clarity, not so much.
Feb 03
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Is it more depressing to think that Microsoft, seemingly alone among industry observers, truly believes that there’s some legitimate “synergy” (ugh) here, or that it is consciously leveraging its bank account to crush a competitor? In one case, Microsoft looks hopelessly out of touch, or perhaps just so desperate that denial has set in. The other evokes the “evil” Microsoft from the bad-old days of the 1990s.
Jan 31
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Nevertheless, putting object extensions on RDBMSs is tantamount to adding stereo radios and global navigation systems to horse-drawn carriages. You will have interesting enhancements, but the wrong base vehicle.
Dec 18
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I am always pessimistically optimistic about major releases; no wild sales projections, but vaguely confident that it’ll be worth my time.
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Authority in general, and physical force in particular, are anathema to many among the intelligentsia, academic or otherwise. They can always think of some “third way” to avoid hard choices, whether on campus, in society, or among nations. Moreover, they have little or no interest in the actual track record of those third ways.
Dec 17
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Evolution is a scientific theory, a hypothesis to be tested; it’s not something you “believe in.” People who demand that others “believe in evolution” are looking for religious dogma in the wrong places.