Also, Running Interference: There's a Big Threat to 802.11b Networking, Yet Nobody Seems to Care -- Here's Why from Robert X. Cringely's The Pulpit.

Interesting analysis of upcoming trouble for those of us who like our 802.11b wireless networking. The nice thing about unregulated spectrum is that 802.11b can exist without all of us end-users having FCC licenses. The down side is that we're exposed to other technologies using the same spectrum stomping all over the signal.  3:43:03 PM  (comments [])   

This is ML for .NET. Trippy.

I kind of miss the the currying functionality of ML; which makes it a lot easier to use object polymorphism and still retain robust type safety. But that's about all I miss; the language is not really designed for readability.  3:30:54 PM  (comments [])   

This is a story on Slate, talking about a story in Esquire. Here's a quote from the Esquire story (quoted in the Slate article, natch):

... [Card] gets up and starts pacing the cobalt-blue wall-to-wall, kneading his hands. ... "This, you know, will be seen as one of those crossroads, a moment of causation, and everything after this will be prefaced by 'After Karen Hughes left.' " Then he stops. He sees it clearly, and it's very personal. "She's leaving when the president has one of the highest approval ratings on record. From here, it can only go down. And when it does, you know who they're going to blame." He taps his chest. "They're gonna blame Andy Card!"

The White House has gone on the offensive to discredit the Esquire story, and the Slate story discusses that. However, it's made very clear that what the White House has not done is to say that Card was misquoted. Oops.  12:49:54 PM  (comments [])   

The movie turns out to hold up well on the second viewing; and more importantly, on the small screen. The two major complaints I had when seeing the movie on the large screen seemed less imposing upon rewatching.

First, I remember thinking that movie seemed more like a nice visual companion to the books, rather than standing well on its own. I now feel I was wrong; the movie does have a good narrative flow by itself (and still manages to hew well to the text and spirit of the original book).

Second, a lot of the visual effects that seemed awkward (mainly in the animation of characters on broomsticks) look much better on a smaller screen. I'm not sure if they redid the effects, or if it's just that the defects in composition were exaggerated when projected.

Not all effects are improved: the centaur still looks bad. He exemplifies the biggest problem with these effects, which is that it feels like the people making these special effects aren't taking as much care to line up the lighting for these composited shots. It feels like -- now that the technology has matured somewhat -- they are relying on the technology to take care of the details, rather than obsessing over each frame. Another possibility is that studios obsessed over budgets are no longer willing to let the SFX guys obsess over each frame. Whichever it is, it feels like visual quality is backsliding a little, even as these amazing composited effects are becoming ubiquitous.

To my complete dismay, I discovered that I had bought the standard cut of the movie, not the widescreen version. I didn't even realize that there would be two versions. And, of course, the information about standard vs widescreen is hidden in a small box on the back of the case. I'm pretty mad about this; there should at least have been a sticker identifying the differences, or a sign next to the giant stack of boxes. I'm going back to see if I can exchange it today.

(That being said, the pan&scan cut was well done; it took my twenty minutes before it sunk in that I wasn't watching the widescreen version. I'm sure that has something to do with film directors & editors being hyper-aware that their films will eventually be cut down for broadcast on TV.)  12:29:51 PM  (comments [])