Ars Technica has an interesting article in which Timothy Lee rebuts the argument of Tim Wu, in which he says:
Protecting a computer's "speech" is only indirectly related to the purposes of the First Amendment, which is intended to protect actual humans against the evil of state censorship. The First Amendment has wandered far from its purposes when it is recruited to protect commercial automatons from regulatory scrutiny.
Should the output of a computer program designed to mimic human curation be protected under free speech?
Holy levitating Slinky! (via Kottke)
I have a theory. That theory is that software engineers see themselves very differently than those with whom they work. I've come to this conclusion after over a decade in the software industry working at companies large and small. Companies (product managers, designers, other managers) tend to look at software engineers as builders. It's the job of the product manager to dream up what to build, the job of the designer to make it aesthetically pleasing, and the job of the engineer to build what they came up with. Basically, engineers are looked at as the short-order cooks of the industry.
And here's the real crux of the problem: software engineers aren't builders. Software engineers are creators.
I'm not really that impressed, because, as it says, it's just a throwable ball with cameras that takes panoramic pictures. But it's certainly a clever idea, similar to the 360 degree video format (66MB) we made at the Digital Media Center with Hank Willis Thomas when he was an artist-in-residence.
If it's not on fire, it's a software problem.
— Anonymous
People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better.
— Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012
"The return on an average bank robbery is, frankly, rubbish. It is not unimaginable wealth."
Plus, jail time!
The BBC apologised to viewers after mistakenly showing a graphic from the hit computer game Halo in place of the UN Security Council logo.
The UN, the UNSC ... what's the difference?
My first game in AT&T Park, the Rangers' first win in AT&T Park ... coincidence?
This is a company that sells hundreds of millions of hardware gadgets all over the world and yet it doesn't actually need to stockpile its goods.
Oh, supply chain management...