Prisoner 819 Did A Bad Thing

NYTimes - "U.S. Youths Rebel at Harsh School in Costa Rica" :

Children were divided into six levels, the lower ones forbidden to speak freely or raise their eyes, the higher ones free to discipline and punish inferiors.

Wow, I knew schools like this existed, but I didn't realize how jacked up they were, or that they were in places like Costa Rica. Haven't these people ever heard of the Stanford prison experiment ?

Collect Call Commercials

I haven't made a collect call in probably two years. Most people that I talk to haven't made a collect call in about the same period of time. Even when I did make collect calls, it was maybe two or three times a year (when I needed a ride from my parents and didn't have change for the pay phone). I'm sure that the proliferation of mobile phones is cutting into collect call volume. Why, then, are commercials for 1-800-COLLECT and 1-800-CALLATT on TV all the time? How is the collect call business so profitable that it can fund commercials during practically every commercial break of every TV show I watch?

Seriously, I'd like to know. Anyone got a clue?

Phone Booth

I went to Southpoint ("Southpoint - Where people come to wear the clothes they bought at Southpoint") to see Phone Booth today, and I'm really glad that I did. It nearly slipped under my radar, but I felt like seeing a movie, and it was the only one at the megaplex that piqued my interest.

Many of the reviews of the movie describe it as "taut", and that's the perfect word for it. It's only 80 minutes long, but that's exactly the right length. Too many movies today take an interesting kernel of a premise and try to stretch it way too far. Phone Booth knows its plot is a one trick pony, executes well, and then ends. I highly recommend the movie, but you had better hurry: Finding Nemo, et. al. will likely push it out of theaters next week.

CWRU Blogs

I'm thinking about creating a site like javablogs.com , but for people affiliated with CWRU . I've been meaning to learn Python , and this seems like a good project for it. I don't think the basic functionality of the site should be too difficult to code. It would be cool to have something ready for the upcoming school year.

Anyone know of a good webapp framework for Python?

I Have No Idea What You're Talking About (Redux)

A sign of the impending apocalypse: the goddamn bunny with a pancake on its head (see this previous post ) is in the New York Times .

ReplayTV Commercial Advance

Wired News claims that the next generation of ReplayTV may not include Commercial Advance or Show Sharing. I can't say I'm surprised, but they better not disable these features on my trusty ReplayTV 4504, or I'll be very annoyed.

Computer Science Major

Great article about the Computer Science major in the New York Times :

Andries van Dam, a professor of computer science at Brown who has been teaching introductory computer science there since 1965, agreed. "When kids say, 'Is there going to be a job for me when I graduate?' I essentially have to laugh," he said. "That's like saying, 'When Maxwell discovered the rules of electromagnetism, was physics over?' "

I didn't really consider the job market in choosing to be a CS major. I figure that in any field there is always demand for people who are damn good, and if I'm not going to be damn good at what I do, then why even bother?

The Matrix Reloaded Revisited

I saw The Matrix Reloaded for the second time this evening. I enjoyed it much more than the first time I saw it. Why? Because I figured out which parts of the movie were bothering me and ignored them:

• The Dance Scene. This scene really ruins the movie. Since it occurs so early in the film, if you try to accept this scene on good faith, it will kill the rest of the movie for you.
• Neo Flying. Neo's flying ability is just too corny and stupid. Sure, I know he's The One, but just because he could theoretically fly doesn't mean he has to. I really wish the plot had been designed so that Neo could save the day without flying. Flying worked for Superman, but it doesn't work for a guy wearing a black trenchcoat and sunglasses.
• Zion Politics. Who cares. The look of the Zion counselors screams Star Wars ripoff. As my friend Bean said, they might as well put Samuel L. Jackson and Yoda on the counsel.

I think the common thread among the things I dislike is that they shatter the cyberpunk/cypherpunk feel of the movie. Ignoring these things greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the film, but Reloaded is still is a much weaker film than The Matrix.

Sidenote I noticed the following continuity quirk: when Trinity jumps out of the building, her hair is heavily greased back. However, when she is shot and when Neo catches her, her hair is no longer greased back. I supposed they needed to make her look more feminine or something.

JDK 1.5 ("Tiger") Features

java.sun.com has a Q&A with Joshua Bloch regarding the new features in JDK 1.5 ("Tiger"). For some reason, whenever I heard the codename "Tiger", I think of Sagat in Street Fighter II. Tiger! Tiger Uppercut! Tiger!

CWRU Shooter's Court Complaint

In case you haven't heard, last week there was a shooting and standoff at the Peter B. Lewis Building at CWRU.

The original court complaint detailing the events that supposedly triggered the shooting can be seen on the shooter's website . Apparently Halder was angry because he believed that someone at the university had posted a defamatory message on his website and then "surreptitiously gained unauthorized access to Plaintiff's Unix shell account at his ISP."

Survivor Finale Sucked

Well, the Survivor finale sucked big time. Aside from Jenna winning, here are my major complaints:

• All the talk of Matt not needing the money. What the hell? This is Survivor, not the American Association of Philanthropists. CBS should institute a new rule forbidding Survivors from talking about their financial status.
• The final immunity challenge wasn't very good. I like the idea of a pure will power challenge, but that's not what the final challenge was. The balancing and headdress holding made it a physical challenge. There's no way you can say that Roger or Butch (had they still been around) could compete with Jenna in a challenge like that.
• Survivor: Pearl Islands is a cop out. I was really hoping to see a Survivor: Iceland or Survivor: Greenland.
• Announcing the winner in New York was lame. I don't know if that's how they normally do it, since this is the first season I've watched, but it ruined the grit of the show. Everything in New York felt contrived and tacky.

Now that I've seen a season of the show, I'd really like to go back and watch season one and maybe some of the other seasons. Unfortunately, the only official video I can find is an outtakes DVD. Anyone have the whole thing on VHS?

I Have No Idea What You're Talking About

A great image to send during those IM conversations that make you think, "Whaaaaa?"

(Thanks, Sajan )

NetNewsWire Web Interface

I really like NetNewsWire . It's a great RSS aggregator. However, I spend many hours a day at work, where I don't have a Mac with Internet access. What I would really like is a web interface to NNW, so I could read my subscriptions from a web browser at work. I think this should be possible by building an app with a simple HTTP server and web interface that communicates with NNW via AppleScript. Does anyone know of such a beast?

Chronos rips off LaunchBar

Looks like Chronos has ripped off my beloved LaunchBar . Chronos' new F10 Launch Studio includes a "Chameleon Filter":

The Chameleon Filter uses adaptive searching technology to produce lightning fast launches. The Chameleon filter learns from short abbreviations you type to find and launch an application or document. For example, you might type "cal" to launch the Calculator, "pc" to launch the Print Center, etc. Since the Chameleon Filter adapts to your abbreviations as you use it, no setup is required.

Those of you who have used LaunchBar know that this is exactly how LaunchBar operates. I have not used F10 Launch Studio - for all I know it could be better than LaunchBar. Still, not giving any credit to Objective Development and LaunchBar is lame.

Mac OS X Development Tools and Eclipse

Michael Tsai and Buzz Andersen are talking about Eclipse and Project Builder . Ever since I started using Eclipse and developing an Eclipse-based product full-time, I've been meaning to say something about Eclipse and Apple's developer tools.

Eclipse JDT (Java Development Tooling) is an IDE par excellence. After primarily using Project Builder, the move to Eclipse was quite a shock. Eclipse was so powerful that I was stunned as I found feature after feature that made me say "wow". Even now, after using Eclipse full-time for four months, I am still finding features that amaze me. I haven't used Project Builder in a while, and now I'm worried that I will face withdrawal when I try to go back to Project Builder to do some Cocoa development. What am I addicted to? Automatic compilation constantly happening in the background, with errors displayed in your code in real time. Content assist that shows available types, methods, and variables, with associated documentation. Effortless refactoring support. Wicked CVS integration.

Project Builder and (especially) Interface Builder are fine tools, with lots of Apple and NeXT style. However, Apple does not have the resources of Microsoft or IBM. Apple will never be able to deliver a world class IDE (e.g. Visual Studio .NET and Eclipse) as long as they continue trying to write the whole thing themselves. That leaves Apple with a couple of options. One is to continue down the path they are on, turning out charming and sometimes innovative development tools that lack the feature set of major IDEs. Those who "get it" (see the beauty of Cocoa and Objective-C) will like, or at least put up with, these development tools. However, professional developers who may have heard the buzz about Mac OS X will investigate the platform, take a look at Apple's development tools, and recoil in horror at the feature set of Project Builder. They will leave the platform, having never had a chance to see the beauty of Cocoa. The second option for Apple is to find a way to build a world class IDE on par with Eclipse JDT, even with their limited resources. How can this be done? Well, as Steve Jobs has pointed out, "good artists copy, great artists steal." Apple could use (steal) code written by others for the foundations of an IDE, leaving them free to concentrate on creating features that developers crave. Eclipse is a tool platform - Eclipse JDT is just an example of an application for the Eclipse platform. What if Apple created a new Project Builder based on Eclipse?

Although this sounds promising, there are major issues with such a proposal. First of all, an Eclipse-based Project Builder would not feel Mac-like. Perhaps if Apple jumped in and did a really amazing port of SWT it would feel more Mac-like, but there would still be look and feel issues. Another problem is that Apple might be viewed as not eating their own dog food. Eclipse is written in Java and the Mac port of SWT would probably use Carbon. Pundits might say, "Look, if Cocoa is so great then why isn't Apple using it to build their development environment?" So, although the idea of Eclipse MDT (Mac Development Tooling) sounds tantalizing to those of us who have drunk the Eclipse Kool Aid, it doesn't seem to be in the cards.

The crux of the problem here is that Apple doesn't have the resources to implement the plethora of features available in IDEs like Eclipse. They need help. But maybe my pipedream of Eclipse MDT was the wrong way around. Perhaps, instead of Apple piggybacking off of Eclipse, Apple should rely on people piggybacking off of them. Instead of scrambling to catch up with the features of more advanced IDEs, perhaps Apple needs to rearchitect the very core of Project Builder with an amazing plugin scheme (quite possible given the elegant dynamism of Objective-C). Then Apple can sit back and watch as their fanatical developers, those who understand the beauty of Cocoa, pump out plugin after plugin providing whizbang features like code completion and refactoring. Given the creativity of Mac developers, we could see the next great IDE feature developed for Project Builder, and then watch as Microsoft scrambles to introduce it in Visual Studio .NET.

Although I hate to see duplication of effort, it seems that we need something similar to the Eclipse platform's scheme of massive plugability, but implemented in Cocoa. People have clamored for Project Builder plugins for some time, but I believe Apple needs to go beyond a simple plugin scheme, and create a Project Builder extensible to its very core. Apple - if you build it, they will come, and they will create a world class IDE for you.

What does the future hold for Apple's developer tools? Could WWDC 2003 bring big changes? I don't know. I want to believe.