Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't it really just mean that we should grab a couple of cells early on, every time someone(/thing) is born, preserve them, and then we'll have young cells should we (or the thing itself) decide that cloning would be advantageous? --
Researchers were checking to see if the animal was the victim of a lightening strike or ingested a toxin, including poisonous weeds. They are also looking into the appearance of several crop circles in surrounding fields on the same night. No other animals at the station appeared to be affected. --
Mr. Ravicher is right, open source isn't going to win because it has a license with
the legal kryptonite to undo proprietary software. It's going to win when users get
tired of exaggerated license fees and bizarre EULA's and because it's
technologically superior. He's right, the state of open source is impressive. Look at
where Microsoft is after 10 years of dominating the desktop OS/office market and
buying up or undercutting their competition and having all major hardware
vendors except Apple specifically tailoring workstation hardware to run various
flavors of Windows. Then compare the state of GNOME, KDE, and Linux and
how much the groups responsible for each have accomplished in less than a
decade, often meeting complete apathy or heavy resistance from larger
manufacturer's on various fronts
I was also impressed by this recurring advice. Another thing that I liked was how often he batted down "this license abridges speech" arguments. He didn't exactly advertise it, but it brings up the extremely important point that people voluntarily enter into these agreements. Ok, maybe you can make an argument that a business these days is, in fact, forced into using MS stuff (but he (and the courts) have addressed that, as well), but as far as things like DVDs go, no one of forcing you to buy that stuff.
It's easy to blame the big corporations, but it's about as responsible as blaming the Jews. The real problem isn't the RIAA/MPwhoever, it's the unthinking public that will go ahead and buy a DVD that they can't use in a way they want to. All of these problems would be solved if we just said--"what, it's formatted in a way that means I can't legally make a backup copy? No, thnks! I won't buy it!".
Turn your anger toward the consumers. Think "politician : people that vote for them":: "corporations : people that vote for their practices with their money". The thoughts are equally frustrating. But they are valid.
If you are going to throw your effort at solving a problem, solve the problem of getting people to think (and, possibly the harder part, act based on that thought).
--
John Yaya of Yoyodyne, Inc, announced today that his company has obtained a patent on their new magnetic suit. {you fill in the rest--refer disparagingly to Yoyodyne's stock holdings in plastic pens for extra credit. Also, describe how the person demonstrating the new suit was almost killed at the press conference when a reporter let his microphone slip, etc] --
First, consider a hypothetical. Say somone that messes around with cars
figures out how to make a completely transparent (plexiglass?) carburetor.
They make one and put it on their car. The car runs _exactly_ the
same as it did before. Unless you look at it, you will detect _no_
difference and it will break down just as often, etc, etc. But if you
look under the hood, you'll see this very cool looking thing that this
person put there because he thought it would be a cool thing to do.
That is clearly (in my mind) "expressive" rather than just functional.
He would not make a pink one--why? because of the function? no, because
he would feel that it would be taken as an expression of femininity.
Okay, now let's consider some very old code of mine that I was looking
through the other day. I had a function in it called "start_me_up".
This was a reference to the Stones song. It would have worked just
the same if I had called it "start". No difference in functionality.
No one that ever used the program ("drove the car") would know it was
there. But when you look at the source code you get a little insight into
my personality. It expresses something about what kind of music I like,
and my sense of humor. Furthermore, when I looked at it I thought
"I would probably hesistate to use that function name today because it
might make someone think of the Windows 95 ad campaign". Not because
it would run different. Because of what it would express to someone.
Further examples--when I was working in a language that had problems wth
scope issues, I would use different names for my loop counters (frequently
people use "i" and "j" as loop counter names). If I just wanted functionality,
I would have called them i2, i3, etc. But, just to be funny, i would
use variable names like "eye", "aye", "jay", etc--my intent was that
people would see the variable, and wonder why it was called that
for a split second before they realized that it was pronounced exactly
the same way as "i" or "j".
It amused me when I saw it later. That was the whole point of writing it
the way I did.
Even now that I'm in a more corporate environment, I see plenty
of examples of expressive code. One programmer on my team implemented
some functionality with an array named "f--k_you"--didn't change the
functionality, but it expressed his emotion at how much trouble
implementing that feature had given him. It also nearly got him
fired because the manager thought the expression was directed at
him or other members of the team. Not because of the functionality--
because of what it expressed.
If it has to be clearer than that, we really have no hope in this thing anyway.
There're two things that I can think of that make RedHat's business model potentially viable:
Lack of information - John Q. User will probably go with the quick-and-easy update process that's readily visible after installing
RedHat.
[snip]
Remember that "lack of information" is a pretty good description of why a lot of people buy windows (instead of Mac, of course:). So it's believable that this will result in a reasonable amount of revenue.
Also, this is the sort of thing that will get pushed in by third parties--"Yeah, we'll come in and set you up, and then for this low fee you can get updates every month from the Big Fedora", and then the big fedora kicks them back a few bucks for adding a subscriber.
I would venture to say that most of the money made in the computer industry is a result of "relative ignorance".
Not unlike a lot of the postings on slashdot...
--
Funny that you bring that up, because it was that exact interview (or rather, the report of it) that I first mused that Bill might really not be in touch with reality. I don't remember many specifics, but one was that he had never heard a Bill Gates joke. That's whacked. But there was something else he said in there that really got me thinking that maybe he really did live in a world where Microsoft was leading the revolution and making the world a better place. This Wired article slammed that notion home. Not that it matters, I suppose. But it was something of a stunning revelation--you wouldn't think that someone as smart as he obviously is oculd really be so far from "getting it". Or maybe I need to reevaluate that idea in the first place... --
Sorry to reply to my own post, but here's an example of something the Wired article I mentioned ("The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth") brings out. Gates, well known for his micromanagement, even micromanaged his legal team (in the article someone admits to this off the record). Once you see that, you realize that quotes like this:
"This is the beginning of a new chapter in this case," Gates said at the time of Jackson's ruling. He called the decision inconsistent with past court decisions and with the realities of the marketplace.
aren't just Gates reading a press release prepared by his lawyers, but rather him asserting his own opinion of the facts (he researched anti trust law, etc, and was absolutely convinced the law was on his side).
Perhaps the most striking thing in the article is how it shows that Gates really appears to believe what he says. He appears to have been genuinely confused as to why his own government came after him. You can fake a lot of sincerety, but I doubt someone like Gates would go as far as faking tears in front of the company's board. --
Now mind you since nothing will ever happen as a result of his ruling, I guess it doesn't really matter either way.
I urge you to read the "The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" article from Wired a couple months back. My take on it is that progress really did get made through this lawsuit. Two important things happened. One was that a bunch of Microsoft people were finally confronted with reality (rather than Bill's version of reality, which, pity the poor billionarie, he really appears to believe) in a credible way, and they reacted by leaving. That had to have had some effect on the faith of the remaining true believers there.
Second, though, was that it marked an important turning point for non-geeks. Much of our ranting about things that Microsoft has done was easily dismissible by the teeming masses as "jealosy of Bill's wealth" or whatever. The findings of the court finally put some of that in the public's face in a significantly less deniable fashion.
The public, of course, will soon have or has already forgotten, but I think a lot of industry types have had the huge morale boost of seeing the giant stumble. That in itself is probably already changing the way things are being looked at and planned.
But even if you don't agree with any of this, at least take the first suggestion and read the article. Not only will it bring back a lot of interesting things about the trial you might have forgotten, it contains a wealth of information that was really juicy but under embargo until the end of the trial. --
The thing about software is that you, dear reader, can create it. We should _expect_ that fact, the fact that anyone can do it, to cause exactly the chaos and prevalence of mediocrity and plain badness that is being complained about here.
Consider the huge difference between software "products" and other machine/tool-like things. Suppose you want to make something--say, a can opener. Most of us understand, in principle, how a can opener works. I think most of us can look at any given can opener (they're pretty much open source, after all) and understand its design. But what would it take to create one ourselves? Lots of money, basically. Not-commonly-available tools, parts or the tools to make them, space to put all of that stuff. Who's going to do that in their garage? Maybe some person with a vision of the perfect can opener and dreams of changing the way everyone opens cans? But, of all the people that dream of changing the way everyone opens cans (already a tiny number of people, I would guess), how many of them could even afford it, or could convince someone to fund it?
It's just not likely to happen. So can openers, by and large, are going to be designed only by companies with access to the materials and tools _and_ a bottom line to worry about--meaning that they're not going to do it half-assed.
Now switch your brain to the world of software tools, and instead of a can opener, think of a recipe database. Heck, I wrote one one day, and I thought the other day about web enabling it so my family could share recipes over the web. It doesn't, as has often been observed, mean that I _should_--but I can, I know that I can, and all it's going to take is a little time (but "little" is, of course, _very_ deceptive). The tools are right in front of me--except for the hardware, that you could probably get for almost free, everything is free. All it takes is time. And I have (at least some) time. So I can. So I might. And so, many people do.
Okay, that explains a lot of the crap that's out there, but what about the commercial stuff that's also crap?
A similar thing happens at software companies--although the perception is not correct, they _think_ they can. That same "we have the tools, we just need to write the code" mentality is alive and well at software companies. It's relatively easy for an engineer to say "okay, metal gears of this size and spec will cost this much, but it will be this much if you want plastic. if we eliminate this button we save X dollars and get rid of some possible breakage issues which we rate as an X% probability in normal use". Quick, how much does a javascript function to validate input on a form cost? There's no easy way to answer that, no book to look up the numbers in. Because "all" it takes is for someone to sit down and write those lines out, and because, once those lines are written, producing the next copy of them costs nothing, designers are led down a very deceptive path to a hugely complicated structure that quickly becomes hard to understand, hard to coordinate the interactions of the different parts of, hard to test thoroughly, and hard to deliver on time.
Once you get into that situation, you have to cut corners, slap stuff together, do the absolutely necessary stuff, and suddenly you're plagued with a poor user interface (because that takes time, understanding, and developer buy-in to get right), ugly bugs (because you didn't have time to develop, much less run through, an exhaustive set of test cases), etc, etc. And then is when you come up against the wall, and you find out that, while all this time you were thinking out oculd, because the tools were right there, you actually _can't_, because you _don't_ have enough time.
Basically, the feature sirens are always calling us to the rocks, and the song is so beautiful ("We could make it compatible with...") that we find it hard to resist. And all this time it just all seems so _possible_. In a theoretical sense, it is--but the razorlike reefs are right there under the waves. Even when we are going down we often don't see why we failed.
I really love your cover of "Why does the sun shine?", as well as the originals in the same or similar vein, like "Mammals" (and even the less direct "Dinner Jacket" and "Whistling in the dark", which (at least to me) seems like a critique of Plato's republic (call me crazy)).
would you consider doing an entire album or even a series thereof that is aimed at interesting presentations of science/history/etc? I really think songs like these have a lot to offer to the effort to show kids (of all ages) what is cool and fun about these topics which are normally presented rather dryly.
Also, so you watch Bill Nye the Science Guy? (I couldn't resist).
Finally, here's a song a friend of mine wrote, sung to the tune of home on the range, just to convince you that if you don't do it, someone else will do it badly:
(lyrics by Robert M. Panoff, may he forgive me for posting them with his name attached)
Oh, E is a field,
Whose divergence will yield
The charge density, times four pi.
It's curl is B dot--
Hence, in statics, it's naught
and a minus sign orients I.
Chorus:
Waves, weves in free space
at the speed of light, c, they do hurl [unfurl?]
They flux energy
As their modes, E and B,
Oscillate, with divergenceless curl
[Okay, okay, so it's not funny unless you have seen the vector calculus forms of Maxwell's equations. You sort of have to see it with the accompanying whiteboard presentation of the math.]
Many of the people that I know that like your music are also very intelligent. That probably leads to higher-than-average incidence of people wondering about the origins of many of your songs, since "smart" people tend to be ery curious and interested in solving puzzles.
I realize that some of these things have been discussed in interviews, and still others have been widely speculated about, etc. I, for one, like a puzzle, like trying to figure out what a particular line might refer to, etc. So I have a couple of questions related to that.
One, do you feel the same way when you listen to music with intriguing lyrics? Do you ever wish you could get access to the artist to find those things out? Does it frustrate you when you can't get the definitive answer?
Two, being at the other end--does it bother you for people to ask you all the time "what does [this line of this song] mean?", etc? Have you ever considered just putting explanations up somewhere? Would you consider that too time-consuming, too much like having to explain a joke that someone didn't get, or spoiling the fun of the puzzle?
[Sorry to put so many questions together--if you run all the syllables together when you ask them (e.g. "i'dhavealotofeyesinmebynowwouldn'ti?wouldn'tthatj ustbefine?") it doesn't seem like so much.] --
while I'm not one to buy into conspiracy theories, this whole thing seems like a plan that
originally had good intentions, but the potentials for foul play are pretty easy to think up
Apply above comment to Windows....NET... MSN... anything[1] Gates touches...
Slashdot Mirror
We got smart enough for God to deem us worthy to talk to...
Oh, wait, that happened when we discovered abstract algebra.
--
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't it really just mean that we should grab a couple of cells early on, every time someone(/thing) is born, preserve them, and then we'll have young cells should we (or the thing itself) decide that cloning would be advantageous?
--
...that anything I say with a subject like that will be modded up as funny!
Whaddya say, moderators? C'mon, eleven!
:)
--
Researchers were checking to see if the animal was the victim of a lightening strike or ingested a toxin, including poisonous weeds. They are also looking into the appearance of several crop circles in surrounding fields on the same night. No other animals at the station appeared to be affected.
--
(Score:-1)
by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05, @12:37PM EST
With a Beowolf cluster of Attorney Dan!
Now, cmon, that's funny!
--
I was also impressed by this recurring advice. Another thing that I liked was how often he batted down "this license abridges speech" arguments. He didn't exactly advertise it, but it brings up the extremely important point that people voluntarily enter into these agreements. Ok, maybe you can make an argument that a business these days is, in fact, forced into using MS stuff (but he (and the courts) have addressed that, as well), but as far as things like DVDs go, no one of forcing you to buy that stuff.
It's easy to blame the big corporations, but it's about as responsible as blaming the Jews. The real problem isn't the RIAA/MPwhoever, it's the unthinking public that will go ahead and buy a DVD that they can't use in a way they want to. All of these problems would be solved if we just said--"what, it's formatted in a way that means I can't legally make a backup copy? No, thnks! I won't buy it!".
Turn your anger toward the consumers. Think "politician : people that vote for them" :: "corporations : people that vote for their practices with their money". The thoughts are equally frustrating. But they are valid.
If you are going to throw your effort at solving a problem, solve the problem of getting people to think (and, possibly the harder part, act based on that thought).
--
the spray painting _was_ the community service
--
10 We'll want that land back now.
9 no, we don't
8 yes, we do
7 etc
6 [you
5 fill
4 in
3 these]
2
1 All your ancestors are belong to us.
--
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
John Yaya of Yoyodyne, Inc, announced today that his company has obtained a patent on their new magnetic suit. {you fill in the rest--refer disparagingly to Yoyodyne's stock holdings in plastic pens for extra credit. Also, describe how the person demonstrating the new suit was almost killed at the press conference when a reporter let his microphone slip, etc]
--
First, consider a hypothetical. Say somone that messes around with cars
figures out how to make a completely transparent (plexiglass?) carburetor.
They make one and put it on their car. The car runs _exactly_ the
same as it did before. Unless you look at it, you will detect _no_
difference and it will break down just as often, etc, etc. But if you
look under the hood, you'll see this very cool looking thing that this
person put there because he thought it would be a cool thing to do.
That is clearly (in my mind) "expressive" rather than just functional.
He would not make a pink one--why? because of the function? no, because
he would feel that it would be taken as an expression of femininity.
Okay, now let's consider some very old code of mine that I was looking
through the other day. I had a function in it called "start_me_up".
This was a reference to the Stones song. It would have worked just
the same if I had called it "start". No difference in functionality.
No one that ever used the program ("drove the car") would know it was
there. But when you look at the source code you get a little insight into
my personality. It expresses something about what kind of music I like,
and my sense of humor. Furthermore, when I looked at it I thought
"I would probably hesistate to use that function name today because it
might make someone think of the Windows 95 ad campaign". Not because
it would run different. Because of what it would express to someone.
Further examples--when I was working in a language that had problems wth
scope issues, I would use different names for my loop counters (frequently
people use "i" and "j" as loop counter names). If I just wanted functionality,
I would have called them i2, i3, etc. But, just to be funny, i would
use variable names like "eye", "aye", "jay", etc--my intent was that
people would see the variable, and wonder why it was called that
for a split second before they realized that it was pronounced exactly
the same way as "i" or "j".
It amused me when I saw it later. That was the whole point of writing it
the way I did.
Even now that I'm in a more corporate environment, I see plenty
of examples of expressive code. One programmer on my team implemented
some functionality with an array named "f--k_you"--didn't change the
functionality, but it expressed his emotion at how much trouble
implementing that feature had given him. It also nearly got him
fired because the manager thought the expression was directed at
him or other members of the team. Not because of the functionality--
because of what it expressed.
If it has to be clearer than that, we really have no hope in this thing anyway.
--
Lack of information - John Q. User will probably go with the quick-and-easy update process that's readily visible after installing
RedHat.
[snip]
Remember that "lack of information" is a pretty good description of why a lot of people buy windows (instead of Mac, of course :). So it's believable that this will result in a reasonable amount of revenue.
Also, this is the sort of thing that will get pushed in by third parties--"Yeah, we'll come in and set you up, and then for this low fee you can get updates every month from the Big Fedora", and then the big fedora kicks them back a few bucks for adding a subscriber.
I would venture to say that most of the money made in the computer industry is a result of "relative ignorance".
Not unlike a lot of the postings on slashdot...
--
Shhhhhhh!
--
I was once told from a very reliable source that they were alive after the explosion, but had no means of doing anything to save themselves.
Does anyone have any independent verification of this?
--
Funny that you bring that up, because it was that exact interview (or rather, the report of it) that I first mused that Bill might really not be in touch with reality. I don't remember many specifics, but one was that he had never heard a Bill Gates joke. That's whacked. But there was something else he said in there that really got me thinking that maybe he really did live in a world where Microsoft was leading the revolution and making the world a better place. This Wired article slammed that notion home. Not that it matters, I suppose. But it was something of a stunning revelation--you wouldn't think that someone as smart as he obviously is oculd really be so far from "getting it". Or maybe I need to reevaluate that idea in the first place...
--
"This is the beginning of a new chapter in this case," Gates said at the time of Jackson's ruling. He called the decision inconsistent with past court decisions and with the realities of the marketplace.
aren't just Gates reading a press release prepared by his lawyers, but rather him asserting his own opinion of the facts (he researched anti trust law, etc, and was absolutely convinced the law was on his side).
Perhaps the most striking thing in the article is how it shows that Gates really appears to believe what he says. He appears to have been genuinely confused as to why his own government came after him. You can fake a lot of sincerety, but I doubt someone like Gates would go as far as faking tears in front of the company's board.
--
Now mind you since nothing will ever happen as a result of his ruling, I guess it doesn't really matter either way.
I urge you to read the "The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" article from Wired a couple months back. My take on it is that progress really did get made through this lawsuit. Two important things happened. One was that a bunch of Microsoft people were finally confronted with reality (rather than Bill's version of reality, which, pity the poor billionarie, he really appears to believe) in a credible way, and they reacted by leaving. That had to have had some effect on the faith of the remaining true believers there.
Second, though, was that it marked an important turning point for non-geeks. Much of our ranting about things that Microsoft has done was easily dismissible by the teeming masses as "jealosy of Bill's wealth" or whatever. The findings of the court finally put some of that in the public's face in a significantly less deniable fashion.
The public, of course, will soon have or has already forgotten, but I think a lot of industry types have had the huge morale boost of seeing the giant stumble. That in itself is probably already changing the way things are being looked at and planned.
But even if you don't agree with any of this, at least take the first suggestion and read the article. Not only will it bring back a lot of interesting things about the trial you might have forgotten, it contains a wealth of information that was really juicy but under embargo until the end of the trial.
--
"Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks and the last light of Durin's day will shine upon the keyhole."
--
The thing about software is that you, dear reader, can create it. We should _expect_ that fact, the fact that anyone can do it, to cause exactly the chaos and prevalence of mediocrity and plain badness that is being complained about here.
...") that we find it hard to resist. And all this time it just all seems so _possible_. In a theoretical sense, it is--but the razorlike reefs are right there under the waves. Even when we are going down we often don't see why we failed.
Consider the huge difference between software "products" and other machine/tool-like things. Suppose you want to make something--say, a can opener. Most of us understand, in principle, how a can opener works. I think most of us can look at any given can opener (they're pretty much open source, after all) and understand its design. But what would it take to create one ourselves? Lots of money, basically. Not-commonly-available tools, parts or the tools to make them, space to put all of that stuff. Who's going to do that in their garage? Maybe some person with a vision of the perfect can opener and dreams of changing the way everyone opens cans? But, of all the people that dream of changing the way everyone opens cans (already a tiny number of people, I would guess), how many of them could even afford it, or could convince someone to fund it?
It's just not likely to happen. So can openers, by and large, are going to be designed only by companies with access to the materials and tools _and_ a bottom line to worry about--meaning that they're not going to do it half-assed.
Now switch your brain to the world of software tools, and instead of a can opener, think of a recipe database. Heck, I wrote one one day, and I thought the other day about web enabling it so my family could share recipes over the web. It doesn't, as has often been observed, mean that I _should_--but I can, I know that I can, and all it's going to take is a little time (but "little" is, of course, _very_ deceptive). The tools are right in front of me--except for the hardware, that you could probably get for almost free, everything is free. All it takes is time. And I have (at least some) time. So I can. So I might. And so, many people do.
Okay, that explains a lot of the crap that's out there, but what about the commercial stuff that's also crap?
A similar thing happens at software companies--although the perception is not correct, they _think_ they can. That same "we have the tools, we just need to write the code" mentality is alive and well at software companies. It's relatively easy for an engineer to say "okay, metal gears of this size and spec will cost this much, but it will be this much if you want plastic. if we eliminate this button we save X dollars and get rid of some possible breakage issues which we rate as an X% probability in normal use". Quick, how much does a javascript function to validate input on a form cost? There's no easy way to answer that, no book to look up the numbers in. Because "all" it takes is for someone to sit down and write those lines out, and because, once those lines are written, producing the next copy of them costs nothing, designers are led down a very deceptive path to a hugely complicated structure that quickly becomes hard to understand, hard to coordinate the interactions of the different parts of, hard to test thoroughly, and hard to deliver on time.
Once you get into that situation, you have to cut corners, slap stuff together, do the absolutely necessary stuff, and suddenly you're plagued with a poor user interface (because that takes time, understanding, and developer buy-in to get right), ugly bugs (because you didn't have time to develop, much less run through, an exhaustive set of test cases), etc, etc. And then is when you come up against the wall, and you find out that, while all this time you were thinking out oculd, because the tools were right there, you actually _can't_, because you _don't_ have enough time.
Basically, the feature sirens are always calling us to the rocks, and the song is so beautiful ("We could make it compatible with
--
I can't remember why I liked this
--
I really love your cover of "Why does the sun shine?", as well as the originals in the same or similar vein, like "Mammals" (and even the less direct "Dinner Jacket" and "Whistling in the dark", which (at least to me) seems like a critique of Plato's republic (call me crazy)).
would you consider doing an entire album or even a series thereof that is aimed at interesting presentations of science/history/etc? I really think songs like these have a lot to offer to the effort to show kids (of all ages) what is cool and fun about these topics which are normally presented rather dryly.
Also, so you watch Bill Nye the Science Guy? (I couldn't resist).
Finally, here's a song a friend of mine wrote, sung to the tune of home on the range, just to convince you that if you don't do it, someone else will do it badly:
(lyrics by Robert M. Panoff, may he forgive me for posting them with his name attached)
Oh, E is a field,
Whose divergence will yield
The charge density, times four pi.
It's curl is B dot--
Hence, in statics, it's naught
and a minus sign orients I.
Chorus:
Waves, weves in free space
at the speed of light, c, they do hurl [unfurl?]
They flux energy
As their modes, E and B,
Oscillate, with divergenceless curl
[Okay, okay, so it's not funny unless you have seen the vector calculus forms of Maxwell's equations. You sort of have to see it with the accompanying whiteboard presentation of the math.]
--
Many of the people that I know that like your music are also very intelligent. That probably leads to higher-than-average incidence of people wondering about the origins of many of your songs, since "smart" people tend to be ery curious and interested in solving puzzles.
j ustbefine?") it doesn't seem like so much.]
I realize that some of these things have been discussed in interviews, and still others have been widely speculated about, etc. I, for one, like a puzzle, like trying to figure out what a particular line might refer to, etc. So I have a couple of questions related to that.
One, do you feel the same way when you listen to music with intriguing lyrics? Do you ever wish you could get access to the artist to find those things out? Does it frustrate you when you can't get the definitive answer?
Two, being at the other end--does it bother you for people to ask you all the time "what does [this line of this song] mean?", etc? Have you ever considered just putting explanations up somewhere? Would you consider that too time-consuming, too much like having to explain a joke that someone didn't get, or spoiling the fun of the puzzle?
[Sorry to put so many questions together--if you run all the syllables together when you ask them (e.g. "i'dhavealotofeyesinmebynowwouldn'ti?wouldn'tthat
--
it's a code phrase. It means "stand on my head and tell me I'm fat"
--
Anxiously awaiting your clarification...
--
uh, "subtle"? Try this.
<p>
:)
<p>
But otherwise, you're absolutely <!--stating the obvious--> right.
<!--Yes, the extrans is on purpose. sheesh, guys-->
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Apply above comment to Windows ... .NET ... MSN ... anything[1] Gates touches ...
See a pattern?
[1] Okay, except maybe Bob.
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