Rudy Rucker writes: Speaking of time, how long does a computation continue?. We won’t impose any bound at all. Certain kinds of computation will indeed signal when they’ve arrived at a desired result — for instance by beeping or by printing a result — and then halt in the s ense of no longer changing their states. But there’s a sense in which such computational processes continue after their halting point.

Michael Fremer reveiws the Wavac SH-833 monoblock power amplifier. Now, granted, this is a review of a $350,000 amplifier, but this line just kills me: There’s nothing outrageous about spending a million bucks on a painting or a vintage automobile. Pretty bold statement. Then again, this guy did try this thing out with London Calling, so I have to give him some credit. And, for that matter, the lucky bastard got to listen to this thing (these, really, it’s a matched pair of amps) for two whole months.

Jon Eaves describes what he refers to as the consulting dilemma, that is, the fact that as a consultant you are usually brought in to work with companies that you wouldn’t ever choose to work for and often in the worst of circumstances (the project has run off track, the team has no process defined, the architecture is a mess or nonexistent). While I’m not a consultant, I have thought a lot about this issue.

You are an enzyme. You are powerful, dark,
variable, and can change many things at your
whim…even when they’re not supposed to be
changed. Bad you. You can be dangerous or
wonderful; it’s your choice.

Which Biological Molecule Are You?

brought to you by Quizilla

Indirectly (via Engadget) I found this gem of dotcom brilliance. And it’s practical, too!

This sounds painfully familiar: I was talking to a programmer today who works for a business who does business software development for a large client. Their process is that the client sends a requirements document, they go back and forth a few times to sort out some detail, and he codes the software or enhancement. He never, ever sees a user, does not know who they are or what they do.

Page 5, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci And this is the proper order; since if you wished to show the usefulness of any plan you would be obliged again to devise new machines to prove its utility and thus would confuse the order of the forty Books and also the order of the diagrams; that is to say you would have to mix up practice with theory, which would produce a confused and incoherent work.

An interesting example of an XDoclet template to generate Tiles definitions.

Whiskey Bar: Where Was Dick?

The Securities and Exchange Commission gave Vice President Cheney a nice campaign present yesterday, in the form of a tidy little settlement of its securities fraud charges against Halliburton - charges that might have proven extremely embarrassing to the company’s former CEO if the SEC had showed the same relentless dedication to its job that former special counsel Kenneth Starr showed to his.

From John Shirley comes this nice little take on the conservative vs. liberal points of view. I won’t bother to summarize, just go read it.