I want to be clear about my purpose here. My point is not to claim that the uniqueness of programming is itself unique. Every interesting field is unique in its own special way. For each field, it is helpful to understand why it is unique if you wish to truly excel, or you may bring inappropriate concepts from other domains in, or export inappropriate programming concepts to other domains. I say that programming has several unique aspects and that these aspects are worth thinking about, but this does not mean that programming is privileged somehow.

Re this ABC News leak that the Administration has not yet denounced: As I was reading the original article yesterday, it immediately occurred to me to wonder if it was even true, or if the leak itself was most of the covert op. Given the paranoia exhibited by the leadership of Iran (the entire world is run by a small cabal of Zionists, etc.), it could be an effective strategy just to claim that we're going to begin large-scale covert ops, and see if they start eating themselves from the inside.

Suppose one day I walk up to you and offer you a single pill that would make it as if you were exercising perfectly every day, without the actual need for exercise. Sit on your butt and play video games all day or go outside and run a mile for the sheer joy of it, no difference; your body in both cases would respond as if you were exercising well. No ifs, ands, or buts, no tricks, no gotchas, except I will point out this isn't a "perfect health" pill; I'm not guaranteeing you won't get cancer or a bad cold or a pulled muscle if you exceed your limits, just guaranteeing that you will receive all the benefits of exercising, including toned muscles, strength, etc..

The most common complaint about software is that it is "too buggy". The question is, "What does too buggy mean?" People making this complaint are often holding software to absurdly high standards, even when making comparisions to other engineering disciplines. In fact, bridges do fall down. Architects fail; often the designs can be seen to fail and corrected or maintained before catastrophic collapse, but it happens. Software is no more likely to be absolutely perfect than any other human endeavor.

Software is an engineering concern, and one of the things that means is that you can't have anything for free. If faced with the choice between a $100 piece of buggy or incomplete software, and a $50,000 piece of production-quality bullet-proof highly-tested quality software, it's unfair to complain that the $100 piece of software is buggy and incomplete.

Some guy took a crack at answering that question. Or more accurately, he claimed to take a crack at it; he never actually got around to answering it. It occurred to me the questioner does have a point, though.

What is computer science, anyhow?

Ban signs advertising gas prices visible from the roads.

Oh, it's not a total solution, but it would certainly turn the volume of kvetching down if people didn't see every twist and tumble of a commodity's price.

It's been a bit quiet here because I've been very busy. My long waiting game is over and I finally have a new job with Barracuda Networks. They are most famous for their effective spam firewall appliance, but I'll be working on the IM Firewall appliance (which may be slightly misnamed; it provides IM server services and ships with a client, it's not just a "filter").

They're opening an office in Ann Arbor, but to interview I had to fly out to California, and I'll be spending some time in Cali before the office opens. That probably won't affect my blog much though. If anything it'll help it. :)

A dream I once described here:

I dreamt that somebody came up with a symbol that would cause you to die if you looked at it. I’m not sure exactly what the symbol was, but it was an 8 by 8 grid of single-digit numbers and a few lines. (Matrix mathematicians beware!)

The funny thing is this: Nobody believed it when told. They’d demand to see it, snatch it out of the person’s hands, and as they are collapsing to the ground loudly declare, “See, I told you so.”... their final words.

The last five minutes of St Elsewhere is the only television show, ever. Everything else is a daydream. - Dwayne McDuffie

The best argument against the War on Terrorism is that terrorism simply isn't enough of a threat to be worth the resources we're pouring into it. On the balance, in a universe that permits things like nuclear weapons, I'm not quite willing to bet the farm on that argument, but I certainly think it's well within the field of factually-viable opinions on the issue.

Bolstering the "terrorists really can't be large-scale threats" theory is this article from the Wall Street Journal OpinionJournal, Iran's Economic Crisis, which I will quote selectively and extensively from: