SIGWTF

I stumbled across this entry in Aaron Swartz's weblog:

I've been working on a book called Small is Beautiful: The Unix Philosophy [...]

(Eric Raymond has a book called The Art of Unix Programming but he doesn't seem to know what he's talking about.)

And I'm, like: "Would you care to expound upon that?" This Swartz fellow doesn't seem to have a commenting facility on his site, so I'm saying it here. What, precisely, is so awful about TAOUP? Personally, I consider it to be one of the best books ever written on programming in general, let alone Unix programming. I found useful information and advice on every page.

Of course, I don't expect everyone to feel the same way about it. But the point is that I don't see any obvious flaws in ESR's book, and if there are, indeed, a buttload of flaws, then I'd like to know about them. Couldn't Aaron be bothered to provide even one example of TAOUP's presumed horrendousness? I mean, sure, he's entitled to his opinions. But his manner of dismissing the entire book in one parenthetical sentence is, at best, questionable.

Possibly Useful Words

As you might guess, I've been playing with Dissociated Press:

• abnormail
• accidemocracy
• difficular
• discordicates
• enyachtenment
• forgious
• hostilligence
• informatiously
• kinkremental
• looney-tooling
• moronspiring
• pandervatives
• particumented
• pornogregation
• presidevil
• Prohibitchen
• reputaterialism
• revolitics
• shoutlawing
• spectrographiconoclerical
• televirulent
• therapeutimobile
• thincipia
• wiculouse
• worticulable

Terminator 3

It's pretty good. I liked the cute terminator -- every time she climbs out of a pile of wreckage, she looks so adorably indignant: the combination of sweet little voice and ice-cold facial expressions worked rather well. Arnold's good, too.