Solipsism Gradient

Several people (among them Chris Hanson pointed at The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, written by Carlo M. Cipolla:

The first basic law of human stupidity asserts without ambiguity that:

Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

…I firmly believe that stupidity is an indiscriminate privilege of all human groups and is uniformly distributed according to a constant proportion. This fact is scientifically expressed by the Second Basic Law which states that

The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

…As the Third Basic Law explicitly clarifies:

A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

When confronted for the first time with the Third Basic Law, rational people instinctively react with feelings of skepticism and incredulity. The fact is that reasonable people have difficulty in conceiving and understanding unreasonable behaviour…

There’s much more to it, including lots of stuff on the main True Stupidity site. All, sadly, true.

Some nice folks are linking to my recently released Fax Alert Installer. I purposely didn’t do my usual routine of following the release with a barrage of press releases to major Mac websites, to see what would happen.

Today there was a mention at Mac OS X Hints. Previously, Daniel Steinberg also referred to it, and niknud in turn linked to Daniel’s article. Macintouch also had a brief note, as did MacSurfer.

Meanwhile, even with little publicity, there’ve been around 1400 downloads – and so far, in December, Fax Alert Installer downloads are running neck-and-neck with XRay downloads. Not bad…

Although Max Lyons has been in the news these days for his Gigapixel image of Bryce Canyon, his image gallery is well worth a longer visit.

I was particularly taken by the photographs of the Canadian Rockies, the Southwest Deserts, and the Sierra Nevada… all places where I’ve been. I can attest they really look like that, although my own results were far more modest. Highly recommended!

This seems to be mostly accurate:

Linked to by the J-Walk Blog, as usual… curiously enough, the first version of these pages used nearly exactly this light cyan tint as a background, but I found it slightly tiring.

If you’re a fan of composer Philip Glass, you’ll love the Glass Engine, an IBM research project that allows you to select and listen to any track from over sixty Glass works. I spent over an hour there without really noticing.

The engine has a unique user interface which, unfortunately, runs only on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Java is also required.

The J-Walk Blog, among other goodies, points at a site that turns any website into a screenplay. So guess what I did?

FADE IN.

INT. TRENDY CAFE

WINONA RYDER is lovelorn and sad. She is complaining to her best friend BROCKERHOFF.NET (SOLIPSISM GRADIENT) about the lovelorn and sad state of her life.

WINONA RYDER

Oh, BROCKERHOFF.NET (SOLIPSISM GRADIENT), do you think that I will ever find my true love? I am so lovelorn and sad. Surely, you, as my best friend, have some wisdom to offer

BROCKERHOFF.NET (SOLIPSISM GRADIENT)

Sorry, but to set everything up properly you must first run XRay once from an Administrator account.

WINONA RYDER

Yes, you said that from the very beginning, didn't you? Oh, if only I'd listened to you,BROCKERHOFF.NET (SOLIPSISM GRADIENT).

...

She shoots angrily again. LEONARDO DI CAPRIO comes running up.

LEONARDO DI CAPRIO

I must talk to you, WINONA RYDER. I can explain.

...

BROCKERHOFF.NET (SOLIPSISM GRADIENT)

This mode builds a smaller, faster program without debugging symbols and other encumbrances.

WEDDING GUESTS

Hear, hear.

BROCKERHOFF.NET (SOLIPSISM GRADIENT)

Well, all of this usually takes several hours and is extremely tiring.

Everybody laughs

LEONARDO DI CAPRIO and WINONA RYDER

Hahahahahaha!!!! Oh BROCKERHOFF.NET (SOLIPSISM GRADIENT). You are one of a kind.

THE END

Story of my life…

Acabo de publicar um update para o Aurélio Século XXI para Mac.

A versão 1.05 agora roda sob o Classic do Mac OS X 10.1.5 em diante. Detalhes aqui…

One of my favorite constantly-used applications, NetNewsWire, wins the Eddy Award. Congratulations to Brent Simmons! Well deserved.