Mashup of the Day: The musical mothership from Spielberg’s Close Encounters duels it out with the people of Earth, Deliverance-style in Marc Bullard’s fantastically overdue mashup, “Close Encounters of the Redneck Kind.”
Fabulous!
8 hours ago"The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn’t change a proposed same-sex marriage law."
—And that, my friends, is why social programs should be run by states, and not by partisan religious organizations. Catholic priorities must be maintained! : Pharyngula (via lkm) (via chartier)
6 days ago
"Now a few years ago, I started work on a helpdesk ticketing system called tina. In the early days of tina development, I’d didn’t use any version control. I was frequently confused by my own code. I’d look at a piece of code and wonder, “What was I trying to do here?” or “When did I change this? Wait, did I change this?”. Occasionally, I’d tar-up my code for a historical record and I’m not sure now if I ever referred to those tarballs. When I eventually put the tina code into a Subversion repository I was much happier because of it."
—Version control isn’t just good for teams, it’s good for single developer projects, too, because it allows you to undo any change, and it allows you to see the history of line of code, so you’ll always know why you made a specific change. Just remember to commit early, commit often.
Cocoa Is My Girlfriend » Why version control is important for solo developers (via lkm)
3 weeks agoFront cover, Bangor (Maine) Daily News, Wednesday, November 4, 2009.
There are people who celebrate keeping people who love each other apart. There are people who make it their pathetic life’s work to keep two people who belong together from being together. There are people who revel in not letting others be genuinely happy, and making them feel like second-rate citizens in their own country, for the want of “preserving tradition.”
These people are assholes.
"Remember how I wrote about all those kids who died because their ignorant parents preferred to pray for them to get better rather than call a real doctor? Well, it appears that a couple senators are trying to include a provision to the healthcare bill that would require insurers to cover Christian Science prayer as a legitimate medical expense."
—
Senators try to get prayer payment plan into Health Care Bill | The Good Atheist
This isn’t a joke. How utterly ridiculous.
via lkm
(via chartier)
3 weeks ago
[Microsoft COO] Kevin Turner…[called] it “a magical day for Microsoft.”
He said Microsoft stores will stand out from Apple’s stores by developing deeper customer connections.
“We’re not looking for an encounter, we’re looking for a deep-seeded relationship so we can truly connect with their needs and help illuminate the magic of software and the value of the technology,” he said.
Microsoft’s first retail store opens in Scottsdale, Associated Press, October 22, 2009
Huh? I think that Mr Turner hasn’t been in an Apple store—at least as a customer. Apple has a number of features in its stores that encourage a longer relationship—if not with an individual store, then with the Apple brand. Just looking at my local store, there’s:
If that’s not engaging at a high level, I don’t know what is. In fact, I’m not sure I like the concept of the Field Trip to the Apple Store as a concept.
Microsoft doesn’t do personal. It’s not part of their DNA, and they should stop pretending that it is.
1 month ago