mimoSite Programming and some other things

Jobs is a very abstract term

Governor Jerry Brown, quoted in ‘Bark if you don’t like the deficits’

I watched Obama’s State of the Union speech the other night. As in previous year it left me with a sort of general bad feeling, and I could not identify the cause (I usually quite like Obama’s speeches).

I think I figured out what’s bothering me: the undertone of these speeches – and in some case not just the undertone – is that the US is different and better than any other country. As a foreigner that can be a bit upsetting.

I just watched the end of the year speech of the Italian president: there are patriotic references, but this ‘our country is best’ stuff is not there at all.

The second incarnation of Mr Brown [as California’s Governor] … has been marked by a relentless pursuit of the possible and a serene neglect of everything else

The Economist in ‘Bark if you don’t like deficits’

Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.

Bertrand Russell in 'Ten Commandments for Living in a Healthy Democracy'

He added (redundantly) that the president was a “Washington insider”

The Economist in ‘No switch for Mitch’

A well-defined job is a job at risk.

Arnold Kling in ‘PSST: Patterns of Sustainable Specialization and Trade’

This makes it incumbent upon society to spread opportunity to all who can compete—shaking the national cornflake packet, as he perplexingly put it—and helping those who cannot

The Economist, referring to a Boris Johnson speech, in ‘Top of the class’

Weird things you find following links: MIRI, a research institute devoted to prevent future artificial intelligence to take over the world.

Maybe they are actually right, and I should not define them ‘weird’, but ‘taking over the world’ AI seems a bit farfetched considering were we stand now with software development.

In fact, we can think of few more difficult jobs [Civil Liberties & Privacy Officer at the NSA] since the post of Staff Rabbi to the Spanish Inquisition

The Register in ‘The NSA's hiring - and they want a CIVIL LIBERTIES officer’

Selected HTML5 technologies:

• Canvas (2D drawing) – like Windows GDI
• WebGL (3D drawing) – like Windows OpenGL
• WebSocket – like Windows Winsock
• Indexed Database – like Windows MSDE
• Offline Web applications – like Windows normal applications
• File API – line Windows NTFS
• Font support – like Windows GDI font handling
• Video/audio support – like Windows Media Player and associated APIs
• Web Workers – like Windows threads

So we are re-developing all this stuff (and more) in various browsers running on different platforms – and then develop (or re-develop) applications on top of it.

Tell me again, why are we doing all this? Wouldn’t have been simpler just to stick with Windows?