Sega announces Shenmue Online
— also, you can play Shenmue with the Chankast emulator via Slashdot #Fark.com secretly sells their homepage story links
— Shirky has more thoughts on this fundamental violation of reader trust #Video: "Team America" trailer
— Matt Parker and Trey Stone’s political action/comedy with marionettes via @ponderance #Video: "Thriller" music video in Second Life MMO
— they used a pale woman for Michael Jackson’s part via Simon Carless #Jazz preservation difficult with iTunes
— problems with performers, reissues, album art, liner notes, and more via Magnetbox #Flash: Peasant Quest
— Homestar retro adventure game in the style of King’s Quest, plus a walkthrough via littlefluffy.com #Life Lessons from the Super Mario Bros. Instruction Booklet
— another great McSweeney’s list via Delicious #EmoteMail
— e-mail client with subtle visual cues for facial expression and typing speed via Jason Cosper #Museum of Hoaxes on Clubbo.com, the fake indie record label
— elaborate prank, with MP3s from every fake band #Toronto Star's entire 1945 archive
— the comics archives are wonderful, but the interface stinks via robotjohnny.com #Young girl stumbles on Perl.org Journals, hilarity ensues
— they thought the posts were autogenerated by a Perl module #Knauss on Paul Graham's "Great Hackers"
Greg Knauss doesn’t have a weblog of his own, so I asked if I could post his rebuttal to Paul Graham’s Great Hackers essay. Greg writes:
“Hello, my name is Paul Graham. I have a bunch of opinions and prejudices, and I’ll now present them as fact: Python is better than Java, Linux is better than Windows, quiet is better than noise, one big problem is better than a thousand tiny ones, hackers are better than normal people. If you disagree with me, then you are obviously not a super hacker, and are instead some sad little monkey, banging on a keyboard.”
Jesus. s/hacker/self-satisfied prima donna/g.
You know what a hacker is? It’s someone who enjoys solving problems. Great hackers do it elegantly. Good hackers do it at all. How they do it is irrelevant, and it certainly has nothing to do with what language they choose or what OS they run or if they’re politically correct or not. To claim otherwise is arrogant, narrow-minded foolishness.
The fact that I’m learning C# and Windows.Forms does not make me any less of a hacker. In fact, it makes me more of one, because I’m able to solve a problem I couldn’t with all the Python and Linux in the world. Oh, but I forgot: hackers only solve the problems that interest them, if they’re presented in the right way and in the right environment. Because hackers are special.
Joshua pointed out that while it may seem that every smart person I know is using open-source tools, it’s a product of observational bias. Open-source programmers hang out with other open-source programmers. I don’t know many Windows applications developers, so I’ve never met a Windows super-genius. But they exist, and to say they don’t is a form of technophobic racism.
