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.

At work, we’ve started using iDictate for transcribing audio. After sending them an MP3, they send back a written transcription within an hour or two for about $.01/word. (They split the audio into manageable chunks, distribute it to typists around the world, reassemble the text, and send it back.)

Phil noticed that they offered a 100-word free trial by phone, so decided to have a little fun. He called their toll-free number, started his favorite MP3, and held the phone up to the speakers. They e-mailed him the transcript below. (They couldn’t figure out the words “find emotion” and left it blank.)

Try it out! Call 1-877-DICTATE (1-877-342-8283), press “1” to dictate, then “1” to do the free trial, and start recording. If you have any good results, post them in the comments.

Update: Ryan sent them They Might Be Giants’ “Exquisite Dead Guy.” They mangled the lyrics.

Continue reading “Fun with iDictate Transcription” →

One of my favorite music-related websites is All Music Guide, the most comprehensive reference source for music online. (Think IMDB for music.)

So when I heard they were redesigning, I was excited to see if they’d fix my laundry list of complaints with the existing site: the inadequate search engine, their convoluted URL structure, inaccessible and confusing Javascript tricks (like showing/hiding biography text and blocking right-click URL copying), and the frequent server timeouts.

Their redesign launched moments ago. (The old site can still be viewed here. It’s offline now.) They not only failed to fix any of my complaints, but they made it worse. Much worse.

Most frustrating, the site only displays properly in Internet Explorer. (In Firefox, Safari, IE Mac, and Opera, you get a big banner warning that the site is IE Windows-only.) Worse, display bugs make many features of the site unreadable and unuseable in other browsers. All tables are broken, like the search results, track listings and discographies. Some pages, like the New Releases, reposition content off the screen. I can’t tell what’s a hyperlink, because the cursor doesn’t change in anything except Internet Explorer. (July 15, 2004: Almost all of these rendering bugs have been resolved now.)

The problems aren’t limited to display bugs. The URLs are worse than before, now so long that they can’t be sent by e-mail. Biographies, discographies and album reviews are no longer a single page, so you’re forced to click through to multiple pages to view the content you want. And the site’s slower than ever, and I’m periodically getting server timeouts and connection delay error messages. (Oh, and the spinning Flash navigation is a waste of space.)

What a disappointment. As an early beta tester, I sent them a long e-mail outlining my new complaints. Let’s hope they listen. Does anyone know anyone on staff at AMG? I’d love to ask their web guys a few questions.

July 13, 2004: One commenter recommends using MP3.com, which licenses a near-complete database of AMG’s content. The only problems are the missing band member and “worked with” information, individual musician/producer/contributor profiles, genre information, AMG’s Editor Picks, browsing by genre or mood, and a few other features. For most daily usage, it’s a good drop-in replacement for Allmusic.com.

July 13, 2004:: AMG responds! An AMG employee e-mailed me their response to the criticism.

For their newest Gameboy Advance game, Jaleco Entertainment quietly borrowed the source code for an open-source Nintendo emulator. While the emulation community was outraged, the emulator’s programmer felt a bit differently.

Like the recent Classic NES Series, Jaleco Entertainment’s Jajamaru Jr. for the Gameboy Advance is a nostalgic reissue for the Japanese market In addition to one new game, the cartridge includes five different emulated classic NES/Famicom titles from Jaleco’s library: Ninja Jajamaru, Jajamaru’s Great Adventure, Exerion, City Connection, and Formation Z.

Instead of writing their own emulator, Jaleco used PocketNES, the best NES emulator for the GBA. After analyzing the game’s binary, it was obvious the code was borrowed without credit or payment. Emulation fans were upset, with cries of copyright infringement.

Loopy, the programmer behind PocketNES, responded to the incident:

Yes, PocketNES is public domain… I wanted it to be public domain. This “Jaleco incident”, in fact, is the very reason I wanted to make it FREE (as in public domain) rather than “GPL free” (strings attached). I’m not a fan of the GPL, I think it’s selfish.

Let someone take an idea, do something cool with it, and not have to hesitate because of legal nitpickings. If a company can take something that I made, and turn it into a product that other people enjoy, I’m all the happier for it. Why should I care if someone else profits off of something I made? It’s already free.

Demanding that someone pay homage to my work is just ego-stroking, and I’m not into that. Sure, as a courtesy it would have been nice for Jaleco to tell me “hey, thanks for the source”, and they didn’t, but I’m not going to lose sleep over it, because I didn’t write PocketNES so people would pat me on the back.

I wrote it so people could have fun playing old games. And that’s exactly what’s happening here. Mission accomplished.

For me, his message embodies the spirit of the open-source movement.

It looks like Dreamworks is using Friendster to promote the release of Anchorman, with user profiles for each of the characters. In addition to Will Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy, there are photos and descriptions for Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), Brick Tamland (Steve Carell), and Champ Kind (David Koechner).

It looks like someone’s logging in every day to approve every new friend request and testimonial. (So far, Ron Burgundy has 273 friends from word-of-mouth alone.)

Is this sort of promotional tie-in a first for social networking applications? Does anyone know if Friendster approved (or was paid for) the creation of the fakester accounts, which they officially forbid? (Thanks to James for the original tip.)

Update: Some users are seeing giant Anchorman banner ads, proving that it’s an official Friendster tie-in.

March 29, 2012: Eight years later, Ron Burgundy joins Twitter to promote Anchorman 2.