The very first public wiki: it goes by the aliases "Wiki Wiki Web", "C2 wiki", and "Portland Pattern Repository".

It's a combination wiki, blog, and discussions on the philosophies of software design. It's messy, but often messy in a good way.

There is a tension between what may be called "practitioners" and "academics" that I find fascinating (and have helped fuel, I must say). The practitioner stance is that human (coder) nature/perception and economics (bottom line) are the key factors, while the academics tend to argue that symbolic parsimony and mathematical provability/analyzability are the keys.

You will generally NOT find definitive/consensus answers, but you will find interesting questions and a wide variety of opinions on various software design and IT topics. It's fuel for thought in the sense of "Why is technique X better than technique Y?", or "can you objectively prove that technique X is better than Y, and if not, what's holding you back?"

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?Welcome...

However, lately it's only in read-only mode, and being redone into a "distributive" wiki, in part driven by vandals and spammers. The future direction is unknown.

It's like a junkyard for idea-tinkerers.

In other news, Microsoft is hiring 7800 H1B workers to head up their new mobile division.

That may actually be the funniest thing I've read in several months! Bravo, sir, bravo.

Are you claiming there are no doctors who get paid per visit or per service offered? Because unless that is the case, your remarks reflect your utter ignorance for the matter.

Even for you and your colleague who never calls in sick, I doubt there are no financial interests at play. Do you have a limited number of sick days? Do you have to take vacation days after those sick days are exhausted? Are you compensated at the year's end for unused sick days? Are your sick days and vacation days all combined into a single PTO group? Does your hospital not keep enough staff on hand to cover for sick doctors? If you said "Yes" to any of these questions then there are financial interests at play.

These issues are either caused by financial interests, ignorant doctors, or doctors who don't care about their patients' health. I am betting on the first, and would be very sad if you think it is one of the two latter explanations.

I'd like to hear how the BRIC currency is going to wipe out the USD and take over the world.

You don't hear that particular canard anymore.

Because they paid Lucas the equivalent of the GDP of some small countries. They're going to milk this baby for every penny, and they know those of us of that special generation from about 43 to 55 will pay to see whatever crap they stick a Star Wars logo on. Yes, I admit it, I'm that pathetic.

But Lucas put multiple theme worlds in each film. Episde IV had two, Episode V had 3, Episode VI had two. I'm trying to remember the prequels, I think Episode I had three, Episode II had three, and I can't even remember how how many Episode III had.

A good, a Star Trek-Star Wars mashup. I like the scene where Riker and Han get in a fight over a scantily clad Troi, as Jabba's band plays Born To Be Wild. Admiral Kirk finally wins the day by forcing Jabba's protocol droid into a logic loop that causes its head to explode, bringing down Jabba's palace.

Great, so we end up with Darth Binks.

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Oh god. The whole romance angle in the second prequel was a masterstroke of hackneyed, butchered, gawdawful and outright flat dialog. The first time around I was just too overawed by the awfulness to know what was hitting me, but the second watching was where the full extent of Lucas's incapability of writing decent dialogue.

Even better was Padme's death scene in the final prequel:

MEDICAL DROID: Medically, she is completely healthy. For reasons we can't explain, we are losing her.

OBI-WAN: She's dying?

MEDICAL DROID: We don't know why. She has lost the will to live. We need to operate quickly if we are to save the babies.

Every time I watch them, I come up with another reason to loathe them. Mind you, it's been about five years since the last viewing of any Star Wars film, so I'll probably have forgotten half the reasons the prequels stunk so very very badly.

I remember clearly watching The Phantom Menace and realizing the extent of the suckage when C3PO turns out to be Darth Vader's droid. I was still reeling from the midichlorians nonsense, and then that. Of course, by the time pod-racer video game advertisement had taken up most of the second act, I realized that George Lucas wasn't just a greedy bastard, but well and truly had no fucking idea how to make an at least enjoyable film anymore. Two more prequels and the last Indiana Jones movie convinced me that Lucas was done even as an action-adventure director (the latter demonstrated that he had lost even the basic concept of pacing).

Make more theme worlds, because apparently the universe is populated by jungle worlds, metal worlds, forest worlds, magma worlds, ice worlds and desert worlds.

Unfortunately, he will be constrained by the Prequels.

I don't really get it. In the same cantina scene, our fearless retconner George "I Don't A Flying Fuck What Fans Think" Lucas got Greedo to shoot first, but he didn't bother altering a small awkward bit of dialogue. But then again Lucas never met a piece of dialog so horrible that it didn't end up in the final cut.

Meesa thinking Han movie going to be mooie mooie good! Gonna have meesah and Han fighting all the bad guys!