If you’re a member of my tribe, you should definitely read A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Computer Languages.

A couple gems:

1964 – John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz create BASIC, an unstructured programming language for non-computer scientists.

1965 – Kemeny and Kurtz go to 1964.

and

1972 – Dennis Ritchie invents a powerful gun that shoots both forward and backward simultaneously. Not satisfied with the number of deaths and permanent maimings from that invention he invents C and Unix.

and of course

1980 – Alan Kay creates Smalltalk and invents the term “object oriented.” When asked what that means he replies, “Smalltalk programs are just objects.” When asked what objects are made of he replies, “objects.” When asked again he says “look, it’s all objects all the way down. Until you reach turtles.”

iSnort.

A previously NDA’d feature of Windows 7 has finally gone public; basically, Win7 comes with a virtualization-based “XP mode” that creates a virtual machine to host any apps that can’t run in a post-XP environment.

The real bonus here is that it allows Microsoft, like Apple before them, to make a break with backward compatibility. OS X was a quantum leap over System 9 precisely because they made no real effort to allow backward compatibility outside a “compatibility box” that was the next best thing to virtualization (since virtualization wasn’t really an option 9 years ago).

Microsoft has, so far, not made the same kind of break with the past, and that’s hamstrung the evolution of the platform. If they do this right, they’ll be able to make the same kind of leap with 7 or whatever comes after 7 that Apple made in 2000.

This is a good thing for everyone; I’m not a huge Windows fan, but I want Microsoft in the race in the same way I want the GOP in the race. Competition is good for everybody.

Penny Arcade takes on Rock Bank sub-branding.

Because, as this Slate piece makes abundantly clear, the movie people are just too bone stupid to realize they have to compete with it.

The days of controlling distribution with arcane contracts and weird periods of artificial scarcity are over. If consumers can’t legally watch what they want to watch when they want to watch it, it’s becoming easier and easier for them to do so in ways that result in zero revenue for the copyright holder. Do the math.

…it’s the 66th anniversary of the most interesting bicycle ride EVER.

Albert Hofmann joined the pharmaceutical-chemical department of Sandoz Laboratories (now Novartis), located in Basel as a co-worker with professor Arthur Stoll, founder and director of the pharmaceutical department. He began studying the medicinal plant squill and the fungus ergot as part of a program to purify and synthesize active constituents for use as pharmaceuticals. His main contribution was to elucidate the chemical structure of the common nucleus of Scilla glycosides (an active principal of Mediterranean Squill). While researching lysergic acid derivatives, Hofmann first synthesized LSD-25 in 1938. The main intention of the synthesis was to obtain a respiratory and circulatory stimulant (an analeptic). It was set aside for five years, until April 16, 1943, when Hofmann decided to take another look at it. While re-synthesizing LSD, he accidentally absorbed a small quantity through his fingertips and serendipitously discovered its powerful effects before his bicycle ride home.