Wilkins's Real Character depended on his exhaustive taxonomy of all knowledge and topics of conversation. This must be done perfectly, and a perfect taxonomy is impossible to produce from our mortal vantage point. Borges points out that

The whale belongs to the sixteenth category; it is a viviparous oblong fish.

That may have been a reasonable classification in Wilkins's time, but in our time it looks wrong. But it could look much worse.

Borges's wrote in Spanish. There are translations on the net that render that statement differently.

Beauty belongs to the sixteenth category; it is a living brood fish, an oblong one.

Beauty is a fish? What does this mean? Is it a metaphor? No, it is a typo. In Spanish, beauty is belleza, and whale is ballena.

BITS
 4321
 0000
 0001
 0011
 0010
 0110
 0111
 0101
 0100
 1100
 1101
 1111
 1110
 1010
 1011
 1001
 1000

Gray code is useful in shaft encoders, where you want to sense the state of rotation. An optical encoder could have each state represented by a pie wedge, where the 0 bits are white and the 1 bits are black.

The Towers of Hanoi is a puzzle in which there are three posts and several discs of various sizes. This is a JavaScript program that solves the problem of moving the discs from one post to another:

hanoi = function (n, src, aux, dst) {
    if (n > 0) {
        hanoi(n - 1, src, dst, aux);
        document.writeln('Move disc ' + n + ' from ' +
                src + ' to ' + dst);
        hanoi(n - 1, aux, src, dst);
    }
};

The solution to a tower of 4 discs is obtained by hanoi(4, 'Src', 'Aux', 'Dst'):

Move disc 1 from Src to Aux
Move disc 2 from Src to Dst
Move disc 1 from Aux to Dst
Move disc 3 from Src to Aux
Move disc 1 from Dst to Src
Move disc 2 from Dst to Aux
Move disc 1 from Src to Aux
Move disc 4 from Src to Dst
Move disc 1 from Aux to Dst
Move disc 2 from Aux to Src
Move disc 1 from Dst to Src
Move disc 3 from Aux to Dst
Move disc 1 from Src to Aux
Move disc 2 from Src to Dst
Move disc 1 from Aux to Dst

The number of the disc to move corresponds exactly with the next bit to toggle in the Gray code.

The other was William Goldman's The Princess Bride. Goldman remembers his grandfather reading him a wonderful book by S. Morgenstern. When he's grown he searches for the book and is very excited when he finally finds a copy, but discovers to his horror and confusion that it really isn't very good. Why did he remember it as being so wonderful? Because his grandfather only read him the good parts.

The expectation was that when the format war ends, that sales of Blu-ray players would immediately exceed the sales of HDTV sets. That didn't happen. Sales of Blu-ray players have stayed pretty flat.

Blu-ray can deliver much higher quality than DVD, but the difference is not significant in most homes, so Blu-Ray is going to have a much harder time getting mass acceptance. Sony may be forced into price reductions. They don't have much time because the window is closing. To survive, Blu-ray must become dominant before is made obsolete by network delivery.

My recommendation is still to stick with DVD at least until Sony announces that they are going to remove the DRM components from Blu-ray. DRM makes the gear and discs more expensive and harder to use, so clearly it is something you don't want.

The ads pitch women's deodorant, but behind the scenes, they contact servers that have been used by previous rogue ads targeting high-traffic websites. Typically, the ads produce a pop up that looks strikingly similar to official Windows dialog pop-ups that urge the end user to download software to fix problems. Expedia, Rhapsody, MySpace, Excite, Blick, and CNN.com have all served up similar malicious ads in the past.

Attackers who shoe horn their banners onto reputable sites usually take advantage of the highly decentralized way that online advertisements are sold. It's not unusual for there to be a succession of affiliates, making it possible for an attacker to pose as an authorized agent of a name-brand product or service. In this case, Yahoo has gotten hoodwinked into running ads that point to adtds2.promoplexer.com, which has been implicated in previous rogue banner attacks.

I don't know if this has actually been happening at Yahoo, but it is feasible. The architecture of the browser does nothing to protect users and websites from malicious ads. As a result, all websites that depend on advertising are at risk. All users of ad-supported sites are at risk. And things aren't all that hot for the honest advertiser, either.

We could blame the browser makers for making products that put everyone at risk. Or we could blame the W3C for producing standards that fail to track the way the web is actually used. Or we could blame the web publishing companies for choosing to implement their services on a technology that is clearly inadequate. Or we could blame the advertising industry for insisting on a body of practices that are unsafe. But I think assigning blame at this late date is a waste of time. We need instead to be fixing this thing. The easiest attack on web systems now is to buy ads. Ads can be cheap. They can be targeted. They can be highly effective.

The fundamental problem is that the browser's security model failed to anticipate that there are multiple interests involved in a web application. We have here the interests of the user, of the site, and of the advertiser. If we have a mashup, there can be many more interests. The browser does not defend these interests from each other. The best it can offer is the iframe under the Same Origin Policy, which does not prevent the abuse that The Register is reporting.

In the short term, the Advertising Industry must adopt safer practices. It must be requiring the use of Safe JavaScript Subsets in all ads because that is the only thing that can work today. I recommend ADsafe because I designed it. Google's Caja is also very good. Neither is effective unless it is used.

And in the meantime, you should be using Firefox's NoScript extention.

Ultimately, we must fix or replace the browser. It has been pushed way past its competence.

Limbaugh was also quite harsh to McCain, accusing McCain of disloyalty for demanding that the Republican Party in North Carolina not run ads that McCain considers morally objectionable. Limbaugh insisted that the state party ignore their candidate and run the ads anyway. The implication is that McCain cannot even command his own party. Therefore, McCain is not qualified to command the nation.

Limbaugh is unhappy because this year the primary process has not produced a single candidate that meets even his most minimal standards. I share Limbagh's frustration, but not his traitorous, treasonous tactics. I have been voting since 1972, and I have never once been offered a presidential candidate that I liked in the General Election. I have always had to choose between the lesser evil and the doomed third alternative.

This year, that may change. I might finally get a chance to vote for a candidate that I actually want to serve as president.

So my advice to Limbaugh (and I would give exactly the same advice, strangely, to Clinton) is to not attempt to subvert the Republic just because things didn't work out for you this year. You had a run of eight years with your guy in office, and we all saw what a disappointment that was. So accept reality, step back, reread Common Sense, regroup, and come back in 2012. In the meantime, I'm voting for Obama.

It was a story that must be told.

JavaScript is the world's most misunderstood programming language. The language has so much expressive power that it is possible to be somewhat productive with it without knowing what you're doing. But that is not an effective way to work. Programming is serious business that should never be undertaken in ignorance.

Why is your book especially important now?

JavaScript, because it is the language of the web browser, has become important. Most of the world's applications now use JavaScript. It is the language of Ajax.

What is the single most important thing readers of your book will be able to do after reading your book?

They will be able to transform JavaScript into a much better language simply by avoiding the bad parts.

Do you have top 5-10 list of tips, tricks, and/or best practices?

No. I don't believe that quality is obtained from tricks. Good programs come from thoughtful, knowledgeable use of tools.

Who is your intended audience?

This book is for programmers who are coming to JavaScript for the first time from other languages, or for JavaScript programmers who want to be working a higher level. It is not a book for beginners.

Is there anything that you feel is especially important that the readers would want to know about you or the book?

The book is short, but dense. I, on the other hand, am tall.

How important is the subject matter of your book?

The subject matter of this book couldn't be less important, unless you happen to be developing web applications, in which case it is critically important.

Is there anything in the news right now that affects or is reflected in your book, or is related to the subject of your book?

Web 2.0 baby, whatever that is, wouldn't be happening without JavaScript

Are there any anecdotes about writing the book, or how you became involved in the subject?

I was going to write this book in 2001, but I didn't because in that post-bubble period, there didn't appear to be demand for it. That changed with the Ajax Resurgence in 2005.

Do you write regularly for any publications in this field?

Just the blogs.

In researching the book, did you come across any surprising facts, figures, or statistics that the press might be interested in?

Surprisingly, facts have very little to do with web development.

So the cartel is exploring a taxation model. They want a piece of all music sales and/or a piece of all music player sales, which would probably include all computers and cellphones, to compensate them for their failures to adapt to the changing technological landscape. The cartel is not entitled to your money and should not get it.

Your Congressional Representative is up for reelection this year, and maybe one of your Senators. So ask them where they stand on the Music Tax. Make it an issue. Remind them who they work for.

It is a good book, but Norman got something really wrong: The title. Even though he is a psychologist, this wasn't a psychology book. It was a design book. He made the same POV mistake in naming the book that the book itself warns against. This was corrected when the book was reissued as The Design of Everyday Things. It is still a good book.