Sometime even AC’s post something worthwhile: The best scenario is that copyright once again becomes applied as was intended, to protect producers from other producers, not from consumers. Pirates will be people who copy for resale, not for use in the car.

(Mozilla users get quotations thanks to support for the <q> tag. Groovy, huh?)

The story is “Answer,” from Angels and Spaceships, by Fredric Brown (Dutton, 1954). Here is the original text:

Dwar Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore through the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.

He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe–ninety-six billion planets–into the supercircuit that would connect them all into the one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.

Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then, after a moment’s silence, he said, “Now, Dwar Ev.”

Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.

Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. “The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn.”

“Thank you,” said Dwar Reyn. “It shall be a question that no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer.”

He turned to face the machine. “Is there a God?”

The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of single relay.

“Yes, now there is a God.”

Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.

A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.

The Mozilla Source Generator lets you view the final output of JavaScript generated output is one of the most useful sidebars for development ever. Where has this sidebar been all my life? While to a degree the DOM Inspector can work for this purpose, the Source Generator is much more convenient for purposes of reviewing output.

Mozilla 1.0 released today (here), and a week before Netscape 4’s fifth birthday. There’s also a Mozilla 1.0 Start Guide up now, and a FAQ. Neat.

Noticed that Phil put a picture of The Get Up Kids concert at the Sunset House of Blues. We were upstairs at the tables, which had a great view, and apparently also the loudest spot in the house (My musician’s earplugs really earned their keep tonight. Despite paying $150 for them two years ago, these fitted plugs have been more than worth it. If my ears could talk, I’m sure they would thank me.)

PSA: if you regularly go to clubs, concerts, etc., definitely invest in hearing protection. The el-cheapo foam plugs sort of suck, but you can get much better ones for only a few bucks more that won’t sound half (or even three-quarters) as shitty.

The concert itself was pretty good. A lot of the songs from the new album came out much better live than on the album (either that, or they’re growing on me). It’s pretty jarring how different the songs are from their older material. Almost a night and day difference. Also, it was fun looking down and seeing a thousand 15 year olds bobbing up and down and trying to mosh and crowd surf.

Continuing in my recent ‘listening to live music’ kick, I’m probably going to be going to be hitting up the Cursive (6/14) and Sugarcult (6/22) shows at the Troubador.

I stopped by Ashley Wood‘s site; it’s been totally redesigned (ximeraLabs) since I was last there. He’s started putting up what looks like to be a piece of work/sketch everyday in his gallery. Very cool.

“The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.”

-Thomas B. Macaulay

Yesterday, I decided to figure out how to rearrange my apartment by modeling it in 3dsmax (before, after). I’m still not happy with the layout, but the options are sort of limited. Too much furniture in a space without enough walls. On the bright side, I finally got a parking space, so I’ll be buying a new car soon. I went out today and got some stick shifting practice on a friend’s WRX (the car I’d like to get). The lowest insurance quote I got was over $4K/yr for coverage. That’s nuts.

“America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.” – Claire Wolfe, 101 Things To Do Until the Revolution

Dan Egnor (sweetcode, gale) not only won the 2002 Google Programming Contest, but also had previously won the First International RoShamBo Programming Competition as well.

Related: NetGeo, ip-atlas, Google Labs, spamming Google, FIPS, TIGER, /. article