You’ve met the Steam Lisp.  Now meet vitrium flexile, the Roman Lisp: “… there was an artificer once who made a glass goblet that would not break. So he was admitted to Caesar’s presence to offer him his invention; then, on receiving the cup back from Caesar’s hands, he dashed it down on the floor. […]

Among the advertised features of Apple’s latest OS update, three in particular caught my attention: “auto-save”, which claims to wipe out the abomination of volatile-by-default documents; “versioning”, which claims to introduce document version-control into the Mac’s normal operations; and “resume”, which promises to re-load a user’s work-state whenever an application is re-started. On the surface, […]

Looking for an inexpensive, robust Lisp system?  Consider this one: Tried it?  Not satisfied? Well, don’t blame me: it meets all of the basic qualifications for “Lispiness”: Does not hide the abstract syntax tree from programmers. Does not force a non-modifiable syntax on programmers. Does not impose an arbitrary order of sub-expression evaluation on programmers. […]

Vladimir Sedach explains the purpose of the Lisp macro and comments on some of the reasons for its absence from “modern” programming systems: “I used to like arguing over the Internet about this subject. There are many good technical and management/organizational arguments you can make for and against macros. What I’ve come to realize is […]

How many of your waking hours have you wasted in babysitting machine processes which ought to be entirely hidden and automatic?  In the use of “job-creating” technologies? Next time you find yourself doing so, consider this: “Improvements come in many ways, sometimes after much thought and after many experimental failures. Sometimes they flash upon clever […]

I believe that Apple manufactures and sells junk and crapware. If you, my dear reader, have even a rudimentary awareness of what is possible with regards to personal computing – or even of what was possible two decades ago – the above should seem obvious to you. Hopefully the idiots who accused me of kissing […]

Technological standards may be usefully divided into five basic types: 4 – Standards arrived at by consensus. Examples: Common Lisp. 3 – Standards imposed by dictatorial fiat. Examples: Russian railroad gauge. 2 – Standards imposed through sudden, overwhelming, and indisputable technological supremacy over the previous state of the art. Examples: Arabic numerals.  Sildenafil. 1 – […]

Is there a ballpoint pen in your pocket?  How fast is it? What do you mean, you don’t know? You didn’t ask the salesman? There is indeed a maximum speed at which the little ball in the pen can roll and still leave a satisfactory trace of ink upon the page.  Would you pay extra […]

Forget for a moment about the security of your computer.  Instead ask yourself: how secure is your body? Don’t ask a computer security “professional.”  Instead, ask an anatomist.  Or better yet, a trauma surgeon.  Or a prison medic.  A weapon no deadlier than a pencil, driven through soft flesh into your abdominal cavity, brings a […]

My apologies to all readers who were inconvenienced by the multi-page layout. All of the Laws, slightly re-worded [1], are here once more.  To view the original pages, click on the numerals. A sanely designed personal computer system: I – Obeys operator The operator shall retain full control of the machine at all times.  In […]