Avoid The Ring

From the reviews I had read, I expected The Ring to be good. People were saying it was the best in its genre since The Sixth Sense. One IMDB user writes, “Never have I seen a film that has affected me so.” I found it boring, though thankfully it didn’t drag on as long as the similarly engaging Fellowship of the Ring. David Dorfman’s precocious “Aiden” was entertaining, but the parents didn’t live up to their billing. Brian Cox has been in far better films, like Rushmore and Manhunter.

Allen Read, the Expert of ‘O.K.,’ Dies at 96

From the New York Times:

Mr. Read saw words as playthings and told The New Yorker that “jubilance is an explanation for a lot of the things that happen in language.” He loved and studied slang, euphemisms, pig Latin, double talk, adult baby talk and graffiti. Exuberant, obviously impromptu words like blustrification and discombobulate delighted him.

Rest in Peace

IDG May Pressure Apple

IDG chief Charlie Greco, quoted by the Boston Globe:

You know how badly they [Apple] want to do San Francisco…We don’t have to let them. We might not let you cherry-pick which Macworld events you do…that’s currently under discussion here.

Mach-O vs. CFM

Slava Karpenko writes about the problems of Mac OS X using the Mach-O ABI, estimating that it causes a 10% performance hit because Mach-O was designed for a CISC architecture. I haven’t studied this enough to know whether he’s right, but I’ve not heard any arguments that Mach-O is technically better.