penso che berlusconi vinca le elezioni per via dell'ignoranza degli italiani.

con i vecchietti ci parlo tutti i giorni, ed il modo in cui ragionano ce l'ho ben chiaro.
i vecchietti danno la colpa all'euro, come se dentro la moneta ci sia qualche magico mistero di raddoppiamento dei prezzi. i nostalgici del fascismo poi sono tanti, come tanti sono quelli che vivono di espedienti, si arrangiano nel rubare una striscia di terra al confinante, a fare gli allacci abusivi, a strappare un'autoradio, a non pagare qualche tassa.
tutta la fascia d'eta sopra i sessant'anni vota berlusconi perchè durante il fascismo secondo loro si stava bene, e di conseguenza è cresciuta con questa mentalità anche buona parte dei loro figli. sto affermando che è un fatto di ignoranza storica, culturale e di maleducazione, che viene proprio dai genitori.
tutta questa fascia crede in qualche modo, nel subconscio, che berlusconi coincida con il ritorno dei fasti fascisti, ma non è ovviamente così. credono che berlusconi sia il nuovo mussolini ma berlusconi è il male, l'inculatura somma.
perchè berlusconi è populista: urla cose tipo meno tasse e più stipendi e tutti abboccano. dipende a chi e dipende come.

l'altra porzione invece, quella giovane ed adulta, si lascia confondere da tutti i diversivi che offre berlusconi con i suoi media: la spagna ci surclassa, allora per nascondere le giuste azioni politiche di zapatero lo si infanga con la storia del matrimonio tra gay, che scandalizza - ovviamente - l'opinione bacchettona e filo-ecclesiastica degli ignoranti italiani. io che ci sto dentro alla chiesa non mi scandalizzo (ma la religione è trasversale, in queste cose non c'entra e non deve proprio entrarci), la gente che non gliene frega nulla si. curioso. perchè berlusconi è furbo: quando deve fare un qualche impiccio, lo copre con uno più grosso per buttare il discorso in caciara. e funziona!

ne parlano canale5, rete4 ed italia1, il tema che copre il tema vero scotta (vedasi anche: lodo alfano - legge blocca processi), e di conseguenza ne deve parlare anche rai1 e rai2, certamente meno ma anche rai3, per fare audience perchè un telegiornale non può sembrare fuori dal mondo, la linea editoriale deve seguire i trend. per non dimenticare che il consiglio di amministrazione delle reti statali è creato a tavolino per esser filoberlusconiano. cosa arriva alle masse: che zapatero è uno zozzone, quando invece si parla solo di assicurare uguali possibilità legali alle coppie di fatto.

perchè berlusconi è nazista: invece di costruire ponti, innalza barricate. la via più breve per confinare i problemi e non farli vedere alla gente. al rogo tutti gli extracomunitari, i campi nomadi, la gente che non mi piace. via tutti. senza considerare che il mondo è uno solo, che non puoi nascondere la polvere sotto il tappeto, spostando il malessere in un altro paese o riportandolo indietro. come l'immondizia, che va smaltita correttamente, gli immigranti vanno integrati: è l'unica strada. se non smaltisco bene inquino, se non integro c'è la delinquenza.

mettiamoci anche che i politici italiani si ostinano a fare gli eruditi (vedi d'alema, fassino, bertinotti specialmente con i suoi discorsi fuori dal tempo, veltroni che ci prova ad esser vicino alla gente, a cui abbiamo creduto tutti e che non è stato premiato) e la gente non li capisce, apprezzando invece di pietro che parla pane e vino (per immaginare la gente, pensate ai romanzi di verga).

la globalizzazione è la stessa cosa. se chiedi cosa è in giro, anche ai ragazzi, ti rispondono che è mac donald's che apre in india. e non che ci sono multinazionali che sfruttano i lavoratori dei paesi poveri, sottopagandoli, per guadagnare di più sul prodotto finito, che viene presentato allo stesso prezzo, nonostante possa esser prodotto a meno. e non che si sfruttano risorse e si inquina senza misura in paesi dove la regolamentazione è meno forte. e non che se indiani e cinesi si spostano dalle campagne alle città, non si sa chi più coltiverà le campagne per dargli da mangiare. e non che questo sistema è direttamente connesso ai temi dei diritti umani (pena di morte), riscaldamento globale e fame nel mondo (perchè la globalizzazione qualche aspetto positivo potrebbe anche averlo, ma è l'ultimo degli interessi delle multinazionali). la globalizzazione del resto è inevitabile, va solo regolamentata il prima possibile, ma non si sta facendo nulla, e tutti i ragazzi in piazza urlavano a gran voce che era il caso di far qualcosa.
il messaggio che è passato invece è che le generazioni di oggi non hanno nulla da fare il giorno, e vanno a farsi ammazzare in una rissa tipo quelle dello stadio. del motivo per cui i ragazzi erano lì a manifestare, se chiedi in giro nessuno ne sa nulla.
il risultato fu, sempre su ordine di berlusconi, una dura repressione per far capire alle generazioni moderne cosa devono aspettarsi se si mettono contro di lui giù in strada.

arriverà - diamine! - il momento in cui la gente smetterà di dormire (credere a televisione e giornali, o cominciare ad informarsi sulle vere motivazioni di quel che accade) e scenderà in piazza con i forconi. in italia la folla non nasce perchè tutti hanno paura del ripetersi di certe scene (straviste in tv ed ampiamente strumentalizzate come monito per le generazioni future, come dicevo prima). no invece!
il primo passo deve essere un accordo di unità (o al massimo di non belligeranza) con le forze dell'ordine, perchè anche loro - che dovrebbero essere i più vicini al potere dello stato - stanno soffrendo. e non vedo l'ora.
quando lo stato non avrà più il supporto delle forze dell'ordine, la popolazione avrà l'obbligo morale di modificare tutto il sistema. e poi, se avremo un nuovo piazzale loreto, sarà solo una vecchia storia che si ripete.

10. Thou shalt not give tests in game development courses, nor be dogmatic in thy doctrine, for even thou knowest not all.

As far as I’m concerned, game development students should be developing games, not regurgitating facts or opinions from textbooks. They should be using their creative and analytical skills, not their memorization skills. I would be delighted if you adopted my book for your classes, but for God’s sake, don’t use the multiple-choice questions.

This raises a fundamental question about the nature of the work itself. Unfortunately, websites persist in categorizing news about video games under Technology rather than Entertainment. To them, “entertainment” means film, TV, and theater. But calling us “technology” makes about as much sense as calling filmmaking “photography.” We use technology in the same way that filmmaking uses photography, but there’s much more to it than that. Programming is a form of engineering, and in some forms of engineering tests are appropriate. But programming isn’t one of them. A programming course shouldn’t end with a test, it should end with a final project.

And if that’s true for programming, it’s at least as true for art, animation, music composition, and game design. Knowing the names of terms in game design is the least important thing about game design. We don’t have a common vocabulary yet, so insisting that yours in the one right one, and testing the students on it, is just arrogant. Don’t give tests at all. The one exception I can think of might be in some kind of history of interactivity course – but even then, an essay would be more appropriate than a test.

9. Thou shalt reward precision and punish hand-waving, for the Lord loveth it not.

In my game design workshops, I ask people to think of the actions that an avatar character will perform. What I’masking for are lower-level details: what specific action is assigned to each button on the controller? The “verbs” of the game. But again and again, I get responses like, “defeat the enemy,” “solve the puzzle,” “escape from the dungeon,” and so on – high level responses, and when I ask for the details, I get hand-waving.

It is imperative that your students understand that hand-waving will not do in a commercial environment. To get a product finished and out the door, they must be specific. In the industry, I’ve worked on several projects where the lead designer or the producer’s overall vision was so vague that it was impossible for the rest of the team to know exactly what they were supposed to be working on. This usually stems from a desire to make a game that can “do it all,” and a reluctance to commit to any one particular approach, genre, or style of game. Making that commitment means limiting the game, and the problem is, these guys are mesmerized by the boundless potential of the medium. If they were sculptors, they would sit all day, staring at the uncarved block of stone, spellbound by the infinity of beautiful sculptures that it potentially contains. But they’d never carve a thing.

I understand that fascination; I’ve felt it myself. But the fact is, making a sculpture requires commitment to a final result, to an actuality rather than a potentiality. And creating a game requires commitment to limits on the game, because almost every game is a simplification of something else. If you were the greatest real estate agent in the world, who knew everything there was to know about property, you might find it hard to pare down the details of the business to the simple essentials of Monopoly. But you have to do it.

Now, in the context of a university course, where time is limited, it is also possible for students to go too far in the opposite direction, and amass a huge pile of circumstantial detail – for example, the student who works out the exact performance characteristics of 27 different unit types when there’s really only time to implement 5 of them. Or who does far too much research. When they do this, it almost always happens at the expense of something else. He’s got the 27 unit types down, but he never got around to designing the user interface. So it’s possible to go too far in the other direction, and amass too much detail. But I think that’s not as big of a risk as hand-waving and lack of precision is.

Hand-waving is one of the classic faults of producers and other managers who don’t actually do the work. It requires someone else to figure out their vague plan and implement it – then that person takes the blame if it doesn’t work. It’s unfair to the developers and extremely detrimental to the project.

As instructors, I encourage you to reward precision and punish hand-waving.

8. Except ye teach a master’s level course in experimental interaction design, thou shalt not emphasize aesthetics or story at the expense of interaction, i.e. gameplay.

If your BA degree is aimed at teaching people to make commercial video games, then gameplay comes first, period.

In every genre of commercial game, players buy the game primarily to do things, not to look at the pictures or watch the story. Emphasizing aesthetics or story over gameplay is a distinct risk at institutions whose primary concentration is Art-with-a-capital A rather than technology or games specifically. The fuzzier your program is – in the sense of “fuzzy studies” – the more likely this is to happen. This doesn’t mean that you should tolerate disharmonious, incoherent artwork, or stupid stories. But they need to start with gameplay.

Now I admit there is useful research to be done on low-interaction media (for example, novelist Kate Pullinger’s work Inanimate Alice); on play spaces that do not offer gameplay (Second Life); on interactive artworks; on interactive narrative. But if that is where you start your students off, they’re going to miss the point, and you will be doing them a disservice. Those are master’s level topics.

Students often come in with an expectation that video game design is about telling linear stories. They describe their game progression as “first the avatar does this, then he does that” and give you a series of narrative plot points. They tend to wave their hands about the actual interactivity, the puzzles, the challenges, the actions. Students’ natural tendency to tell stories – which is easy and fun – has to be shunted into designing interactive experiences instead, which is not as easy and not as fun.

Teach them interaction design, gameplay design, first, and only then let them worry about storytelling.

7. Thou shalt teach not only game development, but also the history of games, the analysis of games, and the sociology of gaming.

Be sure your students understand the roots of the medium. First-year student projects nowadays often build 1980s arcade games that are actually as good as anything we built back then. Fortunately the students don’t have to do it in assembly language and 4K of ROM, but the principles of design are still the same. So they might as well know about those old games and learn from them. Of course they’ll all want to make massive role-playing and real-time strategy games, but that’s not realistic in the context of a 10 or 15-week course full of newbies, and the sooner they learn it, the better.

The medium is now sufficiently old that some students are younger than the games they are studying.

Analysis of games is an excellent way to observe the principles of game design in practice. It’s one thing to try to design them according to those principles, but being able to see why a hit was a hit is essential groundwork for the field. And, for that matter, why a failure was a failure. You don’t become a composer of orchestral music without first dissecting the works of Bach and Mozart and Beethoven to see how they work – or Salieri to see why he was no Mozart.

As for the sociology of gaming, that’s a question of understanding the relationship of the medium to its consumers. We don’t build games in a vacuum, nor do we built them to please wealthy patrons. We build them to sell to people, and so the question is, who are those people and how and why do they play?

You realize, of course, that I’m dangerously close to endorsing teaching them marketing, but if I call it sociology of gaming I can stomach it better.

6. With industry shalt thou build relationships; yet also shalt thou remember that “industry” explodeth in all directions, and meaneth more than PC and console games for the West.

Relationships with industry are key to getting your students placed in jobs after they graduate, and as you know, this is one standard by which your program will be measured. Developing these relationships pays dividends in various ways:

- First, it increases your program’s credibility both with the students, with their parents, and with industry itself.

- Second, if a company has an internship program, your students get work experience before they enter the job market.

- Third, you get a potential source of guest speakers to come and give talks. I know this sounds self-important of me to say it, but again and again, faculty have told me, “They don’t always believe me, but they’ll believe it when you say it.”

Even if the visiting speakers don’t know any more than you do, they bring a level of street cred that instructors find it hard to match. Bringing them in for the students will not only drive home your points (assuming that they agree with you), it will also make your students grateful to you.

Bite the bullet and pay them to come and teach. Yes, you shouldn’t have to – industry benefits from the academy and doesn’t give much back. But the truth is that many professional developers aren’t going to see any upside to going off to teach for a day – they’re extremely busy. But a lot of them would be happy to have another $500 now and then.

You have to pursue these relationships. Industry doesn’t have the time to come to you. You have to go to them.
Industry rarely contacts higher education institutions looking for potential employees – they know all they have to do is put an ad on their website to be flooded with applicants. So instead of expecting industry to pull, you need to push.

But don’t construe the industry narrowly as PC and console games for the West, and don’t let your students do that either. Always remind them that “games” now includes PC, console, MMOGs, handheld, mobile phone, location-based entertainment, serious games, arcade games, alternate reality games, persuasive gaming, web-based casual games, indie gaming, gambling machines, and on and on and on. Furthermore, there are markets set to explode in India and China, and the Middle East won’t be far behind. These people will need games tuned to their own cultures.

One last related point: I used to hear my teachers say that his and other universities shouldn’t be admitting too many graduate students, because the jobs aren’t there for them. I disagree.

Some people might just want a Ph.D. in anthropology for its own sake, and I don’t believe it’s fair to deny them the opportunity to get one on the basis of how you perceive the job market for them. This goes double for the game industry, which is very entrepreneurial. Nobody knows how many jobs there are in the game industry, because nobody knows how many indie developers there are. Furthermore, nobody has any idea how many jobs there will be in three or four years, when the students graduate.

In short, by all means reject those students who don’t have the talent or the ability to do the work, and don’t try to teach more than you can handle – naturally you don’t want either the quality of your program or the quality of its graduates to suffer. But don’t worry about the job market. That’s not your problem.

There’s a real possibility that there are now so many game programs that we are training more game developers than the conventional PC and console industry can absorb. But as I said, the industry isn’t just PC and console any more.

Admit as many students as you can reasonably handle with the resources that you have, but don’t limit their numbers artificially.

5. Thou shalt require teamwork. Thou shalt teach project management, and gently discourage over-ambitious projects.

From talking to industry people, teamwork experience seems to be the number one thing they want an academic game program to teach. And the number one reason why game projects fail is lack of management skills and failures of internal communication. It is imperative that you make students work together in teams and learn how to do it efficiently.

Let me talk about team sizes for a moment. Team sizes on first-year projects at the University of Skövde tend to be in the range of 8-10. Two or three programmers, two or three artists or animators, two or three designers, a writer, and a team leader. If someone has music composition skills, that person may often be shared among several teams – which in fact mimics the situation at real companies. Team sizes at the University of Ulster are similar. Be sure the teams are big enough to include some redundancy. You can’t allow teams to have just one programmer or just one artist; if one drops out, it tanks the whole project.

Teach your project managers or team leaders:

* To know the state of their project at all times.
* To know what each person on the team is doing at all times, and what they will do next.
* To be able to stand up in front of a group and explain it.
* You might even teach them to use Microsoft Project, although that’s usually overkill if you have teams of three or four.

These are skills that few people emphasize, except perhaps the military, where an officer is expected to be able to deliver a concise and accurate situation report at a moment’s notice. But they’re valuable.

Above all, emphasize the importance of finishing – the need to complete and ship. The most fantastic, amazing, wonderful, game is worthless if it can’t be shipped.

4. Thou shalt permit failure in thy students’ first-year projects, and encourage them to learn from it.

The fact is, on a first-year student game development project, especially a group project, the students have been thrown in at the deep end of the pool. They’re really not prepared for what it demands of them, and many projects will fail to complete their work. That’s all right. We learn far more from failure than from success. But you should also punish those who do not learn from their failure, and continue to fail.

Require each student to write a reflective report on the project, and to keep a project diary. They must attend the build meetings, and of course they must have actually contributed to the work. But the quality of the resulting game is not relevant. As you probably already know, you will get some students coming in who think a game degree is going to be all fun and games, what we used to call a Mickey Mouse course. One good way to weed them out is by not allowing any game development at all in the fall semester of freshman year. Stick to your history, analysis, and basic skills courses then; they’ll get annoyed they’re not diving straight into games, and leave.

3. In their final projects, thou shalt encourage thinking outside the box.

College is students’ best and perhaps only opportunity to do really strange things. Nobody in the industry is going to pay them to be weird. We’re too busy trying to meet the product plan to tolerate any weirdness, so let them be weird while they still can. This is an art form, not civil engineering. There are good and bad design principles, but almost any design rule can be broken under certain circumstances.

Juvenile satires aren’t true weirdness, however. You will undoubtedly have to put up with some of that. There’s a game development contest for students called Dare to be Digital, with teams coming from all over the world. A team from the University of Ulster wanted to make a game called Bathroom Buccaneers, about tiny pirate ships in a toilet bowl – along with the kinds of things one might encounter in a toilet bowl. I told them, “Look, do you actually want anyone to fund and build this game, or not? Because you’re not going to get very far with that idea. You might think it’s amusing, but nobody will ever turn it into a real product.” I told them to move it to the bathtub, which offers more opportunities for gameplay anyway. They did, and they ended up representing Ireland in the finals. If you want to be taken seriously, you also have to take yourself seriously – at least to some degree.

Their final project is also the most important part of their portfolio. You need to offer them some freedom here, and to encourage them to express themselves to the best of their ability. They will naturally want to do things that will be most impressive to the conventional game industry, and sometimes that will mean being conservative – it won’t do to force them to be radical if they don’t want to be. But emphasize that they need to stand out from the rest of the crowd. A hiring manager is going to be looking at a stack of DVDs and they need theirs to rise above the others.

2. Thou shalt require thy pupils to study other arts and sciences besides the craft of game development, for the ignorant developer createth only the derivative game.

There’s an issue about this commandment – in some cases it will be unnecessary, and in others it will be impossible.

At American institutions that offer a bachelor’s degree, this commandment may not be necessary, because an American BA includes distribution requirements for a degree of breadth – that is the nature of the American, four-year system. So you Americans don’t necessarily need this advice. However, I don’t apologize for making it. Don’t take up your students’ time with so much game stuff that they don’t have the chance to study other things.
As you design your curriculum, don’t concentrate too much on technology and practice. Make some of art, literature, music, history, economics, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and classical physics part of the requirements. You might even consider things like military history for strategy designers; ballet, or gymnastics for animators; political science for those interested in Civilization-type games.

On the other hand, European institutions may not be able to provide these things. The European undergraduate model assumes that the students already got an adequate high school education, so students expect to study only one subject for their bachelor’s. They don’t have the distribution requirements that American schools do.

As a result, many European universities are not actually universal at all. Because they are centrally funded by the state, they often concentrate on a few subjects to avoid duplication. For example, the University of Ulster Magee is particularly strong in computer science and integrated systems, and nursing! Still, do the best you can with what you’ve got.

In addition to basic game development courses, some universities require the following: dramaturgy, human-computer interaction, cognitive science, game analysis, hypermedia, digital culture, online cultures, and the history of games.

1. Thou shalt integrate all the disciplines of game development unto the utmost of thy institution’s capacity.

One of the most extraordinary things about this medium is the number of fields that it draws together – even more than the movies. It uses fields that seldom talk to each other in the context of higher education. How often do the people in the English department talk to the people in the music department? At least they’re both in the College of Arts and Sciences. Computer science is often stuck off in the College of Engineering. Art is in the art school, while animation is probably in the film school – if there is one.

One of the hardest things about setting up a game development education program is getting all these people together, especially if there is an entrenched bureaucracy and an old guard of tenured greybeards who see video games as a frivolous waste of time. It’s particularly difficult at the grass roots level, at large institutions, and at old institutions. It’s easier at smaller and newer institutions that don’t have so many traditions already in place. It’s easiest still if it has a powerful champion of some kind – an important leader who has the support of the university administration and the resources to make it happen. But, champion or no, you’ve got to do it, or your game program will be lopsided and poor value for your students.

Skövde has a peculiar situation in that the school is named “Humanities and Informatics” – Informatics being a catch-all European term for “computer stuff.” The fact that they came together is an accident of history and bureaucracy, but it turns out to be very fortuitous for their game development program that it includes humanities in the same school.

I strongly believe you should make the students all learn each other’s tools – not necessarily the high-end tools, but the basic ones. Make everybody learn to use a simple audio waveform editor. Make everybody learn to use a paint program like Photoshop if you can afford it or GIMP if you can’t. Make everybody learn to use a 3D modeling tool like 3DS Max if you can afford it or Blender if you can’t. Make everybody learn a little programming – not C++, but Python or Lua or maybe Java. Yes, even the artists!

Don’t fail them if they suck – they’re going to suck. That’s part of the point. The idea is to get them to understand what their other colleagues do. They have to realize that they have complementary talents and they need each other. That’s critical for communication on team projects later on. Don’t fail them for not being talented at everything; fail them if they refuse to try.

I realize that some of these may be difficult to achieve. Audio engineering is not a traditional university subject. But look for workarounds. For example, DeVry University’s program is heavy on programming but light on art. At the Phoenix, Arizona campus of DeVry, they cooperate with the Art Institute of Phoenix so that people with art skills can come and work on their game development projects.

Finally, as this is a programming-related discipline, I have in true programmer-fashion, incorporated a zeroth commandment:

0. Thou shalt NOT take an existing computer science, art, animation, media studies, English, or other program, add a game course or two to it, and call it a game program, for that is an abomination unto the Lord.

I cannot emphasize this enough. We’re all familiar with fly-by-night outfits that make unrealistic promises to students because they’re offering a half-baked program. If you do this, you are doing a terrible disservice to them. You’re cheating them. I realize that I may have insulted some of you just now, but if you have reason to feel insulted, then you probably deserve it. Build your curriculum properly, from the ground up. The latest edition of the IGDA’s Curriculum Framework Document just came out, so there are plenty of resources to help you design a solid program.

american and italian rap are two distinct worlds, divided by a bold line.
although italian rap differs in style and flow, it was inflenced by some good vibes from the us, that don't deserve to be forgiven.
a plethora of reminiscences, citations and sound samples are the base of the first wave of italian rap.

a list first: remember these names. here are some notable rappers with their distinctive flow:

- gza
- ll cool j (ladies love cool james)
- slick rick
- redman
- scarface
- ice cube
- jay-z
- nas
- big daddy kane
- krs one
- rakim
- beanie siegel
- busta rhymes
- method man
- canibus.

here are some 1st-gen never-live-without rappers, and some of their greatest songs:

- snoop doggy dogg
--- Gin and Juice
--- Who Am I? (What's My Name)
--- Murder Was The Case
--- Doggy Dogg World

- scarface
--- In Cold Blood
--- My Block
--- Someday
--- In Between Us

- dr dre
--- Stranded On Death Row
--- Nuthin' But A G Thang
--- Still Dre

- jay z
--- Dead Presidents II
--- Can't Knock The Hustle
--- Regrets
--- 22 Two's

- wu tang clan
--- C.R.E.A.M. (cash rules everything around me)
--- Protect Ya Neck
--- Can It Be All So Simple

- notorious big
--- Top Tracks Juicy
--- Big Poppa
--- Ready To Die
--- Unbelievable

- public enemy
--- Rebel Without A Pause
--- Don't Believe The Hype
--- Black Steel In The Hour of Chaos
--- Night of The Living Baseheads

- nas
--- Halftime
--- It Ain't Hard To Tell
--- The World Is Yours
--- New York State of Mind
--- Memory Lane

- tribe called quest
--- Scenario ft Busta Rhymes
--- Verses from The Abstract
--- Buggin' Out
--- Check The Rhime

- 2pac
--- Dear Mama
--- Lord Knows
--- Me Against The World
--- So Many Tearz

Speaking about metrics, sometimes you hear lyrical missteps that make your favorite rappers wish they could go back in time and rewrite their rhymes.

25. "Verse number 2 do the damn thang keeps on my neck pocket's full of Ben Franks."
Yung Joc, "It's Goin' Down."
Album: New Joc City
A classic case of saying... absolutely nothing.

24. "There's no need to lie folk, Why you sleepin' wit ya eyes closed?"
Timbaland, "Get on the Bus"
Album: Why Do Fools Fall in Love (Soundtrack)
Well, Tim, if I had to endure your mediocre rhymes all the time I'd definitely sleep with my eyes, ears, and nose closed as well.

23. "I can double my density from three-sixty degrees to seven-twenty instantly."
Canibus, "Funk Master Flex Freestyle"
Obviously, Canibus slept through 10th grade when they went over units of measurement.

22. "Thirty-eight revolve like the sun round the Earth."
Jay-Z, "It's Hot"
Album: Volume 3: Life and Times of S.Carter
And, Jay-Z skipped his Geography class.

21. "N****s in the Bronx call me Lex cause I push a Lex, and I rock a Rolex and I lounge on Lex', and I love sex."
Peter Gunz, "Deja Vu: Uptown Baby"
Album: Make It Reign
What are the odds that Cory Gunz ghostwrote this for his dad at age 9?

20. "Never let me slip, cause if I slip, then I'm slippin."
Dr. Dre, "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang"
Album: The Chronic
Aren't we glad that he eventually decided to hire some ghostwriters?

19. "When it's hot I'm duckin' them people with my firearm Look I be straight thuggin."
Turk, "Trife Livin"
Album: Young and Thuggin'
If he's the one with the firearm, why's he duckin'?

18. "My paragraph alone is worth five mics (uh-huh) A twelve song LP, that's thirty-six mics (uh-huh)..."
Redman "5 Boroughs"
Album: The Corruptor Soundtrack
Apparently, Redman's calculator is miles ahead of the game.

17. "Don't try to treat me like I ain't famous My apologies, are you into astrology Cause I'm, I'm tryin to make it to Uranus..."
Kanye West, "Gettin' It In"
Album: Kiss of Death
Oh I get it: there's Libra, Sagittarius, Scorpio, and then Uranus. And you say Kanye doesn't deserve to have his image displayed next to the word 'genius' in Webster's Dictionary?

16. "Hood n***a from Bankhead, I stay by Grandma Nana I lay by my banana, dumpin' and punkin' monkeys."
Young Dro, "Shoulder Lean"
With all the money T.I. makes from music and movies, you'd think he would at least invest in a decent ghostwriter for his sidekick.

15. "When you take a sip you buzz like a hornet Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets."
LFO, "Summer Girls"
Cut them some slack. These guys graduated from the prestigious Vanilla Ice Institute of Hip-Hop and decided to try their hands at random word association.

14. "Sometime y'all get crimey crimey, grimy grimy But those with a tiny hiney they get whiny whiny."
Cam'Ron, "5 Boroughs"
Album: The Corruptor Soundtrack
Someone should have informed Cam that this choppy choppy rhyme thing is silly silly.

13. "I'm hungry for cheese like Hungry, Hungry Hippo."
Project Pat ("Ballers")
Album: Ghetty Green
Extra points for giving us one of the worst songs ever known to man.

12. "If you don't bring back my m****f*****n money or my m***f****n dope, you can forget about Christmas n***a, cause you ain't gon even see New Years."
Master P ("Do You Know")
In Master P's universe, New Year comes right before Christmas.

11. "It's like fee, fie, foe, fum, I smell the blood of a jealous a*s punk."
Prodigy ("Click Clack")
Album: Blood Money
No longer inspired by hardcore hip-hop, Prodigy turns to nursery rhymes for some equally uninspiring lyrics.


10. "First family will gradually lift that a*s up like gravity."
Lil' Fame (of M.O.P.) ("Half and Half")
Sire Isaac Newton must be turning in his grave right now.

9. "I like the way ya ass move to the beat You a freak, that's somethin' you can be."
J-Kwon ("Show Your A**")
Album: Hood Hop
You see, kids, that's another reason why you should stay in school.

8. "D.D.T. the b**ch, I can go for some hours. Let Parlae hit, together we like twin towers."
Pimpin ("Freaky as She Wanna Be")
Album: On Top of Our Game
A terribly humorless and tasteless joke. Enough said.

7. "I like them black, white, Puerto Rican, or Haitian Like Japanese, Chinese, or even Asian."
Chingy ("Balla Baby")
Album: Powerballin'
As far as Chingy's concerned, Asian is a nationality damnit.

6. "I'll break it down for you now, baby it's simple If you be a nympho, I'll be a nympho."
50 Cent ("Candy Shop")
Album: The Massacre
Well, what do you expect from an artist whose stage moniker in itself constitutes a grammatical mishap?

5. "Thirty-two grams raw, chop it in half, get sixteen, double it times three. We got forty-eight, which mean a whole lot of cream Divide the profit by four, subtract it by eight We back to sixteen..."
Foxy Brown ("Affirmative Action")
Album: It Was Written
This holds the world record for worst mathematics on a song.

4. "Got a Bill in my mouth like I'm Hillary Rodham."
Ali G (Grillz)
Album: Sweat/Suit
No comments.

3. "Young, black, and famous, with money hanging out the anus."
Mase ("Can't Nobody Hold Me Down")
Album: No Way Out
Now, that's the type of money I definitely wouldn't want to touch before breakfast.

2. "I watch my back when I'm walkin, I watch my mouth when I'm talking. My glock cocked when I'm crawling."
Mike Jones ("Scandalous H**s")
Album: Who is MIke Jones?
What's next? I watch my ears when I'm hearing, I watch my sight when I'm seeing?

1. "Now you know that I'm the Queen of Miami. All that loud talkin, lyin, save that sh*t for your mammy. Sounds like "blah, blah blah, blah bla blah-blah," I'm like uh-huh (uh-huh) okay (okay), Whassup (whassup) SHUT UP!"
Trina ("Here We Go")
Album: Glamorest Life
Actual lyrics.

What follows is a list of ten rap songs that will either tug at your heartstrings or cause you to reminisce this Valentine's Day (that's good for making ladies appreciate rap!).

10. A Tribe Called Quest - "Bonita Applebum"
"Bonita Applebum" finds ATCQ romanticizing a calm, thumping drumbeat. With his nasal flow and soothing delivery, Q-Tip spills poetic excerpts, masterfully pausing between lines for ardor.

9. Jay-Z - "Song Cry"
Just when you thought Hov was all about money, cash, h*s (he actually is), he pulls out his storytelling hat and struts a classic rap love song. Although Jay's defiant persona is alive here (instead of shedding the tears himself, he makes the song cry), he's sentimental enough to concede being called "ugly" by the gold-digging female in this story.

8. DJ Honda feat. Mos Def - "Travellin' Man"
DJ Honda dismantles a gritty sonic template and rebuilds it with funky jazz fragments. The result is a lush mix of harmonic samples and a cool street hip-hop drum track. Mos takes advantage of the shimmering production, as he seamlessly seesaws between rapping and singing about this journey called life.

7. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - "Tha Crossroads"
Following Eazy-E's demise in March of 1995, his disciples Bone Thugs-N-Harmony unleashed this moody masterpiece in honor of the late west coast vet and other fallen soldiers.

6. De La Soul - "Eye Know"
This jazzyfied hip-hop crew was the first to rhyme about daisies and dames and make it sound, oh so sweet. De La's candy-coated musings over lush soulful samples (notably from Otis Redding's "(Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay") made it trendy to declare sweet affection for that "special person" without losing credibility.

5. Ghostface feat. Mary J. Blige - "All That I Got Is You"
Ditching the conventional 32-bar structure for a long-running verse, Ghost drops genuinely emotional lyrics about crashing in a congested apartment with his mom and plucking roaches out of cereal boxes. No hard-hitting drums, no anti-swine-eating vignettes. Just Mary J. Blige's tear-jerk crooning and GFK's emotion-laden words.

4. 2 Pac - "Dear Mama"
Pac made it cool for rappers to glorify their moms in the 90s, as he pats mama on the back for attempting to liberate him from the perils of street life. Shakur's soulful lyrics make "Dear Mama" a sentimental hip-hop masterpiece.

3. PM Dawn - "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss"
Set atop a soundbed of Spandau Ballet's "True" and Eric B & Rakim's "Paid in Full," PM Dawn dreams up a world that is both reflective and sentimental. Ultimately, "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss" is about releasing old attachments and reliving them in one's memory.

2. LL Cool J - "I Need Love"
This 1987 smash, often heralded as the first true hip-hop love song, is a reminder that Cool J has been swinging the "L" to the ladies for decades.

1. Pete Rock and CL Smooth - "They Reminisce Over You [T.R.O.Y.]"
Insane horn riffs. Shimmering cymbals. Soulful samples. You just know it's Pete Rock's unmistakable craftsmanship. On the other end, C.L. Smooth channels controlled emotion through the mic on this funeral favorite. Even though C.L. swears he's "noddin' off, sleep to a jazz tune," this is melancholy elegy at its finest.

Here are a Top Fifty Rap and R&B Collaborations (also useful for girls who don't like arshness, dissings and ghetto stories):

50 - I Can't Wait - OutKast ft. Sleepy Brown
49 - I Like That - Houston ft. I-20, Nate Dogg Chingy
48 - Addictive - Truth Hurts ft. Rakim
47 - Fast Lane - Bilal ft. Jadakiss and Dr. Dre
46 - Karma - Lloyd Banks ft. Avant
45 - Thugz Mansion - 2Pac ft. Anthony Hamilton
44 - Ghetto Supastar - Pras Michel ft. Ol' Dirty Bastard and Mya
43 - Sincerity - Mary J. Blige ft. DMX and Nas
42 - Locked Up (remix) - Akon ft. Styles P.
41 - Deja vu - Beyonce ft. Jay-Z

40 - The Best of Me (Remix) - Jay-Z & Mya
39 - How Do You Want It - 2Pac & K-Ci & Jojo
38 - Still Not A Player - Big Pun & Joe
37 - Body Kiss - The Isley Bros. ft. Lil' Kim
36 - We Ride - R.Kelly, Cam'ron, Jay-Z, Vegas Cats, & Nore
35 - I Don't Wanna Know - Mario Winans ft. Diddy
34 - Hey Lover - Boyz II Men & LL Cool J
33 - Just Right - Ryan Leslie ft. Snoop Dogg
32 - Start from Scratch - The Game & Marsha (of Floetry)
31 - I Can Change - John Legend ft. Snoop Dogg

30 - Gold Digger - Kanye West & Jamie Foxx
29 - Pocketbook (Remix) - Me'Shell Ndegeocello ft. Redman
28 - Street Dreams - Nas & R.Kelly
27 - What These B****es Want - DMX ft. Sisqo
26 - Fiesta (Remix) - R.Kelly & Jay-Z
25 - I've Changed - LL Cool J ft. Ryan Toby
24 - The Streets of New York - Rakim, Nas, & Alicia Keys
23 - We Need a Resolution - Aaliyah ft. Timbaland
22 - Break Up to Make Up - Method Man & D'Angelo
21 - Oh - Ciara ft. Ludacris

20 - Been Through the Storm - Busta Rhymes ft. Stevie Wonder
19 - Got It (Remix) - Goapele ft. E-40
18 - Breakdown - Bone Thugs-N-Harmony & Mariah Carey
17 - High Post Brotha - Jill Scott ft. Common
16 - One More Chance (Remix) - The Notorious B.I.G. & Faith Evans
15 - The Seed (2.0) - The Roots ft. Cody ChesnuTT
14 - Why - Jadakiss & Anthony Hamilton
13 - The Way You Move - OutKast ft. Sleepy Brown
12 - Can't Knock The Hustle - Jay-Z & Mary J. Blige
11 - Break You Off - The Roots ft. Musiq

10 - All That I Got Is You - Ghostface & Mary J. Blige
9 - Can't Deny It - Fabolous ft. Nate Dogg
8 - I'll Be Missing U - Puff Daddy, Faith Evans, & 112
7 - Fantasy (Remix) - Mariah Carey ft. Ol'Dirty Bastard
6 - You Got Me - The Roots & Erykah Badu & Eve
5 - Home Alone - R. Kelly ft. Keith Murray
4 - If I Ruled the World (Imagine That) - Nas ft. Lauryn Hill
3 - Let's Get Down - Tony Toni Tone ft. DJ Quik
2 - No Diggity - BLACKstreet ft. Dr. Dre and Queen Pen
1 - I'll Be There For You/You're All I Need To Get By - Method Man & Mary J. Blige

And finally a list of one hundred of the best rap songs ever:

100 - Da Brat - Funkdafied
99 - The Roots - What They Do
98 - Common - The Light
97 - Smif-N-Wessun - Bucktown
96 - Junior M.A.F.I.A. - Player's Anthem
95 - Das EFX - They Want EFX
94 - Coolio - Gangsta's Paradise
93 - ODB - Brooklyn Zoo
92 - Killer Mike - That's Life
91 - The Notorious B.I.G. - Who Shot Ya

90 - Method Man ft. Mary J Blige - All I Need
89 - GZA - Fame
88 - What U See Is What U Get - Xzibit
87 - Ghostface ft. Mary J Blige - All That I Got Is You
86 - Ultramagnetic MC's - Ego Trippin'
85 - The Fugees - Fu-gee-La
84 - The Luniz - I Got 5 On It
83 - Akrobatik - Remind My Soul
82 - M.O.P. - How About Some Hardcore
81 - Ice Cube - It Was A Good Day

80 - Wu-Tang Clan - Protect Ya Neck
79 - Cypress Hill - How I Could Just Kill A Man
78 - The Game - Dreams - Listen
77 - Big Pun - Still Not A Player
76 - LL Cool J - Mama Said Knock You Out
75 - Biz Markie - Nobody Beats The Biz
74 - Nas - New York State of Mind
73 - Fabolous - Breathe
72 - Lupe Fiasco - Kick, Push
71 - Big L - Ebonics

70 - DJ Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince - Parents Just Don't Understand
69 - Snoop Dogg - Gin and Juice
68 - Common - The 6th Sense
67 - Jay-Z ft. Mary J Blige - Can't Knock The Hustle
66 - Lauryn Hill - Everything Is Everything
65 - Mos Def - Umi Says
64 - Jadakiss - Why
63 - 50 Cent - Many Men (Wish Death)
62 - UGK feat. OutKast - Int'l Players Anthem (I Choose You)
61 - Slum Village - Reunion

60 - Big Daddy Kane - Raw
59 - Special Ed - I Got It Made
58 - Eminem - Mosh
57 - DJ Quik - Tonite
56 - Black Moon - Who Got da Props
55 - Naughty By Nature - OPP
54 - Nas - One Mic
53 - A Tribe Called Quest - Electric Relaxation
52 - UGK - Ridin' Dirty
51 - Artifacts - Wrong Side of da Tracks

50 - Marley Marl - The Symphony
49 - Aasim - Hip-Hop 101
48 - Run-DMC & Aerosmith - Walk This Way
47 - Salt-N-Pepa - Push It
46 - Zion I feat Talib Kweli - Temperature
45 - Eminem - Stan
44 - Slick Rick - Children's Story
43 - Kanye West - Jesus Walks
42 - M.O.P. - Ante Up (Remix)
41 - OutKast - Ms Jackson

40 - Scarface - I Seen A Man Die
39 - O.C. - Time's Up
38 - Craig Mack - Flava In Ya Ear (Remix)
37 - DMX - Slippin'
36 - Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - Tha Crossroads
35 - Kool G Rap & DJ Polo - Ill Street Blues
34 - GangStarr ft. Nice & Smooth - Dwyck
33 - Warren G - Regulate
32 - Slick Rick & Doug E Fresh - La di da di
31 - Westside Connection - Bow Down

30 - Mos Def - Mathematics
29 - Brand Nubian - Slow Down
28 - Big Daddy Kane - Ain't No Half Steppin'
27 - Mobb Deep - Shook Ones II
26 - Kurtis Blow - The Breaks
25 - Talib Kweli - Get By
24 - Beastie Boys - Paul Revere
23 - MC Lyte - Paper Thin
22 - The Pharcyde - Passin' Me By
21 - dead prez - It's Bigger Than Hip-Hop

20 - Wu-Tang Clan - C.R.E.A.M.
19 - N.W.A. - Straight Outta Compton
18 - Geto Boys - Mind Playin' Tricks on Me
17 - A Tribe Called Quest ft. Busta Rhymes - Scenario
16 - Jay-Z - Dead Presidents II
15 - The Notorious B.I.G. - Juicy
14 - Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg - Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang
13 - LL Cool J - I Need Love
12 - Boogie Down Productions - My Philosophy
11 - 2Pac - Keep Ya Head Up

10 - Afrika Bambataa - Planet Rock
9 - Public Enemy - Fight The Power
8 - Audio Two - Top Billin'
7 - Nas - The World Is Yours
6 - Pete Rock & CL Smooth - They Reminisce Over You
5 - Eric B & Rakim - Lyrics of Fury
4 - 2Pac - Dear Mama
3 - Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5 - The Message
2 - The Sugarhill Gang - Rapper's Delight
1 - Common Sense - I Used To Love H.E.R.

What's involved in putting together a complete uncompressed HD workstation?

Because of a budget-sensitive (prices listed refers to year 2007), full-DIY post ethos, we center on Apple Final Cut Pro as a scalable, affordable, widely professionally accepted, high-quality solution. Although strong arguments can be made for Avid and Adobe Premiere Pro, as well as other NLE combinations, those are beyond the scope of this article.

This article assumes three broad categories of users:

Group 1: Just enough to get by. You can accept some risks and hassles-the classic starving indie category.

Group 2: You need something competent-and want greater workflow comforts-but you're still budget-sensitive.

Group 3: The fully professional, well-equipped individual's solution, also suitable for a small studio or small facility setup.

so: these are the systems you have to buy at least:

Group 1: Mac Pro 2.66 GHz tower, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB boot drive minimum; Final Cut Studio software; Nvidia GeForce 7300 graphics card; MacGurus 1.25 TB, five-bay SATA RAID (port-multiplying, or PM, enclosure) with Sonnet E4P host adapter; Dell 24- and 20-inch monitors; Blackmagic Design Intensity card; and $1,000 HDMI-equipped HDTV. Total: about $7,600. Increase storage for longer-form projects as needed. Bumping up to Blackmagic Design HD Extreme and a JVC HDTV adds about $2,500. Getting Blackmagic Design's 4:4:4-capable Pro card (which lacks HDMI) adds $200.

Group 2: Mac Pro 2.66 GHz tower, 4 GB RAM, 250 GB boot drive, 500 GB data drive, with Bluetooth/AirPort capabilities and AppleCare protection plan; Final Cut Studio software; ATI X1900 graphics card; Apple 23- and 20-inch monitors; two MacGurus 1 TB PM enclosure, four-bay SATA RAIDs with Sonnet E4P host adapter; Blackmagic Design DeckLink HD Extreme; and JVC TV-1710CG with component/RGB card. Total: about $12,000. Switch to twin 23-inch monitors: add $300. Increase storage for longer-form projects as needed. Bump up to two 5-drive RAIDs, for 4 TB total storage: add $1,200. Switch to a fault-tolerant G-Tech G-Speed 1.5 TB RAID with an Atto 4 Gb Fibre Channel card: add about $3,000. Bump up to a 4:4:4-capable Blackmagic Design DeckLink HD Pro PCIe: add $200. Bump up to an AJA Kona LHe: add $800.

Group 3: Mac Pro 2.66 GHz tower, 5+ GB RAM, 250 GB boot drive, 500 GB data drive, with wireless cards and AppleCare protection plan; Final Cut Studio software; ATI X1900 graphics card; Apple 30- and 23-inch LCD monitors; G-Tech G-Speed 3 TB RAID; AJA Kona3 I/O with K3-box (breakout box); and Sony 14-inch 16:9 HD CRT with analog board. Total: about $25,500. Bump up to 3.0 GHz tower (makes sense at this price point): add $800. Increase storage for longer-form projects as needed. Bump up to Apple Xserve 7 TB RAID: add about $7,000. Switch to Blackmagic Design Multibridge Extreme I/O: save $400. Bump up to 20-inch Sony CRT: add about $7,500.

Bonus round: the hybrid, best bang for the buck, indie filmmaker build. Mac Pro 2.66 GHz tower, 4 GB RAM, 250 GB boot drive, with AppleCare protection plan; Final Cut Studio software; ATI X1900 graphics card; Dell 24- and 20-inch LCD monitors; two MacGurus five-bay 2 TB RAIDs with Sonnet E4P host adapter; Blackmagic Design DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 PCIe; and JVC 1710CG. Total: about $14,000. With some additional software, you could edit and finish a 10-bit 4:4:4 feature with this system if you wanted to.

I hope this information helps you get started.
Remember to check all the details before you buy: this stuff changes rapidly.

HD/SD editing and finishing solutions certified from adobe
Dell T7400/AJA
HP xw8400/AJA
HP xw8600/AJA
HP xw8400/Blackmagic
HP xw8400/Bluefish444
Mac Pro/AJA
Mac Pro/Blackmagic

Real-time multiformat HD/SD editing and finishing solution certified from adobe
HP xw9400/Matrox Axio LE

Videogames are interactive, but they are not movies. The fact that people want to call them interactive movies just points out how lost we are. Movies came from stage plays, but the references are long lost and movies have come into their own. The same thing needs to happen to story games.

The desire to call them Interactive Movies comes from a couple of places. The first is Marketing. It is the goal of narrow-minded marketing to place everything into a category so it will be recognizable.

Story games are not movies, but the two forms do share a great deal. It is not fair to completely ignore movies. We can learn a lot from them about telling stories in a visual medium. However, it is important to realize that there are many more differences than similarities. We have to choose what to borrow and what to discover for ourselves.

The single biggest difference is interaction. You can’t interact with a movie. You just sit in the theater and watch it. In a story game, the player is given the freedom to explore the story. But the player doesn’t always do what the designer intended, and this causes problems. It is hard to create a cohesive plot when you have no idea what part of the story the player will trip over next. This problem calls for a special kind of storytelling, and we have just begun to scratch the surface of this art form.

There is a state of mind called “suspension of disbelief”. When you are watching a movie, or reading a good book, your mind falls into this state. It occurs when you are pulled so completely into the story that you no longer realize you are in a movie theater or sitting at your couch, reading. When the story starts to drag, or the plots begins to fall apart, the suspension of disbelief is lost. You soon start looking around the theater, noticing the people in front of you or the green exit sign. One way I judge a movie is by the number of times I realized I was in a theater.

The same is true of story games (as well as almost all other kinds of games). As the story builds, we are pulled into the game and leave the real world behind. As designers, our job is to keep people in this state for as long as possible.

Every time the player has to restore a saved game, or pound his head on the desk in frustration, the suspension of disbelief is gone. At this time he is most likely to shut off the computer, at which point we all have lost.

The following set of rules of thumb will minimize the loss of suspension of disbelief. As with any set of rules, there are always exceptions.

Some people say that following these rules makes the games too easy to play. I disagree. What makes most games tough to play is that the puzzles are arbitrary and unconnected. Most are solved by chance or repetitive sessions of typing “light candle with match,” “light paper with match,” “light rug with match,” until something happens. This is not tough game play, this is masturbation. I played one game that required the player to drop a bubble gum wrapper in a room in order to get a trap door to open (object names have been changed to protect the guilty). What is the reasoning? There is none. It’s an advanced puzzle, I was told.


End objective needs to be clear
It’s OK if the objective changes in mid-game, but at the beginning the player should have a clear vision as to what he or she is trying to accomplish. Nothing is more frustrating than wandering around wondering what you should be doing and if what you have been doing is going to get you anywhere. Situations where not knowing what’s going on can be fun and an integral part of the game, but this is rare and difficult to pull off.


Sub-goals need to be obvious
Most good adventure games are broken up into many sub-goals. Letting the player know at least the first sub-goal is essential in hooking them. If the main goal is to rescue the prince, and the player is trapped on an island at the beginning of the game, have another character in the story tell them the first step: get off the island. This is just good storytelling. Ben Kenobi pretty much laid out Luke's whole journey in the first twenty minutes of Star Wars. This provided a way for the audience to follow the progress of the main character. For someone not used to the repetitive head-banging of adventure games, this simple clue can mean the difference between finishing the game and giving up after the first hour. It’s very easy when designing to become blind to what the player doesn’t know about your story.


Live and learn
As a rule, adventure games should be able to be played from beginning to end without “dying” or saving the game if the player is very careful and very observant. It is bad design to put puzzles and situations into a game that require a player to die in order to learn what not to do next time. This is not to say that all death situations should be designed out. Danger is inherent in drama, but danger should be survivable if the player is clever.
As an exercise, take one complete path through a story game and then tell it to someone else, as if it were a standard story. If you find places where the main character could not have known a piece of information that was used (the character who learned it died in a previous game), then there is a hole in the plot.


Backwards Puzzles
The backwards puzzle is probably the one thing that bugs me more than anything else about adventure games. I have created my share of them; and as with most design flaws, it’s easier to leave them in than to redesign them. The backwards puzzle occurs when the solution is found before the problem. Ideally, the crevice should be found before the rope that allows the player to descend. What this does in the player’s mind is set up a challenge. He knows he need to get down the crevice, but there is no route. Now the player has a task in mind as he continues to search. When a rope is spotted, a light goes on in his head and the puzzle falls into place. For a player, when the design works, there is nothing like that experience.


I forgot to pick it up
This is really part of the backwards puzzle rule, but in the worst way. Never require a player to pick up an item that is used later in the game if she can’t go back and get it when it is needed. It is very frustrating to learn that a seemingly insignificant object is needed, and the only way to get it is to start over or go back to a saved game. From the player’s point of view, there was no reason for picking it up in the first place. Some designers have actually defended this practice by saying that, “adventure games players know to pick up everything.” This is a cop-out. If the jar of water needs to be used on the spaceship and it can only be found on the planet, create a use for it on the planet that guarantees it will be picked up. If the time between the two uses is long enough, you can be almost guaranteed that the player forgot she even had the object.
The other way around this problem is to give the player hints about what she might need to pick up. If the aliens on the planet suggest that the player find water before returning to the ship, and the player ignores this advice, then failure is her own fault.


Puzzles should advance the story
There is nothing more frustrating than solving pointless puzzle after pointless puzzle. Each puzzle solved should bring the player closer to understanding the story and game. It should be somewhat clear how solving this puzzle brings the player closer to the immediate goal. What a waste of time and energy for the designer and player if all the puzzle does is slow the progress of the game.


Real time is bad drama (in 1988)
One of the most important keys to drama is timing. Anyone who has designed a story game knows that the player rarely does anything at the right time or in the right order. If we let the game run on a clock that is independent from the player’s actions, we are going to be guaranteed that few things will happen with dramatic timing. When Indiana Jones rolled under the closing stone door and grabbed his hat just in time, it sent a chill and a cheer through everyone in the audience. If that scene had been done in a standard adventure game, the player would have been killed the first four times he tried to make it under the door. The next six times the player would have been too late to grab the hat. Is this good drama? Not likely. The key is to use cinematic time, not real time. Give the player some slack when doing time-based puzzles. Try to watch for intent. If the player is working towards the solution and almost ready to complete it, wait. Wait until the hat is grabbed, then slam the door down. The player thinks he “just made it” and consequently a much greater number of players get the rush and excitement. When designing time puzzles I like to divide the time into three categories. 10% of the players will do the puzzle so fast and efficiently that they will finish with time to spare. Another 10% will take too much time and fail, which leaves 80% of the people to brush through in the nick of time.


Incremental reward
The player needs to know that she is achieving. The fastest way to turn a player off is to let the game drag on with no advancement. This is especially true for people who are playing adventure games for the first time. In graphics adventures the reward often comes in the form of seeing new areas of the game. New graphics and characters are often all that is needed to keep people playing. Of course, if we are trying to tell a story, then revealing new plot elements and twists can be of equal or greater value.


Arbitrary puzzles
Puzzles and their solutions need to make sense. They don’t have to be obvious, just make sense. The best reaction after solving a tough puzzle should be, “Of course, why didn’t I think of that sooner!” The worst, and most often heard after being told the solution is, “I never would have gotten that!” If the solution can only be reached by trial and error or plain luck, it’s a bad puzzle.


Reward Intent
The object of these games is to have fun. Figure out what the player is trying to do. If it is what the game wants, then help the player along and let it happen. The most common place this fails is in playing a meta-game called “second guess the parser.” If there is an object on the screen that looks like a box, but the parser is waiting for it to be called a mailbox, the player is going to spend a lot of time trying to get the game to do a task that should be transparent. In parser-driven games, the key is to have lots of synonyms for objects. If the game is a graphics adventure, check proximity of the player’s character. If the player is standing right next to something, chances are they are trying to manipulate it. If you give the player the benefit of the doubt, the game will be right more than wrong. On one occasion, I don’t know how much time I spent trying to tie a string on the end of a stick. I finally gave up, not knowing if I was wording the sentence wrong or if it was not part of the design. As it turned out, I was wording it wrong.


Unconnected events
In order to pace events, some games lock out sections until certain events have happened. There is nothing wrong with this, it is almost a necessity. The problem comes when the event that opens the new section of the world is unconnected. If the designer wants to make sure that six objects have been picked up before opening a secret door, make sure that there is a reason why those six objects would affect the door. If a player has only picked up five of the objects and is waiting for the door to open (or worse yet, trying to find a way to open the door), the act of getting the flashlight is not going to make any sense in relation to the door opening.


Give the player options
A lot of story games employ a technique that can best be described as caging the player. This occurs when the player is required to solve a small set of puzzles in order to advance to the next section of the game, at which point she is presented with another small set of puzzles. Once these puzzles are solved, in a seemingly endless series of cages, the player enters the next section. This can be particularly frustrating if the player is unable to solve a particular puzzle. The areas to explore tend to be small, so the only activity is walking around trying to find the one solution out.

Try to imagine this type of puzzle as a cage the player is caught in, and the only way out is to find the key. Once the key is found, the player finds herself in another cage. A better way to approach designing this is to think of the player as outside the cages, and the puzzles as locked up within. In this model, the player has a lot more options about what to do next. She can select from a wide variety of cages to open. If the solution to one puzzle stumps her, she can go on to another, thus increasing the amount of useful activity going on.

Of course, you will want some puzzles that lock out areas of the game, but the areas should be fairly large and interesting unto themselves. A good indicator of the cage syndrome is how linear the game is. If the plot follows a very strict line, chances are the designer is caging the player along the path. It’s not easy to uncage a game, it requires some careful attention to the plot as seen from players coming at the story from different directions. The easiest way is to create different interactions for a given situation depending on the order encountered.


Conclusion
The first thing I’d do is get rid of save games. If there have to be save games, I would use them only when it was time to quit playing until the next day. Save games should not be a part of game play. This leads to sloppy design. As a challenge, think about how you would design a game differently if there were no save games. If you ever have the pleasure of watching a non-gameplayer playing an adventure game you will notice they treat save game very differently then the experienced user. Some start using it as a defense mechanism only after being slapped in the face by the game a few times, the rest just stop playing.

second, if the designer ever thinks the game might be too short, he throws in another puzzle or two. These also tend to be the worst thought-out and most painful to solve. If I could have my way, I’d design games that were meant to be played in four to five hours. The games would be of the same scope that I currently design, I’d just remove the silly time-wasting puzzles and take the player for an intense ride. The experience they would leave with would be much more entertaining and a lot less frustrating. The games would still be challenging, but not at the expense of the players patience.

in the end, the average guy spends most of the day failing at the office, the last thing he wants to do is come home and fail while trying to relax and be entertained.

An example. One of the worst design mistakes in The Longest Journey is this. WARNING: May contain spoilers!

In order to proceed through a certain area you need a pizza box. You will find this box in a bin. But the bad thing about it is that you have to wait for someone to put it in the bin. And this happens only once you have given a character, in a location far away, a completely unrelated item to the puzzle at hand.

What the designers should of done is this. When you visit the character far away before, which you have to do in order to gain access to the area with the bin, you should be prevented from leaving him until you have given him what must be given to him. For example, when you try to walk out your character can stop and say 'I feel like I've forgotten to do something very important here'. This still may be a bit lame but it is much better than what was done. Actually, it probably wouldn't have been so lame because of the story.

o per dirla come gli antichi: la vanità è il motore del mondo?
tra le riflessioni di weinberg, la legge di brooks e la legge di linus, il paradiso anarchico di internet qualche legge comunque sembra avercela.

nell'articolo di Eric S. Raymond (22/11/1998 ore 04:01:20) vengono messi a confronto due diversi stili di sviluppo, il modello “cattedrale” in voga in gran parte del mondo commerciale, opposto al modello “bazaar” del mondo Linux. il seguente post ne è il riassunto. si dimostrerà come tali modelli derivino da premesse divergenti sulla natura dell'attività di debugging del software, arrivando a stabilire la validità dell'esperienza di Linux riguardo l'affermazione “Con molti occhi puntati addosso, ogni bug diventa una bazzecola”, che suggerisce analogie produttive con altri sistemi di agenti indipendenti in grado di auto-correggersi.

Linux è sovversivo. Chi avrebbe potuto pensare negli anni novanta che un sistema operativo di livello mondiale sarebbe emerso come per magia dal lavoro part-time di diverse migliaia di hacker e sviluppatori sparsi sull'intero pianeta, collegati tra loro solo grazie ai tenui cavi di Internet?

lo stile di sviluppo proprio di Linus Torvalds – diffondere le release presto e spesso, delegare ad altri tutto il possibile, essere aperti fino alla promiscuità - lasciò tutti sorpresi. Nessuna cattedrale da costruire in silenzio e reverenza.

Piuttosto, la comunità Linux assomiglia ad un grande e confusionario bazaar, pullulante di progetti e approcci tra loro diversi (efficacemente simbolizzati dai siti contenenti l'archivio di Linux dove apparivano materiali prodotti da chiunque).
Un bazaar dal quale soltanto una serie di miracoli avrebbe potuto far emergere un sistema stabile e coerente.

la cosa più strana è che il mondo Linux non soltanto non cade preda della confusione più totale, ma al contrario va rafforzandosi sempre più a una velocità a malapena immaginabile per quanti costruiscono cattedrali. sono numerose le lezioni da imparare e da applicare allo sviluppo di software. eccole:

1. Ogni buon lavoro software inizia dalla frenesia personale di uno sviluppatore.
Forse ciò avrebbe dovuto risultare ovvio (è risaputo da tempo che “la necessità è la madre di tutte le invenzioni”), ma troppo spesso gli sviluppatori trascorrono le giornate impegnati a guadagnarsi da vivere con programmi di cui non hanno alcun bisogno e che non apprezzano. Ma non nel mondo Linux – il che spiega l'alta qualità media del software originato dalla comunità Linux.

2. I bravi programmatori sanno cosa scrivere. I migliori sanno cosa riscrivere (e riusare).
Linus Torvalds, per esempio, non ha mai cercato di riscrivere Linux da zero. È invece partito riutilizzando codici e idee riprese da Minix, piccolo sistema operativo per macchine 386 assai simile a Unix. Alla fine il codice Minix è scomparso oppure è stato completamente riscritto – ma per il tempo che è rimasto lì presente è servito come impalcatura per l'infante che sarebbe infine divenuto Linux.

3. “Preparati a buttarne via uno: dovrai farlo comunque.” (Fred Brooks, “The Mythical Man-Month”, Capitolo 11)
In altri termini, spesso non si riesce a comprendere davvero un problema fino alla prima volta in cui si prova a implementarne la soluzione. La seconda volta forse se ne sa abbastanza per riuscirci. Per arrivare alla soluzione, preparati a ricominciare almeno una volta.

4. Se hai l'atteggiamento giusto, saranno i problemi interessanti a trovare te.
In una cultura del software che incoraggia la condivisione del codice, non si tratta altro che la naturale evoluzione di un progetto.

5. Quando hai perso interesse in un programma, l'ultimo tuo dovere è passarlo a un successore competente.

a questo punto è importante avere molti utenti. Altro punto di forza della tradizione Unix, portato felicemente agli estremi da Linux, è che molti utenti sono essi stessi degli hacker. Ed essendo i sorgenti disponibili a tutti, posso diventare degli hacker molto efficaci. Qualcosa di tremendamente utile per ridurre il tempo necessario al debugging. Con un po' d'incoraggiamento, ogni utente è in grado di diagnosticare problemi, suggerire soluzioni, aiutare a migliorare il codice in maniera impensabile per una persona sola.

6. Trattare gli utenti come co-sviluppatori è la strada migliore per ottenere rapidi miglioramenti del codice e debugging efficace.
È facile sottovalutare la potenza di un simile effetto. In realtà un po' tutti gli abitanti del mondo open source erano soliti sottovalutare drasticamente il fatto che tale potenza crescesse di pari passo con il numero degli utenti e con la complessità del sistema. Finché Linus Torvalds ha mostrato le cose in maniera diversa.

In realtà la mossa più scaltra e consequenziale di Linus non è stata la costruzione del kernel di Linux in sé, bensì l'invenzione del modello di sviluppo di Linux. Quando persone esprimono questo pensiero in sua presenza, sorridendo Torvalds ripete con calma quel che va spesso affermando: “Praticamente sono una persona molto pigra cui piace prendersi il merito di quel che sono gli altri a fare.” Pigro come una volpe. Oppure, come avrebbe detto Robert Heinlein, troppo pigro per fallire.

Elemento centrale del processo di sviluppo di Linux è la rapida e frequente distribuzione delle varie release. La maggior parte degli sviluppatori aveva sempre considerato negativa questa usanza per progetti appena più che minimi, poiché le versioni iniziali sono piene di bug quasi per definizione e non pareva il caso di far spazientire inutilmente gli utenti.

Linus trattava gli utenti al pari di co-sviluppatori nella maniera più efficace possibile:

7. Distribuisci presto. Distribuisci spesso. E presta ascolto agli utenti.
L'innovazione introdotta da Linus non consisteva tanto nel seguire questa pratica (qualcosa di simile faceva parte da molto tempo della tradizione del mondo Unix), quanto piuttosto nel farla crescere a un tale livello d'intensità da raggiungere la medesima complessità del lavoro di programmazione che stava facendo. A quei tempi (intorno al 1991) non era raro che egli diffondesse versioni del nuovo kernel anche più di una volta al giorno! Qualcosa che poté funzionare grazie all'attenzione dedicata ai co-sviluppatori e all'ampio utilizzo di Internet come strumento di collaborazione.

Ma come funzionava? Era qualcosa che si può duplicare, o tutto dipendeva esclusivamente dal genio di Linus Torvalds?
Certo, Linus è un gran bell'hacker (quanti di noi saprebbero realizzare per intero un sistema operativo di qualità?). Ma a livello concettuale Linux non rappresentava alcun significativo salto in avanti. Linus non è (o forse non ancora) quel genio innovativo del design allo stesso modo, ad esempio, di Richard Stallman o James Gosling (di NeWS e Java).

Piuttosto, Linus sembra un genio dell'engineering, dotato di un sesto senso per evitare bug e strade senza uscita, oltre che di un ottimo fiuto per arrivare dal punto A al punto B con il minimo sforzo possibile. Non a caso l'intero design di Linux trasuda queste qualità e rispecchia l'approccio essenzialmente conservativo e semplificativo tipico di Linus.
Se, quindi, la rapida diffusione delle release e il pieno sfruttamento del medium Internet non erano casuali, bensì parti integranti delle visioni da genio dell'engineering di Linus lungo il cammino del minimo sforzo possibile, cos'era che stava amplificando? Cos'è che riusciva a tirar fuori da tutto questo gran daffare?

Messa così, la domanda si risponde da sola. Linus tendeva a stimolare e ricompensare costantemente i suoi hacker/utenti – stimolati dalla soddisfazione di sé per aver preso parte all'azione, ricompensati dalla vista dei miglioramenti costanti (perfino giornalieri) ottenuti nel loro lavoro.

Linus puntava direttamente a massimizzare il numero di ore/uomo coinvolte nello sviluppo e nel debugging, rischiando perfino la possibile instabilità del codice e l'estinguersi del contributo degli utenti qualora fosse risultato impossibile tener traccia di qualche serio bug. Linus si comportava seguendo una concezione più o meno riassumibile come segue:

8. Stabilita una base di beta-tester e co-sviluppatori sufficientemente ampia, ogni problema verrà rapidamente definito e qualcuno troverà la soluzione adeguata.
O, in modo meno formale, “Dato un numero sufficiente di occhi, tutti i bug vengono a galla”: la così detta “Legge di Linus”.

La formulazione originale era che ogni problema “diventerà trasparente per qualcuno”. Linus fece notare come la persona che si rende conto e risolve il problema non necessariamente né di norma è la stessa persona che per prima lo mette a fuoco. “Qualcuno scopre il problema,” dice Linus, “e qualcun altro lo comprende. E secondo me il compito più difficile è proprio trovarlo”. Ma il punto è che entrambe le cose tendono ad accadere piuttosto rapidamente.

Questa la differenza fondamentale tra lo stile a cattedrale e quello a bazaar. Nel primo caso la visualizzazione dei problemi relativi a programmazione, bug e sviluppo costituiscono fenomeni dubbi, insidiosi, complessi. Servono mesi di scrutinio ravvicinato da parte di più d'uno per poi sentirsi sicuri di aver risolto tutti i problemi. Da qui i lunghi intervalli tra le release, e l'inevitabile delusione quando le versioni così a lungo attese si rivelano imperfette.

Nella concezione a bazaar, d'altra parte, si dà per scontato che generalmente i bug siano fenomeni marginali – o che almeno divengano rapidamente tali se esposti all'attenzione di migliaia di volenterosi co-sviluppatori che soppesano ogni nuova release. Ne consegue la rapidità di diffusione per ottenere maggiori correzioni, e come positivo effetto collaterale, c'è meno da perdere se viene fuori qualche toppa raffazzonata.

Tutto qui. E non è certo poco. Se la “Legge di Linus” è falsa, allora ogni sistema complesso tanto quanto il kernel Linux, ricavato grazie al lavoro collettivo delle molte mani che lo hanno messo insieme, a un certo punto avrebbe dovuto crollare sotto il peso di interazioni negative impreviste e di “profondi” bug non scoperti. Se invece è vera, allora è sufficiente a spiegare la relativa assenza di bug di Linux.

E forse ciò non dovrebbe rappresentare affatto una sorpresa. Qualche anno addietro sono stati i sociologi a scoprire che l'opinione media di un gruppo di osservatori equamente esperti (o equamente ignoranti) si rivela parametro assai più affidabile di quella di un solo osservatore scelto casualmente in quel gruppo. Si tratta del cosiddetto “effetto Delfi”.

Ora sembra che Linus abbia dimostrato come ciò vada applicato anche all'operazione di debugging di un sistema operativo – ovvero che l'effetto Delfi è in grado di addomesticare la complessità della programmazione, persino la complessità del kernel di un sistema operativo.

Jeff Dutky ha sottolineato come la Legge di Linus possa essere definita anche: “Il debugging è parallelizzabile”. èpossibile notare come nel corso dell'intero processo, pur richiedendo il coordinamento di uno sviluppatore che curi le comunicazioni tra quanti si occupano del debugging, questi ultimi invece non richiedono particolare coordinamento. In tal modo non si cade preda della notevole complessità e dei costi gestionali imposti dal coinvolgimento di nuovi sviluppatori.

In pratica, nel mondo Linux la perdita di efficienza a livello teorico, dovuta alla duplicazione di lavoro da parte di quanti seguono il debugging, non arriva quasi mai a rappresentare un problema. Uno degli effetti della policy “distribuire presto e spesso” è proprio quello di minimizzare tale duplicazione di lavoro propagando rapidamente le soluzioni giunte col feedback degli utenti.

Anche Brooks ha fatto un'osservazione su quanto sostenuto da Dutky: “Il costo totale per il mantenimento di un programma ampiamente utilizzato in genere viene valutato intorno al 40 per cento, o più, del costo dello sviluppo. Non senza sorpresa, tale costo viene notevolmente influenzato dal numero di utenti coinvolti. Maggiori sono questi ultimi, più bug si trovano.”

Ciò per via del fatto che con un maggior numero di utenti ci sono più modi differenti di verificare il programma. Un effetto amplificato quando costoro sono anche co-sviluppatori. Ciascuno affronta il compito della definizione dei bug con un approccio percettivo e analitico leggermente differente, una diversa angolazione per affrontare il problema.

L'effetto Delfi pare funzionare esattamente sulla base di tali differenze. Nel contesto specifico del debugging, le variazioni tendono anche a ridurre la duplicazione degli sforzi impiegati.

Quindi, dal punto di vista dello sviluppatore, l'aggiunta di altri beta-tester può non ridurre la complessità del bug “più profondo” attualmente sotto studio, ma aumenta la probabilità che l'approccio di qualcuno consentirà il corretto inquadramento del problema, così che per questa persona il bug non apparirà altro che una bazzecola.

Inoltre, in caso di seri bug, le varie versioni del kernel di Linux sono numerate in modo tale che i potenziali utenti possano scegliere o di far girare l'ultima versione definita “stabile” oppure rischiare d'incappare in possibili bug pur di provare le nuove funzioni. Una tattica ancora non formalmente imitata dalla maggior parte di hacker Linux, ma che forse dovrebbe esserlo. Il fatto che entrambe le scelte siano disponibili le rende entrambe più attraenti.

9. Meglio combinare una struttura dati intelligente e un codice non eccezionale che non il contrario.
è questo il principio generale che ogni programmatore dovrebbe tenere bene a mente, soprattutto lavorando con linguaggi come il C che non accettano facilmente gli inserimenti dinamici: Brooks, capitolo 9: “Mostrami [il codice] e nascondimi [la struttura dati], e io continuerò a essere disorientato. Mostrami [la struttura dati], e non avrò bisogno del [codice]; sarà del tutto ovvio.”
Per esser precisi, lui parlava di “diagrammi” e “tabelle”. Ma considerando il mutamento lessicale/culturale di questi trent'anni, il senso rimane invariato.

ecco quindi una possibile roadmap:

1. Ho diffuso le varie release presto e spesso (quasi mai a meno di dieci giorni di distanza; una volta al giorno nei periodi d'intenso lavoro).
2. Ho inserito nella lista dei beta chiunque mi avesse contattato riguardo fetchmail.
3. Ho mandato simpatici messaggi all'intera lista dei beta per annunciare ogni nuova release, incoraggiando la gente a partecipare.
4. E ho dato ascolto ai beta tester, ponendo loro domande sul design adottato e plaudendoli ogni volta che mi mandavano aggiustamenti e feedback.

Questi semplici accorgimenti producono una ricompensa immediata. Fin dall'inizio del progetto, in genere è possibile ottenere report sui bug presenti di una qualità che qualunque sviluppatore potrebbe invidiare, spesso con buone soluzioni in attach. si ricevono anche mail piene di critiche costruttive, lodi sperticate, suggerimenti intelligenti. Il che ci porta a:

10. Se tratti i beta tester come se fossero la risorsa più preziosa, replicheranno trasformandosi davvero nella risorsa più preziosa a disposizione.
L'ultime revisioni di un software open source, rivelano in genere che la lista va perdendo membri, dopo aver raggiunto un massimo nei nominativi, e ciò per un motivo degno di nota. In parecchi chiedono di essere rimossi perché il software funziona così bene che non c'era più alcun motivo di seguire il traffico della lista! ciò fa parte del normale ciclo di vita di un progetto maturo in stile bazaar.

11. La cosa migliore, dopo l'avere buone idee, è riconoscere quelle che arrivano dagli utenti. Qualche volta sono le migliori.
Fatto interessante, è facile scoprire che se sei completamente onesto e autocritico su quanto è dovuto agli altri, il mondo intero ti tratterà come se ogni bit di quell'invenzione fosse opera tua, mentre impari a considerare con sempre maggior modestia il tuo genio innato. Abbiamo visto come tutto ciò abbia funzionato a meraviglia con Linus!

12. Spesso le soluzioni più interessanti e innovative arrivano dal fatto di esserti reso conto come la tua concezione del problema fosse errata.
Morale? Non esitare a buttar via opzioni inanellate una sull'altra quando puoi rimpiazzarle senza perdere in efficienza.

Diceva Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

13. “La perfezione (nel design) si ottiene non quando non c'è nient'altro da aggiungere, ma quando non c'è più niente da togliere."
Quando il codice diventa migliore e più semplice, allora vuol dire che va bene.

14. Ogni strumento dovrebbe rivelarsi utile nella maniera che ci si attende, ma uno strumento davvero ben fatto si presta ad utilizzi che non ci si aspetterebbe mai.

15. Quando si scrive del software per qualunque tipo di gateway, ci si assicuri di disturbare il meno possibile il flusso dei dati – e mai buttar via alcun dato a meno che il destinatario non ti ci costringa!

16. Ma se scrivi programmi per tutto il mondo, devi dare ascolto ai tuoi clienti ed alle loro differenti necessità – e ciò rimane valido anche se non ti ricompensano in denaro.

a volte, all'interno del software, può venire da pensare che potrebbe esser più facile usare qualcosa di simile all'inglese comune piuttosto che un minilinguaggio imperativo. Ora, pur essendo in tanti i convinti fautore della scuola di design del tipo “trasformalo in linguaggio”, come esemplificato da Emacs, dall'HTML e da molti motori di database, generalmente può rivelarsi utile una sintassi in “quasi-inglese”.

Tradizionalmente i programmatori hanno sempre avuto la tendenza a favorire sintassi molto precise e compatte, del tutto prive di ridondanza. Si tratta di un'eredità culturale del tempo in cui le risorse informatiche erano costose, così gli analizzatori dovevano risultare semplici ed economici al massimo grado. Allora l'inglese, con quel 50% di ridondanza, sembrava un modello poco appropriato.

Con l'attuale economicità dei cicli e delle strutture, la pulizia non dovrebbe essere un obiettivo in sé. Al giorno d'oggi è più importante che un linguaggio sia conveniente per gli esseri umani anziché economico per il computer.

Esistono comunque buoni motivi per procedere con cautela. Uno è rappresentato dai costi della complessità dell'analizzatore – non è il caso di aumentare tale complessità fino a raggiungere il punto in cui produrrà bug significativi e confusione nell'utente. Un'altra ragione è che cercare di rendere un linguaggio in quasi-inglese spesso richiede un tale aggiustamento linguistico che le somiglianze superficiali con il linguaggio naturale generino confusione tanto quanto l'eventuale sintassi tradizionale.

il dominio riservato al linguaggio va quindi tenuto estremamente limitato. Non deve avvicinarsi neppure lontanamente a un linguaggio di tipo generale; con espressioni che non sono affatto complicate, e che lasciando quindi poco spazio a potenziali confusioni, quando ci si sposta mentalmente tra un ristretto ambito d'inglese e il linguaggio di controllo vero e proprio.Credo qui si tratti di una lezione di più ampia portata:

17. Quando il linguaggio usato non è affatto vicino alla completezza di Turing, un po' di zucchero sintattico può esserti d'aiuto.

ed infine:

18. Un sistema di sicurezza è sicuro soltanto finché è segreto. Meglio diffidare degli pseudo-segreti.

È alquanto evidente come lo stile bazaar non consenta la scrittura del codice partendo da zero. Si possono fare test, trovare i bug, migliorare il tutto, ma sarebbe molto difficile dar vita dall'inizio a un progetto in modalità bazaar. Linus non lo ha fatto. La nascente comunità di sviluppatori deve avere qualcosa da far girare e con cui giocare.

Quando s'inizia a costruire la comunità, bisogna essere in grado di presentare una promessa plausibile. Non è detto che il programma debba funzionare particolarmente bene. Può anche essere crudo, pieno di bug, incompleto, scarsamente documentato. Non deve però mancare di convincere i potenziali co-sviluppatori che possa evolversi in qualcosa di veramente ben fatto nel prossimo futuro.

Quando Linux e fetchmail venne diffuso pubblicamente, era dotato di un design di base forte e attraente. Molte persone ritengono che il modello bazaar riveli correttamente questa fase critica, per poi da qui saltare alla conclusione che sia indispensabile un elevato livello di intuizione e bravura da parte di chi guida il progetto.

Ma Linus prese il suo design da Unix. È dunque vero che il leader/coordinatore di un progetto in stile bazaar debba possedere un eccezionale talento nel design? Oppure può cavarsela facendo leva sui talenti altrui?
Non è essenziale che il coordinatore possa produrre design eccezionali, ma è assolutamente centrale che sia capace di riconoscere le buone idee progettuali degli altri.

È chiaro che occorrano capacità di un certo livello per il design e il codice. Il mercato interno della reputazione della comunità open source esercita una sottile pressione sulle persone in modo che non si lancino dei progetti se non si è abbastanza competenti per seguirli. Finora quest'approccio ha funzionato piuttosto bene.

Esiste un altro tipo di capacità normalmente non associata allo sviluppo del software, importante al pari della bravura nel design per i progetti bazaar – anzi, forse ancora più importante. Il coordinatore o leader deve essere in grado di comunicare efficacemente con gli altri.
D'altronde è ovvio che per metter su una comunità di sviluppatori occorra attirare gente, coinvolgerli in quel che stai facendo, tenerli contenti per il lavoro che fanno. Lo sfrigolìo tecnico aiuta molto in questo senso, ma è ben lungi dall'esser tutto. È anche importante il tipo di personalità che proietti.

Non è certo una coincidenza che Linus sia un tipo simpatico, capace di piacere alla gente e di farsi aiutare. Per far funzionare il modello a bazaar, aiuta parecchio essere in grado di esercitare almeno un po' di fascino sulla gente.

le migliori operazioni di hacking nascono come soluzioni personali ai problemi quotidiani dell'autore, e si diffondono perchè si scopre che tali problemi sono comuni a molte altre persone. Questo ci riporta indietro alla questione della regola numero uno, riformulata forse in maniera più consona:

19. Per risolvere un problema interessante, comincia a trovare un problema che risvegli il tuo interesse.

In “The Mythical Man-Month”, Fred Brooks osserva come il tempo del programmatore non sia calcolabile; aggiungendo altri sviluppatori ad un progetto in ritardo, lo si fa tardare ancora di più. Secondo lui, i costi della complessità e delle comunicazioni di un progetto crescono esponenzialmente con il numero degli sviluppatori coinvolti, mentre il lavoro cresce soltanto in senso lineare. Quest'affermazione è nota come la “Legge di Brooks”, ed è considerata una verità pressoché universale. Ma se la Legge di Brooks fosse stata l'unica verità, Linux non sarebbe mai esistito.

Il classico di Gerald Weinberg “The Psychology Of Computer Programming” spiega in che modo, a posteriori, sia possibile individuare una vitale correzione alla tesi di Brooks. Parlando di “programmazione senza ego”, Weinberg fa notare come laddove gli sviluppatori non si dimostrano territoriali rispetto al proprio codice, incoraggiando altre persone a cercare bug e offrire miglioramenti, questi ultimi prendono corpo molto più in fretta che altrove.
Ma cosa s'intende esattamente con un certo stile di leadership e quali sarebbero queste usanze cooperative? Intanto, non ci si basa su relazioni di potere – e anche se tali dovessero essere, una leadership fondata sulla costrizione non produrrebbe i risultati che abbiamo visto. Weinberg cita al riguardo l'autobiografia dell'anarchico russo del XIX secolo Pyotr Alexeyvich Kropotkin, “Memorie di un rivoluzionario”:

“Essendo cresciuto in una famiglia che aveva dei servitori, sono entrato nella vita attiva, al pari di tutti i giovani della mia epoca, con un notevole carico di confidenza nella necessità di comandare, impartire ordini, rimproverare, punire. Ma quando, ancora giovane, dovetti gestire degli affari seri e avere a che fare con uomini [liberi], quando ogni errore avrebbe portato da solo a pesanti conseguenze, iniziai ad apprezzare la differenza tra l'agire basato sul principio del comando e della disciplina e l'agire basato sul principio della comprensione condivisa. Il primo funziona mirabilmente in una parata militare, ma non ha valore alcuno allorché si tratta della vita reale, dove ogni obiettivo può essere raggiunto soltanto tramite i duri sforzi di molte volontà convergenti.”

È precisamente i “duri sforzi di molte volontà convergenti” sono quel che un progetto come Linux richiede – e il “principio del comando” è veramente impossibile da praticare tra i volontari di quel paradiso anarchico chiamato Internet. Per operare e competere con efficacia, ogni hacker che voglia guidare progetti collettivi deve imparare come creare e dare energia a reali comunità d'interesse secondo le modalità vagamente suggerite dal “principio della comprensione” citato da Kropotkin. Deve imparare ad usare la Legge di Linus.

l'effetto Delfi potrebbe esser possibile spiegazione della Legge di Linus. Ma si potrebbero anche fare analogie forse più calzanti con i sistemi d'adattamento delle scienze biologiche ed economiche. Sotto molti aspetti il mondo Linux si comporta come un “free market” oppure come un sistema ecologico, una serie di agenti indipendenti che cercando di massimizzare quell'utilitarismo che nel processo va producendo un ordine spontaneo e in grado di auto-correggersi, più elaborato ed efficiente di quanto avrebbe potuto raggiungere qualsiasi pianificazione centralizzata. È dunque questo il luogo dove cercare il “principio della comprensione”.

La “funzione utilitaristica” che gli hacker di Linux vanno massimizzando non è economica in senso classico, quanto piuttosto espressione dell'intangibile, egoistica reputazione e soddisfazione che si guadagna tra gli altri hackers. (La loro motivazione potrebbe essere definita “altruista”, ma ciò significherebbe ignorare il fatto che a ben vedere l'altruismo stesso altro non è che una forma di soddisfazione egoistica). In realtà le culture del lavoro volontario che funzionano in tal modo non sono così rare; un'altra è quella dei fan della fantascienza, che al contrario del giro hacker riconosce esplicitamente come motore propulsore dietro tale attività volontaria proprio il cosiddetto “egoboo” (l'esaltazione della reputazione individuale tra gli altri fan).

Linus, posizionandosi con successo come filtro di un progetto nel quale il lavoro è in gran parte svolto da altri, ealimentando interesse nel progetto stesso finché non arriva ad auto-alimentarsi, ha dimostrato di aver acutamente fatto proprio il “principio della comprensione condivisa” di Kropotkin. Questa visione quasi-economica del mondo Linux ci consente di vedere come applicare tale comprensione.

È possibile ritenere il metodo di Linus come un modo per creare un mercato efficiente all'interno dell'egoboo – per collegare nel modo più sicuro possibile l'egoismo dei singoli hacker con quegli obiettivi difficili che possono essere raggiunti soltanto grazie alla concreta cooperazione collettiva.

Molte persone (soprattutto quanti politicamente diffidano del “free market”) immaginavano che una cultura di egoisti auto-referenziale si rivelasse frammentaria, territoriale, sprecona, segreta, ostile. Ma tale aspettativa viene chiaramente confutata (per fornire un solo esempio) dalla notevole varietà, qualità e profondità della documentazione relativa a Linux. Se è un dato di fatto che i programmatori odiano lavorare sulla documentazione, com'è allora che gli hacker di Linux ne producono di così copiosa? Evidentemente il “free market dell'egoboo” di Linux funziona meglio nella produzione di comportamenti virtuosi, diretti verso gli altri, rispetto a quei negozi dei produttori di software commerciale che si occupano della documentazione, avendo alle spalle massicci finanziamenti.

dando la giusta ricompensa all'ego di molti altri hacker, un bravo sviluppatore/coordinatore può utilizzare Internet per catturare i vantaggi dell'avere a disposizione molti co-sviluppatori senza che il progetto si frantumi in una confusione caotica. Ecco quindi una controproposta alla Legge di Brooks:

20: Stabilito che il coordinatore dello sviluppo abbia a disposizione un medium almeno altrettanto affidabile di Internet, e che sappia come svolgere il ruolo di leader senza costrizione, molte teste funzionano inevitabilmente meglio di una sola.

il futuro del software open source apparterrà allora sempre più alle persone che sanno come giocare al gioco di Linus, persone che si lasceranno alle spalle la cattedrale per entrare nel bazaar. Ciò non significa che non saranno più importanti le visioni e l'intelligenza individuali; piuttosto la punta avanzata del software open source apparterrà a quanti sapranno muovere da visioni e intelligenza individuali per poi amplificarle tramite l'effettiva costruzione di comunità volontarie d'interesse.

E forse ciò vale non soltanto per il futuro del software open source. Nessuno sviluppatore in “closed-source” potrà mai pareggiare la fucina di talenti che la comunità Linux è in grado di riunire per affrontare un problema.

Forse alla fine la cultura dell'open source trionferà non perchè la cooperazione sia moralmente giusta o perché il software “costretto” sia moralmente sbagliato (dando per scontato che si creda a quest'ultima affermazione, cosa chenemmeno Linus fa), ma semplicemente perché il mondo “closed-source” non è in grado di vincere la corsa agli armamenti dell'evoluzione contro quelle comunità open source capaci di affrontare un problema con tempi e capacità superiori di diversi ordini di grandezza.

You Know You're In Design Hell When You See...

blinking text
    Blinking text makes it nearly impossible to pay attention to anything else on the page. It reduces 87% of all surfers to a helpless state of fixated brain-lock, much like that of a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming semi. This is not good. If you abuse the blink tag, you deserve to be shot. Clue: if you use the blink tag, you're abusing it.

gratuitous animation
    With animations you get the all the wonderful injuries of the blink tag with the added insult of the graphics download time. People who abuse these should have flip books rammed into every bodily orifice until they figure out that a two- or three-frame graphics loop is even less pleasant than that.

marquees
    So, maybe you think the blink tag and cheesy animations are the worst abuse half-bright websmiths can perpetrate on your retinas? Naaahhhhh. For those times when too much is just not enough, the Great Satan of Redmond has given us <MARQUEE>, which allows you to create animated scrolling marquees at the drop of an angle bracket. This bastard cousin of the blink tag can cause vertigo and seizures in susceptible individuals, reducing them to exactly that state of drooling lobotomized idiocy that's such an essential prerequisite to purchasing Microsoft products. Coincidence? We think not.

garish backgrounds
    The very next time we stumble across a page composed by somebody who thinks it's cool to use leaping flames or a big moire pattern or seven shades of hot pink swirly as a background, we swear we are going to reach right through the screen and rip out that festering puke's throat. If there's a worse promoter of eyestrain and migraines than the blink tag, this is it.

unreadable text/background combinations
    The world is full of clowns who think their text pages look better in clown makeup, clashing colors galore (your typical garish-background idiot also pulls this one a lot). The magic words these losers need to learn are "luminance contrast". Your color sense is between you and the Gods of Bad Taste, but if you don't stick to either light text on dark backgrounds or the reverse, you will drive away surfers who like to be able to read without suffering eye-burn.

brushscript headings
    Brushscript headings are rude. Unless, that is, you think every single surfer hitting your page truly craves the opportunity to hang out long enough to watch toenails grow while a brushscript GIF downloads just to display a heading you could have uttered in a nice, tasteful, fast font.

"Best viewed with..."
    Ah, yes, "Best viewed with..." — surest sign of an incompetent web designer (unless it's one of the parody buttons from the Viewable with Any Browser campaign). This kind of lameness is not just bad taste, it makes the site actually unusable for the large numbers of surfers who happen to be using something other than the designer's favorite browser. Unfortunately, the sort of people who do "Best viewed with..." is also usually way too stupid to get the point if you try to explain that HTML is supposed to be about device-independence — so pull them by the guilt-strings and point out that blind people surf too. If that doesn't work, club them to death with a chair leg or something. No court would convict.

"resize your browser to..." instructions
    Right. As if we wanted our browsers to take up that big a chunk of screen real estate. But what's really annoying is that invariably these bozos get it wrong. Like, their browser has an 8-pixel offset, ours eats 20, and they forgot to allow for scroll bars so they're off by at least 30 pixels anyway and the display graphics are complete garbage.

large fixed-size tables
    This one is often brought to you by the same idiots who so love "resize your browser to..." instructions. Hello? Hello? Would somebody explain to me how it escapes these people that the world is inhabited by lots of people with different sized displays, and that tables flow for a reason? Sigh...

unnecessary border spacing
    In this particularly moronic variant of large fixed-size tables, the designer puts the entire web page in a table and pads the edges with empty columns of a fixed width. Duh. This is a sure sign that he or she is one of those pathetic desktop-publishing weenies who thinks HTML is a page description language. Hanging's too good for them...

Pointless use of <small> or <font size=>
    If we wanted our text to be unreadably tiny, we'd have told our browser to display it that way. This one mugs viewers with 20" and 21" screens particularly hard; since most fonts are scaled for 72dpi they're already 30% smaller than they ought to be at 100dpi. Anybody who use these tags for running text should be compressed by 30% themselves, slowly, and preferably in a machine with big nasty spikes.

masturbation with Javascript
    There is a large class of Javascript annoyances perpetrated by people whose ability to do cutting and pasting exceeds their negligible sense of taste. Of these, one of the most common is the script that scrolls text in the Netscape status line. To all the disadvantages of <MARQUEE> this one adds the fact that you can't see where links go any more. Better than that, pages with 25K of Javascript followed by < 5K of actual content; these pages, of course, are invariably hosted on slow servers so you can experience the pleasure of waiting for Javascript to load just so you can see a cutesy animated menu bar or something equivalently useless. In general, any page whose source has more Javascript than content should be sent to the recycle bin.

unnecessary use of Java
    There is one thing worse than your average garden-variety idiot web designer, and that is the half-clever idiot who loves to ring in all the latest technology without stopping to think about its side-effects. One notorious Fortune 100 website, when it detects a Netscape browser, assumes you must be able to support a fancy Java search applet — and if you have Java turned off for security reasons, you can't search the site, because the perfectly adequate CGI search you'd get if you were using Lynx has been disabled. Moral: Keep It Simple, Stupid!

pop-up windows
    Some particularly irritating designers have discovered the magic formula that causes your browser to spawn a new window when you click on a link — or worse, ways to make pop-up windows appear even if all all you're trying to do is exit their wretched hive of scum and villainy as rapidly as you can find the Back button. Stay in your own window, dammit! The Web is supposed to be about viewer control; designers who persist in rudely grabbing pieces of the viewer's screenspace without permission deserve to be lashed with knouts.

menus made entirely from image maps
    Clue: lots of people use text-only browsers like lynx, either because they want to (for speed) or because they have to (visual impairment, or lack of a graphics display). An entire page that shows up only as "[ISMAP]-[IMAGE]" is useless. Designers who can't be bothered to at least provide a link to an alternate text menu are, at the very least, guilty of laziness and thoughtlessness. Huge image-maps are bad even for graphical browsers; they're slow-loading and needlessly frustrate users. And a frustrated user is a gone user.

CSS that sets fixed-size fonts dimensioned in pixels
    This is the idiot web designer's favorite way to make a site unreadable on a monitor with a finer dot pitch than the one he/she happened to use. Guess what happens when you set a 10 or 11px font on a 72dpi monitor and it gets viewed on a 120dpi monitor? That's right, instant eyestrain and another user cursing your name. This problem is going to get worse as displays get larger and finer-grained.

CSS that changes the hotlink colors
    Isn't it fun when you surf to a page and your eyes stall out trying to figure out which piece of text are hotlinks? That underlined blue and purple are valuable navigational cues in the Web jungle. If the page has multi-colored links or links that are not easily distinguishable, then this is another case where overriding the browser's settings should be punishable by intimate acquaintance with a flensing knife.

background MIDI, Flash, Shockwave, and other abominations
    Background music takes forever to load, and isn't portable. Flash and Shockwave take forever to load, aren't portable, and are proprietary formats that lock you into a single vendor. When you insult your viewers with crap like this, don't expect them back.

You Know You're In Content Hell When You See...

hit counters
    "You are the 2,317th visitor to this page." Yeah, like we care. On Yahoo's and Alta Vista's web it takes no effort at all to find and bounce off every page on the planet with a reference to (say) credenzas or toe jam. In this brave new world, hit counters are nothing but a particularly moronic form of ego display, impressing only the lemming-minded. They may tell you how many people got suckered into landing on a glitzy splash page, but they won't even hint how many muttered "losers!" and surfed out again faster than you can say "mouse click". To add injury to insult, hit counters screw up page caching, heaping more load on the Internet's wires.

guestbooks
    If we have something to say to you, we'll send you mail. Having a guestbook is lame and only demonstrates that the designer is not thinking about what happens when you nudge people to write something, anything. Of course, 95% or more of what guestbooks collect is inane drivel.

stale links
    Stale links are lame. People who have lots of stale links are lamers. OK, everybody has a pointer vaporize on them once in a while — but haven't you noticed that stale links generally show up on a page in swarms, like cockroaches? That's because people with good web pages use them and hack them and fix broken pointers quickly so they're unlikely to have more than a few at a time busted. A page with lots of stale links yells "My author is a lazy, out-of-it loser with the attitude of a slumlord running a cockroach palace."

pages forever under construction
    Surfers learn quickly that for every ten "under construction" signs that go up, maybe two will ever come down before the heat-death of the Universe. This is stupid. HTML is not rocket science and prototyping pages is not a slow process. Anybody who can't find the time to clean the construction signs off their pages should yank them and take up a hobby better matched to their abilities, like (say) drooling, or staring at the wall.

You Know You're In Style Hell When You See...

pointless vanity pages
    If we had a nickel for every home page we've seen that's a yawn-inducing variation on "Hi, here's me and here's a cute picture of my dog/cat/boyfriend/girlfriend" we could retire to Aruba with a bevy of supermodels tomorrow. Clue: if you don't have something to say, shut up. And keep it off the Web; life is too short for boredom.

angst and pretentiousness
    We were originally going to vent our spleen at black backgrounds, until we realized that black is not the problem. It's the three overlapping populations of losers that compose 99% of the black backgrounds on the Web that are the problem. These are (a) cooler-than-thou art fags, (b) angst-ridden adolescents, and (c) the kind of coffeehouse trendoids who actually believe subscribing to Wired makes them hip. Clue: angst and pretentiousness are boring. People who spew bad poetry and/or make a fetish of writing in all-smalls and/or traffic in fuzzy images of mediocre avant-garde art should slit their wrists or join a commune or do anything else that will keep their self-indulgent sludge off the Web.

corporate logorrhea
    We've all seen them — corporate pages that start by downloading some monster logo graphic from hell. And after you've waited a million or three years for it to finish, the rest of the page has a ton of gush about how wonderful the company is, maybe some lame-oid promotion that's just a hook to get you on their mailing list, and no content at all. Tip for marketroids: this is not effective, unless your goal is to make the company look like every other moronic me-too outfit that thinks having a Web address will make it look like it has some semblance of a clue. Not!

advertisements from hell
    Don't you love top of the page ads that are changed every time the page is accessed? If you're jumping back and forth between a parent page and a child devoted to a subcategory, you get the dubious pleasure of waiting for a new ad graphic to load each time!

no email address for feedback
    These folks want you to look and listen to them, but they don't want to hear from you. Isn't it interesting that half the Web pages of Fortune 500 companies, the big names like McDonald's, won't tell you what their email address is? Shows you just how much these gutless wonders really value their customers. Another tip for marketroids: this sort of thing makes your company look exactly as arrogant, stupid, and indifferent to its customers as it actually is. Think of an email feedback address as a sort of necessary disguise.

cookie storms
    Lots of web users don't want strangers dropping little turds on their disk drives so they can be tracked, scanned, collated, and sold. Lots of users therefore set their browsers to query them before setting a cookie. Lots of users become extremely annoyed at pages that flood them with cookie requests. Clue: if the user rejects your first cookie, he doesn't want a second or a forty-ninth — cope with this gracefully. Any web designer who fields pages that generate cookie storms should be disemboweled with a dull pruning knife pour encourager les autres.

You Know You're In Extension Hell When You See...

broken HTML
    A lot of broken HTML gets inflicted on the world because it happens to get past the brain-damaged `parser' of everyone's favourite bloatware web browser. The designer gets the perversity prize if he can provoke radically different behaviour in different browsers or browser versions.

Microsoft's `smart quotes'
    Another sure sign of Microsoft brain damage — questionmarks showing up where single or double quotes ought to be. Here?s an example, doesn?t it look illiterate? Clue: shut off the so-called "smart quotes" feature in your Microsoft Word, moron. It generates Microsoft-specific characters that aren't in the Latin-1 character set; many browsers (rightly) throw up their hands in horror at this. There is a cure.

unstable extensions
    We just love it when our browser freezes while loading a page, hangs for a while, and then ignominiously coredumps. When this happens, you can bet money the page is using a Netbloat extension nobody ever bothered to debug properly (there are a semi-infinite number of these). The worst offender is undoubtedly...

frames
    We used to say "frames are for idiots", back when they tanked most browsers. Bordered frames still are; they eat up precious screen space with frame widget cruft. We now grudgingly concede that borderless frames have their uses — but if you do them, do them right. Frames that can't be bookmarked still suck, and links that don't replace the whole page when you jump offsite suck even worse. Use frames with extreme caution.

Improving your web page

"Okay," I hear you saying, "so you've given me good advice on how not to screw up. Have you got anything more positive to say? Like, good things to do and how I can improve my page?" For you, my friend, I have three words. Content, content, and content. Give the audience a reason to care. Too many web pages are like tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Do you want to be interesting? Then forget the glitz. First and foremost, have something to say.
Suggestions?

 

mea culpa: also most of my works are affected by at least one of this abominations. ok: i am working on this. please forgive me.

post scriptum: Please do not write asking me to review or correct your web page design. I have enough trouble finding time to maintain my own web pages, let alone other peoples'. You might be able to change my mind with lots of money, payable in advance. thanks.

mia sorella possiede un acer aspire 3000. vuoi per il prezzo competitivo, vuoi per l'inesperienza (prima di comprare qualsiasi cosa di elettronico, leggete cosa ne dice la gente su internet!) s'è portata a casa un'autentica b-busta.

il computer è lento, possiede solo 256 mega di ram. è un 3000+ amd, in verità viaggia a 1.7ghz, o almeno così dicono.
accensione, caricamento e spegnimento sono un'odissea: il mio vecchio 866, stracolmo e anche lui con windows xp, ci metteva molto meno.

già alla prima settimana di funzionamento, si disinstallano da soli i drivers della scheda audio, ed appare sul desktop lo sfondo di errore "riattiva active desktop". la batteria inoltre dura al massimo 30 minuti.
dopo qualche tempo, comincia a non funzionare il mouse e la tastiera, e scopro che è per via della batteria. rimuovendola infatti, tutto torna normale. anche se, inglobato nel packaging della batteria, c'è uno dei quattro piedini del portatile: togliendo la batteria il portatile resta sbilanciato ed oscilla sul piano, ed è scomodo scrivere. e comunque a questo punto mia sorella possiede un portatile che può funzionare solo con alimentazione a parete, quindi non è più un portatile. pazienza.

il colmo arriva con il malfunzionamento del plug dell'alimentatore: basta un piccolo spostamento, ed il pc si spegne, essendo senza batteria. per piccolo spostamento intendo anche l'urto di un piccolo oggetto, come un telefono, sul tavolino.
il portatile diventa inutilizzabile: va appoggiato su un piano abbastanza orizzontale ed assolutamente sfiorato con le mani. chiudere il cassetto del masterizzatore o inserire una pendrive causano spesso lo spegnimento.
tutte queste improvvise mancanze di corrente elettrica danneggiano poi l'hardisk, che si riempie di errori di windows. per non parlare del lavoro perduto e delle lunghe attese per scandisk.

ho deciso allora di acquistare una nuova batteria, almeno per evitare il problema dello spegnimento: 150 euro. un assoluto furto!
decido poi di rivolgermi all'assistenza per la riparazione del jack dell'alimentazione sulla scheda madre, ma:

- il centro assistenza è uno solo, a milano;

- il numero di telefono è a pagamento: 15 centesimi al minuto e ti fanno ovviamente aspettare ore;

- sono necessari 45 euro di controllo preventivo, spedizione a carico esclusa, più 100 euro di riparazione. con i 150 euro della batteria fanno praticamente il prezzo di un altro pc.

cosa dire: assolutamente vi ordino di non acquistare acer.
la qualità generale dell'elettronica è pessima. il servizio ancor di più ed a prezzi esorbitanti.
sono computer portatili usa e getta, come le epson per la stampa a getto d'inchiostro.

ci manca solo che prenda fuoco. dopo questo il pc acer avrà fatto davvero tutto.

ps: questa storia è abbastanza comune. date un'occhiata su internet. diciamo basta all'elettronica usa e getta, inquina l'ambiente e causa grande frustrazione nell'utente. maledico acer: che fallisca oggi stesso con tutti i suoi tecnici e dipendenti.

possiedo due psone: quella di carletto, che aveva il plug dell'alimentazione rotto, e quella di giacomino, con la modifica.
il primo modello di playstation, cosiddetta psx, e la sua versione rimpicciolita, la psone, differiscono solo per le protezioni hardware implementate.
vengono effettuati sostanzialmente due controlli: uno atto a verificare se il gioco è originale, l'altro per controllare il codice regione. il modchip risolve il primo, il boot cd il secondo.

condizione necessaria per utilizzare giochi masterizzati pal è aver installato il modchip.
condizione necessaria per utilizzare giochi ntsc usa o japan è avere un disco di boot.
condizione necessaria per utilizzare il boot cd è aver installato il modchip.

installare un modchip di tipo stealth non è difficile. costa 5/10 euro, le istruzioni sono incluse nell'acquisto. è chiamato stealth perchè si disattiva automaticamente quando non è richiesto, e questo fa si che alcuni giochi con protezioni contro di esso, non si accorgano della sua presenza. una volta riassemblata la consolle, il lettore ottico leggerà i dischi masterizzati. masterizzati correttamente, e non è cosa da poco.

materizzare (si, si: renderli materia) i giochi è un'alchimia. è facile procurarseli, utilizzando le parole chiave [playstation] / [psx] / [ps] / [psone] + pal + ita / eng.
bisogna fare attenzione alla provenienza del gioco: europeo, americano, giapponese, segnalati in genere con [E], [U], [J]. attenzione anche alla lingua perchè ci sono casi in cui il gioco ne contiene solo una: personalmente al limite gioco in spagnolo (il tedesco proprio non lo capisco), ma preferisco italiano ed inglese.
fate prima una ricerca per scaricare solo i giochi che val la pena giocare, allineati ovviamente ai vostri gusti*.

una volta scaricati vi si presenteranno sottoforma di file immagine (bin+cue, iso, img+bin+ccd).
i programmi utili sono clonecd (scrive correttamente dalle immagini) ed alcohol 120% (possiede un profilo di masterizzazione proprio per playstation). è necessario comunque fare delle prove: nelle prime 6 ore, ho scritto 8 cd inutili su 40.
il succo è che i dischi vanno scritti raw-dao mode2, senza correzioni di jitter effettuate dal programma e con lettura delle sottotracce. in alcuni casi è necessario montare l'immagine su daemon tools, per poi effettuare una copia disco con il programma scelto.
procuratevi 50 dischi di discreta qualità, scriveteli a velocità bassa (2x).

il terzo passo è scrivere il boot cd per usare i giochi di provenienza estera.
ne troverete a bizzeffe, in minuscole immagini, ma solo un paio sono validi. appena posso posto dei link.
scrivete il disco con alcohol, inseritelo nella playstation normalmente. aspettate il caricamento avvenuto. comparirà un menù con la modifica della regione ed anche l'utilizzo di cheats. scordatevi i secondi ed agite sul primo. premete su gioca, inserite il disco del gioco straniero ed è fatta.

dimenticate il fatto del disco da far girare con il cassettino aperto, e da sostituire con il gioco.
esistono infine piccoli programmi per convertire le immagini dei giochi da ntsc a pal, ma si fa prima ad utilizzare il boot disc.

altre note hardware:
- è possibile utilizzare i pad della playstation sul computer tramite un apposito hub usb, che prende in ingresso due controller. idem per i vecchi joypad e sterzi con cavo seriale. prezzi modici: 10 euro.
- è possibile trovare in vendita tutte le parti di ricambio del lettore ottico a prezzi sotto i 20 euro.
- è possibile trovare su ebay giochi a 5 euro, controller dualshock a 10 euro, pistola gcon a 35 euro.
- esiste una versione per sviluppatori della playstation psx, si chiama yaroze. la consolle è grigio scuro/nera invece di grigio chiaro. contiene cavi per interfacciarla al computer via seriale, manuali di programmazione per giochi per playstation, dischi di boot speciali. è una serie limitata e può arrivare a costare 700 euro su ebay.

* nota sulla selezione dei giochi: posso farvi una lista dei miei giochi preferiti, tuttavia sottolineando che proprio perchè mi piacciono cerco di averli originali.

assoluti capolavori:
parappa the rapper
final fantasy vii
final fantasy viii
final fantasy ix
point blank 1-2-3
crash bandicoot 3 warped
spyro 3 year of the dragon
dino crisis 2die hard trilogy
chrono cross
rayman
rayman 2 the great escape
tekken 3
wing commander iv the price of freedom
metal gear solid
castelvania chronicles
worms world party
tombi!
silent hill
ridge racer type4
resident evil director's cut
resident evil 2
persona 2 ethernal punishment
street fighter alpha 3
syphon filter 3
oddworld abe's exodus
myst
bust a move 4
dance dance revolution
metal slug x
armored core
twisted metal 4
harvest moon back to nature
harvest moon back to nature for girls
final fantasy tactics
castlevania simphony of the night
ape escape


giochi in forse:
grandia
pro pinball timeshock
crash team racing
diablo
armored core master of arena
vigilante 8
vagrant story
megaman legends 2
rayman rush
destruction derby
carmageddon
hot shots golf 2
r-type delta
time crisis
fifa 2004
the next tetris
worms pinball
super pang collection
bugs bunny e taz time busters
bomberman world
spyro the dragon
capcom generations 2 chronicles of arthur
gundam battle assault
final fantasy origins
tenchu
legend of mana
alundra
bubble bobble rainbow islands
medievil 1-2
pandemonium 2

questi i giochi che non ho trovato e che desidererei provare:
lsd
backstreet billiards
magical drop
roll away

questi i giochi per pistola (i tipi di pistola ufficiali sono due: namco guncon e konami justifier) :
Area 51 (Justifier)
Crypt Killer (Justifier)
Die Hard Trilogy (Justifier)
Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas (Justifier/Guncon)
Elemental Gearbolt (Justifier/GunCon)
Ghoul Panic (GunCon)
Gunfighter: The Legend of Jesse James (GunCon)
Judge Dredd (Guncon)
Lethal Enforcers 1&2 (Justifier)
Maximum Force (Justifier/GunCon)[11]
Moorhuhn series (GunCon)
Point Blank series (GunCon)
Project Horned Owl (Justifier)
Rescue Shot (GunCon)
Resident Evil: Gun Survivor (JPN/PAL versions) (GunCon)
Time Crisis (GunCon)
Time Crisis: Project Titan (GunCon)

in più ci sono gli introvabili per pistola:
Gunball Japanese
GunBullet Japanese
Guntu Western Front June, 1994
Revolution X

attenzione: queste regole sono riferite a chi (utente windows) produce contenuti per internet (grafica, video, audio, testo, software) e quindi si ritrova miriadi di piccoli files in strutture che devono essere gerarchiche. inoltre, per grandi quantità di dati si intende 1+terabytes, anche se l'idea è applicabile a scala più ridotta, in vista del prosieguo della vostra esistenza digitale.

ed ecco a voi i sette metodi d'oro (ehm...) per gestire enormi quantità di dati nell'epoca in cui si scarica veramente di tutto!
se siete qui, disordinati cronici, avete intuito che è il caso di seguire qualche regola nell'organizzare i vostri dati.
anche perchè, come è successo a me, nel caso in cui vadano perduti c'è ben poco da esser contenti. cerchiamo quindi di rendere indolore un futuro ripristino (i facimm'e'ccuorn).

ps: se scaricate solo .mp3, metteteveli nell'i-pod o nello zen che fate prima.
e leggete un altro articolo a piacere. tipo questo.

regola base: più hard disk

comprate più hard disk.
non vi sto parlando di raid (a meno che non abbiate un raid5 o facciate supercalcolo, risparmiatevi i soldi), vi sto parlando di dividere i vostri dati su più superfici diverse.

su un hard disk mettete i dati su cui state lavorando, sull'altro le risorse che utilizzate per il vostro lavoro, sul terzo le altre storie di piacere.

e tenete a mente che spostare dati tra due partizioni dello stesso hard disk è un processo lento: spostarli tra due hard disk diversi è molto più veloce.

regola uno: dividere in zone d'interesse con area di parcheggio

lo so: sembra ovvio, ma non si sa mai...
ho visto gente con 280 giga nella cartella documenti, che si lamentava perchè aprendola si bloccava explorer.exe, e che poteva navigarla solo con l'esplora risorse di winrar (perchè? perchè non estrae alcun dato dai files, ma si limita a visualizzarne nome e tipo. quindi non sta lì a cercare di darvi una qualche inutile anteprima...).

dividete i files scaricati in macroaree, in cui infilare le selezioni e (sempre!) una cartella in cui parcheggiare i files nuovi prima della catalogazione definitiva. come esempio posso portare la mia suddivisione:

- biblioteca:
contiene libri .pdf e dejavu, a loro volta divisi in aree tematiche (elettronica, mems e scienza dei materiali, algebra, interior design, tipografia, programmazione, webdesign e marketing, manuali di software, linux, arte, scacchi, dungeons and dragons, fotografia, origami, scienze varie, romanzi e saggi, articoli e seminarii).
eliminate subito i doppioni (vi basta ordinarli per dimensione: quelli con dimensione uguale...) e scegliete la versione migliore del libro che siete riusciti a scaricare (che non sempre è la più pesante! perchè qualora non sia chiaro, questo articolo sottende una sottile linea di pensiero: conserviamo e collezioniamo files che non abbiamo nemmeno mai aperto. e che non apriremo mai.).
non dimenticate di fare una selezione delle cose più urgenti in una cartella del tipo "robe da leggere" (le nuove letture sono sempre illuminanti: così sapete subito dove andare quelle volte in cui accendete il computer e non sapete cosa fare di preciso, oppure quando non avete voglia di far nulla).

- fonts:
scegliete font nuovi solo a patto di toglierne qualcuno vecchio.
tenete il numero di fonts basso e stampatevi un fontbook. un limite gestibile nella vostra testa e con un fontbook è tra 1.500 e 2.000 tipi di carattere. comunque non installatene più di 1.500 sul vostro computer.
consiglio mio: meglio prediligere .otf di famiglie estese con legature, invece di una collezione di dingbats pesantissimi.

- audio:
dividete tutto in cartelle per nome artista, poi anno del disco - nome del disco, e dentro gli .mp3. in questo modo si ordina tutto anche per data.
personalmente, non mi fido dei vari jukebox o i-tunes: sono noiosi da compilare. meglio le (e anche per questo ho uno zen) cartelle!
è inevitabile in definitiva una cartella "musica sparsa e variegata - non classificata o non classificabile". ma abbiate il coraggio ogni tanto di andarvi a risentire i dischi che avete ascoltato poco: se scoprite che non vale la pena averli ancora nell'hard disk cancellateli senza pietà.

- video:
i film è il caso di non tenerli nella root di un hard disk, altrimenti si apre domani.
nel mio caso spesso vanno a farsi (ehm...) un giro appena li ho visti: mettete su un dvd solo quel a cui siete veramente affezionati.

- vjing:
inserite animazioni flash, video .flv e .mov divisi.
dividete già tutto il materiale in banchi da trenta filmati a tema, vi tornerà utile la sera che sarete live.
e fatevi una cartella con i modificatori live (se non sapete cosa sono, saltate senza remore al prossimo punto!). se poi usate max / msp / jitter... una regola ancora non ce l'ho per come organizzare le patch! aiuto! :)

- archivio lavori finiti:
dividete in cartelle i vostri capolavori, e scordateveli allegramente su un hard disk sicuro che usate poco.
vabbè: ogni tanto riaccendetelo per darci un'occhiata però!

- immagini varie:
quelle cose che salvate perchè vi ispirano.
dividetele in temi, campi di ricerca, colori. qui le cose si fanno davvero difficili.
comunque mai mettere tutto nella stessa cartella: provate voi ad avere un file thumb.db con dentro l'anteprima di 30+ gigabytes (prometto che non lo faccio più) di immagini.

- immagini stock / vettori stock:
meglio tenerli separati.
ai vettori stock .ai / .eps è necessario affiancare l'anteprima.jpg: salvatela con lo stesso nome del vettore ed ordinate la cartella per nome.

- templates:
salvate solamente i templates su cui volete mettere mano.
avere mezzo catalogo di template monster sul computer serve davvero a poco.
quando li guardate, non fidatevi della grafica e dei colori così come vengono, out-of-the-box. pensate piuttosto se vi piace il layout, come sono disposte le cose tra di loro, se sono chiare. ci vuole un attimo a cambiarne l'aspetto.

- non dimenticate:
directories d'appoggio tipo "roba appena scaricata" tornano sempre utili, in caso vogliate velocemente liberare spazio sul vostro hard disk principale.

regola due: cartelle di swap mensili

sull'hard disk dei vostri lavori, copiate periodicamente il vostro intero desktop diviso per mesi, creando cartelle del tipo 200802swap_febbraio. potrete dimenticare la collocazione delle miriadi di file che create, ma difficilmente dimenticherete che mese era quando ci stavate lavorando.

quando finite un progetto, andate a raccimolare nei vari mesi tutti i files inerenti, ed archiviateli tra i lavori finiti. magari in un bel .rar.

regola tre: archivi compressi scaricati

nel caso di template di siti internet, o di codice software, in cui la gerarchia delle cartelle va mantenuta: scompattate il tutto (se i files sono pochi potete aprirli direttamente dall'archivio compresso, ma quando la quantità di files contenuti nell'archivio aumenta il processo diventa lentissimo), mantenete uno screenshot del template dandogli lo stesso nome dell'archivio, e cancellate immediatamente le cartelle estratte.
se la roba non vi convince anche per un capello, cestinate tutto.
è molto utile mantenere l'archivio perchè in caso di perdita di dati (master file table corrotta ad esempio, che fa perdere tutta la gerarchia delle cartelle) sarà più facile recuperarlo.
e comunque resta più maneggevole nell'archiviazione e spostamento (salvare o spostare cartelle con un gran numero di file piccole è un processo lento; spostare un file singolo grande è più veloce).

in caso di archivi contenenti altri tipi di files, come i fonts, scompattate gli archivi, scremate il contenuto, spostate le robe buone nella cartella apposita, cancellate la fuffa ed i file .rar / .zip stessi.

regola quattro: tagliare invece di copiare (la cosa più importante)

l'unico modo istintivo per non avere duplicati e far ordine fin da subito è spostare i files tra un hard disk e l'altro solo tramite taglia / incolla (il drag'n'drop equivale a copia / incolla, e se poi cancellate i files a mano ci state mettendo un 20% in più di tempo!).

case study: scompattate un archivio, selezionate i contenuti, li mettete al loro posto, ritrovate in seguito la copia di quello stesso archivio (ma nel frattempo avevate dimenticato il suo nome) e per senso di completezza non ve lo fate sfuggire, perchè se lo avevate scaricato chissà cosa era d'importante. vi ritrovate così a scremare gli stessi font del mese precedente, per poi buttarli nella cartella "fonts buoni" e scoprire che già li avevate scelti.

regola cinque: la prova del nove

come nove: non era la cinque?!

cancellate i file sorgente pesanti che non servono, i doppioni, le sottoversioni.
ma quelli che servono: manteneteli!

case study: ho un amico che ogni volta che finisce un progetto... lo cancella. bisogna esser scemi. prima o poi vi tornerà utile, è tutto lavoro che vi anticipate. infatti lui ogni volta ricomincia da capo, tra l'altro con una certa dose di insulti.

regola sei: velocità

creare percorsi con cartelle annidate massimo tre / quattro volte.
altrimenti rischiate di sovra-classificare ogni cosa e rallentate la ricerca.

regola sette: backup backup!

nonostante un hard disk sia decisamente più sicuro di un dvd o cd che sia, il backup su disco è imprescindibile per le cose importanti.

backup vuol dire "fare una copia di sicurezza", non "scrivere su disco e cancellare dall'hard disk".
quest'ultimo comportamento ha un'altro nome: si chiama "liberiamoci dei files non importanti che avrei dovuto/potuto/voluto cancellare ma che preferisco tenere a fare la polvere nella libreria".
certo, poi non potete pretendere che il disco possa esser letto da tutti i lettori del mondo, nè che lo riusciate a rileggere voi stessi cinque anni dopo. ma in caso vi si rompa l'hard disk, avete una grande speranza. il passato digitale è un peso che conviene portarsi dietro.

post scriptum per i malati sysop

scordatevi di mettere tutto il mondo sul vostro spazio su server noleggiato dal provider xyz. anche quello si può rompere e non vi rimborsano nulla.

post scriptum sull'ordinamento dei files

poichè il computer - vostro schiavo - è abbastanza scemo, vi conviene ordinare i files con date preposte ove necessario (esempio: richiamare immagini che rappresentano eventi da un archivio storico per inserirle in un cms): 2008_06_17_nomefile.est è un esempio. puntate a nomi più brevi possibile: personalmente tolgo spazi, trattini ed underscores.

e mi fanno stranire i files che scarico con nomi lunghi 1.982 caratteri.

se cercate un programma per rinominare in blocco files, consiglio lupas rename.

ovvero - per l'utente italiano - i siti imperdibili per aprire gli occhi e dire "conosco il web due punto zero" (citazione!). e anche altre frasi tipo: "...ma che figata!", "ah, ho visto tante volte quell'iconcina senza assolutamente chiedermi cosa fosse..." oppure "utile!" e perdere intere nottate. sconsiglio twitter e second life, causano dipendenza.

this is part of my actual research: understanding the leading concepts behind every one of these successful stories in web2.0. i am writing an article about "dusting & tyding up the internet with fun". [ ;) ]

you are invited to visit the subsequent websites, too. please help me and comment about things you like in these websites or services.

from information architects - japan, my love.

what is the feature you like most between the websites in this list?
comment, comment, comment!

you've got to know these notorious hackers, famous for wreaking havoc and driving technological innovation.

The portrayal of hackers in the media has ranged from the high-tech super-spy, as in Mission Impossible where Ethan Hunt repels from the ceiling to hack the CIA computer system and steal the "NOC list," to the lonely anti-social teen who is simply looking for entertainment.

The reality, however, is that hackers are a very diverse bunch, a group simultaneously blamed with causing billions of dollars in damages as well as credited with the development of the World Wide Web and the founding of major tech companies. In this article, we test the theory that truth is better than fiction by introducing you to ten of the most famous hackers, both nefarious and heroic, to let you decide for yourself.

Black Hat Crackers

The Internet abounds with hackers, known as crackers or "black hats," who work to exploit computer systems. They are the ones you've seen on the news being hauled away for cybercrimes. Some of them do it for fun and curiosity, while others are looking for personal gain. In this section we profile five of the most famous and interesting "black hat" hackers.

1. Jonathan James
James gained notoriety when he became the first juvenile to be sent to prison for hacking. He was sentenced at 16 years old. In an anonymous PBS interview, he professes, "I was just looking around, playing around. What was fun for me was a challenge to see what I could pull off".

James's major intrusions targeted high-profile organizations. He installed a backdoor into a Defense Threat Reduction Agency server. The DTRA is an agency of the Department of Defense charged with reducing the threat to the U.S. and its allies from nuclear, biological, chemical, conventional and special weapons. The backdoor he created enabled him to view sensitive emails and capture employee usernames and passwords.

James also cracked into NASA computers, stealing software worth approximately $1.7 million. According to the Department of Justice, "The software supported the International Space Station's physical environment, including control of the temperature and humidity within the living space". NASA was forced to shut down its computer systems, ultimately racking up a $41,000 cost. James explained that he downloaded the code to supplement his studies on C programming, but contended "...the code itself was crappy... certainly not worth $1.7 million like they claimed".

Given the extent of his intrusions, if James, also known as "c0mrade," had been an adult he likely would have served at least 10 years. Instead, he was banned from recreational computer use and was slated to serve a six-month sentence under house arrest with probation. However, he served six months in prison for violation of parole. Today, James asserts that he's learned his lesson and might start a computer security company.

2. Adrian Lamo
Lamo's claim to fame is his break-ins at major organizations like The New York Times and Microsoft. Dubbed the "homeless hacker," he used Internet connections at Kinko's, coffee shops and libraries to do his intrusions. In a profile article, "He Hacks by Day, Squats by Night", Lamo reflects: "I have a laptop in Pittsburgh, a change of clothes in D.C. It kind of redefines the term multi-jurisdictional".

Lamo's intrusions consisted mainly of penetration testing, in which he found flaws in security, exploited them and then informed companies of their shortcomings. His hits include Yahoo!, Bank of America, Citigroup and Cingular. When white hat hackers are hired by companies to do penetration testing, it's legal. What Lamo did is not.

When he broke into The New York Times' intranet, things got serious. He added himself to a list of experts and viewed personal information on contributors, including Social Security numbers. Lamo also hacked into The Times' LexisNexis account to research high-profile subject matter.
For his intrusion at The New York Times, Lamo was ordered to pay approximately $65,000 in restitution. He was also sentenced to six months of home confinement and two years of probation, which expired January 16, 2007. Lamo is currently working as an award-winning journalist and public speaker.

3. Kevin Mitnick
A self-proclaimed "hacker poster boy", Mitnick went through a highly publicized pursuit by authorities. His mischief was hyped by the media but his actual offenses may be less notable than his notoriety suggests. The Department of Justice describes him as "the most wanted computer criminal in United States history". His exploits were detailed in two movies: Freedom Downtime and Takedown.

Mitnick had a bit of hacking experience before committing the offenses that made him famous. He started out exploiting the Los Angeles bus punch card system to get free rides. Then, like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, dabbled in phone phreaking. Although there were numerous offenses, Mitnick was ultimately convicted for breaking into the Digital Equipment Corporation's computer network and stealing software.

Mitnick's mischief got serious when he went on a two and a half year "coast-to-coast hacking spree". The CNN article "Legendary computer hacker released from prison" explains that "he hacked into computers, stole corporate secrets, scrambled phone networks and broke into the national defense warning system". He then hacked into computer expert and fellow hacker Tsutomu Shimomura's home computer, which led to his undoing.

Today, Mitnick has been able to move past his role as a black hat hacker and become a productive member of society. He served five years, about 8 months of it in solitary confinement, and is now a computer security consultant, author and speaker.

4. Kevin Poulsen
Also known as Dark Dante, Poulsen gained recognition for his hack of LA radio's KIIS-FM phone lines, which earned him a brand new Porsche, among other items. Law enforcement dubbed him "the Hannibal Lecter of computer crime". Authorities began to pursue Poulsen after he hacked into a federal investigation database. During this pursuit, he further drew the ire of the FBI by hacking into federal computers for wiretap information.

His hacking specialty, however, revolved around telephones. Poulsen's most famous hack, KIIS-FM, was accomplished by taking over all of the station's phone lines. In a related feat, Poulsen also "reactivated old Yellow Page escort telephone numbers for an acquaintance who then ran a virtual escort agency". Later, when his photo came up on the show Unsolved Mysteries, 1-800 phone lines for the program crashed. Ultimately, Poulsen was captured in a supermarket and served a sentence of five years.

Since serving time, Poulsen has worked as a journalist. He is now a senior editor for Wired News. His most prominent article details his work on identifying 744 sex offenders with MySpace profiles.

5. Robert Tappan Morris
Morris, son of former National Security Agency scientist Robert Morris, is known as the creator of the Morris Worm, the first computer worm to be unleashed on the Internet. As a result of this crime, he was the first person prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Morris wrote the code for the worm while he was a student at Cornell. He asserts that he intended to use it to see how large the Internet was. The worm, however, replicated itself excessively, slowing computers down so that they were no longer usable. It is not possible to know exactly how many computers were affected, but experts estimate an impact of 6,000 machines. He was sentenced to three years' probation, 400 hours of community service and a fined $10,500.

Morris is currently working as a tenured professor at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He principally researches computer network architectures including distributed hash tables such as Chord and wireless mesh networks such as Roofnet.

White Hat Hackers

Hackers that use their skills for good are classified as "white hats". These white hats often work as certified "Ethical Hackers," hired by companies to test the integrity of their systems. Others, operate without company permission by bending but not breaking laws and in the process have created some really cool stuff. In this section we profile five white hat hackers and the technologies they have developed.

1. Stephen Wozniak
"Woz" is famous for being the "other Steve" of Apple. Wozniak, along with current Apple CEO Steve Jobs, co-founded Apple Computer. He has been awarded with the National Medal of Technology as well as honorary doctorates from Kettering University and Nova Southeastern University. Additionally, Woz was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in September 2000.

Woz got his start in hacking making blue boxes, devices that bypass telephone-switching mechanisms to make free long-distance calls. After reading an article about phone phreaking in Esquire, Wozniak called up his buddy Jobs. The pair did research on frequencies, then built and sold blue boxes to their classmates in college. Wozniak even used a blue box to call the Pope while pretending to be Henry Kissinger.

Wozniak dropped out of college and came up with the computer that eventually made him famous. Jobs had the bright idea to sell the computer as a fully assembled PC board. The Steves sold Wozniak's cherished scientific calculator and Jobs' VW van for capital and got to work assembling prototypes in Jobs' garage. Wozniak designed the hardware and most of the software. In the Letters section of Woz.org, he recalls doing "what Ed Roberts and Bill Gates and Paul Allen did and tons more, with no help". Wozniak and Jobs sold the first 100 of the Apple I to a local dealer for $666.66 each.

Woz no longer works full time for Apple, focusing primarily on philanthropy instead. Most notable is his function as fairy godfather to the Los Gatos, California School District: "Wozniak 'adopted' the Los Gatos School District, providing students and teachers with hands-on teaching and donations of state-of-the-art technology equipment".

2. Tim Berners-Lee
Berners-Lee is famed as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the system that we use to access sites, documents and files on the Internet. He has received numerous recognitions, most notably the Millennium Technology Prize.

While a student at Oxford University, Berners-Lee was caught hacking access with a friend and subsequently banned from University computers: w3.org reports "Whilst [at Oxford], he built his first computer with a soldering iron, TTL gates, an M6800 processor and an old television". Technological innovation seems to have run in his genes, as Berners-Lee's parents were mathematicians who worked on the Manchester Mark1, one of the earliest electronic computers.

While working with CERN, a European nuclear research organization, Berners-Lee created a hypertext prototype system that helped researchers share and update information easily. He later realized that hypertext could be joined with the Internet. Berners-Lee recounts how he put them together: "I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and – ta-da! – the World Wide Web".

Since his creation of the World Wide Web, Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium at MIT. The W3C describes itself as "an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff and the public work together to develop Web standards". Berners-Lee's World Wide Web idea, as well as standards from the W3C, is distributed freely with no patent or royalties due.

3. Linus Torvalds
Torvalds fathered Linux, the very popular Unix-based operating system. He calls himself "an engineer," and has said that his aspirations are simple: "I just want to have fun making the best damn operating system I can".

Torvalds got his start in computers with a Commodore VIC-20, an 8-bit home computer. He then moved on to a Sinclair QL. Wikipedia reports that he modified the Sinclair "extensively, especially its operating system". Specifically, Torvalds hacks included "an assembler and a text editor… as well as a few games".

Torvalds created the Linux kernel in 1991, using the Minix operating system as inspiration. He started with a task switcher in Intel 80386 assembly and a terminal driver. After that, he put out a call for others to contribute code, which they did. Currently, only about 2 percent of the current Linux kernel is written by Torvalds himself. The success of this public invitation to contribute code for Linux is touted as one of the most prominent examples of free/open source software.

Currently, Torvalds serves as the Linux ringleader, coordinating the code that volunteer programmers contribute to the kernel. He has had an asteroid named after him and received honorary doctorates from Stockholm University and University of Helsinki. He was also featured in Time Magazine's "60 Years of Heroes".

4. Richard Stallman
Stallman's fame derives from the GNU Project, which he founded to develop a free operating system. For this, he's known as the father of free software. His "Serious Bio" asserts: "Non-free software keeps users divided and helpless, forbidden to share it and unable to change it. A free operating system is essential for people to be able to use computers in freedom".

Stallman, who prefers to be called rms, got his start hacking at MIT. He worked as a "staff hacker" on the Emacs project and others. He was a critic of restricted computer access in the lab. When a password system was installed, Stallman broke it down, resetting passwords to null strings, then sent users messages informing them of the removal of the password system.

Stallman's crusade for free software started with a printer. At the MIT lab, he and other hackers were allowed to modify code on printers so that they sent convenient alert messages. However, a new printer came along – one that they were not allowed to modify. It was located away from the lab and the absence of the alerts presented an inconvenience. It was at this point that he was "convinced... of the ethical need to require free software".

With this inspiration, he began work on GNU. Stallman wrote an essay, "The GNU Project", in which he recalls choosing to work on an operating system because it's a foundation "the crucial software to use a computer". At this time, the GNU/Linux version of the operating system uses the Linux kernel started by Torvalds. GNU is distributed under copyleft, a method that employs copyright law to allow users to use, modify, copy and distribute the software.

Stallman's life continues to revolve around the promotion of free software. He works against movements like Digital Rights Management (or as he prefers, Digital Restrictions Management) through organizations like Free Software Foundation and League for Programming Freedom. He has received extensive recognition for his work, including awards, fellowships and four honorary doctorates.

5. Tsutomu Shimomura
Shimomura reached fame in an unfortunate manner: he was hacked by Kevin Mitnick. Following this personal attack, he made it his cause to help the FBI capture him.

Shimomura's work to catch Mitnick is commendable, but he is not without his own dark side. Author Bruce Sterling recalls: "He pulls out this AT&T cellphone, pulls it out of the shrinkwrap, finger-hacks it, and starts monitoring phone calls going up and down Capitol Hill while an FBI agent is standing at his shoulder, listening to him".

Shimomura out-hacked Mitnick to bring him down. Shortly after finding out about the intrusion, he rallied a team and got to work finding Mitnick. Using Mitnick's cell phone, they tracked him near Raleigh-Durham International Airport. The article "SDSC Computer Experts Help FBI Capture Computer Terrorist" recounts how Shimomura pinpointed Mitnick's location. Armed with a technician from the phone company, Shimomura "used a cellular frequency direction-finding antenna hooked up to a laptop to narrow the search to an apartment complex". Mitnick was arrested shortly thereafter. Following the pursuit, Shimomura wrote a book about the incident with journalist John Markoff, which was later turned into a movie.

The bottom line is that the message must be perceived as having value.

Relevant or timely information, research, or studies are all examples of content that may be viewed as potential pass-along material. Interactive content like a quiz or test can inspire forwarding, especially if it's fun. Personality tests, fitness quizzes, or compatibility questionnaires are all things that have been passed to my inbox at one time or another. Why? Because they're entertaining. And entertainment has value!

A cool, multimedia experience is always going to achieve some pass-along. Rich media email is getting a lot of press lately. Vendors like RadicalMail and AdTools have Forward to a Friend capabilities built right into their technology, facilitating pass-along. And for them, right now, this works. Eventually, as rich media becomes more of the norm, marketers will still have to rely on the value proposition in their message being enough to distinguish their message from the rest to make their particular email campaign worthy of being sent to a friend.

Should you try to capitalize on viral marketing? Absolutely. You have to incorporate into your email campaigns some value that would inspire forwarding. Without a doubt, you should reap the benefits of reaching more than your target audience, stretching those advertising dollars. But understand that viral marketing is a tactic, a strategy, and an integral element of your offer. One that works toward achieving your campaign objectives. Incorporate this knowledge into your email campaigns.

One more thing: You can craft a brilliant offer and a great message, and follow all the rules of Email Marketing 101, but if a consumer visits your site and has an experience less than what was promised, youre going to achieve viral marketing as well the bad kind.

What does a virus have to do with marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as word-of-mouth, creating a buzz, leveraging the media, network marketing. But on the Internet, for better or worse, it's called viral marketing. While others smarter than I have attempted to rename it, to somehow domesticate and tame it, I won't try. The term viral marketing has stuck.

The Classic Hotmail.com Example

The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services. The strategy is simple:

1. Give away free e-mail addresses and services,
2. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com" and,
3. Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates,
4. Who see the message,
5. Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then
6. Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely rapidly.

Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy

Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others' resources

Let's examine at each of these elements briefly.

1. Gives away valuable products or services

"Free" is the most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary. Most viral marketing programs give away valuable products or services to attract attention. Free e-mail services, free information, free "cool" buttons, free software programs that perform powerful functions but not as much as you get in the "pro" version. Wilson's Second Law of Web Marketing is "The Law of Giving and Selling" (http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmta/basic-principles.htm). "Cheap" or "inexpensive" may generate a wave of interest, but "free" will usually do it much faster. Viral marketers practice delayed gratification. They may not profit today, or tomorrow, but if they can generate a groundswell of interest from something free, they know they will profit "soon and for the rest of their lives" (with apologies to "Casablanca"). Patience, my friends. Free attracts eyeballs. Eyeballs then see other desirable things that you are selling, and, presto! you earn money. Eyeballs bring valuable e-mail addresses, advertising revenue, and e-commerce sales opportunities. Give away something, sell something.

2. Provides for effortless transfer to others

Public health nurses offer sage advice at flu season: stay away from people who cough, wash your hands often, and don't touch your eyes, nose, or mouth. Viruses only spread when they're easy to transmit. The medium that carries your marketing message must be easy to transfer and replicate: e-mail, website, graphic, software download. Viral marketing works famously on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Digital format make copying simple. From a marketing standpoint, you must simplify your marketing message so it can be transmitted easily and without degradation. Short is better. The classic is: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com." The message is compelling, compressed, and copied at the bottom of every free e-mail message.

3. Scales easily from small to very large

To spread like wildfire the transmission method must be rapidly scalable from small to very large. The weakness of the Hotmail model is that a free e-mail service requires its own mailservers to transmit the message. If the strategy is wildly successful, mailservers must be added very quickly or the rapid growth will bog down and die. If the virus multiplies only to kill the host before spreading, nothing is accomplished. So long as you have planned ahead of time how you can add mailservers rapidly you're okay. You must build in scalability to your viral model.

4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors

Clever viral marketing plans take advantage of common human motivations. What proliferated "Netscape Now" buttons in the early days of the Web? The desire to be cool. Greed drives people. So does the hunger to be popular, loved, and understood. The resulting urge to communicate produces millions of websites and billions of e-mail messages. Design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors for its transmission, and you have a winner.

5. Utilizes existing communication networks

Most people are social. Nerdy, basement-dwelling computer science grad students are the exception. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. A person's broader network may consist of scores, hundreds, or thousands of people, depending upon her position in society. A waitress, for example, may communicate regularly with hundreds of customers in a given week. Network marketers have long understood the power of these human networks, both the strong, close networks as well as the weaker networked relationships. People on the Internet develop networks of relationships, too. They collect e-mail addresses and favorite website URLs. Affiliate programs exploit such networks, as do permission e-mail lists. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you rapidly multiply its dispersion.

6. Takes advantage of others' resources

The most creative viral marketing plans use others' resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on others' websites. Authors who give away free articles, seek to position their articles on others' webpages. A news release can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals and form the basis of articles seen by hundreds of thousands of readers. Now someone else's newsprint or webpage is relaying your marketing message. Someone else's resources are depleted rather than your own.

History

The term Viral Marketing was coined by a Harvard Business School professor, Jeffrey F. Rayport, in a December 1996 article for Fast Company The Virus of Marketing. The term was further popularized by Tim Draper and Steve Jurvetson of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 1997 to describe Hotmail's e-mail practice of appending advertising for itself in outgoing mail from their users.

Among the first to write about viral marketing on the Internet was media critic Douglas Rushkoff in his 1994 book Media Virus. The assumption is that if such an advertisement reaches a "susceptible" user, that user will become "infected" (i.e., sign up for an account) and can then go on to infect other susceptible users. As long as each infected user sends mail to more than one susceptible user on average (i.e., the basic reproductive rate is greater than one), standard in epidemiology imply that the number of infected users will grow according to a logistic curve, whose initial segment appears exponential.

Among the first to write about algorithms designed to identify people with high Social Networking Potential is Bob Gerstley in Advertising Research is Changing. Gerstley uses SNP algorithms in quantitative marketing research to help marketers maximize the effectiveness of viral marketing campaigns.

Notable examples of viral marketing

* BusinessWeek (2001) described web-based campaigns for Hotmail (1996) and The Blair Witch Project (1999) as striking examples of viral marketing, but warned of some dangers for imitation marketers.

* Burger King's The Subservient Chicken campaign was cited in Wired as a striking example of viral or word-of-mouth marketing.

* In 2000, Slate described TiVo's unpublicized gambit of giving free TiVo's to web-savvy enthusiasts to create "viral" word of mouth, pointing out that a viral campaign differs from a publicity stunt.

* Cadbury's Dairy Milk 2007 Gorilla advert was heavily popularised on YouTube and Facebook.

* With the emergence of Web 2.0, mostly all web startups like facebook.com, youtube.com, collabotrade.com, myspace.com, and digg.com have made good use of Viral Marketing by merging it with the social networking.

* The release of the 2007 concept album Year Zero by Nine Inch Nails involved a viral marketing campaign, including the band leaving USB drives at concerts during NIN's 2007 European Tour. This was followed up with a series of interlinked websites revealing clues and information about the dystopian future in which the album is set.

* The film Cloverfield initially released one teaser trailer that did not reveal the title—only the release date. The subsequent online viral marketing campaign for the film is remarkably complex, making use of everything from fictitious company websites to MySpace profiles for the film's main characters.

* In 2007, World Wrestling Entertainment promoted the return of Chris Jericho with a viral marketing campaign using 15-second cryptic binary code videos. The videos contained hidden messages and biblical links related to Jericho, although speculation existed throughout WWE fans over who the campaign targeted. The text "Save Us" and "2nd Coming" were most prominent in the videos. The campaign spread throughout the internet with numerous websites, though no longer operational, featuring hidden messages and biblical links to further hint at Jericho's return.

* In 2007, portuguese football club Sporting integrated a viral feature in their campaign for season seats. In their website, a video required the user to input his name and phone number before playback started, which then featured the coach Paulo Bento and the players waiting at the locker room while he makes a phone call to the user telling him that they just can't start the season until the user buys his season ticket. Flawless video and phone call synchronization and the fact that it was a totally new experience for the user led to nearly 200,000 pageviews phone calls in less than 24 hours.

Viral content is an awful phrase. It's used by marketers - and generally means material designed to propagate a message or meme, usually with an eye to some commercial gain. But the content itself needn't be a bad thing - and the qualities of great viral content can be used on their own merits. Here are 7 such features of great viral content - and they all begin with Q.

Quality

An easy one to begin with: Quality. And not quality as in 'a quality', quality as in 'good'. If you want your content to be shared, you need to make sure it's up to scratch. If it's a video, make sure your production is slick. If it's written content, you'd better spell check it. A lack of professionalism can be endearing in some cases, but usually - quality is important.

Quantity

If one is good, two is better. If two is better, then the more content you've got to spread then the more likely it is that it will. Certain types of content, such as compendiums and lists, benefit the most from this - a list of 10 amusing facts is good, but one hundred? Even better.

Quantifiable

It's no good just having quantity - you also need to let people know exactly what to expect. Quantify your content - if you've got a list of the top 100 websites fit for a certain purpose, then refer to it as a 'Top 100 List'. If you've got quantity, then quantify your content so people know what to expect.

Quirky

People are drawn to the unusual - it grabs their attention, and that's half the battle. Quirkyness, if done right, can be a great means of getting your stuff to spread. Whether it's just 'different' or a full-blown case of the 'WTF!?', standing out in a crowd is good.

Questioning

If you can incite questions in the mind of your audience, then you could be onto a winner - debate, controversy and opinion can be a great way of stirring up a 'buzz'. Of course, there's a fine line between a delightfully incisive opinion point and trolling, but that's another matter altogether...

Quotidian

Meaning 'ordinary' or 'common', this might seem a little mundane - out of place - when compared to the other points. But some restraint is advised when considering more outlandish ideas or efforts - if you strive too hard then your audience simply won't 'get it'. This applies to the topics/subjects you cover, too - if they're too obscure, then finding the right audience could be tricky. Not everybody wants to read about the 'Top 10 ways to Optimise SQL in FORTRAN running on OS/2' - specialist content won't fare well virally.

Qismet

I may be stretching the bounds of the English language here, but 'qismet' is an alternative transliteration of the Arabic word 'kismet' - meaning destiny, or fate. That is to say, there are no silver bullets in viral media - sometimes a sprinkling of luck is what's needed most. Stick to the points above though, and you may just be on the right track.

What's Wrong With My Blog?
A guide to common pitfalls, mistakes & faux pas in blogging

Creating a blog is easy - but alas, building a readership is somewhat more difficult. So where do nascent bloggers most commonly go wrong?

Ensure you have enough content

If your blog is still wet behind the ears, it's likely that you don't have a lot of articles on the site. Some readers will be put off by this - new blogs are created all the time and a certain percentage of those never get off the ground. If you have a decent amount of content in your archives, then new readers will be more inclined to stick around and subscribe to your feeds for future material.

Clarify your blog's topic - diversify or focus on a niche if necessary

One trouble with personal blogs is that the topics covered can be very disparate - it's better to focus on a distinct set of topics. Clearly specifying a topic (either through consistent posts, in a tagline, or on an 'about' page) will help tell your readers exactly what you're about.

Accept that some topics are just too marginal

Some topics are more popular than others - if you choose something too obscure, you may struggle to find readers. Niche blogs can be a good way of creating a smaller, more dense and closely-knit readership, but if you're after a large following, you need to write about something with mass appeal.

Controversy doesn't wash well

Building a successful blog based on controversial content can be tricky. If you're writing stuff which a lot of people disagree with, particularly if it's written in a caustic way, then you may evoke a response but you won't find a lasting readership.

Consider your blog's brand

If you can couple your visual identity and content theme, you're onto a winner. Creating a cohesive 'brand' for your blog can be a great way of establishing a clear niche and can help build a solid readership.

Update often, but don't let quality suffer

Regular posts will make your readers want to come back more often - but that doesn't mean that you should post for the sake of it. Essentially this means you need a steady stream of high-quality articles - but you weren't under the impression this was going to be easy, were you?
Ensure linkability

Links are the most important element to growing a blog. Organic traffic is boosted, traffic elevated and exposure is increased with every link. 'Linkability', then, is ensuring you do everything you can to facilitate the process of getting links.

A few key points: Make sure your blog has permalinks, and make sure they're obvious enough for people to find. Ensure that older content stays in the same location, and isn't deleted, renamed or moved - and if you have to (for instance, if you move your blog to a new platform or domain) - make sure you redirect from old to new. Finally, make sure your content is worth linking to!

Don't over-monetise

If you plaster your blog with AdSense and have no traffic, you're not going to see any revenue. Over monetisation can turn new readers away, particularly on a new blog. It's tempting to cram ads on your site in the early days to try and drum up some cash, but you should consider restraint when it could have an adverse effect on your popularity.

Make sure your SEO is up to scratch

You don't have to don your black hat to be mindful of search engines - but make sure you get the basics right. Write headlines with search engines in mind, ensuring you title your posts with something resembling the search phrases that you'd use to find it. Technical considerations extend to the use of the headline in the page title - something most blog platforms do - and the use of H1 tags to semantically identify the title in the page content itself.

Patience, patience, patience!

Perhaps the most important piece of advice for new bloggers - patience is essential in terms of building a readership. It isn't going to happen overnight - for a new blog on a new domain it takes a spectacular amount of work. A lot of your initial work will be in assembling a set of post archives that will drive organic traffic (= potential new readers) and help you develop and improve your blogging techniques.

il consiglio è sempre lo stesso: se ti interessi di arte, nel senso di fare dell'arte, non puoi prescindere dal vedere i quadri dal vivo. qualsiasi fotografia risulta sempre deludente a confronto. e le opere minori hanno molto più da dire dei capolavori. che poi mi chiedo: chi ha deciso che i capolavori son quelli?

ho visitato la mostra di renoir al vittoriano, assieme a quella sull'unità d'italia e della settimana della scienza (per i bimbi!).
l'avevo già osservato attentamente al museo d'orsay, ma vedere bozze, incompiute e disegni è un'altra cosa.
pierre auguste renoir è indiscutibilmente un grande ma non sono favorevolissimo a certe elucubrazioni di critici e galleristi sul suo conto. ecco i miei pensieri riguardo la mostra.

è un pittore che ha attraversato l'impressionismo con distacco. ha esposto prima al salon ufficiale, poi a quello des refusès (dei rifiutati, quindi gli impressionisti), poi di nuovo al salon, poi ha preso a dir di no ad entrambi. amici suoi erano sisley, monet e caillebotte. monet specialmente, si scrivevano spesso e di cose molto umane, tipo "sono andato a questi funerali" e "grazie dei fior". poi si è aggiunto un tipo che gli ha comprato la bellezza di 170 quadri in dieci anni. Renoiur è venuto in italia una volta sola attorno ai 40 e ne è rimasto impressionato.
appunto.

ha un rapporto con le dimensioni dei quadri molto umano. faceva quadri che possono entrare nelle case, e che son belli se visti da lontano, mentre leggi dall'altra parte della stanza, o quando ci passi davanti velocemente. che vanno bene se hai una casa piccola, non una reggia. ecco cosa è per lui l'impressionismo.

i soggetti che sceglieva si rifanno allo stesso ragionamento: prendere il caffelatte davanti a 8 metri quadri di nave che affonda nella tempesta, seppur firmata william turner, non faceva per lui. quindi gente tranquilla, simpatica e rilassata. scene rilassanti, colori rilassanti. sui canoni poi, c'è poco da dire: nella maggior parte delle tele trovi l'idea di bellezza che poi è diventata sua moglie, addirittura prima che la conoscesse. forse l'ha sposata proprio perchè vi si avvicinava, o forse la conosceva già da molto tempo, non lo so. è curioso come, in numerosi disegni preparatori e prove tecniche, sia possibile trovare la donna assorta ed un po' fuori contesto della colazione dei canottieri.
nei volti dei bambini trovi invece i figli.
nei volti degli amici trovi quel che volevano vedere gli amici degli amici. si nota immediatamente che gli sfondi dipinti per le sue prove son ben diversi da quelli delle tele su commissione: solo in questo caso infatti ingentiliva le forme, cercando di connotare positivamente il soggetto (di lì sfruttando qualsiasi elemento compositivo, sfondo incluso).
diverso invece il discorso sulle tele fatte per sè, in cui vedeva l'imperfezione con naturalezza, senza morbosità.

i capolavori che ho visto sono (i titoli li dò io, perchè finchè non mi fanno leggere dietro il telaio una esplicita informazione autografa, son convinto che siano solo opera della fantasia dei critici):

- una veduta di parigi ed una di casa sua dal cortile (The Garden in Montmartre,1890), da guardare lontanissime. luminose e rilassanti.

- un bimbo triste, per la verità somigliante ad andy serkis (smeagol / gollum de il signore degli anelli) da bambino: occhi un pizzico storti ed un tocco di grigio chiaro sui capelli della fronte. pelle fatta a pennellate rosa e grigio, che seguono l'andamento morfologico del volto, dando l'impressione che questo bambino abbia vissuto in verità 500 anni. orecchie a sventola (la destra superflua, quasi incerta tra il prolungamento dei capelli, ma necessaria a bilanciare il tutto).

- zingarella (Gypsy Girl,1879) e piccolo lord: occhi penetranti, posa naturale spalle indietro tipo foto di moda odierna, vestito etereo e sfondo coloratissimo la prima; fondo scuro, occhi bassi e vestito blu il secondo, con risvolto della blusa bianco a tracciare una linea che divide il quadro diagonalmente a tre quarti, per bilanciare la postura e l'espressione da piccolo lord imbarazzato a farsi ritrarre. non lo dico io: se lo guardi da vicino è chiarissimo che quella linea sia stata ritoccata più di una volta.

- domitilla all'osteria: donna paffuta con gote rosse, stanca di lavorare fino a notte fonda (riscontrabile anche in Andree in Blue, Andree in Yellow Turban and Blue Skirt, che son ritratti di Andree Heurschling).

- ritratto per una ragazza che ama la vita: beata lei, perchè una persona che ti ritrae con un'espressione ed un'espressività così...

- i giardino con le grate per i rampicanti: una grata approssimativa e maldestra posta a centro quadro sullo sfondo, si rivela a 3 metri di distanza un accorgimento che rende perfettamente l'idea di sole che filtra tra le piante. la grata in alto a sinistra è invece perfetta così, con otto trattini incrociati di un giallo sporco chiarissimo e di un grigetto azzurro.

ad un certo punto (ho letto la lettera manoscritta, non è un'invenzione di quelle dei critici...) ha deciso che l'impressionismo era per lui un vicolo cieco, che magari poteva sperimentar su altre cose, e come ogni buon cristiano l'ha fatto. gli piaceva la cellulite, la schiena monoblocco con il sedere, senza curve. ho visto capelli dipinti con macchie di blu, verde smeraldo, grigio, viola e rossiccio, tirati con la mano messa a spatola a seguire l'andamento del cranio, su fondo verde prato al centro, a diradare verso un verde bosco di tonalità grigio 60.

ho visto delle pennellate date a punta secca sui bordi frastagliati, tipo tra i capelli e la pelle del viso.
ho visto un totale disinteresse per il dettaglio esclusi gli occhi, sempre blu e profondi.
mani e piedi eran per lui del tutto trascurabili. anzi: proprio dei salsicciotti informi.
i vestiti hanno solo il compito di raccordare e bilanciare i volti, che son sempre il centro percettivo della composizione (mi riferisco ai quadri fatti per lui, non a quelli su commissione).
donne paffute e goffe, viste da lontano diventano di un'eleganza priva di qualsiasi spocchia e malinconia.

scolpiva l'argilla finalizzandola in bronzi, colpito dall'artite dovette smettere. assunse un tipo a sostituirlo, ma durò poco tempo perchè i risultati non eran soddisfacenti.
il tratto dei bronzi è lo stesso dei quadri: sporco e frastagliato, significativo nelle espressioni e tutt'altro che levigante (tipo ad ingentilire espressioni e rughe).

i suoi manoscritti son curiosi: carta a quadretti di infima qualità, a volte con intestazione di hotel e macellerie, poche ciance e frivolezze, poche chiacchiere e pensieri metafisici, entusiasmo e concretezza invece. l'artrite si vede da un certo punto in poi: scriveva peggio di mia nonna. immagino come gli si eran ridotte le mani. di certo era persona umile ed affabile, un autentico bonaccione, felice nel godere di un ambiente familiare sereno, poco attaccato ai valori terreni.

ahh... che sollievo. il mio bloggo-notes.

Whether you're a blogger, a journalist or social bookmarker, writing a great headline is a must if you want to capture your reader's interest. Faced with an ever increasing wave of blogs, RSS subscriptions, and links, the headline is more important now than it ever has been.

So how do you engage your readers? How do you get your RSS subscribers to click the link in their feedreader? There's no definitive way to maximize your exposure, but there are certainly a few ways that have proven popular. Follow these tips, and you might just be able to conjure up some interest.

Mention keywords & hot trends

People love to read stories about topics they're interested in. Some trends endure longer than others, whilst some are short lived - but if you're writing about a hot topic, be sure to drop in those keywords to whet your reader's appetite.

So what defines such a hot topic? Well, at the time of writing, the next-gen console wars are raging,so anything with 'PS3', or (especially) 'Wii' in the headline will garner a good amount of attention. 'Web 2.0' and 'AJAX' are strong keywords amongst the web design crowd, and current events (including but not limited to politics/icians, war, celebrities et al.) also prove popular.

For example,

Bad headline : 'Qatar TV Channel aquires new hardware'

Good headline : 'Al Jazeera International chooses Apple Technology'

Quite a polarized example, perhaps - but if you're writing about a topic that will gain interest of its own accord - in the above example, both the term 'Apple' and 'Al Jazeera' will get clicks, although for altogether different reasons.
Best tip, ever: Use superlatives

This point is perhaps particularly relevant to social bookmarking sites, but the use of a superlative is a good way to get clicks on your headline. In fact, it's probably the BEST way.

For example,

Bad headline: 'Send large files to your friends'

Good headline: 'The easiest way to send Super Large Files'

Not just files. Super Large Files. Not just a way. The easiest way.

If you want to hype up your headline somewhat, then there's no cruder way than to bung in a superlative or two. It does look cheap, some people don't like it - but others do. Your mileage may vary, depending on your readership.

So if you must, use the words 'best ever' or 'worst' or 'longest' or 'coolest' in your headline. It might just do the job.

Summarise it all in one sentence

If your article isn't about the Nintendo Wii, or you can't justifiably refer to it as the 'best ever', then your best shot might be to blurt out everything in a few short words.

This sort of headline works great for science or technology findings - give away the result of the article in one short sentence and you might just pique the reader's interest enough to click through and read the whole article.

For example,

Bad headline: 'Scientists conduct cell transplant experiments'

Good headline: 'Scientists grow human ear on back of a mouse'

It's not sensational, it's not necessarily riding on the influence of a few keywords, but it is info-dense, and is far more likely to attract clicks than a less informative headline.
Pose a question (or an opinion dressed as a question)

In some circumstances, you may not want to give away the conclusion of a given article - indeed, the article may be of a speculative nature in itself. In this case a leading question can make a great headline.

Contentious or opinion pieces can be written with leading questions, preparing the reader for a discursive essay - indeed, the lead-in question itself can be loaded or controversial.

For example,

Bad headline: 'Zune not much better than the iPod'

Good headline: 'Is the Zune any better than the iPod?'

In this particular case, revealing the result of the review could lessen the effect (unlike research, studies, as per point 3) - but a loaded question can essentially contain the same information whilst leaving the opinion to the article itself.

Such a loaded question is likely to rile fanboys into response, as well - if it's an inflammatory piece you're after, then a loaded question in the headline is the way to go.

Use lists to gain interests

Finally, and perhaps the most tawdry of all, is the blogger's fallback - the numbered list.

Although it's a cheap shot, lists can be a popular addition to social bookmarking - whether it's a 'Top 100 films of all time' or 'Top 10 HTML tags', you'll be sure to gain some quick interest for those looking for a bite-sized read. If nothing else, you'll leave them wondering what attained #1.

You do run the risk of being dismissed as 'blogspam' if you overuse this technique - and already the method is dwindling in popularity due to overuse. However, used subtly, and with new, interesting content, the list or run-down can be a great no-brainer for both the content and the headline.

For example,

Bad headline: 'Great films released this year'

Good headline: 'The Top 10 films of 2034'

'Top 10s' are particularly popular, least of all because they present easily-skimmable information that can be digested in a short few minutes, and they embody an opinion by ranking things in a particular order.

Listing specifics, as with the year '2006' in the example above, adds further to the headline by giving it a sense of 'officialness', were it needed.

The humble bullet-pointed list can be misused as somewhat of a crutch, but there's no denying the fact that they can get some serious exposure.

Which summarises this list of sorts-5 different techniques that can better align a headline to gain more attention. Some are crafty, others overused and tired, but all can be used in specific situations to garner more clicks.

Punching up your headlines can help in a number of ways - RSS subscribers will generally judge a blog post by the headline, only stopping by to read if you grab their attention - the same applies for organic traffic. Popularity on Digg, Reddit, and other social bookmarking sites can be attained far easier with the right headlines - if you can successfully get a hook in the first sentence of your article, then you'll have a much better chance of getting them to read the whole shebang.

Your Outward Links Can Kill Your Rankings!

Link building strategies have, for most people for a long time, revolved around reciprocal link exchanges. Whilst most people understand that links are important, they generally don't understand why this is so. In a nutshell, a link to your site has traditionally been accepted by Search Engines as a vote for your site. A link from a topic or theme-related site to yours is better than a link from a site having a completely different topic. An important site's link to yours carries more weight - for example from The Open Directory, or Yahoo Directory. All pretty straightforward...

BUT... the rules have changed... significantly! All the thinking webmasters worked diligently to build links - willy-nilly - in order to subvert the search engine rankings and gain an advantage to themselves at the expense of everyone else. For a long time, there have been mutterings about this, and comments from Google staffers about possible penalties from linking to "bad neighbourhoods'" and - heaven forbid it - buying links! Google et al simply don't approve of willy-nilly link-building schemes, and have recently tightened the screws a bit more, in two notable ways...

Bad Links

Some links are bad... for example, if you are a car sales company and you've got dozens of completely irrelevant links to international hotel sites... yeah, YOU know the ones! in Prague, Munich, Shanghai etc! That's a BAD neighbourhood over there! That IS going to put a world of hurt on you! And as for the Free-For-All link sites, web rings, and 3 way link schemes... that's just suicide in cyberspace! Why? Coz its a blatant and completely indefensible attempt at cheating the system!

Reciprocal Links - Almost a Waste of Effort

Reciprocal links are still of some value, providing the link titles are explicit, and if the page they link to you from has a higher Page Rank than the page from which you link to them. The concept of a link to you being a vote for you, and being added to your site's Total Vote Count has a flip side. A link from you to someone else essentially deducts one vote from your total vote count... meaning its value is minimal when compared to a 1-way incoming back-link!

1-Way Outward Links Are Toxic

Ok, lets assume you are a service provider, maybe a health clinic, and you deal with hospitals, other doctors, specialists, nurses, laboratories. So, as a benefit to your visitors, you place direct links to their web resources on your links page. Is that clever?

Most certainly it is NOT! Transfusion time, because you'll be haemorrhaging Page Rank with nothing in return! Do it, but be smart about it, because there is NOTHING to be gained (by you) from linking to any site that does not link back. So make sure your links include the "nofollow" attribute that tells SE's that the link is NOT a vote by your site for that site!

Link Content Is Mission Critical

This is mission critical because Google and others have decided that they can't trust you to be honest about your site! Basically, it seems like there are two web tribes - those who know not so much about how things work, and those who know more than they should. There should also be a flourishing third tribe, who just build great sites with lots of terrific content that automatically ranks highly - but nobody's seen nuthin' from those guys for ages!

The tribe who know more than they should ruthlessly manipulate every available loophole to dominate search engine rankings, at the expense of those who have yet to read SEO For Dummies. Therefore, Google decided that its essential that there is some external correlation between what YOU say your site is about, and what OTHER people say your site is about... This is done by analysing the words in the Link Title on all links pointing to your site. Bottom line here is - if a keyword phrase does NOT appear on links to your site, you ain't gonna rank for that phrase!

For many established sites, this is the main reason they might have experienced a noticeable decline in rankings in the last few months. Most older sites will have a majority of incoming links based on their business name, and NOT on their activities / products / services / location etc. To use the common "widgets" analogy - if you are selling "widgets" and all your incoming link Titles have only your business name e.g. Smiths Manufacturing Co Ltd, it's now very difficult for you to rank for "widgets"!

Backlink analysis reveals this shortcoming rather quickly and, lucky for you, it is possible to remedy this by building 1-way incoming back-links using multiple Title / Description combinations that contain a good spread of relevant keywords. It does require some keyword research, and it is tedious - but if you don't do it, you are certainly not going forwards! But your competitors might be...