This is great!  Please check out "The Rootless Root, The Unix Koans of Master Foo", by Eric Raymond.  Each one is funnier than the last.  I've been laughing for ten minutes and I can't stop.  If you don't have time to read them all, read Master Foo discourses on the Graphical User Interface.  { Warning, if you think these are funny, you might be a nerd... }

Dr. Dobbs mentions a new micro-payment scheme called Peppercoin.  Interesting idea, you throw away 99 out of 100 microtransactions at random, and send through the 100th with 100X the value.  Reduces the processing overhead by a factor of 100.  Seems like a great idea, but [as with all such schemes] the devil is in the details...

The same article by Jonathan Erickson mentions Tibanna, which I had heard about before.  A unique approach to digital rights protection, it rewards people for sharing content.  This is the right approach; when people are clearly going to share, take advantage of it instead of fighting it.

The 30th Carnival of the Vanities is up, please make a meal of it (er, check it out).  My favorite is the lettuce, er, the Queen City Soapbox.