{"id":2283,"date":"2013-12-24T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-24T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2013\/12\/24\/essays-from-the-funniest-man-in-microsoft-research\/"},"modified":"2013-12-24T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-12-24T07:00:00","slug":"essays-from-the-funniest-man-in-microsoft-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20131224-00\/?p=2283","title":{"rendered":"Essays from the funniest man in Microsoft Research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>James Mickens has written a number of essays for <i>;login:<\/i> magazine. The wall-of-text presentation is kind of scary, and the first time I encountered them, I skimmed the essays rather than reading them through. As a result, my reaction was, &#8220;I got tired.&#8221; But if you follow the path and read the essays through, you realize that they are all brilliant.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>November 2013: <a href=\"http:\/\/research.microsoft.com\/en-us\/people\/mickens\/thenightwatch.pdf\"> The Night Watch<\/a>. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote class=\"q\"><p> You can&#8217;t just place a LISP book on top of an x86 chip and hope the hardware learns about lambda calculus by osmosis. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> and in the &#8220;so funny because it&#8217;s true that it wraps around and isn&#8217;t funny any more, but then wraps around a second time and is funny again, but with a tinge of sadness&#8221; category:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"q\"><p> I HAVE NO TOOLS BECAUSE I&#8217;VE DESTROYED MY TOOLS WITH MY TOOLS. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>September 2013: <a href=\"http:\/\/research.microsoft.com\/en-us\/people\/mickens\/theslowwinter.pdf\"> The Slow Winter<\/a>. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote class=\"q\"><p> &#8230; because in those days, you could XOR anything with anything and get something useful. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>July 2013: <a href=\"http:\/\/research.microsoft.com\/en-us\/people\/mickens\/nestofhornets.pdf\"> Mobile Computing Research Is a Hornet&#8217;s Nest of Deception and Chicanery<\/a>. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote class=\"q\"><p> When researchers talk about mobile computers, they use visionary, exciting terms like &#8220;fast&#8221;, &#8220;scalable&#8221;, and &#8220;this solution will definitely work in practice.&#8221; <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>May 2013: <a href=\"http:\/\/research.microsoft.com\/en-us\/people\/mickens\/thesaddestmoment.pdf\"> The Saddest Moment<\/a>. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote class=\"q\"><p> With careful optimization, only 14 gajillion messages are necessary. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> One of my colleagues found the stash of columns in the &#8220;Miscellaneous Excellence&#8221; section on <a href=\"http:\/\/research.microsoft.com\/en-us\/people\/mickens\/\"> Mickens&#8217; Web site<\/a> and reacted with &#8220;This is better than getting free cookies.&#8221;\n Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.technet.com\/b\/next\/archive\/2012\/01\/24\/james-mickens-the-funniest-man-in-microsoft-research.aspx\"> an interview with &#8220;the funniest man in Microsoft Research&#8221;<\/a>.\n I would have done this for <i>TechNet Magazine<\/i> if I had known this was possible.\n Also if I had the talent.\n Mostly the talent part.<\/p>\n<p> <b>Bonus Mickensian reading<\/b>: <a href=\"http:\/\/research.microsoft.com\/en-us\/groups\/studio99\/preparetobedevastated.aspx\"> What is art?<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Mickens has written a number of essays for ;login: magazine. The wall-of-text presentation is kind of scary, and the first time I encountered them, I skimmed the essays rather than reading them through. As a result, my reaction was, &#8220;I got tired.&#8221; But if you follow the path and read the essays through, you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-2283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-other"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>James Mickens has written a number of essays for ;login: magazine. The wall-of-text presentation is kind of scary, and the first time I encountered them, I skimmed the essays rather than reading them through. As a result, my reaction was, &#8220;I got tired.&#8221; But if you follow the path and read the essays through, you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}