Links van 22 december 2014 tot 23 december 2014

A Lost 1996 Interview with David Foster Wallace — Medium
In February 1996, David Foster Wallace came to Boston. He was the not-quite recognized writer of the massive book, Infinite Jest, which was just beginning to capture the attention of reviewers, readers and a generation of writers. Christopher Lydon interviewed David Foster Wallace on The Connection on WBUR in Boston, and told him he seemed to be living in “a moment between of cultish obscurity and international artistic celebrity, perhaps even immortality.” Last winter, we went to the WBUR archives to see if we could find the tape. We found it in the dusty basement, nestled between shows about the 1996 presidential primaries and escalating violence in the Middle East.

Ayn Rand Reviews Children’s Movies – The New Yorker
Ayn Rand is zó een takkenwijf. "The Little Mermaid: A young woman achieves all of her goals. She finds an object of value—in this case, a broad-chested brunet man—and sacrifices as much as she believes necessary (the ocean, talking, etc.) in order to acquire him."

Linus Torvalds’ BitKeeper blunder | InfoWorld
Torvalds seems to have fallen for the "free beer" argument: He didn't have to pay for BitKeeper, so he figured it was good enough. But not having to pay is not, and has never been, the real purpose of free software. The point is to avoid the situation Torvalds eventually found himself in: McVoy didn't like how his product was being used, so he took his ball and went home. Could you afford to switch gears in the middle of a project if one of your key software vendors did the same?

Peter Jackson Must Be Stopped | WIRED
J.R.R. Tolkien once said that “believable fairy-stories must be intensely practical. You must have a map, no matter how rough.” But in Peter Jackson’s new and final Hobbit film, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, which opened Wednesday, there is no map. There’s not even a plan. We veer far not just from Middle-earth, but from all plausibility. But you can’t blame Tolkien for this. Jackson got us here; he’s the one who must be stopped.

The Best Data Visualization Projects of 2014
It's always tough to pick my favorite visualization projects. I mean, it's a challenge to pick and rank your favorite anything really. So much depends on what you feel like at the time, and there's a lot of good work out there. Nevertheless, I gave it a go.