Thursday, June 30, 2005
Is the web permanent?
I was going to post about how it was a bit premature to be hammering on the consoles when the final versions haven't even come out. The real problem with commenting just based on the numbers is that it's very tough to compare A v. B since the hardware is so customized to do one thing and one thing only. That's why my 733 Mhz Xbox has been a significantly more reliable and better performer than most of my computers. But then AnandTech took down the article! I did some reverse engineering to find the comments section:
AnandTech Comments
But the article is gone without even a notice. I HATE that. Maps.a9.com did that as well! Please just leave a note or a page explaining what happened... just taking it down is so annoying.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/30/2005 01:26:00 PM
0 Comments
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
The Occasional Joy of Reading
I remember reading something (it was either "Nickel and Dimed" or a piece in Harper's) where the author was saying how, as a writer and reader working in a non-writing/reading job for the story, she was desperate for something to read... so much so that she just kept reading menus and can labels over and over again. I can definitely see that. I am reminded of that everytime I work for an entire day on the production end of (not creative in the least) writing, and then I come upon something that just enthralls me. This story was one of those moments. Oh, and Subscribed!
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/29/2005 05:34:00 PM
1 Comments
Career Limiting Moves
Um, yep, I'd say that's about right. Except every button should be self destruct. I can't imagine another person who is in more desperate need to shut up and make movies. I couldn't have directed this spiral downward better if it was intentional.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/29/2005 04:58:00 PM
0 Comments
Human Modeling In A Flash Game
Man, strangely hypnotic is right. And Creeeeepy. Still, I love the human modeling. Very nicely done. Notice how the joints will bend backwards to a point, but ultimately no further. And the back will arch but not snap in half. Cool.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/29/2005 04:35:00 PM
0 Comments
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Bad User Interfaces
D
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/28/2005 10:50:00 PM
1 Comments
Monday, June 27, 2005
What it looks like when someone gets nailed
Jeez, I don't know what I was thinking would happen, but I guess this is what I should expect if someone gets completely called out with no basis. Apparently the new book on Hillary Clinton has been found to have a number of real mistakes in it, and the author (Edward Klein) went on the Al Franken show. And got absolutely destroyed. He hemmed and hawed through the entire thing and at the end it made it seem like he had just thrown together random rumors and quotes. It's not like it's a problem, of course. It'll still sell millions ...
Was there ever a time where when someone was proven so completely wrong they were just thrown out of the talk show circuit? Because I guarantee that's not going to happen here. These quotes and rumors will be echoed for the next 20 years and likely will be perceived as facts forever. And they will make up the basis of the negative campaign that assaults Mrs. Clinton in her next run. I don't even particularly like her, but this is terrible. It's not new, but it's completely transparent now that all that matters is selling the books and, even if they are completely false, the books will continue to be churned out at amazing speed. It'd be nice to have a time where after a book or quote or ad or whatever was proven wrong, the responsible parties retracted it all and destroyed the remaining copies (or reprinted them to be sorted in the fiction section). Not likely that's going to happen any time soon.
Technorati Tags : What, it, looks, like, when, someone, gets, nailed
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/27/2005 06:00:00 PM
0 Comments
Swimming Goggles with Internal Lap Counters
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/27/2005 04:24:00 PM
0 Comments
Friday, June 24, 2005
MS Doing Something Good?
I know that I have a huge bias here, but I really think that MS is doing a really great thing when it comes to RSS. The beautiful part of it is that amount of work that an application developer no longer has to do. I think that RSS is going to be so much broader because MS is putting the work they are doing into the platform. The nice part is that this is not novel work… soon you’ll see these kind of platform investments in every platform. The surprising part is that any one else could have done the work first, but MS did. I think this may be the first time in a long time that MS has done something big that other people will emulate. Because knowing what RSS is and parsing XML for a dev is absolutely useless. It’s like knowing how to handle a TCP/IP packet. It’s the start of a brand new world. And when you can synch your databases, web directories, book marks, photos, calendars, reports, contacts, sales pipelines and everything else you can think of over RSS, you can have announcements like this to thank for kicking it off.
D
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/24/2005 10:38:00 AM
1 Comments
Gnomedex Initial Post
I will say this, I think the people in here really miss how broad blogging really is. I’ve heard comments that ~50% of the population doesn’t know what blogging is. Are you kidding? NINETY percent of the population doesn’t know what blogging is. And the majority of the remaining 10% don’t even know they’re on a blog when they’re reading it. I used to think my company had a unique sense of myopia when it came to understanding how broadly technology was adopted. I’m beginning to think it’s all geeks.
D
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/24/2005 10:24:00 AM
0 Comments
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Other Jobs I'd Like To Have
What follows is what I like to call a complete fucking waste of time which, coincidentally, would probably be my dream job.
First, I’d like to say I consider this to be one of the greatest short films (calling it a commercial is almost an insult) I’ve ever seen. It is so dense and intricate that one can watch it a thousand times and be taken up and down the emotional and intellectual roller coaster every time.
But second, and most fascinating part to me, is the subtlety of editing resulting in the dramatic difference of character portrayal from the 30 to 60 second video. In the 30 second video (from now on Video A), you might walk away thinking that the interrupter (call him Ben) was unwelcome. The woman (call her Elaine) was going through her wedding to her fiancé (call him Carl) and seemed unphased until Ben showed up and then she knew it was on, ending with the fantastic double entendre “Fasten Your Seatbelts”.
In the 60 second (from now on Video B), there are the following additional clips:
- 16 - 18s: Elaine spins her ring and looks up and away, caught in thought
- 28 - 30s: Elaine’s father looks around at the window with trepidation
- 34 - 35s: Elaine pensively looks out the window and then abruptly turns away
The remainder of the piece is roughly the same. The amazing thing here is that with an additional six to seven seconds of footage, you now have Elaine portrayed as torn between the decision she’s made and the consequences of that decision. Absolutely incredible! I know that in some other life I was an editor… this stuff is too interesting for me to have nothing to do with the movie/television industry.
Oh and for the curious, I was reminded how amazing this short film was after hearing yesterday’s All Things Considered on the subject of the excellent composer, J. Ralph. You better believe I’m going buy the shit out of that guy’s discography here and here.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/23/2005 05:12:00 PM
2 Comments
Fountains Of Wayne
This past NFL season, I was treated to a commercial with their song: http://www.fountainsofwayne.com/media/
I'm always happy to see an interesting band achieve success. One thing that strikes me as particularly interesting about them is that they seem to write a lot of songs about being pre-teenager. Did they write all the songs when they were in junior high and then finally get around to recording them?
D
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/23/2005 03:41:00 PM
0 Comments
Unfair Comment Commentary #152 (in a series)
A posting from two (!) years ago about how wrong the comparison is
People on both sides make these mistakes. But you know that these policitians are just reading off of talking points. Do you guys and gals who write these know what Google is? You could do a QUICK search if you'd like. Better yet, why don't you just pass them my way and I'll spend the 2 minutes it takes to verify if you're telling the truth or not. Passing this stuff off as fact just cheapens the debate.
D
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/23/2005 02:38:00 PM
0 Comments
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Small Ads from the UK
I'm not sure how many of these are real, but they're all really funny. Subscribed!
Edit: By real, I mean really in the newspaper, not just photoshopped in. I assume they're all jokes... except for the 30 Chinamen and the zeppelin.... I mean who DOESN'T need that.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/22/2005 02:55:00 PM
0 Comments
Salon's Coverage Of The MSM's Coverage of the Downing Street Memo
Salon basically comes to the conclusion that the media has begun to go soft on the Bush administration because they have been so harsh with anyone who puts out a negative piece. Considering I work in a job where lots and lots of people are taking aim at the stuff I put out, I think I understand the Bush administration's tact. What I don't know is exactly how much access a daily reporter needs... does it make that big a difference if you can get a 30 minute canned interview? Is that real reporting? I just have no idea about the journalism world.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/22/2005 02:54:00 PM
0 Comments
What Happened To The Hysteria?
Also, The Lead Singer of Judas Priest on Fresh Air
The lead singer of Judas Priest was an amazingly interesting interview! I had only be a fan to the degree that anyone who listened to popular music in the 80's was a fan, but it certainly made me much more interested in the band. But he had a great point which was only reinforced by today's Penny Arcade. Twenty years ago (scary how long ago it's been), rap music started to catch fire and people started to react negatively saying that kids would be destroyed by the horrible lyrics and society would be on a never ending spiral downward. And we are... having the lowest crime rate in ages. I think we can be fairly confident in saying that rap has no effect on crime. I was going to start this blog by saying "Why don't people take a position, then revisit the position later to see whether or not they were right", but it's absurd of me to ask. If they were right, then the speakers would be touting it all over the place. But people are remarkably bad at predicting the future.
Now people are up in arms about video games... give me a break. I promise... I PROMISE that whatever is predicted today will have very little (if any) correlation to what actually happens. Without fail, the outcomes are more moderate than anyone, on either side, ever predicts. Here's a hint... nothing we do when it comes to popular culture will be a dramatic change the world for positive or negative. Our societies are just not built that way.
D
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/22/2005 09:57:00 AM
0 Comments
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
BitTorrent V. Avalanche
I know I've said this already, but I LOVE it when the people who actually do stuff on a daily basis comment on public information. It's like that old saying... if you can tell the media (any media!) tends to be wrong or miss something when they cover a story you know, why do you think they'll be so much better when it's a story you don't know? Anyhow, I appreciate Bram's comments, and there's only one response for the Avalanche guys.. blog about it!
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/21/2005 09:45:00 AM
0 Comments
Monday, June 20, 2005
Class and Humor
So I've delved a little into class, but one thing that really separates us from the Brits is how explicitly we claim that we are class-free, and how explicitly they react to class. Ultimately, this manifests itself in people in England who seem to be happier than equivalently "classed" people are in the US because, I speculate, they are aware of where society feels they should be and they know how what they should be aiming for. Of course, this also manifests itself in their style of comedy, as highlighted in the above story. The author of the study is "Dr. Helen Pilcher, a molecular neurobiologist and stand-up comedian who specializes in scientific jokes"... I'd like to find two of those in the world. Anyhow, one of the key points of British comedy, she finds, is the upper class person who ends up failing miserably. Only by explicitly recognizing class do they have the ability to take delight in their failings. In the US, we have a subtext of this, where the "working class" is noble and the backbone of society and the "upper class" are rich people who have had everything handed to them. But we don't have a great story for John Delorean, who had everything and died penniless, or Mark Cuban, who started with nothing, made a fantastic sum of money but is now kind of a dick. Our society does not really know how to handle these people well... do you pity them? Do you hold them up as examples?
Which leads me into my recent viewing of The Comeback. Which is brutal. And funny. Brutally funny. The entire show is only possible to exist as a comedy because you can never really feel that badly for Valerie Cherish. She may have had success, but now, in that she feels so deserving of more, your gut probably tells you it’s ok to stick it to her.
D
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/20/2005 03:18:00 PM
0 Comments
A Hamburger Today
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... burger-tastic. From the creators of Slice NY! (Subscribed!)
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/20/2005 03:06:00 PM
0 Comments
2006 Hummer H1 Alpha
I am terribly sorry to report this, but if you are driving a Hummer, you are ugly. You're driving an ugly car, you're ruining my roads and environment and you're more likely to die in an accident than me. Oh, and by the way, YOU DON'T NEED IT. I don't care if you off road every day for your entire life... you don't need it. There's a better car for you. It's so fucking arrogant to think that you deserve this thing. I'd say this about sums it up.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/20/2005 03:04:00 PM
0 Comments
Apollo 13 Engineers
Man, I feel absolutely dwarfed in engineering prowess when I read about these guys. I make an engineering choice and my code compiles or does not compile. These guys make a choice and someone lives or dies. This may be the only time in history where the real story was as good as the movie.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/20/2005 03:00:00 PM
0 Comments
Google looking to compete with Paypal
Ever since I read Cryptonomicon, I've always been fascinated with the idea of having a currency which is entirely outside of a governmental control. In truth, I haven't really thought through exactly what this would do to the stability of the world, but I'm also not exactly sure how different it is today. If Visa decided to change their currency from dollars to sea shells, it wouldn't make a bit of difference to me. 90% of what I buy anyway is electronically exchanged, and I do not make decisions based currency exchange rates (at least in the US... if I'm overseas, this might change things a bit).
Anyhow, with Google selling nothing (except ads), this seems like the first real step to having something like this happen. Actually, I'm surprised that Ebay hasn't done something like this already. If you do nothing but trade within the Ebay universe, you have no need for dollars. As far as Google's likelihood of success... it's an interesting play, but outside of ads, I'm not sure how big they could get without signing up some huge retailers.
D
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/20/2005 08:42:00 AM
0 Comments
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
When Tulips Were Out of Control
My favorite part about this is the fact that no matter what time in history, there was always a desire to ride the bubble. People talk about the real estate bubble today, and my thoughts are the same as they've always been. There are countless localized bubbles all the time, whether or not it's real estate, or cabbage patch kids, beany babies, Internet stocks and so on. The only difference between them is the commodity they're trading and how much they will rise and fall when they peak and then burst. My advice is limit your downside and upside. If you're making 100% y/y, you don't deserve to be, and you're likely to get hit hard when the time comes.
This book sounds pretty good... Tulipomania : The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower & the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/15/2005 02:55:00 PM
0 Comments
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Natural Pet Food
Might as well give a free ad for these guys. They only serve about 500-600 dogs a week, but the food sounded so good, I felt like I would be happy to eat it. Apparently the dog food is designed based on the digestive system of the wolf, from which the dog is a descendent. What a good idea! I wish I knew exactly what our digestive system was designed for. Every week it's something new... but if I could eat exactly what we were DESIGNED to eat, that'd be so much easier! I wish there was a little thermometer on your stomach that just read "need meet now", "need water now" and so on. We need more direct measurement of your needs and much less figuring out what you want based on what you THINK you want, since that's influenced by all the crap around you. Let's face it, when it comes to our bodies, we have no idea what's going on.
D
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/14/2005 09:42:00 PM
0 Comments
The Long Term Investments Required In A Class Based Society
This was a really interesting documentary on the differences between the U.S. and Europe, especially in the context of the EU failure to pass the EU constitution. But in the series of class system in America, one thing that jumped out at me was the phrase that in Europe they spend $8 in funding for programs for young people vs. $1 for funding for programs for adults. This is the kind of thing that is possible in Europe, which is much closer to socialism with enforced redistribution of weath, than in America, where you are basically given the freedom to succeed or fail, and no one is going to help you. But these are the kind of investments that really pay off in the long run. Yes, it's a ridiculously high tax rate, but that is exactly what you have to invest in in order to try and reduce crime and poverty in the long term. Well that's what I'd like to think. The problem with this logic is that if it's so true that investing in pre-schools and after school programs are so beneficial, then why are the crime rates virtually equivalent in the U.S.? It was an interesting theory...
D
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/14/2005 09:14:00 PM
0 Comments
Monday, June 13, 2005
Puzzles as Food For The Mind
Chooky's Puzzles via Chooky
My girlfriend gave me a puzzle a few weeks ago which I absolutely loved. She said "I bought something today, I paid 99 pense for it". In a lot of ways, this was the perfect puzzle for me. It gave the absolute minimum of information yet was incredibly rich. First, I had to figure out what was cheap enough but still worth her mentioning it to me. Second, I had to remember it was in pense meaning bought from a country that used the pound (is there another form of currency that has pense as a denomination?). Third, because we don't use pense locally, I had to conclude that it was an Internet purchase (or phone purchase, but that seemed unlikely considering how cheap it was). Then I had to compare the date and what her interests were to try and get a union on everything. I still ended up stumped. (Turned out it was the new Coldplay single)
What is it about puzzles that are so engaging? I absolutely loved being challenged in this way... my major problem always comes down to the fact that I over think these things and then get into a perceived dead end... then I jump to the answer. I should force myself to work them through more often.
D
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/13/2005 08:52:00 PM
0 Comments
The Classiest
D
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/13/2005 08:46:00 PM
0 Comments
Friday, June 10, 2005
Cringely Has Gone Loco
Look, I'm the first to say that I am horribly bad at predicting the future of ... well ... anything. But Cringely is so far out in left field with this one, it isn't even funny.
A: Even if Intel LOATHED MS, I would wager they still make the VAST majority of their money selling PCs that happen to run Windows. The thought of them turning on that relationship is not something that you do on a whim. They have a lot more hope of success going with Linux than with Apple, considering Apple (just like Intel) makes their money selling hardware and therefore are going to be competitive more than they are complimentary.
B: Cringely seems to be missing public disclosures already made:
OS X 10.4 -- Tiger -- is a 64-bit OS, remember, yet Intel's 64-bit chips -- Xeon and Itanium -- are high buck items aimed at servers, not iMacs. So is Intel going to do a cheaper Itanium for Apple or is Apple going to pretend that 64-bit never existed?
Mr. Cringely apparently missed the announcement, and shipping, of the 64-Bit Pentium 4s.
The fact is that Mr. Cringely does not realize that the chip is totally irrelevant to the Mac. All they have ever cared about is faster, better, cheaper (though the same argument could be made about all PC users). If Apple is able to deliver the same product (done) running existing applications (done) running on hamsters in a wheel in the middle of the machine (tbd), the users won't care! As long as a user is able to run the application they care about in the same way they do today and faster without having to buy a new copy, they'll be ecstatic. Compability layer? Possibly, you could dual boot or you could run it in a virtual machine, but OS/2 tried that and everyone just ignored the OS/2 APIs and programmed for Win32.
As far as Mr. Cringely is concerned, I don't know why I keep reading his column; he hasn't been right for years.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/10/2005 10:37:00 AM
1 Comments
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Share What You Know
In my continuing attempt to try and encourage people to share what they know and get it out on the web, allow me to pass along something very cool... Screencasts! This is a recording of someone doing something on-screen. Let me tell you, this is INVALUABLE. I cannot tell you how difficult it is to follow instructions/how-tos/etc, even if you know what you're doing! Here, the person is doing exactly what you want right in front of you. I really like it.
One on the scary side is this:
Cracking WiFi in 10 minutes
You know, I thought it was easy, but yeesh. This is practically brainless. Time to get on WPA folks!
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/09/2005 12:44:00 PM
0 Comments
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Lack of testing 'threatening stability of Linux'
This is a bit strong, but it never fails to amaze me the difficulty of doing things with computers that are seemingly really easy with real life.
You want to build a bridge (real life edition)? Pile some stone up. Measure the sheer, tension, torsion strength of the stone. Now you know how much the bridge can hold.
You want to build a bridge (computer program edition)? Pile some stone up. Figure out some automated ways to test the sheer, tension, torsion strength of the stone. Now you know absolutely nothing, because the second someone gets that bridge in real life you're going to have people driving boats into the pillars and throwing 65 million ton trucks on it and hitting it with tidal waves and getting pissed when it crashes because they weren't thinking of using it in the same way you were using it. Or, better yet, somebody will sit around and figure out the exact resonance frequency necessary to bring the thing down and then publish that. Or, even better, totally randomly someone will drive a car, the water will swirl and somebody 20 miles away will pound a jackhammer into the ground and, somehow, all these things will come together to cause a massive crack with no ability to predict it whatsoever.
It's my guess that it's this last thing that the Linux community will have the hardest time overcoming.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/08/2005 03:55:00 PM
0 Comments
Letting Someone Else Do The Hard Work
Baby Polycarp on Flickr
I love the new art that seems to be going on right now. Maybe because I could not draw a straight line to save my life, but it particularly appeals to me in that people seem to be using existing bits and pieces to create interesting work. The dominos (on the top) and the rendering of the history of the early church (bottom) are great examples of this. No, they are not the next Mona Lisa, but it's a great start.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/08/2005 02:40:00 PM
0 Comments
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Watch out Hallmark
Amazingly addictive/powerful/etc site of nothing but homemade postcards. I wish I could post them all here. I remember, back in high school, reading Shakespeare and thinking that it was not possible to compress that many references and meaning into such a compact form as sonnets and plays. I feel a bit like that reading these too.
While I'm at it, I might as well give a free link to another site with way too much meaning packed into an impossible small space.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/07/2005 05:57:00 PM
0 Comments
Another Bubble Set to Blow Up?
I'm not exactly sure why this author thinks this is another bubble getting ready to burst. I have never been even remotely close to the financial sector, but I'm telling you I've heard people talking about making billions on the stock market at the zenith, at the nadir, and everywhere in between. The points this author makes are good ones; we, as humans, are remarkably BAD at evaluating exactly how good/bad our outcomes of any situation were, and we tend to always remember the best stories (I know Joe who made $6 M playing options!) vs. the bad (I know Bob who dropped his entire college fund on pork bellies!). But the fact of the matter is that for the past 75 years, the S&P 500 has returned ~11% y/y and the longer you hold onto it, the more likely you are to get that ~11% y/y growth. As far as an anonymous reader of his column is concerned:
"Boy, does this sound like a great way to make money in the stock market during my retirement years," he wrote. "The class only costs a few thousand. I'm thinking about signing up and playing with $50,000 of my retirement funds. What do you think?"
Uh, people have been acting irresponsibly with their retirement money/college money/mortgage money/medicine money/don't lose this or we will die money/etc. since the dawn of man, why would you think now would be any different?
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/07/2005 05:06:00 PM
0 Comments
Monday, June 06, 2005
Do the math (part 57)
These are really nice... though the big problem I have with the site is that it doesn't tell you how much it can hold (weight-wise).
I was doing a ridiculous amount of closet work recently (well, ridiculous for me, who's general number of activities per day/week/month can be measured on your dick), and my biggest problem was a steel plate that was behind a piece of drywall at the back of the closet. I needed to mount the rail on which you hung the rest of the closet but, unlike the other walls in the closet, beyond the 5/8" thick drywall was 5/8" of space and then this 1/4" steel plate. all the other wall anchors I looked at required too much depth so I went on a three week long journey to find something that would work. I ended up coming up with this:
This worked out perfectly, and it turns out the problem was, as is almost always the case, that I did not accurately estimate the requirements up front. Each of these hold 50 lbs, I had 7 in the wall, that's 350 lbs. That's ridiculously more than I required... I should have just done that math sooner and saved myself the weeks of searching. Anyhow, it's up and hanging, but I'm a little surprised that The Closet Factory, or whoever that was from whom I purchased the stuff, hasn't seen this problem before.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/06/2005 03:29:00 PM
0 Comments
Start.com
Boy, everyone is doing something cool out there. This is the new portal from MS, and I love it. There are great inline stories, answers on the fly, and moveable parts. I have to say, Google's entry could learn a bit from this.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/06/2005 03:09:00 PM
0 Comments
Real Estate Boom
Boy, Chooky's title has hit it right on the head. Anytime you have a situation where EVERYONE thinks they can get rich, you're screwed. I wonder what the most effective way for me to short the market would be?
My favorite quote is one that Chooky highlights: "LA homeowners expect their home values to grow 22% every year for a decade." Just FYI, the math on that says that if you bought a house in 2005 for $200,000, your house would have to be worth $1.2 M in 2015. That would be absolutely absurd.
My thoughts are that, though I don't think housing can maintain the sustained growth rates, the pull of being close to the center of the city and/or where you work is so strong that you won't quite see a burst bubble. Likely, you'll just reach a point where the total number of owners goes down (with each owner owning more) and more renters come into the picture. A depression in prices would mean that people see a reduction in values of the homes... I don't think that will happen. The best you could get is some retreating off the peaks, but that's it.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/06/2005 03:02:00 PM
0 Comments
What eBay Could Learn From Craigslist
I thought this was a really cool article. As a recent seller of stuff on Craigslist (or more accurately, as the recent beneficiary of my girlfriend's hard work of selling stuff on Craigslist), I was floored how easy and quick it was to sell the stuff. I guess shipping is a bigger blocker than I had previously imagined (all my goods were sold to local people). The best part about it is how easy it is to participate. On the other hand, for more obscure items, the lack of a universal search (such as Ebay) for those items makes it hard when people in your area are not looking for what you are selling (or vice versa). I think Ebay's number one take away is exactly how easy it is to setup and sell... reduce the cost of entry and you'll just naturally get everyone increasing what they are doing.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/06/2005 11:59:00 AM
0 Comments
Thursday, June 02, 2005
RealClimate.org
Commentary on Michael Crichton's "State of Fear" book by climate scientists. It's always particularly interesting to me when someone who does a job daily weighs in on that subject. The New Yorker just finished running a three part series on the state of the environment, and when I'm done with it, I'm sure I'll have some nonsense to spew. But the authors of the above talk about this stuff because they actually write the papers. What always confuses me is when someone comes along and says "I don't know the science" when you try and make a point. Doesn't that mean you basically have no idea what's going on, and have no business talking about the subject?
Anyhow, I'm also particularly surprised that so many people are up in arms about Crichton's book. I mean the guy is a fiction writer; he is paid to make things up for a living. He did opened himself up with the points at the end where he tried to claim some of his stuff was fact. I love debunking pieces like the one I linked to, regardless of which side is doing the debunking. I just wish they revolved faster. Or better yet, put the people in a room and let them go back and forth until we understand EXACTLY where people do not agree. Then you know what you need to decide on in order to make your decision on the whole issue.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/02/2005 11:32:00 AM
0 Comments
Stamkey stamps transfer personal info to your cellphone
Yet another idea whose time has come. People are so focused on producing techniques for outputing data that humans can read (from a computer) and then reading that back in. But there's no reason to let a human read it! I've known about these two-dimensional barcodes for quite a while, and I love them. So dense with information, as well as having checks built in so even blurry images can be read. Everyone focuses so hard on getting optical character recognition levels up, but it's stuff like this which will be the real revolution in passing information from the cyberworld to the meatsphere and back.
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/02/2005 10:48:00 AM
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Life's Inventions
I talked about this a little bit before, but nature figures everything out before us. The deeper I dig into stuff like this, the more impressed I am that a random bunch of neurons has created the drivel on the screen you see before you. One thing in the article above which I know very well is about vision. I am absolutely ASTOUNDED that we can see at all. The level of complexity on top of complexity when it comes to the eye is ridiculous. My favorite little tidbit? Every sensor in your eye is pointed backwards, such that light has to travel through all the plumbing to get detected YET your eye can detect the equivalent of a single candle light from 50 miles away on a perfectly dark night. Sick huh?
D
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/02/2005 10:39:00 AM
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Tiger Did It
and screwing it up royal:
How did it go in (.com) and the commentary there on
People please! Why can't you understand that less is more? The first cut is so perfect an ad for Nike, why wouldn't you just show that over and over? It's an absolute crime what they did afterwards. Not because the ad is particularly bad; it's more that they did not let the purity of the original message work for them.
D
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/02/2005 10:34:00 AM
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Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Portable High-Resolution NMR Sensor
This is one of those little inventions that has the possibility to change the world. NMR is a technology which can unambigously identify a material and the components thereof. Today, the only way to get that material tested is to grind it up and take it to a very large lab where very powerful magnets will test the material. This is all well and good, but it takes a damn long time to do it (get time on the machine, run the test, etc etc). The author calls out the interesting facets of this new invention in that you could have one of these machines in your back room at the airport, but now that it's getting smaller and the amount of energy required to run the test is much lower, expect that you'll be able to run this stuff in a portable (hand held) format in 10 years or so. That means on the field MRIs during sports events, or scanning every shipping container that comes through or a hundred other things. Very neat!
posted by Iron Yuppie
6/01/2005 04:07:00 PM
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