Archive: February 9, 2025
Archive: February 9, 2024
Archive: February 9, 2023
Checking in ... let's see what's happening!
This is Kylo. Sleeping in odd positions is his specialty.
It is increasingly borne in upon me that I'm posting too much. Sorry. I shall attempt to tighten the filter granularity! I can tell this from reviewing my flight each day; in former years I was less verbose, more interesting. Noted. 
MedCity ask: With Livongo, did Zane Burke sell a lemon to Teladoc’s Jason Gorevic? My own answer is No, Livongo was not a Lemon, at all, and the strategic fit was great. But the price was not great, both companies were public high-flyers at the time of the deal, and the consequent need to realize projected synergies led to unnatural decision-making. I believe he would do it again, but would execute the "merger" quite differently. 
So what do you think, did Putin invade Ukraine to prevent it from joining NATO? Seems plausible. And if so, it worked. 
Mapped: the most innovative countries in the world!
Guess who's [still] #1? 
Literally awesome: James Webb Telescope’s Incredibly Deep View of the Universe. (Click to enbiggen amazingly.) When you think that each of those galaxies has millions of stars... 
Hmmm... Wired thinks Mastodon bump is now a slump. Maybe, but it's too early to tell. Wired love to stake out contra positions which support their world view. 
Doc Searles: Is Mastodon a commons? 
Clive Thompson: How I use RSS to 'rewild' my attention. And he includes Twitter and Mastodon in "RSS"... 
Um, congratulations? LeBron James breaks NBA's all-time scoring record, surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. LeBron is and has been amazing, but Kareem is one of my all time favorites ... the sky hook was literally unstoppable. What people forget about Kareen is he played on teams with many different scorers; LeBron was mostly the main scorer on his team all through. 
Reason TV: these five technologies will change the world by 2050. To save you watching (V;DW!), here are the five: 1) Micromobility (sure), 2) Delivery Drones (okay), 3) Language AI (absolutely), 4) Lab-grown meat (what?), 5) Health wearables (yes!). 
I think related: Oracle reorganizes AI, data business units as healthcare becomes CTO's primary focus. 
Already a long pooost... I think I'll stop here :) 
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Archive: February 9, 2022
Archive: February 9, 2021
Archive: February 9, 2020
Archive: February 9, 2019
Archive: February 9, 2018
Archive: February 9, 2017
Archive: February 8, 2016
We all think of Amazon as a company that cares about their customers and wants us to find the right products, right? Well...
Amazon is first and foremost a book store, and their Kindle ecosystem has transformed publishing. Furthermore their "recommended for you" algorithms have set a high bar for e-commerce sites everywhere. So finding Amazon's "Kindle Books recommended for you" should be easy, right? You just visit amazon.com, sign on, and poof there they are! Nope.
I challenge you to find Kindle Book recommendations linked anywhere on the website. It's there, but you won't be able to find it. Today I was trying to find it, spent a good ten minutes clicking around, and then figured I might as well just ask. My first attempt was to chat with an Amazon rep. Here's how that went:
Initial Question: Hi can you please help me find Kindle Books recommended for me?
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02:45 PM PST Adam(Amazon): Hello Ole, my name is Adam. I'm here to help you today.
I understand that you want to find Kindle books for you. No worries, I'll do my best to help you with your concern, Ole.
A member of our Kindle team will be the perfect person to help you with this. Please hold while I transfer you. One of our Kindle Specialists will assist you shortly.
(pause)
02:46 PM PST Jeff(Amazon): Hi Ole, Thanks for contacting Amazon. How can I help you today?
02:46 PM PST Ole Eichhorn: Hi can you please help me find Kindle Books recommended for me?
02:47 PM PST Jeff: A member of our kindle specialist team will need to help you with this. Please hold while I transfer you. One of our kindle specialist representatives will assist you shortly.
(pause)
02:48 PM PST Ina(Amazon): Hello, my name is Ina.
How may I help you today?
02:48 PM PST Ole Eichhorn: Hi can you please help me find Kindle Books recommended for me?
02:49 PM PST Ina: What kind of Kindle books are you referring to?
02:50 PM PST Ole Eichhorn: Any kind of books. You have a page of Kindle books recommended for me and I cannot figure out how to get there
(long pause)
Hi are you still there
02:50 PM PST Ina: Yes.
02:51 PM PST Ina: One moment.
02:52 PM PST Ina: Are you referring to the Recommendations that can be found on your device?
02:52 PM PST Ole Eichhorn: Not on my device ... on your website
02:53 PM PST Ina: One moment.
(long pause)
02:55 PM PST Ina(Amazon): I'm sorry we were disconnected. I can pick up where we left off.
Please click on the link:
http://www.amazon.com/?ie=UTF8&usecaseSessionID=5460072861
02:56 PM PST Ina: Check to see if you are able to locate "Sign in to see personalized recommendations" button.
02:56 PM PST Ole Eichhorn: I am signed in already
02:57 PM PST Ina: Kindly log out and sign in when prompted once you click"Sign in to see personalized recommendations" button.
02:57 PM PST Ole Eichhorn: I am signed in already
Hi can you please help me find Kindle Books recommended for me?
02:58 PM PST Ole Eichhorn: I cannot find the link
02:58 PM PST Ina: Kindly click on the link below:
https://www.amazon.com/ap/signin?_encoding=UTF8&openid.assoc_handle=usflex&openid.claimed_id=http%3A%2F%2Fspecs.openid.net%2Fauth%2F2.0%2Fidentifier_select&openid.identity=http%3A%2F%2Fspecs.openid.net%2Fauth%2F2.0%2Fidentifier_select&openid.mode=checkid_setup&openid.ns=http%3A%2F%2Fspecs.openid.net%2Fauth%2F2.0&openid.ns.pape=http%3A%2F%2Fspecs.openid.net%2Fextensions%2Fpape%2F1.0&openid.pape.max_auth_age=0&openid.return_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fyourstore%2Fhome%3Fie%3DUTF8%26ref_%3Drhf_custrec_signin
02:59 PM PST Ole Eichhorn: that is a signon link
02:59 PM PST Ina: Sign in to see the Recommendations.
03:00 PM PST Ole Eichhorn: I am signed in already
03:00 PM PST Ina: Let me connect you to Generalist for further assistance. Please stay connected. Thank you.
03:00 PM PST Amazon: Thank you for contacting Amazon.com Chat Support my name is Shanice.
03:00 PM PST Ole Eichhorn:
Me: Hi can you please help me find Kindle Books recommended for me
03:01 PM PST Amazon: Let me transfer you to our Kindle team.
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So that was fun. Next I tried calling customer support. The first person with whom I spoke was unintelligible. I have no problem with people who have learned English as a second language, but in a customer support situation you have to be able to communicate. When I called back, I was transferred three times between teams. Finally I was told there is no such link. I knew there was such a link - I've visited it - so I hung up and tried again. On my third try, the second rep put me on hold and never came back.
So, what to do? I decided to spend another ten minutes poking about the site, trying to find the link, and this time I found it! Yay... here it is:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/yourstore/recs/ref=s9_ps_bw_clnk?ie=UTF8&nodeID=154606011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-8&pf_rd_r=0963HZHZDWEVMYRSTYGE&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1721688622&pf_rd_i=154606011
You might want to bookmark this link because it is *not* easy to find :)
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Flashlights
(Still not quite as bright as the Galvanick Lucifer :)
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Archive: February 9, 2015
Blogging the blues ...
Old meets new: A guitar cover of Daft Punk's 'Get Lucky' in the styles of 10 famous guitarists. By the well-named Andre Antunes. Carlos Santana, Steve Vai, Kurt Cobain, Angus Young (AC/DC), Slash (Guns 'n Roses), Brian May (Queen), Mark Knopfler (Dire Straights), Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine), Joe Satriani, and Eddie Van Halen. It's awesome. The guitarists I know well (Santana, Knopfler, Satriani, and Van Halen) were covered perfectly. I love it. 
An idea whose time has come: Uber for helicopters. Yes of course we all want this. We might not be able to afford it yet, but we want it... 
There's a new 'zine in town: Apple World Today, launched by former TUAW staffers. (TUAW = "the unofficial Apple weblog", recently decomissioned by new owner AOL) Subscribed! 
And AWT are off to a good start with: Preparing for the Apple Watch. A detailed list of launch features. My favorite right now is that I'll be able to use Apple Pay from my iPhone 5S. 
A nice long read: There goes the neighborhood, again. In which a new Oakland homeowner in a newly gentrified area digs into the history of his house, and discovers the waves of settlers. Most interesting. 
Another good long read: Six stories from the Russian North. I've been thinking a lot about settlement on Mars (!), and I believe settlement near the polar circle is a good proxy. Amazing. 
This is a picture of Kaierkan, Russia, which translates as "death valley".
PS did you know there's such a place as the White Sea? Brrr..
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Just noticed this will be my 3,000th post. Wow.
I hope you've enjoyed them almost as much as I have. And I hope they were gates rather than fences.
When I started blogging in 2003, I'm not sure I thought I'd still be doing it twelve years later. Will I be blogging in 2027? Stay tuned :)
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Archive: February 9, 2014

Important work.
I've tested this by verifying a few of the threads:
Personal -> home -> alone -> recovering from work = Pinot Noir
Personal -> on the go -> restaurant -> fancy -> new world -> no cult = California Cabernet
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Another quiet day of coding and watching the Olympics... if only it was cold and rainy all the time, I'd get so much work done over a weekend!
So Dutch speed skater Ireen Wust has three-peated as Olympic champion in the 5,000m. Excellent. And it led to some of the wust puns ever, as the commentators forecast the wust competition of the games. Each of her laps was wust than the previous one. When she won, it was absolutely the wust victory. Some of the wust sportscasting I've heard :) 
TechCrunch: you'd be surprised by what really motivates users. Interesting but I must confess, not all that surprising. People want recognition from other people they care about. I've been thinking about this a lot in the context of visual search... 
Cross-post: Learning object segmentation. 
I'm a sucker for this: Stunning photos of Mars from NASA's Curiosity Rover. Which one is your favorite? Mine is the compound selfie self-portrait at right, made from dozens of different exposures. This is a real picture of a real rover on Mars, taken by itself. Now how cool is that? 
PS must say, I like Forbes, man is their website over-designed
Jerry Brown is trying to will California's high-speed rail into existence. That would be great. But it takes more than will, it takes money and good engineering, and the state doesn't seem to have either one. 
Here we have a Lego R2D2. Way cool. Should have been in the Lego movie :) 
Did you see this? Bill Gates spends entire first day back in office trying to install Windows 8.1. And he wasn't able to do it. More telling to me was the fact that he didn't already have it installed. [ Update: this was parody! Who knew? ] 
Speaking of MobileSoft (we were): GigaOm posts an analysis of Windows Azure's strengths and weaknesses. This could be the key to their recovery. It most definitely will not be Windows. 
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Archive: February 9, 2013
Archive: February 9, 2012
Archive: February 9, 2011
Today featured HP's big "Think Beyond" event, at which they announced new webOS devices: small, medium, and large, a teeny Palm Pre -like "Veer", a larger Palm Pre 3, and the TouchPad, a webOS -based tablet.

Of course it was the TouchPad that got the most attention, from TechCrunch, Robert Scoble, John Gruber, and Boing Boing, among many others. The general impression seems to be most positive, but we'll have to see whether developers and consumers actually adopt.
[Update: you can see video of the entire event here. It is interesting that while I am interested in the webOS devices, I am pretty un-interested in watching the announcement itself. Not quite a Jobsnote...]
Overall it looks like HP have pushed webOS forward in a big way; they even announced that it will be distributed on their laptops in future! Some bemoaned the death of the "Palm" brand, but I get it; they couldn't confuse with too many brands, and "webOS" is their go-forward brand of choice.
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Archive: February 8, 2010
So how was your Super Weekend? Mine was pretty Super :) Spent Saturday hanging out, blogging, getting caught up, and Sunday watching the big game with my friend Yogi (thanks for being an awesome host!) I was rooting for the Saints, mildly (returning to my Rams'/NFC roots) and enjoyed a pretty nice game paired with some pretty great food. Oh yeah and squeezed in a couple of Rockstore rides, too; fortunately our weather improved right on schedule.
Some Super observations:
- This game showed that in football, you win with a team. Peyton Manning and the Colts were probably better position-for-position than the Saints, but the Saints played like a better team.
- You have to love that onside kick in the third quarter. Even if it didn't work, it was classic; but it worked perfectly and deliciously. I found myself yelling YES at the screen, along with you and millions of others :)
- The Audi ads were the best. Cute and well focused. We all love being green until we encounter the Green Police...
- The Google ad, while okay, was definitely not 1984 revisited. Oh well. It actually isn't clear to me why Google needs ads for search, I think it was just something they did that day. Their strategy seems a bit lacking.
- The Who sucked. Some of these older acts that come back for halftime shows rock - like Tom Petty, and the Stones - but The Who truly have not aged well. (Not that they were ever that great before.) We won't be fooled again.
So ends another football season, whew. Time to start watching College hoops; go Bruins!
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So tonight I'm riding along the top of Mulholland, turn the corner, and poof! there's a Spyker. Sitting there at the top of the world, with a photo crew taking pictures as the sun sets...

Pretty cool... a beautiful car, framed by a beautiful sunset...

I cannot wait to see the final ad :)
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Archive: February 9, 2009
I'm actually making progress on my todo list! Yay. And had a few productive conversations, and made two count 'em two useful decisions. And I took the world's slowest and coldest ride today; it was 40o; I'm still frozen, three hours later. I think I'll take the rest of the day off. But first, this:
Of all the things which are crappy in Windows Explorer - and there are many - the crappiest is the way it manages image thumbnails. The whole feature is tectonically slow, buggy, and hard to use. The filmstrip is a joke; it could be useful, but it is just way too slow and buggy. Really I cannot see how they whole thing ever shipped. Whenever I try to use thumbnails in Explorer I toy with the idea of writing an app from scratch to replace it. So far I haven't done so, but I got awfully close last night... 
TheScientist features Darwin vs. his Dad, c 1931. In this letter Darwin summarizes his father's objections to a voyage around the world as a naturalist: 
- disreputable to my character as a clergyman hereafter
- a wild scheme
- that they must have offered to many others the place of naturalist
- and from it not being accepted there must be some serious objection to the vessel or expedition
- that I should never settle down to a steady life hereafter
- that my accommodations would be most uncomfortable
- that you should consider it as again changing my profession
- that it would be a useless undertaking
How classic. The letter changed his father's mind, Darwin's life, and perhaps the course of the world.
The Onion: Sony releases new stupid piece of shit that doesn't fucking work. Hilarious :) 
This looks pretty cool: LovelyCharts. Perhaps a great new way to make network diagrams. I use Visio now, and it isn't easy enough. I notice you can save them off as a PNG, too. Very cool. 
Spam of the day: Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall - Confucius.
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Archive: February 9, 2008
So today I am going to do a l o n g ride, in preparation for next weekend, on which I am planning to do a r e a l l y l o n g ride, my first double, the Butterfield Double Century. Last weekend I did a 300K, which is "only" 185 miles. Why do I do these rides? I'm not sure. It isn't fun at the time, but it is fun later. More evidence that "fun" really consists of anything that makes you feel better about yourself. I think it is part of a hopeless endeavor to prove to myself that I'm not really getting older :)
Wow: WSJ reports Yahoo board to reject Microsoft bid. And will propose that the company is worth $40/share. I didn't see that coming, did you? I guess this is their attempt to bid against themselves... I doubt it will work, there are probably plenty of shareholders who want the deal at $31/share. 
Has the Archbishop gone bonkers? Thank you for asking. The answer is yes. 
Yes, traffic is bad in California, but nothing like this: A 2,000 car pileup in Wisconsin that lasted 12 hours. Bad weather, sure, but reading the reports it seems the State Patrol's response was slow and ineffective. Glad the sun is out here :) 
Panda's Thumb: Reconstruction of Ancestral Proteins. "Yesterday a really cool paper came out in the journal Nature that demonstrates why evolutionary theory is so useful and fruitful in biology. A team of researchers has recreated an ancestral bacterial protein to determine that the ancestral bacteria grew in hot water around 3.5 billion years ago." This kind of research is happening more and more often, and in addition to the valuable basic research provides a great retort to those who think evolutionary theory "isn't useful". 
It had to happen: Polaroid shutters the Polaroid. What an amazing technology it was! But "Polaroid failed to embrace the digital technology that has transformed photography, instead sticking to its belief that many photographers who didn't want to wait to get pictures developed would hold onto their old Polaroid cameras." 
What's fascinating is that they're still skating to where the puck used to be, here's their new strategy: "As it seeks to gain a foothold in digital photography this year, Polaroid plans to sell an 8-ounce photo printer slightly bigger than a deck of cards that requires no ink and prints business card-sized pictures. It uses thermal printing technology from Zink Imaging, founded by private investors who bought technologies from Polaroid as it was coming out of bankruptcy." I view printing pictures as a dead-end technology; clearly we're going to end up with display screens on everything. Who carries around snapshots when you can have an iPhone? Weird how you can't see the forest for the [dead] trees sometimes...
Patterns in Nature! Check out this picture of Dallol crater in Ethiopia. Looks like something from a video game :) The rest of the National Geographic photo series is worth checking out, too...

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I ended up riding up the [infamous] Rockstore climb. From my house this is a 30mi loop, about 15 miles to reach the climb, 3 miles up, and then 12 miles back. This ride also features a couple of smaller climbs and a spiffy descent down Decker Canyon, as well as some nice flat powering, so it has a little of everything. And it is beautiful! This is some of the best riding anywhere...
BTW I'm not the only one who thinks so; check out this article from Competitive Cyclist, reporting on Team CSC's training in these very hills: "The general area around Agoura Hills - our understanding is that it basically straddles the Ventura/Los Angeles County line - might possibly hold the best riding in America. In previous years we've logged big miles around Encinitas, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco, and we're fond of all those places. But none of them matches the mix of savage climbing, spectacular scenery, and lack of traffic we found around Agoura Hills."
I thought you might enjoy some snaps of the ride, so I whipped out my trusty Treo; here ya go...

The start! - the iconic Rock Store itself, with the usual posse of Harleys...

Starting metrics: 630ft, 14.5mi.

It starts "slow"...

Ouch, that first turn, and the road tilts up.

Yes Virginia, this is a climb. But "only" 7% here.

The road curves around a lot - now we're heading right at the summit.

This is a cool curve, literally, shaded by a big rock.

This straight section is the calm before the storm...

...and now we really start climbing.

On and on it goes, fortunately there is some shade.

Peeking back down into the valley where we started.

Back up we go, again headed at the summit - and the sun.

More shade, whew. The road winds all around itself.

Cresting the steepest section yet. 11%, baby, and feels like more.

Almost there! The last curve.
This is popular with motorcycles, who take it at speed.

Another look down - we've come a long way!

A tribute to Lance - way cool. But we're not quite there yet.

One last straight to the top, with an overlook at the left.

Powered cycles congregate at the overlook.

The top! Yay!
{One day I rode up here and found a bunch of emergency vehicles, a Ferrari had just hit a motorcycle head-on. The Ferrari was totalled and the cycle was, well, a ball of metal. Very sobering. I think about it every time I reach this spot.}

Final metrics - 1920ft (+1290), 16.9mi (+2.4).
...at Kanan...

...a climb and some rollers later, down Decker!

And finally, a Google Earth view of the Rockstore climb.
So that was really fun, guess what I'm doing tomorrow? The Amgen Breakaway from Cancer charity ride! Which is a fifty mile loop around Thousand Oaks and Agoura Hills, featuring - ta da - the famous Rockstore climb. Stay tuned for a full report :)
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Archive: February 9, 2007
Archive: February 9, 2006
Some things age gracefully, some don't. Boats do. A while ago I came across this picture, posted by the Horse's Mouth:

Yeah, it's old, and yeah, it's probably unusable and certainly decrepit, but it's beautiful, perhaps more beautiful than the day it was launched. Then we have the Staten Island Boat Graveyard, an amazing collection of photos of abandoned wrecks. [ via Cory Doctorow ]:

When you see a wreck like this, it makes you wonder what happened. How did it come to sit here? Surely there was a day when it was spiffy and new, and someone was proud of it? But then time passed, and it was less spiffy and less new, and finally one day it was wrecked and nobody cared. And then time began to take its toll, inexorably. Until now it is a relic, a window into an older time. So cool.

Few things age as gracefully as old boats...
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The Ole filter makes a pass...
So tomorrow the Winter Olympics start! Fire up your Tivo! I'm expecting my new Adelphia HD-PVR next Monday, so I'll have to watch the old way over the weekend. The official website's lead story is Olympic Stadium is ready for the Ceremony, which is good news considering it takes place tomorrow night. (Whenever I hear "Torino" I think of my Mom's car back when I was a kid, aka the world's biggest station wagon.) Anyway I'm looking forward to it, especially speed skating, which is one of my favorite sports to watch. 
Matt Haughey notes NBC, the Olympics, and Intel's new Viiv platform.
Today's bonus question: where does the phrase "Olympic Movement" come from? It sounds like something which might cause plumbing problems :)
Powerline notes: The gentleman from Louisiana is recognized, regarding former Congressman Robert Livingston. Read it all. Seems not all politicians from Louisiana are clueless. 
My favorite take on the Cartoon Wars comes from Dilbert Scott Adams: Cartoonist or Puppet Master. "I always thought it was unfair that diplomats had diplomatic immunity. They can run over you with their car several times a day while saying the equivalent of 'neener neener' in their own language. And it’s all perfectly legal. As a cartoonist, I have the power to fight back. The next time I see an ambassador double parking, I will mumble to myself 'Say goodbye to your embassy.'" 
Daniel Dennett has a new book out, called Breaking the Spell. Subtitle: "Religion as a Natural Phenomenon". You know what that means (you have to read it :) I've one-clicked it, stay tuned for a review. Dennett is one of my very favorite authors. 
Speaking of my favorite authors, Geoffrey Moore posted his Top Ten Myths about Business Innovation. Consider #3: "It is good to innovate. No, it is good to differentiate on an attribute that drives customer preference during buying decisions. Innovating elsewhere costs money and entails risk but does not create competitive advantage." 
So, have you tried Songbird yet? "Songbird is a Web player built from Firefox's browser engine." [ found via Xeni Jardin ] Pretty darn cool; essentially, an open-source version of iTunes. Although I must say I downloaded it, installed it, ran it, and then I was like "now what"? It is a front-end for a whole bunch of music websites, but it doesn't have it's own content. So the interface is not uniform. It will be interesting to watch this play out... 
Some of you may be using Google Desktop Search, which is a Google Toolbar function that indexes your hard drive. When you perform a search, Google delivers results from your hard drive as well as results from the web. Okay as far as it goes, but recently Google has taken this further. They now have a function described as “search across computers”. This means the index is uploaded to Google’s servers, so they can deliver results to you from computer A even if you are located at computer B. I don’t know about you, but I do not want Google to upload anything about my stuff to their computers. Sure, they are doing it just to help me, sure they are. Until the dust settles on this new feature and the ‘net has a chance to figure out the implications, I suggest people do not enable this feature. In fact, I really suggest that instead of trusting big companies like Google or Microsoft with desktop search, you use a simple little utility like X1. I just don’t trust these big companies, seems like the temptation to do evil things with your data is too strong. 
[ Later: The EFF agrees with me: "Coming on the heels of serious consumer concern about government snooping into Google's search logs, it's shocking that Google expects its users to now trust it with the contents of their personal computers". ]
SpaceX did a "wet dress" yesterday, and things did not go perfectly. Another is scheduled for today, but they missed their launch window. Elon Musk notes: "Once we have thoroughly checked out all systems, I will post an update on what was found and when the next countdown attempt will occur. Based on range availability and logistics constraints, a rough guess would be two to four weeks." I guess the third time wasn't a charm, this time... 
Jeff Atwood: The Day Performance Didn't Matter Any More. "Clearly, the performance penalty for interpreted languages is extreme. How extreme? If you have to ask, you probably can't afford it." Right. This is why Photoshop isn't written in Python. Or Aperio's ImageServer :) 
I'm actually really enjoying my new archive. It is simple, it works, and (gasp!) it is useful, which the old calendar-based one never was. I find myself using it to find stuff instead of using Search... 
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Archive: February 9, 2005
Archive: February 9, 2004
Archive: February 9, 2003
Thomas Friedman has written a thoughtful op-ed piece for the N.Y.Times entitled "Vote France Off the Island". I'm sure W would! (Hey, how do you get your own letter? Can I be "O"?)
Here's a recently posted [internal] memo from Sun engineers explaining why Java on Solaris is not appropriate for their internal software projects. "As it stands client-side Java remains primarily a web language." These dogs are spitting out the dog food. Whew. Adding insult to injury, Pixar is starting to use Lintel servers in their render farm.
Are smart cards a smart idea? France is experimenting with a country-wide implementation. They seem inferior to credit cards in every way to me... The current economics of credit cards make their use for small transactions inefficient, but this is a market effect not fundamental to the product.
Every month there is a new story about broadband access over power lines [here's this month's, in Wired]. What a dumb idea. We already have cable "everywhere", why would you establish a parallel network with a bunch of technical problems cable doesn't have?
Clay Shirkey has written an interesting article exploring the network effects of weblog traffic. He concludes that "them that has, gets" - visitors and traffic, that is. Meanwhile little 'ol 'blogs like mine languish in obscurity. So be it - let the market decide!
Dave thinks Clay doesn't get weblogs. But this is a market thing, not a weblog thing. I doubt weblogs are immune to market things...
CNN has an interesting article about the state of Kazaa. The lead for the story is about an unknown band who thinks its great that people are downloading and listening to their music. That is the thing the RIAA just doesn't get.
I'm getting ready for the NBA all-star game, later today. As usual this event marks my transition from football to basketball, from here on out I'll follow the Lakers all the way to their fourth consecutive title (you heard it here but probably not first :). I love it that the all-stars are wearing old Air Jordans to honor Michael. That's cool.
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