Since I work in a Dilbertian corporate environment whose stories are many, I have seen my share of dead men walking. I have speculated about who’s about to be fired and later have been mildly amazed when my speculation came to pass. Aside from gut feel and outright hating somebody, there are some real telltale signs that your job is pining for the fjords. In fact, here are 20 of them.
My favorites:
1 – Are you no longer in the loop about, well, anything?
3 – Are people avoiding you at all costs?
7 – Do you now have less responsibility than the intern?
9 – Do people whisper more, or does the conversation change as you approach?
Ouch. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where these roads lead. Especially #1 — if you’re in the dark about major issues that are supposedly (finger quote) your responsibility (/finger quote), that’s not good. It becomes really not good if it’s a trend that continues and worsens. Your executive hasn’t suddenly become retarded.
This is what Scoble was talking about on Twitter last night: Microsoft Surface. According to the website (which must be under load right now, because it buffers endlessly), it’s a new bridge between users and digital media. Scoble says that before its official launch, it was called “PlayTable.” Under a broader label, it’s “gestural computing.”
From what I can glean from the website (which is done in Flash, ironically, not Microsoft’s Silverlight), this is impressive. It’s incredibly easy to see parallels between this and what we’ve seen with the iPhone’s multi-touch display. You could pretty coherently argue that this is a larger surfaced multi-touch underpinned by Microsoft technology. The gestures to drag and resize seem awfully similar to the iPhone.
I’m speculating, but we’ll see. There’s no news yet about Apple/MS licensing.
Regardless, the market penetration vector for Surface is unclear to me. Is ultimately this for home use? Do you buy a smallish living room table that’s really an MS Surface machine and that serves as a lifestyle computing device that interfaces with your mobile phone and camera? It hasn’t been announced for the home yet, but I have to imagine that MS is going to go there eventually.
So, then, what about business use? The website shows POS (point-of-sale) opportunities, but aside from boutique places, is there really a market for something this slick (and untested)?
Where will this live?
I strongly suggest you go take a look at the website: the demos they have their are very impressive, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t interested. Unfortunately, Scoble talks about the price and (relative) complexity of MS Surface, and like most magic there’s quite a bit going on backstage.
Anyway, surface computing is real and is wild. I want one of these in my house, but it is too expensive. Anyway, here’s how it works:
1) It has a piece of holographic glass that can display images that a projector shoots at it.
2) It has a projector underneath.
3) It has two cameras, aimed at the glass which can triangulate on objects on it.
4) It has software, written in Windows Presentation Foundation, that take advantage of the new hardware.
So, how does it recognize the glass chips placed on top of it? Easy, each chip has an invisible bar code in infrared-reflecting ink. Your eye can’t see it. The cameras can.
The problem is the expense. It costs a few grand for the glass, another grand or two for the projector, $50 for each camera, and then you need a computer underneath.
iPhone season is about to kick off. You could argue that the Steve Jobs/Bill Gates face-to-face conference at the D: All Things Digital conference could be the foothills to the iPhone’s coming publicity mountain, and you’d probably be right. Regardless, if you haven’t heard a ton about Apple’s iPhone yet, you will. Wait a few weeks.
What’s been happening so far is not a lot, actually: since the iPhone’s announcement, there’s been very little real news, not counting the FCC’s approval of the device. There’s been lots of speculation. There’s been lots of zealotry and bashing of Apple’s game-changer.
There’s been lots of everything except what matters most: real-world information about the device. For $499 or $599, I think most people — outside of the overexuberant sight-unseen early adopters — would want to know a thing or two about the iPhone before plunking down serious cheddar on a revision A device with no market history.
Soon, we’ll see and hear real-world feedback pouring into the mainstream media (MSM) and blogosphere in droves. It’s already starting to happen, albeit in very small drips.
The Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley gets a chance to sit down with AT&T’s Glenn Lurie, President of National Distribution. Lurie uses an iPhone and has some real hands-on time with the device, so he’s uniquely positioned to provide useful feedback on the iPhone, which, as some have said, is more a concept device than one that will be truly usable.
Bear in mind that Lurie works for AT&T, so there’s not much of a chance for true objectivity here, but nonetheless he provides some interesting comments.
I don’t know how I missed this, but it’s too good to pass up.
A few days ago, as Dubya took questions from a reporter regarding his Attorney General Al Gonzales, a bird flew by and shit on his suit. He tried several times to wipe it off to no avail.
Simultaneously, a sparrow flew overhead and left a splash on the President’s sleeve, which Bush tried several times to wipe off.
Deputy White House Press Secretary Dana Perino promptly put the incident through the proper spin cycle, telling ABC News, “It was his lucky day…everyone knows that’s a sign of good luck.”
Yes. Getting shit upon is always a sign of good luck. No question. It’s a big, “keep up the good work!” from God himself.
I hate to bite on such blatant linkbaiters, but it’s worth it just to echo a comment from the story: “You’re a fucking liar and retard.” (The fact that its grammar is FUBAR makes it all the more charming.)
Indeed.
So, either I’m missing something — maybe it’s one of those pics that you have to stare at until your eyeballs dry out until you see some abstracted picture — or this is one of the lamest traffic stunts ever.
If you’re sitting around early on Memorial Day morning listening to music and reading thinking that there’s no way there’s a professional Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS) society, you’re sitting around on Memorial Day being wrong. Not only does the society exist, but Graham Walker, the Director of Management for the World RPS Society, has some tips for you, the amateur RPS slappy.
Contrary to what you might think RPS is not simply a game of luck or chance. While it is true that from a mathematical perspective the ‘optimum’ strategy is to play randomly, it still is not a winning strategy for two reasons.
First, ‘optimum’ in this case means you should win, lose and draw an equal number of times (hardly a winning strategy over the long term). Second, Humans, try as they might, are terrible at trying to be random, in fact often humans in trying to approximate randomness become quite predictable. So knowing that there is always something motivating your opponent’s actions, there are a couple of tricks and techniques that you can use to tip the balance in your favour.
The tips on which an entire strategy is built? Rock is for rookies and scissors is thrown the least often. Read more here for the subtle nuances — and trust me, there are more nuances than you imagine.
It was difficult to judge the exact number of zombies that shuffled through the city’s shopping district, losing limbs, blood, and unmentionable body parts along the way, but probably at least 150 converged on Union Square. Then they decided to visit nearby businesses, including the Apple store, Nordstrom, the Disney store, and the Westfield Mall.
A flash horde of zombies organized by the dark clerics over at EatBrains have invaded SF’s Union Square, and, specifically, the SF Apple Store, which, if you were there, would either be incredibly funny or terrifying, depending on your state of mind. Me, I think it’s hilarious, but then again I didn’t have zombies shambling after me looking to eat my brains. The event was called “SF Zombie Mob 2007″.
The zombies were inordinately polite as well: only victims who volunteered their brains to the zombies were eaten. That’s some remarkable evolution in zombie behavior.
I’m saddened by this, only in the sense that nothing interesting like this ever happens around me. I’d pay good money to see a horde of zombies invade the Somerset Collection, a mere five minutes from my house. That’s be quite a shock to those who normally frequent the place. And by “quite a shock” I mean some socialites would be have to be de-fibbed.
Here’s a very comprehensive list of the fonts used by major companies for their logos and brands. The site is in German, but you can get the idea easily enough.
PETERSBURG, KY — Providing ample evidence that anyone can do anything given enough will and perseverance, the zany creationists behind the $27 million, 60,000 sq. ft Creation Museum have opened their funhouse. The slogan? “Prepare to believe.”
While the $27 million museum near Cincinnati has drawn snickers from media and condemnation from U.S. scientists, those who believe God created the heavens and the Earth in six days about 6,000 years ago say their views are finally being represented.
“What we’ve done here is to give people an opportunity to hear information that is not readily available … to challenge them that really you can believe the Bible’s history,” said Ken Ham, president of the group Answers in Genesis that founded the museum.
Here exhibits show the Grand Canyon took just days to form during Noah’s flood, dinosaurs coexisted with humans and had a place on Noah’s Ark, and Cain married his sister to people the earth, among other Biblical wonders.
Ken Ham is loopy. And it’s beautiful that significant numbers of secularists and moderate Christians are speaking out against the museum, so the museum is likely already relegated to curiosity status. In fact, during the opening ceremony, an airplane trailing a “Thou Shalt Not Lie” banner flew overhead.
AOL money and finance analyst Georges Yared says that Apple will grow to be bigger than IBM. For me, this is a great crystallization of what I’ve been saying in discussions for the past 18 months: that Apple (and Google) are the hottest tech companies in the world right now, bar none.
If you read Apple blogs and news routinely, this won’t be much of a surprise to you. But the majority of the general public doesn’t know or doesn’t care about Apple like you or I, and it doesn’t think Apple has clout like an IBM has clout. If the public had any sense of a broader clue, the gentleman in Caribou Coffee, some five weeks ago, wouldn’t have looked at my MacBook Pro and said, “Apple? They still make computers? I thought they only did iPods.” Clearly he doesn’t own a TV, and he might be a fringe example, but nonetheless Apple is generally regarded as (a) the iPod company, (b) an old-school also ran or (c) both.
The reality is actually quite different, and I think people will start noticing very soon. Very soon as in June, when the iPhone starts becoming a household name.
Apple, although only about one-fourth the size of IBM in revenue terms, is growing aggressively. The marketplace will, and has rewarded that aggressive growth by lifting the shares nearly $50 these past two years. But Apple is just beginning. The iPod and iTunes store have captured the consumer world by storm. Apple recently announced its 100 millionth iPod sale and iTunes has delivered over 2.5 billion downloads … both stunning numbers but still so much more to capture. The iPod (or MP3 market) is a growing market in its own right and Apple has the win-win situation: market share dominance in a growing market. Couple this with the launch of the iPhone next month and Apple’s dominance is bound to continue.
Next Wednesday, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates will sit before a panel of executives and A-list technologists for a 75 minute long, face-to-face interview. This is the first event of its kind, the first time the two icons — whose approaches are nearly opposite of one another — will sit down and openly discuss the challenges to the ongoing development of the tech industry.
This should be enthralling, to say the least. Jobs is in the middle of his second act after a fragmented and storied past. Gates, whose focus and decisions made in Microsoft’s early days led to the complete and utter domination of the PC industry — is on the downslope of his executive career, focusing these days on his philanthropic pursuits.
If the questions aren’t a bunch of softballs written by shovel-headed PR wonks, this has all the potential in the world. If it’s treated like a staged celebrity event, then not so much.
I had no idea I could make homemade butter by simply shaking the hell out of a jar containing regular whipping cream. I am going to try this. I will, however, add salt, because I can’t get with unsalted butter.
Without even trying this, I can all but promise you that this will be probably the best-tasting butter you’ve ever had. And if you don’t make a habit of eating real butter (as opposed to all the processed shit that’s out there), you should. Protip: salted butter also stays fresh (doesn’t go rancid) when left at room temperature.
I am about to reveal to you an ANCIENT butter making secret, to make butter it requires, shaking, shaking, shaking, MORE shaking, lots of shaking, but the end result is FANTASTIC.
DECISIONS, DECISIONS….Question: Which is more annoying? (a) Lefter-than-thou liberals who are under the impression that it’s somehow either immoral or impolite to make money or (b) hacker-than-thou conservatives who worship 24/7 at the altar of making of money except when the moneymaker in question happens to be a Democratic presidential candidate and thus presents a chance to score some political points? It’s a tough choice.
Not to ruin the story, but it’s one most of us know already: America is the most obese country on the globe, thanks to the proliferation of processed foods and a nonexistent nutritional education curriculum that isn’t shrouded in politics. America, as a nation, is swimming in sugar. We’re literally a sick country because of the way we eat.
Note the thinnest five countries: Austria, Italy, Norway, Japan and Korea. These are countries that, by and large, adhere to cultural/traditional diets (read: whole foods), don’t have the “paradox of choice” confusing consumers in markets, and have little or no interest in processed foods.
When you install Adobe Version Cue CS3 Server on Mac systems that have the Mac OS X personal firewall enabled, the installer turns off the firewall to correctly set up Version Cue Server but does not turn the firewall back on at the end. This creates a potential security vulnerability.
Just incredibly poor use case creation, coding and QA. I’m shocked nobody caught this in system testing or beta.
I spent my tumultuous teen years loving Stallone’s Rambo movies, particularly First Blood and its successor, Rambo: First Blood Part II. I couldn’t get enough of them, even though on one level I knew they sucked and were cheesy. I think I loved these movies for the same reason I liked certain hair metal bands, but that’s another story. Simply put, these movies will always hold a special place in me, for better or worse.
Time passes. I grew up. Or so I thought.
Turns out there’s a fourth Rambo installment coming out in May 2008, simply entitled John Rambo. Yes Stallone is in his 60s, and yes there are hundreds of jokes to be made about him doing such a film, but it seems that Stallone is creating his modern identity by modernizing cheeseball 80s flicks (Rocky Balboa, anyone?), and it’s working.
Don’t believe me? Check out the first official John Rambo teaser trailer, which is essentially 3 minutes and 30 seconds of Rambo:
Looking old
Looking mean
Non-cheeseball special effects (no glamor blood here)
Grunting inarticulately (and, somehow, wisely) in his famous mouth-half-paralyzed drawl
Getting pissed
Kicking ass
Cutting heads off with machetes
De-throating an enemy
Shooting things with exploding arrows (namely, people)
Turning a guy into raw meat at close range with a truck-mounted .50 cal
Saving a war torn nation and, presumably, falling in love with some wavering-voice blonde ninny
I’ve been accused of being an Apple slappy on occasion, which is understandable seeing how I’m a Mac user and generally respect and admire Apple’s technologies. To this day, I think Apple is the best thing going for personal technology.
That doesn’t mean I can’t be objective and call things like I see them. I’m more than willing to call a spade a spade, and seeing how Apple’s being accused of selling 6-bit displays (when they’re advertised as 8-bit) on its MacBook and (even worse) MacBook Pros, that time is upon me.
AppleInsider analyzes a recent patent filing by Apple that provides for an anti-theft mechanism for portable electronics that actually can sense what’s happening in the outside world.
Given the details of the patent, this system would use the already-present internal accelerometers in Macs and iPhones to sense movement patterns that mimic theft — sudden stops and erratic movements and rapid sustained motion. It’s an idea that takes data security beyond a mere password lock: with the right software and configuration, this would allow a Mac or iPhone to proactively lock down its data, regardless of the state it was in when the theft occurred.
Installing an accelerometer and the right software would easily solve the problem, according to the patent. Certain positions or vibration conditions could automatically send a signal to the computer hardware at the heart of the device, forcing it to trigger an audio or video alarm. The device could even be locked entirely and would require a password to return to normal.
Blogs 4 Brownback has a tremendously entertaining post about how heliocentrism (the theory that the earth revolves around the sun) is an atheist doctrine and is, in essence, not true. Quoth the author “Sisyphus”:
I support the Bible, and I don’t want my children learning about Heliocentrism in school. I think this doctrine encourages atheism, Darwinism, and anti-Americanism. I don’t want my tax dollars going to finance this kind of false science. It’s complete rot, and I hope that those of us who come to realize this can ultimately prevail against its propogation amongst OUR children with the money from OUR salaries.
I can’t wait to hear from the moonbats and the Darwinists and the other rubes on this one, though. Go on, witch doctors. Preach to me how the planet hurtles through the ether, Scriptural and physical evidence to the contrary! Your false doctrines will be cast down on the day when America rediscovers its Christian roots. That is a promise.
As of right now, there are 110 comments to Sisyphus’ post, most calling him a loon, moron and fundy Christian freak. The vitriol is strong. But in the end, the critics are all wrong — Sisyphus is a genius.
Not only is this particular post a perfect example of trolling, but his entire blog is. Everything is a mockery of what Brownback — the conservative religious Republican candidate who said he doesn’t believe in evolution, among other things — stands for. Brownback has absolutely no chance of winning anything ever in this political world, and that’s largely because of his completely soft-headed views on major issues. The dude’s out to lunch.
But the beauty is that to the uneducated reader, Blogs 4 Brownback’s satire and sarcasm is missed entirely. Hence, the mockery is taken as actual pro-Brownback editorial, and the intentionally-ironic logic behind the blog succeeds spectacularly.
The two top-ranked chatbots — Richard Wallace’s ALICE and Rollo Carpenter’s Jabberwacky — converse with one another, each using its own brand of AI to keep the conversation rolling. The results are are both interesting and funny in their sophistication.
I just spent the last three weeks of my real job in week-long training sessions for our North American sales and sales support teams. In between my intermittent presentations, I had a chance to observe how hundreds of high-powered account managers, sales support engineers and sales executives used their mobile devices, and it got me thinking about the iPhone and business users.
In case you don’t want to read all of this, here’s the skinny: I think positioning the iPhone to business users — at least out of the gate — would be a mistake. Business users have a concrete set of requirements, and the iPhone is probably not intended to address them directly.
Sales VP: Jeff, our champion at the customer’s site drives the technical decision making. If he decides to step on the gas, the car stops. Period. We need to be responsive.
Since Jerry Falwell’s taking a dirt nap now, there’s no better time to revisit some of his stupidest proclamations. We’ll do that in a second.
In the meantime, if I sound unsympathetic to Falwell’s passing, well, sue me. Falwell was an intolerant, phony bigot who preyed on the emotionalism of others for his own personal gain. He founded the Moral Majority and used its influence to mold the religious right into the braindead collection of zealots and hypocrites we get to read about every day. There was nothing admirable about the man whatsoever.
And before you say, “It’s sad to see anyone go,” spare me. The passing of anyone who manipulated the political process to re-write laws to impose his narrow-minded, intolerant views on others is not a loss.
Rudy Giuliani is right: unless the GOP orthodoxy adjusts its inflexible religious stance on social issues, it will lose the 2008 election. The US is becoming less tolerant of hardline stances that are utterly devoid of reason, not the other way around. And the more I read (Giuliani excepted — he’s the GOP’s lone knight, as far as I can tell), the more I think the GOP has completely lost touch with reality.
The latest example of illogical, unreasonable conservative thinking is amply illustrated by the right-wing-backed blocking in several states of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine for young girls. The vaccine, developed by Merck and called Gardasil (please hold your clever Clearasil comparisons), has been shown to be 100% effective against cervical, vulval and vaginal diseases casued by HPV. It offers 98% protection against advanced pre-cancers caused by HPV.
In short, it’s a sure-fire way to help reduce potential human suffering and protect against a fatal disease. It’s hard to argue why this isn’t a good thing.
It’s a good thing, of course, unless you’re a member of the conservative religious right, in which case the frenetic obsession over what people do when naked trumps any notion of real morality. If you’re in that camp, then chances are you want something like this blocked, because it “encourages promiscuity.” Nevermind the fact that the price young girls might pay could be their lives. Don’t worry about that.
I got the day right but the model wrong, as it turns out. Instead of having a new MacBook Pro announced today, we saw a very lightweight MacBook update. I’m underwhelmed by the refresh.
You can get details here, but the high-level summary is this:
Faster Core 2 Duo CPUs (up to 2.16GHz with 4MB L2 cache)
More default RAM (1 GB, expandable to 2 GB)
Larger hard drives (up to 200 GB)
802.11n wireless (draft n)
Prices remain quite competitive, with the basic model starting at $1099 (2GHz Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB HD, Combo Drive) to $1499 (2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB HD, DL SuperDrive, black enclosure).
Unfortunately, the MacBook still uses the Intel GMA950 graphics accelerator, which is definitely showing its age.
These are not Santa Rosa-based notebooks. Apple is yet to introduce those, and I stand by my prediction that the MacBook Pro will see these first. (As it turns out, the MBP will be Santa Rosa-based long before the MacBook, given today’s update.)
Overall, this update is hardly newsworthy: what’s more interesting is what Apple did not announce as opposed to what it did. Everyone’s looking for Santa Rosa to debut within Apple’s stable, and this wasn’t it.
The other shoe is yet to drop, and I’ll go on record now to say that it won’t be long before it does.
Nothing official, but I have that buzzy I-see-dead-people intuition going on, which makes me think that tomorrow (May 15) will bring updated MacBook Pros based on Intel’s recently-released Santa Rosa platform. I’m already seeing Windows-based Santa Rosa notebooks in the wild (HP’s are making the most noise, PR-wise), and I don’t see Apple waiting much longer.
It was October 2006 when the MBP lineup was last appreciably refreshed with the Core 2 Duo processor. Since then, it’s been quiet.
There’s a few things running headlong into one another that make me think this perfect storm is upon us:
The relative slowness of MBP updates. The move to Intel hardware was supposed to reduce model refresh time, remember?
If I’m right, the new MBP’s will boast Core 2 Duo CPUs running at 1.8GHz, 2.0GHz, 2.2GHz and 2.4GHz. I think the MBP will commandeer the two fastest CPUs, while the MacBook — which will be updated down the line — will take the bottom two. There might be some overlap at the 2.2GHz mark with value-add differentiators (to separate the MPB from the standard MacBook) left to other options and upgrades, but I doubt it.
