rww: Until U.S. websites learn that most other countries in the world don't have zip codes, I'll continue to enter '90210' in online forms. - http://twitter.com/rww...
Thanks Mike! Good to see your name popping up. I feel like it's been awhile -- probably mostly my fault
- Justin Korn
Justin, nah its all my fault :( I recently started a new job and was away from FriendFeed for a few weeks. I'm starting to get back to my normal posting schedule. My social media hiatus is coming to an end :-)
- Mike Fruchter
Mike - good to hear on both counts!
- Justin Korn
from IM
Justin, thanks! It's good to see you too.
- Mike Fruchter
Keeps stealing? They stole more then one sign? I couldn't find anything about their being repetitive thefts of their signage. Either way, it's sad that people have resorted to stealing political signs in this campaign. In the absence of real political discourse, I guess the only thing left to do is commit petty theft.
- Jason Shultz
An excellent deterrent to prevent Obama-dislikers from stealing signs, but what if an Obama supporter steals the sign so the supporter can have his own sign for free? The campaign gets more money, which is the thief's intention, but the money does not come out of the thief's pocket.
- Rishabh Mishra (p248)
I would go without the eyesore ... now it just looks tacky. Now they are just asking for more attention. I don't put political signs on my car simply because I don't want any problems. I don't think a sign is going to change anyone's mind... Major props to the design team for all the awesome looking collateral they created, though.
- Brandon
Ha! I've considered doing a few things to some rather prominent McCain signs but the fact that I'm not evil prevents it.
- Lindsey is Fierce!
I've been tempted to throw Obama stickers over the McCain signs here in Florida, but passed. I just flip them off instead.
- ::Kristen::
Must be nice to be on the left, where the worst that happens is the sign gets stolen. In Democrat neighborhoods in Oregon, McCain signs get firebombed. http://twurl.cc/5wk
- Rob Sterling
I need to do that when I replace my stolen sign. Glad I took a picture, 'cause it's lasting longer.
- Erica Mauter
Rob - you forgot about the dude that got shot for wearing an Obama shirt. :P :D
- Internet's Tad
hell yes! A slightly tidier version of this needs to go in my mom's front yard. They (whoever "they" are) stole her sign, too.
- Kamilah Gill
They had to buy the sign? I thought they gave them away for people to put up.
- Victor Ryden
The only problem? Obama campaign takes a loss on every sign they sell. Thief still wins.
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
Loved it, until I read Mark's comment.
- Toby Graham
Classic! Of course, the net signage is now bigger. Thus the total cost per square inch has been reduced. Plus it's getting page views here, so it must also be getting some extra eyeballs in the 3D world.
- Mike Reynolds
@Tad: The guy who got "shot" for wearing an Obama shirt was in Great Britain, not America, and he got "shot" with a BB gun. So I don't think that counts.
- Rob Sterling
I had my Obama sign replaced by a McCain sign. I should have done something similar... Maybe i will now ;)
- Ari Milner
Rob, n=1 on that McCain sign. It's odious, but its hardly a trend. As for the guy shot in Britan, yeah, it was a "bb gun" but it was still a violent assault, and a lot of bb guns are powerful enough to be lethal. Yes though, n=1 and it was in Britan.
- Erik S
this can't be real, can it? i didn't see this anywhere on the economist's site. i doubt a publication like that would publish something like this
- Cee Bee
Why The Flow Of Innovation Has Reversed | Union Square Ventures: A New York Venture Capital Fund Focused on Early Stage & Startup Investing - http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2008...
glad to see that my conversations with VCs over beer result in great quotes / blog posts: "the success of a web service is more often determined by its social engineering than its electrical engineering" (Brad Burnham). awesome post.
- dave mcclure
from Bookmarklet
especially for the mail deliverer who has to play proctologist every time they deliver the mail. LOL
- Michelle Snow
Michelle, you just gave me some crazy visuals LOL Do Not Want!
- Mona Nomura
That's just asking some one to steal it, Matt!
- Mona Nomura
it's such a shame that we can't trust people not to fill these things with dogshit and knick peoples mail here in the UK.. we have mail slots in our doors instead!
- alphaxion
isnt this what most of essential correspondence represents?;)
- Hayk H.
You guys are out of control! hahahaha
- Mona Nomura
Clearly the mutations and inventions are not literally random (people are not just injecting random characters), but also clearly some are much more successful than others, and the successful ones create offshoots. So like Ruchira said, both intelligence and natural selection are at work.
- ⓞnor
But I bet you are wondering the level at which intelligence is acting. Are there people who, through intuition and/or principled study, are much much better at crafting viral messages than you or I would be, or does most of the success come from random luck by people who are not much more clever than average, but who chanced on a combination of concept A, wording B, and seed population C that turned out to be successful?
- ⓞnor
the important thing to realize is that in complex organic systems emergent behavior is continually evolving. what was viral y'day might not be viral today. Intelligently designed? virus loop = purpose/value = survival = strategically control scarce resource = intelligently design
- ray
Some of them are really funny. Like this one: "Paris Hilton's V*g*na Bites Penguin" ...
- Stuart Woodward
The commonality among virulent (in both senses of the word) political emails is that they reinforce your existing beliefs or opinions in a way which is novel to you. So you feel compelled to forward it to both the people who share your belief and people who you think may be compelled by this "new" evidence/argument/rhetoric.
- Jeremy Raines
What do you mean by viral in this case? I'm assuming you don't mean chain letters...
- xero
@xero, I was assuming chain letters were included, so now I don't know what Paul meant either.
- Ruchira S. Datta
Yet she dealt a huge blow to Palin with her recent "She's not qualified to run a corporation" remark. If you wouldn't hire someone to run a corporation, they have no business running the largest corporation in the world.
- Alex Scoble
Then she also added McCain and Obama. So the Palin thing is a wash. You already had goverment people running companies. Freddie and Fannie look what happen to them.
- Caleb Easterwood
Alex, nice spin. She said, in her opinion, none of the four POTUS/VPOTUS candidates are qualified to run a corporation based on their respective experience.
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
from twhirl
She only added the other two after she was yelled at by the campaign.
- Robert Scoble
Sorry wasn't intended to be spin. I only saw part of what she said apparently, without the complete context. Shocking how that happens :) Then again she wasn't qualified to run a corporation either if you consider the shenanigans she pulled at HP. Sounds like I shouldn't have used her quotes at all. :) Sorry for that.
- Alex Scoble
I don't think Alex was spinning. The additional context was she said that Palin was not qualified to run a large corporation BUT that's not the position she's running for. OK, fine. It's kind of like saying, no she can't drive a car to save her life, but she's asking for us to let her drive a F-16!
- Paul Reynolds
*Grin* Let's all agree to not take her seriously and never speak of this again!
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
Oh oh ... are you proposing a Scoble Arrogance Index? Fiorina a 1000RS? Silverton a 102RS? Arrington a 98RS? Could get ugly! :-)
- michael silverton
That sounds like a fun list to compile. But maybe using my brother isn't such a good idea (he is rather full of himself)...Maybe I'd be a better barometer since I have no ego whatsoever (but I do know more about home theater than you do) :)
- Alex Scoble
Reminds me of the Ed Begley character in the Simpsons movie: "No I don't need any (gas for my car). It runs on my own sense of self-worth!"
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
Alex: anyone who says they have no ego should automatically be distrusted. Anyway I know better. :-)
- Robert Scoble
@AlexScoble: sorry, but even accidental innovators get the credit for their work; but your enlightened humility scores you 98; but asserting self for replacement standard? That gets you back up to 120! Congrats, you beat even MeMe Me! LOL! :-)
- michael silverton
Hehe yeah, I guess that does smack a little of a lack of humility. So just so I understand, Robert's level is at 100 and someone with absolute humility (like perhaps Mother Teresa) would be at 1? And Rush Limbaugh would be at somewhere like 10k?
- Alex Scoble
Who is designing the chart? We'll need web-design and some angel money. Probably win the TechCrunch50 next year!
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
Yeah. I'm proposing that RS is 100% himself; hence, he scores a 100. :-) However, he could have chilled out days where he's only being 89% of his "usual self" ... probably only a brother or S.O. would have sufficient context to set a good baseline. ;-)
- michael silverton
I restart Firefox *much* more often than Vista. (Disclaimer: Vista still sucks.)
- Philipp Lenssen
Yeah, I, too, restart Firefox more than Windows (XP in my case). I do share your situation when it comes to Office, though. Version 2003.
- Voyagerfan5761
When I need to use office I run it in a virtual machine seamlessly in Ubuntu http://www.ubuntu-unleashed.com/2007... and I havnt restarted my computer in 277 days since its always running at top performance, check out www.ubuntu.com
- Kyle Weller
Like defcon, I run ubuntu. We have every right to be smug. We don't restart anything unless we want to. When I need to use office, I don't. I tell everyone to save their documents in a non-proprietary format.
- Slippy "WildBeard" Lane