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Jason Calacanis posted a message on Twitter

“Read nytimes piece on obama economics... Great that he is tapping big thinkers, bad that he is thinking of raising taxes. Also vp choice bad”

Sunday at 3:13 pm - Link

Helen Is SOOO Not Of Troy, Andrew Burd, AlexScoble(Robert'sBro), Jeff Quinton and 3 other people liked this

http://www.washingtonpost.com/... - stammers a lot

The only way for Obama to bring about the utopia he keeps promising is to raise taxes. I doubt if cutting spending is even in his vocabulary. - Joey Gibson

Show 33 more comments

Both are going to raise taxes, and both are going to cut taxes based on the plans you reference in the NYT piece. Did you read it? Also, Biden is bad? Huh? - Ryan

Biden is going to be hilarious. He's great on foreign policy and a great debater. He's going to demolish whomever McSame taps as his VP candidate. - Jason Carreira

good if taxes are raised, america has a whole lot of stuff to fix. combine with decreased spending, will be shining again soon. but i think this is not going to happen, people want to be comfortable, and don't want to change. .... oh, by the way, the auto industry wants 50 billion, the banks want another 100 billion, fannie and freddie want .... - gregory lent

He's actually planning to lower taxes for most of America. - AlexScoble(Robert'sBro)

he is going to raise taxes on the wealthy not the middle class. we cry where is the govt when bridges fall --- how will they be rebuilt. We get upset over the lack of quality in our education system: how will it be fixed. When the auto, banking,housing, whatever the crisis of the week hits we want the govt to provide a safety net because OUR jobs, our neighbors, our biz community is impacted and eventually it hits us. How will this be paid for. Now granted if we would stop spending billions monthly on a war, while the nation we are there to help stockpiles $$$$ in their accounts --- i grant you that would help pay for some of these bills. - Ruth Ferguson

@Gregory The Government exists to protect our God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They don't need to be involved in bailing out private industries. Protect us with a strong military, fix the fucked up tax code - in fact trash it for the fairtax, and stay the fuck out of my bank account and my personal business (health care etc) - Mattb4rd

@Matt- The fairtax is just the worst plan ever. The fact that a regressive tax system (in fact it's the definition example for regressive in most economics) is labeled as "fair" is just insane to me. A flat tax, on the other hand, is actually fair. And we wouldn't be punishing the successful in our nation any longer. - Andrew Burd

the rich and corporations will never pay more in taxes, they'll have the best accountants and lawyers and the corps will just pass it on as consumer costs - JFK had it right - lower tax rates to raise tax revenue. - Jeff Quinton

@Jeff - But you realize there is a limit to how far you can lower taxes while raising revenue? The laffer curve is a curve, not a straight line, so there is a point of maximum government revenue per tax percentage. If we could just lower taxes to raise revenue we would have a 1% tax rate and government revenue would be through the roof. It just doesn't work like that. I would argue that we are about the point of maximum revenue as the increases associated with the last tax cuts were minimal and could easily be attributed to the economic cycle doing what it does... eventually recovering. - Andrew Burd

Matt & Gregory don't both plans merely tax the middle and lower because they proportionally spend more of their income. Yes the wealthy make large purchases but often not as frequently as we shop. Once they buy the big house, car and furniture their money is spent on upkeep which would not be taxed under those plans. - Ruth Ferguson

Also, I think it is important to remember that almost any project the government wishes to undertake can be funded with bonds. A community can rebuild a bridge or a school and the community can pay for it. The individuals get tax free income from the bond and the community gets to borrow money at a low interest rate. It's a pretty cool system. - Andrew Burd

Andrew, lowering taxes not only raises revenue, but the other consequence is that more cash on hand goes into the economy instead of tying it up in tax shelters. It stimulates both ways. Taxes go up and corporations and consumers get stingy with their cash. - Brian Norwood

Andrew excuse my ignorance, but does the federal govt issue bonds for such local issues? I am familar with it as you say at the local level for buidling schools. What about a city like Detroit that is not going to receive a favorable rating on their bonds, and therefore unattractive to investors. - Ruth Ferguson

Brian, so if we had a 1% tax we would have more revenue in our government than we have now? And if we lowered it to a half a percent we would have even more government revenue? I love low taxes. And the laffer curve is an interesting idea. But lowering taxes doesn't always raise government revenue. Only if the current tax scheme is hampering the economy would lowering taxes raise revenue. - Andrew Burd

Ruth, the federal government wouldn't issue local bonds. I just looked it up and Detroit has an A1 or A+ rating. Now they may have to pay a higher interest rate because of that, but not much. That's still a decent rating. Detroit, for all it's problems, could issue a bond to pay for whatever and attach a General Obligation promise to it and borrow money pretty cheaply. - Andrew Burd

thanks Andrew for the patience and 411. I picked Detroit b/c I could not imagine it being attractive to investors. So my question is --- if it is this simple, why are more cities not going this route? - Ruth Ferguson

Ruth, well it isn't unlimited. Cities have to keep large reserves of cash in Rainy day funds in order to satisfy the bond rating agencies. Most cities are reticent to increase the rainy day fund so they can only issue a certain number of bonds before their rating falls. Also, putting a General Obligation clause in a bond prospectus means ceding some control of how the community is potentially run over to the bond holders. Something no government ever wants to do. - Andrew Burd

inflation tax > 3-5% raise in income taxes. - Will DeLuca

Andrew, if a we had 1% tax rate, our government would be closer to the size it ought to be. Somethings, we need a government to do. Broker international treaties and things. But almost everything else, the private sector does better. What pray tell will this money buy us? More hopelessly broken welfare programs? More free illegal alien health care in our emergency rooms? A college degree for every child regardless of how undeserving they are to receive one? - Brian Norwood

Our government needs to live within it's means and cut spending. And sure, it's Dubbya's fault. Doesn't mean I want Obama to continue it. - Brian Norwood

the country needs more money than it has. the country needs to allocate differently than it does. what ever gets it done ..... - gregory lent

So Brian, I assume you think that the mystical "Private sector: would be better at, say, providing police protection? how about putting out fires? Private armies to keep your precious money safe from all those brown people who want to steal it? What about making sure that food and drugs are safe? The private sector would, I'm sure, not let something as frivolous as profit motive get in the way of safety. Or would they? - Jeff Jones

Jeff, and I don't do this to this extreme often, you are a dumb ass. 1) "Mystical" private sector, as if it's fairy tale that doesn't exist. 2) Didn't my post say we need a government for somethings? I just double checked, it DID. 3) No, government has NEVER let something as frivolous as profit motive get in the way of safety. My kid just likes lead paint. 4) I happen TO BE a BROWN PERSON. That's enough, you're out. - Brian Norwood

If you think that raising taxes is bad, you think that they should be 0? Taxes isn't a one sided issue. What do you get for the taxes? That is key... you have to balance all sides. "Don't raise taxes" makes no sense at all unless you weight everything up. - Dion Almaer

seriously lively discussion, but why doesn't Jason comment on his- 'vp choice bad' - Ryan

@Ryan because he doesn't actually post on FF, just sends his stuff here. Kind of a dick move. - Jason Carreira

@Jason, while he doesn't post here often, look at his feed and you'll see he does indeed post to FF sometimes. - stammers a lot

Debating where we are on the Laffer Curve is a concession that you believe in a core of supply-side economics, which failed in the 80s, 90s and 2000s and remains a joke no matter how it's repackaged. Even if you want to take up the argument, supply-siders have to admit that higher taxes under Clinton didn't discourage ridiculous amounts of investment (budget surplus!), and lower taxes under Bush didn't encourage new investment or job growth (record deficit!). Supply-siding isn't even worth addressing. - Kevin Hessel

Brian, I might be a "dumbass" but at least I can read. 1) The word "mystical" does not imply the non-existence of the private sector only the assumption of supernatural powers that are not in evidence. I was saying that the "free market" mantra that the right likes to bandy about is just that, a meaningless mantra. Of course there is a private sector. It's just not the solution to every problem we face as a species like you would have us believe. - Jeff Jones

(cont). Had I used the word "mythical" then your response would have made some small bit of sense. Before you go throwing words like "dumbass" around perhaps you should crack a dictionary or two. 2) Your post mentioned promoting treaties and"things". from that we are supposed to ascertain... what? So I threw a few "things" out there to see what you would say. So what other "things" is it OK for the government to be responsible for? - Jeff Jones

(cont.) And if the government can do police and fire better than the private sector (and it can) then why not health care? Why does the protection of the government extend if a guy is pointing a gun at me but end the millisecond the bullet enters my body? 3) You don't get to use THIS administration to bolster an argument against the role of government in keeping citizens safe from dangerous products. THIS administration is the most anti-safety administration in over a hundred years. - Jeff Jones

(cont.) What's more, THIS administration is acting EXACTLY like you would want it to. Hands off the "private sector"! The free market will take care of us... yeah a few little kids might die along the way but eventually the market will expose the offending products. Let's just hope they aren't our kids huh? 4) I don;t care what color you are. being a brown person doesn't preclude you from not wanting other brown people be here. - Jeff Jones

(cont.) Or when you rail about illegal immigrants not being turned away at the emergency room door are you talking about Canadians? Somehow I think not. Whenever I see Dobbs or Fox News doing stories about this subject it the film the show shows very tanned people. - Jeff Jones

I see little incentives for companies to be beneficial to a community. - Noah David Simon

where is the tax break for hiring local people or doing right for the environment? - Noah David Simon

I might be for raising taxes to business if we can give guidance with tax breaks. - Noah David Simon

Sam Pullara posted an entry on Javarants

2008 Olympic Medal Counts by Population

August 24 at 12:25 pm - Link

Nick Lothian, James Williams, Dion Almaer and Atul Arora liked this

Looking at China's totals really makes you think for a sec about how many of the kids taken from their families as toddlers to enter those athletic academies DON'T make it. - James Williams

Eric Burke posted a message on Twitter

“When did 'FTW' get so popular?”

August 23 at 6:11 pm - Link

I don't know, but it drives me frigging nuts.... even more so than "FAIL" - Dion Almaer

Dave Winer posted a link

Barack Obama | Change We Can Believe In | Contribute

August 23 at 1:49 am - via Bookmarklet - Link

Jody C, Robert Prather, Eric Florenzano, Scott Granneman and 17 other people liked this

Good Choice. First ticket I am happy with since I've been able to vote.... - George Smith

Has there been a ticket with two names with such pronounced B's? - rob friedman

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So much better than Obama/Clinton, and hits all the right notes. Injects a sense of history and pragmatism into what has been a 'celebrity' campaign. - Bill Claxton

Well rounded ticket that may bring some honor back to the presidency. - Bob Blunk

It is upside down. - Morgan Warstler

Let's see, two guys, neither of whom has ever had an actual real job, want us to vote for them to lead the free world. I think Obama sucessfully chose one of the few men in the US senate who is more ridiculous than himself. - eggsy

eggsy, are you freaking kidding me? Bush did great with his business experience. Sheesh, what is with this freaking country! - Dion Almaer

And you should get your facts correct my friend. They have both had very real jobs. Thanks for the ugly smear spam. - Dion Almaer

better watch those credit cards. delaware's biggest industry is going to get even more gold plated. - sean808080

obama-biden, laughin' - gregory lent

Great choice guys, one guy never wrote a law review article and the other one plagiarized two. Character! Honor! My ass! - Claude Betancourt

And those who complain about this country should GET THE FUCK OUT. - Claude Betancourt

Obama was supposed to relieve us Virginians of Kaine, he's left us with a billion dollar shortfall..please take him, Obama...please! - Mike Lewis

I like this picture. - WeiTe Kao

Claude: That's such an awful sentiment. People who complain about the country often care about it more. The easy solution *is* to get out, but the hard and better solution is to stay and fight for what you believe in. - Eric Florenzano

@ericflorenzan what is "fighting" ?... living from another paradigm is more effective .. - gregory lent

I think this is great! - Robert Prather

Bradley Horowitz posted a message on Twitter

“We're contemplating seeing Avenue Q tonight in London... recommended?”

August 22 at 2:05 am - Link

Neil Dunn liked this

Brilliant show. Don't hesitate, just see! - Ross Bailey via twhirl

Go! - Benjamin Golub

I saw it in Toronto last weekend. It's an amazing show - definitely check it out. - Ryan Anderson

Fell Out of My Chair Laughing - Mark Interrante

Thanks all. We saw it, loved it! - Bradley Horowitz

Classic, and everyone here is only on the Internet for Porn ;) - Dion Almaer

Richard posted a message on Twitter

“Google Announces Mobile Geolocation API for Gears http://tinyurl.com/59g9fo”

August 22 at 10:23 am - Link

And the Ajax libraries version, and a bunch of other new features in Gears .4 http://gearsblog.blogspot.com/... - Dion Almaer

Simon Willison posted an entry on Simon Willison's Weblog

Back to full-time employment

August 22 at 10:26 am - Link

Adewale Oshineye liked this

Congrats to the Guardian! - Dion Almaer

John Lilly posted a message on Twitter

“i think i'm going to start asking everyone "how many houses do you have?"”

August 21 at 9:22 pm - Link

Sarah Miller, Clare Dibble, Andy Kaufman, Bret Taylor and 3 other people liked this

And, "maybe this is easier: how many private jets do you have?" - Dion Almaer

Even better, "How many of your friends are home grown terrorists?" - Claude Betancourt

Show 9 more comments

"how many times have you cheated on your spouse?" - Jason Carreira

Home grown terrorists are the best. Foreign terrorists are stealing jobs from the hard working American terrorists. ;) - Paul Buchheit

how much did your shoes cost? - Ruth Ferguson

What's the definition of "elitist?" - Rick Powell

How many houses do you have in your house? - Jason Brooks

Do I include the number of houses I had during the end of the last game of Monopoly or technically do you "lose" the houses if you put them back in the box? - Philipp Lenssen

For different reasons than McCain, I also cannot answer this question. Is it my house if I rent? What if my company pays the rent? Can I count my main residence as a home even if it has a front desk and free breakfast buffet? - Sarah Miller

The original question was how many houses he *owns*. That seems less ambiguous, though I guess you could still be uncertain about time shares and fractional ownership plans. - ⓞnor

do you have a lot of timeshares? - j1m

Sarah Miller might. - ⓞnor

Sarah Miller is one of the few people I have known to be happy while living out of a hotel. I think it might be her superpower. - Clare Dibble

To be fair, apparently it's his wife that owns all the property. Depending on their prenup, if he divorces he might not get any of that. If I were in that situation, I might not think I owned any houses either. - Melinda Owens

Werner Vogels posted an entry on All Things Distributed

Amazon EBS - Elastic Block Store has launched

August 20 at 10:50 pm - Link

Bill de hÓra, Christian Kullander, Amit Patel, Sean McBride and 22 other people liked this

Can I write reviews of elastic blocks, and maybe get recommendations, see what other people who looked at this block eventually bought? - ⓞnor

$0.10 per GB-month of provisioned storage, $0.10 per 1 million I/O requests. - Sanjeev Singh

Really cool. A single disk should be able to do about 10 million i/o day, so an i/o saturated disk cost about $365/year. 1TB of their storage costs $1200/year, so getting a "full" disk is over $1500/year. (vs $125 for raw disk, though 2x for machine and 3x for replication would be $750, though obviously it's possible to do better than that). That's lower than s3, oddly ($0.15/GB/mo). - Paul Buchheit

Werner Vogels is Amazon's CTO. - Robert Scoble

Planning on seeing how using Hadoop on top of this performs. - Michael

This really brings Amazon's cloud services to the next level. It will be hard to catch up for any competitors. - Christian Kullander

Ryan Carson posted a message on Twitter

“Great to be in Colorado!! Really missed my fam.”

August 20 at 11:20 pm - Link

Didn't know you were a Colorado guy. I was just out there for four weeks! I love it. - Dion Almaer

Scott Morgan shared an item on Google Reader

Mike Chambers » Blog Archive » Flash Player 10 Security Changes

August 20 at 1:37 pm - Link

More security changes in Flash Player 10, you better starting updating your shiznatt now! - Scott Morgan

Great. This document has a few issues to watch out for: http://code.google.com/p/docty... - Dion Almaer

Russell Beattie posted a message on Twitter

“McCain is leading Obama? Jesus Christ this country is filled with complete fucking MORONS.”

August 20 at 9:03 am - Link

David Hulbert and Richard Goodwin liked this

Time to move back to Spain? Or Canada? - Dion Almaer

This is only true in Zogby-world... it's similar to the Bizarro universe where everyone has a goatee and is an evil version of the regular person. - Jason Carreira

just figuring that out? oh my ... - gregory lent

Jason Chen posted a message on Twitter

“the lat/long put into people's locations on twitter by various iphone clients is pretty useless. why not reverse geocode to place names?”

August 20 at 9:01 am - Link

Robert Fischer, Kaia ♥, "Czar" DJ Peterman, James Williams and 2 other people liked this

or a URL with a link to a map - Michael(tm) Smith

Paul Buchheit posted a link

Auto Facial Attractiveness Enhancement Engine

August 17 at 5:13 pm - via Reshare - Link

Laurent Dieterich, Paul Winch, Tai, Nikhil Dandekar and 122 other people liked this

This is amazing. I think we should automatically apply it to all profile photos ;) - Paul Buchheit

Facial discrimination? - Jason Brooks

Show 34 more comments

Impressive. - j1m

Can I get one for the body as well as the face? - Dion Almaer

Very interesting. Hope they post the download link soon so that we can all play with it. - Brady Brim-DeForest

It seems as if the main problem with most people in the examples shown is their forehead is too short or too narrow. Wonder if there's a subtle clue that big brains are beautiful there! :) - Lindsay Donaghe

@Jason - that's an interesting concept. Would you be more likely to trust the girl on the left or right? Would you be more likely to talk to either one of them at a party (or more intimidated by either one?). - Lindsay Donaghe

Right one looks more dumb... - Phil Smirnov

Notice that for all the women they soften the jaw, while squaring it for men. Everyone also gets a slightly thinner face and upturned almost smiling lips. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)

@SB yeah and the forehead adjustment... almost like there is a triangle with the forehead at the point and they flip it so the chin is the bottom of the triangle... weird. - Lindsay Donaghe

They are different women! Blame Paul! : ) - Erhan Erdogan

impressive - accesine

Lindsay: whenever sketching generic faces, the face starts as an inverted triangle and the eyes appear a third of the way down from the top of the forehead; lips and nose appear below and above (respectively) a line 1/3 up from the chin. Looks like these pictures are rearranged to meet that particular school of drawing. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)

That is interesting yet odd. Seems that the faces are slendered with the software. - Jim Goldstein via twhirl

I wonder what would come out of applying their algorithms to face of black or asian person? Different countries have different concepts of beauty. - artemy tregubenko

This technology should be made available in eye glasses, just imagine how much better your work day can be! - Claude Betancourt

Paul - Think you should definitely add the option. "Click here to be beautiful without the expense of plastic surgery! .... and you may even get more 'Likey's" :)" - Charlie Anzman

Some of the stuff coming out of Siggraph this year is really freaky. How about combining this with the automatic video editing stuff? ;) - Joe Beda

without a doubt amazing. It's incredible how subtle the changes are yet massive difference. - Zee at WeDoCreative

Huh, that's pretty crazy. Creepy, but cool. :) - felix

I haven't read the paper, but I wonder if it adapts to different notions of "attractive" (that changes from culture to culture ...) - Rui

+1 @Claude I was thinking the same thing! Incorporate this software in wearable monitor glasses, and the whole world would be beautiful! I'll bet we can look for these on the shelves in the U.S. just before November. Social media and reality enhancement software have put Winston Smith out of a job. - Chris Kim A

Isn't this something these Japanese photo booth do since years? - minus3

do i sense another manga-style meme starting? - anna

So, if it turns me into Gilbert Godfried... what does that mean? - l0ckergn0me

You know, if these guys had gotten together with the realtime video+photo enhancement folks and approached the Beijing Olympic Comittee then that singing girl in the opening ceremonies might not have had to been replaced with a body double. (Yeah, I just brought three of this week's biggest memes together. I'll be here all week.) - Kevin Fox

The artist proportions were laid out by the Greeks as the perfect human, that's not being used here. This beautification engine, I think, builds on top of a previous study where some students tried to mathematically identify attractiveness. They had participants rate the attractiveness of head shots from yearbooks. What they found was there was a high correlation b/w the geometrically "average" face and high attraction. That "average" is based on the proportions of the di - xero

stances between the individual elements of the face and their relative sizes. IIRC the software adjusts elements so they statistically/geometrically complement each other. It's not actually working toward a golden set of proportions, but a set of proportions appropriate for the individual as defined by the masses. I wouldn't think of it as "facial discrimination" so much as "deviation from ones potential". - xero

imagine if this were available in real-time installed into special glasses. sober beer goggles. - Jess Lee

I'm not fussy. I'd take either out for a romantic dinner. - Andy C

Or maybe both. - Andy C

I'm waiting for the first Facebook application that automatically enhances your profile picture like this. Every social network should run this on the avatars. Beautiful people! - Benedikt Koehler

Can you imagine the controversy if dating sites got a hold of this? - xero

@paul automatically apply it to all profile photos, huh? are you sure you ready for results? check my picture - try to see wonderful cossacks writing infamous letter to Turkish Sultan :) - silpol

I wonder if they'll turn Mickey Mouse into Mighty Mouse - Dave Q

@Lindsay; A)Maybe/? 1=Left 2=Right 3=N/A - Jason Brooks

this will have a lot of practical applications to create a (virtual) world of beautiful (or more acceptable facially) people. - Apostolos Tsompanopoulos

Just a complicated high tech implementation of beer goggles. - Hayes Haugen

Chris' comment is sooo tempting - Charlie Anzman

Chris DiBona posted a message on Twitter

“Saw "The Bank Job" last night. It was pretty great.”

August 17 at 5:17 pm - Link

I had fun talking to my parents after watching this and learning about the "real" version. Amazing how they got away with it due to what was in there :) - Dion Almaer

Tobias Peggs posted a message on Twitter

“i love 606 (and everything that means for the next 9 months) http://is.gd/1GK3”

August 17 at 5:47 pm - Link

Dion Almaer liked this

Kevin Marks shared an item on Google Reader

Lessons on Blogging from Jon Stewart

August 17 at 5:50 pm - Link

Dion Almaer liked this

Dion Almaer posted a message on Twitter

“"Testing on the Toilet; Not just about pregnancy anymore" is a true classic.”

August 15 at 1:17 pm - Link

ropiku and Mark Derricutt liked this

This makes me laugh. For those that don't know what Testing on the Toilet is, it's a publication at Google in which tips for testing software are plastered above urinals and in stalls. - Patrick Lightbody

Thanks for clarifying Patrick :) - Dion Almaer

Dion - just wanted to make sure that my non-engineering friends didn't think I was weird if I simply Like'd it :) - Patrick Lightbody

Adewale Oshineye posted a message on Jaiku

“Trying to organise a Google Tech Talk on Erlang, AMQP and RabbitMQ. What would people be interested in hearing the LShift guys talk about?”

August 15 at 6:38 am - Link

Dion Almaer and DeWitt Clinton liked this

awesome! I would be great if the talk includes a tutorial on how to use the rabbitmq xmpp gateway and show some integration with ejabberd. - Augusto Becciu via twhirl

Thanks. They only have 60 minutes so there won't be enough time for a tutorial. However I'm going to ask them to cover the XMPP gateway. - Adewale Oshineye

I don't know anything about any of these, but will check it out. - Steve Weis

Tom Stocky shared an item on Google Reader

Google Translate now for iPhone

August 13 at 6:21 pm - Link

Dion Almaer and Derek Collison liked this

Google Translate on iPhone ... powered by AJAX Language API - Tom Stocky

Kevin Marks shared an item on Google Reader

huge and important news: free licenses upheld

August 13 at 10:40 am - Link

Dion Almaer liked this

Daniel Shaw posted a message on Twitter

“Interesting update on the progress of HTML5. http://bit.ly/twih5-e1 [ via @ajaxian. Tkx @dalmaer. ]”

August 13 at 10:41 am - Link

Dion Almaer liked this

Dustin shared an item on Google Reader

Mac 101: Pressing F5 in a text field

August 13 at 9:17 am - Link

Dion Almaer liked this

hey, well this is useful - Dustin

Nick Olejniczak posted a message on Twitter

“Favre-as-a-Jet on the cover of Madden '09: http://pnt.me/qd7x5B -- that really didn't take long.”

August 13 at 9:17 am - Link

Dion Almaer liked this

John Resig posted a message on Twitter

“Gopher protocol implemented in JavaScript: http://bit.ly/12TUsf Godspeed.”

August 12 at 7:55 am - Link

Robert Cooper, Dion Almaer and MikeAmundsen liked this

"I was at the University of Minnesota when Gopher, the Internet protocol, was in its prime. It was created by a professor at the University of Minnesota you see, and I had to help implement gopher services. When the Web kicked off, they still tried to hang on, but made the fatal mistake of not having it totally open, and it quickly died off. But now it is back! Cameron Kaiser has updated the Mozilla code with the good ole Gopher protocol implementation. Ah, old times." -- from http://ajaxian.com/archives/go... - Dion Almaer

I loved Gopher so much when I was in school. - Robert Cooper via twhirl

dan farber posted an entry on Outside the Lines

The cloud of unreliability

August 11 at 5:19 pm - Link

Dr. Apps, Atul Arora, Millard Baker, James Fridley and Dave Martin liked this

Think its funny the standards we set for some companies and not others. Being that gmail is free, I can handle it going down once in a while, but when the ISP, telephone company or power company go offline for a millisecond I become enraged. Guess the answer that the cloud is meant to provide is to diversify our options so that something will always work (using gmail and other account in serial or parallel) - James Fridley

I have to remember too though, how often did my machine / hosting provider go down in the past. When that went down, it was a lot harder for me to get back in the game... instead of waiting for a few minutes. - Dion Almaer

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It's better to let them handle uptime and security and patching than for all of us to try and handle it on our own like we used to. This gives us more time to work on what we excel at. It's a fine example of specialization and of course it's going to have its inconsistencies. Just consider the alternatives. - Ben Turner

"The much-ballyhooed cloud from which Web services emanate is inherently unstable and prone to odd behavior from any number of causes. At the same time, the Internet overall is incredibly robust and redundant. You just don't want to be caught at the intersection of some errant configuration change or badly behaving router. In the case of a Gmail outage, you need to have alternative e-mail services that capture messages from multiple sources to stay afloat." - Adewale Oshineye

There are many things wrong in the above quote. 1-The cloud is unstable: But he doesn't say what he's comparing it to. The cloud is vastly more stable than my desktop, most internal IT and most ISPs. 2-The internet is robust: Read the Renesys blog to hear the ugly truth: http://www.renesys.com/blog/ 3-Alternative email services: It's a good idea to have an alternative way to send email. It's a good idea to use IMAP for local storage but that won't help you receive email if your main provider goes down. - Adewale Oshineye

Good point Adewale...depends on which cloud...if my desktop crashes...I reboot in a few minutes or less....not necessarily so with the cloud...and it turns out the corporate Outlook is quite stable.... - dan farber

sorry I'm late... I actually started sending my important stuff to another webmail as backup about 24 hours before the outage. Reason: Scare stories about being locked out od your google account. I thought time for a plan B - DC Crowley

dave mcclure posted a message on Twitter

“OH Web 2.0 Expo planning mtg: "Porn invents new stuff every year... we should have a 'Porn Innovation = Pornovation' conference!"”

August 11 at 4:23 pm - Link

Dion Almaer liked this

DeWitt Clinton shared an item on Google Reader

Why Google Needs to Buy Wikipedia

August 11 at 8:04 am - Link

Dion Almaer and Lu Tao liked this

"Allow me to explain. In the next post. I promise... " -John Battelle - DeWitt Clinton

I hear this from time to time -- that Google needs to buy Wikipedia. And aside from the very notion of anyone buying Wikipedia being silly (it's not something that can be acquired), it is also absolutely unnecessary. Everything that Wikipedia does is public information lying on top of the surface of the web. Google can, and does, reap tremendous benefit from Wikipedia being Wikipedia. The more content and knowledge that exists on the web, the better for *everyone* that scales their business with the size of the web. Google is the company that it is because it was one of the first to incorporate this into its DNA -- that it is better to help grow the entire ecosystem of the web, rather than try to control and "own" it directly. - DeWitt Clinton

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True, Google benefits very indirectly. But if Wikipedia ran Adsense ads, that'd help the G, directly. It so wants its own ad laden Wikipedia it went and made Knol (which is a poor, poor attempt). - felix

That's not the philosophy behind Knol, though. Knol is an attempt to surface more of the knowledge that wasn't being captured on the web already -- principally content with strong authorship. Scholarship is a good way to describe it. Wikipedia, by virtue of its very strength -- the commons -- doesn't surface that. And don't forget, Google benefits greatly from indexing Wikipedia. People visit Google to find information, and when they find the answer they are pleased, regardless of where it comes from. - DeWitt Clinton

I was told by Mike Godwin last week that Google could take Wikipedia and repurpose it any way they want, even put ads on their version of it. He's the lawyer at the Wikimedia Foundation. - Dave Winer

In case people haven't heard it, here's Jimmy Wales on Knol: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.... - DeWitt Clinton

@Dave -- lots of people use Wikipedia content and do crazy things with it. From my conversations with people in that community, it's culturally acceptable -- "they" are excited when the knowledge gets repurposed. - DeWitt Clinton

That said, Wikipedia content is licensed under a GFDL, which is a copyleft license, so the resultant derivative work must also be GFDL. This prevents some egregious abuses. Unfortunately, the GFDL is not Creative Commons BY-SA compatible (yet), so there is a big incompatibility between Wikipedia content and much of the recent open content on the web. I can bore people with details if they are curious. - DeWitt Clinton

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“Just wached USA vs. NED. So sad.”

August 10 at 10:36 pm - Link

USA looked like they were sleepwalking in the second half. Wasting the chance in the 88th minute, then the stupid Bradley yellow card, and a bs Holden foul to set up the tying goal right through the wall. Craptacular. And I don't even follow soccer, football, whatever. - DeWitt Clinton

But it does make for a very interesting 3rd match. Nigeria is worthy opponent, And the Dutch can still progress to the next round. - Werner Vogels

I'm glad that the Dutch can advance, they earned it from not giving up and mounting that last attack. - DeWitt Clinton

Without a "british" team, I can barely watch. 2012 baybee. - Dion Almaer

Giving up on 2010 already, Dion? - DeWitt Clinton