Steve Crossan - Comments

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More of Joel Spolsky's smart understanding of "social software" as both social and software. Now StackOverflow evolves to become a smart online CV for recruiters. - http://smartdisorganized.blogspot.com/2009...

November 14 from Smart Disorganized Individuals - Comment - Like - Share

Didn't we have this idea in about 2000 with Runtime? Hope they have a solution for recruiter spam. - Steve Crossan

Paul Buchheit

Hard to believe she didn't get the job ;) - http://www.businessinsider.com/my-nigh...

November 13 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

sean percival, Roman Zolotarev, Mark Douglass and 56 other people liked this

"“I want you to estimate,” Oliver began, “how much money you think Google makes daily from Gmail ads.” Oh. My. GOSH. Was he serious? The answer depended on so many different factors, none of which I had any clue how to guesstimate. “Um, you mean a hard number? Maybe…$70,000?” Oliver’s hearty laugh told me my response was foolish. ... Now I was asked for an exact amount of revenue. “Say each G-mail user opens seven new e-mails a day. They would see 28 ads. If they click on ¼ of those ads, then only seven ads are clicked. If all advertisers are charged $0.05 per clicked ad, then the amount of revenue would be whatever $0.05 x 7 ads x the number of G-mail users is. Does that make any sense at all?” “Kind of.” Oliver sounded confused. “You lost me at the ‘only clicking on ¼ of the ads’ comment. Let’s move on.” " - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

85 more comments

Does everyone get those estimation questions? I didn't get anything like that in the interviews I had at Google. - Benjamin Golub

There's a reason I'm not a Google employee... - Robert Scoble

Here's a hint: if they ask you to estimate something, don't just make up a random number. Also, don't assume that people click on 1/4 of all ads :) - Paul Buchheit

@bgolub She was interviewing to be an APM. I imagine those interviews are quite different from Eng interviews. I can't be sure having only done Eng interviews myself. - EricaJoy

Its unfortunate, because the interviewers need to filter, but some people don't do well when put on the spot under real-time stress, but in a job situation could solve similar problems being left to think about them. The kinds of skills needed to win lightning math competitions or TopCoder, are not necessarily the skills best needed to work on a product. - Ray Cromwell

The problem I had with my interviews at Google were they were too literal. They were all questions that a recent college grad would be familiar with but anyone with any length of experience in the industry would have forgotten by this point. Going back and studying after I remember the answers now but I felt like I was being interviewed by someone just out of college (which was probably the case). - Jesse Stay

I've heard of one Eng interview question that could be answered quickly by estimation (but more slowly by just computing it). (I wasn't asked that question myself, nor did I ever ask it.) - Ruchira S. Datta

Priceless "You lost me at the 'only clicking on ¼ of the ads'" comment is priceless :) - Micah Wittman

Jesse, I wasn't asked any questions like that, nor did I ask any. I guess the interview process can be very variable. - Ruchira S. Datta

The "estimate something unknowable" question is something anybody interviewing for an even remotely technical position should expect these days--even though you might not get it--and you should understand the interviewer is asking to hear the process you go through, not the answer. As far as the 1/4 click through rate goes... well... that's classic. - Ken Sheppardson

Ha-ha, clicking on ¼ of the ads seemed like a ridiculously high estimate to me. I never click on an ad. And now I have ad block pro installed so I can't even see them. - Laura Norvig

A Google interviewer asked me similarly ridiculous questions. Why ask me about low-level database algorithms when i'm interested in java and web positions?! We danced around one question for 10 minutes while i tried to answer it to his satisfaction. It should have been obvious to him i'm knowledgeable enough about databases and database programming to just move on to the core interview. - ·[▪_▪]·

Ray, it's not a math problem -- it's a problem solving problem. - Paul Buchheit

Paul, there are different kinds of problem solving as well. To take mathematicians as an example, von Neumann was said to be very quick, whereas Hilbert was rather slow. So Hilbert might not have done well in an interview. - Ruchira S. Datta

The classic variations I've heard are "How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?" and "How many hamburgers does McDonalds sell each day?" - Ken Sheppardson

Wow... how would you answer either of those questions? - SAM

One of the people I interviewed with didn't speak very good English, and I spent 3/4 of the interview arguing with her how I thought Friend Connect could improve. I was then given 5 minutes at the end of the interview to try and answer her technical question which was about binary trees, something I hadn't studied or played with since college. 5 minutes wasn't enough to recall. The questions I was asked were math problems (and I graduated with a 3.95 GPA in college, A in stats and Algebra). - Jesse Stay

I could never survive an interview process like that. So I won't even try. - Laura Norvig

Jesse, sorry to hear that. I would usually ask one 45-minute interview question or two 20-minute ones. I was only asked 45-minute ones. And no non-technical questions till the end. - Ruchira S. Datta

These are almost the same questions I was asked (which I could answer easily now): http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap... - amazing that Google hires MIT grads, considering MIT has an entire course around "hacking the Google interview". - Jesse Stay

SAM: You'd just dive in with an estimate of *something* and walk your way through it. E.g. How many people do you know who own pianos? What % of the population do you think owns pianos? How often do they get their pianos tuned? How long does it take to tune a piano? How many people live in Chicago? It doesn't matter so much whether your numbers are right, it's the fact you know how to combine all the component estimates into an overall estimate. - Ken Sheppardson

Not being able to do the math is fine, thinking that 1/4 of ads are clicked on is not. It's the approach and rough estimates that matter. - Paul Buchheit

Yeah, the two important pieces of info the interviewer got in this situation are from (1) the initial random guess vs walking through some estimating process and (2) the lack of understanding of click through rates - Ken Sheppardson

Those problem solving skills are useful when you have to model real-world systems. How many concurrent users to you estimate will we have at peak load? How many expensive vs. cheap queries are they going to perform? It's basically the same process - figure out reasonable estimates for each of the factors, do some basic stats and math and get a ballpark of how many servers you'll need vs. whether your problem is even viable. - Matt Mastracci

Ruchira my technical questions were all at the end (except for 45 minutes on arguing with someone I could barely understand how Friend Connect could improve). I got the non-technical, easy. Going back and studying I would have gotten the technical too, which is silly considering how fast I was able to find the answers (and understand them). I think that's why non-technical should be... more... - Jesse Stay

When I interview, I look for clear, informed thinking. I'm sure that's what Google looks for, too. It's the odd personal interaction that turns an interview into something hasty and pressured. I'm fine giving a person a question, and time to mind-map or outline -- tho I do prefer someone who can do the thinking right there in the moment. Also, it's best to warm a person up to the type... more... - Christopher Galtenberg

Jesse, the technical question is supposed to be about problem-solving. You see how someone solves problems by watching them do it. It's not about looking things up. - Ruchira S. Datta

Ruchira, 5 minutes to show the thought process in figuring out how to tell how many levels are in a binary tree isn't enough to determine if someone can problem solve. - Jesse Stay

Call me soft, but I don't think she should have been bounced for a bad guess on ad CTR under interview stress. She worked through the appropriate steps and setup the right equation, just one of her assumptions was garbage. If she wasn't under pressure, and was asked to prepare a spreadsheet modeling out ad revenues, would she have really picked 1/4? or would she had thought about it... more... - Ray Cromwell

Jesse, agreed. That's why I like the longer interview questions. E.g., I would often find that someone was good at writing code but bad at complexity, or could think of an algorithm but not program. - Ruchira S. Datta

RE "ridiculous questions", one of the things I try to do when interviewing somebody is ask a question to which the correct answer is "I don't know." That's one reason I might drill down on some sort of low level technical issue outside the candidates field of expertise. If you don't know, say so. Don't sit there and try to pretend you do. Be willing to admit there's something you have to learn. For extra credit, explain how you'd find the answer. - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, there's major game theory going on. Does the interviewee think the interviewer wants a best effort attempt or rather an admission of insufficient data/experience. - Micah Wittman

Another one I realized afterwords he was talking about linked lists, but he never mentioned linked lists. He had just asked how many edges it would take (asking for the exact formula, mind you - it's been 10 years since stats!) before a cycle could be made (or something like that). If he had just mentioned he was talking about linked lists I could have given him an answer much faster. - Jesse Stay

Micah: Yup. And I want to see how much somebody will thrash before they ask what it is I actually want to know. - Ken Sheppardson

you got to thin the herd. - Aron Michalski

The right answer may be both. A good communicator, person who knows how to 'read' the other will put it out all out on the table. Hopefully without being too wordy :) - Micah Wittman

The interviewer is comparing multiple interviewees. Google gets so many qualified applicants that it's very likely that even though she was OK, compared to others applying for the same job, she didn't do as well. - Piaw Na

The interview process is designed to have few false positives, but in the classic tradeoff it can therefore have many false negatives. Although Jesse, in your case it sounds like it was just executed badly. - Ruchira S. Datta

The funny thing is the best answer wasn't always the answer they were looking for. For some reason interviewers never want to see the hash table answer, which is almost always the answer in the real world. (yet they never ask you why a hash table may not always be the best answer) - Jesse Stay

I always want the hash table answer Jesse. People who use red-black trees or whatever often haven't written real software :) - Paul Buchheit

Paul I like your style :-) So much time is saved that way. - Jesse Stay

@Paul: Agreed. I also find a surprising number of people who think they're brilliant for inventing tries, when a hash table would solve the problem faster, and with less code. - Piaw Na

Not only that but in a search world that can make or break your search speed. We dealt with that in HIPAA transaction matching at UnitedHealth Group while I was there. The hashed digest made matching records so much faster. - Jesse Stay

I cringe when I find out the developer interviewing me just graduated from college 3 years ago. - Jesse Stay

I have never been asked for these estimation questions during my interviews but engineering positions need them too. Good estimators are good engineers. - Burcu Dogan

@Jesse, why does that bother you? I was interviewed at Google by 6 folks, 5 of which were way younger than I was --- one of them so young that I remember him from when I was his TA in grad school. It didn't matter --- the questions weren't particularly hard, and I had fun. I didn't think Google's interview was any tougher than Yahoo's, Microsoft's or any other tech company known for engineering excellence. - Piaw Na

My quickie solution to the Egg Drop problem is exponential doubling sequence + 2x linear search = 25 drops, best solution is 14. Doh! BTW, I've heard this problem stated before as a Cats with 9 lives (can survive 9 drops). - Ray Cromwell

Piaw because a recent college grad is only going to ask you what they learned in college - Jesse Stay

Try to solve my interview puzzle question: http://cromwellian.blogspot.com/2006... - Ray Cromwell

Ray, that's a cool problem. - Matt Mastracci

@Jesse So the 3 years in the "real world" mean nothing? - EricaJoy

@Matt, I specifically constructed it so that it would be impossible for people to search for a pre-existing solution. - Ray Cromwell

@Jesse: I'd been working in Silicon Valley for 10 years when I interviewed there. I did not feel that my experience disadvantaged me. - Piaw Na

I just take more of a "get it done" attitude when I write code. I'd rather focus on getting the problem fixed in the fastest manner possible rather than spend all this time on theory. I guess it all depends on the problem at hand as to whether that's the right choice, but a recent college grad is less likely to understand that than someone who's been in the field for awhile. I like the... more... - Jesse Stay

BTW, if you're a startup that wants to take on Google that's the way to beat Google. It's why Twitter has grown so fast. - Jesse Stay

True, if you look at many of the successful Web 2.0 startups, a lot of them didn't solve interesting computer science problems, but executed well in other ways. Implementation speed becomes a priority, as they can always go back and fix stuff later or rewrite, once they reach a certain level. Twitter ran "ok" enough on a Ruby mishmash until they broke down, but they didn't really lose their users because of it. - Ray Cromwell

Glen, unless the speed isn't as important as getting the product out the door fast. - Jesse Stay

All of those formulas need a "T" element (time to write the code), along with an "M" (maintainability) element - Jesse Stay

I think the best way to get a job at Google is to build a business and get bought by them :-) - Jesse Stay

Its good to be retired... ;) just sayin - WarLord

@Glen: Are you seriously asserting that insertion into a tree (of any sort) is O( 1 / (n log n))? - Piaw Na

@Jesse: It does no good to acquire a company whose software wouldn't scale (or whose people can't make them scale) when Google turns the firehose of traffic at them. Some of the due diligence done before a company is acquired (by Google or anyone) is to make sure that everything's technically up to snuff, or the people being acquired are smart enough to get them up to snuff. - Piaw Na

I don't see anything "nightmarish" about her interviews at all...In fact it seems pretty amazing to me she couldn't figure out the "math" problem in the 2nd interview. - Bindu Reddy

Well just for grins, here are a myriad of "problem solvers" trying to figure out how many golf balls you can fit on a bus: http://www.acetheinterview.com/questio... My solution to this is tell me how long it will take you to hang my wet clothes on the line without slipping on the downward slope of a ravine on 5 acres of wood... more... - Melanie Reed

If the question was really about problem solving then why would you stop at 1/4? That's just a parameter. - Todd Hoff

You would stop at 1/4 because you've already interviewed 20 other folks, and some of them gave you a much better answer there. You would then go back to hire one of them, or keep interviewing more people because nobody was good enough so far. - Piaw Na

wow, very insightful but clearly she is not geeky enough for the job! - Loc

Todd: The interview didn't end when she said 1/4, they just "moved on". The point wasn't to get a specific dollar amount, it was to see her process. - Ken Sheppardson

It's true that 1/4 is just a parameter, but choosing something out by so much shows a pretty significant lack of knowledge in an area that has _some_ relevance to Google. I'd suspect there would have been candidates who'd been able to have sensible discussions about the likely CTR in Gmail based on known CTRs on other websites and the factors which influence it. Surely that's relevant? - Nick Lothian

Also, clicking on 1/4 of ads, with 4 ads per email means that people were clicking on an ad every time they read an email. That's pretty clearly wrong. - Nick Lothian

Yeah, the 1/4 answer shows that the candidate did not apply her own personal experience to the problem solution. That's a negative mark. - Gary Burd

Nick, then don't say it's about the process, because clearly it's not. The process was correct. If you care about the numbers then ask about the numbers. Ken, "you lost me" is not moving on. - Todd Hoff

“Kind of.” Oliver sounded confused. “You lost me at the ‘only clicking on ¼ of the ads’ comment. Let’s move on.” - Ken Sheppardson

How you came up with your estimates is part of the process. Also, the ability to do basic match (1/4 * 4 = 1) is part of the process. "Does that sound high or low to you" is part of the process. - Nick Lothian

I wish I had learned how to reason probabilistically much earlier than I did. I never even heard about Bayes theorem until after grad/professional school. - Victor Ganata

"@Matt, I specifically constructed it so that it would be impossible for people to search for a pre-existing solution" Ray, what's the last piece of useful technology you've worked on? - Bill de hÓra

@Nick "It's true that 1/4 is just a parameter" - well is it or isn't it? is the model wrong or not? "but choosing something out by so much shows a pretty significant lack of knowledge in an area that has _some_ relevance to Google" - You mean like a Web based email client, or an ad serving system? - Bill de hÓra

"How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?" - Don't care, bought a dump truck instead. These questions are to interviews as rail shooters are to video games. - Bill de hÓra

@Plaw "It does no good to acquire a company whose software wouldn't scale" - explain Jaiku and while you're at it, explain Chubby. - Bill de hÓra

you can click on the ads in gmail? learn something every day. - SuezanneC Baskerville

Paul Buchheit's assumption of a 25 percent clickthrough rate on a Gmail ad is way to high. Most advertisers report an average of 3 clickthroughs per 1000 impressions. That about one one-hundredth of the rate that Paul has entertained. I suggest that he experiment with Google or Facebook advertising before flaunting assumptions that are two orders of magnitude beyond the norm. - Rich Reader

@Rich Reader that's right you tell Paul not to flaunt his assumptions about Gmail. But maybe read his post and comments first. Oh, and maybe his bio. - Steve Crossan

@Bill, Google Web Toolkit. Prior to that, http://timefire.com/showcase. - Ray Cromwell

@Rich Reader: I can't quite discern whether your comment is satirical. Paul wasn't making that assumption, and I'm fairly confident he knows a bit about Gmail, Google advertising, and Facebook. :) - Simon

http://friendfeed.com/search... Paul I am having deflamatory comments about me with my first and last name used, could you please warn this user or something, it is effecting my business and is illegal, I have told brent TWICE, but he removed my account and placed it on private now which was quite rude to be honest, now I will see a lawyer about deflamation since it effects my views as a writer if she is not removed or given a warning - dawngordon

Just saw an interesting article on Gawker about Google hiring http://gawker.com/5392947... and then another where Peter says they misconstrued his statements: http://www.mv-voice.com/square... - Laura Norvig

Fabrice Retkowsky

Went back to Versailles for the first time in more than 10 years. Amazing how things look smaller than when you were a kid.

July 10 from Facebook - Comment - Like - Share

did you live in Versailles as a kid? I lived in St. Nom La Breteche - Steve Crossan

surely did! from 76 to 93, before moving to Brittany then Brighton. what about you? - Fabrice Retkowsky

From 77 - 79 :). I remember learning to swim at the pool in Marly-le-Roi. - Steve Crossan

Andrew C

Yahoo's "You" campaign is maddeningly vague. Maybe that works for a company without any real competitors, or with crazy buzz, but for Yahoo it's an epic waste of marketing dollars IMO.

November 12 - Comment - Like - Share

Jérôme Flipo, Chieze Okoye, Bindu Reddy and 4 other people liked this

Don't people test these things? Maybe we're just not the target audience. Maybe the goal is just to increase brand recall and warm fuzzies. (I admit, I have the same reaction.) - ⓞnor

6 more comments

Also not helping : Yahoo advertises it's behind the free wifi in Times Square. That would be great, except I cannot get it to work on either laptop or phone. The best I can do is connect to the wifi access point; not to the internet. And there's no hotspot web page either. - Andrew C

Looks very 1998 - Steve Crossan

"Y!ou were named Time's Person of the Year, so we decided to let Y!ou run the company! Only not really, but Y!ou won't notice. Now finish Y!our Big Gulp." - Kevin Fox

@nor, big brands can stumble... see New Coke or more recently the Tropicana debacle. - Andrew C from Android

Both of whom took steps to cry mea culpa. Coke introduced Coke Classic and Tropicana reverted their packaging. - Kevin Fox

I don't think Yahoo's stumble is quite so massive. They won't have to apologize for it, but I think it won't generate a lot of business... in a few months, then, I'd expect them to find a new direction and drop this campaign. (Whereas successful campaigns can go on for years) - Andrew C from Android

I agree Andrew. Unlike Coke and Tropicana, Yahoo's branding campaign is not a mandatory gateway along the user's path to purchasing the product. Their brand campaign may or may not be effective in attracting new users, but it's less likely to dissuade current users (even Thomas Hawk, who will continue to use Yahoo! no matter how much he hates them. ;-) - Kevin Fox

niniane

Antarctica tour is cancelled due to boat engine issue. Tour co will rebook me on tour anywhere in world within 6 mo. Where should I go?

November 9 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

edythe, Clare Dibble, Jérôme Flipo and April Buchheit liked this

North pole on xmas? - Jim Norris

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You can't just get them to rebook you for next year? - Piaw Na

New Zealand in Jan/Feb is beautiful. - Aaron D'Souza

I don't know where you've been, but last year, someone recommended an African safari. He was quite bubbly about it. - MiniMage TKDteacher of FF

NZ, Oceania - Spidra Webster

Greenland. - imabonehead

They can rebook me for next year, but I'm not sure I want to go any more. It's a ton of money, and will be very cold. - niniane

But you have a ton of money, and like being very cold. - Jim Norris

Boat up the Amazon. - Shannon Jiménez

Tour the Silk Road. - imabonehead

With global warming, it's probably going to be warmer next year :-). - John μller

So far New Zealand has the most votes (2). I have heard great things about New Zealand. Is the Silk Road actually interesting? - niniane

New Zealand is great: http://picasaweb.google.com/piaw... Do the Routeburn track or the Milford track, they are awesome. - Piaw Na

Re: Silk Road - I know some people who have done it, and they liked it but didn't rave about it. I think Samarkand looks fascinating, though. - Nick Lothian

Go to BA, then Patagonia, then end up in Ushuaia. Then get a last minute antarctic deal from there for < half price (available most weeks in the Summer). Plus you get BA and Patagonia. - Steve Crossan

How can you get a last-minute Antarctic deal? Are there web sites to do this? Please point me to some. - niniane

I think the point is to go show up at the dock and find out who's got space at the last minute. Cancellations are not uncommon, and they don't overbook the Antarctic boats. :-) - Piaw Na

Those Antarctica tours are the ones that always run aground, aren't they? Yes, I'm exaggerating greatly; I'm guessing less than 1% actually do that, but every time I hear about them, I feel cold.There were at least two incidents this year, I think. I wonder what it's like on an evac. - MiniMage TKDteacher of FF

Steve Crossan

http://www.sciencedaily.com/release...

November 12 - Comment - Like - Share

"The team’s discovery could also revolutionize the process of cooling computer chips. " - Steve Crossan

"an order of magnitude less energy is required to bring water to boil." - They're on crack. Essentially what they made is something that bubbles faster and thus could make the heat distribute a bit better. You still need 4.19 J/gK to pump that energy in. - Henner Zeller

Jimmy Wales

Swahili Wikipedia challenge from Google, cool! http://ow.ly/BCSf

November 12 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

http://www.google.com/events... - Steve Crossan

Paul Buchheit

Movies we should watch again:

August 3 - Comment - Like - Share

Caroline, devsbv, Durukan Duru and 77 other people liked this

The Big Lobowski - Paul Buchheit

242 more comments

Pi - Paul Buchheit

Real Genius - Kevin Fox

Airplane - Jim Goldstein

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Paul Buchheit

The Woman in Red - Tony Peters

Ferris Bueller - Nils Sandin

Brazil - Jim Goldstein

The Princess Bride - Jenna Bilotta

All ZAZ films (Kentucky Fried Movie, Airplane, Naked Gun, Hot Shots) and Most Mel Brooks films (Blazing Saddle and Young Frankenstein) - Neal Krummell

Goonies - Jenna Bilotta

+1 For Lobowski! - TheHenry

Chinatown - Karl Rosaen

bottle rocket - Karl Rosaen

Factory Girl Edie - simge ungor

+1 for Young Frankenstein! (and yes, I sooo need to see Chinatown again) - Tony Peters

The Great Escape - Matthew DeVries

The Wizard of Oz - Eric Logan

Harold & Maude (& I 2ndYoung Frankenstein) - Jim Goldstein

Just watched: Waynes World ..... classic - patrick

Fight Club - Matt Ruiz

Lives of Others - Deepak Singh

Into the wild - corvin

just recently caught "Point Break" on netflix streaming, can't say I regret watching it again - Karl Rosaen

The Godfather, I, II and III - Benjamin Perdomo

Tron - Kevin Fox

Memento - Stephen Mack

Blast from the Past - Kishore Balakrishnan

star wars - chaz2b

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly - Jim Goldstein

Fast times at Ridgemont high. - joe is...

Sixteen candles. - joe is...

Spirited Away - Shirley Wu

Grosse Point Blank. - joe is...

I can always watch Harold and Maude. My fave. Boondock Saints. - R1CC1

Something About Mary - johnpiercy

Shawshank Redemption - Gabe

+1 Brazil. Also Do The Right Thing - Steve Crossan

Fargo - joe is... from iPod

Being John Malkovich - weird stuff. - joe is... from iPod

Blade Runner - Johnny

+1 for Blade Runner - Henner Zeller

Army of Darkness...preferably with beer and friends - Alex Scoble

Alex - neither of those things exist on school nights. - Matthew DeVries

I'm not a big fan of watching something I've already seen, but I could probably watch The Last Dragon again. I suspect seeing that would be a first for most of you, since it tanked at the box office. Why? Taimak is so beautiful! - MiniMage TKDteacher of FF

Ok, I'm looking at highlights. I know why :D - MiniMage TKDteacher of FF

+1 to The Lives of Others and Spirited Away; wonderful movies. And I'll add Tous les Matins du Monde, Immortal Beloved, and The Red Violin. All amazing movies if you love music. - Joel Webber

+1 to The Lives of Others and Spirited Away; wonderful movies. And I'll add Tous les Matins du Monde, Immortal Beloved, and The Red Violin. All amazing movies if you love music. - Matthew DeVries

Bridges of Madison Cou…no, never mind, I can't bring myself to that level - Glen Mistletoe

Boondock Saints - scott willeke

Punch-Drunk Love - edythe

Falling Down, Beautiful Girls, Juno, Almost Famous - Liza

Can't Buy Me Love (African Dance scene) - Liza

Matrix?! :-o - hIpPy

+++ edythe - RAPatton

Better Off Dead, 3 O'Clock High, The Killing Fields - Capn' One Eye - adrift

Rap: :) - edythe

"How I Got In To College". Yeah, I said it. - Kevin Fox

++ to Jim Goldstein for Airplane! and to both Jim and Ricci Krassa for Harold and Maude. :) - edythe

Pulp fiction - arunthampi from iPhone

Anything by Hitchcock or Miyazaki. Almost anything by Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, David Lynch, Tarantino, or Coen Bros. - LogEx

this is an example of a discussion prompt that got messy. So I vote for two, too: Revenge of the Nerds, Moving Violations, and anything with Kate Blanchett, I mean by Woody Allen. I mean produced by Harvey Weinstein. - Lane Rapp

The Fifth Element - Josh Haley from iPhone

Transporter 1, 2 & 3 - Mac Sharp

Dune. - Bwana ☠

Vanilla Sky - Mike Bracco

1UP Bwana - Josh Haley from iPhone

True Romance - Rick Cogley

Office Space - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

Stalker. - Akiva Moskovitz

Serenity - WorldofHiglet

Riddick - Mac Sharp

Men in Black - Mac Sharp

Trainspotting - Will Higgins™

Chungking Express - Rodfather

12 Angry Men - Dennis O'Neil

+1 Will - Johnny

Sin City - Mac Sharp

Kill Bill - Mac Sharp

E.T. - Mark Evans from iPhone

Jason Bourne series - Mac Sharp

Being There - Cathryn Hrudicka

Matewan (a John Sayles film) - Cathryn Hrudicka

Mr & Mrs Smith - Mac Sharp

The Conversation - Cathryn Hrudicka

On the Waterfront - Cathryn Hrudicka

Rashomon - Cathryn Hrudicka

Men With Guns. Cidade de Deus. Not happy, but wonderful movies. - Joel Webber

A Patch of Blue - Cathryn Hrudicka

Escanaba in Da Moonlight - Matthew DeVries

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (and read the book!) - Cathryn Hrudicka

Midnight Cowboy - Cathryn Hrudicka

In the Heat of the Night - Cathryn Hrudicka

Day for Night - Cathryn Hrudicka

A River Runs Through it - Mac Sharp

The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Cathryn Hrudicka

Manhattan (and some of Woody Allen's other movies) - Cathryn Hrudicka

Do the Right Thing (and other Spike Lee movies) - Cathryn Hrudicka

Any of these: http://www.flickchart.com/Charts... :) - Nathan Chase

My Brilliant Career - Cathryn Hrudicka

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - Cathryn Hrudicka

Chan is Missing - Cathryn Hrudicka

The Saint with Val Kilmer - Mac Sharp

My Left Foot - Cathryn Hrudicka

My Beautiful Laundrette - Cathryn Hrudicka

Gran Torino - Travis Koger from iPhone

Tomb Stone - Mac Sharp

American Splendor - Cathryn Hrudicka

Ghost World - Cathryn Hrudicka

The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, and other Ingmar Bergman films - Cathryn Hrudicka

Moulin Rouge with Nicole Kidman - Mac Sharp

Cool Hand Luke and Hud - Bonnie Foster

The Graduate - Bonnie Foster

Easy Rider - Bonnie Foster

BrotherHood Of The Wolf (Le Pacte Des Loups) - Mac Sharp

The Last of The Mohicans - Mellissa Claus

Wanted with Anjelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman - Mac Sharp

BeoWulf - Mac Sharp

A Clockwork Orange - Gabe

It's crazy to me how consistently "Children of Men" is overlooked. - Chip Ramsey

Alien & Aliens - Rolf Schewe

Children of Men - Mac Sharp

Reign of Fire - Mac Sharp

space balls! :D - Susan Beebe from BuddyFeed

Blazing Saddles - Mac Sharp

¡Three Amigos! - Mac Sharp

Broadcast News - Cathryn Hrudicka

King of Hearts - Cathryn Hrudicka

The Ghost and the Darkness - Mac Sharp

Kalifornia - Mac Sharp

Seven - Mac Sharp

Atlantic City - Cathryn Hrudicka

All That Jazz - Cathryn Hrudicka

The Boondock Saints - Brandon Mendelson

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb; Lolita; other Kubrick films - Cathryn Hrudicka

Kiss of the Spider Woman - Cathryn Hrudicka

Time Bandits - April Buchheit

Vanity Fair (the BBC version and not the version with Reese Witherspoon in it - that was such a crappy rendition imho) - April Buchheit

ForestGump - sirishkumar

Cast Away — more than anything, I liked the skillful use of silence in the soundtrack, which you don't hear much in today's films. I'm biased, perhaps, because I interned with Sound Designer/Re-recording Mixer Randy Thom, but often I choose films based on their soundtracks as well as for visual reasons or a good screenplay. - Cathryn Hrudicka

MANY Capra films: It's a Wonderful Life (try watching it outside of Xmas so you aren't influenced by that), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It Happened One Night, American Madness, You Can't Take it With You - Spidra Webster

"The Magnificent Seven" - Thierry R. Andriamirado

To kill a mocking bird and 12 Angry Men - Shauns from iPhone

Matrix & The Beach - Dobromir Hadzhiev

Inglorious Bastards - Adrian

Apocalypto + lethal weapon I II III IV - r1lita

Apocalypse Now - Cathryn Hrudicka

Pursuit of Happyness - Nick Humphries

Paths of Glory - James (!?)

Electric Dreams (not sure if that's the name but it's where the computer comes alive) - Joe Dawson from iPhone

2001: A Space Odyssey - Willem (@wim66) ☠

I can watch "A Christmas Story" at least once a year. - Spidra Webster

The Departed. - Shawn Whitmire

@CreativeSage great pointers to underrated movies - thanks. - andrei_c

Surfs up - Mac Sharp

Ratatouille - Mac Sharp

Happy Feet - Mac Sharp

L'Eclisse, The Passenger by Antonioni - andrei_c

Conformist, Stealing Beauty, The Last Emperor by Bertolucci - andrei_c

In The Mood For Love, 2046, Chungking Express by Wong Kar-Wai - andrei_c

Throw Momma From The Train - Mac Sharp

Rocky Horror Picture Show - Mac Sharp

@andrei_c Thanks for mentioning some other great films—there are so many different reasons certain ones resonate and we remember them over time. - Cathryn Hrudicka

Of course Rocky Horror !! - R1CC1

Clue - Mac Sharp

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? - Cathryn Hrudicka

Klute - Cathryn Hrudicka

McCabe and Mrs. Miller - Cathryn Hrudicka

Paris, Texas - Cathryn Hrudicka

The Grapes of Wrath - Cathryn Hrudicka

Some Like it Hot - Cathryn Hrudicka

UHF - Peter from iPhone

Wings of Desire - Charles Tanton

Reservoir Dogs - Charles Tanton

Wild at heart - Charles Tanton

Wedding Crashers - Charles Tanton

+1 to The Big Lebowski - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick

+1 Cathryn +1 Mac :) - 'Like' robot (frɐnc)

I mean ++Crouching Tiger ++ Rocky Horror Picture Show =P - 'Like' robot (frɐnc)

+Baraka - 'Like' robot (frɐnc)

Seven Samurai - Andrew Terry

That reminds me .... Rashomon (by Kurosawa, the directory of Seven Samurai). Bewitching ! - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick from IM

Top Gun? - funkyboy

+1 For Lobowski! - Özgür

Gattaca (1997) http://bit.ly/NDBBi - Michael Fidler

Goodfellas (1990) http://bit.ly/XXrwg - Michael Fidler

The Sting (1973) http://bit.ly/WUXd1 - Michael Fidler

Equilibrium (2002) http://bit.ly/gUk7L - Michael Fidler

Excalibur (1981) http://bit.ly/3HyNJI - Michael Fidler

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) http://bit.ly/prB3J - Michael Fidler

Sideways (2004) http://bit.ly/SsPh4 - Michael Fidler

12 Monkeys - Anton Tanderup

Spartacus (1960) http://bit.ly/PCOlR "I'm Spartacus" - Michael Fidler

Casino (1995) http://bit.ly/ta7Ma - Michael Fidler

Full Metal Jacket (1987) http://bit.ly/31yx7 - Michael Fidler

Legends of Fall - imran

The Warriors (1979) http://bit.ly/fwLBC - Michael Fidler

Platoon (1986) http://bit.ly/O6qoG - Michael Fidler

The Mission (1986) http://bit.ly/236QzJ - Michael Fidler

The Hunt for Red October (1990) http://bit.ly/2X0d4O - Michael Fidler

The Elephant Man (1980) http://bit.ly/D8C3N - Michael Fidler

We Were Soldiers (2002) http://bit.ly/V9Smu Excellent! - Michael Fidler

Time Bandits (1981) http://bit.ly/DCTls - Michael Fidler

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) http://bit.ly/ILnmJ I watch it when I'm sick; it makes me feel better! - Michael Fidler

Amadeus (1984) http://bit.ly/1ARfot - Michael Fidler

Scarface (1983) http://bit.ly/Cg7dy - Michael Fidler

Planet of the Apes (1968) http://bit.ly/17mW3H - Michael Fidler

Catch-22 (1970) http://bit.ly/QLmeN - Michael Fidler

Casablanca (1942) http://www.imdb.com/title... - vinod

Good Will Hunting (1997) http://bit.ly/18BIvZ - Michael Fidler

Groundhog Day (1993) http://www.imdb.com/title... (Again and again ;) - Jemm

Sid and Nancy (1986) http://bit.ly/DJonx - Michael Fidler

Modern Times (1936) - Trent Hamm

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) http://bit.ly/68WFY - Michael Fidler

As Good as It Gets (1997) http://www.imdb.com/title... - Amit Morson

Old School - Cyndi ~ @muchmorethanmom

The Pink Panther (1963) http://bit.ly/19Y7Ex - Michael Fidler

Enter the Dragon (1973) http://bit.ly/ZnoGA - Michael Fidler

Annie Hall (1977) http://bit.ly/Xj7YN - Michael Fidler

Sleeper (1973) http://bit.ly/aEbKd - Michael Fidler

Heaven Can Wait (1978) http://bit.ly/WtC54 - Michael Fidler

Shawshank Redemption - Ozgur Gercek

Defending Your Life (1991) http://bit.ly/3xqbgy - Michael Fidler

Little Big Man (1970) http://bit.ly/UPrF1 - Michael Fidler

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) http://bit.ly/AsywZ - Michael Fidler

Network (1976) http://bit.ly/14ut31 should be re-made - Michael Fidler

JFK (1991) http://bit.ly/9lg0C - Michael Fidler

My Dinner with Andre (1981) http://bit.ly/TnJN7 - Michael Fidler

Saturday Night Fever (1977) http://bit.ly/9SFMv - Michael Fidler

Old Boy (2003) http://www.imdb.com/title... - chocobo

2001 Space Odyssey - Harold Cabezas

Logan's Run - Mark Layton

Big Trouble in Little China - Zulema ◕ ◡ ◕

Purple Rain - Tofu De la Moore from BuddyFeed

Some really good suggestions. Pi, stalker, oldboy are definitely worth to watch again. I could watch the good the bad and the ugly everyday. Mulholland drive and sraight story are my suggestion. - Mario from Android

Shine + Sling Blade - Steve C

2001 - Tsega Dinka

Primer. Quite a mind-bender. - Wade Dorrell

Some great suggestions. My personal play list now contains: The Big Lobowski, Brazil, Blazing Saddle, Young Frankenstein, The Great Escape, Waynes World, Fight Club, Memento, The Godfather, I, II and III, Fast times at Ridgemont high, Fargo, Being John Malkovich, Serenity, A Clockwork Orange, Alien, Dr. Strangelove, Teh Conformist, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Some Like it Hot. Blade... more... - Ken Morley

star wars series, ocean's eleven, the prestige - Ahmet Soyata

Nine Queens - bet most people have never watched it - Andy Davies

The Breakfast Club - bujio

Kikujiro - Krishnamoorthy

Andrew Eland

Wondering when the US is going to discover modern kitchen appliances.

July 13 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Henner Zeller liked this

Yeah, wonder this as well. They're kindof stuck in the 50ies. - Henner Zeller

6 more comments

Discover? You mean like invent? - j1m

Maybe they can trade 24 hour shopping with Germany for induction hobs - Andrew Eland

So, what are we missing? - ⓞnor

How long are you here for? - Steve Crossan

Ages, until August 1st. How are you enjoying your life here? - Andrew Eland from email

You're missing ovens that weigh less than 16 (metric) tons, and hobs that can boil water for tea in less than 10 minutes. - Andrew Eland from email

.. and silent refrigerators, washers and dryers with a better than a horrible user interface (esp. the opposite semantics of actions such as push/pull in many instances of these two device classes), more silent vacuum cleaners, microwave ovens with a good user interface. Many stoves here still have this wierd spiral like heating element which everyone in the world would refuse to buy except people in north america .. - Henner Zeller

Tom Coates

Triaging e-mail and closing browser tabs in the fifteen minutes before the next meeting.

May 18 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

I get in this situation a lot. I need a (preferably auto-generated) list of 10-minute tasks for exactly this moment in the day. - Steve Crossan

Gabor Cselle

Spent 30 mins with @egregor disussing the incentives of the NY Times website. Interesting stuff.

May 18 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

I think it would be a nice idea to do a remix project on a major news website - grab the content, redo it like it should be done. - Steve Crossan

Michael Nielsen

Milton Glaser: Ten Things I Have Learned - http://www.miltonglaser.com/pages...

May 4 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

Steve Koch, Bosco Ho, landonf@bikemonkey.org and 4 other people liked this

Glaser is a well-known graphic artist who came up with (among other things) the "I [heart] New York" design. (I mention this because I knew the name, but nothing about him.) This is an interesting list. - Michael Nielsen

4 more comments

I'd call it an outstanding list! - Robin Barooah

Very interesting read! - Shirley Wu

"You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energised or less energised. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life. " - Steve Crossan

Steve: That's a great bit, isn't it? - Michael Nielsen

Milton Glaser spoke at TED 11. I have a hat he designed. One slide in his presentation had "the best marketing" he'd recently seen. It was a wooden sign painted white. Black letters announced Reliable Dutchman Auto Repair. We all laughed at the simplicity of the message, but Glaser pointed out that an Italian mechanic might need a different pitch. - bill

Tudor Bosman

I really wish I could use Gmail Chat exclusively. There is one missing feature: allow me to whitelist users whose incoming chats pop out in a new window automatically.

May 1 - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Attila Babo, Piaw Na and 5 other people liked this

I'd be okay with disabling the pop-up blocker (I think I have an exception for gmail anyway, for tear-off compose). - Tudor Bosman

9 more comments

This would solve my problems too. Often I am working with the volume muted. I can't see the Gmail tab because Firefox is covered by my VM and I can't hear the ding. - Benjamin Golub

I always turn off the sounds, so no ding -- I get startled and distracted too easily by my computer making unexpected noises. - Tudor Bosman

I want to do a similar feature: when you set status to 'don't interrupt' we respond to chat request with an auto-message you can set e.g. 'steve is currently dealing with a huge outage. unless you can help him directly (rather than just ask for an update) please defer this until later'. - Steve Crossan

Does Google Talk Labs Edition http://www.google.com/talk... work for you? - Daniel Dulitz

Daniel: "Requires: Windows XP/ Vista" no Mac version? - Tudor Bosman

Sorry, ummm, that might change sometime, who knows. - Daniel Dulitz

Use Digsby. Great IM with hooks to your social networks. - Kevin Kuphal

Labs edition is very slow (impossible to use on my Eee) - Denya

I've been using Adium because of that limitation, which handles Google Talk. Stinks that the only way to know to check Gmail for messages is via the sound. A Growl hook would be killer, but that would require the user agent to support it. - Mark Trapp

Gmail's integrated IM is the only reason I'm willing to use IM at all. - Piaw Na

Kasper Sorensen to Kasper's feed, GNU/Linux, The Next Web Europe

EU gives 2.5 million Euro's towards the development of Minix- http://translate.google.com/transla...

May 1 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Didn't that happen already in the 80s? - Steve Crossan

I guess I'm too young to have any knowledge of that ;-). But I'm always thrilled when money is being invested in Open Source. - Kasper Sorensen

niniane

NumPy docs are more intuitive than I expected. Good job NumPy! Much better explanations of covariance & correlation than wikipedia.

April 22 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Amit Patel, Space Cowboy, Shakeel Mahate and 8 other people liked this

And to think you made fun of their name. - ⓞnor

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Have you tried scipy? It is built on top of numpy. All sorts of scientific and statistical functions. - Robert Felty

Wikipedia's description (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...) seems more comprehensive than Numpy's (http://docs.scipy.org/doc...). Presumably what you liked were the simple examples in Numpy's documentation and the lack of explanation about how the measure is actually defined? It's more of a "plug in your numbers here, get your answer out there, handwavy explanation of what it means, hope you like the result!". - ⓞnor

In general I've found wikipedia's explanations of mathematical concepts to be unhelpful for learning purposes. They're more definitional and less tutorial. Mathworld is better in a lot of ways -- I like their definitional explanation of covariance (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Covaria...) better than wikipedia's, though I doubt Niniane would find it helpful. - ⓞnor

+1. Also true of their definitions of economics concepts & similar. - Steve Crossan

I used a NumPy documentation page with more examples than the page you cited (http://www.scipy.org/Numpy_E...). I found the combination of definition + examples to be better than wikipedia's lack of examples. Also, NumPy places a higher priority on explaining the relationship between covariance vs correlation vs variance, which I found very helpful. - niniane

NumPy is awesome especially when paired with Sage. I really wish more schools would teach these apps rather than the commecial competitors. - Kevin D. White

April Buchheit

Have there been any good rock songs released yet this millenium? All of the great songs (to my limited knowledge) came out in the 70's and 80's. Is rock dead?

April 22 - Comment - Like - Share

Nikhil Dandekar, Josh Haley, Jeff P. Henderson and Bindu Reddy liked this

I can't think of any, but I was a teenager in the '70s, and still listen to Classic Rock - Seth Greenblatt

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Everybody loves that stuff that was made when they were kids. If only you were 15 you'd appreciate, er, whatever it is they're putting out now. - j1m

While I must, due to my age, first state the disclaimer that nothing will ever be better than 70s and 80s rock, there is the occasional gem, such as this from 2003: http://www.youtube.com/watch..., and this: http://www.youtube.com/watch... - Benjy Weinberger

BTW I assume you meant 'rock' in the narrow sense? - Benjy Weinberger

Oh, and also, Arctic Monkeys, who are pretty much the future of rock. E.g., http://www.youtube.com/watch... - Benjy Weinberger

Rock lives, though it can be harder to find with the proliferation of pre-packaged corporate tripe and the rise of punk-pop and such. Even if you don't extend the definition of rock to include punk rock, there are lots of bands who have been making good rock. Some examples from the 90s include Metallica, Foo Fighters, Smashing Pumpkins, Jane's Addiction, etc., and this millennium we've seen some killer rock from the likes of The White Stripes, System of a Down, Wolfmother, etc. - Keith Pelczarski

I think another confounding factor is the dizzying variety of media available now. When we were growing up, television was the big three networks plus PBS and maybe a UHF station or two. There were a few big competing radio stations per city, and the relatively scarcity of media offered a shared experience that served to reinforce the musical canonization of the Beatles, Stones, Who, etc. Now with so many choices available for entertainment, it can feel like nothing really makes it to the top of the heap. - Keith Pelczarski

Finally, in the immortal words of Pete Townshend (belted out by Roger Daltrey)... Long live rock, be it dead or alive! - Keith Pelczarski

Although he also said "Hope I die before I get old" and that didn't pan out... - Benjy Weinberger

I think that he and his still-rocking senior contemporaries have passed into the "undead rocker" phase. ;-) - Keith Pelczarski

++ Keith's 90's rock. I know a very small handful of bands after the 90's but I'm sure there are more. I need to know more about more recent stuff. - Rachel Lea Fox

I like Beth Orton; not sure if girl + a guitar counts as rock, though. - Clare Dibble

I would consider Red Hot Chili Peppers to be rock, and they are still rocking! - Robert Felty

Rock is certainly not dead when things like this are released: http://www.last.fm/music... - April Russo (app103)

Foo Fighters: Best Of You - Johnny Worthington

King's X, Panic Channel, Chickenfoot, Dramagods, Sick Puppies all give me hope for the future of rock. - Josh Haley

+5000 to Josh for mentioning Dramagods! - holly

I wish they were still together, but at least I got to see Extereme after they stole the Dramagods drummer. That was a pretty good show. King's X was with them. - Josh Haley

I traveled to Vegas to see that show! definitely agree that there is good rock out there still. though I guess it all depends on your definition of rock. for me, that's much broader than it used to be. so much good music out there, I am discovering. - holly

Bon Jovi - Have a Nice Day, 2005: http://www.amazon.com/Have-Ni... - AC Delco

Velvet Revolver is not half bad: http://www.youtube.com/watch.... But yeah, classic rock still is the best. - Nikhil Dandekar

The Strokes - Last Night. Plus anything by Louis XIV. There's been a lot of good rock songs in the last 10 years but hard to say how many will last to great. QoSA, Kings of Leon, The Killers ? Ting Tings? Arctic Monkeys? all good I reckon. The hard thing's to find a new rock song that has that killer rock song thing but also feels really original. Last Night sounds like the Stooges etc. Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl's a pretty great song, but has the same thing. - Steve Crossan

@benjy that The Darkness thing was insane. What happenned to them? I think they retired. - Steve Crossan

j1m

Matthew Yglesias » Charging for Content - http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archive...

April 21 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Steve Crossan liked this

"The solution, if you want to charge people for something, is to find an area in which there’s no competition. And that means, slightly paradoxically, information that nobody cares about. If you’ve got a big blockbuster about Jane Harman, AIPAC, Alberto Gonzales, and surveillance then tons of people are going to be interested and everyone’s going to want to spread your info around. If you make the article free, then everyone will read your article and at a minimum you’ll get a ton of hits. If you charge for it, the traffic will just gravitate toward people who are summarizing your report. But if you have a subject niche that only 10,000 people care about then you could image a situation in which in 5,000 of those people are willing to pay $1 a month to subscribe. That’s $60,000 in revenue, so as long as it doesn’t take many staff-hours to cover this subject it can make economic sense. But it wouldn’t necessarily make economic sense for anyone to bother competing with you in that niche. There just aren’t e" - j1m from Bookmarklet

2 more comments

"n a competitive marketplace, the price of a good should converge toward its marginal cost. In a digital world, the marginal cost of distributing a given piece of information to a new person is about zero. Consequently, competitive pressure should drive the price down to free. The solution, if you want to charge people for something, is to find an area in which there’s no competition. And that means, slightly paradoxically, information that nobody cares about." - Steve Crossan

Trouble with this is, the natural extension is, just publish the niche content and forget about the mass market. Obvious counterargument - you need the mass market to get the traffic. But not if search/collaborative filtering/global sharing works - then the niche should find its market. So: you need a) to make shareable abstracts and b) have a global subscription system with syndication (so you don't have to sign up to lots of places - think iTunes). Maybe - Steve Crossan

$1 a month? More like $35 for a scientific paper, or $5,000 for someone's competitive report on the state of an industry. Pay content online tends toward higher price points, not lower. Unfortunately, that kills a lot of auxiliary use, and for niche content auxiliary use -- the long tail of curious browsers and cross-domain users outside of the defined target audience, in short the *interested public* -- is a large part of the social value of information. - ⓞnor

j1m

Palo Alto is dying :-(. Z Gallery, Wolf Camera, Rococo Harmony, and one of the rug places, all gone since last I noticed.

April 19 - Comment - Like - Share

still queues at most of the big restaurants on Friday & Saturday nights though. - Steve Crossan

18 more comments

How about the cheesecake shop - Rob Schonberger

Also, the apple store? Borders? - Rob Schonberger

@Steve, yeah, it could be just a blip. there's always some churn. Still, 4 empty storefronts at once seems like a lot. And the Walgreens is still being rebuilt, not sure if that counts. - j1m

@Rob, yes yes, many stores survive. Those and many others. Caffe del Doge, for example. - j1m

Never been to Caffe del Doge in Palo Alto. i've been to 2 of them in Venice though, not bad. Also, Bondi Junction is similarly pained, and there are plenty of shops for lease in Bondi Beach too, so I think theres some funny correlation between Palo Alto and Bondi Beach. go figure. - Rob Schonberger

Just tell me one thing, my fave, Red Rock Coffee on Castro in MTV, is it still there? - Rob Schonberger

I think that correlation may be called "global economic downturn". - ⓞnor

Or, "the apocalypse?" - j1m

Do not go to Cafe del Doge. I enjoy being able to find a table whenever I walk in. Thanks. - Tudor Bosman

Tudor is to blame for Palo Alto vacancies? :P - Rob Schonberger

there is churn - some new places are opening. ZGallery and Wolf - it might be hard to find new tenants for those big spaces. but the current crop of new small shops add nothing: l'amour frozen yogurt, mediterranean wraps and a dessert shop. it's a bit sad. somebody open a taqueria! please! - David Vasileff

Rug stores are always "going out of business". - Darren

hence my use of the past tense -- these places are all emptied out, signs gone, everything. Also, Tudor, we all go to cdd already. - j1m

@David, there is that upscale Mexican (I think) place next to the Italian grocery on Hamilton. - j1m

Cafe del dogge huh. Ok. Ill try. - Rob Schonberger

j1m, yes, reposado opened recently. I like it, but as you say it is upscale, $10 for 3 tacos, not really a quick place for lunch. I was also disappointed with LuLu's that just opened in town and country. Sancho's Taqueria was supposed to open on Lytton in January, but it still hasn't opened. - David Vasileff

@Rob Red Rock is still there, but the coffee is much better at Barefoot in Santa Clara. :-) And they pull Barefoot beans pretty well at Bistro Maxine. How long Borders can stay open is anyone's guess now that they're only "Amazon when you can't wait until tomorrow." It's now easier to get reservations at places. There are more empty tables. It's not falling off a cliff, but it is down a lot. - Daniel Dulitz

That Borders? Yeah, there's no way that's still there past Christmas 1999. - j1m

It's just the beginning, IMO. Has Facebook moved to their new building in old PA yet? Commercial real estate is the next shoe to drop. - AC Delco

j1m

Editorial - The Torturers’ Manifesto - NYTimes.com - http://www.nytimes.com/2009...

April 19 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Joel Webber liked this

"In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary." - j1m from Bookmarklet

5 more comments

"These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him." - j1m

Incredible, I can't believe this is the New York Times. It's as if they suddenly discovered the rule of law: "And if the administration will not conduct a thorough investigation of these issues, then Congress has a constitutional duty to hold the executive branch accountable. If that means putting Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales on the stand, even Dick Cheney, we are sure Americans... more... - j1m

Huh? Has the nytimes previously editorialized in favor of letting torturers off the hook? - Larry Greenfield

I'm always surprised when they stand up for doing the right thing. I mean, aren't you? - j1m

They apologized for the war for a long time. I think they're trying to make up for it. - Steve Crossan

This is well and truly nauseating. Not that I think any of us are terribly surprised by much of it. The issue of accountability comes down to whether we are a nation of men or a nation of laws. I'll be the first to admit that there are cases we should let slip, but allegations of torture is not among them. - Joel Webber

ana

Feeling totally weird in an awesome way after an IA session with Carole Mudge. Among other things, I just want to giggle all the time.

April 16 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Bindu Reddy and Amund Tveit liked this

Isn't it wonder-ful how body and emotion are so interconnected? - Daniel Dulitz

12 more comments

IA? - Steve Crossan

Integrated Awareness. It's a type of bodywork. - Daniel Dulitz

I prefer disintegrated awareness ;). Actually though it sounds interesting -- is it good? - Paul Buchheit

Oh, it is very good, Paul. Carole has been 6 years at Google doing it, you should have tried! - ana

At first I was scared of IA. I had just moved to California and it sounded like so much bizarro New Age crap. And then Babette convinced Alice and me to see Carole. After that it still _sounded_ like bizarro New Age crap, but I was really confused, because it clearly felt awesome. Steve and τorƍue, it's hard to explain. IA people would probably say something about balancing and energy fields -- I've forgotten -- but unless you were born in California I don't think you'd understand. - Daniel Dulitz

In terms of a behavioral description, IA is a type of bodywork that involves very gentle physical touch (sometimes little physical touch at all) and which elevates emotional connection to a first-class subject. It can include both verbal and nonverbal elements together. One thing all these years of California stuff has taught me: all material media of communication (sound waves, light) are puny and insignificant compared to the immaterial kinds. - Daniel Dulitz

It's very good - and when you listen to the theory - it may not be science, but it's also not hard to relate to - it's based on reasonable ideas about physiological and psychological development and the effects of interpersonal interaction. - Robin Barooah

Carole described IA once as "massaging your nervous system from inside", which I think is a pretty good description, but might not make much sense if you haven't experienced it. - ana

And ana, I guess that's why you want to giggle all the time. :-) - Daniel Dulitz

Usually bodywork has emotional connection as an element, but it's not the subject of the work (the physical body is). IA is much more explicitly about "energy flow" from person to person. - Daniel Dulitz

To be honest, I haven't had enough IA work done to really see that explicit emotional connection as element that clearly. - ana

Maybe it's just me. - Daniel Dulitz

Mmm, dunno. There is definitely something to the way Carole asks you about "what's going on with you". I just haven't visited her often enough for a statistically significant sample, that's all I'm saying. - ana

Bindu Reddy

Annoyed with Obama's plans around high-speed rail. Why not spend the money on better airports/air-travel. America is a very vast country and convenient air travel seems like a better mode of transportation than high speed rail. Am I missing something?

April 16 - Comment - Like - Share

Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ, Phil G, mjc and 16 other people liked this

I wish there were more options in Canada - Shey, Jamaican of FF

52 more comments

The problems with air travel are cultural (annoying security, etc). In some ways, that's harder to fix, because it means acknowledging that the security is bs. - Paul Buchheit

In theory a rail system can be more efficient in its fuel usage. Depends on the design. - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

Trains have fewer emotional problems because fewer people are scared of trains (a very large fraction of people are fearful of flying, even before 9/11). - Paul Buchheit

Umm. How about we have better more automated security. You could walk through some sort of an "safe" x-ray corridor and have your hand luggage/shoes checked. I am sure we have the technology to design something like that. Spend the stimulus money on that - Bindu Reddy

I think for a lot of people who are afraid, unwilling or unable to fly, we need more high speed options for connecting the country - Lindsey is Fierce!

more trains, less cars. - MikeAmundsen

I see. I didn't realize that there were so many people who didn't like flying. One thing high speed rail may be good for is a good alternative to driving - Bindu Reddy

And also I feel, scaling air travel for many people can be highly expensive, compared to trains. With my Indian background, cannot imagine air travel replacing train anytime :). - Karthick R

Trains also work better for smaller cities/destinations because it only takes a few min for a train to stop but hours for a plane to stop. - Paul Buchheit

That said, planes are clearly better for very long distances and I agree that airports should be made less annoying and painful. - Paul Buchheit

Chris, I have travelled by train both in Europe and Japan and while it is fun I don't think I would want to hang out in the train for more than 3-4 hrs. It's pretty convenient for short destinations/trips but the last time I took the overnight train from Paris to Milan, I really disliked it. I simply went back to flying which in Europe is not so bad as the security is more lax. - Bindu Reddy

Airport capacity can never compete for quick and easy commuting or quick hops. Airports take all of your day and I see no way for that to get any easier anytime soon, even with an infusion of cash. - Eric @ CSTechcast.com

I would MUCH rather have adequate high speed rail systems than improved airports. I have to fly from NJ to WI regularly to visit family and I absolutely hate the flying experience from A to Z. I would LOVE to be able to take a train to WI. - Robert DeBord

I am all excited about these plans. Also, high speed rail is the fastest and most convenient transportation mode at certain distance range (50-200 miles), if you count in downtown-to-airport travel times, traffic and security. - andrei_c

I couldn't disagree with you more. I think high speed trains are far too long in coming. They move more people more efficiently, are more cost effective, and high-speed rail tech has come a long way. If I could get to SF in 2 hours via high-speed train I'd consider commuting. Because flying takes me 3 hours minimum. - Karoli

I have to disagree, I've been waiting for High Speed Rail for a long time. Air travel is a such a pain in the butt now. For short trips, HSR is perfect, and easy! - Michael Fidler from twhirl

OK, I totally agree with trains being good for short distances and as replacement for cars. I thought I heard Obama talking about some sort of corridor across the country. Did I get that wrong? - Bindu Reddy

Even better, I thought they were only considering short trips. Good news! - Michael Fidler

he mentioned Lincoln building the transcontinental RR during the Civil War...and talked about identifying major cities as hubs, but I don't recall any specifics around a national route. He was pretty specific about how effective it was to link up major cities within 100-300 miles. - Karoli

For air travel, you have to get to the airport several hours early. A real pain. The shinkansen in Japan was great b/c you could show up a few minutes before departure. - Mike Reynolds

OK, I am reading the news article again and it only mentions high speed corridors. So that would mean only short distances? Ah, my bad. I have been conjuring up images of travelling all the way from SF to Seattle on train... If I could get from SF to LA in 2 hours, I would love it. You prob. want to add an extra 1 hr to get to the train station. But still 3 hrs beats the current 5-6 hrs driving. - Bindu Reddy

I traveled from LA to Portland by train with my daughter a few years back. It was magic. But impractical for anything other than vacation. If i could zip up to SF via high speed or from SF to Portland, or Portland to Seattle, I think it would rock. As the great-granddaughter and granddaughter of lifelong train employees, I have a deep love for them. - Karoli

Cell phone access, WiFi, corporate entertaining in the designated cars (full bars), sit down eating, decent toilets and scenery - Johnny Worthington

will i have to pay for 2 train seats too? - Jason

Karoli, sounds real interesting.... I have never taken the train in the US. I should try it sometime. Though I have taken trains in other places including India, Europe and Japan. In India a lot of travel happens on trains but the travel time can be crazy. Sometimes as long as 2-3 days! Some ppl love it though :) - Bindu Reddy

Chris, not as many ppl live close to the Townsend caltrain station ;) It's about 8-9 blocks for me as well - Bindu Reddy

Ah OK even closer :) - Bindu Reddy

Acela for example sucks as far as high-speed trains go, but it was a pleasant way to go NYC<->BOS. Downtown to downtown is a huge win; it saves 2 hours when you count the taxi/AirTrain ride, security, and waiting latency. Something better than Acela on that corridor would be costly but wonderful. - Daniel Dulitz

Trains are far more convenient for short and medium distances, especially between city centers. - John (a.k.a. dendroica)

I love highspeed rail. I can walk into Boston South Station, buy an Acela ticket from a kiosk, and walk onto the train in 5 minutes. Less than 4 hours later I'm in downtown New York. During the whole trip I can get up, walk around, buy snacks, use my cell phone, access the Internet, or recline my seat enough to comfortably sleep. - Gabe

Aha, what you're missing is that what's wrong with air travel wouldn't be fixed by money. It would be fixed by instilling an attitude of customer service in the people who run airlines (not possible), replacing security with something extremely fast (e.g. lineless), and, putting airports in easy-to-get-to places downtown (not possible, and also not desirable when you're not actually flying) - j1m

As one of the people freaked out by air travel, I am all for this high speed rail plan. I would gladly take a bullet train from SF to DC if it meant I didn't have to fly. - EricaJoy

45 mins downtown to airport; 45 mins flying time; 45 mins airport to downtown; assuming traffic isn't snarled. 2hrs 15 mins total commute for air travel. High speed rail; 11/2 hrs total, downtown to downtown. 45 mins saved and very much more efficient use of petroleum. Save the oil for flying to Europe & Asia. - Alex Williams

High speed rail as a service is competitive vs. plane journeys < 1.5 hours. On the other hand, it's not very economical. Generally only works in Europe where it's subsidized. - Steve Crossan

Oh, trust me, Steve. there will be an entitlement bill or an EO that will subsidize these for decades. - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Airlines are already very heavily subsidized, far more than rail. Without subsidies air travel might not be competitive at all. - John (a.k.a. dendroica)

Anyone whose has ridden TGV or Shinkansen would not be making that statement. If we had Japanese/German/French-like tracks and trains, a trip from SF to LA would probably be <3hrs door to door with far less hassle. I used to ride DC to NY every weekend, 2hr30min, hop-on/hop-off. Trains are greener to operate, and our airports are already congested and subsidized. All I can say is, it's about time. HS intercity links are the way to go. - Ray Cromwell

Ray, I am completely on-board when it comes to having trains for short-distances (journey is about 3-4 hrs.). I thought that the plan was to have more trains for longer distances. Also our airports do need a lot of improvements and it would be good to upgrade them as well. - Bindu Reddy

Even on long distances, a train ride could be enjoyable. A 200mph train could make a coast-to-coast trip in 15 hours. You'll have dining cars, shopping cars, sleeper cars, ability to take your own car (not rental) with you in some cases, much more freedom to walk around. Stop-overs are less of a hassle. I took an 8-hour sleeper in the EU one time, I slept better than 99% of times I've flown. It would be an option for some people. - Ray Cromwell

@Ray: Shinkansen FTW! Does anyone know of a reputable source for efficiency numbers on rail (normal, high-speed, etc.) vs. air travel? I've always assumed rail would be much more efficient, but have no evidence to back that up. Assuming that's correct, it seems to me that a carbon tax ought to nudge the travel market in the right direction (though I suppose short-term subsidies might still be necessary to help with massive capital expenditures required to get decent rail built). - Joel Webber

I think Obama's PDF proposal includes graphs of efficiency. Of course, Reason/Cato foundation will chime in and tell you rail travel is an epic fail, even in Japan, where apparently 90 million people ride it daily, but somehow Reason thinks they're losing ridership to cars and that cars are the way of the future there. I used to have real respect for those guys, but on climate change, energy, and other matters, they've turned into zealous spinmeisters instead of trying to approach things with an open mind. - Ray Cromwell

It is several orders of magnitude easier to make trains that run on solar/nuclear/wind/geothermal/wave/etc energy than aircraft. With aircraft, you have to start messing with hydrogen or biofuels, both of which we don't know if it'll scale well enough to work for the current load. With trains, as long as the overhead lines have electricity, all is good. - Wirehead

Many times, air travel is a nightmare, because of crowded airports, weather, waiting uncomfortably. If high speed trains can help with that, I'm all for them. - Stan Scott

Rail for freight is very efficent, they've been udon hybrids for a long time (diseal-electric), OTOH, I took Amtrak from STL to KC, I would have made better time driving and it would have more pleasant to go by oxcart. - Robert Hafer

Bindu, have you seen the proposed lines? ( http://friendfeed.com/e... ) The lines are relatively short; there's no cross-country lines here. - Andrew C

How about job creation point of view ??? - Parvath

From the standpoint of infrastructure, I think plowing massive amounts into roads will be less efficient in stimulus. Our road infrastructure is mostly saturated/built-out and it's in maintenance mode now. High speed Passenger rail is in infancy here, like a startup, a lot of innovation will occur, a lot more engineering work will happen, in addition to lots of blur collar skilled labor soaked up. Or, we could outsource everything to German companies. :) - Ray Cromwell

Additionally, there are engineering challenges unique to some corridors that will require custom solutions, so it will serve to stimulate renewed interest in civil engineering careers. A country can't stand to lose engineering talent in making/producing real things. Software and financial services are great and all, but we need to be able to make stuff too. - Ray Cromwell

All my cousins live in Germany, and one of my programmer cousins used to ride a train across the country every other day, he said he got more work done on the train than in the office. He had internet access and didn't have to wear a seatbelt. Plus, he didn't have to own a car. - Phil G

Airports are ruined. Your not going to get the security back to normal for that travel for a really really long time. Too many people see airflight as a form of weapon. Rail trains can only go in a planned direction and it will bring money to the local communities they travel through either through work, and stops for tourists. - CW™

I took the Caltrain today from Santa Clara Station to SF to see the Giants game. (disapointment that was) it was nice to not have to drive. I was able to sit back, pop open my laptop and do some work. I didn't need to worry about anything other then missing my destination. Also it was packed! Tons of people used this service today. Granted it was a brilliant day in SF and everyone was up beat and enjoying it. If I was working in SF on a daily basis I would be taking this transportation. Its just easier. - CW™

Saying that trains suck because Amtrak sucks is like saying the Internet sucks because AOL sucks. - Wirehead

Man, I never got any shiny disks from Amtrak! - Adam Lasnik

Bindu Reddy

If someone were going to give you a prize for winning a contest and the prize had to be $100-$150 worth in value. What would you like to win?

April 10 - Comment - Like - Share

Nia, Harold, mjc and 2 other people liked this

maybe 1/3 of a Kindle? - ⓞnor

29 more comments

$150 in cash. - Alex Scoble

gold. - imabonehead

Gift certificate to Powell's Books. - Ruchira S. Datta

@nor, ha ha :) I have discovered the Kindle is not such a great prize. There are quite a few people who are not into books and simply don't want one :) - Bindu Reddy

@Bindu , so then maybe 1/3 of a kindle would be all they need - Fedor Karpelevitch

the contest. Duh! - Kevin Fox

As far as universal gifts go (if you exclude cash equivalents) I believe food is a winner. A nice wine/cheese/etc.. basket or something.1) anyone can use one 2) if he already has one it is not a problem 3) it is not something people buy for themselves every week anyway.. And you can always find something at pretty much any price point. - Fedor Karpelevitch

You could have a celebrity speak a personalized message. Some cost $149, many seem to have sold out though. http://www.liveautographs.com - Philipp Lenssen

@Fedor: It may be hard to find food that is non-perishable in $100 quantity and acceptable to everyone. I don't drink, nor eat cheese with animal rennet; others have different issues. - Ruchira S. Datta

the personalized autographs sounds pretty neat.. Esp. since there are lot of celebrity fans :) the food has to be something universal. Something like chocolate maybe. I wonder if it is easy to give away iphones - Bindu Reddy

Kevin may not win the contest but he won the thread... - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Perhaps a giftcard, Bindu. Like a Visa or an AMEX one. The recipient can choose anything they want. - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Amex/Visa gift cards are pretty appealing to everyone. - Jess Lee

Kevin and his wise-cracks :) - Bindu Reddy

Magnetic Letters! Then I could spell "A WINNER IS YOU" on my refrigerator - Larry Hosken

Larry, was that a NES "Pro Wrestling" reference? o.O ..also I'm with Alex, cash is a good reward in any situation. - Joe Pierce

$150 in lottery tickets. It's something people wouldn't buy for themselves but wouldn't mind receiving. - Tödd Nëmët

This: http://beagleboard.org/hardwar... - Goran Zec

Gram of Coke might be really effective incentive for a certain kind of person. :) I have feeling it is more expensive than $150 though. Jess/Mark, seems like the gift card is the simplest/most sensible way to go. - Bindu Reddy

half an hour of market research :) - Paul Lindner

Paul you are on FF! Wow, i didn't know that. Good to see you here - Bindu Reddy

An Amazon.com GC. - Piaw Na

Carbon credits. - Antonio Piccolboni

Gift certificate for Best Buy. or Amazon. - Helen Sventitsky

Vodka. - bnoise

massage - Steve Crossan

I agree with Steve... but at least 2 of the hour long massage sessions... - Harold

Antonio -- I have carbon credits for sale...from our solar array. http://tiny.cc/blogdoug Welcome to buy. Re: prize. Depends on nature of the contest, is it genius programming, prefect prose, or wet tee shirt mud wrestling? The the last contest category is from Wikipedia, not my idea. I would like someone to win a luxury fragrance from my company. Any further non-commercial questions? - Douglas Hopkins

Cash. - Melinda Owens

thanks for all the suggestions! I went with the gift card suggestion - http://friendfeed.com/e... - Bindu Reddy

j1m

In the wak of the newspaper execs' hissy fit - http://www.dailykos.com/storyon...

April 9 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

"Local news? Newsroom cuts in search of ever-higher profit margins have decimated local coverage in the age of corporate ownership. Local TV is filling many of those gaps, as are citizen bloggers. Don't laugh at the notion of citizen journalists -- the best Oakland coverage anywhere, bar none, comes from the muckrakers at A Better Oakland. It truly beats the shit out of anything the Oakland Tribune or local TV stations are doing" - j1m from Bookmarklet

3 more comments

Funny I've been surfing for stuff about media tonight also. Found this very good Frontline series - just watched the first part: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh... - Steve Crossan

Reminds me once again of the amazing facts. They lied in order to take us to war and a lot of people died. More amazingly, despite the almost total failure of the media, *we all knew* they were lying all the way through. We found out they were lying afterwards for sure. We all still know. The memoirs have started to come out admitting it. And yet the small numbers of journalists who put out stories to this effect were hounded and not defended by their organisations. The BBC ended up apologising ... - Steve Crossan

... their director general resigned, and they've been on the defensive ever since. Media organisations don't need a brilliant plan to combat the web, they just need a spine. - Steve Crossan

The other day I was discussing investigative journalism with ⓞnor, and he said something like, They took a pass on the entire Iraq war -- just when were they going to start investigating? (I'm sure I've got this wildly wrong and he'll correct me.) - j1m

Steve Crossan

http://beta.friendfeed.com/about...

April 6 - Comment - Like - Share

File Not Found The file you requested is no longer on FriendFeed's servers. You may have followed an out-dated link, or there may be an error in our service. We apologize for the inconvenience. - Steve Crossan

Steve Crossan

Sisters make people happy, brothers breed distress: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1...

April 6 - Comment - Like - Share

"Researchers quizzed 571 people aged 17 to 25 about their lives and found those who grew up with sisters were more likely to be happy and balanced." - Steve Crossan

Douwe

Just realized I've been in Oz for 6 months now. another 6 and I'll be back in good old Switzerland.

April 1 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

I didn't know you were going back. Thought you'd transferred? - Steve Crossan

Mona Nomura

Scotch drinkers: what do you recommend that is balanced yet complex with an average price tag? Not a gift.

March 26 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Chieze Okoye, Patrick Jordan, Kevin Pedraja and 6 other people liked this

Crickets from FF? :( - Mona Nomura

46 more comments

Define average price tag. Have you tried Oban? - Alex Scoble

Reshared to the drinking room: http://friendfeed.com/rooms... - Rochelle

Reasonable price for scotch - under 200? - Mona Nomura

Glenlivet. But I don't drink much Scotch. - Steven Perez

Oban is about $62 a bottle or so at Bev Mo. It's the fav of the Scobleizer. - Alex Scoble

You cannot go wrong with Macallan 18. If you want something truly impressive, check out Macallan's Cask Strength. (Obviously, I'm a Macallan fan.) Balvenie makes an excellent Double Wood that has a unique flavor. - Akiva Moskovitz

Akiva - you're the third person to say Macallan 18. And I love when you go into details. Btw, Macallan - is it salty, oakey, smokey, or sweet? - Mona Nomura

I'll second the Balvenie Doublewood - 12yo, better if you wait until it's 20 :) - Glen Mistletoe

It's a scotch, so it tastes like dirt. - Alex Scoble

Alex, I am going to punch you in the throat and then giggle like a little girl. - Akiva Moskovitz

It's a got quite the oak streak but it's definitely on the sweeter side. If you want sweet and can afford it, the Balvenie 21 is unbelievable. Speaking of, I think I'll have a bit now myself. - Akiva Moskovitz

It's true. Because of the peat they use to dry the hops or barley or whatever scotch tastes a bit earthy. When you find a scotch that doesn't taste earthy, let me know. - Alex Scoble

How will I be able to properly let you know WHILE I AM REPEATEDLY PUNCHING YOUR THROAT, ALEX. - Akiva Moskovitz

You won't. Especially if you are drinking scotch because after the first sip you'll say "damn, he's right...it tastes like dirt." - Alex Scoble

You, sir, will suffer the suffering of a thousand sufferers who are suffering the suffering of a thousand other suffers who are suffering a slightly different but equally potent suffering than the first thousand sufferers are suffering. - Akiva Moskovitz

It doesn't all taste like dirt. It all tastes like rubbing alcohol. - Rochelle

Macallen 12 yo (or better) if you can afford a few extra $$, otherwise Bushmills - Threepwood

I should read the other comments first....heaps of other Macallen fans here :-) - Threepwood

You know how I know what scotch tastes like? Because I drank half a bottle of it one Thanksgiving. 1/4 bottle of Macallan 15 year and 1/4 bottle of Macallan 18 year. Dirt! - Alex Scoble

Mona..Macallen 18 tasting notes are online if you havnt seen them before -> http://tinyurl.com/c8m3zf - Threepwood

Akiva has a glass of some kind of scotch right now and I can smell it from across the living room. - Rochelle

Alex, that's the equivalent of stuffing several different kinds of sushi at once. You, sir, lose. - Akiva Moskovitz

Rochelle, it's the Balvenie 21. Holy crap is it quite not terrible! - Akiva Moskovitz

Akiva, I was hungover for three days after that, so yeah, I lost. Ugh. And now I can't drink scotch anymore. Yuck. - Alex Scoble

Canadian Club. 22 year old if you're feelin' fancy. - Andrew Smith

Oban double matured. Amazing. Macallan 18 year too is quite good - Jeff (the メガマクダジ of FF)

Alex, now I understand. That'd do me in, as well. It's why I can't drink tequila anymore unless it's silver. - Akiva Moskovitz

But blancos have no flavor. :( - Alex Scoble

although i have been leaning to Bourbon lately. Basil Hayden FTW!!! - Jeff (the メガマクダジ of FF)

The Macallan that people have been mentioning is good. I also like the Highland Park 12 year and Glenfiddich 12 year. - Aaron Hood

i can't get into Glenfiddich - Jeff (the メガマクダジ of FF)

If you could get in to a bottle of any of the scotches, Jeff, that would be quite the magic feat. - Alex Scoble

Now I'm craving mashed potatoes and scotch. Great. - Mona Nomura

There's worse things, Mona. You could be Derrick craving some motorboating. - Alex Scoble

OMG I need to sleep but I can't get off FF!!! - Mona Nomura

Yeah, Mona. I know EXACTLY what you mean. - Alex Scoble

one more vote for Macallan. 12 year old if you don't want to spend a lot of money, 18 if your budget is a bit higher. - Tudor Bosman

I actually recommend Irish Whiskey. It is same family of whiskey. It is smoother than Scotch Whiskey because it is filtered 3 times. Scotch is filted only twice. Two brands - Jameson or Bushmills. Also, they are so pure that no hangover from it. - Pokai

I too like the Oban 14, but it is made by the "classic malts" people. Compass Box Oak Cross is a different choice that is not too smoky or peaty. - Sarah Miller

Laphroaig (i like). if you like peat & smoke. de gustibus, of course. keeps youngsters with undeveloped palates away ;) - jacek

Isle Of Jura, or Caol Ila - Iain Baker

What jacek said about Laphroaig. Also, Oban. And, of course, Lagavulin, but I don't think it qualifies as having an average price tag. - Kevin Pedraja

Talisker, Bowmore are wonderful, drinkable, reasonable - Barry Parr

For reasonably priced scotch, another vote for Balvenie Doublewood. Great stuff. Macallan 18 year old is great though pricey. Glenlivet has an unfiltered special reserve that is outstanding. I'm not nuts about Oban, Laphroaig and the really peaty scotches, though your taste may be different. - jcunwired

Besides the other 2 I listed, I am really enjoying Dalhwinnie double barrel. It's so creamy and vanilla we are contemplating trying it on ice cream - if we find an ice cream worthy of the experiment. - Sarah Miller

+1 Jamesons for the best brand / blended / standard priced. And I'm a Scot. - Steve Crossan

My Dad became a Scotch drinker when he was in Europe because he couldn't get bourbon. His brand was Cutty Sark, which is a blended whiskey as opposed to a single malt. Glenfiddich is popular with my customers, but then some of the still drink Dewar's. - Robert Hafer

Bindu Reddy

Hang out on Friendfeed if you are in a mood for a thoughtful / intense discussion, Hang out on twitter and casually chat, Hang out on Facebook and comment on how fab. your RL friends and their babies look...

March 19 - Comment - Like - Share

Vishy, Gordon Swaby, mjc and 28 other people liked this

True or False? - Bindu Reddy

38 more comments

Not really sure, I don't spend much time on either Twitter or FB. - Yolanda

Mostly true I think. But then again I'm no expert... - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

True execpt for Twitter, which is the least conversational "social" site I've used. - Andrew

not that simple, I use twitter for activism all the time. - Tracy Viselli

There's also whimsy on FF - sofarsoShawn

Interesting... I think one reason Twitter may be good for casual conversations is how easy it is to use on a mobile phone. Anytime you are hanging out waiting for someone/something you can @reply to someone else. - Bindu Reddy

Theoretically - Yes. But in practice, I always end back up on Twitter. FriendFeed definitely fosters more 'intense debate', but for me Twitter offers a more dynamic social-informational context. - phil baumann

Tracy - activism? i.e. pushing specific ideas to your followers? - Bindu Reddy

Chris, we know you hate twitter :) Actually the commenting on FB photos sometimes gets to me... esp all the baby ones - Bindu Reddy

I agree, the ease with which one can tweet with your cell makes up a significant % of tweets. What else do you do stuck in traffic? However I've recently gotten a twitter jump in @'s and DMs - sofarsoShawn

I detest baby photo shares: save them for a wallet or there should be a room. They go redundantly like this: awww cute baby :o) with a bit of variation I'll concede. - sofarsoShawn

Bindu - The friends on Twitter I have don't check Twitter very often so they don't @ reply to me. And I don't know personally know anyone who gets updates from their friends on their phones. - Andrew

sofarsosean - no rooms on FB as you know. The recent jump in @s is likely due to a lot of people reviving their dead twitter accounts after all the press twitter got. Some of my RL friends are finally on Twiiter and have been DMing me - Bindu Reddy

Chris, agree there is some truth to that. However some of these tools really make your more connected with your friends and more happy. Kinda of like how people used to be thrilled with gmail/google a few years ago which is why people can't stop talking about them. - Bindu Reddy

I enjoy Twitter. Quick and dirty overs, a bit like CB radio really I guess. - Ian May

Ian - I see what you are saying. Love that analogy - Bindu Reddy

What I dislike intensely about Twitter is that it's entire interface and service is set up as competition of who can get the most followers and follow the least. The running total is in your face perpetually. - sofarsoShawn

Chris, what do you mean, you don't use CB radio... You are out of it :)) sofarsosean, yes there is definitely a big competition to get more followers which might benefit Twitter but does get a bit tiresome - Bindu Reddy

& for some users is definitely their top priority for using Twitter - sofarsoShawn

Bindu Not just pushing ideas, pushing action--phone calls to legislators, email campaigns, using social media to spread a message very quickly to influence lawmakers, etc. - Tracy Viselli

Now taking note of Bindu's original question: has anyone ever discussed as much via Twitter (and don't even dare use more than 140 characters). How could your answer not be true? - sofarsoShawn

+1. I'm in exactly the same twitter/fb/ff manifold as you Bindu - Steve Crossan

Why do we expect each service to be all things to all people? In my toolbox I have a wrench and a screwdriver: both are tools but used for different purposes. Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook are all tools, but they are different tools for a different purposes. Just my too scents. - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Mark - Amen to that.. I was making the observation as to how these tools have evolved for me and was wondering if everyone else thought the same way :) - Bindu Reddy

I have a toolbox. In my toolbox is a mutltool. My multitool does everything. It is all I need. It has the friendfeed logo on it. I am happy. All my other tools are sad. - Alex Scoble

Alex/Chris really.. when are you guys going to forget about this. You guys need to "kiss and make up" :)) - Bindu Reddy

Forget about what now, Bindu? :) - Alex Scoble

Seriously, I wish we could block Alex and Chris from each other. ;-) - Kevin Fox

OK, I am trying to help but Chris that sounds mean, unless it is supposed to be funny.. I am sure Alex won't delete your comments again. You guys sound like me fighting with some of my girl friends :) - Bindu Reddy

Bindu it's like two brothers wrestling in the yard. Just let them be. - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Mark, OK fine :) - Bindu Reddy

Naw, Bindu. If Chris passes a line in the sand that I put in a discussion, I'd delete his comments again. I reserve the right to delete comments on my threads. He might not like it, but that's the breaks. But to say that I did it because his point of view doesn't agree with mine? Pish posh. Pish posh, I say. - Alex Scoble

What does that say for me that doesn't like Facebook and doesn't get twitter, but I'm here a lot? - CW™

CW, It says that you like long addictive discussions :) - Bindu Reddy

Just CW, it says you aren't in to shouting in a crowd, you actually talk to your friends instead of IM them and you have found that some people share interesting things and enjoy good conversation. - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Well said Mark... - Bindu Reddy

Probably why I subscribe to both you Bindu and MVB! Thourghly enjoy your posts. :) - CW™

I should print more "Social Media Expert" cards... - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

If I had to sum it up in a few sentences, then I would say you nailed it, but there's a lot more going on at each of these sites you mentioned. BTW, I still think socialmedian is the best place for intense debate. FF is wonderful too, but they happen quickly and then I rarely see the same post come up again.On socialmedian I've seen some discussions span several weeks. The comments are well thought out, and can be longer than many blog posts I've read. Lately,the dicussion has been on the light side. Sucks! - Michael Fidler

Steve Crossan

http://www.boston.com/bigpict... - http://www.boston.com/bigpict...

March 19 - Comment - Like - Share

Photos worth seeing - Steve Crossan

Ihar Mahaniok

IQ48 - Здаровыя Лосі! - http://likaholix.com/mahanio...

March 16 from Likaholix - Comment - Like - Share

Bindu Reddy liked this

Most interesting and professional young music band in Belarus. - Ihar Mahaniok from Likaholix

2 more comments

Bindu, I really need ability to add several links to a description :). here, for example, their last.fm page would fit. - Ihar Mahaniok

Most interesting and professional young music band in Belarus sounds like a new MTV music award. - Steve Crossan

Steve, could you pursue this with MTV and make them to introduce a new award next year? :)) - Ihar Mahaniok

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