Amazon’s EC2 is the most exciting thing I’ve seen in a while - If it were Google that had launched this, I imagine there would have been more fuss.

EC2 allows you to put a disk image of a Linux machine onto Amazon S3 (their remote storage service) and create a virtual machine by installing from there onto EC2. From there on you pay only for CPU time and bandwidth.

This is the grid computing that Oracle has been bullshitting about, and chenges the landscape for hosting - allowing instant, on-demand scaleability and no upfront hardware costs, or per unit rackspace fees.

I need to investigate more. However, for startups this potentially solves the ‘launch’ problem, where you need extra horsepower for a traffic boost at launch, but the cost of setting it up is prohibitive if you only need that level of service for a couple of weeks.

I can’t help thinking that Amazons naming is a bit bland or too clever - Mechanical Turk, EC2, S3.

Perhaps they should buy anywhere.com off me for EC2.

Amazon.com Amazon Web Services Store: Amazon EC2 / Amazon Web Services

Has Digg Been Hijacked, by FUD

Today a largely factually based story with referenced quotes and run by the Associated Press, which was also reported in most US newspapers is flagged by Digg as potentially Inacurate.

I’ve noticed recently that a large number of political stories, particularly left of center ones, get slapped with the ‘Warning: The Content in this Article May be Inacurate” - Because enough people who want to deliberately create uncertainty in light of the truth, say so.

This is the way wikipedia does it, and to be honest, with no other option for wikipedia, it means that Wikipedia is largely useless and hopelessly banal for contentious political issues.

But news is not like Wikipedia - users are directly linking to a source not editing it. If people on the political fringes moan, that does not necessarily mean that the source is innacurate.

The Wikipedia reputation system does not work on Digg.

digg - “Bush Misled America” - John McCain

Average house price in the US, Aug 2006:
$230,000

Average house price in the UK, Aug 2006: $376,600

Average gas price per gallon in the US, Aug 2006: $3.04

Average gas price per gallon in the UK, Aug 2006: $6.46

There will almost certainly be a recession in the US soon, caused primarily by inflated gas and house prices. One will continue to go up and the other will crash - a problem for people who own houses and drive cars, i.e. are long in real estate and short on gas.

But these prices are actually very, very cheap compared to places like the UK, which didn’t go into recession with much larger costs and similar wages. The principal difference being the rate of consumption.

average home sales prices in all regions of the united states

Percentage of Americans who identified themseves as ‘church members’:

1776: 17%
1990: 62%

The statistics for Britain now (10%) and at the height of Empire (possibly 70%), are similar. It is possible that Christianity in America today is a form of nationalism rather than spiritualism, rather like Victorian Britain.

Exclusive Graphs

Dave is right on to keep banging on about the morbid obsession with the JonBenet story.

My take is that this is somewhat apallingly taking the place of a light relief story, like a dog on a skateboard clip.

Current geopolitical stories in the Middle East in particular are difficult to grapple with or find a clear cut answer to - so when a Paedophile is wheeled in, people find no moral ambiguity there, and just react on gut without having to think, venting their anger with a ‘burn the witch’ chorus.

To saturate the news with this makes Paedophile baiting a form of light entertainment distraction, although nobody will admit to the fact, which is very disturbing.

Kathy Young for Capital News 9:

“By the end of the week, the universe could be expanding, with the addition of three new planets to our solar system.”

Hilarious. Given the relative size of the known Universe to our solar system, this is the equivalent of saying: “By the end of the week, the earth could be expanding, with the addition of three grains of sand on a beach in Florida.”

Capital News 9 | 24 Hour Local News | HEADLINES | A cosmic change

My wife has put together a Wist of bathroom and makeup products, such as solid shampoo, that should be allowed in carry-on luggage, with the no liquids ban.

Wists - non liquid carry on products.

A quarter of everything that exists has just been found.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Team finds ‘proof’ of dark matter

Jonathan Miller’s: A Brief History of Disbelief Pt. 1

“God is an essence we know nothing of, until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there will never be any liberal science in the world.”
John Adams US President 1797 - 1801

“The clergy believe that any power confided in me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes - and they believe rightly.”
Thomas Jefferson US President 1801 - 1809

“I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed and distorted by religion.”
James Buchanan US President 1857 - 1861

“My earlier views on the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation have become clearer and stronger with advancing years.”
Abraham Lincoln US President 1861 - 1865

You occasionally get Cricket stories on the front page of Google news (because, as Digg has proven - news driven by robots is crap compared to human editorial), but on the New York Times front page!

The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia