Google is to build a gigantic campus in The Silicone Valley ‘Silicone’ Valley – that would be the San Fernando Valley where all the porn stars hang out, I guess.
Read More
I normally agree with what Seth Godin has to say, but his rules of viral spread (which have spread virally, interestingly enough) seem provably wrong: Seth says (and note that he does not say anything about virality in his set of criteria for message sending): “No one ‘sends’ an idea unless:” “a. they understand it” Not true. People send things when they think they understand it but don’t and when they don’t understand it but think they should. An example of the former is the Sokal Hoax. In fact the Nietzsche example given is perfect proof to the contrary – Nietzsche does propagate but without understanding. This is important as it explains the mechanism of mutation of an idea into a better propagating one. If people had to understand an idea as the sender intended, the mechanisms of natural selection on ideas would be vastly different. “b. they want it…
The myth: “religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.” The reality:
Full article is subcription only. FT.com / Home UK – Track clickerati’s new buzz
“It is a powerful, highly addictive drug openly peddled on street corners and in purpose-made buildings across the country. Suicide bombers get high on it and governments encourage its use. It can be hallucinogenic, destroys lives and, in its strongest doses, start wars.”
I have always liked libraries, since I spend a whole summer in the British Library reading a massive ten volume translation of the Arabian Nights while at university. Having tried an office in Tribeca and appointing the cats as CTO and VP of marketing, working out of my apartment I am now basking in the marble and oak glory at desk 610 in the main reading room of the New York Public Library. Each desk space has an elegant bronze lamp and a brass plate with ethernet and power, where you can hook up your laptop and enjoy speedy Internet access for free. Adjacent Bryant park, one of Manhattan's best public spaces, also has very good free WiFi and Parisian style folding chairs on gravel paths.link » tags: [new_york] posted via Wists: permamark
Following on from the acquisition of Skype by Ebay, this weeks Economist leads with a prediction that everyone would have laughed at if it had been in Mondo 2000 ten years ago: 'the rise of Skype and other VOIP services means nothing less than the death of the traditional telephone business established over a century ago… the death of the trillion dollar voice telephony market… it is now no longer a question whether VOIP will wipe out traditional telephony, but a question of how quickly it will do so' What other sectors are toast: 2. Retail banking – retail banks are crap, expensive, lazy and complacent. Why do I have to mail pieces of paper that look like 19th century parchment 3000 miles to deposit virtual money via a building with travertine floors and 20 foot ceilings? 3. Photography – The number of art schools in Britain reflects the requirement…
This is from Time magazine: 'If a flood of Biblical proportions were to lay waste to New Orleans, Joe Suhayda has a good idea how it would happen. A Category 5 hurricane would come barreling out of the Gulf of Mexico. It would cause Lake Pontchartrain, north of New Orleans, to overflow, pouring down millions of gallons of water on the city. Then things would really get ugly. Evacuation routes would be blocked. Buildings would collapse. Chemicals and hazardous waste would dissolve, turning the floodwaters into a lethal soup. In the end, what was left of the city might not be worth saving. "There's concern it would essentially destroy New Orleans," says Suhayda.' Mark Schleifstein and John McQuaid quote Suhayda again, in a Weather Undergroud piece: "A catastrophic hurricane represents 10 or 15 atomic bombs in terms of the energy it releases…Think about it. New York lost two big buildings….
A potential perfect storm is brewing, just like all weather forecasting it's not 100% certain how big the storm is going to be, but despite what some conservatives say the risk is too great to avoid, and despite what some liberals say a storm buster may be available. Global warming, Global energy supply and Globalization – the free flow of energy, its availability and its effects – are changing on a global level, combining to produce a real threat to our everyday lives. Oil supply problems and the switch of industrial economies away from industry to services based economies are linked. Current oil prices are largely due to increased demand rather than supply problems. Service based economies are doing well because they are outsourcing production to cheaper industrializing economies like China but in doing so they have created a rival with a growing appetite for oil. One problem with the…
Dawkins and Coyne point out the serious side to silly creationism – that even as religion it is bogus, because it is immoral. They say that the seemingly reasonable demand that both sides of an argument should be taught “would be the end of science education in America” One side, Intelligent Design has no supporting evidence other than pointing to a few gaps in another theory, evolution, which has hundreds of thousands of mutually corroborating pieces of evidence. The logic of allowing ID to be taught would justify the teaching of Holocaust denial for which there is no supporting evidence other than normal gaps in another version of events, which has hundreds of thousands of mutually corroborating pieces of evidence.
As the tech. world awaits Apple’s announcement of an iTunes cellphone, Apple’s strapline is: “1,000 songs in your pocket changed everything,” reads the invitation. “Here we go again.” In 1999 I bought a hard-drive MP3 player that fitted 1000 songs in my pocket. In 2000 I had a Samsung cellphone with built-in MP3 player. The problem was that both these products had badly designed hardware, poor useability and bug ridden firmware. Today I have an iPod and it suits me fine, because it is well designed. In fact it suits me better than the first generation iPod I had, which looked better, but was less ergonomic. The design has improved. Which brings me to a line that was oft touted by VC’s during the dotcom bubble – ‘First Mover Advantage’. From the Ebay auction site, to Google search engine to Microsoft OS to Apple MP3 players, none of them suffered…
Christian Exodus is a weird new bunch of religious extremists whose idea is to turn South Carolina into something that sounds like Wahabist Saudi Arabia. The leader of the cult has a blog “ChristianExodus.org is coordinating the move of thousands of Christians to South Carolina for the express purpose of re-establishing Godly, constitutional government… The time has come for Christians to withdraw our consent from the current federal government and re-introduce the Christian principles once so predominant in America to a sovereign State like South Carolina.” Christian Exodus :: Come Out of Her, My People