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Aug 04 2005
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I Could've Been a Contender – 7 Internet companies that could have been big or bigger

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1. AltaVista – a better search engine than Google even when there was tech cred in saying Google was better. Cause: Digital constrained it, CMGI killed it with portal mania and lack of focus. Culprit: Digital/CMGI 2. Octopus – Better than any personal portal or RSS aggregator and started when MyYahoo was terrible and RSS aggregators were twinkles in techies eyes. Cause: Investors panicked over it as a consumer application and jumped on the idiotic enterprise bandwagon. Culprit: VCs 3. Wired – It had one of the first search engines and content businesses on the web. Cause: Selling off the online bit at a time when a magazine about the web seemed more valuable than anything on it. Culprit: Wired 4. Paypal – should have brought down half of the anachronistic, check writing, retail banking system. Cause: Swallowed up in an organization (Ebay) that can’t take risks because it has…

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Aug 04 2005
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If biblical creation is true why fund Nasa?

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Joshua Marshall on how out of step fundamentalist evangelicals are with both a modern society and the vast majority of other religions. “Most mainstream religious groups have long since made their peace with evolutionary theory. As in, most Protestant denominations, the Catholic Church, Judaism in its Conservative, Reform, and most Orthodox groups.” And as one of his readers points out, Nasa’s current focus is the search for life: “The creation vs science question has a major bearing on a rather visible government program: Isn’t the primary rationale for most of the space program to learn more about the origins of life? Some would say that exploration of Mars and the moons of Saturn will help us shed light on these eternal mysteries. Others would point out that all we need to know can be found in the book that’s available in every hotel room.” Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah…

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Aug 02 2005
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Bush endorses intelligent design

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“I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought,” Bush said. “You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.” Some ideas are better than others. The idea that you go to heaven if you blow up innocent people is nauseating. This idea is extremely dangerous even if it is taught to a small number of people. A global education system, where ideas that have no supporting evidence or predictive ability are taught as fiction but never fact would help erradicate the word of ideas like those above. Because the defense of Intelligent Design is not on its own merits, but the merits of teaching different ideas, it creates a bad precedent. It may seem ridiculous to create the analogy, but just as separation of church and state is important, separation of church and science…

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Jul 29 2005
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Power Law coefficient deviations and the Long Tail

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[physics/0506213] From old wars to new wars and global terrorism Reading this gruesome study into fragmentation of ‘attack units’ in modern warfare, that Kottke linked to, it is clear that this is the mathematical model that should be used to examine niches in the ‘Long Tail’ debate. I.E. The change in power law coefficient over time and its trend compared with G-7 terrorism or non G7-terrorism could be applied to standard co-efficients for low inventory mass market retail, bricks and mortar, vs unlimited inventory, niche market retail, the Internet. I wonder what the standard power law coefficients are for these. I still have a hunch that there are some non-linear affects and that fractals play a role in revealing the same pattern for niches within niches etc.

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Jul 29 2005
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IE7 shows why Google must develop a browser.

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Microsoft has always owned the UI, whether that be the command line or desktop – owning this is their unwritten mission statement. Google owns the command line for the web, so they directly step on Microsoft's territory. IE7 has search built into the browser – although it lists several search engines, it will not include saving Google search over MSN as a default setting. This tiny detail is a passive aggressive masterstroke – everyone is equal but MSN is more equal than others. It forces a minute ‘switching cost’, changing the dropdown every single time you do a search if you really like Google. Web savvy people will do this, but would your mother? Moreover, it is rumored that IE7 will not allow Google or Yahoo toolbars. This steps on Google's territory. If web search boxes go from being embedded in a web page to being embedded in a browser,…

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Jul 26 2005
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Iran executes gay teenagers.

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Lest we forget, this is not a Persian crime, but a religious one, and one based upon opinions that are shared by some people from all the Abrahamic religions. Some people email me wondering what I have against religion: I think belief is an abrogation of our moral responsibility as human beings to reason and empathise with other people rather than passing the responsibility to a text which cannot be reasonably challenged or ammended. I do think that religion makes good people better, but it makes bad people worse – and it is easier to destroy things than build them. Until someone disproves the 2nd Law, religion and humans are a volatile mix. I think that the more secular a society is, the more moral, creative and innovative it is. In America people are not arguing about whether gays should be executed but whether they can marry, I am not…

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Jul 26 2005
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Mac OSX for Free

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If I were Steve Jobs… I would use the Gillette model (free fancy handle, pay for the blades) to sell value-add products like iPhoto on top of a free OS. I would make power PC and the Intel version of OSX which has been worked on for a while – free. Particularly in light of this: Everyone wants ‘free’ Windows… | CNET News.com

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Jul 26 2005
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Why the battle between Google, Microsoft and Yahoo will involve maps.

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Number of households in US: 101 million. Local Services market value: $600 billion annual. Household services: $180 billion annual. Amount spent on local offline advertising by contracting and real estate businesses: $25 billion annual. Dotcom investment in 10 online services during boom: $250 million [they were keen but too early] Amount spent on advertising local services to households: anywhere between $50 -$90 billion annual [this is the biggest untapped revenue opportunity for search] Largest category of services posting on Craigslist (taken by looking at a sample 2 days of postings): Sex services, 40% [i.e. Craiglist not a player yet, outside of jobs and real estate] Largest category of Yellow pages advertiser: Attorneys, $856 million in 2001. Largest single event resulting in Yellow Pages use: eldest daughter gets married [personalized search and user profiles will be important] Number of Overture searches that explicitly have a city in the search: 4% Number…

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