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Archive: October 21, 2024
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Blogging from Virgin America flight 108 high above Arizona. Have I mentioned how great this is? I am on my way to an FDA panel meeting to discuss regulation of whole-slide imaging for pathology, and I am really excited about it. This is it; the culmination of years of hard work and development and study designs and customer advocacy, where the field of digital pathology moves into clinical diagnosis. A real inflection point!
But meanwhile, it's all happening...
 Quick, how big is Antarctica? Check out this picture of the U.S. superimposed over it... 
Ann Althouse notes we are losing our religion, as U.S. belief in global warming is cooling. Like nuclear energy, carbon emissions are a political football and most people respond based on opinion rather than fact. I believe global warming is a problem and is also way overstated as a problem.
 News you can use: how to shoot an anvil 200' into the air. Do not try this at home, especially if you live in my neighborhood :) In addition to loving the idea of blasting an anvil into the air, I was struck that the practitioners of this sport look exactly like what you would expect.
 Well it didn't have the hype of the Kindle, but Barnes and Noble have announced the Nook, a Kindle competitor. It uses a similar E-ink display, but has a color touch screen. In terms of business model it is similar to Kindle, with a tweak that allows people to "lend books" to their friends. I think this validates the Kindle more than competes against it.
BTW I noticed B&N's website is considerably slower than Amazon's; a minor note, but I'm telling you website speed is important. It is no accident that Google's website is faster than Bing's, for example.
Apple stock hits all time high. John Gruber goes out on a limb and predicts AAPL's market cap will surpass MSFT's by year-end 2010. And notes that Apple has enough cash on hand to buy every share of Dell. It is amazing that everyone gave up on Apple, and they have succeeded by creating new markets for music players and smartphones, instead of by growing within the desktop computer market.
 Picture of the day: the thinker. The very definition of a silverback.
 ZooBorn of the day: a baby white rhino. (NB "white" rhino designates a species, not a color.)
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sometimes you can only cut so far
might have been better to leave out half the species instead :)
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Archive: October 21, 2008
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More work, more kid taxiing, and still blech although I did get in a ride today, so it was better. And I was able to get some code running "in production" that I've been working on, so that was nice. I can't complain but sometimes I still do. And meanwhile, it's all happening...
 So I must tell you, I like Lala. To early to tell if it is a fad or a keeper, but I've spent more time listening to music there than on any other online music site so far... and they don't even have much of a "sounds like this" capability. Basically I already know all this music, but I don't have it, and there it all is... I haven't downloaded anything yet, I guess that will be the proof of the pudding. Stay tuned...
Remember Mississippi Queen? Can you name the band? ... Mountain ...
 India have launched their first moon mission! "The unmanned Chandrayaan 1 spacecraft blasted off smoothly from a launch pad in southern Andhra Pradesh to embark on a two-year mission of exploration. The robotic probe will orbit the Moon, compiling a 3-D atlas of the lunar surface and mapping the distribution of elements and minerals. The launch is regarded as a major step for India as it seeks to keep pace with other space-faring nations in Asia." Wow, how excellent. Good for them.
 This is an amazingly innovative idea: Microsoft's Sidesight. Technology that detects gestures you make with your fingers at the sides of a mobile device, that can be used for controlling it. No touchscreen required, multitouch or otherwise. A great idea...
 Matt Haughey notes Tivo's rebound. "Off and on for the past six years I've been an armchair quarterback for TiVo telling them they should do anything and everything to become profitable... What I realized this week is that TiVo has spent the past couple years starting battles on all these fronts, and it looks like (at least to this outside observer) like TiVo is winning on all fronts." I'm a huge fan, of course, even more so after my ill-fated flirtations with Moxi and other DVRs.
BW has an interesting interview with Bram Cohen, creator of BitTorrent. They play up Bram's Asperger's Syndrome angle, but neglect the more interesting question of how you take a successful program like BitTorrent and turn it into a successful business. So far it is an unanswered question...
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Archive: October 21, 2007
Archive: October 21, 2006
Archive: October 21, 2005
Archive: October 21, 2004
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Here's an email you don't get every day:
Is this a great time to be alive, or what?
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One of the really feel-good stories that came out in the past couple of weeks was the elections in Afghanistan. As Scott Norville reported, it was Just a Success Story [ via Citizen Smash ] Democracy is the best hope we have of defusing radical Islam. Cox & Forkum captured this perfectly in "Casting":
A classic Kerryism. "Talking about education yesterday, Mr. Kerry also told the largely black crowd at the day care center that there are more blacks in prison than in college. 'That's unacceptable,' he said. 'But it's not their fault.' Rather than the inmates, the former Boston prosecutor blamed poverty, poor schools, a dearth of after-school programs and 'all of us as adults not doing what we need to do'." Classic victimology. I sure hope this pendulum of political correctness starts swinging back. People have to be held responsible for their own actions.
Related, Philip Greenspun: The Bell Curve Revisited. I still think it is a great and important book, and I defy anyone who has actually read it to brand it "racist". There are important problems in our society, and we must face the truth to solve them.
Kip Esquire: How Evolution is like Economics. Interesting commentary on the Wired Magazine article about "Intelligent Design", a creationist plot against evolution. "Almost every college student takes at least one basic economics course, yet when economic policies are debated the most basic economic principles seem to get drowned out in the din of a handful of crackpots who posture themselves as having equal standing when in fact they don't."
The Motley Fool looks at The eBay Way. eBay just announced their quarterly earnings, and knocked the ball out of the park again. "I would love to lead this story by pointing out how eBay trounced Wall Street's targets this past quarter and is raising its guidance for the next year, but would that even be newsworthy?"
 The Antikythera Computer, 56 B.C. "In 1900, sponge divers discovered a shipwreck in 200 feet of water. Among the historical curiosities to be excavated from the wreck was the earliest geared computer. About the size of a shoebox, the unit was a working computer which could calculate the positions of the moon and the five planets known in 56 BC. From this one device we learn that the Greeks had clock-making capabilities equaling that of 16th-century Europe."
Weirdly, my ancient Tyranny of Email article continues to get linked, and hit; today I had over 50,000 hits again. Aside from the ego gratification, the best thing about this is seeing all the great sites linking me in the referral logs.
 One of them was a post by "Nik" to the Brosenbex forums, using this really cool animated avatar... (Reminds me of David Roy's "wood that works" sculptures :)
This is so I can find it later, and in case you need it; a great survey article about glue. If you ever need to stick something to something else, bookmark this page. [ via Gizmodo ]
 Finally, here we haveJaws for Bunnies.
I am not making this up.
[ via BigWig ]
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Archive: October 21, 2003
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