Category: Uncategorized

You ever wish the people in your daily life were this smart?

David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and partner in 37 signals, went nuclear on the official 37s blog in a profanity-titled post called You’re not on a fucking plane (and if you are, it doesn’t matter)! – (37signals). Now, I’m not a prude (feel free to search this blog or come out drinking with me), but leading a post on your corporate blog with the f-bomb is, what’s the word, dumb.

But I’m not here to lament David’s immature way of titling a post, but to take issue with the content of his post. Essentially, David argues that there’s no need for offline components to web applications because connectivity is so ubiquitous. Which is true, if you live in a major metropolitan area, such as David does. But here in the uncharted backwaters of suburban Detroit (Ann Arbor), there’s no such thing as ubiquitous WiFi. Sure, I could pay another $80 a month to get an EVDO card, but do I really need that? Not really, certainly not for business.

From a business standpoint, I know that my customers (professors and researchers) like to go to places that, ding, no one has been before. I wonder if they’ve laid lines that can handle 10mbps internet connections or cell tower that carry EVDO. I’m going to guess not. So, when I want my customers to interact with the web application we’ve built for them to get their research reviewed, how do they do that without an offline component? The answer now is paper, fax, and time.

So, why is 37 signals being so shortsighted? Apollo. Yep, that old chestnut called competition. Can’t access your Basecamp account from the airplane? Build your own app that let’s you update your project information offline and then synch that data when you do connect to the Internet. Sure, it’s a stretch but the threat to 37 Signals and RoR is there.

As one of the commenters to the 37s post said, “Distortion field at work here, folks.”

Microsoft Corp. … said on Monday that it sold more than 20 million Windows Vista licenses in the first month since the operating system’s general debut on January 30.

The world’s biggest software maker said the pace of Vista adoption is at more than twice the rate of its predecessor, Windows XP, which had sold 17 million licenses after its first two months of release. [source]

Wow, sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Too bad it’s hooey. Sure, in raw numbers, Vista is trouncing XP. Unfortunately, when XP was released in 2001, there were far fewer computers in the world. Some publications claim that the number of computers in the world doubles every 6 years, although the pace could be faster as there were 150 million personnel computers in 1994 and 575 million in 2004, over 350% more in 10 years.

So, really, when Microsoft says sales for Vista are huge, they’re not huge enough. Conservatively, in 6 years, sales should be double (24 million) XP’s numbers, possibly as high as 350% more (59.5 million). Makes 20 million seem, well, like marketing.

Funny, funny stuff. Mr. Deity is a series of short vignettes detailing the trials and tribulations of being an all-knowing, all-powerful deity. The Boss has to deal with Larry, his annoying Holy Spirit, his son Jesse, and constant calls for attention from the cast-down Luci.

The show is available via YouTube or iTunes for free (podcast link). I’d recommend the iTunes version as the video quality is extremely high for a video podcast. Good for a chuckle, and not too blasphemous.

mrdeity

Thanks Fark.

Super short review: Well acted, tired plot, too cute for it’s own good.

Short review: The Prestige is one of those movies that starts with a premise (voiced over by one of the characters) and then proceeds to build the structure of the movie on that premise. The premise of The Prestige is that there’s three parts to a magic trick: the pledge (where the performer sells the trick), the turn (where the performer makes the ordinary extraordinary, and the prestige (the payoff).

It sort of works, but the disjointed timing of the flashbacks and staccato movement of the action is jarring. Many people have commented on the similarities to the director’s (Christopher Nolan) previous work, Momento. The Prestige has that feel, although not nearly as jarring. In that vein, however, The Prestige falls down. Where Momento jumped around in order to draw you into the point of view of the main character, The Prestige manages to confuse and dare you to figure out the When of what you just saw. For Nolan, disjointed timelines are starting to feel like a fall-back position.

That said, the movie is visually stunning, building a sense of presence from the sets themselves. The acting is very good, perhaps superb considering the stiffness of the leads previous roles (Michael Caine aside). Christian Bale and Michael Caine are both excellent and the casting of David Bowie as Nichola Tesla was a wonderful surprise. Scarlett Johansson as always, played herself, only this time she had to wear older clothes.

In the end, you’re left wondering exactly what happened. The movie tried far too hard to be a magic trick, working to whip aside the cloth and reveal the end of the illusion. But the “ta da” moment never really hits you and you’re left wanting. While the film waits for the applause after the prestige, all I could muster was courtesy clapping for technical execution and acting, but not so much for the experience.

3.5/5 stars (liked it, won’t buy)

The last bottle of HP sauce has been produced in England. Don’t expect to see outrageous auctions for the bottles on eBay; parent company Heinz is moving production to the Netherlands.

Of course, this move came with a great deal of hand wringing and political posturing, with MPs attempting to get the sauce barred from Parliament cafeteria tables, because it somehow now symbolized less Britishness than before. Not that they did any of that went Heinz bought the company (from a French company who had previously bought HP) in 2005.

Wait until they find out that not everything is made where you think it should have been made.

I don’t remember where I saw this first, but..

I know I saw this on DataWhat first. Anecdote to all you music execs (and CBS); I bought this album after seeing this video.

Trying Yahoo.