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Showing posts from August, 2006

My First DECLINED LinkedIn invitation!

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I am crushed.

An old collegue from Apple Computer (who, albiet, I didn't know well, I just remembered her name) TURNED DOWN my LinkedIn invitation!

A first! I'm sad. And a bit happy. I'm glad to see that there's at least some degree of filtering going on. I know I've said no to alot of the guys just looking to add names to their list, but not all of them (LinkIn 'notches' on the belt... so to speak.. God, when I think of it, I feel so... used....sigh).

Invitation DeclinedLinda XXXX (formerly XXXX) declined your invitation to connect, because Linda doesn't know you well enough to represent your interests when forwarding requests or facilitating contacts.And added these comments:Sorry, I'm keeping my network restricted to those I know very well.You can view your connections here, or by pasting the following link into your browser:http://www.linkedin.com/xxxxxThank you for using LinkedIn.--The LinkedIn Team
http://www.linkedin.com/
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Bob Dylan... Luddite!

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Bob Dylans a Luddite!

What's interesting about this is he's been on the cutting edge of music for so long, and is obviously using digital technology in the studio.

I wonder if he's releasing the new album on vinyl.

Who'd a thought? From Wired:
Bob Dylan says the quality of modern recordings is "atrocious," and even the songs on his new album sounded much better in the studio than on disc."I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really," the 65-year-old rocker said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.Dylan, who released eight studio albums in the past two decades, returns with his first recording in five years, Modern Times, next Tuesday.Noting the music industry's complaints that illegal downloading means people are getting their music for free, he said, "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway.""You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sou…
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Verizon's now making up fee's, literally

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Anyone who thinks the phone company will do the right thing and 'pass on savings to the consumer' just got a nice screw you from Verizon.

Apparently, the government stopped requiring Verizon charge a universal fee to help cover the cost of phone service coverage in rural areas on DSL lines. From $1.20 to $2.80 a month. Your bill should drop by that much now, right?

Not so much. The unvarnished word directly from Verizon:
"Effective August 26, Verizon will charge a Supplier Surcharge for all DSL customers. The surcharge helps offset costs we incur from our network supplier. The Supplier Surcharge will be $1.20/month for 768Kbps service customers and $2.70/month for higher DSL speeds.

Verizon Online will cease charging an FUSF recovery fee, beginning August 14, 2006. The impact of the elimination of the FUSF fee is for DSL customers up to 768Kbps, fee eliminated is $1.25.month; for DSL customers of up to 1.5Mbps and 3Mbps services, the fee eliminated is $2.83/month. On balan…
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Windows Live Writer: Just Stupid?

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Alright.. isn't the point of web 2.0 to be on the WEB? Isn't the concept of a downloable application like this just announced Windows Live Writer from Microsoft against everything Windows Lives is supposed to be? (LIVE.. like.. right there... on the web. AJAX, WebApps, yadayada.... you know Web 2.0...).

Introducing Windows Live WriterWelcome to the Windows Live Writer team blog! We are excited to announce that the Beta version of Windows Live Writer is available for download today.Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts using Windows Live Spaces or your current blog service. Blogging has turned the web into a two-way communications medium. Our goal in creating Writer is to help make blogging more powerful, intuitive, and fun for everyone.

Am I missing something or is this as it appears: just stupid?

I'm actively deleting my stand alone applications from my computer. I use google spreadsheet for 80% of the sprea…
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Cars: Stepping down while stepping up

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I just traded in my Mini Cooper for a 2007 Yaris. It's weird, As I get older, I'm finding I like simpler, and friendlier to the world I live in.

At 40MPG, this little beastie puts even the Mini Coopers high 20's low 30's to shame.

I paid about $12,500 for it. (actually, I traded the Mini and got a nice big check back).

I've owned Porche's, Lexus and Audi's. I've spent twice the average American's annual income on a single car several times. I've come to the conclusion it's just dumb. That 12 MPG Landcruiser cost as much as 5 of these cars. Did I ever take it off road? Did it save my ass in a pileup? Was there really any reason to buy it other than it was big, it was impressive and it was expensive?

No.

I suppose some of it is just: I don't care what others think of what I'm driving anymore. Yea, I used to. I admit it. I just don't anymore. And, having lived in startup company land the last year or two, I've really g…
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Does Apple believe in OpenSource? Really?

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Apple is trying the OpenSource approach, again.


By ScuttleMonkey on on-the-road-again Today Apple announced a few expanded open source efforts. First, beginning with Mac OS X 10.4.7, the Darwin/Mac OS X kernel, known as "xnu", is again available as buildable source for the Intel platform, including EFI utilities. Second, iCal Server, Bonjour, and launchd are moving to Apache 2.0 licensing. And finally, Mac OS Forge has been launched, as the successor to OpenDarwin as a conduit for hosting projects such as WebKit that were formerly hosted by the OpenDarwin project's servers, such as WebKit. Mac OS Forge is sponsored by Apple. DarwinPorts has already moved to its own servers. Update: 08/08 01:43 GMT by J : The official Apple announcement is now out. Other fun news: Leopard will ship with Ruby on Rails.

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/07/2359256&from=rss

Something tells me this isn't going to work. They originally tried this with Darwin and formed Open…
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Media Meltdown? Nope.. it's the aggregation of old and new media

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Chris Anderson, of "The Long Tail" fame has some interesting figures on traditional media.

Mainstream Media Meltdown IIIA couple times a year, I take a statistical look at mainstream entertainment and media in decline. All figures are year-on-year comparisons unless otherwise noted. (The last version of this, from November, is here).Down:
TV: netwo rk TV had its lowest ratings week ever in July.Music: weekly album sales set a 10-year low in July. For the year, CD album sales are down 4.2%; although digital single downloads (still less than 10% of the business) are up 77% and are nearly making up the difference in revenue terms. Radio: the music radio listening audience is down 8.5% this year alone, continuing a multi-decade decline. DVDs: shipments are down 4% so far this year, more than 30 million units behind the same period last year.Newspapers: circulation, which peaked in 1987, is declining faster than ever and is down another 2.6% so far this year.Mixed:Magazines: ad r…
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Indian Scott?

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What if I'd been born in India and not the US?

THIS is what. heh. Check it out

http://www.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~morph/Transformer/
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