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Seen, Heard, Said

Things I’ve seen, heard, or was told by someone. Item in this category usually originate from the Internet.

What Do You When People Are Wrong?

From www.boingboing.net:

The sign mounted on this hideous sculpture of a typewriter eraser scarring a Seattle neighborhood says, “Sorry, photography of this statue is not permitted.”

My new pet peeve: people who try to abuse the law.

My understanding is this:
With very few exceptions (basically nothing except maybe DoD related), anything that is viewable from a public place is fair game to photograph. One of the key words here is “viewable”. Even if it’s on private property, as longs as it’s viewable from a public area it’s fair game.

The Question Mark

From The Word Origin Calendar for Tuesday, January 16, 2007:

?: The question mark was first used, in its present form, in the 16th century England. It is a simplification of an abbreviation in which an uppercase Q stood atop a lowercase o, representing the Latin word quaestio, “I search for.”

And as Bill Nye used to say: Now you know!

The Prestige

Saw The Prestige last night. Quite a film. Very reminiscent of The Usual Suspects. I think the best way to describe the film is to quote the opening line:

Every great magic trick consists of three acts. The first act is called “The Pledge”; The magician shows you something ordinary, but of course… it probably isn’t. The second act is called “The Turn”; The magician makes his ordinary some thing do something extraordinary. Now if you’re looking for the secret… you won’t find it, that’s why there’s a third act called, “The Prestige”; this is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you’ve never seen before.

And that is The Prestige.

I give it an: A

Don’t Let Faux Klingons Send Real Americans to War

You can’t make this stuff up. From January 10th, 2007, Representative David Wu’s (D-Oregon) one minute morning speech:

From reason.com:

“This president has listened to some people, the so-called Vulcans in the White House, the ideologues. But you know, unlike the Vulcans of Star Trek who made the decisions based on logic and fact, these guys make it on ideology. These aren’t Vulcans. There are Klingons in the White House. But unlike the real Klingons of Star Trek, these Klingons have never fought a battle of their own. Don’t let faux Klingons send real Americans to war. It’s wrong.”

Keynote Text Analysis

This is kind of cool. Todd Bishop, a writer at the Seattle PI who covers Microsoft and “related business and technology subjects”, did an analysis of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell’s keynote speeches at MacWorld and CES. He ran each speech through 4 tests (Avg. Words/Sentence, Lexical Density, Hard Words, Gunning Fog Index) and also created a tag cloud. The results are very interesting.

Go take a gander: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs: Keynote text analysis

One thing to keep in mind when looking at the scores: “Lower scores generally mean that the language is easier to understand. By those measures, one executive did noticeably better than the others.”

Well Duh

Pete Cashmore over at Mashable wrote:

From mashable.com:

Meanwhile, it emerged today as a result of SEC filings that Apple is being sued over an alleged monopoly. The allegation is that Apple’s DRM is monopolistic, since it prevents iTunes music from being played on anything apart from an iPod and vice versa (songs bought elsewhere don’t tend to work with iPods).

Well duh. DRM has always been a two fold issue. First, it supports the RIAAs infantile desire requirement to “protect” “their” music. Second, it’s a reasonably good business model: keep people locked into your system.

But there are issues.

First, DRM for the RIAAs sake is one of those things where it really only hurts the honest people. Current DRM systems suck balls because their implemented poorly. Thus, someone like DVD John is able to crack them within hours of release. The honest people don’t know how to unlock their music and the dishonest people do, causing hell for the rest of everyone else.

Locking people into your system may be a good thing. That is, until people jump ship and go to your competitors product. Then what? In a world where everything must, and I do mean MUST, communicate with EVERYTHING else, proprietary formats are doomed to failure. Case in point: Betamax, ATRAC3, UMD. Ok, actually that’s more than one and they are all Sony technologies (which I currently ban). But I think the point is still valid.

So what? Well, I hope the coming year sees the change in companies that I have been seeking for years. Much like the proverbial “Peace on Earth”, I doubt it will happen. But it’s something to consider. For any companies or persons at companies who happen to not only stumble upon this post, but also happen to read this far: I just want to let you know that my purchasing choices do tend to reflect my desire for a level of openness: open source, non-proprietary, APIs, etc.

P.S. I found the original Mashable post via Scoble’s Google Shared RSS, it’s pretty cool and picks up on a lot of things I don’t see in my limited set. Thanks Robert!