We don't buy it because they canceled it, we buy it because it is good television. All my friends that like Firefly are pissed that Fox canceled it. Every month a larger percent of my friends are fans of Firefly. Originally there were only two of us. Then I showed my dorm-mates who all watched and loved it. One of them showed his family and his mom bought three copies for herself and friends. I showed two friends this summer who fell in love and got really excited for the movie. I have a friend that saw the movie and hadn't seen an episode of Firefly until last night. He loved the movie and really loved the TV show.
So yeah... the cancellation isn't what drove us to this show. I don't see a similar buzz around Greg the Bunny or John Doe. Almost all my friends who have been introduced to the series loved it. It has amazing potential.
Actually, Google Analytics is recent within a few hours for me (usually no more than 8). I think they are suffering from their own popularity. Now that more people use the advanced features of Google, and they have the Google Blog to announce new features, everyone jumps on the new services as soon as they are released. Google probably didn't anticipate this huge demand (although, they should be learning their lesson now) and hadn't added enough servers to their cluster.
Hey, thanks, I'm glad you liked it. I submitted it to Google about 07:00 this morning, after testing it and making sure I had all the required metadata (like screenshot). I just checked and they haven't added any new widgets to the directory yet.
I was thinking about the widget more after I got some sleep. It doesn't do amazing Javascript trickery or anything, but it matches the page design well and provides somewhat useful information. Hopefully you and others find it useful:)
Hmm, good idea. When I was developing it, traffic was low. Now they are being hammered and their redirect thingy is really slow. I was punching in some artists a few minutes ago, and then it'd be a minute before I saw Google requesting the appropriate file from my server.
Well, I was just trying to copy the trend. I was hoping someone would rebuttal me with Konfabulator. (hence the winking)
I must admit, there are a bunch of advantages of having these hosted on a server. First, Google gives you a method to easily request webpages (so you don't have to worry about the quirks of every browser). Also, they forward all requests through their server, which has the added advantage of caching the requests. The script I wrote is pretty slow because it has to bounce around a few servers and compile a bunch of data, but Google caches it, so it'll last for a few hours, reducing traffic and making users happier.
When playing around with it, I came to admire the system they have in place to make sure the widgets don't interfere and there are no namespace issues. Each widget is assigned an ID, so you just put some code in there which is replaced at load time with a number. You put this in every id and function name, and then there are no problems. In my other post I wail on them, but it is actually quite clever.
Come on now. Don't go the Microsoft route. Microsoft blatantly ripped of Apple's Dashboard. Anyone in their right mind would know that Apple was the One True inventor of widgets.;)
I've been up all night writing a widget. Let me tell you this: the development environment is a pain in the arse. Using their developer widget, it gives you the option of not caching the various widgets. I tried using this tool to not cache mine (so I could reload easily and see changes to the code), but it didn't work reliably. Whenever you moved the widget around to a different spot, it would go to a new revision of the code... and it was almost never the latest revision. This was so frustrating. What I ended up doing was renaming my widget every revision (also a huge pain in the arse). I ended up renaming it over 40 times during the course of the night. Then you have to add the widget back to your personalized home and go through all the steps again. Blast. I'm not bitter:).
My widget pulls data from musicmobs. You can look at similar artists or find interesting playlists. If you visit that page, you can upload your iTunes library to make the recommendations more accurate, and it gives you the ability to upload your own playlists (which then become visible in the widget). Check it out!
Not necessarily. I saw a few key people using Macs years ago and that is when I realized that Macs and OS X were going to take off. I saw some 'high-power' nerds using iBooks, which meant they could attract the power user market, and I knew older extended family members that used it, which means they could attract the non-tech savvy users. When I heard rumors of the music store (and $.99 for a song), I put my money where my mouth was and purchased stock. The point is, watching certain members of the population can be a good way to predict trends.
Or because you live in LA and work in Mountain View, as one of the bloggers did. I've been reading this site for a while now and it is very good. One of the guys worked there for a year, flying in on Mondays, working until Thursday, flying home, and then telecommuting on Friday. That's one hell of a commute.
Well, I mean, it is available to purchase, but they don't seem to be pursing customers at all. I am a student, so perhaps I'll check it out at some point, but right now my web apps are written in perl. I'd probably like to learn Ruby on Rails before WebObjects.
I agree that they are new to the datacenter and people are still skeptical. However, I that wasn't quite what I intended (I'll admit my comment was unclear). I'm no expert on the history of WebObjects, but this is the impression that I've gotten from my more in-the-know Apple friends and colleague that used to work at Apple: Apple used to have a larger WebObjects team (including in-house consulting staff to help other companies) when it was based on Objective-C. I think with one version, they moved WebObjects (the programs written in it, at least) to Java and significantly cut their development and team. I don't think they've made many major changes recently (well, changes might not be necessary). It seems to me that they still offer it for people that want it, but mainly just develop it so they can use it in house. Take this previous paragraph with a grain of salt.
Also, outside of the datacenter, it seems like small businesses could use WebObjects. A small Mac shop could buy a PowerMac, stick it in an empty office or back room, and run whatever they need off that, no 'datacenter' necessary.
The two approximately hour long episodes are: 10th Anniversary Special, and a Best of Triumph episode. The short clips (15 minute) include a few Triumph clips and some other skits. All of the skits offered for download (at $2 a pop!) are pretty old (4-5 years?). I'm a little disappointed.
I was watching the video full screen (I'm 23:40 into it now) and I started getting dizzy with all the movement in the camera. Whoooa! We're moving toward the screen again!
Also, it would be nice if they went over the interview plan before hand, so we wouldn't have to listen to them ask if they can show different tools, and so we wouldn't have to watch them switch the refresh rate, etc.
Yeah, I'm worried about that with the Intel Macs as well. I don't want my ability to break the iTMS DRM removed because I would like to be able to 'protect my investment'.
Andrew
PS: I love the last sentence of your second paragraph.
I'm a fan of SwarmSketch. Each user can draw so many line segments, and then they can vote to make certain lines lighter or darker. The system averages the darkness from each user to find the darkness of the line. Each month is a new themed picture.
Well, us biodiesel advocates have been pushing the red/blue state connection biodiesel creates for a while (especially during last election):). Unfortunately, while many people think it is a good idea, there are only so many diesel vehicles and only some of the users are willing to change. Unfortunately, companies and fleets are usually pretty conservative about new things (and are some of the biggest users of diesel).
Also, please don't encourage soybean growth. Soybean groups want soy associated with biodiesel and I believe this is a bad idea. There are other plants that produce more oil per acre than soy (like canola). Also, if everyone grew soy, that means we are putting all our eggs in one basket. If one disease came along, it would wipe out a large part of the crop, but if it was diversified, a lot of oil would be preserved. Diversity and high-oil crops are what we should be encouraging. Nothing against soy, I eat it all the time:), but they want their name associated with biodiesel so they'll get mores sales.
A year ago (here in Seattle) biodiesel was $3.40/gallon and diesel was like $2.30/gallon or less. Over the summer it was $3.00/gallon for biodiesel and $3.20/gallon for petrodiesel. Right now biodiesel is $3.05/gallon and diesel is around $2.90/gallon. Biodiesel is a little more expensive now, but when you take into account social/political reasons, the increase in cost is negligible. Of course, if you don't drive, it doesn't make much difference (yay for bicycles!).
I took a tour of our new green building at the University of Washington named Merrill Hall. They took us in the bathroom to show us the no-flush urinals. They also had the half/whole flush toilets. The urinals didn't smell (they are wiped down every day), but they still had a problem. With no water going through the urinals and very little water going through the toilets, the main sewer line leading from their building would get clogged. The matter leaving the building was very thick, and the limited amount of water wasn't enough to get it through the sewer line into the mains.
Yeah, my 12" has trouble with bright light... especially daylight. The screen is the weakest part of the computer, which is too bad. It is bad even in comparison to the 15" (including the old TiBook).
One of the best things about Ranked Pairs/Condorcet is that there are almost no strategic voting strategies. It would be in your best interest to vote to your actual belief. Putting Bush last behind Pat Buchanan wouldn't change Bush's chances again Kerry, Nader, or Barnarik. The more people that can be educated about it, the more likely it is to be adopted.
Exactly. The only thing parties are for is fundraising and voting along party lines (where that vote is citizens voting for candidates or legislators voting for laws and such).
The conversation seems to be winding down, but it has been good talking to you. Andrew
I didn't mean upgrade to save. Thousands of people buy new TVs every day because their old one broke or they want a larger size. No one would replace their TV to save a few dollars of energy, but the people that are buying the new ones would benefit from the advance in technology. It seems I pick up a couple wall-warts every year (through new products or whatever), so replacing those with better tech wouldn't save energy, but it would slow the increase in energy use.
Now for a little personal story: I have an old TV from the 80s in my apartment. It has an actual on-off switch on the back that I use, since I don't often use the TV. I also unplug the microwave that I only use perhaps twice a week. My stove is electric. For my first billing period, which was 55 days, I only used $13 of electricity, or 3.34 kWh/day. Now it is getting colder and I turn on my heat occasionally (maybe half an hour/day or less), so it will go up, but not that much. Using a laptop and LCDs exclusively helps as well.
In my town, it seems the most light pollution is coming from the industrial area south of town. They have tons of those obnoxious orange lights and they seem to have quite a high density. I don't see the point. I don't imagine there are many people walking around the industrial area at 04:00 in the morning; everyone that is there is probably in cars that have headlights. I live in a dense urban/residential neighborhood. There are lights on the main street, but the smaller residential streets on my other side are much darker (although, they still have street lights). They put the lights in unpopulated industrial places, but not in the residence areas. They would probably save lots of money if they turned off even half of the lights in this areas.
I'm not a fan of light pollution. My family lives in a really dark suburb, but it is surrounded completely by city (a few miles away). On cloudy nights, you can see enough to walk around because the clouds are orange from lights in the city. I think that means we have a little problem.
Finally, if we had denser cities, we could use more aesthetic lights, instead of this like mercury vapor lamps. It would be a lot more pleasant walking around if the lights were white.
Slashdot Mirror
We don't buy it because they canceled it, we buy it because it is good television. All my friends that like Firefly are pissed that Fox canceled it. Every month a larger percent of my friends are fans of Firefly. Originally there were only two of us. Then I showed my dorm-mates who all watched and loved it. One of them showed his family and his mom bought three copies for herself and friends. I showed two friends this summer who fell in love and got really excited for the movie. I have a friend that saw the movie and hadn't seen an episode of Firefly until last night. He loved the movie and really loved the TV show.
So yeah... the cancellation isn't what drove us to this show. I don't see a similar buzz around Greg the Bunny or John Doe. Almost all my friends who have been introduced to the series loved it. It has amazing potential.
Actually, Google Analytics is recent within a few hours for me (usually no more than 8). I think they are suffering from their own popularity. Now that more people use the advanced features of Google, and they have the Google Blog to announce new features, everyone jumps on the new services as soon as they are released. Google probably didn't anticipate this huge demand (although, they should be learning their lesson now) and hadn't added enough servers to their cluster.
Hey, thanks, I'm glad you liked it. I submitted it to Google about 07:00 this morning, after testing it and making sure I had all the required metadata (like screenshot). I just checked and they haven't added any new widgets to the directory yet.
:)
I was thinking about the widget more after I got some sleep. It doesn't do amazing Javascript trickery or anything, but it matches the page design well and provides somewhat useful information. Hopefully you and others find it useful
Hmm, good idea. When I was developing it, traffic was low. Now they are being hammered and their redirect thingy is really slow. I was punching in some artists a few minutes ago, and then it'd be a minute before I saw Google requesting the appropriate file from my server.
Well, I was just trying to copy the trend. I was hoping someone would rebuttal me with Konfabulator. (hence the winking)
I must admit, there are a bunch of advantages of having these hosted on a server. First, Google gives you a method to easily request webpages (so you don't have to worry about the quirks of every browser). Also, they forward all requests through their server, which has the added advantage of caching the requests. The script I wrote is pretty slow because it has to bounce around a few servers and compile a bunch of data, but Google caches it, so it'll last for a few hours, reducing traffic and making users happier.
When playing around with it, I came to admire the system they have in place to make sure the widgets don't interfere and there are no namespace issues. Each widget is assigned an ID, so you just put some code in there which is replaced at load time with a number. You put this in every id and function name, and then there are no problems. In my other post I wail on them, but it is actually quite clever.
Andrew
Come on now. Don't go the Microsoft route. Microsoft blatantly ripped of Apple's Dashboard. Anyone in their right mind would know that Apple was the One True inventor of widgets. ;)
I've been up all night writing a widget. Let me tell you this: the development environment is a pain in the arse. Using their developer widget, it gives you the option of not caching the various widgets. I tried using this tool to not cache mine (so I could reload easily and see changes to the code), but it didn't work reliably. Whenever you moved the widget around to a different spot, it would go to a new revision of the code... and it was almost never the latest revision. This was so frustrating. What I ended up doing was renaming my widget every revision (also a huge pain in the arse). I ended up renaming it over 40 times during the course of the night. Then you have to add the widget back to your personalized home and go through all the steps again. Blast. I'm not bitter :).
If you want to see the culmination of my night's work, plug this into the widget manager: http://andrewhitchcock.org/musicmobs/w.xml
My widget pulls data from musicmobs. You can look at similar artists or find interesting playlists. If you visit that page, you can upload your iTunes library to make the recommendations more accurate, and it gives you the ability to upload your own playlists (which then become visible in the widget). Check it out!
Andrew
Not necessarily. I saw a few key people using Macs years ago and that is when I realized that Macs and OS X were going to take off. I saw some 'high-power' nerds using iBooks, which meant they could attract the power user market, and I knew older extended family members that used it, which means they could attract the non-tech savvy users. When I heard rumors of the music store (and $.99 for a song), I put my money where my mouth was and purchased stock. The point is, watching certain members of the population can be a good way to predict trends.
I think he said he started there in 1999, so they probably only had the one (in fact, they hadn't moved into the Googleplex yet).
Or because you live in LA and work in Mountain View, as one of the bloggers did. I've been reading this site for a while now and it is very good. One of the guys worked there for a year, flying in on Mondays, working until Thursday, flying home, and then telecommuting on Friday. That's one hell of a commute.
Well, I mean, it is available to purchase, but they don't seem to be pursing customers at all. I am a student, so perhaps I'll check it out at some point, but right now my web apps are written in perl. I'd probably like to learn Ruby on Rails before WebObjects.
I agree that they are new to the datacenter and people are still skeptical. However, I that wasn't quite what I intended (I'll admit my comment was unclear). I'm no expert on the history of WebObjects, but this is the impression that I've gotten from my more in-the-know Apple friends and colleague that used to work at Apple: Apple used to have a larger WebObjects team (including in-house consulting staff to help other companies) when it was based on Objective-C. I think with one version, they moved WebObjects (the programs written in it, at least) to Java and significantly cut their development and team. I don't think they've made many major changes recently (well, changes might not be necessary). It seems to me that they still offer it for people that want it, but mainly just develop it so they can use it in house. Take this previous paragraph with a grain of salt.
Also, outside of the datacenter, it seems like small businesses could use WebObjects. A small Mac shop could buy a PowerMac, stick it in an empty office or back room, and run whatever they need off that, no 'datacenter' necessary.
Yep. And even though they are running their computer store and music store on WebObjects, they don't seem to be trying to sell it to anyone else.
The two approximately hour long episodes are: 10th Anniversary Special, and a Best of Triumph episode. The short clips (15 minute) include a few Triumph clips and some other skits. All of the skits offered for download (at $2 a pop!) are pretty old (4-5 years?). I'm a little disappointed.
I was watching the video full screen (I'm 23:40 into it now) and I started getting dizzy with all the movement in the camera. Whoooa! We're moving toward the screen again!
Also, it would be nice if they went over the interview plan before hand, so we wouldn't have to listen to them ask if they can show different tools, and so we wouldn't have to watch them switch the refresh rate, etc.
From what I've seen, it already holds the title of centre of golf course homes and gated communities.
Yeah, I'm worried about that with the Intel Macs as well. I don't want my ability to break the iTMS DRM removed because I would like to be able to 'protect my investment'.
Andrew
PS: I love the last sentence of your second paragraph.
I'm a fan of SwarmSketch. Each user can draw so many line segments, and then they can vote to make certain lines lighter or darker. The system averages the darkness from each user to find the darkness of the line. Each month is a new themed picture.
Well, us biodiesel advocates have been pushing the red/blue state connection biodiesel creates for a while (especially during last election) :). Unfortunately, while many people think it is a good idea, there are only so many diesel vehicles and only some of the users are willing to change. Unfortunately, companies and fleets are usually pretty conservative about new things (and are some of the biggest users of diesel).
:), but they want their name associated with biodiesel so they'll get mores sales.
Also, please don't encourage soybean growth. Soybean groups want soy associated with biodiesel and I believe this is a bad idea. There are other plants that produce more oil per acre than soy (like canola). Also, if everyone grew soy, that means we are putting all our eggs in one basket. If one disease came along, it would wipe out a large part of the crop, but if it was diversified, a lot of oil would be preserved. Diversity and high-oil crops are what we should be encouraging. Nothing against soy, I eat it all the time
A year ago (here in Seattle) biodiesel was $3.40/gallon and diesel was like $2.30/gallon or less. Over the summer it was $3.00/gallon for biodiesel and $3.20/gallon for petrodiesel. Right now biodiesel is $3.05/gallon and diesel is around $2.90/gallon. Biodiesel is a little more expensive now, but when you take into account social/political reasons, the increase in cost is negligible. Of course, if you don't drive, it doesn't make much difference (yay for bicycles!).
I took a tour of our new green building at the University of Washington named Merrill Hall. They took us in the bathroom to show us the no-flush urinals. They also had the half/whole flush toilets. The urinals didn't smell (they are wiped down every day), but they still had a problem. With no water going through the urinals and very little water going through the toilets, the main sewer line leading from their building would get clogged. The matter leaving the building was very thick, and the limited amount of water wasn't enough to get it through the sewer line into the mains.
Yeah, my 12" has trouble with bright light... especially daylight. The screen is the weakest part of the computer, which is too bad. It is bad even in comparison to the 15" (including the old TiBook).
One of the best things about Ranked Pairs/Condorcet is that there are almost no strategic voting strategies. It would be in your best interest to vote to your actual belief. Putting Bush last behind Pat Buchanan wouldn't change Bush's chances again Kerry, Nader, or Barnarik. The more people that can be educated about it, the more likely it is to be adopted.
Exactly. The only thing parties are for is fundraising and voting along party lines (where that vote is citizens voting for candidates or legislators voting for laws and such).
The conversation seems to be winding down, but it has been good talking to you.
Andrew
I didn't mean upgrade to save. Thousands of people buy new TVs every day because their old one broke or they want a larger size. No one would replace their TV to save a few dollars of energy, but the people that are buying the new ones would benefit from the advance in technology. It seems I pick up a couple wall-warts every year (through new products or whatever), so replacing those with better tech wouldn't save energy, but it would slow the increase in energy use.
Now for a little personal story: I have an old TV from the 80s in my apartment. It has an actual on-off switch on the back that I use, since I don't often use the TV. I also unplug the microwave that I only use perhaps twice a week. My stove is electric. For my first billing period, which was 55 days, I only used $13 of electricity, or 3.34 kWh/day. Now it is getting colder and I turn on my heat occasionally (maybe half an hour/day or less), so it will go up, but not that much. Using a laptop and LCDs exclusively helps as well.
In my town, it seems the most light pollution is coming from the industrial area south of town. They have tons of those obnoxious orange lights and they seem to have quite a high density. I don't see the point. I don't imagine there are many people walking around the industrial area at 04:00 in the morning; everyone that is there is probably in cars that have headlights. I live in a dense urban/residential neighborhood. There are lights on the main street, but the smaller residential streets on my other side are much darker (although, they still have street lights). They put the lights in unpopulated industrial places, but not in the residence areas. They would probably save lots of money if they turned off even half of the lights in this areas.
I'm not a fan of light pollution. My family lives in a really dark suburb, but it is surrounded completely by city (a few miles away). On cloudy nights, you can see enough to walk around because the clouds are orange from lights in the city. I think that means we have a little problem.
Finally, if we had denser cities, we could use more aesthetic lights, instead of this like mercury vapor lamps. It would be a lot more pleasant walking around if the lights were white.
Andrew