natalie writes "Mathematica for grits was announced at Condom. It offers support for the usual platforms--Star Wars, uh, other platforms, and Linux--and offers the ability to use heterogeneous small broken grains of corn. I haven't used the product in years, but it is HOT nonetheless. Does an off-the-shelf grits package, which is pourable as this, provide competition to custom packages--is it easier to add water than develop custom grits?" And just when you thought Portman was good and dead.
China is extremely hot right now. I know for a fact that many companies are getting serious about sending their manufacturing to China for cost reasons. Also, the Chinese market is growing at a rapid clip. It won't be long before they are sucking up as much oil as we are, and expecting a higher standard of living.
This might interest some people: The New Silk Road - Secrets of Business Success in China Today. As I indicate in my review, I think the book is good, especially for people who want a 30,000 foot view of doing business in China. I also liked Chinese Business Etiquette: A Guide to Protocol, Manners, and Culture in the People's Republic of China (ISBN: 0446673870). This Etiquette book is more ground level, "tactical", and person-to-person. Combined, these two books will give you a good taste for doing business in China.
In any event, I know that going offshore is having an impact. Not just in manufacturing, but in other areas too, such as programming. It is strange to see whitecollar jobs fly away from the U.S. to places like Hungary, India, Russia, and China. Why? Well, when I was younger, I thought these "brain" jobs couldn't be easily replaced by lower cost labor. Well, that's just not true. The internet has had a lot to do with that, of course. I'd be interested to hear what other folks have to say about outsourcing "brain" work.
Re:Viable Alternative?
on
Xandros 1.0
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
One more thing. I've said here, and in other places, that Linux stuff isn't easy enough. (How many other people have said this too?) I've also talked beyond usability and about marketing, or lack of marketing, regarding Linux and open source. (How many others have done the same?) Geez, you know, you would think these companies would get a clue. A poster in the eWeek article summed it up quite well:
"Unfortunately, in the world of ignorant desktop users, marketing counts for much more than good product. Lindows is selling pre-installed on computers in multiple countries already. Xandros? The only reason I've heard of it is because I read geek sites like Newsforge."
Viable Alternative?
on
Xandros 1.0
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Is this a viable alternative to anything? Seriously, I can't believe they don't offer some sort of free trial version. I don't understand how companies expect they will ever gain traction in the marketplace when they don't do something substantially better. Incremental improvements, if that is what they are in this case, are not enough. Sure, I admit it, I haven't used the product. But what is my incentive? Why should I shell out $99? Based on a review? No chance of that. Not when I can get something almost as good for free. Or, not when I don't see a major improvement for making the leap. Of course, I suppose you could rain on my parade by saying this is an OS so the rules are different. But, I don't think that is a good argument; not when I can get an OS for free. Do I want to run Windows? OK, then I'll use Wine or maybe I'll go for Lindows. This is just my quick, early post, $0.02 and I'm probably wrong in a major away. Here are some rotten eggs to throw at me -- have a blast throwing them at me.
From the site: "What is BookCrossing, you ask? It's a global book club that crosses time and space. It's a reading group that knows no geographical boundaries. Do you like free books? How about free book clubs?. Well, the books our members leave in the wild are free... but it's the act of freeing books that points to the heart of BookCrossing. Book trading has never been more exciting, more serendipitous, than with BookCrossing. Our goal, simply, is to make the whole world a library. BookCrossing is a book exchange of infinite proportion, the first and only of its kind."
Growing a Spam Killing Community -- "The purpose of this article is to discuss how to eliminate spam through a community of spammer killers. Why take a passive role in spam elimination and why use up precious time and complex tools to track down one spammer? Instead, let's create a community of spammer hunters to track them down and wipe them out, using their own methods against them. Forget killing spam, let's kill the spammers."
Growing a Spam Killing Community
on
Meet the Spammers
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Growing a Spam Killing Community -- "The purpose of this article is to discuss how to eliminate spam through a community of spammer killers. Why take a passive role in spam elimination and why use up precious time and complex tools to track down one spammer? Instead, let's create a community of spammer hunters to track them down and wipe them out, using their own methods against them. Forget killing spam, let's kill the spammers."
"This means that with PageRank-sorted results, to be better linked is more important than to contain the search therms -- even though the search therms ultimately have to be there.
"A hypothetical high-PageRank page that contained the most popular search therms in the title could appear very often in the top 10 pages. We might call this a catch-all page.
"This is significant because a badly linked page, perhaps a new page, might be popular within the community of pages with the same topic, but eclipsed by the score of an extremely well linked page (linked from pages not containing the word) that also happens to contain the word."
Has the "IP level of the Internet" stabilized enough to consider making it a "publicly supported & controlled utility"? Sure, it has been around for a while, but are we really ready for it to be a utility? Connectivity is important but do we need the IP level of the Internet to be a utility to guarantee stability? Further, aren't there some benefits to instability, such as innovation? The article is good, but it doesn't convince me that we are ready to this kind of commitment.
For those folks that don't know about WebWord, it is a web site that has been around for nearly 4 years. It is focused on usability and human factors for the internet (web sites, email, browsers, etc.). News is posted to the site almost daily. There are two newsletters available to readers -- a daily update and a periodic update. Check out the subscriptions page for details.
It can be tough to decide how to define something. A blog is a blog is a blog. The material posted by kids about their lives might mean nothing to you but everything to that kid and his/her peers. If you don't like it, move along. Call it a journal or call it something else. Call it a blog, or not. Fine.
On the other hand, there are some "industrial strength" blogs out there. At a minimum, this is going mainstream, for better or worse. For example, there are blogs written by folks that are employed by Macromedia. Examples...
There was a pretty good article about the "blogosphere" a week or two ago. Very long, and relatively interesting, especially if you are interested in blogs, journalism, news, and that sort of thing. If you have a blog, you might like it too. If you are interested, I've got interview questions sent off to John Hiler, the author of the blogosphere article. I think he'll be getting back to me in a few days. I'll have the interview posted on WebWord.com soon after that.
There was also another story making the rounds about a week ago about making a living from blogging. I was expecting a lot more from it, i.e., some real details on "how to do it", but it was still a reasonable article. It might give you some ideas. Mileage may vary.
Last link whore comments: If you haven't seen Blogdex or Daypop, you might want to check them out. Very nice tools to see what it hot in the world of weblogs.
Slashdot Mirror
I burned karma on this post, eh? Well, at least I thought it was funny. Sometimes that is what counts.
natalie writes "Mathematica for grits was announced at Condom. It offers support for the usual platforms--Star Wars, uh, other platforms, and Linux--and offers the ability to use heterogeneous small broken grains of corn. I haven't used the product in years, but it is HOT nonetheless. Does an off-the-shelf grits package, which is pourable as this, provide competition to custom packages--is it easier to add water than develop custom grits?" And just when you thought Portman was good and dead.
China is extremely hot right now. I know for a fact that many companies are getting serious about sending their manufacturing to China for cost reasons. Also, the Chinese market is growing at a rapid clip. It won't be long before they are sucking up as much oil as we are, and expecting a higher standard of living.
This might interest some people: The New Silk Road - Secrets of Business Success in China Today. As I indicate in my review, I think the book is good, especially for people who want a 30,000 foot view of doing business in China. I also liked Chinese Business Etiquette: A Guide to Protocol, Manners, and Culture in the People's Republic of China (ISBN: 0446673870). This Etiquette book is more ground level, "tactical", and person-to-person. Combined, these two books will give you a good taste for doing business in China.
In any event, I know that going offshore is having an impact. Not just in manufacturing, but in other areas too, such as programming. It is strange to see whitecollar jobs fly away from the U.S. to places like Hungary, India, Russia, and China. Why? Well, when I was younger, I thought these "brain" jobs couldn't be easily replaced by lower cost labor. Well, that's just not true. The internet has had a lot to do with that, of course. I'd be interested to hear what other folks have to say about outsourcing "brain" work.
One more thing. I've said here, and in other places, that Linux stuff isn't easy enough. (How many other people have said this too?) I've also talked beyond usability and about marketing, or lack of marketing, regarding Linux and open source. (How many others have done the same?) Geez, you know, you would think these companies would get a clue. A poster in the eWeek article summed it up quite well:
"Unfortunately, in the world of ignorant desktop users, marketing counts for much more than good product. Lindows is selling pre-installed on computers in multiple countries already. Xandros? The only reason I've heard of it is because I read geek sites like Newsforge."
Is this a viable alternative to anything? Seriously, I can't believe they don't offer some sort of free trial version. I don't understand how companies expect they will ever gain traction in the marketplace when they don't do something substantially better. Incremental improvements, if that is what they are in this case, are not enough. Sure, I admit it, I haven't used the product. But what is my incentive? Why should I shell out $99? Based on a review? No chance of that. Not when I can get something almost as good for free. Or, not when I don't see a major improvement for making the leap. Of course, I suppose you could rain on my parade by saying this is an OS so the rules are different. But, I don't think that is a good argument; not when I can get an OS for free. Do I want to run Windows? OK, then I'll use Wine or maybe I'll go for Lindows. This is just my quick, early post, $0.02 and I'm probably wrong in a major away. Here are some rotten eggs to throw at me -- have a blast throwing them at me.
Some people will be interested in BookCrossing.
From the site: "What is BookCrossing, you ask? It's a global book club that crosses time and space. It's a reading group that knows no geographical boundaries. Do you like free books? How about free book clubs?. Well, the books our members leave in the wild are free... but it's the act of freeing books that points to the heart of BookCrossing. Book trading has never been more exciting, more serendipitous, than with BookCrossing. Our goal, simply, is to make the whole world a library. BookCrossing is a book exchange of infinite proportion, the first and only of its kind."
Class testers.VOTester
Growing a Spam Killing Community -- "The purpose of this article is to discuss how to eliminate spam through a community of spammer killers. Why take a passive role in spam elimination and why use up precious time and complex tools to track down one spammer? Instead, let's create a community of spammer hunters to track them down and wipe them out, using their own methods against them. Forget killing spam, let's kill the spammers."
Dave has written a ton of stuff...some of it might be useful.
A day without programming?
Patents and the W3C
Killer Patents
Amazon's XML Interface
Patents, lawsuits plague the Net (Dave is quoted.)
Notes on competing
What does this mean for warchalking? Hmm...
Growing a Spam Killing Community -- "The purpose of this article is to discuss how to eliminate spam through a community of spammer killers. Why take a passive role in spam elimination and why use up precious time and complex tools to track down one spammer? Instead, let's create a community of spammer hunters to track them down and wipe them out, using their own methods against them. Forget killing spam, let's kill the spammers."
Maybe they should read the Kuro5hin stories on this subject?
1. The fundraiser ends, and the next stage begins (Support Kuro5hin, Kuro5hin.org)
posted by rusty on 06/21/2002 11:23:29 AM EST
123 comments
2. Day two wrapup, and a change of plans (Support Kuro5hin, Kuro5hin.org)
posted by rusty on 06/20/2002 08:21:06 AM EST
84 comments
3. Day one wrapup, and a special day two gift (Support Kuro5hin, Kuro5hin.org)
posted by rusty on 06/19/2002 10:20:36 AM EST
186 comments
4. The Future of K5, and the First Ever Kuro5hin Fundraising Drive (Support Kuro5hin, Focus On...)
posted by rusty on 06/18/2002 07:26:16 AM EST
358 comments
5. We're Broke: The Economics of a Web Community (Meta, Kuro5hin.org)
posted by rusty on 06/17/2002 04:18:46 AM EST
737 comments
If some folks were smart, they would try to do two things:
1. Set up VoIP systems. This might kill their telephone bills. Who knows? Find a way to make VoIP work, work, work.
2. Set up wireless hubs everywhere in the area. See how people get creative with the access. Always on, always fast. Yum!
Here is a snip from an article just written called Google's Integrity:
"This means that with PageRank-sorted results, to be better linked is more important than to contain the search therms -- even though the search therms ultimately have to be there.
"A hypothetical high-PageRank page that contained the most popular search therms in the title could appear very often in the top 10 pages. We might call this a catch-all page.
"This is significant because a badly linked page, perhaps a new page, might be popular within the community of pages with the same topic, but eclipsed by the score of an extremely well linked page (linked from pages not containing the word) that also happens to contain the word."
Read more...
Has the "IP level of the Internet" stabilized enough to consider making it a "publicly supported & controlled utility"? Sure, it has been around for a while, but are we really ready for it to be a utility? Connectivity is important but do we need the IP level of the Internet to be a utility to guarantee stability? Further, aren't there some benefits to instability, such as innovation? The article is good, but it doesn't convince me that we are ready to this kind of commitment.
1. Eeggs.com is good site for Easter Eggs in general.
2. You'll find a few web sites with Easter Eggs here.
For those folks that don't know about WebWord, it is a web site that has been around for nearly 4 years. It is focused on usability and human factors for the internet (web sites, email, browsers, etc.). News is posted to the site almost daily. There are two newsletters available to readers -- a daily update and a periodic update. Check out the subscriptions page for details.
- John
WebWord Usability Weblog
Why bother...
Read about it on CNET without the hassle.
--
.
--
Funny how Microsoft, IBM, Corel, and some other companies are linked. However, there are no links to OpenOffice.org. How hard would that have been?
This isn't exactly related but then again maybe it is....Is it marketing or journalism?
It can be tough to decide how to define something. A blog is a blog is a blog. The material posted by kids about their lives might mean nothing to you but everything to that kid and his/her peers. If you don't like it, move along. Call it a journal or call it something else. Call it a blog, or not. Fine.
On the other hand, there are some "industrial strength" blogs out there. At a minimum, this is going mainstream, for better or worse. For example, there are blogs written by folks that are employed by Macromedia. Examples...
Mike Chambers (Flash MX):
http://radio.weblogs.com/0106797/
Vernon Viehe (ColdFusion MX):
http://vvmx.blogspot.com/
Matt Brown (Dreamweaver MX):
http://radio.weblogs.com/0106884/
And then there a blogs by the professional folks at MSNBC:
Eric Alterman: Altercation
Michael Moran: World Agenda
Cosmic Log: Alan Boyle's Diary
Chris Matthews: Hardball
Jan Herman: The Juice
Crapphy HTML? Who knows. My link didn't make it in my post above; I didn't preview. In any event, for your reading pleasure...
Blogonomics: making a living from blogging
There was a pretty good article about the "blogosphere" a week or two ago. Very long, and relatively interesting, especially if you are interested in blogs, journalism, news, and that sort of thing. If you have a blog, you might like it too. If you are interested, I've got interview questions sent off to John Hiler, the author of the blogosphere article. I think he'll be getting back to me in a few days. I'll have the interview posted on WebWord.com soon after that.
There was also another story making the rounds about a week ago about making a living from blogging. I was expecting a lot more from it, i.e., some real details on "how to do it", but it was still a reasonable article. It might give you some ideas. Mileage may vary.
Last link whore comments: If you haven't seen Blogdex or Daypop, you might want to check them out. Very nice tools to see what it hot in the world of weblogs.
The Jakob Nielsen Drinking Game
Driving Over Jakob Nielsen