Author: 1

adaptive beings

google internet

Nicolas Carr asks Is Google Making Us Stupid.

The question is provocative, the underlying mechanism interesting. His conclusions seem predictive and not very helpful I am afraid. Reading the title I hoped for the wrong article. One that would illuminate and much more interesting question: “How does google change the way we think”. It certainly does. I am amazed how quickly I find myself forgetting things. It was worrying at first. After all I make a living based on the application of knowledge. The foundation of knowledge was being able to remember things. I say was. And -actually- I think it is quiet ok.

The apparent loss of memory was frightening when I observed how I would google for things again and again. The nicest anecdote I mention frequently: Reading my own blog without noticing that I am fixing an issue following a recipe that I wrote myself.

Nowadays I think that my brain just realized that it is a waste of time to compete with the internet and google as it’s access if it comes to all those mundane details that make up my job. Once a decent phone book function comes along (be it as a book or function of the phones software) we quickly forget most numbers we used to be able to remember. Just how it goes.

white is the new black

Apple marketing

With a MacBook you pay around 50 extra to get it in black. Now with the iPhone 3G there will be a white version. But that will only be available for the larger 16GB version. I never ever have filled up the 4GB I had. So you have two choices now with the iPhone 3G: pay too much because you can and don’t show people (get the black one) or let people know that you don’t need to care about the extra 100. The new price of 199 is pretty low, compared to last years launch. But I would guess that the 20$ a month extra for 24 months rule is still in place. You pay AT&T or whomever, but you pay. That’s 480 dollars extra that any iPhone will cost you. So the price started out at 1079 for the 8GB / 979 for the 4GB and now has arrived at 879 / 779 respectively.

Turns out that the data plan is now $30 and not $20 any longer. So the total price for an iPhone2 is $1019 / $919.

seing the wrong page? Again?

Apple OSX

Funny how Apple sometimes ‘fixes’ things by giving the remedy a new name:

Under 10.4 the ‘fancy’ cache would go made quiet frequently. Basically you’d see the wrong web page, while other commands like
ping etc still reach the proper server.

sudo lookupd flushcache

used to fix that. Of course the bug has not been fixed in 10.5.2 but the remedy is called now:


dscacheutil -flushcache

1 video – 2 OS releases

Apple media

Probably the only music video that starts out in OS X 10.4 and ends in 10.5:

Or -to say it better- the only one where it’s that apparent.

We have indeed come a long since theCMX 600

80,000

interdubs

Today Interdubs crossed the 80K file mark. 59 days for 20,000 more files. Last time it took 83 days to grow that much, and before that 118. Something seems to be working here.

What makes me even happier is to hear the following from a new client: “you must have worked in our field for a while”. That would be true, and it delights me that it seems to show in the application. Intentions are one thing. Seing that they apparently manifested themselves at least somewhat is very rewarding.

not gonna work

M$

in a million years

unbelievable how bad it actually it. From start to finish. Idea to execution. Whom are these people kidding?

old link

economy

still worth reading
even after a couple of weeks. Thx BlogsNow

wrong about being wrong

history media

It turns out that I was wrong then I thought I was wrong about the Next-Gen of movies on a disc: Blu-Ray sales declined. Bluray might become the first class of enteraintment: Coach has many more seats that 1st. Specially on inner american flights.

betting on the wrong horse

Apple M$ technology

Years ago when both Microsoft and Apple decided what to put into their next operating systems they had to look into the future. Picking arbritrary one from each company makes for an interesting comparison: Vista got a feature where a memory stick could be used by the operating system to speed things up. Harddrives are 10,000 times slower than memory. USB2 still 10 to 40 times faster than most drivers. Makes allot of sense. It is probably a very tricky thing to implement: the user can remove the stick at any time, and things still need to work. Trouble is: Internal memory got dirt cheap. So a complicated and expensive idea that has no future net gain.

Compare that to “TimeMachine”. The actual concept of a backup is nothing new or innovative at all. But Time Machine makes it possible that people back up easily. External drives are inexpensive and easy to use. Makes 100% sense. The TimeCapsule rip off lets show apples dark side again. But at least they did not extend it to normal drives. The value of a working backup is huge. Once people have stories to tell that TimeMachine saved their Live they are sold for good and forever to run only Macs. Maybe if hey will backup to Memory Sticks in the future …

Astrovlog

technology

If you ever wondered what those astronauts are doing up there:

vloging