Karl -you suck- Rove

politics

A few weeks ago Karl Rove claimed that he was in ownership of the math. According to that he predicted a clear win of Senate and House for the Republicans. Somehow that did not happen. In 2004 the two biggest problems for the Democrats seem to be Kerry and that he opens his mouth and the myth of Karl Rove being able to mass mail always enough people to the polls making them believe that there are two choices: vote republican or Sodom & Gommorrah.

Since Mr Rove messed with so many people and was instrumental in keeping an administration in power that was clearly on the wrong track all the time it is only fair to dwell for a short time in glutony on his defeat. He was the one supposedly having ‘delivered’ elections. Not this time.

Mr. Rove: your math, even though you might think it is ‘the’ math, does not add up. Faith based math never engineered an airplane or anything that worked for that matter. Fundamentalism and it’s ignorance towards science never worked. If it appears to,, than it’s because there is real math and engineering going on behind the scenes.

the super spin

confessions of a pixel pusher

An article about the Superman Workflow. Sounds awesome. I am sure lots of interesting work has gone into this. The title talks about an “all data Workflow”. They used freaking video tape for crying out loud. Digital tape, but still tape.

Superman was a show that some vendors had trouble getting their in’s and out’s aligned with. The Digital Sandbox / panalog solution probably works really well. But it also makes interchange harder than a less elaborate standard. Adding a vendor can not be done as easily as when you ‘just’ exchange DPX files. Worse can be better.

Superman was also the show that had some -shall we say- ‘QC’ issues: Rumor has it, that the images from one of the cameras had flaws that spawned elaborate fixes. From what I have heard these errors had only been detected late in the game. Which would mean that dailies did not do what dailies are supposed to do: making sure that you have in the camera what you want to have.

I think it is a problem if you simple take the traditional workflow and just replace analog with digital. Replace one linear media (film) with another one (video tape). Digital files have a complete different set of attributes than those older linear means to transfer image information.

starbucks stole christmas

marketing

it’s called a ‘tradition’
For years Christmas was called ‘Holidays’. Now it get’s renamed as a ‘tradition’. Is that new or bad? Certainly not. After all we all know where Santa got his outfit from.

update: Ad Age about the starbucks campaign
It seems as if I did not get why it was on blogsnow where I found it.

innovation

technology

was about time

images

history politics

As expected Mr Hussein has been convicted for crimes he commited in 1982.
Unrelated the voices get louder that call for the resignation of Mr Rumsfeld.

A google image search for both will show an image of both men in 1984. Back then Iraq was a friend of the US, since they would wage war against Iran.

data management

Apple confessions of a pixel pusher media photo technology

Stu Maschwitz writes about data management for digital still photography

It is so very true. We can generate lots of data, some of it might be of potential value for us in the future. The filesystem keeps the it for us. But that’s about it. There is almost no help from the computer to really manage data. Yet that’s one of these things that computers could be really really good at: organising data. Spotlight was a nice attempt. But Apple of all companies messed up the interface. The underlying search technology seems to be working, but the interface is pretty much useless.
In order to find the ‘spacehogs’ on my drives I had to write a perl script that shows me which data is stored in which folders (including it’s sub folders). Should be simple for the OS to just show me where those GBs have been going. Yet I had to gapher tape my own solution, which is never a good sign.

timely verdict

history politics

After being in captivity for 1059 days the verdict against Saddam Hussein is expected for tomorrow. Two days before elections in the USA.

in words we trust

history politics

amazing web application

vertRamp

history internet marketing media

Mark Cuban gives a name to the other end of the long tail: “Vert Ramp”

surprising alliance

history M$ technology

Two kings got together. No, not those. This times it is Novell and Microsoft. To do Linux.

Without having the time or intention to go into detail of the press release the headlines and sound bites read pretty hilarously. Let’s just pause for a second and look back: Microsoft did try everything they could to stop or surpress Linux. For years. They fucking failed. Language? Yes, it is justitified. Since this is a big deal. Not the announcement of Novell and Microsoft doing whatever they feel like doing. The big deal is that Microsoft was unable to win against Linux. They still dominate the desktop, and probably will for years to come. But they lost billions in server revenue. Not to somebody. They simply could not make the money. Nobody did, since Linux is essentially free. If the last sentense should prompt thoughts like “that’s communism” or “but there is total cost of ownership” in your mind, then let me tell you, since today I can, and it is oh so sweet: You merely parrot Microsoft prograganda of a past aera here. Not even the people that paid millions so that you would think these things claim that anymore. Yes, there is also corporate flip floping. No, Ballmer did not stay the course. He never did say that either.

Today it’s allot of fun to quote Sun Tzu:


According to my assessment, even if you have many more troops than others, how can that help you to victory?