Free Hugs Man

has made it big on the youtube! :)

Good stuff!

Openness and Hack of a fest

Hack of a fest sounds good.

"Openness is part of the magic for us," said Dickerson. "If you go around Silicon Valley there is this whole veneer of privacy."

"You aren't greeted with open arms if you knock on the door and say 'What are you doing?' With hack day, we are saying we want you to knock on the door and see what we are doing."

and

Since beginning internal hack days last year, Yahoo has held them at facilities in Australia, India, Europe and the US.

"There are some major products coming that were conceived and built at hack days," Dickerson said. "We can't wait to tell people."

More and more companies are doing this. It's always been a trend I guess. Get smart people to show you how to do things for free, then build products out of them and make more money. This is all Yahoo is doing here.

Even the vendor of a product I work on at work has said the same thing to me (while taking me out for an expensive lunch). "Wow, that sounds cool - why don't you show us a demo of what you've done and then we can build a product like it for you. That way you you won't need to support it and you'll just get it out of the box!" (No, I'll just have to build on top of yours and then pay for mediocre support from people who didn't build the product - genius).

How about showing the rest of us the openness Yahoo! "We can't wait to tell people" indeed.

Portable Film Festival?

Sounds like a pretty nifty idea. www.portablefilmfestival.com

Better than buying an ipod and paying for movies. Totally different of course but I couldn't resist :)

More Something For Kate lyrics

jerry stand up
pull back the curtains and let some light in
quit your job
because you hate it and it's wasting you

once upon a time you were running
singing to the ground every morning
once upon a time you were

jerry stand up
am i the only one who's noticed that you've been missing
remember yourself man
remember that you have chance and possibility

once upon a time you were running
singing to the ground every morning
once upon a time you were crazy

jerry
you're not getting any younger
all you need is fresh air
a nice new suit and a walk in the park every day or two
every day in every way

Jerry Stand Up - Echolalia

The first stanza caught my attention for some reason :)

Zune, DRM and...

Zune is looking more and more like a crappy attempt to break into the portable music player market.

I've spent some of the morning reading some details about it on the zuneinsider.com blog. There is an interesting Zune interface demo up there as well.

It didn't take long however to realise that there are some real corkers in the latest information released by MS.

1. Everything you try to share is DRM'ed
   
   This is huge in my opinion and one of the main reasons why I won't be buying a Zune. Microsoft is obviously taking this very seriously as you can see from the reponse on the zuneinsider blog.

   "I made a song. I own it. How come, when I wirelessly send it to a girl I want to impress, the song has 3 days/3 plays?"
   
   Good question. There currently isn't a way to sniff out what you are sending, so we wrap it all up in DRM. We can’t tell if you are sending a song from a known band or your own home recording so we default to the safety of encoding. And besides, she'll come see you three days later. . .

   This is an absolute joke. Everyone in the know understands that Digital Rights Management is bad for you and me².
   
   How does Creative Commons fit into the picture with a device wrapping all your songs in DRM when you try and share your music with someone?
   
   
2. There is no Podcast support¹

   Zune will play podcasts. I'm actually listenting to a podcast right now. If you bring the audio file into the software (like a wma or mp3 file), you can play it on your Zune. Beyond that, there will be other options for podcasting support for future releases.

   I'm sorry, but just because I can import an mp3 file or whatever into my Zune and play it doesn't mean it can play podcasts. Who the hell do they think they're duping? I can't import my existing podcast RSS feeds? I can't syndicate my favourite podcasts? To say Zune will play podcasts is just lame. Zune doesn't support podcasting.



3. There is no Mac support
   
   This is the official take on Mac support I guess (off zuneinsider):

   ok, back atcha. lots of folks have asked about Mac support: Not right now, but we'll continue to listen to folks and customers and respond to what they tell us they want and need.

   But not about Mac support eh? Being listened to is great and makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside, but if you're not going to do anything about it what's the point?



4. One of them is brown
   
   This just looks like a bar of chocolate with a screen. Fugly!

It seems to me that all the stuff we're hearing about Zune is a mix of misinformation and a deliberate effort to misrepresent the facts. Not very impressive. Yet another portable music device flawed by design.

¹ Though podcasters' web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their content, a podcast is distinguished from other formats by its ability to be downloaded automatically using software capable of reading feeds like RSS or Atom. wikipedia: podcast

² Why DRM isn't good for you and me:

1. Opposing Digital Rights Mismanagement by Richard Stallman
2. defectivebydesign.org
3. EFF's take on DRM

myspace and social engineering networking

There's been ruminations in the online media about www.myspace.com lately, and about potentially forged identities and people questioning the true motivations of the creators and owners of the site. This article is fairly interesting and goes into quite a bit of depth about it. At least it's interesting to read about how the business grew to it's current stature, even if you disregard or don't care about the so-called hidden machinations of the creators.

www.myspace.com is the new Moleskine.

Web standards - stay tuned

I'm going to post an email conversation from work about my company's latest attempts at making a fool of themselves by showing that they have no idea about web standards, and no idea about the web in general. This document slid on by past web developers, web producers (who were instrumental in writing it or at least reviewing it) and even past our esteemed senior system analysts (who have been mentioned before on this illustrious blog). Let me just state this: JSR has nothing to do with front end scripting standards. I know you want to know more - stay tuned - it'll probably not be worth it :P

Turing complete

How good is it that the people we work for in IT don't know what Turing complete means. They haven't heard of brainfuck and they certainly don't know what Big-Oh notation means ("Oh, is that something to do with .NET?" - certainly not you stupid fuck). This is why google is kicking arse.

UPDATE: Actually this is a perfect question to pose to prospective employers at the close of an interview.

Big Wig: Right Jones, do you have any questions for us before we consider your future with us?

Jones: Yes, actually, I do. What does Turing Complete mean?

Big Wig: Ahh, Turing Complete? Umm.. Turing Umm.. Ke?

Jones: C'mon man, Turing Complete. Surely they taught you this in high school computer science?

Big Wig: Ahh, no.

Jones: You're fired!

Big Wig: What? I'm fired! Get out. How dare you.

Jones: You're fired you fucking moron!

Big Wig: Get out! Security?!

Jones: HaHAahAHaHA You fucking MORON

Big Wig: SECURITY! Get this man out of here. He's a threat to national security

Jones: Eat this (bends over and pulls /dev/null out his arse). BAAANG!!!

Love Thy Pixel

Ok - this is insane and brilliant in my opinion. Get ready for a bit of memory usage in your browser on opening that link - but man - I love it. The more I get sucked into the details the more it reminds me of my days spent gazing at miniature train models as a little kid. Well kinda like that crossed with playing Chrono Trigger on a PC emulator. Oh yeah - and cross that with memories of playing with little lego men. Yeah! Brilliant stuff :)

The Little Giant Girl

This really is kinda creepy. The facial expressions are amazing.

Check out the wikipedia entry for more information.

Shaking hands with the Devil

Read an article on smh.com.au this morning called Devil in the detail: Vatican exorcises Harry Potter.

Favourite quotes:

"Behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of the darkness, the devil," says Father Gabriele Amorth, the Pope's "caster-out of demons".

Last year the Pope, who was then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, described Harry Potter as a potentially corrupting influence.

In the same interview, Father Amorth said he was convinced that Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler were possessed by the devil.

My answer: