Ramblings & ephemera
From Jeff Bertolucci’s “Windows 7 Ads: Microsoft Tarts Up the Desktop” (PC World: 13 November 2009):
Microsoft has announced plans to peddle Windows 7 desktop space to advertisers, who’ll create Windows UI themes–customized backgrounds, audio clips, and other elements–that highlight their brand, Computerworld reports. In fact, some advertiser themes are already available in the Windows 7 [...]
Posted on December 1st, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Diana B. Henrioques’s “Madoff Scheme Kept Rippling Outward, Across Borders” (The New York Times: 20 December 2008):
But whatever else Mr. Madoff’s game was, it was certainly this: The first worldwide Ponzi scheme — a fraud that lasted longer, reached wider and cut deeper than any similar scheme in history, entirely eclipsing the puny regional [...]
Posted on November 5th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Nicholas Carr’s “Cloud koan” (Rough Type: 1 October 2009):
Not everything will move into the cloud, but the cloud will move into everything.
Related posts
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What successful startups need
Tim O’Reilly defines cloud computing
Paul Graham’s lessons for startups
Many layers of cloud computing, or just one?
Posted on October 30th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Bloomberg’s “Francis Ford Coppola Sees Cinema World Falling Apart: Interview” (12 October 2009):
“The cinema as we know it is falling apart,” says Francis Ford Coppola.
“It’s a period of incredible change,” says the director of “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now.” “We used to think of six, seven big film companies. Every one of them is [...]
Posted on October 30th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Darryl Taft’s “Enterprise Applications: 20 Things You Might Not Know About COBOL (as the Language Turns 50)” (eWeek: September 2009). http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Applications/20-Things-You-Might-Not-Know-About-COBOL-As-the-Language-Turns-50-103943/?kc=EWKNLBOE09252009FEA1. Accessed 25 September 2009.
Five billion lines of new COBOL are developed every year.
More than 80 percent of all daily business transactions are processed in COBOL.
More than 70 percent of all worldwide business data [...]
Posted on September 25th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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Image by Esther_G via Flickr
From Josh Olson’s “I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script” (The Village Voice: 9 September 2009):
It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you’re in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you’re dealing with someone who can’t.
Related posts
Why Picasso charged [...]
Posted on September 16th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, business, commonplace book, language & literature, on writing | No Comments »
Image via Wikipedia
From Josh Olson’s “I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script” (The Village Voice: 9 September 2009):
There’s a great story about Pablo Picasso. Some guy told Picasso he’d pay him to draw a picture on a napkin. Picasso whipped out a pen and banged out a sketch, handed it to the guy, and said, [...]
Posted on September 16th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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Image via CrunchBase
From Doc Searls’s “The Most Personal Device” (Linux Journal: 1 March 2009):
My friend Keith Hopper made an interesting observation recently. He said one of Apple’s roles in the world is finding categories where progress is logjammed, and opening things up by coming out with a single solution that takes care of everything, from [...]
Posted on August 11th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Robert Darnton’s “Google & the Future of Books” (The New York Review of Books: 12 February 2009):
As the Enlightenment faded in the early nineteenth century, professionalization set in. You can follow the process by comparing the Encyclopédie of Diderot, which organized knowledge into an organic whole dominated by the faculty of reason, [...]
Posted on July 15th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Seth Godin’s “Luxury vs. premium” (Seth Godin’s Blog: 17 May 2009):
Luxury goods are needlessly expensive. By needlessly, I mean that the price is not related to performance. The price is related to scarcity, brand and storytelling. Luxury goods are organized waste. …
That doesn’t mean they are senseless expenditures. Sending a signal is valuable if [...]
Posted on July 6th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Brian Krebs’ “Glut of Stolen Banking Data Trims Profits for Thieves” (The Washington Post: 15 April 2009):
A massive glut in the number of credit and debit cards stolen in data breaches at financial institutions last year has flooded criminal underground markets that trade in this material, driving prices for the illicit goods to the [...]
Posted on June 30th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Bruce Schneier’s “The Economics of Spam” (Crypto-Gram: 15 November 2008):
Researchers infiltrated the Storm worm and monitored its doings.
“After 26 days, and almost 350 million e-mail messages, only 28 sales resulted — a conversion rate of well under 0.00001%. Of these, all but one were for male-enhancement products and the average purchase price was close [...]
Posted on June 27th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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These come from a variety of sources; just Google the law to find out more about it.
Parkinson’s Law
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
Source: Cyril Northcote Parkinson in The Economist (1955)
The Peter Principle
“In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”
Source: Dr. Laurence J. Peter and [...]
Posted on June 22nd, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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photo credit: Andres Rueda
From Brian Kreb’s “An Odyssey of Fraud” (The Washington Post: 17 June 2009):
Andy Kordopatis is the proprietor of Odyssey Bar, a modest watering hole in Pocatello, Idaho, a few blocks away from Idaho State University. Most of his customers pay for their drinks with cash, but about three times a day [...]
Posted on June 20th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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photo credit: C. Young Photography
From Joshua Foer’s “Giant Burning Holes of the World” (Boing Boing: 16 June 2009):
… these sorts of mine fires can stay lit for a very long time. One burned in the city of Zwickau, Germany from 1476 to 1860. Another coal fire in Germany, at a place called Brennender Berg [...]
Posted on June 16th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Farhad Manjoo’s “I, for One, Welcome Our New Android Overlords” (Slate: 5 June 2008):
Microsoft promises that Windows 7 will be able to run on netbooks, but it has announced a risky strategy to squeeze profits from these machines. The company plans to cripple the cheapest versions of the new OS in order to encourage [...]
Posted on June 7th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Steven Levy’s “OK, Mac, Make a Wish: Apple’s ‘computer for the rest of us’ is, insanely, 20” (Newsweek: 2 February 2004):
If that’s so, then why is the Mac market share, even after Apple’s recent revival, sputtering at a measly 5 percent? Jobs has a theory about that, too. Once a company devises a great [...]
Posted on May 1st, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From “Twins Suspected in Spectacular Jewelry Heist Set Free” (Spiegel Online International: 19 March 2009):
Saved by their indistinguishable DNA, identical twins suspected in a massive jewelry heist have been set free. Neither could be exclusively linked to the DNA evidence.
German police say at least one of the identical twin brothers Hassan and Abbas O. may [...]
Posted on April 26th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Ellen Messmer’s “Symantec takes cybercrime snapshot with ‘Underground Economy’ report” (Network World: 24 November 2008):
The “Underground Economy” report [from Symantec] contains a snapshot of online criminal activity observed from July 2007 to June 2008 by a Symantec team monitoring activities in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and Web-based forums where stolen goods are advertised. Symantec [...]
Posted on April 25th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Kelly Jackson Higgins’ “Researchers Find Massive Botnet On Nearly 2 Million Infected Consumer, Business, Government PCs” (Dark Reading: 22 April 2009):
Researchers have discovered a major botnet operating out of the Ukraine that has infected 1.9 million machines, including large corporate and government PCs mainly in the U.S.
The botnet, which appears to be larger than [...]
Posted on April 25th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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