Thursday, October 27, 2005

shahine.com/omar/ - Trading one set of problems for another

Whenever you switch from one platform to another, or one program to another, all you are doing is trading one set of problems for another. If you think otherwise, you are kidding yourself.
...
The k-jam, while more reliable at making/receiving phone calls than any other Windows Mobile device I have used, seems to do so at the sacrifice of the functionality I really care about… getting my data when I want to.
shahine.com/omar/ - Trading one set of problems for another

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

A List Apart: Attack of the Zombie Copy

"Every executive knows that constantly delivering superior customer value is an imperative to veritably creating shareholder value."

-or-

"If you want to make lots of money, you have to please your customers more than the other guy does."

A List Apart: Attack of the Zombie Copy

MIT Student Editorial on File-Sharing Ethics - The Digital Music Weblog - digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com

"The marketplace lacks morals; it is as dumb as a falling object in a gravity field, acquiring its desires in the most efficient possible ways. You might as well say “may not fall” to a brick dropped from a window, or suggest that the brick reconsider the ethics of hitting someone below."

MIT Student Editorial on File-Sharing Ethics - The Digital Music Weblog - digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com

Monday, October 24, 2005

NASA - How We'll Get Back to the Moon

Interesting to see NASA's plans for their return to the moon.

NASA - How We'll Get Back to the Moon

Friday, October 21, 2005

Washingtonpost a "pesky news site"

"Sometimes Web users can circumvent the process of having to use a password at all. For Web surfers who don't want to register at pesky news sites that want your e-mail address and demographic information, one site, http://www.bugmenot.com , is a clearinghouse for bogus accounts. It'll set you up with cheeky fake names and passwords -- like 'noinfo1@fromme.com' and 'death_to_logons' -- that already work on the site you're trying to access."

Bypassing the Password Prompt

"You are too paranoid"

Something strange happened to me recently: a friend told me I was too paranoid when it comes to security. It was strange because he was the third person to tell me that in a couple weeks. Sure, I expect most people to call me paranoid, but these were all colleagues in the security industry. Is it time to worry when security professionals consider you too paranoid?
...
I use very long passwords for everything, even with the lamest accounts I have. I require my kids to use at least 14 character passwords on our home network and I'm considering issuing them smart cards. No one else, not even my wife, knows my network password.
Security for the paranoid | The Register

Nielsen would be proud

Creative's Zen Vision has no fewer than 11 buttons that can be used during playback, two for volume, two for rewinding, three for forwarding, one for play/pause, one for turning an overlay on and off, and one to bring up a menu for screen size changes and seeking. In addition to its separate volume and brightness buttons, Sony's PlayStation Portable puts up a bewildering array of 14 icons on screen and leaves you to scroll, sort through and figure them out. Simple as they are, the iPod's stripped controls just work.
Apple Computer iPod 5G with Video (30GB/60GB) | iPod Accessory Review

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Unhappy Birthday

Singing Happy Birthday in Public is a Copyright Infringement...

Unhappy Birthday

Genuine VC: Seven Founding Sins

Genuine VC: Seven Founding Sins: "Seven Founding Sins"

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Thursday, October 13, 2005

The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security

"Why is 'Enumerating Badness' a dumb idea? It's a dumb idea because sometime around 1992 the amount of Badness in the Internet began to vastly outweigh the amount of Goodness."

The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security

Sex again



What is the fucking problem with these Partner Search Sites?

Why do many adverts look like they advertise something from the red light district?

By the way, you can find the article here:
http://portables.about.com/od/mp3players/a/videoipodrel.htm

Don't be evil

Google Germany is offering an internship.

IT Web Developer, Internship
...
Google is looking for a creative, hardworking web developer with strong artistic skills, technical knowledge, and impressive portfolio.


Responsibilities include:

  • ...
  • Fulfill several projects requests simultaneously while meeting tight deadlines.
  • Day to day duties assisting the German IT Team.
Requirements:
  • High level of creativity and proficiency in Photoshop and Illustrator applications.
  • Proven drawing/sketching abilities.
  • Expert HTML skills.
  • Technical knowledge of file sizes, types, and color formats.
  • Experience implementing and maintaining web content.
  • Keen eye for clean UI implementation and knowledge of website design best practices.
  • Excellent attention to detail.
  • Ability to set priorities and meet deadlines in a dynamic, fast-paced environment.
  • Ability to iterate quickly and synthesize feedback from multiple sources.
  • Strong CGI scripting skills with experience in Unix environment highly desired.
For me, this dosn't look like an intership, more like slaveship. What happend to "don't be evil", or isn't this true for Google Germany?

I once heard tales about Google, how they treat their employees, that they have the chef from the Grateful Dead, that employees work for one day a week on their pet project, that milk and honey flow in vast streams on the Google campus.

This must be some other Google.

Monday, October 10, 2005

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Netsukuku

I guess this new p2p routing system named "Netsukuku" is something we have to look out for.

Netsukuku the Anarchical Parallel Internet || kuro5hin.org

Saturday, October 08, 2005

How to promote your music

"obscure musicians are promoting themselves at Apple's iTunes Music Store. They're recording cover versions of hit songs. That way, when someone searches iTunes for the hit, the cover version also pops up in the results, giving the unknown artist a jolt of free publicity."

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Head phakes

Google Reader is here

How could I miss this?
Google Reader

Who wants to own content?

"Distribution? It was already dethroned — though, again, the old barons of bandwidth don’t know it. Owning the printing press, broadcast tower, cable plant, movie theater, or chain of stores is a cost burden when your competitors and customers can, without friction, effort or cost, bypass your distribution and even your marketing."

BuzzMachine � Blog Archive � Who wants to own content?

Where Yahoo Search is better than Google

I just searched for my pseudo "t-mix" both on google, msn and yahoo.

First surprise: Yahoo drives circles arround google for this term. Well, google list all pages that have the words "don't mix" in it. MSN is slightly better, but still only second.

Second surprise: There is/was a producer named T-Mix. But I seem more important tham him (at least concerning the search engines). What fun :-)

"After beginning his career as a producer for Eightball & MJG in the early '90s, T-Mix became a house producer for the Suave House label and began expanding his reach, producing tracks for non-Southern rappers such as Ice Cube, Beanie Sigel, and Krayzie Bone. ~ Jason Birchmeier, All Music Guide"

T-Mix

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Usability review of remote controls

"Until I conducted a small usability review of my remote controls, I didn't realize why the task was so difficult. I knew only that I found it bothersome, which left me in basically the same situation as most victims of the crummy products that the consumer electronics industry inflicts on the public."

How true...

Remote Control Anarchy (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

Open Source and Hot Rods

"On the IMAP mailing list, I CONSTANTLY see people submitting patches to the U.W. IMAP server proposing tweaks to fix one thing or another (even though it’s the wrong mailing list, the patches still come in). And Mark Crispin shoots them down all the time, because the person making the patch didn’t really understand the system – their patch might have fixed their problem and their configuration, but it either opened up a security hole, or broke some other configuration, etc."

Larry Osterman's WebLog : Open Source and Hot Rods:

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Don't make people leave your website

- Unless your site is a search engine.

"Advertising on search engines is the final exception: the only reason people visit a search engine is to leave it and find another site."

Nielsen: Designing Web Ads Using Click-Through Data

The Word Spy - joy-to-stuff ratio

The joy-to-stuff ratio

We should never rate stuff over joy.