Spyware Warrior is a weblog dedicated to fighting Windows spyware
Spyware Warrior is a weblog dedicated to fighting Windows spyware.
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Entries for July 2004
Enter the 4th Annual Everyman Photo Contest
Enter the 4th Annual Everyman Photo Contest. Amateurs only, deadline is 10/4/2004.
Photos of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye in Poissy, France
Photos of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye in Poissy, France.
The Teacher’s Lounge is a wiki for
The Teacher’s Lounge is a wiki for teachers to share lesson plans. It could use some contributions…forward this along to any K-12 teachers you know.
The Peace Corps is looking for some
The Peace Corps is looking for some Web developers and designers. Volunteer or pass the word along.
Google’s IPO site is live
Google’s IPO site is live. Read the prospectus, view the Meet the Management presentation, get a bidder ID, and get information about the auction.
Is the Bush administration capturing Al Qaeda
Is the Bush administration capturing Al Qaeda operatives only when it’s politically convenient to do so?. I’ve seen many others wonder about a timely Bin Laden capture at the end of October.
NYPD critical response mobilizations designed to intimidate populace
NYPD critical response mobilizations designed to intimidate populace. Isn’t this pretty much what terrorism is?
The preservation of jazz history and the iTunes Music Store
The preservation of jazz history and the iTunes Music Store. What we’re losing in the mp3ing of all music.
Paleoclimatologist sniffs that he wouldn’t see The
Paleoclimatologist sniffs that he wouldn’t see The Day After Tomorrow unless someone gave him $100. Usenet readers successfully take up a collection and send him to the theatre.
2004 Election Guide from the NY Times
2004 Election Guide from the NY Times. Great info-packed Flash presentation.
Craft and the Shake Shack
Meg and I went to Craft earlier this week. The restaurant’s schtick is to present fresh food as simply as possible. The heirloom tomatoes were sliced, salted, peppered, and placed on a white dish with a wee bit of basil. The wild salmon came with a few onions, making it the most accented dish of the evening. The striped bass was served braised in its own juices with a couple of carrots. Plain sautéed hen-of-the-woods mushrooms. The lamb shank was served alone in its own juices, still in the container it was cooked in. Green beans, unbuttered. Mashed potatoes, lightly buttered. Cinnamon and chocolate donuts on a simple white plate. A single slice of brioche pain perdu with small pitchers of caramel and chocolate to flavor it. I enjoyed the no-nonsense presentation, but the tastes were a little too spare for my, um, taste. Verdict: The food was great, the novelty of the preparation was fun, but I don’t think I’d go again.
The next day, we checked out Danny Meyer’s new Shake Shack in Madison Square Park, located at the opposite end of the NYC food spectrum from Craft. We each had a Shack Burger with fries and shared a chocolate shake. The food came in a box and the burgers in little bags, reminding me of In-N-Out Burger. The fries were way too crispy, but the burger was one of the best I’ve had in NYC. (Good burgers are one of the few things I miss from California. Not that good hamburgers can’t be found in NYC, but it’s just not a hamburger town.) I’m looking forward to trying the Chicago-style hot dog (Nathan’s aside, give me a Vienna Beef dog any day of the week over a NYC dog) and the frozen custard on my next visit.
New species of worm discovered in the ocean
New species of worm discovered in the ocean. They eat the fat- and oil-rich remains of whales.
What if companies spent their money on
What if companies spent their money on improving customer experience rather than on marketing?.
A Microsoft intern has dinner at Bill Gates’ house
A Microsoft intern has dinner at Bill Gates’ house.
Crick and Watson’s original letter to Nature
Crick and Watson’s original letter to Nature on the structure of DNA. “We wish to put forward a radically different structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid.”
O’Reilly has a page up about their
O’Reilly has a page up about their new magazine called Make. “This is a magazine that celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will.”
Swiss Army knife with USB storage
Swiss Army knife with USB storage. In the future, everything will have memory.
NY Times on Web diarist hoaxes and Plain Layne
NY Times on Web diarist hoaxes and Plain Layne. Includes a photo of Odin Soli, the man behind Layne.
Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, had died at age 88
Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, had died at age 88.
Sam Brown, of explodingdog fame, has a
Sam Brown, of explodingdog fame, has a new book out in September called Amazing Rain.
The Source is a neat info-sculpture on
The Source is a neat info-sculpture on the “floor” of the London Stock Exchange. “The Source will mark the start of the London markets every day at 8.00am, displaying an arrow to indicate whether the markets have opened up or down and giving the opening price of the FTSE 100 index.”
Review of Restaurant Tycoon, a restaurant management sim
Review of Restaurant Tycoon, a restaurant management sim. “One might assume that a game about restaurant management would be dull, but this isn’t. It helps if you’ve fantasized about running a restaurant, of course.”
Time Magazine on prediction markets
Time Magazine on prediction markets. Using markets, BP hit its greenhouse emissions reduction target *9 years early*.
Google IPO price per share
I’ve seen several references to the price per share of Google stock being priced too high ($108-135) for people to buy it, most notably in this article by Dan Gillmor:
At least, I wouldn’t consider [investing in Google] at the nosebleed-altitude prices that Google suggested to the world Monday. This is starting to feel frothy.
This is silly. If you buy 74 shares of Google stock for $10,000 and 352 shares of Microsoft stock for $10,000, your stake in each company is worth $10,000 even though you’ve got five times more MSFT shares. A more relevant question to ask is whether or not a company is worth its overall valuation…or better yet, whether it will be worth such and such a value in X number of years. There’s a pyschological factor involved here. People think they’re somehow getting more with a higher share price. Reminds me of stock splits…if a stock splits 2-for-1, you get twice the number of shares (woo hoo, I’m rich!) but at half the price per share (hey, wait a minute…).
Frank Gehry and the MIT Media Lab
Frank Gehry and the MIT Media Lab collaborate on a concept car. There’s a huge coat hanger on the top of the car.
Optimizing Perl, when Perl isn’t quite fast enough
Optimizing Perl, when Perl isn’t quite fast enough.
MTA is exploring corporate branding opportunities for NYC subway stations
MTA is exploring corporate branding opportunities for NYC subway stations. In 30 years, everything (individuals, pets, the beach, US currency, the atmosphere, national parks, Spain, etc.) will be branded by a corporation.
Google’s IPO information page
Google’s IPO information page. There’s no info here yet, but will be soon.
Odd tidbit of the day…both Keira
Odd tidbit of the day…both Keira Knightly and Sofia Coppola were in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. They each played one of Queen Amidala’s handmaidens.
The state of the report
Wired News has an article on the guerilla conversion of the 9/11 Commission Report (published by the government online only in PDF format) into various formats, including HTML, text, audio, and a more accessible PDF format. The HTML version I did of the executive summary is mentioned. On a whim yesterday afternoon, I googled for several variations of “9/11 commission report” and my site came up in the top 5-6 results for most of them (for instance). Usually a high ranking on a such a hot topic means lots of traffic from Google, but when I checked my stats this morning, there was almost nothing coming from Google for any of those search terms. So even though the book version is a bestseller, few seem to be looking for the online version.
Also, it looks as though Dave Winer might handily win his bet with Martin Nisenholtz of the NY Times…both kottke.org and Boing Boing rank above CNN, MSNBC, Time, and the Times in the search results for “9/11 commission report”.
Photos of the Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe
Photos of the Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe. “I’ve never been in a space that is more in tune with the nature that surrounds it”.
Film titles by Pablo Ferro, including for Dr. Strangelove
Film titles by Pablo Ferro, including for Dr. Strangelove.
Last 100 posts, part 2
(This is a biweekly-ish wrap-up thing that I’m trying. Here’s the first installment.)
Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France, but you already know that. Enroute to victory, Armstrong tangled with an off-the-bike rival…or was it just smart game theory? Heather has photos (1, 2) from the final stage in Paris.
Ken Jennings is still alive on Jeopardy as the show goes on summer vacation. Tapings begin again in August. I see no end in sight to his reign. More Jennings links than you would ever want:
- Ken Jennings Wikipedia entry
- The various ways in which Ken has signed his name
- An enormous list of movies Ken likes
- Lots of discussion on the Jeopardy Forums. Jennings himself even participates in some of the discussions; here’s a list of his posts.
hello, typepad ties it all together in a post about Lance, Jennings, me, and (respectively) our continued dominance of the Tour, Jeopardy, and Google.
The discussion of the Fast Company article on Whole Foods is a reminder of why it’s so much fun for me to do this site. The thread contains both pro and con responses, including one from the boyfriend of a satisfied Whole Foods employee. What’s odd is that the article generated zero comments on the actual article page on FC. I wonder why?
Re: the HTML version of the 9/11 Commission Report Executive Summary I posted last week, here’s the whole report (HTML TOC links to PDF (FYI LOL)) with permalinks for each section. Should be a Wired article appearing soon about the guerilla reformatting of the report.
For the announcement of the new iPod, we were promised out-of-the-ordinary publicity. Instead, we got the cover of Newsweek. Boooor-ring. Does anyone have one of these bad boys yet?
I tested the wisdom of a crowd by opening up comments on the Wisdom of Crowds post. How’d the crowd do? Well, it would have been more interesting had any of the commenters actually read the book. I’ve thought of starting a kottke.org book club where I post what book I’m currently reading, invite others to read along with me, and then have a discussion about the book when we’ve finished reading. I’m not completely sold on the idea for a variety of reasons, but would there be any interest in this?
In response to my problems with MTAmazon, Adam Kalsey, the creator of the plugin, writes in with a possible solution (haven’t tried it yet, so I don’t know). He says it’s a problem with Amazon’s ever-changing API, which makes sense because nothing with my MT install changed to make the plugin break. Thanks to Adam taking the time to help and for making MTAmazon freely available. Amazon’s API aside, it’s one of my favorite plugins.
The DNC bloggers are gearing up to do their thing. (What “thing” that is exactly remains to be seen.) I’m a little irritated about not being there; I didn’t find out that they were letting bloggers into the convention until it was too late to sign up. Sounds like an interesting experience.
Other than that, last week was a hard week. I’m setting up a new server and, after 40+ hours of monkeying around with installation of software and configuring everything, the hard drive threw a wobbly. Luckily I got the data back, and I’m only out a few bucks and a few hours for my trouble. I’ve got it back to where it was (more or less) and am currently working on an rsync-based backup solution before I go any further. From what I’ve seen so far, rsync is quite a cool application.
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