I just took this interesting life expectancy Quiz and got 88. I’m OK with that I guess, but the quiz suggested that if I cut out fast food (which I eat a lot), I could add as many as 8 years to my life expectancy.
Hmmmm – More burgers and fries or more life, that is the question.
Google as advertising juggernaut continues the aggressive “advertising baron” expansion with today’s purchase of DoubleClick. I doubt it was DoubleClick’s technology that made this attractive to Google, rather the stable of existing advertisers and – perhaps most importantly – keeping DoubleClick away from Google rivals. It seems to me a key part of the Google strategy is to buy technologies and sites like YouTube and DoubleClick to effectively dry up the lake of opportunity for advertising rivals, especially Yahoo and MSN.
Yahoo’s also got good news today with a big newspaper deal, coming on the heels of Yahoo’s Viacom deal. I was surprised Yahoo stock didn’t reflect these positive developments but Yahoo’s stock fate seems to be tied more to the perception of Yahoo as a second fiddle to big and brilliant Google than to developments in the marketplace.
How to enforce more civility at blogs is the hot topic of the past few days. Here at the Joe Duck blog I recently encountered the tricky nexus between censorship and civility when I chose to ban a sometimes insightful but almost always abusive commenter. He was the type of person who seems compelled to be abusive. I think it’s fine to ban that type of person, but I object when people say this is not a a form of censorship – it certainly is and to some degree any censorship can hurt the quest for truth.
Jarvis takes Tim to task about his ideas.
In the latest debate I’m concerned people are confusing two different problems: Blogger Kathy Sierra had some death threats recently. Mike Arrington suggests this is what got this debate going. Death threats are illegal and need police follow up. However Mean-spirited comments are hard to regulate effectively, regardless of any policies, because the line is subjective, unclear, and very dependent on context (e.g. discussion of a savage serial murderer vs a new cell phone).
So as much as I’d like to agree with Tim that we should work to invoke some standards I’m very skeptical of any approach that tries to define civility. Skeptical enough I’d say there really is no reason at all for a new approach, sheriff badged or not.
New warning signs have gone up in the Bear Camp Road area to warn travelers of the dangers there. The sign effort was from John Rachor, the helicopter pilot who was instrumental in the rescue of Kati Kim and the Kim Children back in December. A lot of people were asking John about the signs and he asked me to post these pictures:
As well-fed comfortable primates our interests tend to turn to the superficial, but wouldn’t it be interesting if we could focus our great resources and enthusiasm on the real problems of the world, and focus attention in proportion to their impact on the globe?
This list of Global problems and potential solutions from the Copenhagen Consensus:
Challenge | Opportunity
Communicable Diseases | Scaled-up basic health services
Sanitation and Water | Community-managed water supply and sanitation
Education | Physical expansion
Malnutrition and Hunger | Improving infant and child nutrition
Malnutrition and Hunger | Investment in technology in developing country agriculture
Communicable Diseases | Control of HIV/AIDS
Communicable Diseases | Control of malaria
Malnutrition and Hunger | Reducing micro nutrient deficiencies
Subsidies and Trade Barriers | Optimistic Doha: 50% liberalization
Paul Graham is ridiculously suggesting that “Microsoft is Dead“.
I remember back in the 90’s when many where suggesting how IBM was dead, and how obvious it was that the Apples and Microsofts and clever upstarts would make IBM obsolete.
As this chart shows IBM has thrived since that time, and though they hardly make the news much anymore it’s very important to note that IBM is a bigger company (measured by capitalization) than the following “big winners”: Google, Apple, Yahoo.
Also notable is the fact that what is probably the best search algorithm in the world belongs to … IBM. It’s called “WebFountain”. It’s not scalable and therefore not an alternative to Google at this time, but one can’t even count IBM out of the *search wars*, let alone Microsoft.
Microsoft isn’t dead. Not even close. Of course it is suffering from the inertia that naturally springs from huge success and dominance, but like IBM it will find new markets, new niches, and will benefit (eventually) from the innovations of it’s competitors as they were able to benefit – hugely – from Microsoft innovations (e.g. free internet browser software on all PCs).
Don Dodge corrects the foolishness, and Tony is right to suggest that MS has plenty of life left.
It’s even possible that Microsoft will win the big game. With the LIVE project, Microsoft’s neural network approach to search may be more advanced than Google’s and although search result quality continues to lag Google’s by a notch it’s simply not clear how search will evolve over the next few years.
Hey, as I’m getting over the personal warming of the flu and a long stint of no blogging, what better topic than Global Warming to get me going again? Here, the BBC summarizes the latest IPCC report which deals with how climate change may affect humanity. I haven’t reviewed the real report yet. Here’s the IPCC report summary for policy makers.
It is interesting how strongly they IPCC and news reports are focusing on the effect on the poor because for many the issues with poverty are the key criticism of how alarmists have interpreted the IPCC findings. Should we should spend money on current catastrophic conditions in developing world rather than spending on the possibility of alleviating future suffering. In May IPCC will release the report talking about recommended courses of action.
This ASIMO DEMO post has moved to Technology Report
Disneyland Innoventions exhibit had a few glimpses into future technology, though the pace of change is now so fast that I think they have trouble capturing the “latest, greatest” stuff. Exception was a live show with ASIMO, SONY’s fantastic human sized robot. The walking and stair climbing, which are autonomous actions, were very impressive. You really got the idea you were looking at something we’ll eventually take for granted – robot helpers in the home.
Walk of Fame, Hollywood Boulevard
Originally uploaded by JoeDuck.
This was Sunday, Monday was Disneyland, and today we spent the morning over at a BIG sound stage built for the film “Semi Pro”. Mostly just sitting around while the director reviewed and set up scenes, but luckily we got placed right behind the basket for some shooting so we might actually be in the picture cheering on “our” team (out in 2008). I’m sworn to secrecy about the score and the shot with 17 seconds left in the game. We had to say we’d not talk about the scenes or take any pictures.
Graumann’s is big and impressive – the hand and foot prints in front
are neat. There’s a tour of Grauman’s Chinese Theater aka Mann Theatres but we did not do that or the Kodak Theatre tour which seemed too expensive at about $15 for a half hour.
As we arrived in Hollywood on Sunday, “Meet The Robinsons” was premiering across the street at the El Capitan but we couldn’t make out any stars as they walked down a red carpet past some media.
It was cool today though to be “close” to Will and Woody as they
filmed for Semi Pro.
Overall I get the idea LA is NOT really very glamorous unless you go eat at the fancy restaurants. Hollywood and Vine is much improved with Kodak Theater and a big shopping mall structure, but Hollywood
Boulevard is still pretty dumpy with Tattoo places and such. Funny
how the big rich stars and the grimy mean streets along Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards seem to coexist so comfortably here in the smoggy sun of Southern California.
Joe Duck 