Archive for the ‘Nuvo-Techno’ Category

Drop Dead; drop 12

Posted by Ron Coleman on October 11, 2008

This Tech CrunchIT article by Steve Gillmor about why I can’t get Twitter to work with instant messaging — a marriage that you’d think would be as obvious as chocolate and peanut butter — was worthwhile, because it clarified what was becoming increasingly obvious: It’s not about me. Twitter doesn’t have any idea on earth how to make it work.

Fine and dandy, as far as it goes.

But here’s the icing: The article is called, “Twitter to IM: Drop Dead,” and, to make it re-e-e-e-e-eally obvious what the joke was to the many Twitter and IM users who are, in fact, under 40…. and then some… it included a JPEG of the famous New York Daily News front page of October 29, 1975, featuring the late President Gerald Ford’s picture and the headline, “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD,” in reference to his promise to veto any bailout of New York City in the shadow of its threatened bankruptcy. This decision by Ford may have been the right one, but the News‘s spin — despite its later endorsement — along with Chevy Chase’s libelous depiction of of the President as an oaf on Saturday Night Live, were probably the two most significant MSM contributors to the advent of the Carter Administration.

What’s really, really interesting is the second subhead. The first one reads, “Abe, Carey rip stand” — that meant, for you youngsters and those tuning in from overseas, “New York Mayor Abe Beame and New York Governor Hugh Carey criticized the President’s statement.” Of course, they were not only Democrats; they were as responsible as any two people then living for the disastrous situation in the first place. But the second headline? Dig this — and now I present you with the JPEG in all its glory:

Twelve points of separation

That’s right: “Stocks Skid, Down Down 12.”

TWELVE POINTS.

This was back in the ticker-tape days, when stocks were bought and sold the old-fashioned way. A million shares sold, as I remember it, was a “heavy volume” day on Wall Street. And the Dow Jones average for the month of October in 1975 was 836. The Dow overcame that eight-point “slide” and finished the year at 852.

Now, we were talking about Twitter…

Posted in Americana, Gelt, Nuvo-Techno, Social networking | 1 Comment »

We don’t need no stinkin’ price signals

Posted by Ron Coleman on October 7, 2008

You thought Instapundit was a libertarian? So did I! At least on economics issues. But check this:

BOB ZUBRIN: Obama’s Energy Plan a Mix of Bad and Good. “Moreover, there is one part of the Obama plan which is absolutely splendid, and that is his explicit promise to require flex fuel capability on all new cars sold in the USA by the end of his first term. This is indeed a potential real game changer, especially if the flex fuel standard is written to include not only automobile compatibility with gasoline and ethanol, but methanol as well.” You can make methanol from kudzu. ‘Nuff said.

Well, not ’nuff for me. What happened to the free market? Is it inconceivable that oil could be $40 a barrel at the end of Obama’s first term — and cars will either be X dollars more expensive because of this requirement, or perhaps won’t work right, or… whatever?

Whatever, indeed. We see how easy it is to fix massive policy problems merely by legislating a solution, right?

Posted in Futurama, Gelt, Nuvo-Techno, Politics and Poker, Stragety | 1 Comment »

Is that where they keep them?

Posted by Ron Coleman on August 28, 2008

You can’t escape justice merely by donning a tin hat, it seems. The European Court of Human Rights, his last resort after a series of British courts were unhelpful, has refused to block the extradition to the U.S. of Gary McKinnon, a Briton who hacked into Pentagon and NASA computers. This is despite the fact that he claims extradition “would violate his human rights.”

U.S. prosecutors want to put McKinnon on trial for allegedly hacking into 97 computers belonging to NASA and several branches of the U.S. military from a bedroom in a north London home. He claims he was searching for UFOs.

In retrospect it seems the better tactical move would have been to claim immunity under the Federations’ Uniform Code of Justice. Or, from the looks of him, some provision of the Vulcan constitution.

It came from outer space, but very slowly

Presumably the high-tech aliens he is seeking will swoop down at this point and take care of things for McKinnon, having given earth’s puny rulers every chance to act justly. On the other hand, given their advanced state, they may just be too embarrassed, based on what he told Wired a couple of years ago:

A NASA photographic expert said that there was a Building 8 at Johnson Space Center where they regularly airbrushed out images of UFOs from the high-resolution satellite imaging. I logged on to NASA and was able to access this department. They had huge, high-resolution images stored in their picture files. They had filtered and unfiltered, or processed and unprocessed, files.

My dialup 56K connection was very slow trying to download one of these picture files.

It would be, wouldn’t it!

Posted in Jocularity, Lex scripta, Nuvo-Techno, Sisyphus | Leave a Comment »

Hey, wait a minute!

Posted by Ron Coleman on August 18, 2008

Bob Miller on Beyond BT:

At Yael’s home, I also met the famed lawyer Ron Coleman, as proven by the attached photo he took with a small electronic device. This reassured us that we both existed independently of the Web.

Wouldn’t not taking the picture with a small electronic device have actually been somewhat more reassuring?

Posted in Heart and spirit, Jocularity, Nuvo-Techno | Leave a Comment »

Brain melt via cell

Posted by Ron Coleman on July 24, 2008

ABC News reports that a leading cancer researcher has informally let it be known that, definitive scientific results notwithstanding, he thinks gluing a cell phone to the side of your head probably does fry your brain:

“Really at the heart of my concern is that we shouldn’t wait for a definitive study to come out, but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later,” Herberman said.

No other major academic cancer research institutions have sounded such an alarm about cell phone use. But Herberman’s advice is sure to raise concern among many cell phone users and especially parents.

In the memo he sent to about 3,000 faculty and staff Wednesday, he says children should use cell phones only for emergencies because their brains are still developing.

Adults should keep the phone away from the head and use the speakerphone or a wireless headset, he says. He even warns against using cell phones in public places like a bus because it exposes others to the phone’s electromagnetic fields.

I’d keep that little Bluetooth thingy out of your ear, too. Why on earth actually inject electromagnetic waves into your head? Waves, or beams, or particles, or phlogiston. Whatever.

I tend to be really skeptical about sky-is-falling public health panics. This one I buy, intuitively, based on my utter lack of understanding of a single scientific, medical or technical issue involved. And, as an American and a blogger, I am committed to standing on that platform of ignorance and shouting terror and fear to the rooftops. Laugh if you will, but keep that damned thing away from my noggin.

Posted in Nuvo-Techno, Scientificus | 4 Comments »

Don’t leave a message at the sound of tone

Posted by Ron Coleman on July 6, 2008

Michael Arrington:

[A]n increasing number of people are just plain avoiding voicemail (for my impromptu and unscientific survey, see the comments here, which are predominantly anti-voicemail). It takes much longer to listen to a message than read it. And voicemail is usually outside of our typical workflow, making it hard to forward or reply to easily.

Typical voicemail messages today include things like “Please don’t leave me a voicemail, I rarely listen to them. Please just email me at xxxx@xxxx.com” Many people don’t bother setting up their voicemail accounts at all. Then there’s my favorite method, the one I use personally – let the message box get full and then don’t empty it. Caller ID still tells me who called, and I can simply call them back.

How many times have you called someone back and said “I saw that you called but didn’t listen to the voicemail yet, Is it anything urgent?”

Senders often feel guilty for leaving voicemails, too. And to make sure you get the message, quite often people will follow up with a text message – “Just left you a VM, it’s important” – just so you know it’s there.

Yeah, don’t bother. If you have to reach me, voicemail is about 17th on the list after email, IM’ing, texting, emailing my wife, smoke signals, a Facebook poke and skywriting.

In the ’80’s we thought voicemail, the kind of mainfraim version of telephone answering machines that were the text-messaging of our college years, was cool. That got old fast, though. I remember being impressed when I worked for super-lawyer Ted Wells and finding out his voicemail was disabled. If you wanted to leave a message, you could leave it with his secretary. Awesome. This was about 15 years ago, and email hadn’t even become part of corporate life, but I already knew no one with anything better to do sat down tapping his feet scribbling down a message out of voicemail.

I never was able to get such privileges, although I did get to a point where my secretary’s job was to check my voicemail regularly and turn the message into an email … which doesn’t mean that’s always what happens, just that that was her job. I will stare at, or perhaps more accurately ignore, that little red light a long, long time if I have any semblance of an idea of what the message might be. In contrast, with my BlackBerry cellphone permanently attached to my hip, you’re likely to get a work email back from me within minutes, if not seconds, unless I really, really want to avoid you.

(This is not the same thing as wanting to actually be called up on my cell phone. I do not want you to call me on my cell phone. Have I mentioned email?)

Until I get it completely ripped out, though, all I can do is count on our receptionist (no direct dial number! yay!) to offer to take a message, and to allow “VM” through only with a disclaimer: “He doesn’t really check it.” Because I live in a hierarchical world, however, as long as it’s out there, it’s hanging over my head. That’s what Ted knew: Once someone leaves you a message, you’re “it.”

Sometimes the person leaving that voicemail is a judge. And when he makes you “it,” you’d better be aware.

But everyone else, don’t leave me a voicemail. Not if it matters whether I hear it.

Posted in Nuvo-Techno, Sisyphus | 2 Comments »

Facebook good

Posted by Ron Coleman on June 15, 2008

I’ve come out in favor of Facebook, ultimately. In terms of professional networking and business development, it seems almost certainly to be well-nigh useless. I am also a little surprised at just how few people I went to school with here, there or anywhere are on the thing. I’m not that old! But I think it’s a great way to actually get to know other bloggers a little bit better. In particular I am fascinated at how the rightosphere has kind of coalesced into a number of interlinked groups of “friends” on the program. Of course those few tunnels across to the “other side” are interesting, too, but mostly they’re symbolic of good will and little more.

I also think it’s notable to see who is too snotty to respond to a “friend request” from within what one would expect to be the same community. And, again, who you might think would be, but is not. (It was also interesting to see one particular blogger’s momentary spurt of blogger-to-blogger matchmaking on Facebook, at once heartwarming and yet a little odd in the execution.)

On the whole, though, this is a really good thing: bloggers expanding the substantive space in which they social-network and developing human-like online relationships. It could really add up to something even better, I think. I’m not sure what. I’m not a visionary — I mean I have to spend almost $500 on glasses just to see across the street. Still yes, I think this is a good, good thing — but:

The key to enjoying Facebook, for adults, is this: Don’t add pretty much any idiotic “apps” if you are over 30. Delete, without apology, most of the ones you foolishly already added. You mostly need to be able to write on other folks’ walls, find more friends and friends of friends, plug your RSS feed into your profile, upload media files without going nuts self-obsession-wise — mostly utilizing the native features of Facebook, in other words. But most of the open-source applications either don’t work, take over your space, are really, really debasing or are just plain, uh, stupid.

And make sure your friends know it’s nothing personal when your ignore their “app”-generated “request.” It’s not that you wouldn’t want to be hugged, or have a pie thrown in your face, or be ranked by pulchritude, or to join the Free Egg McMuffin “cause” if the request that you do so involved only them. It’s just that from anyone else (and if you don’t use Facebook, the point is you have to actually add the application to “play” at all, and then it takes over your life) that “app” is probably going to be really, really annoying. Like the kind of annoying that gives a headache. Headache bad.

Posted in Blogophilia, Nuvo-Techno | 2 Comments »

Smile, stupid!

Posted by Ron Coleman on May 12, 2008

The Journal News:

A tech-savvy White Plains woman whose apartment was burglarized solved the crime herself after she was able to log on to her stolen laptop, photograph one of the suspects with it and get photos of another, police said.

Edmon Shahikian, 23, of 13 Cobbling Rock Road, Katonah, and Ian Frias, 20, of 1609 E. 174th St., the Bronx, were picked up at their homes Wednesday night after the victim turned the pictures over to police. The police said they recovered most of the $5,000 worth of electronics stolen in the burglary.

“Our victim did a phenomenal job,” said Lt. Eric Fischer, commander of the Detective Division. “She knew her computer, and she let us know as soon as she obtained the information. We rolled on it immediately, and the result is the arrest of two burglary suspects and the recovery of most of the stolen property.”

Now the stolen stuff tells on you! Pretty impressive. Hat tip to Avigdor M’Bawlmawr.

Posted in Americana, Jocularity, Nuvo-Techno | Leave a Comment »