swernli

Ouch! $22/month for 512 kbps? I pay about $15/month for 30 mbps and at this point couldn't imagine living without it. Downloading big updates, videos, game demos, you name it, and by the time you're done naming it you're almost done downloading it...

EDIT: To clarify, I get that in Redmond, WA. Definitely have a serious advantage there.

I too enjoyed the movie quite a bit. I can agree that the plot was simplistic, but I for one did not find the dialog horrible. Like the review points out, it comes off like something mixing elements of Disney movies like "The Lion King" and "Pocahontas," which admittedly are movies I get a little choked up at. For me personally, that gave it a certain innocence and heartfelt quality. Is it predictable?Sure, but that doesn't neccessarily make it bad. I was emotionally engaded as well as visually stimulated, if not intellectually challenged by the film. For better or worse, that made it great for me.

To respond specifically to the issue of multitasking, I am still surprised that this is such a big deal. Maybe I have atypical phone usage patterns, but the only application I have every wished I could run in the background is Pandora. Anything else I find I only need to run when I'm looking at it, or already mutlitasks. I can listen to music (both from the library and from streaming sources online through Safari) in the background while doing other things. I can stay on speakerphone with someone while I run other apps. People get all in a huff pointing out that the iPhone can't run multiple apps at the same time, but the two things I want, phone and music, work in the background. If AT&T's advertising is to be believed, the Droid wouldn't let me be on the phone and use data at the same time, which to me is almost the be all and end all of multitasking, so instead of gaining something I'd be losing.

For those of you curious, I listen to this radio station streaming, and consider it a great example of a way to embrace Safari for the iPhone: http://c895worldwide.com/web/streaming/iphone/iphone.html It lets me add a bookmark to my home screen with an icon it gets from the page itself, and when I start streaming music, it keeps going even when I leave Safari and do something else.

From pg's essay "Hiring is Obsolete" (http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html),

  Have you ever noticed that when animals are let out of cages, they don't always realize at first that the door's open? 
  Often they have to be poked with a stick to get them out. Something similar happened with blogs. 
  People could have been publishing online in 1995, and yet blogging has only really taken off in the last couple years. 
  In 1995 we thought only professional writers were entitled to publish their ideas, and that anyone else who did was a crank. 
  Now publishing online is becoming so popular that everyone wants to do it, even print journalists. But blogging has not 
  taken off recently because of any technical innovation; it just took eight years for everyone to realize the cage was open.

There are quite a few web technoligies for which I could write your same sentence. What makes bulletin boards interesting is that anyone can become a broadcaster, except that not many people were aware of bulletin boards so you didn't reach many people. What makes electronic mailing lists interesting is that anyone can become a broadcaster, except they weren't that easier to discover and join so you didn't reach many people. What makes blogging+rss interesting is that anyone can become a broadcaster, except it has started to get a similar air of elitism as traditional editorials so unless you have some gimmick or are already famous you don't reach many people. What makes twitter interesting is that anyone can become a broadcaster, except the site has become so inundated with celebrities, news personalities, corporations and marketters that, like blogging, unless you have a gimmick or are already famous, you are just part of the noise and don't reach many people.

Is twitter interesting? Sure. Is it revolutionary? Eh, maybe a little. But does it represent some kind of fundamental shift in how people communicate and who can broadcast to large audiences? Not in my opinion. Twitter makes some things easier, but it doesn't completely change the game. There have been any number of amazing broadcast methods coming down the pipe ever since the web came into existence. But all that broadcasting for the average man doesn't make a lick of difference if no one is paying attention.

Ah, now I understand the distinction you are making. And I agree; get fewer servers, not the same number of slightly more efficient ones, and then you can talk about saving money on power.

The number is correct, the wording is backwards. Studies have shown that waist-to-hip ratios (WHR) for women considered attractive within their cultures hover around average of 0.7. Interestingly enough, variation in attractive frontal WHR across cultures dissapears when using circumference as a measurement; in that case it collapsed down pretty reliably to 0.7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-hip_ratio

While I agree that for those numbers, 5% to 10% savings isn't worth the effort, this isn't a good reason to dismiss saving by reducing data center power. Nissan recently starting rolling out virtualization solutions for some of their datacenters, resulting in 34% energy savings. For the kind of numbers you list, that would end up being over $100k of savings a year.

So they fully admit that the iPhone "cannibalized iPod sales" but then said that they "didn't count the iPhone because the product is also a wireless handset." So all this is saying is that among mp3 devices sold that weren't also phones in the week of Aug 23 - 30, Sony had 43% and Apple had 42.1%, with no mention of what the +/- error was in the survey. While this might be an indication of a trend, it is also very likely to be statistically insignificant. But that doesn't make as interesting a news story.

Harvard never got free hot breakfast on weekday mornings. There is a nearly $800 a year meal plan, from which hot breakfast was just eliminated without changing the cost. Very different than losing the free coffee.

I think this is pretty cool. I could imagine it being even more useful (at least to me) if it were one of those iPhone-esque websites. That way I can lazily grab my phone, tap my bookmark for your site, and then flick through the schedule.

Some development ideas: cookies to remember your zip code (a la goingtorain.com), way to mark or flag certain channels as "favorites" and a corresponding favorites view that shows just those channels, a cool but short name :)

I find it interesting that no comments (as of writing this) touch on the other intersting issue the article brought up: that Americans "prefer technology, not radical politics, to propel social change." I think that's an interesting point, especially given the focus of the HN crowd. We often look to technology and innovation as the disruptive element in society, and one can find many examples in history of how it has been exactly that. But in these modern times, I'd be inclined to think that true change doesn't happen until the politics catch up to the technology and accept its disruption as the norm. Historically, it seems to me that change always flows from technology => social/cultural => political. When it reaches that last stage, that's when the change really takes hold.

My theory is based on personal desire, and some early and very fake images of the iPhone 3G: video calling. A major desire for many users has been the ability to record video. If they give the chance to record it, they would also be pressured to let you send it to friends via email. But why stop there? Why not add a front facing camera and let users video call, simultaneously using their data connection and their mobile minutes?

Of course, these may once again prove to be pipe dreams...

I agree with your points about Wal-Mart not translating to creative marketing, but something many news agencies are missing out on in reporting this is that he used to work for Wal-Mart but is actually leaving Dreamworks, where he worked in global product distribution. So he has at least had exposure to creative content marketing. Hopefully that helps, at least in terms of recognizing creativity if not in producing it.

Here is an arc version of the struquine macro:

  (mac strq (name . slots) 
     (withs (bname 
             (coerce (string name "#") 'sym) 
             creator `((def ,(coerce (string name "?") 'sym) (thing) (is (car thing) ',bname))
                       (def ,bname ,slots (cons ',bname (list ,@slots))))
             accessors nil)
            (on arg slots
                (= accessors (cons `(def ,(coerce (string name "-" arg) 'sym) (thing) (thing ,(+ index 1))) accessors)))
            (cons 'do (join accessors creator))))

I had to use "#" instead of "!" since that is used for special function access in arc, but the effect of this code is pretty much what was written about in the blog post. It creates a constructor for the struquine with name#, accessors for each arg of the form name-arg, and "type" checker of the form name?. For example:

  arc> (strq point x y)
  #<procedure: point#>
  arc> (= mypoint (point# 1 2))
  (point# 1 2)
  arc> (point? mypoint)
  t
  arc> (point-x mypoint)
  1
  arc> (point-y mypoint)
  2