Buying Polonium 210

Apparently you can buy Polonium in potentially lethal quantities on-line.

Making Jeans

It takes 12 minutes and 50 seconds to make a pair of jeans.

Marissa Mayer at Web 2.0

People rarely know what they really want.

Google VP Marissa Mayer just spoke at the Web 2.0 Conference and offered tidbits on what Google has learned about speed, the user experience, and user satisfaction.Marissa started with a story about a user test they did. They asked a group of Google searchers how many search results they wanted to see. Users asked for more, more than the ten results Google normally shows. More is more, they said.So, Marissa ran an experiment where Google increased the number of search results to thirty. Traffic and revenue from Google searchers in the experimental group dropped by 20%.Ouch. Why? Why, when users had asked for this, did they seem to hate it?After a bit of looking, Marissa explained that they found an uncontrolled variable. The page with 10 results took .4 seconds to generate. The page with 30 results took .9 seconds.Half a second delay caused a 20% drop in traffic. Half a second delay killed user satisfaction.

http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20.html

The Parable of the Two Programmers

The Parable of the Two Programmers

Plus ca change...

Animusic - Pipe Dream

Amazing animation

What is the difference between Americans and Russians?

From http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2219890,00.html an Afghan Joke.

Q: What is the difference between Americans and Russians?
A: Americans are better paid

Marvin Minsky writing in 1968

I produce custom clothing for people from 3-D body scans. Its really hard to do, and stretches the capabilities of even 2006 computing hardware. Here is Marvin Minsky writing in the introduction to an issue of the Science Journal in 1968 -- a time when computing power was perhaps a billionth of what it is now.

Prepare for the machines that will end mechanization
The Industrial Revolution brought us inexpensive production of goods at the price of uniformity. Mass production meant that anyone could afford a suit of clothes -- provided his body conformed to one of the official shapes. Thus, and in many other ways, the economics of mass production radiated outwards from the factory into the rest of society. This era is about to end. The new machines will look at a man, watch him run and watch him rest, and design a proper suit for his shapes in his usual postures. For the machine that holds shears in its hand, there is no longer much economy in cutting to standards.
Science Journal, Vol. 4, No. 10, October 1968, Page 3

How do you know?

This is a famous poem by Robert Frost.

The Road not Taken
Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
and having perhaps the better claim
because it was grassy and wanted wear;
though as for that, the passing there
had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
in leaves no feet had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less travelled by,
and that has made all the difference

The question is: how does he know that it has made all the difference?

US Media and self-censorship

The UN working group on arbitrary detention has published a statement today. Its been widely trailed in the UK media. Interestingly Google News's page guantanamo - Google News, has pretty much no US news sites in the first ten (this will no doubt change, and I may put up a saved link later).

This is not the first time that I've notices international condemnation of the US being downplayed in US media. I don't believe that the press is serving the US public well when it doesn't report this sort of story. The reputation of the US has been trashed in the past few years, with many people in Europe, the Middle East and Asia believing that it is a serial abuser of human rights. If I were a US citizen I'd want to know this.

The Open Society and its Enemies

The Open Society and its Enemies

Shades of Kafka.

IBritain will be first country to monitor every car journey

Britain will be first country to monitor every car journey

This is scary. Enormous potential for abuse and very little in the way of public oversight.