tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-194982442010-01-22T07:20:10.465-08:00Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1143606450668303902006-03-28T20:12:00.000-08:002006-03-28T20:27:30.723-08:00

I was watching TV the other day and saw this ad from Cisco.Its the one where a nitwit boss walks into the datacenter and asks about security. The ops guy is a smiling Indian sycophant that say's 'Can I help you sir?' and the boss says something like 'I'm looking for our security'.They go on and talk about 'blinky things' and 'doohickeys', it such a pathetic stereotype it's boarders on the

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1141666677698870512006-03-06T09:18:00.000-08:002006-03-06T11:25:03.063-08:00

I forgot to mention in my last post that one of the reasons I've gone dark here at TumblingDuke was that my laptop's disk crashed.I'm pretty spotty about backing up my data (but at least I do it), and it had been almost a month since I did it last. The thought of loosing a month's data/work/email was pretty terrifying. As far as stress goes, I think a disk crash ranks right up there with

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1141238996697242102006-03-01T10:23:00.000-08:002006-03-01T15:06:35.786-08:00

It's been a while since my last post. I haven't abandoned Tumbling Duke, it's just a that I've been preoccupied with some other things...Related to that, some random observations:1. Just about anything you can imagining building has a open source project for it. 2. Most open source projects are orphans.3. Most open source software is buggy and unusable, except for the people that developed

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1139248083879302042006-02-06T09:24:00.000-08:002006-02-08T19:41:39.940-08:00

I've read a few more articles and posts (here, here and here) on the AOL/Yahoo initiatives to charge high volume senders and find myself in what seems to be the tiny minority of people that think this is a good thing.Let's take a look at the constituents involved here and see who is better off, who is not, and who has an incentive to change.If I have an email account with either Yahoo or AOL,

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1139111739581477592006-02-04T19:43:00.000-08:002006-02-05T06:56:52.690-08:00

The recent announcement that Yahoo and AOL will start to charge bulk mail senders to bypass spam filters seems to be generating quite a controversy.But it comes as no surprise to me that the only ones complaining are the free riders. I've read their arguments and they're all blatantly self serving.The direct email marketers say they can't afford to send you their valuable 'Free Vacation' email

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1139006295768039802006-02-03T14:31:00.000-08:002006-02-03T14:51:01.260-08:00

I read that Bill Gates' tax return is kept on a separate computer by the IRS. Apparently, the standard systems can't handle the large numbers....I call this the Y2R problem. You're Too Rich.

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1138170087836497582006-01-24T22:16:00.000-08:002006-01-28T22:53:56.706-08:00

Dave Cowan has a great post on what he expects to see in an elevator pitch. One thing I think he should have added is a rule to include a direct comparison to the next best alternative. Without this, there is no reference point. Without the reference point, how can you know what you're doing is any better? IMHO, this is key.Its in his example, just not one of his rules.My perspective on this

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1138127685336713542006-01-24T10:12:00.000-08:002006-05-20T20:58:23.543-07:00

Got some quick feedback on my post about Google setting Third Party Cookies. Thanks to Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Watch (via John Battelle) who set me straight with his post revealing that its Firefox prefetching the first listing in the search results. Google takes advantage of the Firefox/Mozilla feature that prefetches the first search result.Clever feature I guess. But I'm going to turn

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1138078185920374442006-01-23T20:41:00.000-08:002006-01-24T09:46:38.323-08:00

I remove my cookies every so often just to reset my click stream with sites I visit. Well, today when I did that, I also changed the settings in Firefox that determines how long to keep a cookie.I have to say that I was completely shocked to see that when I use Google, some of my keywords cause cookies to be written with third party domains! For example, when I search for 'cars' I'm asked to

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1137695905331623552006-01-19T10:33:00.000-08:002006-01-19T10:45:27.836-08:00

The rumor that sex.com was recently sold for $14 million reminded me of the time when my friend Gary Kremen asked me for some help registering some domain names.At the time (~1993/4) there were no domain registration fees but you were limited to registering only about 25 domains (might have been ~75, can't remember exactly). Gary had a list of several hundred domain names he wanted to register

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1137692168987191592006-01-19T09:33:00.000-08:002006-01-20T01:43:57.663-08:00

Fast on the heals of Nikon's announcement to discontinue production of many of their film-based cameras, Konica Minolta follows suit.

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1137625169874324302006-01-18T14:46:00.000-08:002006-01-18T15:24:32.426-08:00

I was looking over the ref URLs for the visitors to this blog the other day. Its interesting to see which keywords cause Tumbling Duke to rank high in organic search results.There's always a fair amount of traffic coming from a Google search on 'Google Stock Units'. It turns out that the number one result from Google when searching for 'Google Stock Units' is my post.How can that be? I checked my

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1137622859243881002006-01-18T14:10:00.000-08:002006-01-19T08:38:43.013-08:00

I've been pretty happy with Google Desktop since I first installed it. I even upgraded to v2 a while back. I turned off all the annoying toolbar stuff, but overall it's been OK. I liked the way it could quickly find an email from the thousands I keep on my laptop.However, recently I noticed that my performance wasn't what it used to be and I would often hear the disk seek. It's an old 533MHz

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1137427362233743512006-01-16T07:53:00.000-08:002006-01-19T08:46:46.696-08:00

I read today that Seagate is shipping their new 160GB perpendicular recording disk drive.If you want to learn more about how they do this, check out this article from Hitachi. If you just want to see the nerdy flash animation, check this out.Now I've got a bigger place for my stuff.

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1137261383533545502006-01-14T09:54:00.000-08:002006-01-14T11:10:10.230-08:00

I saw this article in the NYT today about the celebrity swag bags given to presenters, etc. at events like the Oscars and Golden Globes. Apparently, it's beginning to fall out of favor.I used to get a ton of swag at trade shows. Most of it never made it home since I threw most of it out. But sometimes there was some cool thing that everyone wanted, like the clutch transaxel light-up yo-yo.

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1137204305810518692006-01-13T17:56:00.000-08:002006-01-13T18:05:05.820-08:00

I posted a few days ago about my surprise that personal phone records could be purchase for $100-$200. I predicted that we'd be hearing more about this obvious breach of privacy at the carriers. Well, it didn't take very long.1. Sen. Schumer is introducing legislation next week to make it a crime for someone to obtain call information under false pretenses or for a wireless company employee to

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1137098879605570382006-01-12T12:41:00.000-08:002006-01-16T18:14:35.680-08:00

The news today that Nikon is phasing out its film-based cameras shouldn't come as news to anyone paying attention to technology trends or the habits of photographers.This article from the NYT says that Nikon's film camera body business shrank from 16% of revenue to 3% in a single year. Even if you assume 25% revenue growth (total guess on my part), revenue dropped more than 75%, in a single

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1136950498050910332006-01-10T19:31:00.000-08:002006-01-10T19:34:58.060-08:00

I read on the Salesforce.com blog that API calls account for over 40% of their total traffic!Unbelievable.Aside from the obvious point that over 40% of the interactions with their application don't use their website, the implications of this are significant.The programmable web is really taking off. But still, I don't think most people recognize it.When it does becomes obvious it will seem like

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1136652289708301252006-01-07T08:29:00.000-08:002006-01-07T08:57:28.740-08:00

That's what I thought was going to happen. But Wily+CA? I'm a little disappointed....First, because I thought that IntroScope would be a perfect fit for HPOV. Second, because CAs track record on acquisitions isn't all that great. I've always considered them to be bottom feeders and the acquirer of last resort. 6x TTM revenue isn't bad, but since they weren't profitable, I guess that's pretty

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1136607561313829872006-01-06T20:15:00.000-08:002006-01-15T05:56:36.196-08:00

I read this article today that says that anyone's cell phone records can be purchased for about $400. I'm more than a little surprised by this.How are this records gathered? Is this a massive breach of privacy by the carriers? The article says that:Some online services might be skirting the law to obtain these phone lists, according to Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has called for

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1136505952291850812006-01-05T15:56:00.000-08:002006-01-05T18:40:37.843-08:00

Today I read of Mark Pincus' travails trying to overcome the insidious consequences of being misquoted (malquoted, if I can coin my own sniglet) in the London Times. In what seems like an honest mistake, an ignorant, vitriolic comment on his blog was published in an article and attributed to him.Ouch!Instead of quoting 'Mark Pincus' Blog', they quoted 'Mark Pincus'.What a difference a word

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1135812801428958752005-12-28T15:27:00.000-08:002005-12-28T16:15:49.083-08:00

Matt Marshall at SiliconBeat follows up on his article from today's Merc about Tim Draper's strategy for global expansion that filled in a lot of the gaps. That made me feel a little better since when I first read the article I was going to fire off a cynical email asking basically: hasn't he written this article before? Wacky Tim Draper, family business, elephants, Batman, Frisbee, Hotmail,

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1135722885955313822005-12-27T14:31:00.000-08:002005-12-27T17:24:58.510-08:00

The yield curve inverted today for the first time since '00. I read a few articles that say this typically indicates a recession. I read other articles that say this time is different.I don't remember all my macro IS-LM stuff, but it seems that one reason shorter term 2-5 yr. ARMs have become so popular is because, as a mortgage product, they more closely match homeowners investment horizon.

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1135379392876002692005-12-23T15:01:00.000-08:002005-12-23T15:12:30.390-08:00

I just got back from Safeway where I had to buy some dishwashing liquid. I scanned the shelf and came across 'Non Ultra Joy', as in, not 'Ultra Joy'. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.I was reminded of a Marketing class I was in where Dr. Dish was the guest lecturer. Seriously. I think he had a Ph.D. in stats or something. This guy was the head of dishwashing soap marketing at P&G (I think)

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19498244.post-1135356267047850552005-12-23T08:34:00.000-08:002005-12-29T23:12:45.306-08:00

I got some emails asking to further clarify which claims were infringed etc. Here's a little more detail.We believed the infringed claim was number #6.6. A computer-implemented method of servicing requests for resources from a client by nodes containing different resources, the computer-implemented method comprising the steps of:making a connection and setting up a session between the client and

Chris Marinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18387920502337757555noreply@blogger.com4