My Clippings on NewsGator Online

Looking at Wave

Judi Sohn — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:58:39 GMT

This week, Google announced something they’re calling Google Wave. What is it? I’m still trying to figure it out. I hope Google edits that 80 minute video down to something more digestible.

On the surface, it appears to be a platform that allows for real-time rich media collaboration with a Google spin. Kind of like if Ning, Google Talk, Gmail, Twitter and Facebook got smooshed together into a single open source environment. The idea is that you don’t have to go to 6 different windows to do 8 different things, you can have it all in one place, with one network per subject/focus area, and it all works together. Bloggers are focusing on it as some sort of email replacement, but I shudder to think of that happening.

It looks neat and very interesting. But the reality as I see it?

Early-adopter-types (you know who you are) will talk about it nonstop for a while, and then forget about it until it actually launches.
Said early-adopter-types will embrace it when launched, and will use it to collaborate with other early-adopter-types who blog about things early-adopter-types like to blog about and will have to be continually reminded that the rest of the world doesn’t care (see Friendfeed for what I’m talking about).
A few adventurous folks will try it out in their real-world communities (work, social communities, family networks, etc.). They’ll invite their friends, family and co-workers to check out the new shiny with visions of how it will change the face of communication. Those “regular” people will try it for 15 minutes, be confused and overwhelmed depending how much of the bling the early-adopter puts in (and maybe just a bit bored), and not return.
Pieces of the technology will work its way into mainstream tools, rather than anything like we see now in the demos really taking off on its own outside geek circles.

Google is focusing on the developer community first in this “proof of concept” project. The more gizmos and gadgets available for this thing the better, right? Somehow, I wonder if they have it backwards. When has making something slick and widget-y first ever brought mass appeal to a new concept? Is mass appeal even Google’s goal here? I think Facebook took off because by the time most “regular” people joined, the party was already rolling. They signed up and the network immediately threw 15 people at them they already knew to get them started.

Gmail focused on simplicity first (great spam filtering, super fast search, conversation grouping) and then along came Labs years later to make it all interesting and wiz-bang. As for Twitter, I think that works because what can be lower maintenance than SMS or a single simple column of short messages? Yes, it’s overload for those following hundreds or thousands of people or using TweetDeck to track 15 different search terms, but the majority of regular folks I come across are following less than 100 people. I always laugh when the early-adopter-types follow 1500 people, turn on every bell & whistle, and then complain about how cluttered or overloaded something is.

Facebook went real time and the experience suffered. We’re sticking with it because our connections are already there, so we slog through all the quizzes, kisses and other clutter. It seems people think they want real time updates, but what they really want is intelligent real time updates. Only tell me what I want to know when I want to know it. I may be bored one evening and care that my friend is most like Ginger from Gilligan’s Island. Other times, I only want to see status updates or comments around a particular subject. I don’t want the Internet to just throw data at me.

Maybe I’m cynical because I’m finding it a bit annoying that Google is hyping Wave to coordinate communication between contacts across different spaces, and the built-in Contact management in Gmail still sucks the way it does. If I used Mail.app or Outlook, I’d have a unified address book which can easily be shared/accessed across multiple email accounts. Is that too much to ask, Google?

Let Freedom Ring

Mark — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:50:48 GMT

By a 5 to 4 decision, the NOI have ruled that broadcasters can be fined by the government (the FCC) when a person on live TV blurts out one so-called indecent word like "fuck" or "shit". The unelected dictators reversed an appeals court decision that enforcement of the rule against accidental speaking of one of the forbidden words (shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits) was "arbitrary and capricious". Dictator Scalia:

“The agency’s reasons for expanding its enforcement activity, moreover, were entirely rational,” Justice Antonin Scalia said in summarizing the court’s majority ruling from the bench.

“Even when used as an expletive, the F-word’s power to insult and offend derives from its sexual meaning,” he said.

My reply to Scalia: So fucking what? There are no conditions attached to the First Amendment’s prohibition of government regulation of speech. The FCC is unconstitutional and Scalia and the other 4 on the court who voted against free speech are conservative statists. But I suppose I forgot that the constitution is a quaint, old-fashioned, meaningless document. Or is it a "living document"? I’m getting old and my memory fails me.

Marquee Fail

pizzaburger — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:00:20 GMT

Submitted by NathanAndDavid

Sandy Seattle

Mark — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:05:44 GMT

Last Winter Seattle screwed up big time in removing snow. The process was politicized so that snow was removed from the routes used by politicians and some critical streets to hospitals remained clogged with vehicles when the snow was not removed. Moreover, the government didn’t want to use salt to melt the ice and snow, citing concerns about its impact on chinook salmon habitat, i.e., for politically correct reasons. So, instead of salt, the government used tons of sand (more than 12,000 tons) to dump on top of the ice to try to make streets passable. This policy failed miserably.

Now the sand is showing up in waste water treatment plants and is blocking pumps and damaging filtration equipment. From the Seattle Times article cited above:

Seattle’s failed winter-storm strategy — which involved dumping nearly 12,400 tons of sand on iced-over streets last December — is causing new problems for a wastewater-treatment plant, where unprecedented amounts of grit from city storm drains have plugged up pumps and triggered emergency repairs.

“We’re getting hammered,” said Wade Schrader, a maintenance mechanic at the West Point Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Plant operators called the situation “unprecedented” and attributed it to heavy rains that apparently flushed out pockets of sand and gravel still remaining on city streets four months after it was dropped.

The volume of material became so heavy April 16 that it shut down a pump and forced the early shutdown of a basin that filters grit from wastewater before it’s treated and released into Puget Sound.

Problems at the plant, while unintended, were not exactly unforeseen.

Plant manager Pam Elardo said her boss sent her a newspaper article about the amount of sand Seattle was using to combat a series of storms that rolled over the area in December.

[snip]

Transportation managers dispatched sweepers to clean up the sanding material after the storms passed. They stepped up their efforts in late January — paying a private contractor $42,000 to help them — after receiving reports that bicyclists were being injured by riding into roadside sand berms.

In an e-mail to The Seattle Times in February, Sheridan wrote that “SDOT is confident we are aggressively cleaning the streets and preventing significant amounts of sand from entering catch basins and drainage pipes.”

He did not respond to repeated phone and e-mail requests Friday to discuss how so much sand could end up at the plant if the city’s sweeping strategy had been successful.

A spokesman for Mayor Greg Nickels also did not respond to requests to discuss the issue.

Our public servants in action. Not only did they mess up but they refuse to talk about it. They’re waiting for the next crisis to distract our attention from their failure. I think they’ve found it in the government panic over the swine flu.

English Russia » World’s Biggest Submarine [with pics]

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:26:09 GMT

Two Guys In A Garage Invent Bacon Salt, Quit Their Day Jobs [Entrepreneurs]

Ben Popken — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 02:03:28 GMT

They say recessions are good times for innovation and a time to start your own business, and Justin Esch and Dave Lefkow are proving both true with their invention, Bacon Salt. Building from the simple idea that "everything should taste like bacon," these two entrepreneurs quit their successful tech jobs and started their alchemical project out of their garage. By showing up at sporting events dressed as bacon and using Facebook and Twitter, they racked up 800 orders in the first week and sold out of Bacon Salt in 6 days. An inspiration for anyone with the entrepreneurial desire sizzling inside them.

'Bacontrepreneurs' Building Bacon Empire [ABC]
Baconsalt [Official Site]

RE: Open Source It?

Brent Simmons — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:37:42 GMT

I like iterative development too. I prefer it.

But there are cases where you can't iterate. I've spent the last six months working on NetNewsWire 2.0 for iPhone. (It's the same code as the news app framework for iPhone.) Even though the APIs are Mac-like and easy to learn, it's extremely time-consuming to really become expert in the platform, to learn how to get great performance and memory use. There's just no way out of spending huge amounts of time writing code, throwing it away, writing more, re-architecting, throwing away some more code, writing more -- and spending huge amounts in the profiler figuring out what works best.

An RSS reader really pushes the iPhone to its limits. It's like running 100 Twitter apps at once.

But that's not all -- there are other things I can't really do iteratively. I need to change the Mac version's storage system over to Core Data. I can't give it to beta testers until it works. No iterating possible there.

We've discussed Google syncing, too, which is another case where beta testers can't see the feature until it works. No way to iterate.

And, at the same time, just to make things more interesting -- I've been investing in my own productivity by figuring out how to share as much code as possible between NetNewsWire/iPhone-news-app-framework and NetNewsWire/Mac. Though that means more work now, it will pay off later as I have less code to maintain, as both projects use the best possible code.

Though I totally love the open source model, it would actually slow development way down. My management/communication overhead would be *huge.* I wouldn't be able to write code anymore.

And I know the problem space (RSS reading on Macs) better than anyone in the world. I've been doing it longer and more consistently. So I'd have the additional issues of having to bring other people up to speed.

It's not correct to think that NetNewsWire is a lower priority. I work on it every day and night and weekend. It's just a gathering of circumstances that has led to this seeming slow-down. (In reality I've been working harder than ever.) But it's not a permanent situation -- there will be new versions, and I'm *hugely* excited about them.

[posted by Brent Simmons in forum "Desktop Clients/NetNewsWire"]

Fuck the Teabag parties

John C. Welch — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:01:49 GMT

Lemme just say somethin' here.

I grew up poor. Not "living in a box" poor, but not always far from it either. My mom, at the HEIGHT of her earning power, around 1986, took home around $600 a month. My dad had been mangled in a car accident in 1978, and for a variety of reasons, some stupid, never really recovered from it. We had some bad debt incurred trying to help out a friend.

There were many times when the only reason I had chicken on my rice, or sometimes, even rice, was because of Food Stamps. My mom worked up until the day she went on Social Security, and yet, sometimes we needed help. My country was there for us. My fellow citizens, not so much. I vividly remember my mom stopping me from going medieval on the ass of some redneck jackass who called her "a lazy bitch who should get a fucking job and not be a welfare sponge on the back of good working people" like him. She yanked me back and said "People like that are so sad and pathetic on their own, we don't need to do anything to help them. Ignore them, and they'll go away". This was on the way home from her job. We walked. Because we didn't have a car.

Every morning my Mom woke up, and either walked or if she worked far enough from home, took a bus or two to work. But mostly she walked. In Miami. Then she'd walk home. If we had to get groceries, we carried them. we lived about a mile from the nearest grocery store. That's how she rolled.

But when times got too tight and her family needed food, even though we had no money for it, she'd swallow her pride and ask her country for help. By and large, she got it.

When I was a 19-year-old fuckup who had flunked out of college because getting drunk on South Beach was more important than studying, I made a deal with my country. It'd help me pull my head out of my ass, feed me, give me a place to live, and I'd go live in North Dakota and work on B-1Bs. I wasn't happy about the ND part, but such is life.

When *I* needed it, my country was there for me.

My entire life, I've had to be independent. Only child, my dad died before I was 30, my mom died when I was 32. There was no will. No endowment, no trust. Just some pictures, a set of Indy 500 glasses, and a shitpot of stubborn and attitude.

When I've needed help, that last resort, my country, has always been there.

The last few years, the last decade really, has been good to me. I'm making more money than my parents ever DREAMED of making. I have a nice place to live. If I choose to buy my house, as part of the ND deal, my country will be there and help me get that house, and guarantee that if I can't, they'll pay that debt, even though it's not theirs.

So if you think for one minute, that I'm going to whine and bitch and complain because I'm not only expected to pay TAXES but pay MORE because I'm doing well, you're fucking stupid. No one likes taxes, and we could do a better job with them...but a long time ago, someone else's taxes put food in my belly. Less long ago, someone's taxes helped me become more than I would have ever been on my own.

Bitch about it being my turn to step up and maybe pay so that someone else gets what they need to become more? Fuck that shit.

This country has been too good to me for me to pay it back by being a whiny, petty, cheap, shithead at a teabag party.

The Wolfenstick app can send and recieve data through the iPhone audio port

Mike Schramm — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Hardware, Software, Odds and ends, Developer, iPhone, SDK, iPod touch

This is interesting -- Alex Winston, Ltd. has come up with what they call the Wolfenstick, a little iPhone app that can control Wolfenstein 3D Classic with a second iPhone through the audio port. Obviously this isn't a very practical setup, as buying a second iPhone just to control games on the first one probably isn't in anyone's interest. But it does open up a whole slew of possibilities for how a connection like this might be used -- as you can see in the video above, not only are controls and the accelerometer able to be transferred, but even game and app information can be sent across the cable.

Of course, the 3.0 update casts a nice large shadow across ideas like this -- we know for sure that there will be more hooks for accessories to work with apps on the iPhone, so having to go through the audio port may end up being more of a novelty, as it'll likely be much easier to go through the connector on the bottom of the iPhone. But if you want to play while the unit is charging (or just want to connect two iPhones with nothing more than an audio cable), there's definitely some promise here.

TUAW The Wolfenstick app can send and recieve data through the iPhone audio port originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

External Link: Monoprice Offers HDCP-compliant Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter

doug_mclean@tidbits.com (Doug McLean) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:03:13 GMT

Looking for a way to hook up your Mini DisplayPort-equipped Mac to an HDTV? Ars Technica reports that accessories wholesaler Monoprice is offering a $14 Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter. Most interestingly, the HDCP-compliant adapter enables playback of protected HD content on your Mac - such as you might buy from the iTunes Store - to be displayed on an HDTV, something that isn't possible on many monitors.

Copyright © 2009 Doug McLean. TidBITS is copyright © 2009 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

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Mon, 06 Apr 2009 04:00:00 GMT

Get A Real Mystery Shopping Job With Consumer Reports [Jobs]

Ben Popken — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:02:04 GMT

Hey Consumer Reports is hiring actual mystery shoppers to do actual mystery shopping. You can earn some coin, help out other consumers at the same time, and help with the results that end up in the Consumer Reports magazine. Pretty swell. The job posting is inside.

Consumer Reports, published by Consumers Union, is currently looking for Mystery Shoppers throughout the United States. These freelance mystery shoppers are called on to survey stores for product information; buy and ship products; and act as our "in the field" representative of consumers in a variety of marketplace situations.

To be a Mystery Shopper you must have a means of transportation from your home to stores in your assigned area; be organized, detail-oriented, reliable, flexible, reachable, able to meet tight deadlines, and be proficient with email and spreadsheets (Excel). Much of the work consists of seeking out specific products and writing down label details, including dates and lot codes. You may be required purchase and ship large quantities of products, sometimes using dry ice for perishables

We are currently looking for people who live in the metropolitan areas of the states listed below.

Arizona
California
Connecticut
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Missouri
Michigan
Nevada
New York (North and West of Albany)
New Jersey
Ohio
Pennsylvania
Texas
Virginia
Washington State

As part of your application process, please submit the following:
• Name, address, city and state, plus nearest metropolitan city(ies)
• Resume (optional but helpful)
• If currently employed, include name of employer and indicate full-time or part-time; or indicate if you are a student.
• 3-5 retailers for each of the following, all within 20 miles of your home: supermarkets, drugstores, discount or department stores, and 1-2 warehouse clubs.
• A paragraph (up to 300 words) on why you think you would make a great mystery shopper for Consumer Reports. Include the challenges you think you'll face.
Assignments can be sporadic. Our mystery shoppers may receive 1-2 projects a month, or none at all. Projects generally take several hours and often require fast turnaround, so you'll need to be flexible, reachable during the day by email and telephone, and available when called upon. Results need to be emailed to us, often with Excel attachments. If you are selected as a candidate, you will be given a test assignment to assess your skills in accuracy and following directions.

Mystery shoppers are paid at a rate of $12/hour for their work and are required to follow project guidelines very carefully. As part of their role, shoppers are required to demonstrate the highest ethical behavior, which includes never using the name of Consumer Reports to obtain special or preferential treatment. Because of the highly sensitive and confidential nature of this role, all offers are contingent upon you signing a Confidentiality Agreement.

Interested? Please send the above requested information to shoppers@cro.consumer.org. Because of the volume of emails we receive, we cannot respond to all emails received.

(Photo: geoff_hazel)

Fake April Fools' Day Product Sparks Demand For Real Version [Market Research]

Chris Walters — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:40:11 GMT

Of all companies, ThinkGeek should know that you never taunt a sci-fi nerd with something movie related unless it really exists. Yesterday the company revealed its annual page of fake products to trick customers, including squeezable bacon spread and a "Unicorn Chaser" soft drink. The best product of all, however, was this Tauntaun sleeping bag (check out the tiny lightsaber on the zipper pull!), which sparked so much demand that the company is looking into selling it for real.

Today, ThinkGeek modified the product page to add this note:

Due to an overwhelming tsunami of requests from YOU THE PEOPLE, we have decided to TRY and bring this to life. We have no clue if the suits at Lucasfilms will grant little ThinkGeek a license, nor do we know how much it would ultimately retail for.

You can sign up on the ThinkGeek fake product page to be emailed "IF available" in the future.

"Tauntaun Sleeping Bag" [ThinkGeek] (Thanks to Rob!)

Should You Worry About Data Rot?

By David Pogue — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:24:57 GMT

David Pogue interviews Dag Spicer, curator of the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, about outdated or damaged storage mediums.

What I Learned from Having My Laptop Stolen

david@63p.com (David Blatner) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:47:39 GMT

Someday, somewhere, somehow your computer will be gone. It will be stolen, or the hard drive will self-destruct, or it will be hit by a meteor. While the latter would at least provide you with an excellent story, having your laptop stolen, as mine was recently, just plain sucks. However, I did manage to learn a few things in the wake of disaster, and wanted to take the opportunity to share them with you here.

Three things are lost with a computer’s theft: hardware, data, and privacy. I’ll let others deal with the emotional aspects of loss, and instead focus on the practical ones.

The loss of the hardware is, in many ways, the least of your problems. Sure, it’s money out the door, but as my mom once told me, you can always make more money. That said, I do encourage you to make sure your computer is insured. Many homeowner insurance policies do not cover computers that are used primarily for work, or those that are stolen offsite (like from a car). Be sure to check your policies carefully.

I would also recommend installing tracking software on your computer. Of the various options on the market, I picked MacTrak by GadgetTrak for my replacement computer based on several factors: I really liked the company’s owner, who I met at his Macworld booth; I don’t like the idea of a third-party company being the mediator between me and the tracking data (as other companies do); and I like the relatively simple and straightforward approach the software takes.

If my new laptop is stolen, I log into the GadgetTrak Web site and report it missing. The next time my computer pings their server, it sees the status and starts occasionally taking pictures (with the built-in iSight camera) and reporting its location (based on whatever WiFi address the thief is using). Those photos and data go directly to me, and it’s up to me to give that information to law enforcement.

There are a number of other products and companies that can track your Mac including LoJack and Undercover. While both programs have some interesting features (Undercover in particular does some things I’d like to see incorporated into a future version of MacTrak, such as taking screen shots as the thief works and simulating a hardware failure to force the thief into bringing the machine in for repair), evaluating them should be saved for another article.

So tracking helps protect against the loss of hardware, but what about the loss of data? This was my biggest concern at first, considering I kept everything on my laptop and was not that conscientious about backing it up. Lucky for me I had two things in my favor. First, I had been using SuperDuper about once a month to back up the whole laptop to an external hard drive. It’s easy, cheap, and painless to back up a complete copy of a computer, or make incremental backups regularly.

Second, I had installed a copy of CrashPlan a year or so earlier. CrashPlan is one of several programs on the market that sits in the background and backs up your hard drive to either an external drive, another computer (on your local network or one connected to the internet) that has the software, or to a central location (see “CrashPlan: Backups Revisited,” 2007-02-26). I chose to store my data at CrashPlan's bank vault in Minneapolis for about $5 per month.

About two hours before my laptop was stolen, I had stopped in at Glenn Fleishman's and Jeff Carlson’s office to say hi and check my email. While there, CrashPlan quietly backed up a few more files without me even knowing it. Thanks to those few minutes of being online, I was later able to recover about 95 percent of my data. The only significant data I lost was the previous month’s worth of photos in iPhoto (which I had for some reason instructed CrashPlan to ignore).

Some of you may be asking, “But what about Time Machine?” Well, to be honest, it didn’t work for me at first, and after 5 minutes of troubleshooting I got tired of it and gave up. For those still curious as to how CrashPlan sizes up to Time Machine, you can find a comparison of the two options on CrashPlan’s Web site.

My next overwhelming sense of loss (and that which stays with me to this day) was the loss of privacy. I did use a program called KeePass to protect my passwords and some other private information (I now use 1Password, which offers far more features, such as autofill in login screens). But what about my Quicken files? Or photos of my family? Contracts and other business documents? Suddenly all of that was in someone else’s hands.

After about 5 days, I logged into the CrashPlan Central server and saw that all the files it was backing up had been deleted from my laptop. Or at least, it simply couldn’t find them anymore. That was a small relief, but ultimately I don’t really know what happened to the data, which leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.

So here’s how I’m doing it differently on my new laptop. First, in the Security pane of System Preferences, I turned on the checkboxes labeled “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver” and “Disable automatic login.”

Next, I created a new Guest Account in System Preferences. In the guest account, I set up Parental Controls so a user can’t really do much beyond log in, use iLife, surf the Web, and so on. More importantly, behind the scenes, I have granted MacTrak to run quietly. The idea is that a thief, not being able to log into my account, will find that they can log into the Guest account, which will enable me to capture their whereabouts. It may be a long shot, but it’s better than nothing.

On top of that, I have used Firmware Password Utility to lock my firmware, stopping anyone from reformatting the hard drive, launching from an external disk, or even starting the laptop up as an external FireWire drive. (For more information, see Apple’s support article about setting up a firmware password.) I’m sure someone will soon tell me that it’s surmountable, but so far it seems pretty dang secure.

I’ve implemented two other security options on my new computer. First, before leaving for a recent overseas trip, I dug out an old Kensington cable lock that I bought about a decade ago but never got around to using. Being able to lock my laptop to a table gives me a little extra peace of mind.

Second, here at home, I also have two fireproof media safes for backup DVDs and CDs. Note that I said “media safes” - regular safes may be fireproof for paper, but electronic media will melt in them. I had to get two because the space inside is tiny (the majority of the safe is concrete or some other heavy and thick material).

There are still plenty of other security options I could choose to utilize. For example, I know Mac OS X has FileVault, but the fact that it encrypts the entire Home folder (including gigabytes of photos and videos) puts me off.

Ultimately, I feel that the measures I’ve taken are relatively inexpensive, easy to implement, and leave me with a comfortable sense of security. Sure, the NSA could crack it, and yes, a meteor could still do some serious damage, but if some jerk steals my computer again I won’t hyperventilate or panic. It’ll be okay.

[David Blatner is arguably the world’s most-recognized authority on Adobe InDesign and the co-host of the site InDesign Secrets.]

Copyright © 2009 David Blatner. TidBITS is copyright © 2009 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

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Academic Earth Aggregates Lectures from MIT, Harvard, Yale, and Others [Education]

Adam Pash — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:40:00 GMT

Web site Academic Earth is like Hulu for academic lectures, pulling free lectures from Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale into one attractive, easy to navigate site. It's incredible.

The site clearly takes its cues from Hulu and iTunes on its design, but it's ten times better than either, because it's open. The videos can be embedded anywhere or downloaded and enjoyed wherever you want to take them. It's easy to use, has tons of great content, and it doesn't cost a dime.

We've highlighted these free courses before individually, like MIT's OpenCourseWare or Stanford's Engineering Everywhere, and we rounded up even more of them when we showed you how to get a free college education online, but Academic Earth takes the idea to an even better place. We love it.

O Misfortuna

Jake Vinson — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Cabe B. closed his eyes tightly and sighed. His pager was vibrating and beeping a sad interpretation of O Fortuna. And yet again, their most important server had gotten precipitously hot. If the situation wasn't remedied, XDISP1 would shut down.

It was the early 2000s and Cabe was working for a small startup. And for all the freedom, responsibility, and opportunities to get creative that his position afforded, it was a little frustrating that the budget for the "datacenter" wasn't larger. It was a claustrophobic little room with walls and shelves holding mostly repurposed workstations that were acting as servers and telecom equipment. The A/C was unreliable, and would die several times each month. As such, the equipment was always on the brink of overheating. With a ladle and water to pour over the servers, it could've been converted into a decent little steam room. Cabe wanted to stay on top of all these issues, so he set up some monitoring tools that would page him the moment one of the servers reached a certain temperature.

Cabe casually walked to the server room all the way at the other side of the building. He'd heard his pager play O Fortuna more times than he could count, and what should be a distraction that happens once a month was now happening several times a week.

Learning to Hate the Classics

By the time he got there, the server room was fine. It was surprisingly cool inside, and the A/C wasn't even making the ka-chung sound that it made sometimes. XDISP1's fans were spinning quietly, and the case was cool to the touch. Cabe turned back, walked all the way back to his desk at to the other end of the building and sat down.

Five minutes later, his pager started beeping again. O For-tu-na, ve-lut lu-na, sta-tu va-ri-a-bi-lis, he thought. And after the long walk to the server room, he found it a pleasant, cool oasis, with servers and A/C quietly humming and zero sign of distress. W. T. F.

The same thing happened three more times that day; all from one server. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore. He got Sun on the horn and demanded they come out and fix the system, and set his pager to play Auld Lang Syne instead.

Sun came, replaced the motherboard, and the problem disappeared. That is, until the day after after they left. The server room (and the server), again, were fine by the time Cabe got there.

The problem persisted for weeks; it got to the point that Cabe had temperature sensors installed in the room so he could monitor not just the server's temperature, but the room's temperature from his desk. And for days, looking at the trends, there was never a significant dip. Meanwhile, his pager still was going off all the time. He tired of Auld Lang Syne, Hava Nagila, Fur Elise, and even freaking default beep.

Cabe wanted off the whirlwind tour of crappy pager renditions of the classics. He told his boss that the following day he'd be in the server room and unavailable by phone, and he'd blocked all appointments for that day. He carried his laptop into the server room and set up shop.

The World's Most Expensive Clipboard

It was a little awkward in the cramped room when Joe walked in; neither of them even exchanged a friendly "hello." Joe dropped his notepad, as well as a printout of a trouble ticket that referenced one of the servers in the room. Cabe picked it up and handed it to him. "Ah, thanks, bro," he said, turning to hold it up against XDISP1's intake vent.

The server was at about eye level, and the suction from the intake vent kept Joe's printout in place. Joe typed away, occasionally glancing at the printout that was cheerfully blocking the air flow, while Cabe summoned all of his strength not to slap his own forehead. Or to slap Joe, for that matter. The server began gasping for cool air until it choked, causing Cabe's pager to beep The Ride of the Valkyries in a desperate plea for help.

After asking Joe to please not kill the server, he checked the overheating history against resolved tickets from Joe. Sure enough, the outages were almost all within thirty minutes of a "resolved time" in one of Joe's tickets.

For that and other unrelated screwups, Joe was let go, and a post-it was stuck to the side of XDISP1 reminding people not to use the server as a clipboard. That day, Cabe set the outage notifications to play Pictures at an Exhibition, and thankfully hasn't heard it since.

Brought to you by the Non-WTF Job Board:

Drummer Comes Up With World's Best Tiered Pricing Structure For New Album [Music]

Chris Walters — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:02:51 GMT

Trent Reznor and Radiohead have been dealt a serious blow in the tiered pricing war for album releases. Josh Freese, a member of Devo and A Perfect Circle who's also played for NIN, Sting, The Offspring, and more!, has just released his solo album today. Aside from the free single or vanilla $7 album download option, you can pay anywhere from $15 to $75,000 for increasingly more bizarre package deals.

At the cheaper end of the tier, $50 will get you the digital download, a double disc set, a t-shirt, and a 5-minute phone call with Freese to discuss anything you like—including what you liked or didn't like about the album. Too boring? Buy the $250 package and you'll get signed drumsticks, plus you can have lunch with Freese at The Cheesecake Factory or PF Changs. The $5,000 package includes (among other things) a letter from Stone Gossard of Pearl Jam telling you about his favorite song on the album.

But wait there's more! If you're willing to spend a sizable amount of money, the perks get even weirder: there's only one $10,000 package, but that's because included alongside the foot massage and day at Disneland, Freese will give you his Volvo station wagon, of which he obviously only has one. The $20,000 package includes 2 original songs written for or about you, and you get sing back up or play ("the drums, triangle, whatever") on them.

Wired has an interview with Freese where he discusses how he came up with the ideas, and insists that they're all legit. They're on sale starting today, and you can see the details of every package on his website.

Naturally, he's made a YouTube commercial about it:

"Drummer's Crazy Album Extras Take 'Freemium' to Weirdville" [Wired]
joshfreese.com

It Takes 35 Taco Bell Hot Sauce Packets To Refill Your Hot Sauce Bottle [Frugality]

Meg Marco — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:30:13 GMT

Are you the type of person who saves hot sauce packets? Well, we have good news. Reader Dennis has discovered that it takes 35 Taco Bell hot sauce packets to refill your store bought hot sauce bottle.

Now you know.

How many.....packets of Taco Bell Fire Sauce does it take to refill a bottle of it? [Dennis Judd]

Fire the AIG Management

John Gruber — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:41:37 GMT

Philip Greenspun:

We (the taxpayers) own AIG. We should fire the top 20 managers immediately as an example to the rest. They should be replaced with people who have never been employed by AIG; it would be bad to promote the next tier of AIG employees up to the top because that would effectively be a reward for their demonstrated incompetence in 2008.

Is it risky to replace the top management of a company? We voters do it every 4-8 years for the U.S. government, a vastly more complex operation than AIG.

I would add this: How could all-new management possibly do worse? AIG, today, is perhaps the single worst-run corporation in the history of the world.

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