Posts by Gannon (J.) Dick

.com.us loves you

But as you all know, it's a love that dare not speak its name because if it did Law Enforcement would have to call what large multi-nationals do "Fraud" instead of "Innovation", and they'd have to pay taxes on offshore earnings, and they'd have to obey Asian Labor Laws, and they'd have to drown kittens, lots of kittens.

Pay no attention to ICANN and IANA, think of the kittens.

Now Americans know ...

... why Sarah Palin writes speech notes on her palm.

"So an expansion of FOI into Post-It Note™ territory promises rich pickings for all."

Next up: "Hollywood sues 4 year old in Silly Putty Comic Book Copyright caper ..."

A Modest Prior Art

Swift got there first. What's MS to do ?

Harrumph

Apple's capture and trademarking of complex number notation z={Re} + i{Im} should cement the Sociopath Legend.

In the end, it is Andy Warhol's Enduring Gift of ONLY 15 minutes of fame which will save the human race form further "Steve Jobs: Asshole or Narcissist ?" foolishness.

(hand gesture)

Anything else you want to know ?

2009 ?

The wheels of Justice grind slowly, but exceedingly ... um, could we see that clip again ?

This.Sucks

So, $500k will get me, Gannon.Dick, through firewalls ? I think not.

@Muckminded

From one Calendar Day, to the next, I think. Then at least the math works. A "Return" on investment implies retrograde motion of some sort. To put it a different way ... when you deposit money in a Bank today and withdraw it tomorrow, you are really the Bank's Bank.

Economic Time

Of course Finance has been doing this since the 16th Century. Their solution was to say only 'return' (retrograde motion) mattered, and quadrature of the transcendental functions pushed all the leap days to the end of time. Since the actual doubling period for this 'interest' was far outside the lifetime of humans, bankers convinced us that value was fractional, interest was fractional, time was fractional, but currency was discrete. Pay up or we're taking your car. This was the original Leap-Year-Smear.

My advice, which unfortunately few will take, is to ignore Google's cute trick - smoothing Longitude - and to recognize the social damage done over the centuries by Latitude based exploitation of employees (Labor-For-Hire). It's clever to fool a Network to the tune of ~1000 milliseconds a year, but to fool by coercion generations of slaves is not so clever.

Here's how it works: "The Latitude Effect" http://tinyurl.com/white-nights-forever

in loco helicopterentis

"Jeff Sandquist, senior director of developer relations for Microsoft and self-confessed car nut, said he loves the app because he can follow his daughter around remotely while she drives her VW Beetle."

"El Reg hopes for his sake Sandquist’s kids aren’t picking his retirement home."

But thanks to the new Patricide 1.0 app announced jointly by a consortium of Google, Apple, Oracle, Yahoo, IBM and a bunch of other people who can remember being teenagers, they won't have to!

BigTable, without the piles of money.

'The NSA believes this may be of interest to government and health care operations and other outfits concerned with privacy. It acknowledges, however, that the access labels do not constitute a "complete security solution".'

Might work. I think a "complete security solution" regarding personal privacy would have entailed apprenticing Eric Schmidt to a Plumber or Carpenter many years ago. Seems a bit late for that.

Help!

Hello, Help Desk, you there?

So, I downloaded the Version 4th Upgrade and now my Smart Phone doesn't work - all you can do is make phone calls.

Next

iSmash Cyclotron Tablet

Free WiFi

Didn't know it had been arrested. Pity that.

Don't Believe Toothfairy Propaganda

It will be here way before next Easter

A hundred and how many comments ?!

<rant>

<p>All these comments based upon a Shit Happens graph mislabeled as Adoption Curve or some such. What is up with that ? Don't you people have a neighborhood stores to burn down or something ?</p>

<p>Warren Buffett was absolutely correct (about taxing the wealthy) - the assumption that the 'winners' need special advantages to thrive (let alone that they actually notice, or appreciate) is crazy. They don't need fans, because they did it all themselves because they are brilliant, just ask them.</p>

</rant>

Thank you for your time. Resume misguided hero worship in 4...3...2...1...

Isandlwana, redux

Social Networking is Shaka Zulu's revenge. If you want to know how to Tweet, don't ask a chest full of medals, ask a 15 year old from Natal. Oh, and leave the 7 Pounders at home this time, they just slow you down.

But, but ...

The IPO Prospectus said they were coming into their own. I'm confused.

If you like it ...

... you should have put an O-Ring on it.

Not new, but worse

In the 1880's or so it became impossible to completely read the literature in a Natural Science discipline. By the time I graduated from College in the 1970's, my education was at best 5% rote memory, 95% Library. This is not new.

But what if the Library moved every 12 hours ? And, worse, what if the Card Catalog was not indexed to the new physical location, but rather ranked by original physical location ? How many times have you "found" a link only to forget to Bookmark it ? That is worse.

This smells of Insider Trading

World-class cynic that I am, I cannot help but see this as an overt attempt by Google to lure the SEC (stock watchdogs) into a turf war with the FTC (anti-trust issues).

"We just can't be bothered with anti-trust right now because some rogue engineer only told insiders that the privacy of Google+ was shit when she should have told everybody, and that was wrong and our stock might plunge a dime or more any day now and for god's sakes won't someone think of the children, etc. etc. etc." or something like that.

Maybe it's just me.

Klein Bottles

http://www.kleinbottle.com/drinking_mug_klein_bottle.htm

Open Source Standards

The Corporate behemoths are willing to take in (and lock-in) the poor saps stuck in No-Man's Land. Standards Authorities make a huge extinguishing mistake when they seek interoperability at the 'You' level. Their domain is No-Man's Land. When they give 'You' up, there is no further point.

The future is bright

In time you'll be able to edit your CV from "Moderatrix" to "Piano Player" ...

Good Luck

Does ths include ...

... the Facebook Currency ? Poor Mark's margins are only 30% I hear.

Please get me as far away ...

... from these fools as possible.

http://www.rustprivacy.org/2011/phase/climate-time.pdf

Sanctuary, not Safe Harbor

Google employs all the 'rogue engineers', Apple has all the 'holding it' experts. The rest of us don't need Safe Harbor, we need Sanctuary. Data security is not weather driven. The rules for The Cloud are no different than for taking a thumb drive out of the office. Sooner or later, the data **should have been** redacted, before you stored it on the external media.

If you weren't smart enough to figure out, a priori, what would get you into trouble, this may be of some help ...

http://www.rustprivacy.org/2011/pii/cnpii.xml

The key point is that if parties unknown are picking through your data, you need not have any guilt sending them off to chase their tails.

http://purl.org/pii/terms/