I find this filming style great for a few scenes, to create contrast, (Saving the Private Ryan?), but when it’s the whole film, it just makes me wanna puke.
District 9 has a nice story, but I think the director has Parkinson’s disease
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I love my job, thank you Google!
I’ve been feeling that way for a long time already, but I just want to say it out loud: I love my job!
It’s challenging, interesting, I work with extremely smart and nice people, the environment is productive while extremely relaxed, the Google offices all around the world and the working conditions definitely live up to all the good rumors about them, and I’m given the freedom to work on what I’m interested in.
A couple of days ago I was showing an engineering director how to compile and find his way through some code to help him start contributing in his spare time. I don’t know many companies where this would happen so naturally.
I thought that after 2.5 years of working in this company I’d have found at least a few things I disliked, but I didn’t. I’m sorry, this is gonna sound like some public relation person told me to say this, but I didn’t find any (maybe apart from the legendary Google fifteen). I just love my job.
Wifi-cracker Router Implementation?
Looks like some people are working on actually implementing what I half-jokingly called the Hadopi Router (aka Butterfly router in English) to protests about a French law.
This is starting to get interesting. I must say I was more hoping for a changing law rather than for an actual device, but I’m curious about what they’ll make of it. I did receive plenty of responses from that website from people asking if it would become available at some point…
“Nazi”, a metaphorical word?
Why do so many people use the word “nazi” metaphorically? This word has a very specific meaning in a very specific historical context. I think it’s dangerous to use it beyond its proper meaning.
There will be a time when all the victims and close parents of victims of the holocaust will have died out, and when the word “nazi” doesn’t really mean anything any more. When that time comes, everything will be ready for the world to see real nazis appear again, in whatever form will be most likely at that time.
This word is one of the few things that are left to remember what was probably the greatest tragedy of History (I think I am objective in saying that, my education, family and background being completely a-religious), I would love to see it stay intact.
The mind set of inventors?
It sounds to me like the mind set of inventors is to look at their everyday life from a distance and, every instant, think about what is deeply inconvenient in what they’re doing and what could be improved.
And I believe this is not easy at all: most of us are so used to doing things every day the usual way that it’s really hard to look at the situation from a fresh point of view.
Amazon’s eBook control spooky? Try out this Sony Reader workflow
The recent buzz about Amazon automatically deleting eBooks from people’s Kindle was interesting. For a little bit of contrast here’s the workflow I’ve been using for about 1.5 year now.
- Buy a Sony Reader. You can actually transfer PDFs and eBooks back and forth between the Reader and your computer without paying anything; I thought that in this post-DRM era sharing your own data with yourself ought to be normal, or am I dreaming?
- Aggregate all the RSS feeds you care about in Google Reader.
- Install Calibre (Linux, Mac, Windows).
- When you know you’ll be commuting for a while:
- Open Google Reader in a browser, hit Update.
- Plug in your eBook Reader.
- Open Calibre and ask it to download all your Google Reader unread items to the Reader. That takes a few minutes.
- In your Google Reader browser tab, mark everything as read.
And voilà, you got all your news, with images and all, in your Sony Reader to make your commute time a bit nicer.
Call for entrepreneurs: Cafés to work in
This is a call to entrepreneurs who want to make money 
I think this would be a cool idea but I don’t have the time nor the interest of developing it. If this already exists, then please excuse my ignorance and tell me where I can find these cafés! Cybercafés don’t count, I want to use my own laptop, I want a comfortable chair and I don’t want an hourly rate.
Simple observation one: working conditions are becoming more and more flexible.
Simple observation two: having fewer actual offices and more employees working from home can cut costs for companies.
Random prevision: it’s going to become more and more common for people to work from home.
Simple observation three: many people like to have a clear separation between work and private life. Moreover, many people can’t afford a home large enough to have a special “office” room. And many people don’t like to be completely isolated from any human presence.
In this context, I think cafés where you could work comfortably would fill an increasing need. It seems like Starbucks is slowly moving in that direction… too slowly I think.
A café where I could work from needs:
- Power outlets.
- Wifi.
- Tables/Desks.
- Maybe large screens to which I could plug my laptop (for an additional fee?).
- Maybe input devices that I could also connect to my laptop (comfortable keyboard & mouse)?
- Maybe super comfy chairs where you never get physically tired.
- Flexible opening hours.
This café could offer, for a flat fee (say, 5 dollars for the day), a drink, a comfortable seat, an individual table, a power outlet and unlimited wifi access. Now maybe I could get a 26-inch monitor and a comfortable keyboard and mouse for an extra 2 dollars or something.
You could even get (extra fee, hin, hin) a super-duper comfy chair, the kind where your back or neck never get sore or sweaty even after 8 hours of work (we use those at Google, I have no idea what their name is but they’re totally awesome).
Hourly rates might also work, but I think I’d prefer a flat fee because hourly rates make you look at your watch every ten minutes. “Man, I need to finish this chunk of work in the next 17 minutes or I’ll pay for another hour, quick quick!”
Ultimate refinement: strike deals with companies so that their employees get discounts when working from those cafés.
So, entrepreneurs, pretty please with coffee-sugar and whipped cream on top? Or does that exist already? If so I want one in Paris, French entrepreneurs!
Why do advertised features often hide crap?
I’m struck by the fact that, very often, the features that are advertised as a product’s killer assets are just lies hiding the fact that the product is crap.
- Why do I have the feeling that all these products I’ve seen in developing countries with well-known brands on them and a large “Genuine” printed somewhere are counterfeits? It doesn’t sound to me like the real brand would print “Genuine” on their products
- In the old days where operating systems were advertised as having “tons of software” for it, you could be sure that that particular operating system did not have the piece of software you needed.
- A company in France that is well known for its ads showing off their great customer service has the worst customer service ever.
- A large part of today’s adults in China show a severe lack of education and knowledge precisely because of the “Cultural Revolution”.
An equal amount of skepticism takes over me when I see today’s oh-so-hype “green” concepts and products.
I think we should all do a better job at taking how things are “sold” to us with shiny names with a grain of salt.
About Patents
Locking people. Does not work.
There are countless, countless examples where controlling a resource by locking people into the state you want them to stay in didn’t work. DVD encryption, DRMs, “regions”, etc., etc.
I thought the lesson had been learned, but I discovered yesterday, when I tried to upgrade an Acer desktop computer (E500) at a friend’s home from 1 gigbayte of RAM to 2 gigabytes. The motherboard supports that, but Acer locked it into supporting only 1 gigabyte. They probably hope that you’ll buy another computer instead of upgrading this one, and they’ll earn more money. Of course, I can probably find a way to flash some ROM in there to get rid if the limitation, but I just don’t have time to spend a day figuring that out. Sure, I’ll buy another desktop computer (or my friend will, rather). But it won’t be from Acer. Actually, I’ll probably not buy hardware from them anymore.
Folks, that doesn’t work, quit it. Does. Not. Work.
Update from 2009.0809: A few days ago, Apple did the same thing by locking people out of the Google Voice application for iPhone. People will find ways to install it, or will move away from the iPhone. Once again, in the long term, locking will not work.