Gap pins loss on poor fashion sense / CEO apologizes for bright leather jackets and ’some very strange-looking jeans’ . “We probably got a little bored at being consistent and simple,” said Drexler, in a conference call with investors. “Big mistake.” Great quote.
Archive for February, 2002
Nice article on the storage repercussions of move to home digital centers.
Intel backs consumers over Hollywood. Finally, someone is doing the right thing.
Stuck in a moment. Salon rant about the Emmys. Score 3: Funny.
Great article about the power of weblogs. Specifically, how you can Googlebomb companies using them.
Stolen Restaurant Napkins Are Just a Start. I wonder how much of this happens in the UK. Just as much, I assume, from the number of Mezzo ashtrays around…
Security Quandary: Who’s Liable?. The start of the argument: who should pay for security issues? If they’re the result of an internal misconfiguration then probably the company who configured. If it’s an unknown side-effect of installing software, probably the software manufacturer. Difficult to draw boundaries, though.
World’s First Designer Baby. Yet another science fiction tale has passed recently from the fanciful to the present; this time the story in question is genetically predesigned babies. Seventeen months ago, a woman in Chicago gave birth to the first designer baby. [kuro5hin.org]
Is software innovation gone?. According to an article by Rob Pike from Bell Labs, software innovation is more or less dead (and Microsoft isn’t at fault). For example: high-end PC hardware went from 33Mhz/32MB RAM in 1990 to 600Mhz/512MB RAM in 2000, but in that time software went from Unix, X, emacs, and TCP/IP to Unix, X, emacs, TCP/IP and Netscape. He argues that no one cares about making large changes or something new any more for various reasons. [kuro5hin.org] An old article, but with current resonance.
BT Openworld announces £10 price cut. Good news for me.
Great thread, essentially on why blogging is not journalism.
Could you repeat that in English? How to write sensible error messages.
Reasonable interview with Steve Krug. What a great name. Maybe I’ll change mine by deed poll.
Winter Olympics Site: Not Even Bronze. Jakob bashes yet another site.
The Iceberg Secret, Revealed “Customers Don’t Know What They Want. Stop Expecting Customers to Know What They Want”. Absolutely 100% on the money.
File-swapping network locks out users. Morpheus–a file-swapping service that many have said would be impossible for courts to shut down–shuts out most of its users, citing “technical problems.” [CNET News.com]
Newsbytes: “Lawyers for makers of the file-sharing applications Morpheus and Grokster say that, if their clients can be held responsible for illegal copies of music and motion pictures, then so too should companies such as Microsoft and AOL Time Warner, whose software and Internet connectivity are essential to building networks of file traders.” Like the logic, and the beautiful irony of it. However, if they win, we’ll all have DRM built into everything. Not such a great outcome, then. Here’s Jack Valenti on this issue
Observations From a Weblogger. Dan Bricklin with some sensible ruminations on what a weblog is actually about. I think we should bin the journalism / not journalism debate now. Some jounalists use weblogs to express themselves, but this doesn’t mean that weblogs are journalism.
Great Reg rant on Jack Valenti’s piece.
