I am just finished reading Devil In The White City by Erik Larson. Loved it!
This news item about the first archaeological dig at the site of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition caught my eye because that is what the book is about (also about a serial murderer, but that’s something else again.) I am only part way through the book but it’s quite good so far.
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Recently three friends of mine got nice press coverage, so I thought I’d share them:
So in fact, there IS cool tech stuff going on in Boston 
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I just came across Dave Dupre’s blog. Some good reading there, for example:
“[…snip] If the single test does not show a huge improvement, the project is considered a failure and scrapped. This happens all the time, and it always stifles innovation. Why propose something new if you have to be right all the time?
Innovation does not proceed on a schedule. To maintain a culture of innovation, occasional failure must be allowed - even encouraged! As long as you learn from your mistakes and move on and get better, the team and the company will be better off.” (from Fear of Failure)
Technorati Tags: softwaredevelopment management
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Check this post 30+ Must-Have Updated Firefox 3 Extensions from Mashable!:
We’ve put together a list of 30+ must-have Firefox 3 extensions that we know you’ll enjoy, whether you’ve upgraded to Firefox 3 and are looking for something new to add to your browser, or have yet to make the upgrade and are looking for a reason.
Lots of good stuff there if you are a FireFox 3 user. Check ‘em out!
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This New York Times article, “What’s Obscene? Google Could Have an Answer” is pretty interesting, and makes sense at some level:
“Judges and jurors who must decide whether sexually explicit material is obscene are asked to use a local yardstick: does the material violate community standards?” (from “What’s Obcene?”)
and then:
“In a novel approach, the defense in an obscenity trial in Florida plans to use publicly accessible Google search data to try to persuade jurors that their neighbors have broader interests than they might have thought.” (from “What’s Obcene?)
Read the whole article, it’s quite interesting. Do you think this is a reasonable judicial approach?
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I haven’t seen anyone pointing to this article about TechCrunch and Professor Arrington, but it’s very interesting. I remember when it was first starting and how he would write an unbelievable number of interesting and useful reviews about new products. Mike Arrington was a machine! Say what you will about him, TechCrunch is the labor of some extremely hard work:
“Of course, Arrington’s success is about more than partying like a frat boy and schmoozing like a Hollywood agent at a cast party. With the exception of a three-week vacation (during which he worked half-time) at the end of 2006, he says he has worked every day for two years straight.
He gets up at about 10 or 11 am, is at his desk 10 seconds later, and tends to the business side of his operation until early evening, seeing entrepreneurs, doing phone interviews, tracking the news of the day, and writing posts. He’s often at parties or other events until 10. It’s typically not until 10 or 11 pm, when things quiet down, that he has time to think and write more thoughtful, analytical blog entries. “I’ve actually cut back,” he says. ” from TecCrunch Blogger Michael Arrington Can Generate Buzz
Learn all about TechCrunch and Michael Arrington
Technorati Tags: techcrunch arrington
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He’s been saying something like this since a week after 9/11. I agreed with him then, and I still agree with him:
“Oil is poisoning our climate and our geopolitics, and here is how we’re going to break our addiction: We’re going to set a floor price of $4.50 a gallon for gasoline and $100 a barrel for oil. And that floor price is going to trigger massive investments in renewable energy — particularly wind, solar panels and solar thermal. And we’re also going to go on a crash program to dramatically increase energy efficiency, to drive conservation to a whole new level and to build more nuclear power. And I want every Democrat and every Republican to join me in this endeavor.”That’s what a real president would do.” (from Mr. Bush, Lead or Leave)
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I am on a Mac and I have lots of odd little things running, doing backups, syncs, who knows what. Every so often my computer goes “boink!” with no error message or display and I wonder, hmm, I wonder what just happened?
I have a suspicion it’s my hourly backup which is boinking because one file couldn’t be backed up. But it might be finder saying that it was done copying all those files (oh wait, maybe that’s a “bing” not a “boing”) Or might it be something else totally?
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I got the big new release of FireFox 3.0. Looks fine. Actually looks mostly the same. I am not sure what the big changes are but I am trying it out to see how it goes.
I know one regular headache with FireFox for me has been that it would pin the CPU for no apparent reason. The closest I came to seeing a pattern is that it seemed to have to do with pages being opened that had Flash scripts on them. But I can’t say I ever verified that. All I know is that fairly regularly when my system got slow, I would see FireFox at the top.
If that’s all that FF3.0 fixes, that would be enough for me.
Update: I just saw this link about FireFox 3.0
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I am a LifeLock customer and so I follow developments in this arena pretty closely. Check this post LifeLock and Identity Theft from Schneier on Security:
LifeLock does a bunch of other clever things. They monitor the national address database, and alert you if your address changes. They look for your credit and debit card numbers on hacker and criminal websites and such, and assist you in getting a new number if they see it. They have a million-dollar service guarantee — for complicated legal reasons, they can’t call it insurance — to help you recover if your identity is ever stolen.
All in all, I probably will remain a customer. Schneier does a good job basically saying that LifeLock is clever and useful but too expensive. That’s more positive than the press they’ve been getting.
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