Which begs the question, will I have to buy the book to find out? Is that part of the genius?

Here’s my first flickr photo…

Nothing like a little snow to make me glad I work from home!

I think this marks an interesting change in focus. What do these companies do to create value? The typical, old-fashioned model is you create something once (some Intellectual Property, IP) and you sell it many times over (Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, etc). Yet these new companies give you the IP for free.

Where many of these companies make money is by charging for additional services. Support, consultancy. Some also charge for alternative licences if you want to include their free software within your non-free software.

Personally, I like this direction. I support the idea of people being paid when they actually do something, rather than being paid many times for the same work. I think music will move in this direction over time, where fans pay for concerts, for events, but not for the music that has already been recorded. Interesting times.

I can almost taste the victory… :-p

Here’s my favourite quote from the article:

#7 – PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES ARE LIKE GIRLFRIENDS: THE NEW ONE IS BETTER BECAUSE *YOU* ARE BETTER

Rails was an amazing teacher. I loved it’s “do exactly as I say” paint-by-numbers framework that taught me some great guidelines.

I love Ruby for making me really understand OOP. God, Ruby is so beautiful. I love you, Ruby.

But the main reason that any programmer learning any new language thinks the new language is SO much better than the old one is because he’s a better programmer now! You look back at your old ugly PHP code, compared to your new beautiful Ruby code, and think, “God that PHP is ugly!” But don’t forget you wrote that PHP years ago and are unfairly discriminating against it now.

It’s not the language (entirely). It’s you, dude. You’re better now. Give yourself some credit.

Hat tip to Marc Canter for pointing me at this article midway through his (somewhat random) post!

I see the valid criticisms of OpenID are:

• Phishing – If users login to a url that’s not theirs (http://spamsite.etc/blah) then they’ll give away their logins (same as PayPal, your bank, or any other site).
• DNS Poison – If a hacker can convince your ISP to send traffic to the wrong server, they can steal your login details (as above, true of all logins).
• Privacy – You need to choose an OpenID provider you can trust, personally, that would mean my own server or not at all.

Overall, I think OpenID is a good thing, and I think it will lead to increased security if it’s widely adopted. Primarily because if your OpenID password is the key to your online life, providers will hopefully force you to look after it better than your Hotmail password!

I think for social networking to become ubiquitous, users must own their own data, and different systems must be compatible. I believe Email is so widely adopted because it’s a single standard. It doesn’t matter what email client / server / software you use, you can email anyone else on any other system. If social networking is to go the same way, it will need to be similarly standardised.

With plugins like Google AdSense for Feeds WordPress users can put their own ads into their feeds. With a handful of feed stat plugins around, it must be possible to get all the benefits of FeedBurner without the downsides.

I suppose it’s one of those situations where they’ve “made it” sufficiently that using FeedBurner is the norm. That and they were just acquired by Google, uh oh, the G disease is spreading…

Please note: SMTP authentication does not work in version 0.2, I encourage all users to upgrade immediately.

I was considering the motivation of offering people more money if they work harder. I think there’s a fundamental flaw in that this model encourages staff to want more money. In my opinion, there aren’t many people in the western world who need more money. I think most people could benefit from more leisure time.

If we work harder, we become more efficient, we generate more with less time, why not give that time back? Why not take that time off?

Would this simple system work in today’s competitive employment market? Would you be willing to work for a company that offered you a bonus of time off instead of more cash?

It’s an immensely physical show with some amazing staging, lighting and effects. It’s a highly technical performance, there’s lots of ropes, pulleys and other equipment. The music is fantastic, the sound system kicks some serious ass.

You’ll almost certainly get wet, you might get soaked, and I think everyone will enjoy it. If you can, I highly recommend you go see Fuerzabruta.

Man you have got to tell me where you picked her up. I saw this on the web, it has to be you. see for yourself… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKfyzCIq1ls

Cunning readers will notice that although it looks like a link to a YouTube video, it is in fact a link to another web site (an IP address), which is presumably the spammer’s site. I came very close to clicking the link, but something about the message seemed a bit off (the fact I had no idea who the sender was maybe!).

Spam is getting smarter. I think the solution lies in trust mechanisms and authorised emails.

Comments on a postcard…

I think this concept will take off and spread to other affiliate schemes. For example, the travel related site BeWelcome.org could sign up as an affiliate with somebody like Expedia (an online travel agent). If BeWelcome receive 5% of user spending, they could split that with the user. The result as a user is a 2.5% discount on Expedia.

The same principle could apply to any number of affiliate schemes. From selling books to cars or credit cards. I think there’s a great untapped market here, particularly amongst existing community web sites like Facebook and MySpace. These sites could command impressive deals with affiliates and offer their users great bargains. It’s a win-win.

Using the purchasing power of 30m Facebook users to get better deals would be great for business on all sides.

Time to look into the open protocols for Voice over IP and free myself from the closed, proprietary protocols of Skype.

Edit: You can see the latest Skype service status here.

I debated at some length whether to pay an extra £2 for express delivery. I opted to chose patience instead. Then I watched DHL’s track and trace system with delight as I followed the path of my new gadget from Dublin to Edinburgh in only two days. Wonderful!

It’s working like a charm. One or two sync issues with Fedora 7, but more on that to follow…

If they are unwilling to refund my charges I plan to take them to court in 14 days. This is war. It’s on. Bring it…

Note: I have not provided links to the aforementioned banks websites because I believe those banks suck and I do not wish to offer them any sort of web-recognition!

I’m also getting spams with PDF documents attached. The email is blank, but the PDF contains the spam message. I opened the first one out of curiosity, now I delete immediately.

It’s getting harder and harder to separate genuine and spam emails. Particularly as some people are not very precise with email (blank subject lines, irrelevant subject lines, and so on).

My advice is thus, please use BCC instead of TO when mass emailing. I think this is the single, simplest thing people can do to cut spam.

Goodbye Thailand, hello freedom of speech. Now to watch that controversial video  of the King again…

To my delight, the $9 bottle said “Product of Scotland”. So in preparation for going home I bought two six-packs of 2L bottles for the great value price of only $66. A little taste of home in preparation for my return on Friday!