The 44K individual time trial in the 85th Giro d'Italia is underway. Its all going to come down to a few seconds. From Velonews:
"After 3178 kilometers, the 85th Giro d'Italia will really come down to 43.9 km of pavement. After 18 stages and at least 84 hours, 49 minutes and 55 seconds of racing, this Giro will likely be decided by just a handful of seconds. "
Tyler Hamilton, that kid from Marblehead, MA, has to give it everything. He is 1:28 behind Salvodelli, and in the last TT he beat the man by 1:30.
"I'm no fortune teller so I can't predict for you how the day is going to shake out. But I will promise you this. I will leave it all on the road tomorrow. Every ounce I have left. And then, after three weeks of fighting, whatever will be, will be."
I don't even know if I can watch! Tyler has also been blogging the event. I incorrectly pointed to it before on Velonews - but the real source is on his own website.
"IT'S THE NEW Hatfields and McCoys -- the entrenched monopolists vs. the disruptive technologists."
An interesting rant. Hard to describe exactly... just read it. Makes sense to me. There is so much I want technology to do for me and it is taking way too long to get there. We could have so much more cool stuff if these wars weren't constantly waging, yet from a business perspective it seems inevitable. I'm also reminded of this thread.
As a developer, its great to have one dominant OS and API that I can code against because I really don't want to write everything two or three times. I don't want to have to abstract everything all the time to make it portable across all time and space. But that can also mean that I'm at the mercy of the OS to give me what I want, or write it myself. If some really cool new gizmo comes along and its totally right on, I have to weigh investing my precious time on supporting it vs. the potential gain. Asa game programmer I was basically refusing to grow up, and always interested in supporting new weird stuff - force feedback? A shock suit? 3D stereo glasses? Right-on! Perhaps there was more justification then. Some of the coolest features we got into some of our games at Looking Glass were conceived at 4 a.m. right before shipping and our fans loved us for it. Now, in a competetive business software environment I have to go through a rigorous approval process and wait 2 or 3 release cycles to get anything done. And I completely understand why. But I digress...
I'm getting ready to write my essay on how the 21st century has totally let me down... stay tuned...
