Thursday, October 03, 2002

Cisco CEO draws $1 salary. Chief Executive John Chambers joins Apple CEO Steve Jobs and former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale to be among tech executives to see a $1 salary. [CNET News.com] 11:22:20 PM

Why is it so hard to get a cab in San Francisco?. A San Francisco cabbie -- generally a well-educated and firm-opinion-holding class of person -- has an essay about a subject near and dear to my (non-car-owning) heart: Why is it so damned hard to get a cab in San Francisco? In fact, no cab company ever tells a driver to pick up anyone. When you phone a cab firm in San Francisco, your call is treated not as an order, not as a binding oral contract, but simply as a request... So, why don't cab companies ensure that we pick you up on time-or at all? In a nutshell, labor law states that if a cab company actually commands a driver to carry out a specific action, that constitutes an employer-employee relationship. But if a company farms its work out to independent contractors, it can rid itself of costly expenses such as disability and social security taxes. It also means that the contractor drivers can't unionize. Link Discuss (via CamWorld) [Boing Boing Blog] This sounds sort of like the pizza delivery place I worked at in high school.  Technically, we were contractors, not employees.  The upside was that we didn't have to wear uniforms or sweep the floors when we weren't hauling pies. 10:53:40 PM

Digital Needle: A Virtual Gramophone. This guy scanned an old LP and then "played" it using a program he wrote to convert the wavy lines into sounds. The MP3 files are eerie! Link Discuss (Thanks, Kevin!) [Boing Boing Blog] 10:44:09 PM

Danger, Will Robinson! I decided to take a quick break this afternoon and go by the local T-Mobile store to check out a Sidekick.  Two words: ME LIKE-IE! The form factor was excellent.  It's roughly the same as the Gameboy Advance.  The buttons were large and easy to click, and they had good tactile feedback.  I carried one of the pager-size Blackberrys for a former employer, so I'm proficient with the jog-dial and mini-keyboard interface.  One nice thing: the keyboard is probably at least 1.5 times the size of the Blackberry's, so it should be easier to use in the long term. Based on the online pictures and brochures, I had been unclear how exactly the screen flips open.  I thought it might slide up and down, but it rotates.  The pivot-point is at the top and center of the screen.  It sort-of pops up as it rotates, then "locks" back down into place.  And it's springy, so all it takes to flip open is the slightest touch on the bottom-left corner.  As I held it, I couldn't resist repeatedly fliping it open, then closed.  This could be habbit forming. One question I had was whether or not one could talk into it like a regular phone handset, just in case you got caught without your earbud.  You can. The Sidekick can be set to ring silently, either by vibrating or by flashing the jog-dial, which is illuminated.  Not only can the jog dial light up in different colors, but apparently you can program it to light in a specific color when a specific person calls. The other surprising feature was the camera FOB.  It seems that you can take a picture with it, and associate that picture with a contact entry.  The pictures can also be emailed or transfered to a PC.  I'm unclear if the pictures are recorded in color (though clearly, only grey scale is visible on the hiptop screen), or what resolution they are recorded in. I've decided at this point that I will have one of these.  However, there are still a couple of things that are missing before this can be a complete solution for me: Data synch: I need to be able to synch it with my PIM on my laptop.  I hear that Pumatech has signed an agreement to build something for this. Car mount: I have a nice, dash-mounted phone holder for my current Nokia.  It would be really nice to have a similar setup for the sidekick. In both cases, I suspect these are more a matter of "when" than of "if", so I suspect that I'll have one of these before long. 6:40:57 PM

Typophile's Smaller Picture is an attempt to collectively design a typeface. [Memepool] The Borg-school approach to designing a typeface. 11:06:47 AM

Misleading Term of the Week: "Rights". A "right" is a legal entitlement -- something that the law says you are allowed to do. But the term... [Freedom To Tinker] An interesting point about the correct meaning of the term "right", and how it is misused in the statements "Digital Rights Management" and "Rights Holder".  A right is something that one has a privledge to do.  It is not an ownership thing.  According to Langenscheidt's: "something (as a power or privilege) to which one has a just or lawful claim".  I suppose this could be made to define a copyright holder's "right" to not have their stuff stolen, but it's a stretch.  Especially when our laws and attitudes have traditionally favored the rights of the consumer at the expense of the rights of the copyright holder. 10:59:59 AM

Is it too weird to consider pharmecutecal companies might be 'dusting' our air with minor viral diseases? Seems everyone I know has a 'cold' similar to mine. Is it coincidence I see tons of cold medicine commercials? Is there such a thing as coincidence? [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] This is a truely distrubing thought.  As if I didn't have enough to be paranoid about. 10:45:21 AM

Sophocles. "A short saying oft contains much wisdom." [Quotes of the Day] Could this be considered a recursive quote? 10:41:09 AM

Reese's Peanut Butter Cups Are A Terrible Thing To Waste. And now my day ends on a surreal note: 20 Tons Of Stolen Chocolate Found: "A trailer filled with 20 tons of Hershey's chocolate that disappeared more than two years ago has been found in Cumberland County. Most of the chocolate, estimated to be worth $80,000, was still inside. Police said the trailer was stolen on Aug. 19, 2000, from a Bethel Township truck stop. It was found parked on Harrisburg Pike near Carlisle in September and had been parked for about two weeks before officers investigated.... In this case, the thief got nearly 33,000 cases of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Fifth Avenue candy bars and Peppermint Patties. Some of the candy, 678 boxes, is missing. Now the rest of it will be destroyed, because its expiration date was about a year and a half ago." [NBC5 News] [The Shifted Librarian] Somewhere, a whole bunch of kids in one particular neighborhood scored big-time trick-or-treating that year. 10:28:36 AM

Toshiba ups drives for small notebooks. The computer maker boosts the capacity of its hard drive line for mini-notebooks, tablet PCs and consumer electronics. [CNET News.com] I may have to upgrade my Lifebook with one of these at some point.  More speed.  More space.  Mmmmmm, goooooood. 10:23:04 AM

Pixel Perfect. BNF Turned into Giant Display I've posted about this before, but the live stream is available right now and at the moment, it's nighttime in Paris so you can watch the fun. I'm utterly mesmerized by this! [via /usr/lib/info] [The Shifted Librarian] Oooooooo... hypnotic.... On reflection, it does seem odd to watch a live stream from the other side of the world of a building displaying a funky light show.  I suppose that's what makes it so amusing. 12:01:03 AM