I'm Sorry

Gregor confesses...

At a session about stealth I asked Jay Adelson, Digg.com's CEO) which company he is with. Oops. On the bright side he told me that once he arrived for a talk, entering as Larry Page was leaving the stage. Jay went on to introduce himself and finished with "and you work for…" Doesn't misery love company!

I'm sorry. Are we supposed to know who the hell is the CEO of digg?

Likewise I could not pick Larry Page out of a lineup, nor tell you the name of his partner.

Yes, they've done good stuff, way more than I ever hope to. Or if I do, I couldn't care one iota if you ever recognize me. Sorry.

Storm on the Horizon

Confession time...

I love You Tube, I guess of course. My oldest kid was showing me the series on how various movies *should* have ended.

I watch very little TV and never "reality" shows. But since I really like Storm Large from right here in Portland, I've been watching her You Tube clips from the rock star reality show this summer. (She is *way* beyond what little I could stand to see of her competitors, and I suspect at least as far beyond whatever talent the judges themselves have.)

In any case, this week one her songs was her original Storm and the Balls song, Ladylike. This song is at the top of any list of pop songs about womens liberation. I'd say there is "Respect" the way Aretha Franklin recorded it, combining "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" and "sock it to me" in the same lyrics. And then there is "Ladylike".

In the original R-rated lyrics, which would have cost a *lot* in fines to perform on American broadcast TV, she sings, "What the fuck is ladylike when ladies like to do what the fuck they like just like you?" A *little* bit more direct than Aretha Franklin was, but this is the 21st century vs. the 1960's. The verses of Ladylike go well beyond "Respect".

Nothing else by Helen Reddy or anyone comes to mind as really pushing the point as well as those two songs.

See the abbreviated You Tube PG video version or hear the Balls full PG and R recordings. The Balls versions are supposed to be on iTunes before too long.

Bond

I am with Graham on this Bond thing. I've not seen a new Bond film in over 20 years. Roger Moore was fun in the 70's but that stopped working before he did. Sean will always be the real Bond, but those films are so very dated and I can no longer stand to watch them.

Every glimpse I've seen of the new Bond has led me to believe the role could be recreated as something almost completely new. My hopes are way up for Casino Royale.

On

Jon Udell on...

Way back in 2002, I thought Web services would be the vector for Internet-scale grid computing. It looks like I got that wrong. A Web service is a fairly general construct, but an entire virtual machine is far more general. And since Linux is the OS of choice for cloud-based virtual machines, last week’s suggestion that Microsoft get cracking on portable Avalon and open XAML makes even more sense this week.

And so

And so...

Make no mistake about it; if you do not find it now, you will repeat the same routines for myriad eons, a thousand times over again, following and picking up on objects that attract you.

Lin Chi (d 867)

And so

Sigh

A sigh for Jim (via Jon Udell)...

I wrote the first three versions of the IronPython compiler in Python, but today it's written in C#. Part of the reason is that now I understand it, so the values of prototyping, and the looser thinking that really helped a lot in the early days, don't really help as much any more. Also there are now more people working on the compiler, and there are some real benefits to the static typing, and the support you can get from Visual Studio.

Sigh.