John Carradine on David Carradine's death

Never do anything you wouldn't want to be caught dead doing.
- John Carradine

John Carradine (David Carradine's father) died in 1988. I was at the Imdb page for John Carradine since I read that he had an unbelievable 340 entries as an actor. I had a look at his bio page and at the very bottom of the page is that quote. Of course - it may have been added after David died and John may have never actually said it.

Wall Street & Nigerian princes

"You too can become rich. I offer very special auction rate securities. Low price. High yield. Right now offered by the Premiere Bank of Nigeria..."

What's the difference between...

A) Wall Street

and

B) "Nigerian princes" who send out spam emails.

One group (really) exists in Manhattan and they have managed to grab at least a few trillion.

Chip Maker Sues Banks Over Securities

Texas Instruments has sued Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Bank of New York Mellon, accusing the banks of misleading the company into buying $524 million of auction-rate securities that have become illiquid.

source: nytimes.com

"have become illiquid" - I think that might be translatable in the vernacular as "are probably not worth shit".

When I was young I learned about the robber barons - I mean the American variety (Wikipedia). They appear on this list at Wikipedia: Wealthy historical figures 2008.

I couldn't believe the amounts of money and power they were able to get their hands on. And it seemed so strange that they then named colleges after themselves: Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Vanderbilt.

Well at least prestigious institutions of learning - founded by money gained from greed or not - are positive things.During this recent grab of trillions what has Wall Street done that will have a lasting positive effect?

"Underinvesting in recording history"

Here's an excerpt of an interview Wired did with Paul Baran. It was published in March 2001.

Wired 9.03: Founding Father

...I think we're underinvesting in recording history. Look at the crazy economy we have right now, and all the growth and productivity - which we do not understand - with Alan Greenspan saying it'll be 10 years before we know whether we have a different economy or it was just a bubble. And we're not even recording the key facts. Lawyers are asking companies to destroy all records after three months, lest some sleazeball lawyer play games with discovery. We're in a period where key records are being destroyed very quickly, and some very important issues on what the hell is happening today we won't even be able to unravel.

Paul Baran - wikipedia

Life imitating film imitating life? (aka Bruce Willis and breach of contract)

In "Something Happened" Bruce Willis plays a spoiled actor. He nearly causes a film to be shut down by being in breach of contract. Things get weird with this news:

Bruce Willis being sued for $4 million
AP - Saturday, February 28, 2009 5:52:21 AM

Actor Bruce Willis and his production company are being sued in Los Angeles for $4 million for breach of contract.

The lawsuit filed Friday alleges Willis Brother Films agreed on a contract with three companies to produce the feature film "Three Stories About Joan," which Willis was to star in and direct.

The lawsuit alleges that on Sept. 29 Willis quit as director without notice in violation of the agreement.

Phone calls to Willis' publicist and attorney were not immediately returned.

Henry Gradstein, attorney for the companies suing Willis, says the courts will resolve the matter. He had no further comment.

What Just Happened (2008) [imdb]

Intel Mashmaker (KINDA SORTA BUT NOT REALLY BETA)

Last month Google Mashup Editor closed down. It was "migrated" to the Google App Engine. I use Yahoo Pipes - but it's buggy and gives me migraines. Today, I decided to try the impossible - to find an alternative to Pipes

An app - whatever it is - first has to be shown to work, then it has to be shown that it's stable and finally that's it's supported. Pipes is almost 1 out of 3. It works - but it has problems. Lots of problems. And I'm not convinced - at all - that it will be around a couple years from now.

Intel offers something. Since Intel isn't going to go bankrupt tomorrow - I decided to check out it out - Intel Mashmaker (BETA).

It's important that you notice word "beta" there. It's available as a Firefox add-on. Before I installed it, it I decided to slog through google and slog through searching its sub-domain at Intel to separate the hype from the reality. Does it actually work? Is it useful?

Today I realized that while googling for mashups the word "regex" should always be used. A "this is a truly fantastic, unbelievable and amazing app!" that doesn't support regex is nothing more than empty hype or perhaps a toy.

I'm happy I didn't just download Mashmaker and start using it first and try to figure it out second. After about 30 minutes I found this:

Mash Maker is not a product. It is not a beta, or even an alpha. It is what we like to call a "technology preview release". The purpose of this release is to allow external people to have a play with Mash Maker and see what we are doing. Mash Maker contains known bugs and feature holes and you should expect things to break fairly regularly.

It is possible that Mash Maker may become a supported product in the future, but it does not have that status now.

So, it's what? The Intel Mashmaker (KINDA SORTA BUT NOT REALLY BETA)? Sheesh.

"Atlantis" seen here

'Atlantis' spotted on ocean floor off Africa - thesun.co.uk

I'm waiting for the Google thing that proves ghosts are real.

Yahoo: An Example Of Corporate Logic Failure

At Yahoo Message Board you can't delete or edit your own post. That's the form the "Yahoo! Message Boards Post Deletion Request" - you need to fill out to delete your post. I can only imagine how many 1,000s (more?) of posts were never deleted since the form didn't have enough information.