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Drowning in Data

February 9, 2009

Bob Congdon writes on something we’re all living through — the decline “hard media” (paper, LP’s, even CD’s, etc.) and the prevalence of digital media. From a green perspective, getting rid of all of this hard media is a good thing. Why print out documents when you can read them on your computer? Why should [...]

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Ten Resolutions for 2009

January 3, 2009

Here are my obligatory New Year’s Resolutions. These are my personal ones, what I’m doing for myself. I’ll also have a set of professional resolutions, what we at IBM call “Personal Business Commitments” or PBC’s. I still need to develop those for 2009. Exercise at least 30-minutes every day. Unlike every other January when I [...]

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The biggest media launch of all time?

September 27, 2007

The news from all directions is that Halo 3 had a big day, with “first day” sales of $170 million, which actually includes advance sales as well. Let’s take the report from the XBox.com web site as the canonical version of the tale: Microsoft today announced that Halo® 3 has officially become the biggest entertainment [...]

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The World Ends on May 1st, 2010

February 13, 2007

Actually, at 6:45AM by my calculations. According to ZDNet’s Dan Farber, quoting an IBM whitepaper, by 2010, “the world’s information base will be doubling in size every 11 hours.” Every 11 hours? That’s quite a statement. Let’s see what this means. The largest storage system in the universe is the universe. (Let that sink in [...]

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The 96.97 percent problem

August 21, 2006

The press release puts out numbers of awesome import. We finally have the answers we seek, the science of web analytics and super-duper tools has laid all doubts to rest: Amsterdam – August 14 2006 – OneStat.com, the number one provider of real-time intelligence web analytics, today reported that Microsoft’s Windows dominates the operating system [...]

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Epithets

January 16, 2006

A few thoughts on the Epitheton Ornans, or ornamental epithet. This is more than a nickname, but a formalized word or phrase associated with a person. Classical epic poetry makes heavy use of this rhetorical device. For example, in Homer Achilles is often referred to as “podas okus” or “swift-footed”, whereas Agamemnon is often “anax [...]

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The Most Dangerous Idea

January 5, 2006

The Edge Foundation’s 2006 question is framed as: WHAT IS YOUR DANGEROUS IDEA? The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you [...]

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