Reuters article: Intel and Novell point to Linux gains on MS in Brazil. This news is a result of the big Spring push I’ve been one of the worker-bees for: a four-city tour of Brazil ending today, plus, over the past few weeks, 5 events in the US, 11 in India, and a multi-day event in Dublin, all ending with a 3-day conference next week in Ho Chi Minh City. We’ve been busy and it’s paying off and that makes me happy.
Author: Aaron Weber
Bolivia and the currently oxymoronic capital city
My brother is living in La Paz, Bolivia right now, which is not the calmest place to be at the moment. He and his friends have taken the following pretty impressive pictures. If only they’d use Flickr rather than other picture services. Here you go: Lake Titicaca and environs, Cochabamba and environs, and the Festival del Gran Poder in La Paz itself, a festival of folklore, dancing, and parades, during which the people have set aside political arguments– we’ll see how long the break lasts.
Politically it seems to me that the senate’s compromise– high taxes on foreign investment in hydrocarbons, but not nationalization– seems like a good one, since nobody is happy with it. The test will be whether the various interest groups are willing to accept that the other side is equally unhappy, and that’s an outcome that doesn’t look easy to predict.
Consuming Desire: Scooba
Scooba, from iRobot, scrubs your floors. Coming Winter 2005. My Roomba is great, and this should be great too, right? Although Roomba collects all the filth from the floors of my house into three (three!) different little filter areas, which are a pain to empty and which tend to spill everywhere, I imagine that the newer Roombas have solved this problem, and that the Scooba has some sort of ingenious method of handling the dirty-solvent problem as well.
I agree with the developers that clothes-folding robots are crucial. Such a thing could even be built into a wardrobe!
Deadwood
Salon covered Deadwood awhile back but this article on the historical Sol Starr and his portrayal on the show, and on the way that Jewish people fared in the Wild West, is genuinely insightful. I am greedily awaiting Season 2 on DVD.
I may have to watch Carnivale or even the Sopranos while I wait. Who knows.
… and Boom
Boom & Bust
Fortune and New York Metro weigh in on the coming bust.
Spam Trends, again
Turns out the right-wing spam is the result of a Windows-infecting virus. Obviously, the worst aspects of politics have now gotten in bed with the worst aspects of the internet. Should’ve seen it coming.
Sad housing story
Positive News, software division
From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Microsoft to face Challenges in Brazil. And from the New York Times, Novell Linux Desktop gains on Windows in Brazil.
Two Words
I was wondering about this awhile ago and Federico clued me in: the singular of “tamales” is “tamal.”
Also, the etymology of the word “Bogart” used to mean “to keep selfishly” or “to avoid sharing,” was originally applied to joints and cigarettes, after Humphrey Bogart’s style of leaving a cigarette hanging from his mouth.
