wtf?

There’s nothing like getting to work early to be greeted with the total meltdown of the financial system. Lehman is bankrupt, Bank of America buys Merril, etc. What in the world is going on. Really?

Bank of America is still doing alright, that’s comforting. But it seems to me that the entire country has been in a drindling downward spiral for about a year now with no end in sight. Housing down, people defaulting on loans, not paying credit card debt, banks failing, rising inflation and unemployment. This is making the crisis of the 70s and 80s look like a joke in comparison.

I have no words beside: WTF?

Small update: While my initial bet yesterday morning was that the DOW was going to drop 1000+ points, it really “just” went down 504. But I read today that there is still potential for a total meltdown.

Honestly, what the f!@#$ where they thinking when they came up with the crap like CDOs?? “The average price of housing in the us will never drop” — sounds to me a lot like “We’ll never need more than 640k of memory”.

Sun Releases xVM Server under Open Source License

It looks like VMWare ESX server is no longer the only freely available bare metal hypervisor (i.e. one that doesn’t require a full-blown OS but runs directly on the hardware). I tried to play with ESX but was kind of put off by the particular enterprise hardware it required, there is no way to run it on commodity hardware. Sun now released they xVM hypervisor under the GPLv3. Currently you can only download the source code, but I am looking forward to a binary release. I am hoping it’ll run on one of my servers at home :)

“Sun xVM Server is an outgrowth of the Xen project — which raises the question of why a company would go with Sun’s version rather than the Xen one. Apart from its support for SPARC and Solaris (as well as other chips and operating systems), Sun is also building a services and sales organization around a commercial version of xVM server… If you want to kick the tires or cut your costs, you can hop over to xVMServer.org, download the source (GPL 3) and join the community. But Sun is betting that, as deployments move from an initial testing phase to active usage, large organizations will be willing to pay for guaranteed support (starting at $500 per year per physical server).”

Check it out on xvmserver.org

The Death of FireFox

Crap. First FireFox crashed, then, when restarting, it told me it needed to install updates.

After hitting the ok button, it tries the update again, fails. Ad infinitum.

WTF??

Do I have to use Chrome now afterall? ;)

Cool Ads in the New World

Remember those TV shows that featured the funniest TV advertisements? Nowadays, I usually feel online advertisement is stupid, boring, flashy, CPU intensive and makes me simply flip on AdBlock+. Yet there are a few exceptions, and the latest Apple commercial on the New York Times web site is simply brilliantly executed (also on youtube).

This makes the Microsoft attempt at being hip, i.e. the Gates and Seinfeld ad, which I incidentally don’t really get, look even more pathetic. Oh yeah, and didn’t Seinfeld always have a Mac on his desk?

This post was proudly typed up on an iMac.

Google’s Android GPhone Already a Flop

Disparagement of Android has touched on everything from an alleged lack of sophistication and stability in the software, to the fact that successful devices such as the iPhone and the BlackBerry are based on a different technology model. “The best experiences out there today are ‘vertical’ experiences, where the hardware and software come from the same company,” said Tom Conrad, chief technology officer of Pandora, whose internet music service is one of the most popular applications on the iPhone.

Google’s Android GPhone Already a Flop

Chrome Eula Updated

It looks like after an initial outcry, Google changed the EULA and the content now actually belongs to the creator after all with this update:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

Then again, just poking around, this one bothers me too:

8.3 Google reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all Content from any Service. For some of the Services, Google may provide tools to filter out explicit sexual content. These tools include the SafeSearch preference settings (see http://www.google.com/help/customize.html#safe). In addition, there are commercially available services and software to limit access to material that you may find objectionable.

Why Google is Evil

The guys over at Slashdot found this, and honestly, I was expecting this to be somewhere in the EULA for Google’s Chrome browser:

“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.”

Thanks, I’ll stick with FireFox. On that note, have you checked out Ubiquity?