It's one movie I've always been meaning to get around watching... Thing is, the middle of the afternoon wasn't really a good time... Good movie though. :D - Ian May
"“Plaintiff witnessed the open air burn pit in operation at Balad Air Force Base,” the lawsuit states. “On one occasion, he witnessed a wild dog running around base with a human arm in its mouth. The human arm had been dumped on the open air burn pit by KBR.”" - Steven Perez
via Bookmarklet
A few years ago I decided that I should read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Still haven't done it. - Ontario Emperor
I didn't like this book. I was forced to read it in high school and decided I should do it again as an adult. I'm just not a fan of Austen's writings. - Anika Malone
The BBC movie is the best movie treatment. A perfect movie if there ever was one. - todd
I'm glad I waited to read any of Austen's stuff until I was an adult - there are pieces of the writing that I'm not all that fond of (the beginning of the first chapter is really awkward, structurally), but overall I enjoy it. I'd recommend Persuasion above it any day. - Jennifer Dittrich
I love Jane Austen. Brits are soo good at sounding polite when they're insulting you. - Trish Haley
"Making my way to the subway on a late winter morning in 1999, I picked up a copy of “Torah Times” from the plastic dispenser on the corner of Kingston Avenue and Eastern Parkway. “Torah Times” is the self-declared “largest Jewish weekly shoppers guide” selling anything and everything, from gefilte fish to sneakers. Half-heartedly flipping through it, I stumbled on eight pages of listings devoted to The Manhattan Mincha Map. Together, they provide a directory of all the places in Manhattan where Jewish men may come to recite Mincha –the afternoon prayer- with a minyan, the required quorum of ten. Some of the locales are synagogues or houses of study. However, most are actual workplaces, such as pizza parlors, shipping offices, printing shops, jewelry shops, and so on." - Anna Haro
"As I pored over the information, visions of people praying amidst boxes of electronics, or reams of cloth and stacks of paper, flooded my imagination. I felt a thrill of anticipation, knowing that some day I would visit these places which had remained hidden and unknown to me after almost a decade of life in New York City. But, in spite of my initial enthusiasm, it took almost two years –and the tragic events of September 11- before the project became urgent, and I attended my first Mincha service." - Anna Haro
Surreal ... At first glance I had thought these pictures were taken in the early 50s. - Brandon
Mincha is the shortest of the three daily prayers. It consists mainly of the “Shemonah Esrei” or “Amidah,” a group of nineteen blessings. “Amidah” comes from the Hebrew “la’amod,” which means “to stand.” It is recited while standing at attention, symbolic of the posture of the angels. Jewish tradition credits the patriarch Isaac, son of Abraham, with the authorship of the Mincha prayers. Unlike his father, whose life is associated with kindness, Isaac’s was marked by justice. Mincha is a time when actions are scrutinized by the divinity, and the faithful are judged for their daily service to God. This “daily service” commemorates the daily offerings before the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. - Anna Haro
I had a hat like those once & a lady stopped me in a grocery store and asked if I were a Jewish priest. I laughed and confirmed her ministry observation, but had no clue about the hat:) I left it in a church somewhere and I have not found a replacement since:( - Roney Smith
Like the really old Bugs Bunny Cartoons? ... Like the one with the falling airplane and the alien ... and Elmer Fudd chasing Bugs in the snow? - Brandon
Went there last night. mmm animal frys... - Chris W
That is SO NOT FAIR to post that picture...OH WOW...I'll take a Double Double - Animal Style, two fries and a Vanilla shake... :-\ - Live4SoccerVacations
damn l4s! nice order. make mine a diet coke - Josh Haley
"These days an adjective recognised in the OED, Mills & Boon has become a genre unto itself over its 100-year history. To mark its centenary, The Art of Romance tells the publisher's story with a century's worth of covers. Here is a selection, offering fascinating insights into the changing meaning of 'romance'." - RAPatton
A girl in my high school gifted class modeled for covers like these; she was cute - RAPatton
"So there you have it. If you want to achieve 50 years of almost continuous growth, you now know what you have to do: abolish management and get rid of all the employees." - Paul Buchheit
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cause and effect are not what they seem, in one sense there have never been managers and employers, they have all been sailing to the same wind, not caused by any of them - Gregory Lent
What's interesting is that they were sustainably this way for 50 years. My theory is that this can only happen if you grow slowly (i.e., not at VC-funded rates) - Piaw Na
off-topic: If you change the authorised = false to true in the URL, you don't have to register to read the article. Just a time and hassle saver if anyone's interested. :} - vijay
"I'll look into the <description> element and should have a good ping solution soon. As for MediaRSS, if you include multiple media groups containing thumbnails with width and height small enough to fit multiple images, then they should display horizontally just like Flickr." - Paul Buchheit
So the problem with the <description> tag in RSS feeds is that it generally contains the full or partial content of the blog post. It would be useful to make this content available in friendfeed, but stuffing it into a comment probably isn't the right ui. - Paul Buchheit
So... don't stuff the text into the a comment. Just display the description indented under the title. I would only show the first N characters, and provide a link to read the rest of the text. Might as well use a comment, btw, and truncate. If you want the rest, click the link. The current situation is just wrong for all the reasons I outlined in my post. - Dave Winer
Doesn't that depend on the length of the post? April's blog, for example, generally contains posts with text appropriate for an initial comment. - Bruce Lewis
The problem is that the "description" is not really a description in most cases, it's the content, and automatically stuffing a prefix of all blog posts into the first comment may not be the best experience. I think perhaps the right solution is to provide a "generic rss" service that has options for all this. (and to provide a more elegant way of viewing the feed content inline) I completely agree with your objectives though -- all services should have equal access via feeds. - Paul Buchheit
Would love it if when I include images or videos in my WordPress posts they showed up in FriendFeed. Is there a trick to making that happen? - Patrick Lightbody
We already pick up on MediaRSS tags Patrick. If you do a search, there are several discussions of how to get it working with WordPress. - Paul Buchheit
Paul, thanks for the tip. Trying it out now. Very exciting times :) - Patrick Lightbody
Patrick, it's the WP plugin's fault. I know because RSS from OurDoings gets multiple photos per entry regularly. As for the WP plugin, Paul Reynolds said it wouldn't be hard to extend to handle multiple images, but it didn't sound like he was about to implement that enhancement himself. - Bruce Lewis
via fftogo
@Bruce, I wonder if switching to an Atom feed would help? The Wordpress plugin seems to only affect the rss 2.0 feed (or maybe that is just because that is my default? (it is also the WP default)). Now that Matt Mullenweg is on friendfeed, maybe we can bug him to add in mediarss as a default in the future. - Robert Felty
I expect switching to an Atom-only feed will help. I think it's only mrss elements that FriendFeed picks up on. - Bruce Lewis
via fftogo
Well I'd hazard a guess and say you were from the US? Am I close? I'm not sure where Gay is, though, and all you Americans tend to sound the same so I can;t really tell whether you sound like you're form Gay or not. Cute, though. :) - WorldofHiglet
Derrick, you wimp.. your voice is not gay at all. Little high but that I would suspect that might because your recording yourself purposely for this. Bet if we sat down and had a conversation it would be completely different. - Chris W
You don't sound gay at all. I know several straight guy who sound far more gay. - Jill, Superhero Librarian
Bleh...maybe it's just me. But doesn't everyone hate how they sound played back? I sound WAY nasally. Meh. - Derrick
Silly. It's like you WANT people to tell you you sound all faggy or something. And I don't hate the way I sound. We all know I love my voice. :) Why do you think I do all those damn videos that nobody watches? hee. - pea♥ fierce as a woozle
I don't hear it, either. You sound like any other dude. - Anika Palm
I actually don't like how I sound, but I'm more critical of myself then anything else, but I've been told I have a nice voice that soothes the savage beasts in animals and makes the women all swoon. - Chris W
Then again my mother always says nice things about me. - Chris W
Chris, post it. Let's see if you can get these Calvin Klein boxer briefs in a puddle on the floor. ;) - Derrick
LOL Hun, you don't sound gay at all. Well, maybe a smidge. But really, in comparison...I work with some absolute QUEENS; they make Harvey Fierstein sound butch. - Amanda H.
Ok, so maybe I don't sound limp-wristedly snapperific. I'll defer to what everyone else says even if it drives me crazy. - Derrick
I hear some LA, other than that it's pure Ursa Major ;-) - Logical Extremes
You don't sound ridiculous gay at all. I know straight dudes that talk like that..at least...I think they're straight. I think I sound pretty nasal, but I've given up on that. My doodads dropped long ago and this is as bassy as I'm gonna get :) - ♫ Rahsheen ™ ★
BTW, Derrick, you should put your Utterli feed into FF - ♫ Rahsheen ™ ★
LOL @ doodads, Rah. And looking at making that feed happen (reminder: NOT techy, here...) - Derrick
The original Google datacenter in '99 :) - Paul Buchheit
One of the consequences of factoring in component failure in your every move: you can save the cases, stuff's going to break anyway ;) - Mustafa K. Isik
This design turned out to be somewhat nightmarish. It was eventually cleaned up (we had a "cabling fest") and by now the designs are quite slick, though still very unconventional. I wish Google would publish more about their hardware, because it's very interesting. - Paul Buchheit
i have! it was even color coded, cables of different colors - Joelle Nebbe
WHEN CABLES GO BAD! I used to have a similar problem and the only way to trace cables was to put a small binder clip over the wire and push it along. - Stephen Pierzchala
Cables Gone Wild! woo hoo! gees that is bad. Paul YES I too wish Google published their IT Infrastructure / hardware info - Susan Beebe (Santa Claus)
pretty sure their current IT infrastructure involves genetically-modified human brains soaking in some kind of nutrient bath. - Karim
yap i seen so much worser than this pic .... :D - zos
BTW, I believe this is the same generation of hardware found in the Computer History Museum (they have the jj rack, as I recall). - Paul Buchheit
Paul: I've been inside a Google datacenter. They are a thing of beauty now. I've always wanted to interview the team that is responsible for doing those and get some video. - Robert Scoble
That's how it would look if it was set up at my house. - Gabe
I worked in a server room that look like that too - all those spagetti cabling craziness. - imabonehead
Robert - YES do video interview with Google DC Infrastructure brains! :) - Susan Beebe (Santa Claus)
How long would it take to fix if you pulled out just one cable?Or plugged it into the wrong socket? - Alistair
Here are some pics of a datacenter I put together for a client back in 2003 with some pretty insane cabling. With this much cabling, it was too hard to manage without automation. So I built some tools that allowed me to plan for rapid growth (i.e 20 server SAN jumped to 120+ while we were building out) http://bit.ly/9Q7O - Jauder Ho
Grunt: OK boss, I've got a new cable crimped. Where do you want it? Boss: Server 99,9999 port 1. See it? I'll see you in a week. Grunt: &^* - Shane
"Employees dismantling sections of Google's original data center discovered the decaying corpse of an engineer tangled in a web of network patch cables, police reported today. The mostly-skeletal remains have not been conclusively identified, though the victim appeared to have been wearing a 'Banyan Vines' t-shirt. While forensic tests have yet to be completed, the County Medical Examiner has estimated the date of death to be 'sometime around the 1999, 2000 timeframe.'" - Karim
"A police spokeperson said foul play was not suspected, adding, 'Unfortunately, this is not the first time we've seen this. The Internet was growing so rapidly back then, these things just happened. Someone goes in to work on a patch panel, and they get tangled up. It's sad. And I don't blame Google for not noticing -- their headcount was growing rapidly too. One or two engineers go missing, nobody notices. I bet the poor bastard is still getting direct deposit on his paychecks.'" - Karim
A spokesperson for Google referred to the grisly discovery as "a regrettable loss, but not a single point of failure," and added that engineers are currently required to use "the buddy system" to work in pairs when cabling servers. - Karim
Most datacenters I've ever been in don't allow photography. The exception was the Stanford Linear Accelerator data center that Scoble got me into: http://www.flickr.com/photos/t... - Thomas Hawk
AJ, we're trying to avoid spending too much money, so our datacenter pictures would be a lot less interesting than Google's. Here's a photo of one of our servers though: http://friendfeed.com/e/136525... - Paul Buchheit
orionstarr -- i haven't been on psn in a bit. perhaps later on this week. sorry. ps - i haven't blocked anyone in this thread to my knowledge. sorry about that - Cee Bee
just blocked him for using the word bacon - Gregory Lent
Why do I always completely miss the popular entries? Anyway, totally agree about Cee Bee. As a bonus, when you start following him you will find a Golden Ticket in your next chocolate bar wrapper. - Phil Glockner
Phil isn't lying. I found the golden ticket! - Jordan Hofker
ZOMGZ!! SLEESTACKS!! RUN 4 UR FUKN LIVES!!! =P - UncleCreepy13
LOL UncleCreepy. I don't know of Shaggy ever met a Sleestack, but that's a good impression of him if he does. - Phil Glockner
"If you thought Randall Stross’ attack on Tesla yesterday was in poor taste, wait until you read what Michael Wolff has to say about MySpace" - Kol Tregaskes
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hey... I have a myspace account... some musical acts to be found there - Michael W. May
via twhirl
like banjo musical acts? ;-) seriously, the referenced article (http://www.businessweek.com/in...) has some interesting discussion about American society and whether people identify with being lower class -- though I suspect many won't get past the "[expletive deleted] cretins" line :-D - Karim
"We were somewhere around Topeka when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like, 'I feel a bit lightheaded, Toto, maybe we should rest.' And suddenly there was a terrible roar around us, and the sky was full of flying monkeys and houses and women riding broomsticks. No point mentioning those flying monkeys, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough." -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Wichita" - Karim
"ADELE is from a resolutely un-musical family. “It all comes from impersonating The Spice Girls and Gabrielle,” the teenager cheerfully explains. “I did little concerts in my room for my mum and her friends. My mum’s quite arty; she’d get all these lamps and shine them up to make one big spotlight. They’d all sit on the bed.” Later, when her dad’s best friend, a dance producer, rightly declared ADELE’s voice ‘wicked’, he invited her to record a cover of ‘Heart Of Glass’. The first time she got a microphone in her hand, she realised her calling." - Jason Toney
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My short list of New Artist Nominations (from another FF post): Adele, Esperanza Spalding, Katy Perry, Santogold, and Wale (although he only released mixtapes. No formal albums). Alternate: She & Him, The Ting Tings, Lykke Li. - Jason Toney
Got my tickets for her LA show in January (and found out about her via Twitter). - Derrick
same here derek. i find out about new music from my music nerd friends. - tiffany
For myself, it is a toss up betwixt she, *ahem* She & Him, and Lykke Li. Since M.Ward is far from new and Zooey has had some previous light shined upon her, they are out. Adele's "19" is #4 for the year for me, whilst Lykke Li's "Youth Novels" is #3. Those two have, however, switched positions about a dozen times in the last few weeks of list making ;) - Michael W. May
via twhirl
Personally, Lykke Li, Kings of Leon, and Lovers Electric are fighting for my vote this year - quality, quality music - Matt Harwood
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