Doonesbury Say What?

"I just want my life back."
-- BP CEO Tony Hayward

I just want a non-devastated Gulf back.

There was a lovely piece on The Daily Show of violations recorded by the MMS on BP operations over the last three years. Over 800. The next two highest offenders? EIGHT. The lowest number of violations? Exxon with ONE.

And we don't even have the story of BP letting part of the Alaska pipeline rust on the front page yet.

When Obama said that deep sea drilling was safe a month or so before the well blew, I knew he was going to regret saying that, I just wish it hadn't been so soon and so cataclysmic. Apparently the Saudis (or some UAE country) had a similar incident. Environmental impact: almost zero. Their solution? They brought in lots of oil super tankers equipped with pumps and filters, they sat around the leak pumping in contaminated sea water, capturing the oil, pumping the filtered water back out.

Pity no one is talking about this.

Del Toro no longer directing The Hobbit

First I'd heard about it. I wonder if Jackson will do it, he's already producing it and he'd probably have a significant hand in it anyway. The reason given: startup delays, which means MGM's frailty. Jackson said: “...“The bottom line is that Guillermo just didn’t feel he could commit six years to living in New Zealand, exclusively making these films, when his original commitment was for three years. ...”

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2010/05/30/36920-guillermo-del-toro-departs-the-hobbit/

Google ditching Windows workstations to shore up security

A lot of this is in response to their getting hacked by China last year. Employees will now have the choice of a Mac or a PC running Linux, the article didn't specify which flavor.

If you need to run Windows, you have to get permission from VERY high up, you need approval from the CIO.

There's an interesting paragraph:
The move created mild discontent among some Google employees, appreciative of the choice in operating systems granted to them - an unusual feature in large companies. But many employees were relieved they could still use Macs and Linux. “It would have made more people upset if they banned Macs rather than Windows,” he added. (emphasis mine)

Ultimately, I'm sure they'll eat their own dog food and base their operations on Chrome/Android, but those platforms still need some maturing.

The article might need to be taken with a grain of salt: they quote Google's employee base as more than 10,000; there are sources saying it's more than 20k.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d2f3f04e-6ccf-11df-91c8-00144feab49a.html

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/06/01/011203/Google-Reportedly-Ditching-Windows


This was yesterday. So today, naturally, Microsoft releases a rebuttal, which I'm not going to bother going in to at any length. It's basically saying we've made lots of improvements, and the Mac is far from secure. What they don't bother mentioning is that 99% of the malware out there targets Windows because that's where the machines are.

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/06/02/2218231/Microsoft-Talks-Back-To-Googles-Security-Claims

Book publishers clamor for an open ebook format

I whole-heartedly agree. I don't buy ebooks, but I download a lot, mainly from Gutenberg. The fact that, if I had a Kindle and bought an iPad, that I couldn't read purchased books interchangeably between the two, that would really irritate me. And with an avalanche of slate computing devices over the horizon, that's going to become an increasing problem.

For Michael Serbinis, chief executive of Kobo, a company that allows users to buy e-books and read them on most devices, that battle is a distraction to the real changes coming.

“Today you can buy a book at Barnes and Noble and you can buy a book at Walmart and you don’t have to keep them in separate rooms in your house,” he said. “You buy a book from Apple and Amazon and you have got to keep it tied up with your Apple universe or your Kindle universe.”

I just downloaded Kobo's app for the iPad Mini (AKA iPod Touch) and quite like it, except it doesn't link to Gutenberg like my Stanza app does.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/universal-e-books-format/all/1

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/05/31/2031202/Publishers-Campaign-For-Universal-E-Book-Format