A controversial technique of Society Design. (more)

Commodity Futures Trading Commission (more)

page was renamed from z2010-10-31-MackenzieRailsAbtestAnalyticsCode (more)

Life on earth is dominated by carbon-based life-forms. But we don't want carbon in our air. (more)

typical Fat Client Revenue Model for ISV players in Software Industry (more)

Netscape idea for caching a little bit of data (typically for Digital Identity) in the Web Browser Thin Client. (more)

Federal scientists say the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska contains less than one-tenth of the volume of oil than was previously estimated. The U.S. Geological Survey says new data puts the new estimate at 896 million barrels of oil, compared to the agency's 2002 mean estimate of 10.6 billion barrels. So much for Cheap Oil.

In case you thought that the Fore Closure games were just paperwork shortcuts that only hit people who deserved it...

In a notice recently released by the CFTC, (retiring Judge) George Painter said Judge Bruce Levine, his longtime colleague, had a secret agreement with a former Republican chairwoman of the agency to stand in the way of investors filing complaints with the agency. "On Judge Levine's first week on the job, nearly twenty years ago, he came into my office and stated that he had promised Wendy Gramm, then Chairwoman of the Commission, that we would never rule in a complainant's favor," Painter wrote. "A review of his rulings will confirm that he fulfilled his vow," Painter wrote... Gramm (wife of Phil Gramm) was head of the CFTC just before president Bill Clinton took office. She has been criticized by Democrats for helping firms such as Goldman Sachs and Enron gain influence over the commodity markets. After leaving the CFTC, she joined Enron's board. (more)

Albert Wenger on the COICA bill and its Black List. COICA essentially establishes Internet Blacklists and gives ISPs immunity when they enforce the blacklists, meaning you can’t sue your ISP for suppressing a site that is on the blacklist. The current version of the bill proposes two separate blacklists: one that can be added to only by courts and another that can be added to by Attorney Generals. Sites would be added, according to the bill, if they are dedicated to infringing activity, such as making lots of copyrighted material available for download... With its use of the word “counterfeits” it is clearly linked to the equally misguided international effort known as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which I have decried previously... Now just to give you some idea of how incredibly bad an idea this is. Imagine a future conversation between Attorney Generals and oh say Craigs List. AGs: “We’ll have you added to the Blacklist” CL: “We are not infringing any copyrights” AGs: “You can fight that in court - after the entire country has lost access to your site.” The power of threatened law suits alone was enough to get Craigslist to shutter its perfectly legal adult services section — now imagine the change in the balance of power if there is a way to eradicate a site from the Internet. (more)

Stowe Boyd is structuring his Enterprise MicroBlogging report as a subscription, so the buyer doesn't feel like a report is instantly out-of-date. I am going to modify my pricing model to allow a buyer three versions of the report. So Betty could download the 2010.2 version of the report in December, and also a copy of the 2011.4 report in June 2011, just to see what’s out there. A buyer will received the current version at the time of purchase, and then can request up to two more copies via email, and those versions will be sent along. Additional versions will be available for an additional fee. (Business Models For Information)

Steve Kessel, senior vice-president of Amazon Kindle, said: "For the top 10 bestselling books on Amazon.com, customers are choosing Kindle books over Hard Cover and Paper Back Printed Book-s combined at a rate of greater than 2 to 1. Kindle books are also outselling print books for the top 25, 100, and 1,000 bestsellers—it's across the board."

Korea BigCo (more)

On October21 in San Francisco, *the Internet Archive, with the support of O'Reilly Media, is hosting (more)

We're switching from Cingular (originally ATT) to Verizon for Cell Phone service. (more)

Michael Mace thinks Sam Sung is crazy to price the Galaxy Tab at $600, and doesn't seem to be a fan of the 7" Tablet category in general... The interface is very cool, but I kept asking myself what I'd actually use it for. What problems does it solve that you can't solve with a Smart Phone? Samsung appears to assume that Apple has created a market for generic tablets to do, you know, tablet stuff. But has it? Or has it created a market for IPad-s that seamlessly handle lots of content and unique applications?

I had passed some interesting-looking Book Store in So Ho (New York City) years ago, but couldn't remember its name or exact location. Discovered it the Sunday but didn't have a chance to go in - Mc Nally Jackson on Prince St.

Wow, even MacOs X is stopping shipping with Flash installed! There are a lot of Mac users who’ve never known the joy of using an Adobe software installer, but who soon will.

FaceBook confirmed the Orkut integration is an app that has been offered to users in Brazil and India only and does not have the participation of Orkut. It just went live today and is aimed at helping people manage their accounts on both sites... Facebook has started offering users the ability to integrate and link their accounts with Orkut, so they can share updates, pictures, links, notes and events on the smaller social network. Facebook users will also be able to find Orkut users on the site. This could prove to be the beginning of the end of Orkut: by linking accounts, a user can now broadcast from Facebook and spend more time there while still staying connected to friends on Orkut. It’s basically an invitation to jump ship.

Apple Computer is creating an ITunes AppStore for MacOs X apps. A Fat Client instead of a website. 30% of the gross. Application approval process. This is progress? (more)