Chilean blob was whale-guts, not sea monster

Grok Headline matches for Chilean blob was whale-guts, not sea monster

Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid 0.91 release
2

Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid 0.91 release
2 09/09/2004 07:05 AM
A 2D mission-based platform game.

Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid 0.91 release
3

Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid 0.91 release
3 09/12/2004 01:45 AM
A 2D mission-based platform game.

Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid 0.91

Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid 0.91 09/04/2004 05:17 PM
A 2D mission-based platform game.

Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid 0.9

Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid 0.9 07/30/2004 12:14 PM
A 2D mission-based platform game.

Chilean Gastronomy

Chilean Gastronomy 02/01/2005 09:38 PM

Some notes on Chilean cuisine...

Mayonnaise goes with everything.  A standard snack is a "Completo":one very mild almost tasteless hot dog, steamed or microwaved rather than grilled; Wonder Bread-style bun, microwaved for warmth, chopped tomatoes; onions or sauerkraut; avocado spread; a copious quantity of mayo spread over the top.  A "Cesar Salad" at a fancy restaurant: iceberg lettuce; shreds of local Parmesan cheese; lots of mayo.

What you order is what you get.  If the menu says "lettuce and tomato salad" you get a plate of lettuce, almost invariably iceberg, and tomato.  No garnish.  No spices.  No dressings or sauces.

Canned fruit salad is good for everything from the breakfast buffet at a top hotel to part of an ice cream dessert.

Corn chips and salsa are almost impossible to find.  An enormous Lider supermarket in La Serena had a few bags in the bottom of a small "international food" section.

"Chilean sea bass" is not available in Chile.  It would be called "Bacalao" (cod) on a restaurant menu, supposedly, but nearly all of the Patagonian Toothfish steaks are exported to the U.S. or Europe.

Local seafood can be very good.  It is generally available in a tasty soup, plain, or smothered in a heavy cream sauce.

Best meals so far... (1) a chic 6-table pasta place in Valparaiso, (2) the cafeteria at the lodge at Las Campanas Astronomical Observatory (lots of spices and veggies for the Americans observing there), (3) steamed shellfish in Achao, part of Chiloe in southern Chile

Just about every meal is served in a stylish environment by friendly and attentive staff.

Chilean Collectors Rejoice

Chilean Collectors Rejoice 12/22/2004 01:33 AM
As any one of our International readers can tell you, trying to collect Star Wars figures in countries other than the US can be very difficult but there's some good news for our friends in Chile! Rebelscum reader Nicolas writes to tell us that the Saga Ultra figures as well as both the OTC and VOTC figures have been spotted at the Paris and Ripley's department stores and at Rochet toy stores! Happy hunting!

Telefonica to Buy Chilean Mobile Phone
Co. (AP)

Telefonica to Buy Chilean Mobile Phone
Co. (AP) 05/19/2004 02:54 PM
AP - Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica said Wednesday it will pay $1 billion for Chile's No. 2 mobile phone company.

Chilean embassy deaths mourned

Chilean embassy deaths mourned 07/29/2004 06:27 AM
Masses are held in Chile and Costa Rica in memory of three Chilean diplomats killed by an embassy guard.

Chilean versus California wine

Chilean versus California wine 02/01/2005 09:38 PM
Wine down here in Chile ranges in price from $1 to $3 per bottle. I've been drinking these and some luxury ($7) Chilean wines and, to my uneducated palette, they compare favorably to wines tasted in California's Napa Valley on a recent long weekend out there.  The Napa wines were $30-50/bottle.  So the question for the wine experts reading this is... why would anyone buy wine from Napa, where a small bit of land for a house is almost $1 million?  One would naively suppose that grapes and wine produced on some of the world's most expensive real estate would be a bad bargain.  We don't buy apples from the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  We don't buy oranges from Beverly Hills.  Why does it make sense to buy wine from what is now a Bay Area suburb?  Couldn't a winery in a place where real estate and labor are cheaper (e.g., Australia, Argentina, Chile, etc.) always produce a much better wine for any given price?

Chilean versus American airports

Chilean versus American airports 02/01/2005 09:38 PM

Flying from Santiago to Miami one is faced with some rather rude shocks.  The Santiago airport is gorgeous, full of glass and light.  Rents are obviously fairly low because every nook and cranny of the airport is crammed with the kinds of shops that you'd find in any Chilean business district.  There is a full-service pharmacy.  There is a communications center where you can close yourself into a private phone booth, make calls, and pay for them at the end.  There are Internet cafes.  Miami, like most U.S. airports, seems only to be able to support the $5 slice of pizza store, the $5 magazine store, and the $5 coffee store.  If you want to make a phone call you do it from a noisy public space.  If you want to relax you pay $500/year to one of the airline clubs.  If you want Internet access, you're screwed.  Most of the spaces in Miami are bleak empty wastelands of concrete and/or glass.  In Santiago you feel like you're in a shopping mall where occasionally a couple of hundred people leave en masse.

Oh yes... my feeble attempts to purchase Internet access for my laptop in MIA and LGA have led me to the conclusion that the U.S. will not, in the foreseeable future, have an 802.11 network with useful coverage.  So I've decided to buy an $80/month unlimited data PC card from Verizon or Sprint.  Anyone have experience with these services?  My tendency is to want to go with Verizon because (a) they have the best coverage for voice calls, and (b) I think in the D.C. area where my family lives, they offer some kind of near-Broadband speeds on this service.

Chilean glacier in rapid retreat

Chilean glacier in rapid retreat 04/27/2004 07:31 AM
The famous San Rafael Glacier in Chile, a popular tourist attraction, is experiencing dramatic melting, say UK glaciologists.

Hidden Exposé blob

Hidden Exposé blob 10/29/2003 01:13 AM
Panther's dock has a hidden feature that will display a floating blue 'blob' that activates Exposé if you click on it. The hint was posted in macosxhints a few days ago and now If Then Software has written a free utility to enable or disable the feature.

Do You Have the Guts to Buy?

Do You Have the Guts to Buy? 04/01/2005 11:15 AM
Paul Elliott offers a challenge to growth investors.

distributed replicated blob server

distributed replicated blob server 06/03/2004 03:14 PM
source documentaion updates

You Have Huge Guts

You Have Huge Guts 04/09/2004 04:04 PM
In 1996, the Doom videogame was retold as a comic book, and the result may be the worst of all time. "My cause is just. My will is strong. And my gun is very, very large." (04-03)

MS guts longhorn

MS guts longhorn 08/27/2004 07:10 PM
i wonder if XP SP2's slipping was part of the cause

Gillmor guts

Gillmor guts 12/19/2004 03:40 PM
Dan Gillmor is leaving the SJ Merc to launch a project that continues the best of blogs. Few have the courage to risk so much for this. He has earned praise for the work he has done, and respect for this next step that he is taking.

T Rex guts excavated

T Rex guts excavated 03/24/2005 04:51 PM
Cory Doctorow: The remains of a T. Rex with intact blood vessels and blood cells have been recovered:

The field team used standard procedure as they excavated the bones, wrapping them in plaster jackets before transporting them..

This particular dinosaur fossil was too big to lift and they reluctantly cracked a thighbone.

Usually paleontologists put preservatives on fossils right away, but Schweitzer has been trying to find soft tissue in dinosaur fossils, so this one was left alone.

Link (Thanks, Alex!)

War protest with guts

War protest with guts 03/19/2003 10:26 PM
Some gutsy australians has been demonstrating against the war in a peculiar fashion. Way to go for demonstrating the futility...

The Guts Of A New Machine

The Guts Of A New Machine 12/02/2003 12:37 AM
The iPod became an instant classic by combining high design and powerful technology. But as Apple has learned before, that formula alone doesn't keep you on top. By Rob Walker (New York Times via MyAppleMenu)

On The Guts of a New Machine (Aside)

On The Guts of a New Machine (Aside) 12/02/2003 01:29 AM

One thing that I noticed for the first time today was the distinct similarity between the navigational style of the iPod and the horizo ntal-heirarchy menu-driven interface to Tivos. Is there a memetic forebear to both of these that I'm unfamiliar with, or is this simply an emerging standard in navigating through libraries of content when you only have a few physical buttons and real-life interface elements to deal with?

Read the comments

Web Crossing adds Content Blob
Management

Web Crossing adds Content Blob
Management 03/29/2005 02:18 PM
Web Crossing Inc. announced the release of a new Content Blob Management plug-in for its self-named collaboration server software. The plug-in helps non-technical administrators to control the access of content posted to their Web Crossing site. It's available free for a limited time.

distributed replicated blob server
2004-06-03

distributed replicated blob server
2004-06-03 06/03/2004 03:30 PM
A very simplified distributed fileserver.

distributed replicated blob server
20040607

distributed replicated blob server
20040607 06/07/2004 05:20 PM
A very simplified distributed fileserver.

distributed replicated blob server
20040619

distributed replicated blob server
20040619 06/20/2004 06:28 AM
A very simplified distributed fileserver.

distributed replicated blob server
2004-06-16

distributed replicated blob server
2004-06-16 06/16/2004 04:42 PM
A very simplified distributed fileserver.

distributed replicated blob server
20040804

distributed replicated blob server
20040804 08/08/2004 10:50 AM
A very simplified distributed fileserver.

Storing Data In Cow Guts?

Storing Data In Cow Guts? 07/21/2004 04:20 PM

On The Guts of a New Machine (Part One)

On The Guts of a New Machine (Part One) 12/02/2003 01:31 AM

I've been reading The Guts of a New Machine, the latest (and longest) article on the iPod perpetrated by the New York Times. It's an interesting article that does the journalistic job of covering a variety of angles well while trying to find some unifying theme - but that makes commenting on it in general almost impossible. It itself has no thesis - no argument to make. So instead of addressing the piece as a whole I'm just going to jot down a few thoughts that occurred to me as I read specific chunks. I'm going to do this in multiple posts as it should make commenting more practical.

On rapid product development and coherent product vision

"The iPod came together in somewhere between six and nine months, from concept to market, and its coherence as a product given the time frame and the number of variables is astonishing. Jobs and company are still correct when they point to that coherence as key to the iPod's appeal; and the reality of technical innovation today is that assembling the right specialists is critical to speed, and speed is critical to success."

This chunk of the article (not a quote from anyone) interested me, because of the perceived dislocation between speed, the right staff and coherence. The process seems to me to have been successful in producing something coherent and clean almost because of its brevity. In my experience, three months is about as long as you can reliably expect any individual person to care about their part of the project more than they care about anything else - even if they're given total free space not to have to think about anything else (multi-tasking is the evil enemy of creativity in my opinion). Only clear delineations between stages in a project (and strong management over those transitions) can really help maintain people's levels of constructive engagement if you need a project to go any longer.

When I see the iPod and hear the time it took to think through it, I can almost smell the initial back-to-basics workshops, the brainstorming around what MP3 players could and should be at their core. You can feel the desire to understand something - grasp a vision - and the reason that sensation still sits at the heart of the thing is that there wasn't enough time for that vision to erode before it got to market. The iPod's design to me isn't really about simplicity or coherence at all, it's about getting to the essence of the thing and sparsely sketching it out without letting the cruft or baroque tendencies unfold. Where human beings are involved, design is a process in time, and the quality of that design can be affected directly by too-little time, too-much time, and not know what to do with the time you have.

Read the comments

Microsoft guts Longhorn

Microsoft guts Longhorn 08/30/2004 08:39 AM
SLEEPING SOFTWARE giant Microsoft has decided to release Longhorn in 2006, earlier than planned. However, because it is coming out earlier, Longhorn will be trimmed of some of the more innovative stuff that has been seen in earlier builds.

On The Guts of a New Machine (Part Two)

On The Guts of a New Machine (Part Two) 12/02/2003 01:30 AM

My second response to a chunk in The New York Times article The Guts of a New Machine concerns the comments of Rob Glaser from RealNetworks. You can read my first response (on rapid design processes) here.

Three visions of Apple & the music player market in five years:

Nor will music bought through Apple's store play on any rival device. This means Apple is, again, competing against a huge number of players across multiple business segments, who by and large will support one another's products and services. In light of this, says one of those competitors, Rob Glaser, founder and C.E.O. of RealNetworks, ''It's absolutely clear now why five years from now, Apple will have 3 to 5 percent of the player market.''

It's an interesting position this, but I wonder if it's true. I mean, the iTunes Music Store has clearly been a bit of a success in the States, even if it's not going to topple retail CD sales any time particularly soon. An awful lot of people already have tracks from it, and - given Pepsi's deal to buy and give away 100 million tracks and MacDonald's rumoured deal for a further billion - a hell of a lot of other people are going to join them pretty soon. It seems clear that if Apple sell or distribute that number of tracks during this early period then it'll help them sell iPods straightaway. And later it should have an equally positive effect when people come to replaced their devices - the retention levels should be directly improved as a result. At least this much seems obvious - the more tracks you own, the more you then have to lose by transferring to a player that can't read them.

Now that's already a different sense of the future than that held (in public) by Rob Glasner. And it doesn't take a genius to try and push that a bit further. Given the scale of their lead, you could easily argue that the possibility exists for Apple to create de facto bought-music standard that is attached exclusively to their products. They'll have a lock-in. At which point the question emerges - how long is it in their best interests to maintain it?

Now, I've painted a fairly rosy picture of Apple's use of DRM and non-device-independent music files so far, but there are clearly disadvantages as well. History has shown us (with a few notable exceptions) that unless consumers and companies have little or no choice about whether to use them - things based on non-proprietary and vaguely open standards seem destined to 'win' in the long-term. They'll get used on the most devices and in the most interesting and dynamic (and obviously inexpensive) ways. In fact just last year I was arguing that Apple's resurgence was a direct result of steering away from this kind of proprietary activity (Apple and the Pirate Everyman). Their moves towards open standards seemed to be based around creating the best hardware and software for exploiting the (perhaps problematic / perhaps not) confusions and collapses around intellectual property.

But of course there's no reason why the style of DRM'd AAC that Apple use couldn't be subsequently opened up as an available format for use in other devices. And I don't doubt that if there was an economic rationale for doing something like that then they'd do it in a heart-beat. Say - for example - the restrictions were stopping more people buying the devices than they were retaining. So with that in mind, here are two more very very lightly-sketched out possibilities for Apple's future treatment of their DRM'd non-device-independent AAC format:

(1) Apple have leveraged their current dominance in legal downloads and players into a technology that they (perhaps) license to other players resulting in a situation like with plugins or (kind of) like Microsoft OS's, where almost no music player in the world can afford not to pay to play Apple Music Store tracks (compensating for the corresponding loss in iPod sales). (2) They just open the doors to other companies building players that can play Apple Music Store tracks. There are clearly technology issues around both of these issues (like - I believe - the way that the sale and subsequent approval of Music Store tracks are handled over the internet direct with Apple. But fundamentally, I can see no reason why the current chain between track and player could not subsequently be broken (or reinforced) according to the needs of the market.

Importantly, I'm not going to articulate my position on whether Apple's DRM-based, non-player-independent approach to the selling of music is the right or most moral one. If you find these issues interesting, then Jim Griffin and Cory Doctorow have a lot to say about it in a variey of places, including in the Aula Exposure book.

Read the comments

News: Web Crossing adds Content Blob
Management

News: Web Crossing adds Content Blob
Management 03/30/2005 05:42 PM
Web Crossing Inc. announced the release of a new Content Blob Management plug-in for its self-named collaboration server software. The plug-in helps non-technical administrators to control the access of content posted to their Web Crossing site. It's available free for a limited time.

Update: Content Blob Management Plug-in
for Web Crossing

Update: Content Blob Management Plug-in
for Web Crossing 03/31/2005 11:27 AM
This plug-in for the Web Crossing collaboration and community software simplifies the creation of access-controlled "blobs" of content.

Cell phone guts set to get beefier

Cell phone guts set to get beefier 09/09/2004 08:47 AM
SiliconValley.com Sep 9 2004 12:55PM GMT

DoCoMo's ex-prince has guts to pick up
Vodafone

DoCoMo's ex-prince has guts to pick up
Vodafone 08/18/2004 03:10 PM
Business Day Newspaper Aug 18 2004 5:17PM GMT

"New York Times: The Guts of a New
Machine By ROB WALKER"

"New York Times: The Guts of a New
Machine By ROB WALKER" 12/02/2003 12:28 AM

New Pahlaniuk story GUTS makes people
barf?

New Pahlaniuk story GUTS makes people
barf? 01/27/2004 10:18 AM
A controversial short story, "Guts," by Chuck Palahniuk is set for release in the March issue of Playboy. Rumor has it that when the author reads it in public, audience members flee, faint, and -- vomit. We don't know if this is true, but it sounds cool enough. Link 1, Link 2, Amazon link (Thanks, Susa nnah!)

WFDF 2004 World Ultimate & Guts
Championships

WFDF 2004 World Ultimate & Guts
Championships 07/25/2004 07:54 AM
World Ultimate & Guts Championships .. lefel uchaf

wugc2004.org
track this site | 2 links

46 camel fucking subhumans with their
guts dangling from a pear tree

46 camel fucking subhumans with their
guts dangling from a pear tree 12/02/2003 01:54 AM
US Forces Kill 46 Iraqi Terrorists Attempting Ambush .. he settled for Ba'athist scum

foxnews.com/story/0,2933,104407,00.html
track this site | 7 links

Grok Description matches for Chilean blob was whale-guts, not sea monster
GrokA matches for Chilean blob was whale-guts, not sea monster

Chilean blob was whale-guts, not sea monster

The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: