September 2010
24 posts
Mark Zuckerberg Worth More Than Steve Jobs →
Yay for Mark Zuckerberg, but headlines like this are a bit misleading. Most of Zuckerberg’s wealth is tied up in Facebook stock which he can’t sell easily. Facebook’s current valuation is also inflated because of a few recent investments by venture firms that are willing to pay a premium just to have Facebook stock. If Zuckerberg sold his stock at IPO, it probably wouldn’t...
Michael Arrington Discovers Super Angels Colluding →
Assuming what Arrington says is true, super angels are colluding on a massive scale. It’s a conspiracy not to compete, and it’s targeting Y Combinator specifically. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of this.
NY Daily News: Can I 'call him an a--hole?' Andrew... →
Oh, New York. Such a civil political landscape.
Rasmussen Reports: 52% of Voters Say Their Views... →
Scary. The President is pretty mainstream; Sarah Palin is not. I think this shows the increasing polarization of the political climate.
NYT: Finding the Positive in Cellphones for... →
Phones can be distracting in school, but so is the pick-up game of football that’s happening outside the window. There are so many positives to pushing better technology into the classroom—better organization and being able to conduct labs and other exercises that weren’t possible before among them. They’re not right for every purpose or setting, but the demonization of...
NYT: Tea Party Victory Opens Rift Between Moderate... →
Wait. There are still moderates in the Republican Party?
NYT: Cloud computing hits snag in Europe →
Privacy vs. convenience—it’s the big battle of the cloud computing world. I’m still not convinced we can’t have both, it’s just that no manufacturer has a real incentive to care about privacy when most of their users are ambivalent at best.
Richmond Times Dispatch: Give States a Tool to... →
This proposal would allow acts of Congress to be repealed with the votes of 2/3 of the state legislatures.
Proposals like these fail to grasp that most of the time, we’re one country, not 50 states. There may have been a time when having 50 sovereign, largely independent states made sense to govern such a large area. Not anymore. We fight as one country, trade as one country, and conduct...
Dowd on Christine O'Donnell: Myth and Madness →
To me, Christine O’Donnell is just another in a long line of politicians with the same happy disconnect with the issues. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She doesn’t know what the words she’s saying mean. And when she compares herself to mythical elf creatures (“I’m a fighter, like Eowyn”), no one else knows what she means either.
Her...
“Apple Inc. is developing a digital newsstand for publishers that would let them...”
– Apple Said to Negotiate With Publishers Over Digital Newsstand - Bloomberg
It’s all about control. If Apple can give them access to enough user data, then the publishers might think it’s worth it to surrender control of the sales apparatus to Apple.
DRUDGE REPORT: OBAMA GOES TO CHURCH! →
Oh no! The President went to church! Did the rabid hordes of Islamic extremists he keeps below the Rose Garden dismantle the altar? Did Osama bin Laden hitch a ride in the motorcade?
The pool report says that the gospel is Luke 16:1-13, including a passage that reads “You cannot serve God and wealth.” Is this the beginning of a socialist revolution? I don’t know, but I think...
What I'm Trying to Do Here
View from a Farley originally launched in 2008. At that time, it was a blog and podcast. A few months later, I canned the podcast. Since then, View from a Farley has been a blog, but I’ve had trouble updating it. Someone once told me that blogs that don’t have fresh content every single day have a lot of trouble attracting an audience. I not only want an audience, but I want to...
New York Times: Toyota Plans 6 New Hybrids by End... →
Toyota and Tesla’s partnership will be fun to watch. The big American auto companies are just beginning to realize that people like small hybrids, but Toyota’s already miles ahead. Tesla will be able to give them a badly needed design lesson.
Bloomberg: Rich Americans Save Tax Cuts Instead of... →
I’d be interested in an educated response to this. I’m sure someone with more knowledge of economics than I believes that either Moody’s is wrong or the tax cuts for top wage-earners are still worth it. I know we won’t get anything close to an intellectual response from the Republicans, but I’d still like to know what the intellectual response is.
"The Social Network" Movie is Hard on Facebook CEO... →
Can’t wait to to see this. It’s fiction and fluff, but it is written by Aaron Sorkin (writer of The West Wing), so it’ll at least be entertaining fiction and fluff.
Daring Fireball: Gartner Predicts Mobile OS Market... →
John Gruber dispels the notion that because Apple’s mobile OS market share is losing ground to Android, Apple must be failing. Apple is not after market share; it’s after profit.
If Apple really wanted to gain market share, they could put together $400 notebooks and $5 phones will plastic wrap and duct tape. Most consumer electronics manufacturers have thin margins and hope to sell...
Ted Koppel: Nine years after 9/11, let's stop... →
I’ve felt for a long time that the success of terrorism isn’t measured by body counts, but by how much the target modifies its own values out of fear. Nine years on, our beliefs in privacy and right to a speedy trial are being challenged by warrantless wiretaps and renditions. The 9/11 terrorists hated the freedom that America had, so don’t we play into their hands every time we...
Mark Hurd Joins Oracle as Co-President →
Unexpected.
HP’s board has some explaining to do. The whole story about Hurd’s departure is still somewhat mysterious, so I won’t rush to judgment. However, it’s clear that either HP’s board overreacted or Oracle is making a serious error in judgment.
Sharron Angle tells CNN: "I’ll be a mainstream... →
Either she’s lying in this interview or lying in her campaign materials, but Sharron Angle is not mainstream. She is trying to define a new mainstream, but even in this climate she is not mainstream.
Petraeus Condemns U.S. Church's Plan to Burn... →
Petraeus is widely respected, but largely ignored by the media. He plays his role as “that military guy at congressional hearings” well, but his public statements show he’s both intelligent and politically-minded. He’s one to watch, particularly if he ever runs for office.
Oval Office rug gets history wrong →
Oops.
Kristof: America’s History of Fear →
Kristof makes an excellent point in this op-ed piece. The vast majority of Americans don’t hate Muslims. At worst, most of them are ambivalent. But the Glenn Becks of the world have a remarkable ability to make decent people afraid that “those people” will come to destroy their values and their ways of life. It’s suddenly not about freedom of religion, but about...