The church next door to me has started on their couple-month long project of tuckpointing all the block on the east side of the building. Not a huge problem, except that: 1 - they fire up their large air-compressor at 7am every weekday morning. If I'm not awake by then, it'll wake me up. 2 - they've got the alley on that side of the church blocked off, which means the buildings around the corner from me, who have parking back there (you can see it in the second picture), use the alley right next to my bedroom window to come home from the bars at 1:30 am. It's making for less sleep than I'm used to, and a week into the project, I'm starting to get cranky about it. But only six or seven more weeks to go!- Fire Forces Thousands To Evacuate near Denver. Reed lives about four miles from where this is happening. Hope they manage to control it before the fire eats his house.
- Marketing Software When You Are a Small Company [scripting]
- XP Updates Start to P.O. Users. Is your hard drive big enough to handle
Trustworthy Computing
? [daypop] - Ink imbroglio: Printer firms vs. recyclers. No real news here, but I worked for LaserMaster, where Mel repeatedly cited the "razor-blade" model. Give away the handles, and make your money selling the blades. [fark!]
- Paranoia, stupidity and greed ganging up on the public. Dan Gillmor takes on the newspaper, movie and music industries. [daypop]
- The common thing about these last two stories is what I've heard called
lock-in
. Companies want some way to force customers to keep coming back to them for products. Free markets will usually find a way around lock-in, and astute companies don't bet the ranch on their ability to keep every single one of their existing customers. Making a good product that people won't ever want to give up is probably a better idea. - Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference 2002 starts about now. I'm not there. I hope someone else will put together a report on what happens.
