Fake Storefronts
Trying to control tangible terrain through false information:
This is a simple and cost-effective approach that keeps the retail unit available for potential new uses and in the meantime also contributes to the street scene.”
Empty shops in Wallsend and North Shields are now being earmarked for similar treatment, which costs about £1,500 a time.
The government-funded project involves colourful graphic designs featuring a range of different shop types, which are either taped inside the windows or screwed to the fascia so they can be removed and reused as required.
Fully Burdened Cost of Water in Afghanistan
CNAS -
“hauling water makes up 51 percent of the logistical burden.” In fact, the MEAT calculated that a gallon of water at the tactical edge in Afghanistan costs the military $4.78 (compared to the assured delivery price of $1.42/gallon).
Post Traumatic Sun Disorder
Heh. Sun’s former CEO is blogging at a site called “What I Couldn’t Say,” while its former general counsel is riding his bike across the country to clear his head.
This is As Useful As Any Other Protest
Thriving Hate Groups
SLPC reports:
Now, the latest SPLC count finds that an astonishing 363 new Patriot groups appeared in 2009, with the totals going from 149 groups (including 42 militias) to 512 (127 of them militias) — a 244% jump.
The number of hate groups in America has been going up for years, rising 54% between 2000 and 2008 and driven largely by an angry backlash against non-white immigration and, starting in the last year of that period, the economic meltdown and the climb to power of an African American president.
According to the latest annual count by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), these groups rose again slightly in 2009 — from 926 in 2008 to 932 last year — despite the demise of a key neo-Nazi group. The American National Socialist Workers Party, which had 35 chapters in 28 states, imploded shortly after the October 2008 arrest of founder Bill White for making threats against his enemies.
At the same time, the number of what the SPLC designates as “nativist extremist” groups — organizations that go beyond mere advocacy of restrictive immigration policy to actually confront or harass suspected immigrants — jumped from 173 groups in 2008 to 309 last year. Virtually all of these vigilante groups have appeared since the spring of 2005.
On Ad Blocking
Here’s a whole treatise against the concept. It’s the same old stuff we’ve heard from the RIAA for years. ArsTechnica is leading the way in the arcane DRM model of making their content crash if you’re using an ad blocker. They’ll share the same fate as the folks in Hollywood have.
Look. Businesses adapt to the relentless evolution of technology (which impacts the environment within which you operate) whether you want them to or not. In some cases, businesses exploit that change to thrive (as Ars did when blogging took off). In other cases, their profit margins decline to match the terms dictated by that environment. We’ve seen that in countless industries, time and time again.
Simply put, it’s time to step up innovation, or come to terms with a smaller business with smaller margins.
Rethinking the U.S.
Chirol, of Coming Anarchy, has a new blog. Added to the reader.
So It Begins.
Great captures of the violence occurring in Greece as a result of its imminent collapse.
On Lawns
Grass is a resource black hole with no return (other than making your pompous homeowners association get off on its own grotesque wealth). So it makes sense that this guy got rid of his. Now he’s facing a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.
Ha said he and his wife, Angelina, removed the lawn in 2008 to take their monthly water bill down from $180 every two months to $48 every two months. He said they put down wood chips and started installing drought-resistant plants after city officials warned them about the code, but officials said wood chips do not qualify as landscaping and took Ha to court.
Around During SXSW
I’ll be around for but not attending SXSW. Get in touch if you want to meet up!
Infographic: Career Prospects
Infographic: Free Cities
Theo Deutlinger, one of my favorite infographic artists, has an interesting take on the branding of cities.
He visualizes cities with “free” as a prefix or suffix, both geographically and on a timeline. Of the data, 90% of the cities were in Western languages (German, Spanish, Slavic, English) and farther back on the timeline. The remaining 10% were in non-Western languages, and were developed more recently.
Conclusion:
It seems that within Europe the free town concept was used as instrument for urban development while outside it was used as marking the end from European oppression.
Secret Service Technology
A classified review of the United States Secret Service’s computer technology found that the agency’s computers were fully operational only 60 percent of the time because of outdated systems and a reliance on a computer mainframe that dates to the 1980s, according to Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.
Singer on Drone Defense
Singer (one of the smartest folks in DC) does a good job outlining the threat of cheap and plentiful drones:
Today, the lag time between the development of military technology and its widespread dissemination is measured in months, not years. Industrial farmers around the world already use aerial drones to dust their crops with pesticides. And a recent U.S. Air Force study concluded that similar systems are “an ideal platform” for dirty bombs containing radioactive, chemical, or biological weapons—the type of WMDs that terrorists are most likely to obtain. Such technologies have the potential to strengthen the hand not only of Al Qaeda 2.0, but also of homegrown terror cells and disaffected loners like Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. As one robotics expert told me, for less than $50,000 “a few amateurs could shut down Manhattan.”
However, his prescription for a defensive strategy is far from optimal:
To succeed in this revolution, we need something many competitor countries already have: a national robotics strategy. That means graduate scholarships, lab funding, and a Silicon Valley–style corridor for corporate development. Otherwise we are destined to depend on the expertise of others. Already a growing number of American defense and technology firms rely on hardware from China and software from India, a clear security concern.
The solution isn’t a new Manhattan project. It’s in widespread tinkering.
JooJoo Is Going To Fail
Ignoring all the TechCrunch fluff, this thing is going to crash and burn. Why? No local storage means it’s basically a $500 screen with a battery and a buggy interface. A castrated netbook (which in themselves are pretty impotent.)
The only hope Fusion Garage has is to turn that – it’s an empty touch interface – into a strength and apply it to solve a niche problem with custom software (think warehouse management, or libraries, etc). One possible route is as a web conference interface. (Would require a better built in webcam, however, though whiteboarding is a real option again.)
Some of those will require dropping the price quite a bit though.
