Cox Crow

Sitcom Houses

I'm watching Bewitched — not because Elizabeth Montgomery is a hottie, but because I want to see their house and neighborhood. The interior is nicely open, with good flow between the kitchen and other rooms of the house, and extended views out to the back yard and down the hallway. Though I doubt there's a master suite, it looks like a nice place to live.

10:38:41 PM # Google It!
categories: Place

Assertions

We are a democratic republic, not a democracy. There's a difference.

If you don't like the Electoral College, or the winner-take-all system, talk to your State legislatures. It's their fault.

If you don't like gerrymandered districts and Representatives-for-Life, stop voting for the incumbent.

We're a sovereign nation, yet sovereignty rests with the People.

The United Nations is less united than confederal. Neither the President, nor the Congress, can transfer Our sovereignty to an unelected confederacy of nation-states. This is a limit on the ability of the President to make, and the Senate to ratify, treaties.

The nation-state is a temporary expression of the will of the people. Perhaps it is not the best model for all situations, or all peoples.

9:51:11 PM # Google It!
categories: Law, Politics

The Mysteries of Market Segmentation

Wes Felter notes that

IBM announced some POWER5 servers, but iSeries is inscrutable to me and the Redbooks aren't out yet. [Hack the Planet]

If rumor is to be believed, this is the part of the game where iSeries and pSeries hardware merges. If you read carefully, you'll see that this hardware runs, natively, not just OS/400 i5/0S, but AIX and Linux. (It runs Windows, too, in some sort of execution environment under i5/0S. But I'm not familiar with that.) IBM is reducing their costs, and making their hardware more appealing to thoughtful purchasers, by eliminating the physical distinctions between the lines. As your needs increase, add more Legos to your pile.

One chip to run them all ...

3:47:13 PM # Google It!
categories: Industry

On Death and Statistics

This map of recent conflicts from the Nobel Institute reminded me of Statistics of Deadly Quarrels, by Brian Hayes (American Scientist, January-February 2002), reviewing the theories and numbers of Lewis Fry Richardson [a9]. I read this in hard copy, but forget whether I ran across it on the newstand, or was led to it by John Leinhard's piece on WSHU.

2:45:57 PM # Google It!

Interview with Bruce Schneier

Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing, who seconds my motion regarding the Department of Homeland Security, points to ITConversations' excellent interview with Bruce Schneier. He almost sounds like an economist in evaluating risks: Are we getting good value for our investment?

When the U.S. Government says that security against terrorism is worth curtailing individual civil liberties, it's because the cost of that decision is not borne by those making it.

10:43:19 AM # Google It!
categories: Security