Author: kevin

The beauty of Beta

The beauty of Google is that they never release anything. Almost all their software is in beta, which absolves them of almost all sins: if the software doesn’t work or if they want to come out with new features every day or if they want to yank it entirely, they can. It was never released! You are using it at your own risk! The problem is that when they unveiled a web-based e-mail product, they changed the the equation a bit. They want you to store everything. They give you the space to do it, they even let you download it if you want, and now you can import mail from other services too!

This is great and would be awesome if it were bulletproof, but unfortunately, someone exploited a bug in firefox (don’t even get me started on the open-source version of this discussion), that deleted people’s mail. This would be bad with any mail system, except all fee-based systems (released systems) include backups for just this occurrence. Google doesn’t, but then again, they don’t have to, they are BETA! Mail is just a platform to deliver ads to you, they can’t make money on it as a pay service, so there is no incentive for them to ever release it.

What amazes me is how many people not only use GMail as their primary (if not only) mail service, but actually use it for their business mail as well. That is crazy-insane, especially in light of the privacy issues as well (a beta service would guarantee no damages to you if someone breaks into your mail or if Google decides to peruse it themselves).

The final nail in the coffin of privatization around Social Security?

And Now, a Word From Chile … – New York Times

The shining example of privatized social security is encountering serious problems taking care of their elderly who don’t have enough to live on. Now, hopefully it is obvious that the idea of privatization of social security was, at best, a well mannered (but poorly planned) desire to reduce government spending (and taxes) and, at worst, a cynical attempt to enrich the few on the backs of the many with no regard to the welfare of the most vulnerable in society.

If the debacles around medicare haven’t killed the privatization monster, hopefully this will (although, I kinda doubt it, the right always believes that they know better than anyone else).

When does video resolution make a difference?

[via The New York Times]

1080p Does Matter – Here’s When (Screen Size vs. Viewing Distance vs. Resolution)

This is a nice, simple, explanation of how the interaction of screen resolution, screen size and viewing distance all come together around the perceived quality of the TV image. The practical upshot is that maybe you don’t need the full 1080p unless you want to move your chair up to a couple feet from your TV (which just happens to be how you’ll see the set in the showroom).

Dr. Dobb’s | Microsoft Seeks RSS Patents; Blogosphere Worries

Dr. Dobb’s | Microsoft Seeks RSS Patents; Blogosphere Worries | December 22, 2006

This isn’t really so surprising actually. I was at the Gnomedex where MS announced the big RSS features in Vista (didn’t really hear to much about them after that). It makes sense that they would file some patents around that stuff. However, the patents seem pretty broad given how late they came to the RSS game.