The deflation "recognition phase" has finally arrived. Kroger foods, Costco, and Walmart are blaming deflation for a drop in earnings. Moreover, many high profile names are discussing deflation, something most thought could never happen.

The author of this blog is obviously somewhat radical but the collection of datapoints here is valuable regardless of your opinions on financial policy. Clearly, we have entered a deflationary period for the first time since the 1950s.

Deflation has arrived

Amaya is a Web editor, i.e. a tool used to create and update documents directly on the Web. Browsing features are seamlessly integrated with the editing and remote access features in a uniform environment. This follows the original vision of the Web as a space for collaboration and not just a one-way publishing medium.

I had no idea that this existed. Sounds very interesting.

Amaya Home Page

Caterina Fake:

So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.

Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on.

Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be.

Blindness, and Seeing

Here’s what happens when you turn forty-five. You realize you will only ever read so many books — how much time have you got left for reading? — and you had better only read the good ones. There are only so many movies, so many trips, so many new friends, so many family barbecues with the sun going down over the long grass. It has always been this way. Finite. But at forty-five you realize it.

From Noteworthy's Last Mission post. This is a short colorful essay. The Walrus's new tag line, while rather arrogant, is almost certainly correct.

The Walrus » Forty-five

A SCOTUS case on the Docket this year relates to business method patents, which has caused a slew of amicus briefs from anti-software patent organizations. This article links to one of them.

I'll admit to not having given this question a thorough analysis but my inclination has always been that the anti-software patent crowd was too radical. There are obviously some serious problems with the patent system as it relates to the computer industry. Patents take too long to get and they last too long. Its too easy to get a patent on something that you aren't actually selling or even things you can't actually build, and so there is a big problem with patent trolls scooping up patents for futuristic concepts that haven't really been created yet and they certainly didn't create, later suing when someone else actually reduces them to practice. These are all policy issues that deserve attention.

On the other hand, patents play an important roll in the software startup space, where they serve as a proof point that a new company has a real technological innovation and investors have a real asset that they've purchased with their money. It is not fair to say that software patents only hinder innovation - they both hinder and help it - and furthermore I think a lot of that hinderance could be addressed if there was sufficient effort to do so.

A lot of time and advocacy that could go toward building a better patent system for software has been instead spent on eliminating software patents. To me, concluding that "software" as an embodiment of ideas is beyond patenting is to argue that patents should not exist at all in any domain, and I think that is the real goal of many of those who oppose software patents.

All engineering is the reduction of principals to practice. What difference does it make if that reduction occurs in a microprocessor or in a test tube? If we cannot see where the line is between science and engineering in the practice of computing it is because we haven't sought to find it. We deliberately mislabel most academic software engineering programs as "computer science" when they are doing nothing of the sort. If software is, indeed, truly special, it makes more sense to craft our policy in such a way that the concept of a patent works consistently across all domains of engineering, rather than to create an inconsistent policy environment by exempting software in order to uphold ancient distinctions that our advancing knowledge has blurred.

In any event, I would guess that the court will deliberately avoid engaging the question and narrowly limit their conclusion to business methods, which is the matter at hand. There will be a lot of hand wringing on Slashdot, and that will be the end of it.

Groklaw - SFLC files Bilski brief: Software should not be patentable and don't forget the 1st Amendment

At the beginning of August 2009, Microsoft issued a security patch KB971090 on its Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 product: the result was that when we recompiled our plugin with this updated Studio, it would not run on other PCs...

Hopefully, some smart people suggested four solutions:

Install the vc_redist.exe to be found in c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 
8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\vcredist_x86 on every customer's PC. Not very convenient.

Remove the security fix KB971090. This is what we did.

Some other people like Ted, proposes a method to force the use of build 762 (the previous version used by Visual Studio 2005) but we could not make this work properly.

Finally, it was also suggested to ship this 4053 build as private assemblies. We ran into other isses that
are detailed below.

NO, no, see, you're doing it wrong.

Big LOLs

The "Growing Trend" in Internet deals is towards More & Smaller Acquisitions.  But it's not because of VCs, or the Financial Crisis, or Sarbanes-Oxley.  It's because the Web is Maturing, and Internet Platform Giants are outsourcing / buying Innovation.

This emphatic post has some decent insight into the present state of the web startup market.

Master of 500 Hats: Gordon Gekko 2.0: Flipping is GOOD. (aka Memo to Jason Fried: Sorry, You're Fucking Wrong.)

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's annual privacy report card revealed more details on the agency's controversial policy involving searches of electronic devices at U.S. borders.

The 99-page report was released Thursday...

... with lots of press coverage, but there is actually very little new information here that is relevant to the boarder search debate. The entire relevant section is quoted here:

CBP and ICE may conduct border searches of electronic devices as part of CBP’s mission to interdict and ICE’s mission to investigate violations of federal law at and related to U.S. borders. CBP Officers and ICE Special Agents conduct border searches of electronic devices to determine whether a violation of U.S. law has occurred. These searches have been an integral part of CBP’s and ICE’s border security and law enforcement missions since the inception of their predecessor agencies the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S. Customs Service. In an effort to provide greater transparency, DHS Headquarters, the DHS Privacy Office, CBP, and ICE have undertaken a PIA that assesses the program in light of the FIPPs to discuss the relative rarity of these searches and the safeguards in place to protect the privacy of travelers subject to such a search. The PIA will be issued during the next reporting year.

To place the practice in perspective, between October 1, 2008 and May 5, 2009, CBP encountered more than 144.4 million travelers at U.S. ports of entry. Of these travelers, approximately 3.1 million (2.2% of the 144.4 million travelers) were referred to secondary inspection; however, CBP only conducted 1,947 searches of electronic media during this time period. A "search" in this regard may be as simple as turning on the device to ensure it is what it purports to be. Detailed information on these searches is only available for those performed on laptops. Of the total number of searches of electronic media, only 696 (0.022% of the 3.1 million travelers referred to secondary inspection) were performed on laptops, which does not necessarily involve an in-depth search of the device. Of the 696 travelers subject to laptop inspection, officers conducted in-depth searches of 40 laptops.

Whats important is that they have agreed to perform a privacy impact assessment, but it will be a long time coming.

It is worth reiterating that although its good to hear that only 40 laptops were subjected to in depth search - the stated policy allows for many many more searches. Where these 40 laptops selected at random? It seems most likely that they were not, and therefore DHS cannot argue that a reasonable suspicion requirement would interfere with the operation of this program as is.

DHS privacy report: Laptop searches at airports infrequent

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has graciously offered to provide me with pro bono legal representation regarding the threat I received from Texas Instruments. The EFF is also representing some other individuals who were served. There are some important principals at stake here and we may be fortunate enough to have the opportunity to take a stand on them. Stay tuned...

We’re in what some people call “pretend-and-extend” economy, which means that banks that have commercial loans are often extending those loans and pretending that the property is worth something. That’s because they don’t face reality...

In principle we can keep this in place for a long time. That’s what Japan did…

The U.S. economy is entering a long phase of stagnation.

Q&A: Shiller Sees 5 Years of Stagnant Home Prices - Real Time Economics - WSJ