Steve Rubel:

Wave requires a new way of thinking. Sure, we're capable of it as humans. But... we like linearity...

RSS is one of the greatest Internet innovations of the last decade (thank you Dave!). So why did it never take off with consumers? Simple... It only solved problems that some, eg info junkies, had. And it required a new way of thinking and operating...

But what about Gmail you say? Gmail too was a complex beast when it debuted with its conversation views and interface - and it caught on. Yes, but Gmail was different. It solved problems: mail storage quotas and killer search. Thus people were willing to make the investment to master it.

Decius:

These prophetic comments echo a lot of my experience with MemeStreams.

Noteworthy, from November 2008:

It's like an endless cry in the wilderness, but no one is listening.

The zeal of the True Believer frequently leads to such outcomes.

Douglas Engelbart comes to mind. In a 2007 seminar at MIT, Engelbart spoke with some inspiration for more than an hour about his ideas for harnessing and augmenting our "collective intelligence". But his true passion emerged only at the very end of the seminar, when he pulled out his beloved chord keyboard and proceeded to demonstrate its unsurpassed superiority to all present. Were we not convinced? How could it be? The audience's less than compelling response led to a near-harangue about why his mouse succeeded wildly while his chord keyboard failed utterly. In his view, the chord keyboard is unquestionably far superior to the QWERTY. People did not adopt chording because they lacked the persistence to overcome the mental hurdle of learning it, and they lacked the imagination to envision their lives on the other side of the hurdle. So they sat dumbly, QWERTY in hand, pecking away without satisfaction. It was his duty to carry on the struggle. Eventually all would see the light ...

Google Wave 1.0 = RSS, the Sequel. In Other Words, DoA ... for Now

Declan McCullagh:

A federal judge has ruled that border agents cannot seize a traveler's laptop, keep it locked up for months, and examine it for contraband files without a warrant half a year later.

Judge Jeffrey White, of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling on case 09-946, USA v. Andrew Samuel Hanson:

Because the agents did not find contraband while the laptop was located at the border and, in light of the time and distance that elapsed before the search continued, the court concluded that the search should be analyzed as an extended border search. Given the passage of time between the January and February searches and the fact that the February search was not conduct(ed) at the border, or its functional equivalent, the court concludes that the February search should be analyzed under the extended border search doctrine and must be justified by reasonable suspicion.

Hanson was not arrested on January 27, 2009, and for that reason the court finds the government's reliance on the "search incident to a valid arrest" line of cases to be inapposite. Accordingly, because the court concludes that June search required a warrant, and because it is undisputed that the search was conducted without a warrant, Hanson's motion is GRANTED IN PART on this basis.

Rebecca Brock:

People say to me, "Whatever it takes."

I tell them, It's going to take everything.

Judge limits DHS laptop border searches

Verlyn Klinkenborg:

Driving is the cultural anomaly of our moment.

Peter Maass:

It little matters whether we fill our tanks at BP or Exxon stations.

What matters is that we visit gas stations less often.

Klinkenborg:

Every now and then I meet someone in Manhattan who has never driven a car.

I used to wonder at such people, but more and more I wonder at myself.

William Deresiewicz:

For too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going.

Who can answer questions, but don't know how to ask them.

Who can fulfill goals, but don't know how to set them.

Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they're worth doing in the first place.

What we have now are the greatest technocrats the world has ever seen.

What we don't have are leaders.

Decius:

It's important to understand that it isn't Congress that must change -- it is us.

Clay Shirky:

Nothing will work, but everything might.

Rebecca Brock:

People say to me, "Whatever it takes."

I tell them, It's going to take everything.

The Cultural Anomaly Of Our Moment

John Wood:

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.

Curtis White:

Perhaps the most powerful way in which we conspire against ourselves is the simple fact that we have jobs. We are willingly part of a world designed for the convenience of what Shakespeare called "the visible God": money. When I say we have jobs, I mean that we find in them our home, our sense of being grounded in the world, grounded in a vast social and economic order. It is a spectacularly complex, even breathtaking, order, and it has two enormous and related problems. First, it seems to be largely responsible for the destruction of the natural world. Second, it has the strong tendency to reduce the human beings inhabiting it to two functions, working and consuming. It tends to hollow us out.

Ashby Jones:

Happiness exists just around the corner, it's just a matter of figuring out how to get there.

Sarah Silverman:

You're very free if you don't love money.

David Foster Wallace:

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

Peter Maass:

Smaller cars, less driving, more carpools, public transportation, better home insulation, smaller homes, less meat, more renewable energy -- these are the sorts of useful things we can do. It little matters whether we fill our tanks at BP or Exxon stations. What matters is that we visit gas stations less often.

Decius:

Our job is to apply our well-earned cynicism and fail to follow the baby boomers off a cliff in their pursuit of some idealistic agenda.

Mark Foulon:

We have tried incremental steps and they have proven insufficient.

Tom Friedman:

We're entering an era where being in politics is going to be more than anything else about taking things away from people. It's going to be very, very interesting.

Wallace:

There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

Angus McCullough:

The only way to end your game is to lose.

The Second Best Time Is Now

Richard Florida:

We have come to an economic juncture where we must re-examine even our most cherished beliefs.

Mark Foulon:

We have tried incremental steps and they have proven insufficient.

Viktor Chernomyrdin:

We wanted the best, but it turned out as always.

Peter Singer:

Human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states. If we think that this is a tolerable state of affairs it is because we are victims of the illusion of pollyannaism. This illusion may have evolved because it helped our ancestors survive, but it is an illusion nonetheless. If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone.

Can non-existent people have a right to come into existence?

Nicholas Bakalar:

People start out at age 18 feeling pretty good about themselves, and then, apparently, life begins to throw curve balls. But by the time they are 85, they are even more satisfied with themselves than they were at 18.

Mike Berners-Lee:

Although it takes a lot of energy to make paper, a good read will pin you down for hours, distracting you from all the more carbon-intensive pastimes you might otherwise be indulging in.

Getting cremated is likely to be less than a 10,000th of your life's carbon footprint. On this one occasion you can treat yourself to whatever form of disposal you prefer, safe in the knowledge that you have already done the most carbon-friendly thing possible.

Randy Palumbo:

The greenest thing you can do in your kitchen is not tear it up and put in a new one.

Angus McCullough:

The only way to end your game is to lose.

Sarah Silverman:

You're very free if you don't love money.

David Youngberg and Robin Hanson:

Compared with relatively modern societies, nomadic foragers had similar levels of food and disease, and less murder and suicide. They did not fight over land or resources, and they en... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Clay Shirky:

I've recently gotten away from the daily news cycle. I've got a weekly clock cycle and a monthly clock cycle. Time is a precious commodity. Increasingly, I'm trying to maximize it.

Tyler Cowen:

My question is: what is the wife maximizing?

Leo Babuta:

Stop being busy and your job is half done.

Scott Berkun:

When I was younger I thought busy people were more important than everyone else. Otherwise why would they be so busy?

Merlin Mann:

It takes a lot of patience and it takes a lot of self-awareness to be open to the fact that you may become popular about something that you didn't want to become popular about.

Andre Agassi:

Even if it's not your ideal life, you can always choose it. No matter what your life is, choosing it changes everything.

Nicholas Bakalar:

People start out at age 18 feeling pretty good about themselves, and then, apparently, life begins to throw curve balls. But by the time they are 85, they are even more satisfied with themselves than they were at 18.

Carol Dweck:

Praising children for their intelligence, rather than for their effort, often leads them to give up when they encounter setbacks. Such children tend to become preoccupied with how their performance compares with that of their peers, rather than with finding new strategies to improve their own work.

William Deresiewicz:

I've had many wonderful students at Yale and Columbia, bright, thoughtful, creative kids whom it's been a pleasure to talk with and learn from. But most of them have seemed content to color within the lines that their education had marked out for them. Only a small minority have seen their education as part of a larger intellectual journey, have approached the work of the mind with a pilgrim soul. These few have tended to feel like freaks, not least because they get so little support from the university itself. Places like Yale, as one of them put it to me, are not conducive to searchers.

Tony Travers:

London is becoming a First World core surrounded by what seems to be going from a second to a Third World population.

John Rapley:

As states recede and the new medievalism advances, the outside world is destined to move increasingly beyond the control -- and even the understanding -- of the new Rome.

Joel Kotkin:

Britain's welfare state now accounts for nearly one-third of government spending.

John Lanchester:

The average British household owes 160 per cent of its annual income. That makes us, individually and collectively, a lot like the cartoon character who's run off the end of a cliff and hasn't realized it yet.

We in Britain are, to use a technical economic term, screwed.

David Runciman:

Politics in the UK is now comprehensively out of sync.

During the Blair years there was enough money around to paper over the cracks. Not any more. When the money runs out, the cracks start to show.

Neil Howe and William Strauss:

Each generation belongs to one of four types, and these types repeat sequentially in a fixed pattern.

Anatole Kaletsky:

The battle over bailouts in Europe is only a sideshow compared with the great social conflict that lies ahead all over the world in the next 20 years. This will not be a struggle between nations or social classes, but between generations.

Tom Friedman:

For 60 years you could really say being in politics, being a political leader, was, on balance, about giving things away to people. That's what you did most of your time.

I think we're entering an era where being in politics is going to be more than anything else about taking things away from people. It's going to be very, very interesting.

Neil Howe:

If you think that things couldn't get any worse, wait till the 2020s.

The world is entering a demographic transformation of unprecedented dimensions.

Population trends point inexorably toward a more dominant U.S. role in a world that will need us more, not less.

Decius, on his generation:

Our job is to apply our well-earned cynicism and fail to follow the baby boomers off a cliff in their pursuit of some idealistic agenda.

Rory Stewart:

"It's like they're coming in and saying to you, 'I'm going to drive my car off a cliff. Should I or should I not wear a seatbelt?' And you say, 'I don't think you should drive your car off the cliff.' And they say, 'No, no, that bit's already been decided - the question is whether to wear a seatbelt.' And you say, 'Well, you might as well wear a seatbelt.' And then they say, 'We've consulted with policy expert Rory Stewart and he says ...'"

Robert I. Sutton:

Having ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but it is useless to think about them much.

Caterina Fake:

If you're actually inventing something you shouldn't know what you're doing.

Ira Glass:

If you're not failing all the time, you're not creating a situation where you can get super-lucky.

Ian Malcolm:

You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you want to sell it!

Christian Terwiesch:

It's no good generating a great idea if you don't recognize the idea as great.

Carol Dweck:

'Hard working' is what gets the job done.

You just see that year after year.

The students who thrive are not necessarily the ones who come in with the perfect scores.

It's the ones who love what they're doing and go at it vigorously.

Benjamin Wallace-Wells:

The best way to fight terrorists is to go at it not like G-men, with two-year assignments and query letters to the staff attorneys, but the way the terrorists do, with fury and the conviction that history will turn on the decisions you make -- as an obsession and as a life style.

Johan de Kleer:

One passionate person is worth a thousand people who are just plodding along ...

Lauren Clark:

It's good to have a plan, but if something extraordinary comes your way, you should go for it.

Charles Munger:

The way to win is to work, work, work, work and hope to have a few insights.

Decius:

Wow, life is boring.

John Givings:

Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.

It's Mad Decent!

La Roux, the British synth-pop duo, and Major Lazer, a hipster dancehall vanity project helmed by producer-DJs Diplo and Switch, don't share any obvious aesthetics. But their respective bodies of work -- just one 2009 LP, each -- are a jumping-off point for "Lazerproof," a mix tape as chaotic as it is cohesive. Like M.I.A.'s Diplo-helmed "Piracy Funds Terrorism, Volume 1" mix tape, it succeeds by acting more like a broad survey of emerging music trends than a compilation of remixes and mash-ups.

Download the new release for free.

Bill Gurley:

Customers seem to really like free as a price point.

Have you heard The Swinger?

The Swinger is a bit of python code that takes any song and makes it swing. It does this by taking each beat and time-stretching the first half of each beat while time-shrinking the second half. It has quite a magical effect.

From last year, Sasha Frere-Jones:

According to Mad Decent, the record label, Major Lazer is a Jamaican commando who fought in the "secret Zombie War of 1984" and lost both arms in combat.

Then the US military equipped him with experimental lasers that double as prosthetic limbs.

George Romero:

How many zombies do you know?

Stuart Heritage:

We should probably tell you that the full title of this game is Zombies! Apocalypse - Massive Multiplayer Online Zombies Massacre, even though that's basically given away the point of it all.

Lily Allen:

Hi. Um, I'm just wondering, have you got any kind of like, sort of punky, electronica, kind of grime, kind of like, new wave grime, kind of maybe like more broken beats, like kinda dubby broken beats, but a little bit kind of soulful ...? but kinda drum and bassy, but kinda more broken drum and bass, like sort of broken beats, like break-beat broken kind of drum and bass ... do you know what I mean? No?

Lazerproof, by Major Lazer and La Roux

James Wray:

Holly Madison unveils her new line of candy necklaces at the Sugar Factory in Las Vegas on May 21, 2010.

Ally:

You could also call it a lanyard instead if necklace makes you feel just a little too feminine.

Dagmar:

The goddamn lanyards.

I can't be the only person I know who is trying to find a decent string lanyard without going to the cell phone store to paying fifteen bucks for 38cm of shoestring and some plastic bits.

Brad Sturdivant:

I know many of you were already planning on doing some sort of TWILIGHT SAGA marathon when TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE opens up on June 30th. Well, it looks like AMC Theaters is thinking the same thing ... For $30, you get a ticket to TWILIGHT, TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON and a midnight showing of TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE, plus $10 in movie cash, plus a limited Twilight lanyard.

Decius:

A fashion statement? What does it say? I'm enough of a computer geek to want to wear a computer peripheral around my neck, but I'm not enough of a computer geek to have figured out how to use the internet for this instead?

David Dowling:

There is nothing cool about having a lanyard.

A ZDNet reader:

He occasionally uses the SharePoint lanyard they gave him instead of the Ubuntu lanyard for his keys, but feels dirty afterwards.