Jappix
Jappix is another effort towards open, decentralized social networking over XMPP. Projects like this and OneSocialWeb are pioneering truly open social interaction.
Sisyphus Sand Plotter
Bruce Shaprio’s Sisyphus sculptures are really cool variations on the basic XY plotter.
Because it’s not 1999…
Names changed to protect the guilty.
(09:18:48 PM) John: I’m not sure why I’m watching Anastasia on Netflix streaming
(09:18:53 PM) Peter: …
(09:18:55 PM) Peter: i
(09:18:56 PM) Peter: umm
(09:18:57 PM) Peter: k
(09:19:02 PM) John: well actually
(09:19:09 PM) John: I do know why
(09:19:22 PM) John: I remember thinking this cartoon chick was hot when I was a kid
(09:19:28 PM) John: and I wanted to see if she was still hot
(09:19:36 PM) John: meh
(09:20:37 PM) Peter: ariel is where it’s at
(09:20:38 PM) Peter: rowr
(09:20:50 PM) Peter: less so when she’s a fish
(09:20:51 PM) Peter: but whatever
(09:21:12 PM) John: she’s only not a fish for the last 10 seconds of the movie
(09:21:27 PM) Peter: wtf she’s not a fish for the whole middle!
(09:21:43 PM) John: hmmm really
(09:21:46 PM) Peter: uhh yeah
(09:21:54 PM) Peter: she’s human but can’t talk
(09:21:58 PM) John: ok you seem convincing
(09:22:02 PM) Peter: and she has to get eric to smooch all up ons
(09:22:05 PM) Peter: or she turns back into a fish
(09:22:19 PM) John: is it the can’t talk part that turns you on?
(09:22:31 PM) Peter: gotta keep ‘em suppressed somehow
(09:22:39 PM) Peter: otherwise they start thinking they can go to our colleges and vote
(09:23:08 PM) Peter: although honestly, had she stayed a fish, it woulda been easier to repress her
(09:24:44 PM) John: I would put this conversation in my profile if it was 1999
OneSocialWeb
OneSocialWeb is an open, distributed social network based on XMPP. Reading the preliminary specification reveals that the developers have really planned this out well. My favorite feature is per-item privacy controls.
SparkFun Free Day Fallout
Today, online hobby electronics retailer SparkFun gave away over $100,000 in merchandise, limited to a maximum of $100 per person, all in just under 2 hours. An awfully generous move by any objective measure, but there seems to be much ill-will towards the company both on Twitter and in the comments section of their “Free Day” announcement.
Not surprisingly, nearly all of the resentment comes from people who did not get in before the $100,000 limit on giveaways was reached. This is unfortunate. I’ve always thought of the hobby electronics community and Makers as a niche club where people are generally well-mannered and helpful. Gracious Professionalism abounds.
The vitriol and nastiness I’m seeing from some of those who missed out today are out-of-line with my past experiences with this community. Disappointment is to be expected; resentment is not. It makes me wonder if perhaps much of the negativity is coming from newcomers to the hobby, lured in by a well-publicized giveaway event. In that case, I suppose their words are forgivable, and I welcome them to the community and encourage them to click on some of the links in this post, read some forums, share their ideas, learn some really cool things, and meet some very nice and intelligent people.
The negative commentary consists primarily of a few basic elements, none of which I feel are particularly justified (my comments in italics):
- I didn’t get anything for free, therefore SparkFun is bad.
If this is genuinely your argument, I’m fairly certain that no amount of logic will convince you otherwise, but consider: there are millions of companies who did not give you (or anyone else) something for free today.
- I wasted almost 2 hours of my life unsuccessfully trying to get something for free, therefore SparkFun is bad.
No one forced you to spend any time on this at all. Twitter contains plenty of evidence from others who decided the giveaway wasn’t worth their time and quit trying after 5 or 10 minutes of failed attempts at loading the page. You chose to gamble with your time and continued to refresh in hopes of a $100 payoff. Once the time cost exceeded the potential benefit, the smart thing to do was walk (or click) away. You may also wish to reconsider your disappointment in a broader sense: for example, in those same 2 hours, about 1200 children died of starvation.
- If SparkFun were more competent, they would have designed their site to handle 70,000 SSL requests per second, but they didn’t, and I wasted 2 hours of my life as a consequence, therefore SparkFun is bad.
This one is most confusing to me because SparkFun clearly indicated as early as November 23rd, 2009 that one of the aims of Free Day was to evaluate the capabilities of their new servers under extreme load:
Third: Free Day will possibly create a maelstrom of site traffic, the likes of which our servers have not seen. At the beginning of December, 2009, SparkFun will be graduating out of its high-chair and moving into a server cluster. We are excited to have the breathing room, and Free Day will help us evaluate just how much breathing room we’re getting. We’ll do everything in our power to keep the site up but please understand that the site may go down.
Despite this very clear warning, people apparently felt that SparkFun had promised them a smooth, error-free giveaway in which only their connection and clicking speeds would affect the outcome. Even when it was quite obvious that was not what was happening, they continued to persist (see rebuttal #2 above).
There are, of course, many people who didn’t get a freebie who are being very reasonable with their disappointment—expressing their gratitude at the opportunity, or offering constructive suggestions for how to improve the next Free Day. I hope that others will learn from their examples.
To the SparkFun employees: I hope that you will not let the negative comments discourage you from future generosity; although considering this aftermath, I would fully support a decision on your part to send $100,000 to save the starving children instead.
