[Amazon] has, in essence, outsourced much of its R&D, and a growing portion of its actual sales, to an army of thousands of software developers, who apparently enjoy nothing more than finding creative new ways to give Web surfers access to Amazon merchandise—and earning a few bucks in the process. The result: a syndicate of mini-Amazons operating at very little cost to Amazon itself and capturing customers who might otherwise have gone elsewhere.I mentioned something about Amazon's Web Services strategy being "almost frightening." I think that's becuase I've primarily worked at and with small companies. So when I see what's possible when a large organization decides to pour resources into a project, I'm impressed by what can be accomplished. It's funny to see comments I made in what I viewed as a conversation with someone end up in print, because the quotes feel out of context. (Though I don't think the quotes are distorted or misused here in any way.)
Sharp-eyed moviegoers familiar with Corvallis perhaps noticed the picture's two tributes to Bird's roots. Both Spartan Stadium and the now-defunct Western View Junior High pop up...via the Gazette Times: 'Incredibles' gives a nod to Corvallis
My late discovery of Camera Raw format continues. I picked up Camera Raw with Photoshop, and I'm learning quite a bit about how to adjust raw files. As a bonus, I'm learning about how digital cameras work. (I'm going to call my camera a photon recorder from now on, because it sounds like something from Star Trek.) I learned early in my digital photography experience to underexpose everything, and bump up the midtones later in Photoshop. I could almost always salvage an underexposed photo, but if highlights were blown out there was no saving the photo. Camera Raw works differently, though. Completely blown highlights are still trouble, but if you expose the shot toward the right-end of the histogram, you can bring the exposure down in Photoshop and get more detail in the photo. So far I've learned that getting correct exposure when I take the photo is even more critical with raw, but that erring on the overexposed side can have good results. Even learning that the human eye sees shadow-detail better than highlights has me thinking about exposing for shadow-tones as I take photos. (Instead of thinking that the shadows will be all or mostly black in the final photo.)
But the net police found it much harder to purge discussion of Yitahutu's closure in the blogosphere. Bloggers are quick to find euphemisms so that they can continue conversation despite keyword filtering.Keyword filtering and banning seems like a quaint way to control language. If Lakoff, Luntz, and Orwell have taught us anything it's that the power is in redefining words. I think about this whenever I hear the phrase activist judges. If you want to take power away from the judicial branch of the government, one way to do it is to make the word judge itself into a slur. (It worked with the word liberal.) And hey, why not take down the word activist while you're at it? That's so much more effective than trying to stop the use of the words judge or activist. People have to use these words to communicate, and by attaching negative meanings to them you force people to think negatively about the concepts these words represent. Philip K. Dick also nailed this idea:
The basic tool for manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.Chinese bloggers are practicing the new style of word-manipulation to route around an old style of control.
