And you are here why?

Lobster Salad Seafood Salad . and now  Zabster Salad The mind reels

IBM seemed to have the definitive word in the definition of BigData, i.e., Volume - Quantity.  D-uh. Variety - Different types of data, such as audio, video, text, etc. Velocity - The rate at which this data changes To the above, Forrester (hidden behind a paywall, of course), wants to add a fourth term Variability - The different meanings/contexts associated with a given piece of data It does makes sense.  I have always referenced Variety to subsume Variability, but it probably makes sense to call it out as its own distinct entity.

I know, I know, its the easiest thing in the world to see this, sneer, and then feel slightly superior with the Inside Voice saying  I'd never fall for that. I know what marketing is . Except, you probably will fall for it at some point. In fact, you probably fall for it all the time, but just don't realize it. Its almost a reptilian hind-brain kind of thing - hardwired into our animal spirits.  For more information on this, read both of Dan Ariely's books   Predictably Irrational ,  and The  Upside of Irrationality This message brought to you from the World of Behavioral Economics

A nuanced response to the  original post  re: Tim Cook.  Great reading - get to it...

I could go on, but The Gurgling Cod sez. it best...

Repeat after me  A UPS uniform is much more effective than a Tom Cruise / Mission Impossible Thingy Seriously, people will spend Trillions of dollars protecting against insanely complex Movie Plot Threats , while the fake Janitor will walk off w/ your backups. Of course, now this .  Somebody at RSA clicked on a suspect Excel file, and the next thing you know, Lockheed is hacked.   Sigh.  I weep....

+ Ben Phenix  notes that the available number of good band names drops annually, leaving us with goofy stuff like animal names (indy bands),  the (blank) or (blank) & the boyfriends , or some such. So, herewith my proposal. Unique Names shows random words from the dictionary. Pick one work from column A, one from column B, and sprinkle with a judicious preposition or article. Voila, fun names like Unimpaired Xebec Crawl the Algebraist The Enticing Doodlesacks We Pathoscopic Reefs You're welcome!

Diamonds may, indeed, be forever From the article  "The chemical composition, pressure and dimensions of the companion make it certain to be crystallized (i.e., diamond)."...

I owned one of these!

I still remember the warm fuzzies I got when, part of the way through Alastair Reynold's  Century Rain   , the origin of the Slashers was made explicit. (For those who can't be bothered to read the book  an alliance of progressive thinkers linked together by one of the first computer networks  , followed by a gesture depicting a slash, and a dot) Goodbye  + Rob Malda , we'll miss ya.

(Not the musical. The movie.  The one where you mark the Box of Crap "Guaranteed" , and everyone rushes to buy it...) Seriously, just a few days ago, Moynihan wuz saying _Move along, nothing to see here_ , and now Uncle Warren invests at, basically, loan shark rates?  Hmmm?

This is supposed to be a theoretical comparison of three NoSQL DBs, w/ MarkLogic the hands-down winner.  I'm not so sure about it - there was nothing in the use-case (AFAICT) that couldn't have been handled by either CouchDB or MongoDB, and quite trivially at that. Perhaps it had more to do with learning curves? I suspect if I'd done the same, we'd have ended up with CouchDB as the hands down winner... The only real lesson I drew from the posting was that the days of SQL vs NoSQL are pretty much gone, now its more a case of "Which Is The Best Tool"...

So, heres how things went down in reality (and this is the point behind this article in the NY Times today) Banks - e.g. Countrywide - collected mortgages of extremely dubious provenance (Remember NINJA loans?) The banks then packaged these loans into Mortgage Backed Securities, usually under New York Law (for various reasons).  The problems here were varied, but included They guaranteed that the mortgages were all at least of a certain quality.  e.g., the NINJA mortgage was actually a   AAA rated mortgage. They usually didn't actually transfer all the mortgages over to the security in time.  Slightly trickier, but according to New York law, the mortgages needed to be transferred (signed, checked, stamped, etc.) over to the security within 90 days (or thereabouts) for the security to be valid.  If it wasn't transferred, there is a tax penalty of 100% on the security.  This is to prevent people from playing silly buggers with trusts - e.g. if you cr...

As far as idiotic lines go, this one from Kathryn Wylde of the New York Fed  probably takes the cake .  Face it, when was the last time you went in to the corner grocery store, and were summarily    * Thumped upside the head with many cudgels    * Summarily relieved of your wallet    * Kicked out to the curb, sans shoes, shirt or service    * Had the police come by, and make you pay for replacement cudgels for the store (one broke on your head)    * Had you then empty out your checking account so that you could pay for the store-keeper's end of the year bonus (performance incentives based on the number of people bludgeoned) I think not....

*From the world of Economics - Monetary Policy* What on earth  am I talking about? The thing is, Macroeconomics is most definitely counter-intuitive.  Micro-economics makes intuitive sense - supply/demand, cost/benefit, etc ar things we know at an almost primeval level.  But macro, well, not so much.  (for those keeping track, this is not unlike Classical vs. Quantum physics). This is also the reason why you hear absolute drivel like " The federal budget is just like a family budget, and we in government must tighten our belts and live within our means just like families do ." , the correct response is to do a spit-take, and then throw something at the utterer, preferably something hard-enough to knock some serious sense into the brain-dead doofus issuing said goofosity. Anyhow, when you hear Very Serious People discussing National Economic Issues, you'll hear stuff like Fiscal Policy , Monetary Policy , and so on.  What are these things?  Fiscal Pol...

All nostalgic conversations will eventually involve the phrase I remember when milk was 5 cents a gallon . (Please translate to local currency and/or measurement units)

View Where to eat in Rome in a larger map BOOK    -  David Downie:  The Terroir Guides:  Food, Wine,  Rome .    David is our patron saint when it comes to Italian food.  We ate our way through Liguria based on  his book 'bout that area , and thanks to him, have had two of the best  dining experiences ever.  You'll also note that quite a few of the places below are in his book, which isn't surprising because they tend to show up in pretty much anyone's list of 'the real,  real  places to go in  Rome '.  Do note however, that - with a few exceptions - most of the places are more local than touristic, i.e., you'll be rubbing shoulders w/ people who've been eating there for the last twenty years (or quite possibly, far longer).  FOOD Note :   - Reservations are always useful.  If in doubt, make one (if they take 'em). Depending on the time of the day, you will almost ce...