macnews.net.tc has a photo of Motorola's iTunes phone. Do I want this?

There seems to be consensus that All Along the Watchtower should be on the list. I left it off for a few reasons, but one in particular:

It is boring.

There are only so many times I can hear A minor-F-G played the same way, over and over, in one song. Yes, the playing is good, but I don't really like songs that are nothing more than an opportunity to wank. And wankbait this is.

Watchtower is also played. Every high school band learns Watchtower and Jumping Jack Flash and plays them to death.

Finally, Watchtower makes me think of Jehovah's Witnesses.

For these reasons, I left it off the playlist.

Unix Geek Question

Is it possible to have tcpdump just log source and destination addresses for captured packets, without all the protocol stuff?

SixApart buys LiveJournal.

OK. I think I've decided on two disks. The first is studio; the second is live-ish.

Volume 1

Manic Depression
Love Or Confusion
I Don't Live Today
If 6 Was 9
Crosstown Traffic
Foxy Lady
Spanish Castle Magic
Angel
Waterfall
Are You Experienced?
Wait Until Tomorrow
Little Wing
Castles Made Of Sand
The Wind Cries Mary
Purple Haze
Hey Joe
Bold As Love

Volume II

Introducing The Experience (BBC Radio banter)
The Burning Of The Midnight Lamp
Machine Gun
Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?
Rhythm And Blues World Service (BBC Radio banter)
(I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man
Changes
Stone Free
Driving South
Hear My Train A Comin'
Killing Floor
I Was Made To Love Her
Hey Joe
National Anthem

I was shocked to learn that a colleague of mine didn't know who Jimi Hendrix was (she asked if he was a "country western singer" -- gasp!). To help address this shocking gap in her popular cultural knowledge, I offered to put together an essential Hendrix listening list.

So -- what should be on it. Any strong feelings regarding essential Hendrix songs?

POTD

click for high-res

Interesting stuff going on in New York this month.

The Museum of the City of New York's "3 On The Subway" exhibition is running until January 17. As part of the New York subway's centennial celebrations, the museum is running this three-part exhibit of subway photos by Bruce Davidson, Camilo José Vergara, and Sam Hollenshed. Davidson and Vergara both shot color photos on the subway. Hollenshed recorded the post September 11th rebuilding of the 1/9 line in lower Manhattan. Good stuff.

The Met is still running Few Are Chosen: Street Photography and the Book, 1936–1966 (until March). Few Are Chosen has 35 prints from Walker Evans, Bill Brandt, Helen Levitt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Klein, and Robert Frank. The exhibit displays original prints alongside the photo books that made them famous; it is interesting to see how book-presentation changes the message or context of the original photos. ICP did this with their Looking at Life exhibition. It was particularly interesting to see the full prints alongside the magazine reproductions.

Speaking of The Met, they reproduced Walker Evans' book, Many Are Called. Originally published in 1966, The Met and Yale University have beautifully reproduced the photos in Evans' chronicle of his subway photography from 1938 to 1941. I know it is a bit cliche to claim the photos are "beautifully reproduced," but they really are.

If this kind of thing interests you, Many are Called is worth a look.

Cool. Apple is shipping Xsan.

POTD

click for high-res

This was the crowd waiting to get into MOMA last Wednesday. All these tourists were lined up in cattle pens to see fucking paint blobs. I was rather surprised. This, of course, prevented me from seeing the paint blobs.

Did Rent close, or something?

This stuff is starting to piss me off. There is no bargain when using open source software.

The source is open so that you can look at it or change it. But you don't have to. And if you build a successful business, and happen to to use some open source software, you are not obligated to "give back," whatever that means. Free software is about freedom, not obligation.

This is true if the business you build sells fish and it is true if your business is Google.

Who hasn't made an amazing discovery using Google? Who hasn't saved weeks of time with a well-crafted search? Who hasn't recovered a lost web page using Google's cache?

Think of the web without Google. They've given plenty. Let's not give them shit for using Linux.

In his "2005" prediction list, Don Box thinks that Apple will release a version of Safari for Windows and that said new browser will eclipse Firefox's share of the market. I think that is crazy talk.

I'm right there with him on #8, though. I'm expecting it on the 11th of January.

I missed this in the gut-wrenching run-up to the holidays: SourceGear is shipping a MacOS X version of SourceOffSite. Cool.

Everyone seems to be pointing to Herb Sutter's article claiming that the Moore's Law "Free Performance Lunch" is over, that future performance gains will come from better handling of concurrency.

I tend to agree. Barring some huge breakthroughs, it will be cheaper to create more processors with greater density than it will be to create faster ones.