Look at the graph in TFA. Only 35% are still working by 5pm. By contrast, 45% are working by 7:30am. So...why isn't the "standard workday" the 45%-to-45% mark of 7:30-4:30?

>> Obama will be breaking out his Red pen anytime now

I'd love to see the transcript of their next call.
Obama: "Putin, but why?"
Putin: "Because fuck you, that's why."

But I won't, so I'll have to comfort myself with some classic Clinton triangulation, probably coming out on Friday.
H.Clinton: "I knew Romney was right about Russia, but it wasn't my place to defy my President as Secretary of State."

>> ad development is more like a crap shoot than a science

Crap shoots (e.g., deterministic systems) can be science too. Think of particle physics. Or today's story about the "one in decades" chance to film moving stones.

The "science" in marketing (focus groups, crowdsourcing, testing, brand affinity, etc.) can be used to take a pile of ".00001% successful" ideas to (let's say) "2-3% successful" ideas...which can still be valuable if each idea takes $10K to try but could bring in millions if successful.

>> It could benefit marketers or anyone who wants to spread a message.

The multi-billion dollar marketing industry is WAY ahead of you. We are well aware of memes (as self-perpetuating brands or slogans) and have been successful launching quite a few of our own on behalf of our well-heeled customers for the past 80 or so years, e.g.,

"Bud" "Wise" "Er"
"So easy a caveman could do it."
"... Burma Shave"
"War on Women"

So...we're good over here. Why don't you just send that $1M back to the taxpayers?

#1: Scumblr: Ruby-based, web-configured application that allows searching the Internet for sites and content of interest. Includes libraries for sites like Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
#2: Workflowable: Ruby gem that routes different kinds of detections from Scumblr to specific processes.
#3: Sketchy: takes screenshots of web finds for Scumblr.

(I might be a little off, but the Karma gods will surely reward me.)

>> area around Fermilab hasn't been rural for at least 20 years

I'd say "at least 40." 20 years ago I attended a high school program there - an hour away using mostly four-lane, stop-lighted streets.

The "rural" part's just part of a decades-long marketing campaign to avoid alarming the millions of semi-illiterate residents nearby. E.g., "if cows can live on top of a nuclear accelerator, then you can too."

>> their respective app stores feature hundreds of thousands of apps, sometimes it seems as if most of those apps are crude imitations of other apps

Is the poster new to computers? This clutter has been the case with software since it first reached the consumer. (e.g., RPG games in the 1980s, etc.)

This is why:
1) It's good to be the PLATFORM (you get paid no matter what apps sell).
2) It's good to be a CONSUMER (you get zillions of choices).
3) Being a DEVELOPER is hard, and making a living trying to sell apps to consumers is ever harder (see #1 and #2).

At the moment, just about every major distribution except Slackware and Gentoo not only supports systemd, but ships with it on by default.

So...what "battle" are we talking about? (Or did this post just fall forward five years from the past?)

Having worked in this "file sharing" industry, this result is no surprise to me. The platformers, especially those with heavy investments in content suites (Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop/PDF, Google Docs, etc.) are tired of letting the middlemen make money off of cloud storage and collaboration. Furthermore, they understand the danger of allowing their customers to congregate around "platform independent" technologies too long. Worse, companies with just a dozen or two people can crank out everything Box, etc. can do in less than a year and sell it as either an on-premise or cloud solution. (There are dozens of clones now.) The result is that companies like DropBox aren't worth anything for their technology anymore - instead, it's a race to see if they can "run out the clock" and sell their customer base to one of the platformers before they dwindle down to nothing.

I've been at a couple of companies now where there were cell reimbursement plans, but I never used them with my personal devices.

1) Hassle. I pay like $30/month for 3 hours of voice (which I never use) and nearly unlimited data. Dealing with accountants to get what's basically lunch money out of the company each month isn't worth it.
2) Line item sharing. I talk to a lot of interesting people on my cell phone, including friends working for competitors, previous employers and places that might want to hire me next. I don't really want to file a paper trail on my communications with the company from whom I'm currently drawing my paycheck.
3) Leashing. I don't put company email on my personal phone - period. Nor do I subscribe to a company-generated phone wipe. If someone really needs me, they can track me down through SMS or (shudder) voice, which is still easy because I put my cell phone number on every email I send, every ticket I file, etc.

Not that too many people use "beta", but I noticed today that I had to switch back to the "Classic" site we know and love to skim TFtranscript.

TL;DR version of the transcript for anyone who cares:
"Back when people used to buy computer books our company was the s***, and I was fascinated by all the Tetris-like screens clerks used to use in stores like Borders. (Remember that place?) And government IT sure is f***ed up, ain't it?"

>> don't need embellished intros

Hmmm..."godfather"..."powerful force"..."as much of an effect on the nature of information transmission" - sounds like a little embellishment to me. ;)

So, how do you write an intro that gets more than 8 comments (as of 24 hours) when you're stuck with a full hour of video of some old guy talking at a webcam (yawn). Do what any good journalist would do: scan the transcripts and pull out the 2-3 most provocative things he said, then build a teaser around it. Finally, write a headline like "O'Reilly (Yes, THAT O'Reilly) Says [Some S*** You Wouldn't Believe]".

As things are, I can't even tell from the summary what he's about to cover (some upcoming OSCON event? dunno) or why anyone would care.

>> people like cars

Mostly because they don't smell like other people, or what they ate/drank last night. Figure out how to let me have my own personal compartment that I can maintain to my standard of hygiene and i'll happily give up driving.

>> it's like your elevator, only horizontal

Except it's not, because of scale. If your elevator sucks, you can just move to the next building over. If your city's transportation monopoly sucks (or if its workers just want to shut down the system to complain about whatever), you might have to move to a different city for relief.

>> Wikipedia says (whatever.) And so he is.
>> That alone makes Tim O'Reilly worth listening to for nearly an hour, total.

You just can't make this kind of crappy intro up - are the interns running things over there for the summer?