Google Voice is the shiznit!

Art?

Mes pieds

Nouveau concept de Dr Scholl qui fait des recommendations basees sur la mesure de la pression de la plante des pieds.  Malheureusement, le CF120 recommende n'etait pas disponible...

French: The Most Productive People In The World

http://www.businessinsider.com/are-the-french-the-most-productive-people-in-the-world-2009-8

The real message here is that the French are likely some of the most productive people in the entire world.

France has $36,500 GDP/Capita and works 1,453 hours per year. This equates to a GDP/Capita/Hour of $25.10. Americans, on the other hand, have $44,150 GDP/Capita but work 1,792 hours per year. Thus Americans only achieve $24.60 of GDP/Capita/Hour.

Warren Buffett's Secret Millionaire's Club (MoneyTrack on PBS)

Trop cool, dommage que ça va probablement prendre un bout de temps avant que ça soit traduit en français...

Ugly

Widely copied story, author as of yet unknown - extremely touching:

Everyone in the apartment complex I lived in knew who Ugly was. Ugly was the resident tomcat.

Ugly loved three things in this world: fighting, eating garbage, and shall we say, love. The combination of these things combined with a life spent outside had their effect on Ugly.

To start with, he had only one eye, and where the other should have been was a gaping hole. He was also missing his ear on the same side, his left foot has appeared to have been badly broken at one time, and had healed at an unnatural angle, making him look like he was always turning the corner. His tail has long since been lost, leaving only the smallest stub, which he would constantly jerk and twitch. Ugly would have been a dark gray tabby striped-type, except for the sores covering his head, neck, even his shoulders with thick, yellowing scabs.

Every time someone saw Ugly there was the same reaction. "That's one UGLY cat!!"

All the children were warned not to touch him, the adults threw rocks at him, hosed him down, squirted him when he tried to come in their homes, or shut his paws in the door when he would not leave.

Ugly always had the same reaction. If you turned the hose on him, he would stand there, getting soaked until you gave up and quit. If you threw things at him, he would curl his lanky body around feet in forgiveness. Whenever he spied children, he would come running meowing frantically and bump his head against their hands, begging for their love. If you ever picked him up he would immediately begin suckling on your shirt, earrings, whatever he could find.

One day Ugly shared his love with the neighbors huskies. They did not respond kindly, and Ugly was badly mauled. From my apartment I could hear his screams, and I tried to rush to his aid. By the time I got to where he was laying, it was apparent Ugly's sad life was almost at an end.

Ugly lay in a wet circle, his back legs and lower back twisted grossly out of shape, a gaping tear in the white strip of fur that ran down his front. As I picked him up and tried to carry him home I could hear him wheezing and gasping, and could feel him struggling. I must be hurting him terribly I thought.

Then I felt a familiar tugging, sucking sensation on my ear - Ugly, in so much pain, suffering and obviously dying was trying to suckle my ear. I pulled him closer to me, and he bumped the palm of my hand with his head, then he turned his one golden eye towards me, and I could hear the distinct sound of purring. Even in the greatest pain, that ugly battled-scarred cat was asking only for a little affection, perhaps some compassion.

At that moment I thought Ugly was the most beautiful, loving creature I had ever seen. Never once did he try to bite or scratch me, or even try to get away from me, or struggle in any way. Ugly just looked up at me completely trusting in me to relieve his pain.

Ugly died in my arms before I could get inside, but I sat and held him for a long time afterwards, thinking about how one scarred, deformed little stray could so alter my opinion about what it means to have true pureness of spirit, to love so totally and truly. Ugly taught me more about giving and compassion than a thousand books, lectures, or talk show specials ever could, and for that I will always be thankful. He had been scarred on the outside, but I was scarred on the inside, and it was time for me to move on and learn to love truly and deeply. To give my total to those I cared for.

Many people want to be richer, more successful, well liked, beautiful, but for me, I will always try to be Ugly.

The oldest reference I can find for this story is "Ugly" by Karen Stone in 2002 on the Independent Institute of Living but confusingly, although she claims copyright on the page, she also has this after the story:

I wish I knew who wrote this awesomely moving piece, a piece that will probably become a classic fable in due time.

Three Good Reasons To Liquidate Our Empire

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175101/chalmers_johnson_dismantling_the_empire

According to the 2008 official Pentagon inventory of our military bases around the world, our empire consists of 865 facilities in more than 40 countries and overseas U.S. territories. We deploy over 190,000 troops in 46 countries and territories. In just one such country, Japan, at the end of March 2008, we still had 99,295 people connected to U.S. military forces living and working there -- 49,364 members of our armed services, 45,753 dependent family members, and 4,178 civilian employees. Some 13,975 of these were crowded into the small island of Okinawa, the largest concentration of foreign troops anywhere in Japan

Eclipse 6 year old feature request for word wrap

(Eclipse is an Integrated Development Environment for Java development that I've used and I'm using)

[misc] Text Viewer and Editor needs to support word wrap

...with one valiant attempt from Ahti Kitsik through Google Summer of Code but with no completed results and the following proposal:

Companies who are interested in sponsoring word wrap implementation with some cash -- please contact me directly ahti@codehoop.com for more details. It would be all-or-nothing deal -- sponsorship would be collected only after feature gets into platform codebase.  I'd be happy to come up with a more complete solution if platform team is ready to introduce required API changes and we get enough interest from other companies too. I'm pretty familiar with the codebase and related problems (at least I was ~2 years ago).

MV: the start of Silicon Valley

Sign on San Antonio road next to the shopping mall.

Site of first silicon device and research manufacturing company in Silicon Valley. The research conducted here led to the development of the Silicon Valley. 1956

The old building now houses a mexican grocery.

SFO airport taxis are a ripoff

"This is America, you need to give 15% tip" said the Black & White checker taxi driver as we got off the taxi. Sorry buddy, I don't think America is about government enforced monopolies, stifling free competition and ripping off customers. Although maybe unmitigated greed probably is part of the American ethos and certainly this new immigrant learned that lesson fast.

Not only did he want us to pay cash (or face a 10% hike) but he was charging us 150% the metered fare as allowed by the monopoly on taxis at the airport - which came up to 91$ (plus a 6$ tip we gave him)! 91$ is a third as expensive as the 678 miles plane ride we had just taken! Oh yeah, and thanks for pointing out the surcharge once we had left the airport.

Unbelievably expensive for a 25.2 miles (40km) taxi ride home and absolutely unacceptable when compared to decent public transportation (usually less than 10$) available in every metropolis we've been to outside of North America that brings us almost door to door quickly.

In this area, they have trouble maintaining weekend service for the single train line...

Every experience with the taxis waiting in line at the SFO airport has been horrible. They know nothing about the area (you have to provide them step-by-step instructions), their taxi are poorly maintained, they love chatting on the phone and they don't really want to help you get your luggage in and out their crappy car.

You're better to stick with the unsanctioned drivers: at least they are polite, friendly, helpful and their cars don't suck. Or find a driver that you like and call him when you get off the plane...