1. Each restaurant Gordon gets invited to serves a wonderful concoction of some Sysco-purchased frozen food package. Later in the episode Ramsay introduces the chef to the local farmers’ market or grocery store selling fresh produce, and voila – problem solved.
2. Each “solution” involves purchasing expensive equipment, decor, and some renovation labor. I suspect Fox is picking the ticket, but the secret of success is then pretty obvious – spend a lot of money on making sure the place is clean, looks new, doesn’t have cockroaches, and is cozy to hang out at.
3. Every other episode involves some culinary school dropout calling himself chef, and storing rotten meat/bacon/dip somewhere in the back of the fridge.
4. The public rushes in after Gordon’s renovation – except we’re not sure whether the influx of customers is due to the change of menu, or presence of world-known chef in the kitchen.

“Say (consumers) have a budget to spend $1,000 on a TV. They could probably buy a premium brand 32- or 37-inch, or they could buy a Vizio 47-inch for the same amount,” Patel said. “The low-price strategy is what’s driving consumers to them.”

You don’t say.

Investigators say Tavares boiled over when Anderson called him a nerd and posted a digitally altered photo making Tavares look like a skinny boy in high-water pants, holding a gun and a laptop under a “Revenge of the Nerds” sign. Tavares obtained Anderson’s real name and hometown from Anderson’s Web page about his Museum of Horrors Haunted House. Tavares took leave from his post as a weapons systems operator at the AEGIS Training and Readiness Center in Dahlgren, Va., and started driving. Investigators say he told them he planned to point a shotgun at Anderson and shoot his computer.

In a nutshell he seems to be thrilled with user-driven categorization patterns, like those exhibited in Del.icio.us or Flickr, and thinks this is the wave of the future – produce content, allow others to categorize it for their own purposes, allow the rest to derive value from this user-driven categorization.

Somebody from Google Toolbar team at the end of the video asks Weinberger regarding proper defaults, as with toolbar there are always discussions on how to originally group the buttons – by frequency of usage, by their actions, by the sites they relate to. Moreover, it seems that a slim minority of users actually reconfigures the toolbar buttons. His answer was basically to try to introduce the value not only in customizations to the toolbar, but also in allowing others to benefit from this customization.

Not that the protocols are bad, it’s just that the problem has changed. Previously a lot of networking research went into delivering data from point A to point B, and from point B to point A. TCP/IP therefore perfectly accommodates two hosts on the Internet talking to one another. However, modern data consumption trends indicate that consumption is rarely happening between two equal hosts. More often than not a single host (CNN, NBC, YouTube) is serving requests from hundreds of thousands of other hosts (users), with no ways to optimize the delivery of the same content on the protocol level.

Van Jacobson also doesn’t like the idea of binary connectivity. You’re either on the Internet or you’re off. There’s no way to be on the network, retrieve the information from hosts and caches close to you, and be denied from retrieving information from further hosts, until you get a full connection. Overall, a pretty good lecture with lots of questions that nobody else seems to be asking, primarily because most of us are used to the current ways networking works, and don’t have any inspiration to change the status quo.

Starting in 1950s the game requires enormous amount of Zen-like concentration and you’re constantly playing a pair of partners with 1900 and 2000 personal score. They do not change, they just sometimes vary their tricks. The biggest effort is to get them to play your game, and not vice versa. My game was heavily dependent on the front guy doling out shots left and right, till the back person of the opposing team got tired or was out of range to reach for the ball.

There’re some pretty tough requirements to get to the 2000 level. If you have 1980, and you win the best of 5 with 3-2 in your favor, you lose points. If you win 3-1, you gain 0 points. You have to win all 3 games in the best of 5 right away, win them flawlessly, and preferably without any deuces involved. Talk about pressure.

The opponents, however, are prone to mistakes even at this skill level. If the ball has a chance of either going out or landing on the green, the opponent will always hit it, if they’re in the range. Also, when the front guy hits the ball high in the air, but he has to jump for it to reach it, the ball frequently goes out. Other than that not too many mistakes are allowed.

Earlier this year some German scientists used brain surveillance techniques to determine whether the test participants decided to add or subtract a number, and reached 71% rate.

1. Consumers are increasingly avoiding the movie theaters, dissatisfied with high prices, level of service, and just general noise in the movies whenever you’re visiting something that’s been sold out. Cinema revenues are, however, still growing, but that’s propped by ever-increasing prices.
2. Studios are not exactly happy with the oligopoly on the national movie market, and frequently are trying to experiment with DVD releases coinciding with movie’s official release. Mark Cuban‘s Landmark Theaters does it.
3. Consumers are buying increasingly larger television sets roughly at a rate of 7 mln new sets a quarter.
4. Retailers are not exactly thrilled with CDs and DVDs anymore either, and are looking towards movie downloads options.

Which makes the market pretty ripe for the movie downloads. Not the type that you can get on your PCs, since it’s just not that exciting to download a high-def movie to watch it on a 15″ screen, while your 50″ HDTV is right there in your living room. Companies that can arrange a download to your television screen are too entrenched into defending their little turfs, and with TiVo, Comcast or other proprietary DVR company you’re likely to get content limited to the platform you’re on. None of them has any critical penetration on the market yet, and consumer might get baffled by the cost of a new TiVo or Akimbo box. Maybe not so baffled with the cost of Comcast DVR, but the company has been known to open up its technology for outsiders either.

A winning solution would potentially deliver a low-cost device that’s capable of delivering a high-definition downloadable content to the TV screen. The problem is the low-cost part – if the device is subsidized, it certainly requires the manufacturer to lock in the content delivery in exchange for some premium pricing on content (Apple TV). An ideal solution would allow anyone like Amazon Unbox, MovieLink, NetFlix, Vuze or whatever to plug in and sell their content to the consumer.

Perhaps a dumb terminal with a small hard drive and a Wi-Fi chipset capable of hooking up to the home network, caching the content off the main PC hard drive and delivering it to the HDTV is the solution to go – reasonably cheap to build, something consumers are familiar with (adding a new client to their home wireless network), and something that could be advertised as a fairly sexy solution to watching Internet content on large screen in high definition.

Such device would even support some form of unique identification, thus enabling various DRM schemas and license acquisition, which is a must to please content providers for right now.

The V3i uses the same menu system as the iPod. The phone lacks the iPod click wheel, so an up/down/left/right button substitutes.

Sony Ericsson W810i from Cingular is another one they choose, with the special attention paid to the 3-speaker system and sound quality the phone produces. The phone is also a best seller on Amazon for Cingular plans. Also, it uses a Sony MemoryStick, which works out great, if you listen to the music on both PSP and your phone, but not so great, if you don’t have a MemoryStick.LG VX8500 Chocolate phone offered by Verizon also made the list, but the reviewers weren’t really impressed:

The slider phone has a hot button to take you right to your music, and loading songs, while not flawless, worked with some persistence. Sound quality was a bit thin but acceptable.

The book contains a vast collection of interesting facts from all branches of human knowledge, debunks some popular myths, and generally provides for hours of good reading where you literally cannot put the book away. Depending on how deep you went into specific areas while in high school or college, it might even introduce some new stuff to you- such as why some African countries have such liquid borders and are in constant warfare. For a $10 price tag you get endless stream of interesting facts to bring into conversations and possibility to surprise friends and enemies with vast array of trivia knowledge.

Nintendo has finally broken free of its ‘me too’ position, held since the days of the N64. Even if the Wii stays the third-place console, it’s no longer possible to think of the company as an also-ran. Sony and Microsoft are in for a hard fight this time around. The only side guaranteed not to lose is our side; whatever happens in this war, it’s the gamers who win.

Perfect place

Review of: St Michael’s Alley, Restaurants

By: Alex M. on Judy’s Book

Rating: 5 stars

Read review on Judy’s Book.

It’s really hard to find anything wrong with place. This little restaurant in downtown Palo Alto with outside seating available right on Emerson Street during summer hours has all the majors covered. The cuisine is exquisite. The menu is quite simple, but what St. Michael’s Alley offers, it delivers well.

Reservations are generally required for dinner, for lunch and breakfast they don’t seem to be as busy. The menu is available on the restaurant site http://www.stmikes.com/ The service was excellent, ready with recommendations, and open to discussions on what’s included in the dishes. The carafe of the grapefruit juice that we ordered was delicious as well.

The restaurant is clean, dimly lit to create private atmosphere. The awards on the wall happily inform you that it’s been awarded The Best Romantic Restaurant in Silicon Valley year after year. Overall, the food is great, the service is friendly, this is a must visit.

Good family Italian restaurant with wine fetish

Review of: Frankie Johnnie & Luigi Too, Pizza Restaurants

By: Alex M. on Judy’s Book

Rating: 3 stars

Read review on Judy’s Book.

Frankie Johnnie & Luigi Too is a nice Italian family restaurant in Mountain View with hearty meals, good sauces, free bread with olive oil and wine selection to make every Italian restaurant proud. The parking is a bit tough to find on busy evenings, but generally possible, the service is pretty good and friendly.

The menu for the Mountain View restaurant is available on this site http://fjlmountainview.com/page/o642/Menus.html and the prices are generally within double digit amounts. The atmosphere is quite friendly and fits a family outing or a romantic dinner equally. The free bread is not as good as the one provided at Lion & Compass.

Overall, a pretty good experience for when one is craving Italian.