Tom Gissel @ singlethreaded.org

Scaling at ebay

Tom — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:23:55 +0000

Usually I don’t like to pass along links to articles without some sort of technical comment on its content, but in this case I’ll let the author’s words do the talking. This is a particularly interesting topic for me because I was part of the original POC team that enabled ebay on WAS back in the day. My how they have grown…. http://www.infoq.com/articles/ebay-scalability-best-practices

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What is real?

Tom — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 02:15:55 +0000

I’ve been busily building middleware to enable Web 2.0 application creation for about 2 years, but until recently haven’t fully realized the full impact of this social revolution.

My enlightenment started a couple weekends ago when my sister-in-law, Amy, told me she’d been part of a conversation with her younger colleagues where they were discussing their relationships. Amy was told in no uncertain terms that a relationship wasn’t real unless it was on facebook. After hearing this I chuckled a bit but didn’t think much more of it. Shortly after my chat with Amy I read this article on CNN which echoed Amy’s comments exactly, and got me thinking.

What strikes me is that the Web has evolved from a place where information is shared to a place where information is born. As I ponder this I can’t help but wonder: What is real?

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Apparently this guy hasn’t heard the news

Tom — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:30:56 +0000

I read this fascinating post from Paul Murphy, but it makes me wonder…. Hasn’t Paul heard the news, Java has code completion.

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Steve loves us, he really loves us

Tom — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:00:27 +0000

OK, I admit it. I may have been wrong about Apple not caring about us nerds. Steve now says:

We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February

Cool. I’m not so sure this an altruistic move, but then again what is? The free market is good, especially when if forces companies to do the right thing. Welcome back Apple, we love you.

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Nerds vs the new Apple

Tom — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 01:48:09 +0000

All the nerds I know, which is pretty much everyone, are all pissed-off at Apple due to the much publicized iPhone bricking. Personally I think there is mass confusion here in the geekosphere. When Apple did nothing but sell computers it existed for and was powered by we nerds. Apple was the in-crowd’s alternative to the evil empire. That was then this is now. Now Linux is do-it-yourselfers’ OS, and Mac OS, perish the thought, is becoming main stream. My Dad, not a computer scientist, has even traded in his Windows laptop for a MacBook.

Face it, Apple’s has moved beyond targeting the nerds and is targeting the mass market by creating the best high tech devices the world has ever seen. First it was the iPod then iPhone now iTouch… These things are -not- meant to be hacked they are meant to be the best purpose-built functional appliances obtainable. The best music player, best phone, best media player, and best whatchamacallit on the market for the -average- user. Ironically this means -removing- choice. This means it, whatever -it- is,will not do everything but it will do the thing it does do very well. If you don’t like what it does buy something else. If you want to hack something, buy a mp3 player or phone that runs Linux. Apple isn’t targeting the nerds and we need to get over it and move on.

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