Wired published an interview of Jeff Bezos realized in January 2005.

Some interesting inputs:

How much of retail sales do you think eventually will be online, and how much offline?
I think online ultimately will be 10 to 15 percent of retail. The vast majority of retailing will stay in the physical world because people have acute needs, they want things now. Also, there are products, like a yard rake, where the economics of delivery don’t make sense. But a 600-pound table saw is a great item to sell online because it always gets delivered. And it’s expensive enough that there is enough profit in it to cover the cost of shipping. Plasma TVs, same idea.

Do physical bookstores have anything to offer that Amazon doesn’t?
One thing is face-to-face meetings with authors. And what Howard Schultz at Starbucks likes to call a third place, where people go and sit and spend time. We humans are a gregarious species; we like to mingle with other humans.

In the magazine world, we rely on ads. Should we be terrified?
I’m not saying that advertising is going away. But the balance is shifting. If today the successful recipe is to put 70 percent of your energy into shouting about your service and 30 percent into making it great, over the next 20 years I think that’s going to invert.

[via NASA Planetary Photojournal]

A handle-shaped cloud of plasma erupts from the Sun.

Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) image of a huge, handle-shaped prominence taken on Sept. 14,1999 taken in the 304 angstrom wavelength – Prominences are huge clouds of relatively cool dense plasma suspended in the Sun’s hot, thin corona. At times, they can erupt, escaping the Sun’s atmosphere. Emission in this spectral line shows the upper chromosphere at a temperature of about 60,000 degrees K. Every feature in the image traces magnetic field structure. The hottest areas appear almost white, while the darker red areas indicate cooler temperatures.

Do you know that the worldwide unemployment level decreased last year? That the worldwide unemployment level reached 6.1% in 2004, which represents 184.7 million people? I didn’t know…

I discovered the ILO – International Labour Organization – in one of my last holidays readings. Interesting. Their motto:

Promoting decent work for all.

The International Labour Organization is the UN specialized agency which seeks the promotion of social justice and internationally recognized human and labour rights. It was founded in 1919 and is the only surviving major creation of the Treaty of Versailles which brought the League of Nations into being and it became the first specialized agency of the UN in 1946.

The ILO formulates international labour standards in the form of Conventions and Recommendations setting minimum standards of basic labour rights: freedom of association, the right to organize, collective bargaining, abolition of forced labour, equality of opportunity and treatment, and other standards regulating conditions across the entire spectrum of work related issues. It provides technical assistance primarily in the fields of:
• vocational training and vocational rehabilitation;
• employment policy;
• labour administration;
• labour law and industrial relations;
• working conditions;
• management development;
• cooperatives;
• social security;
• labour statistics and occupational safety and health.

It promotes the development of independent employers’ and workers’ organizations and provides training and advisory services to those organizations. Within the UN system, the ILO has a unique tripartite structure with workers and employers participating as equal partners with governments in the work of its governing organs.

One of their last worldwide statistics published about unemployment:

I was two days in Frankfurt for some business meetings with our outsourcing provider – Triaton. On last Thursday evening, we had a *very* good dinner at the Old Opera House’s restaurant (Alte Oper). Great building!

The Old Opera House still looks as magnificent and imposing as it did when it was opened by Kaiser Wilhelm I in 1880. The building was financed by wealthy Frankfurt citizens and was designed in Italian Renaissance style by Richard Lucae. Destroyed in a 1944 air raid, it was rebuilt in 1964-81 and renamed the ‘Old Opera Concert and Conference Centre’. The main auditorium, with seating for about 2,500 people, is the central part of the building and is used for concerts, conferences and other events. Smaller rooms can be hired for functions. Visitors can obtain refreshments in the café, the restaurant or the bistro.

New version 1.0.1 of Firefox available! Install this one, it includes several security fixes.

Latest changes:

• Improved stability
• International Domain Names are now displayed as punycode
• Several security fixes

• Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) homograph spoofing
• Unsafe /tmp/plugtmp directory exploitable to erase user’s files
• Plugins can be used to load privileged content
• Cross-site scripting by dropping javascript: link on tab
• Image drag and drop executable spoofing
• HTTP auth prompt tab spoofing
• Download dialog source spoofing
• Download dialog spoofing using Content-Disposition header
• Overwrite arbitrary files downloading .lnk twice
• XSLT can include stylesheets from arbitrary hosts
• Autocomplete data leak
• Memory overwrite in string library
• Install source spoofing with user:pass@host
• Spoofing download and security dialogs with overlapping windows
• Heap overflow possible in UTF8 to Unicode conversion
• SSL “secure site” indicator spoofing
• Window Injection Spoofing

[via NASA Planetary Photojournal]

A beautiful picture of Mimas, a satellite of Saturn (mission Cassini-Huygens).

Mimas drifts along in its orbit against the azure backdrop of Saturn’s northern latitudes in this true color view. The long, dark lines on the atmosphere are shadows cast by the planet’s rings.

Saturn’s northern hemisphere is presently relatively cloud-free, and rays of sunlight take a long path through the atmosphere. This results in sunlight being scattered at shorter (bluer) wavelengths, thus giving the northernmost latitudes their bluish appearance at visible wavelengths.

At the bottom, craters on icy Mimas (398 kilometers, or 247 miles across) give the moon a dimpled appearance.[…]

The images were obtained using the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Jan. 18, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (870,000 miles) from Saturn. Resolution in the image is 8.5 kilometers (5.3 miles) per pixel on Saturn and 7.5 kilometers (4.7 miles) per pixel on Mimas. The image has been contrast-enhanced to aid visibility.

[via Heiko via SonnyRadio]

The following are pictures of Tiger Woods practicing off the heli-deck of the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, UAE. They were taken when Tiger was in Dubai for the Desert Classic, March 2, 2004. $1 million appearance fee, and he gets to hit shag balls from the tallest hotel in the world.

Yes, Tiger is paid $1 million each year just to play in the Dubai Desert Classic, regardless of how he plays. But hitting golf balls off the top of this “hotel” is really neat. Bet you’ve never seen golf balls hit like this, or a hotel like this.

For best effect, view pictures in the order shown below. The last picture really puts it in perspective. Extraordinary!!!

I received a “thank-you” gift for a while from a friend of mine, who had the very good idea to give me the DVD No Quarter – Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded.

This DVD is pure happiness, really a-m-a-z-i-n-g :-)

Originally released on CD in 1994 and then in a remastered version simultaneously with this DVD, the 115-minute program (including bonus footage) was recorded on a London soundstage, in the hills of Snowdonia, Wales, and outdoors in Marrakech, Morocco. It finds guitarist Page, vocalist Plant, and an array of other musicians performing some new material, but for the most part, the repertoire focuses on their Led Zep legacy–not a surprise, considering that what they did together in that group was better than anything they’ve done separately, including some pretty good Plant solo efforts and Page’s regrettable stint as a member of the Firm. Yet instead of simply parroting their Zeppelin period (and relying on tired warhorses like “Stairway to Heaven” and “Whole Lotta Love”), they’ve given the music new life, adding exotic instruments like the bodhran (an Irish drum) and the hurdy-gurdy (played by cranking a rosined wheel against a set of strings) to less familiar fare like “The Battle of Evermore” and “Gallow’s Pole.” Add to that three brilliant new songs performed with a quartet of Moroccan players, a full complement of strings from the London Metropolitan Orchestra (on “Since I’ve Been Loving You” and others), and a host of Egyptian percussion and strings on an epic version of “Kashmir” (also from the London session), and you’ve got a world music blend that is at times genuinely thrilling–especially for those with 5.1 Surround Sound capability.

Seth publlished 3 posts (1, 2 and 3) about job-finding / person-finding. I really like what he says and totally agree with his position.

Consider a few facts:
1. The traditional way to get a job is to send a boring resume in response to as many posted jobs as you can afford. Your resume will be scanned, culled and if it doesn’t stand out too much, a person might look at it.

Then you go for a job interview and try to be coglike in your malleability and desire to fit in. If random acts are working in your favor, you get the job.

2. Then, the big Fortune 1000 company that hired you complains that all their people act like cogs, don’t care enough, aren’t creative in solving problems and don’t push the status quo.

3. Then, the big Fortune 1000 company realizes that as long as they’ve got interchangeable cogs, they ought to just move jobs offshore, cause that’s cheaper.

Let’s start with one assumption that has changed in just a generation:

It turns out that 100% of all job growth is now coming from small (under 500 person) companies. In fact, the big companies are shedding jobs, not adding them.

That wasn’t true for our parents. It’s true for us.

Also true: more likely than not, the best jobs, the most interesting jobs and the most secure jobs happen in small organizations.

[via Dilbert – 1 & 2]