candescence.org

Stumbled across this depiction of the 20 Largest Bankruptcies in the history of the world. I love how cheerful the graphic is in comparison to the depressing truth it is displaying. All in all a great little bit of info viz.

Having recently fought of a rather nasty spam bot attack on a forum i run i must say i’ve had little tolerance for spam of any kind as of late but i have to say the most recent comment caught by Akismet has me amused. It was in Chinese with no links what so ever (so i’m not sure how Akismet did in fact catch it unless it just hates Chinese). The comment in its native tongue is as follows:

男人网从多个角度诠释男人时尚生活方式,从男士的健康到着装,到男士忠爱的奢侈品;从男士的烧钱的玩物到男士的性健康,做个有魅力的成功男士.

And being the curious person i am i had to send it through babel fish to see what i got and it was indeed worth the effort:

The man net annotates the man fashion life style from many angles, from gentleman’s health to clothing, to gentleman loyal love luxury goods; From gentleman’s fever money’s toys to gentleman’s natural health, make to have the charm successful gentleman.

My best guess is that they’re trying to sell clothing, maybe, or gentleman fevers? Oh i give up. Maybe a more apt title for this post would’ve been The Confusing Side of Spam. I’m still wondering what exactly a “man net” is…

Finding the corrilation between two Daring Fireball posts i happened upon today in my RSS feeds (i’m a bit behind due to the holidays). In reverse order of reading there is first the story from Fast Company on The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart (DF) in which we read about how Jim Wier, CEO of Simplicity Manufacturing, Inc., sat down rather awkwardly with the VP of Wal-Mart to inform him that he would no longer be selling his line of lawn tractors at Wal-Mart because, in short, he couldn’t lower his product line to the level to which Wal-Mart shoppers were accustomed. This was an interesting read for sure, but it also immediately brought to mind another story i’d read on DF earlier today in which Alex Payne talks about Software I Paid For But No Longer Use (DF). Being in the software business myself (or so i tell myself) the parallels caught my eye. So much software, if not the whole lot, is designed to be disposable just like the lawn tractors at Wal-mart. And for the large part this is completely accepted by buyers. The reasoning, obviously, is much the same – low prices. Sure, the inevitable jump in computing capability plays into it, but let’s face it – the first deciding factor in purchasing a piece of software is how much it costs. And really what software developer would pass down the opportunity to sell the more-or-less same piece of software again the next year?

I don’t think we’ll ever see software being passed down through the generations like you would a good tool or piece of furniture but there’s something to be said for the shortcuts taken – specifically relating to quality – to keep prices low and maintain a disposable product driven market. There may be something to be said for the subscription models that some software vendors have been toying with as of late.