garry’s subposthaven

Back in the 1920s Hubble did photographic surveys of the sky with long exposures. Here is what he found. Pick a random spot in the sky. Take a long exposure. Count the stars you can see. Take a magnifying glass. Count the galaxies you can find. With a few obvious exceptions, there will be more galaxies than stars. A lot more.

And a galaxy itself is hundreds of thousands of stars.

We are but tiny flecks on tiny specks.

Any legal system that would allow these kids to extort $65 million from the most successful business this century should be ashamed of itself. Did Zuckerberg breach his contract? Maybe, for which the damages are more like $650, not $65 million. Did he steal a trade secret? Absolutely not. Did he steal any other “property”? Absolutely not—the code for Facebook was his, and the “idea” of a social network is not a patent. It wasn’t justice that gave the twins $65 million; it was the fear of a random and inefficient system of law. That system is a tax on innovation and creativity. That tax is the real villain here, not the innovator it burdened.

Amen. The full article by Lessig is worth a read too.

The text fields are huge, meaty, clearly-labeled things. Easy to find and click on. Instead of being relegated to a forgotten sidebar, the search activity itself is the focal point of the page. There are no distracting promotions or other crap you don’t care about. “You’re here to search for your flight, so let’s make it happen!” cries Hipmunk, grabbing you by the cheeks and shoving you into search land. Want to leave tomorrow? Type “tomorrow” into the date field.

For reference, let’s compare to another site.

Look at that shit!