I *HEART* Co-Op Game Play

Software development as a cooperative game

Pay close attention to direction number 23!

from: New York, NY to: london uk - Google Maps

Recommended Add-ons :: Firefox Add-ons

I've already been using a lot of these for a while and I really like them. I want to try out a few more of them.

Linked list - Google Patents

Linked list - Google Patents

Abstract
A computerized list is provided with auxiliary pointers for traversing the list in different sequences. One or more auxiliary pointers enable a fast, sequential traversal of the list with a minimum of computational time. Such lists may be used in any application where lists may be reordered for various purposes.

MSGee-licious

The Science Creative Quarterly » MSG: MORE THAN MEETS THE TONGUE: "In spite of the detrimental effects of MSG, the FDA approves of MSG in our food products based on its “naturally occurring” ingredient. Because glutamate is also found in nature, MSG is a safe food additive. Many manufacturers rename the monosodium glutamate ingredient to euphemistic terms such as, malt extract, corn syrup, cornstarch, or hydrolyzed “anything”.

So why do food companies and restaurants add MSG to foods in spite of the problems it causes? MSG fools your brain into believing you are consuming nutritious and tasty food, stimulates appetite, and reduces costs for the food processors."

"Hillary 1984" Video Creator Steps Forward

Many experts feel that the Hillary 1984 video marked a change in political campaigning. Now that voters have the ability to produce their own ads in support of their favorite candidate - or against politicians they oppose - many will.

Mr. de Vellis commented "This ad was not the first citizen ad, and it will not be the last. The game has changed."

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2007/03/22.3.shtml

JSON is not as safe as people think it is - Joe Walker's Blog

JSON is not as safe as people think it is - Joe Walker's Blog

Interesting post. As we move more and more towards web based applications I suspect that this will have to be fixed. I wonder why each javascript session isn't completely sandboxed? IE - why isn't there a different instance of the javascript interpreter with no shared memory for each web page's session?

In an effort to reduce my monthly phone bill, I went searching for an alternative long distance provider for cell phones. I found yak.com It gives cell phones a 3.5 cents per minute long distance rate with no monthly fees.

Does anyone know of anything better?

Even if I pre-pay for 300 minutes of long distance with Fido, it still costs me 8c per minute! I'm also switching to the "family plan" with me and Anita. It gets unlimited incoming calls, unlimited between members of the family and unlimited weekends and evenings. It only comes with 300 outgoing weekday minutes, but (to be honest) I don't need my phone much during work hours, except to answer incoming calls.

An interesting option is to add other people for only 15$ a month. I think they must share the 300 weekday minutes. I wonder if groups of friends can sign up?

TEDTalks

Forget about the mouse and keyboard.

Autocorrect is Grate

Autocorrect is Grate.
For some reason I think of WCL...

Two steps closer to The Singularity?

Jeff Hawkins (inventer of the Palm Pilot and the Treo) has turned to work on neuroscience full-time and has published On Intelligence describing his memory-prediction framework theory of the brain.

In a recent interview with Wired Magazine, Hakwins, claims to have something quite significant to contribute to the study of artificial intelligence. The Numenta Platform for Intelligent Computing.

Wired 15.03: The Thinking Machine: "Hawkins joins a long line of thinkers claiming to have unlocked the secrets of the mind and coded them into machines. So thoroughly have such efforts failed that AI researchers have largely given up the quest for the kind of general, humanlike intelligence that Hawkins describes. “There have been all those others,” he acknowledges, “the Decade of the Brain, the 5th Generation Computing Project in Japan, fuzzy logic, neural networks, all flavors of AI. Is this just another shot in the dark?” He lets the question hang for a moment. “No,” he says. “It’s quite different, and I can explain why.”

... Hierarchical Temporal Memory, or HTM ...

An HTM consists of a pyramid of nodes, each encoded with a set of statistical formulas. The whole HTM is pointed at a data set, and the nodes create representations of the world the data describes — whether a series of pictures or the temperature fluctuations of a river. The temporal label reflects the fact that in order to learn, an HTM has to be fed information with a time component — say, pictures moving across a screen or temperatures rising and falling over a week. Just as with the brain, the easiest way for an HTM to learn to identify an object is by recognizing that its elements — the four legs of a dog, the lines of a letter in the alphabet — are consistently found in similar arrangements. Other than that, an HTM is agnostic; it can form a model of just about any set of data it’s exposed to. And, just as your cortex can combine sound with vision to confirm that you are seeing a dog instead of a fox, HTMs can also be hooked together. Most important, Hawkins says, an HTM can do what humans start doing from birth but that computers never have: not just learn, but generalize."

The article didn't go on to explain HTM's to my full satisfaction but Numenta's Community Wiki did a much better job.


... but wait, there's more! ...


In another, entirely separate Wired Magazine interview, Douglas R. Hofstadter (Author of Gödel, Escher, Bach and I Am a Strange Loop), makes some interesting points about self awareness.

Wired 15.03: PLAY: "WIRED: How is your new book different from Gödel, which touched on physics, genetics, mathematics, and computer science?

HOFSTADTER: This time I’m only trying to figure out “What am I?”

Well, given the book’s title, you seem to have found out. But what is a strange loop?

One good prototype is the Escher drawing of two hands sketching each other. A more abstract one is the sentence I am lying. Such loops are, I think anyone would agree, strange. They seem paradoxical and even strike some people as dangerous. I argue that such a strange loop, paradoxical or not, is at the core of each human being. It is an abstract pattern that gives each of us an “I,” or, if you don’t mind the term, a soul."

I realize this is a stretch, but my imagination immediately jumps to pictures of the vast information of Wikipedia, and the Internet in general, all wrapped up with a friendly personality. Then make it self aware and, BOOM, One strange looped Singularity coming right up! I think they should name it "Singleton". It has a nice ring to it. "Thanks for explaining the meaning of life to me, Singleton, your a pal!".

Hello, My name is Mike. I saw LittleBigPlanet and i liked it...

Penny Arcade! - Karma Sucks: "in place of a six hundred dollar game, I will accept a six hundred dollar idea."

Clips: LittleBigPlanet - Kotaku: "This is the biggest thing to come out of GDC07. Hyperbole? Yes, probably. Is the game worth it? Yes, probably"

Picasa Web Albums Is Getting Really Cool

Picasa Web Albums: "What's New on Picasa Web Albums?

Some on my favorite features so far include:

• The free storage quota has been upped to 1GB (and counting).
• Photos uploaded through Blogger appear in My Photos.
• You can upload videos using Picasa.
• Order prints and photo products
• Email notifications and RSS feeds
• Easy Upload from Google Picassa or from iPhoto
  

YouTube - Mideveal helpdesk with English subtitles

YouTube - Mideveal helpdesk with English subtitles

This made my evening.

Ink-less Printers?!

Since Ink Costs More Than Human Blood, I'm pretty excited about this Zero ink printer from Zero Ink Printer from ZINK!

It won't be available until late 2007 (and I'll believe it when i see it) but it would be really cool to have printers that don't require ink! How much would you pay for an ink-less printer? $300? $1,000?

Nuzmo - Sniffer rats trained for detecting land mines, no joke

Nuzmo - [picture] Sniffer rats trained for detecting land mines, no joke

Haha! This is great. Wonder if it's for real?

Anatomy of a well-intentioned Linux Troll - Ubuntu Forums

Anatomy of a well-intentioned Linux Troll - Ubuntu Forums

Ballmer Repeats Threats Against Linux

...and open source will have to respect the intellectual property rights of others just as any other competitor will.

But maybe they should take care of their own code before worrying about the code of others.

M$ Hit by $1.5 Billion patent award.

Funny Funny

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe: "Open Source"

A Wall Between the U.S. and Mexico?!

Schneier on Security: CYA Security: "we're seeing CYA security on the national level, from our politicians. We might be better off as a nation funding intelligence gathering and Arabic translators, but it's a better re-election strategy to fund something visible but ineffective, like a national ID card or a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

Securing our nation from threats that are weird, threats that either happened before or captured the media's imagination, and overly specific threats are all examples of CYA security. It happens not because the authorities involved -- the Boston police, the TSA, and so on -- are not competent, or not doing their job. It happens because there isn't sufficient national oversight, planning, and coordination.

People and organizations respond to incentives. We can't expect the Boston police, the TSA, the guy who runs security for the Oscars, or local public officials to balance their own security needs against the security of the nation. They're all going to respond to the particular incentives imposed from above. What we need is a coherent antiterrorism policy at the national level: one based on real threat assessments, instead of fear-mongering, re-election strategies, or pork-barrel politics.

Sadly, though, there might not be a solution. All the money is in fear-mongering, re-election strategies, and pork-barrel politics. And, like so many things, security follows the money."

Get to the Point Paul

This essay is too long to read but too good to skim!

Is It Worth Being Wise?: "I think it's important to understand the relationship between intelligence and wisdom, and particularly what seems to be the growing gap between them. That way we can avoid applying rules and standards to intelligence that are really meant for wisdom. These two senses of 'knowing what to do' are more different than most people realize. The path to wisdom is through discipline, and the path to intelligence through carefully selected self-indulgence. Wisdom is universal, and intelligence idiosyncratic. And while wisdom yields calmness, intelligence much of the time leads to discontentment.

That's particularly worth remembering. A physicist friend recently told me half his department was on Prozac. Perhaps if we acknowledge that some amount of frustration is inevitable in certain kinds of work, we can mitigate its effects. Perhaps we can box it up and put it away some of the time, instead of letting it flow together with everyday sadness to produce what seems an alarmingly large pool. At the very least, we can avoid being discontented about being discontented.

If you feel exhausted, it's not necessarily because there's something wrong with you. Maybe you're just running fast."

All Aboard The Ubuntu Train! You Too ESR!

Goodbye, Fedora: "This afternoon, I installed Edgy Eft on my main development machine -- from one CD, not five. In less than three hours' work I was able to recreate the key features of my day-to-day toolkit. The after-installation mass upgrade to current packages, always a frightening prospect under Fedora, went off without a hitch. I'm not expecting Ubuntu to be perfect, but I am now certain it will be enough better to compensate me for the fact that I need to learn a new set of administration tools. Fedora, you had every advantage, and you had my loyalty, and you blew it. And that is a damn, dirty shame. -- Eric S. Raymond"

Vista's Peach Wreck Cognition

...windows vistas speech recognition of king rocks delete of king rocks capitalize f asterisk see kay eye inn gee sucks exclamation point ...




YouTube - Windows Vista Speech Recognition Tested - Perl Scripting

Life Is Hard

I use Google cuz it makes my life easier. I run Ubuntu cuz it makes my life easier. I prefer to program in Python and use Django for web developement cuz they make my life easier... and now the Django cheat sheet (Mercurytide) makes my life easier still!

I *HEART* Nintendo, I Hate Fox News & Penny Arcade is my Hero

MyFox Milwaukee | Nintendo Hand-Held Child Molester Target: "Nintendo Hand-Held Child Molester Target"

Penny Arcade! - The Most Recent Catastrophe:
"While driving on the highway, a child molester who is also driving might look into the back seat of your car and see your child using their DS back there. According to this terrifying report, the child molester can then - while driving their car - produce a DS of their own and utilize it to divine your home address. You will recall that he is driving on the highway at speeds approaching sixty miles an hour. One hand is on the wheel and the other is managing the gearbox. Thus, there can be no question... He is entering these messages into the DS with his erect phallus."

B.C. firm to show off quantum computer

B.C. firm to show off quantum computer: "D-Wave Systems Inc. of Burnaby, B.C. plans to show off its commercial quantum computers at the Computer History Museum on Feb. 13 and at the Telus World of Science museum in Vancouver on Feb. 15."

Steve Jobs has DRMatitis

Apple - Thoughts on Music

Bruce Schneier is Funny & Smrt

MySpace Passwords Aren't So Dumb: "blink182"

History of Programming Languages

I showed this to someone recently and they asked me to "put that were links go".

O'Reilly -- The History of Programming Languages

I Like It

YouTube - BumpTop 3D Desktop Prototype - www.bumptop.com

Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

Not All Traffic Is Created Equal » Publishing 2.0: "mounting evidence suggests that Digg traffic in particular is less like networking with like-minded individuals at a social event and more like getting attacked by a pack of wild dogs, who leave nothing of value in their wake, other than lessons learned on closing comments and crashed servers"

open-source segway

http://lca2007.linux.org.au/talk/185

I've often thought that it would be fun for some of us to get together some summer's weekend to build something cool, like the open source segway. Any other suggestions of what to build?

The Internet weighs two ounces

http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2007/01/this_is_lovely.html

Adobe's PDF Software Flawed

Dunham gave this hypothetical scenario: an attacker finds a PDF file on a banking Web site. The attacker creates a hostile Web site that links to the bank's PDF file. Included is malicious JavaScript code that will run on the unsuspecting user's computer once the link is clicked.

http://www.physorg.com/news87093505.html

Blutooth Watch To Control Your Phone?

Review: Sony Ericsson MBW-100 Bluetooth Watch

When a call is received by the paired phone, the watch will vibrate and display the phone number or, if available, contact name of the party that is calling. The phone's ringer can be quickly silenced by pressing the watch's top button once, and the call can be outright rejected (and sent to voicemail) by pressing the top button a second time. When the phone receives a new text or MMS message, the watch will vibrate and display an envelope icon for a few seconds...

... But it only works with a select few Sony Ericson phones :(

Do heavy things fall faster than light things?

Video of dropping a hammer and a feather on the moon to see which falls
faster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHzVsLAhUCA

Athlete fails gender test

1) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6188775.stm reads:

"Santhi was subjected to a gender test in Doha and we have received the
report which says she failed the test," said Manmohan Singh, chairman of
the Indian Olympic Association's Medical Commission.

Soundararajan is refusing to comment. "I was not informed about the test
results and I don't know much on that. I do not want to talk about it,"
she told journalists.

...

KP Mohan, a sports journalist, said athletes were usually examined by a
team of doctors, including a gynaecologist, endocrinologist and
psychologist, and put through physical and clinical examinations during a
gender test.

2) http://tinyurl.com/yxxuu7 reads:

[G]enetic tests in place in sport might unfairly single out some women as
men, IOC medical commission chairman Dr Arne Ljungquist [said].

...

The gender verification tests are based on chromosomes and sometimes a
sexual disorder results in the presence of male chromosomes in a female.
The athlete would then present male-like features, though without gaining
any undue advantage.

...

The IOC only allows the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technique to
determine chromosomal patterns, a test that was reportedly not done on
Santhi.

...

AIS individuals are genetically male, will have 46,XY chromosomal (male)
pattern, may have male or female genitalia or predominantly male or female
genitalia, but will not have a uterus. Medically, if such individuals
compete against women, they will have no unfair advantage.

3) The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) is used for duplicating DNA so labs
have a larger sample to perform tests on. I assume (but am not sure) the
sample is examined to find the X and Y chromosomes. Females have two X
chromosomes and males have one X and one Y.

It is possible for a human to be born with extra chromosomes. eg two X
and one Y is called "Klinefelter's syndrome". In cases of XXX, XXY, XYY,
or YYY there are a few known differences from the more common XX and XY
humans (eg height). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYY_syndrome for
more information.

Hidden Message

Apparently, this clothing company uses their labels for political expression.

Open-Source Car

"The idea behind open source development is to allow anyone to copy, modify and redistribute ordinarily secret information about a technology without paying royalties to the original developers."

Discovery Channel :: News - Technology :: Open-Source Car Project Gears Up:

Browser sniffing is [or should be] dead

"Sniff the right way

One solid alternative [to browser sniffing] is feature sniffing. This is the other solution mentioned by the “Gecko is Gecko” folks, and it’s vastly superior; instead of looking at the user-agent string and redirecting if it’s not in your “approved” list, you instead use JavaScript to test for the features you want (and, these days, browser sniffing is much more about JavaScript — particularly AJAX capabilities — than anything else). This is a concept that’s been kicking around for years, and which has had one or two high-profile articles written about it (including one by JavaScript guru Stuart Langridge, helpfully linked by the “Gecko is Gecko” site).

The nice thing about feature sniffing is that it’s almost completely foolproof: a browser will lie out of both sides of its mouth about whether or not it’s IE, but its JavaScript engine won’t lie about whether it supports getElementById. There are a couple of wrinkles in this rosy picture (notably Safari which, last I checked, exposes a method called preventDefault on DOM events, even though it doesn’t actually do what preventDefault is supposed to do), but I’d be willing to bet it’s as least as effective, percentage-wise, as sniffing for the “big four” (IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera) and it has the advantage of being future-proof: when the browser market changes, you have to adjust your sniffing scripts. But so long as you’re testing for actual features, you never have to update; getElementById isn’t going to get renamed any time soon.

And to really hammer it home, keep in mind that this is by far the most effective way to implement AJAX effects. Versions of IE prior to 7 expose XMLHttpRequest in a slightly different fashion from other browsers, so the browser-sniffing method relies on being able to absolutely differentiate IE so you can use the correct invocation. Of course, lots of other browsers like to masquerade as IE in their user-agent strings, so that’s out the window — trying to use IE-style invocation in non-IE browsers will just throw JavaScript errors at your users, and then they’ll complain (if you’re lucky) or take their money and their ad-viewing eyeballs somewhere else (if you’re not). Meanwhile, a few short lines of JavaScript which determine where the XMLHttpRequest object lives are all that’s needed to effectively work out how to do AJAX. "

The B-List: Sniffle:

17 years of accumulated strategy experience down to three items

• Standardize - Agree on the standard, upgrade non-standard material, do not allow exceptions but always look for new ways to keep it best of breed. This has so many benefits unto itself that one could write a book on it.
  
• Consolidate - Use a repository (doc, code, etc.), shutting down rouge or excess locations allows folks to locate and interact with the material better. It also saves a ton of money and drastically reduces confusion. I have found that it is always better to harden the central area than distribute it. This doesn’t work for everything (e.g. peer to peer, bazaar coding model (e.g. DARCS/BZR)) but it does for most things.
  
• Automate - Queue up some simple tooling and automate as much as possible. Aside from saving money it allows you to focus your employees on things worthy of their attention instead of the mundane. It does wonders for productivity and can have a positive impact on communications.

Joey Stanford » Strategy: My Three Secrets

Vibrating Corn Starch

Corn starch vibrating in a wide range of frequencies exhibits bizarre, finger-like formations.

PHP security team member gives up

http://www.heise-security.co.uk/news/82500

"
Stefan Esser, PHP security specialist and member of the official PHP
Security Response Team has, he says, had enough - in his blog he has
announced his immediate resignation from the PHP Security Response Team.

...

He says that he had stopped counting the number of times he was called a
traitor when he published a bug report on a vulnerability in PHP.

...

While Esser feels that certain PHP functions are intrinsically unsafe (for
example allow_url_fopen/allow_url_include) and should therefore be
revised, many developers, including PHP specialists Zend, think that the
security problems in PHP applications have simply been caused by
inexperienced programmers.

...

In his view it is also irresponsible to cease proper support for the PHP4
tree.
"

Google as a Registrar? (Sorta)

Official Google Blog: Your easiest holiday task:

"we've made signing up for Google Apps for Your Domain much easier for those of you that don't yet have your own domain. We've partnered with GoDaddy.com and eNom, two leading domain registration services, to offer domains for $10 per year. And I like the fact that we're including private registration to protect your personal information"

USA discussing allowing leaded gasoline.

I almost can't believe this news.

http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/blogs/politicalticker/2006/12/epa-leaded-gas-may-return-along-with.html

"The Environmental Protection Agency said this week that revoking those
standards might be justified "given the significantly changed
circumstances since lead was listed in 1976" as an air pollutant"

Map of the Inter-Web

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

Cringely interviews Englebart

This interview is interesting because Douglas Englebart talks about how he
had ideas he wanted to pursue and how he kept quiet because people told
him his ideas were too wild for the culture he worked in at the time.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/feature/story.cfm?c_id=1501021&ObjectID=10362306

"Doug Engelbart invented computer networks, time sharing, graphical user
interfaces, and the mouse--all while driving to work one day in 1951."

Microsoft redesigns iPod packaging

This was going around a while ago. I found it very entertaining in a "it's funny cuz it true" kinda way...

interface that closely mimics a pencil-and-paper method of design

According to FreeDesign, the NSS technology allows FreeDimension to present a curve-based interface to the user that closely mimics a pencil-and-paper method of design, giving designers more freedom in generating 3D shapes for new product, virtual gaming, and entertainment applications.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=11985

“Are you my friend? Yes or no?”

This question, while fundamentally odd, is a key component of social network sites. Participants must select who on the system they deem to be ‘Friends.’

Friends, friendsters, and top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites

FBI turns on cell phone microphone remotely.

"Nextel and Samsung handsets and the Motorola Razr are especially
vulnerable to software downloads that activate their microphones, said
James Atkinson, a counter-surveillance consultant who has worked closely
with government agencies. "They can be remotely accessed and made to
transmit room audio all the time," he said. "You can do that without
having physical access to the phone.""

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/12/remotely_eavesd_1.html

FoxTrot comic strip will go to a Sunday-only schedule.

FoxTrot will go to a Sunday-only publication schedule as of Dec. 31, 2006.

"After spending close to half of my life writing and drawing FoxTrot
cartoons, I think its time I got out of the house and tried some new
things", said Bill Amend.

http://www.amuniversal.com/ups/newsrelease/?view=468

"You-tube for data"

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/05/swivel-to-launch-this-week-communitize-your-data/

"the site allows users to upload data - any data - and display it to other
users visually. The number of page views your website generates. Or a
stock price over time. Weather data. Commodity prices."

"Uploaded data can be rated, commented and bookmared by other users,
helping to sort the interesting (and accurate) wheat from the chaff. And
graphs of data can be embedded into websites."

"You and other users can then compare that data to other data sets to
find possible correlation (or lack thereof). Compare gas prices to
presidential approval ratings or UFO sightings to iPod sales. Track your
page views against weather reports in Silicon Valley. See if something
interesting occurs."

Wait staff scam. er I mean trick.

I found this on reddit.com.

http://www.gradschoolstory.com/archives/90/credibility

"
Experienced waiters in high-end restaurants use a neat trick to gain trust
and credibility with customers. While taking orders, they point out that
whatever was ordered:

isnt that good tonight, may I suggest the (cheaper dish)?

This immediately gives the customer reason to believe that the waiter is
on their side, since he is willing to comment negatively about the
restaurants dishes and point to a better dish that is cheaper (which would
actually have the effect of decreasing his tip).

In the customers eyes the waiters credibility has increased considerably
because of this show of objectivity. Of course, the waiter then goes on to
leverage this increase in credibility by recommending more expensive
wines, appetizers, and deserts - thereby increasing his tip considerably.
"

Ten Guaranteed Ways to Screw Up Any Project

Michael Greer's Ten Guaranteed Ways to Screw Up Any Project

Strange yet Interesting

Lojban?!

What is lojban?

Lojban is a carefully constructed spoken, as well as written, language designed in the hope of removing a large portion of the ambiguity from human communication. It was made well-known by a Scientific American article and references in both science fiction and computer publications. Lojban has been built over five decades by dozens of workers and hundreds of supporters.

melu la xrist. na.enai la pacrux. djica da li'u

Cringely on ISP service.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20061201_001274.html

Stock investment spam pays about 5% profit in just a few days.

Joel Spolsky pointed this link out. I have had the idea of researching
the impact in price around the time of stock market spam on my list of
things to do for about a year or so. I didn't get around to it but
someone else had the same idea.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=920553

The results are:

"
Before brokerage fees, the average investor who buys a stock on the day it
is most heavily touted and sells it 2 days after the touting ends will
lose approximately 5.5%.

For the top half of most thoroughly touted stocks, a spammer who buys, a
spammer who buys at the ask price on the day before unleashing touts and
sells at the bid price on the day his or her touting is the heaviest will,
on average, earn 5.79%.
"

Google's Master Plan

http://picasaweb.google.com/cdibona/RIPGoogleMasterPlan/photo?pli=1#4979945846336323602

Wii Vs Playstation 3 (NSFW)

YouTube - Wii Vs Playstation 3

Getting Everyone Back in the Game

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/24/arts/24wii.html?ref=technology

"More important, I have already seen the Wii appeal to people who would never pick up an Xbox or PlayStation controller. At Thanksgiving at my aunt’s house in New Jersey, there was my 59-year-old stepfather, who hadn’t touched a video game since Pong, locked in a tight golf match with my 21-year-old cousin. There was my aunt clamoring for her turn. And most shocking, there was my mother, 61, whom I had been trying to get into video games for two decades, playing tennis so vigorously she bruised her finger."

Poll says USA is the most unfriendly country to visitors.

"
The survey showed that the United States was ranked "the worst" in terms
of visas and immigration procedures by twice the percentage of travelers
as the next destination regarded as unfriendly -- the Middle East and the
Asian subcontinent.
"

"
Between 2000 and 2006, the number of overseas visitors, excluding those
from Mexico and Canada, has declined by 17 percent
"

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2006-11-20T221513Z_01_N20294102_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-IMAGE.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-R1-MostViewed-1

Joel on user interfaces. (Yet again?)

Joel wrote:

I'm sure there's a whole team of UI designers, programmers, and testers
who worked very hard on the OFF button in Windows Vista, but seriously, is
this the best you could come up with?

Every time you want to leave your computer, you have to choose between
nine, count them, nine options: two icons and seven menu items.

...

This highlights a style of software design shared by Microsoft and the
open source movement, in both cases driven by a desire for consensus and
for "Making Everybody Happy," but it's based on the misconceived notion
that lots of choices make people happy, which we really need to rethink.

http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html

Sun Open Sources Java

I suppose that all of you have already heard this. I've hadn't. In any case, I think it's wonderful news.


http://www.sun.com/2006-1113/feature/story.jsp

How high school kids can make money.

In high school I made money by mowing lawns and scooping ice cream at
Baskin-Robbins. This was the only kind of work available at the time. Now
high school kids could write software or design web sites. But only some
of them will; the rest will still be scooping ice cream.

- Paul Graham , http://paulgraham.com/gap.html

Joel Spolsky on productivity consultants.

It's an interesting description of a reasonably common scam. Joel wrote:

A management consultant at Bain wrote me a nice email, that included the
following sentence:

"Our team is conducting a benchmarking effort to gather an outside-in view
on development performance metrics and best practice approaches to issues
of process and organization from companies involved in a variety of
software development (and systems integration)."

I didn't understand a thing he wrote. The email contained a lot of words
(benchmarking, outside in, performance metrics, best practice, process and
organization) each of which set off a loud buzzing alarm-like sound in my
head. The noise from the buzzing was so loud and so distracting that I
found myself completely unable to parse the email.

Car dashboard image for low tire pressure.

I would normally pick an ISO standard over ANSI simply because it is probably more widely accepted. I came across a paper on the image to be used in a car to signal that tire presure is low.

I have seen the ISO image and it took me a moment to guess what it meant. Even then I looked it up. The interesting thing is that the image is a cross-section of a tire without a rim. I am going to guess that most drivers do not know what that looks like.

The paper is interesting not only because it gives insight into what symbols drivers understand but because it deals with designing an interface to communicate with humans.

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/vrtc/ca/capubs/tpms_hfes01final.pdf

Calgary Traffic Alterts on your cell phone

The idea is you enter your travel time and streets you will be
traveling on. The system then sends you alerts about traffic problems
in related areas.

http://calgarytraffic.com/work.php

I AM TROLL

Read input and manipulate files on Linux systems with PHP scripts - Program - Linux - Builder AU

If you are already familiar with PHP code for Web sites, then you'll find it works great for command-line scripting on Linux systems. [...] using PHP on the command-line works fantastic and fast. [...] Perhaps one of the biggest functions of any scripting language in a script is to manipulate files and obtain user input. PHP handles this with as much grace as any other scripting language.

I couldn't believe this post and I really can't believe how angry it made me! Here's the comment I submitted but I don't think they'll post it:

It's almost like you don't even know what the words "fast", "easy", "works", "fantastic", and "grace" actually mean!!!




This post is ridiculous! PHP is none of those things. It's slow, broken, inconsistent and clunky!




PHP is one of the my top three languages in terms of lines of code written for employers. I have work experience with at least half a dozen. I have studied language design and implementation. I've reviewed PHP's source along side other dynamic languages. There is no language, (which i have experience with) which i have a lower opinion of!




I know this is a flame but I just don't care. PHP's lack of consistency and awkward implementation have wasted my time on occasions too numerous to count. If i can stop just one programmer or project manager from thinking that PHP will bring them one single advantage over most alternatives, then this flame was worth it!!!

I'll chalk all this up as evidence towards my recent realization: The attraction to PHP that some feel and the difficulty breaking away from it is not entirely unlike those of in a relationship with an abusive partner!

Tool for recovering stolen vehicles.

A while ago I thought about a system with a GPS unit and a cell phone that
can email me when my car is moved without me being in it. Or maybe it
does it every 5 or 10 minutes and normally those messages just get deleted
after say a week or so.

Someone sells a similar system but not in Alberta. Just Ontario, B.C. and
Quebec.

http://www.boomerangtracking.com/

Update: I forgot to mention that the site requires version 8 of the flash browser plug-in. There is a beta version of flash for linux that you can download. http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer9.html

Living beyond your means.

When I was in high-school a friend said he and I should split an appartment. I said there was no way we could afford that. I had a part-time job and knew that without working full-time and overtime it was not going to happen.



He didn't believe me that we couldn't afford it. I said "do you know what groceries alone cost for a month?" He said "about $40". I told him that was far short of what we would need. I went grocery shopping. I had an idea of what food cost. His mother did the grocery shopping for his family and he didn't go to the store with her. A few years went by. He now has a very good idea what groceries and bills cost.



The following story is about how credit-card debt gets built up and how people learn to deal with it. It's not a long read and it is kind of interesting.



http://www.violentacres.com/archives/30/you-can-learn-a-lot-from-a-rich-girl

This sounds kind of familiar.

This sounds like something someone we know would try.

"
Off we set on our merry way, and within only an hour we had managed to
concoct the dozen or so lines of assembler to create /etc. The stripped
binary was only 76 bytes long, so we converted it to hex (slightly more
readable than the output of uuencode), and typed it in using my editor. If
any of you ever have the same problem, here's the hex for future
reference:
070100002c000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000dd8fff010000dd8f27000000fb02ef07000000fb01ef070000000000bc8f
8800040000bc012f65746300
"

Someone is talking about how they dealt with a "rm -rf /".
http://www.justpasha.org/folk/rm.html

Mike is installing an eclipse plugin that Lakin helped him find...

...

Mike: ok, it's installing

Lakin: This mouse is just fucking finicky.

Mike: thanks it works!

Lakin: yay

Mike: howz yer mouse?

Lakin: Expect eclipse to binge on your memory like Kirstie Alley on Grape Sodas

Lakin: mouse still doesn't want to connect.

Mike: Kirstie alley?!

Lakin: It works fine on my desktop, but is being annoying with my laptop. I'm ignoring it as a punishment.

Lakin: Kirstie Alley's gut-busting binges

Mike: like we do with Kirstie Alley?

Lakin: I'm not certain I understand your last sentence.

Mike: ignoring it as a punishment

Lakin: aah. yes.

...

The Interweb

These posts got me thinking about what the web was, is, and is becoming...

Web Design is 95% Typography

The 10 commandments of Web Design

Joel Spolsky on website SQL injection.

http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/01.html

11.3% of web applications have SQL injection vulnerabilities.

Joel wrote:

"
I tried to sign up for an online site. ... The signup page wanted a secret
question and secret answer. ... For the secret answer, I put "Aunt Vera
doesn't have a cat." And I got this:

1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that
corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near
't have a cat', 'male')' at line 1

This is an extremely common problem: Michael Sutton did a little research
project and found that 11.3% of web applications have SQL injection
vulnerabilities.
"

Scott Adams on voting machines.

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/10/electronic_voti.html

"
Now dont get me wrong theres a 100% chance that the voting machines will
get hacked and all future elections will be rigged. But that doesnt mean
well get a worse government. It probably means that the choice of the next
American president will be taken out of the hands of deep-pocket,
autofellating, corporate shitbags and put it into the hands of some
teenager in Finland. How is that not an improvement? "

"
Statistically speaking, any hacker who is skilled enough to rig the
elections will also be smart enough to select politicians that believe in
. . . oh, lets say for example, science.
"

"
Is it too late to start selling bumper stickers that say 'I think I
voted'?
"

myspace hacked?

From http://news.netcraft.com/

Netcraft has discovered that the social networking site, MySpace, appears
to have been compromised by phishers who have presented a spoof login form
on the main site. This modified login form is designed to submit the
victim's username and password to a remote server hosted in France.

Netcraft has notified MySpace of the issue, although it currently remains
live. Because the fraudulent login page is hosted on MySpace's own servers
and does not exhibit any signs of external content, such as cross-site
scripting (XSS) or open redirects, it is convincing and even
security-conscious users are at risk of becoming victims.

Robert X. Cringely's Hard Drive news

Mark told me about this. It sounds pretty amazing. It sounds good. So
good that it might be vapor-ware. It is coming from Cringely and he tends
to be pretty credible.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20061026_001143.html

He comments:

Who needs flash in general as a mass storage technology? Our 10-gigabyte
0.85-inch drive can spin up, read or write data, then shut down again,
all in less time than it takes to perform the same task using flash
while being just as resistant to shock damage and more resistant to
heat. That 10-gig drive will cost $24 compared to $240 for 10 gigs of
flash, so we expect that our technology will be used for any
application requiring more than 2-gigs of storage. The obvious market
here is mobile phones, which will become media storage devices.

Housing crash in the USA.

Preamble: this is about housing markets and economics. Skip it if that
bores you.

Historically in the few years following a stock market crash the housing
market booms and busts. (This might be a North American trend.)
Disclaimer: off the top of my head I don't recall where I heard this.

Stocks prices in North America took a dive in the early 2000s. There were
big things with Nortel, Enron, World Com for example.

There was also the "dot com" crash when people finally had to admit stocks
were over-valued and there is no "new economy". Okay, you don't have to
admit those things to yourself but a number of people lost a lot of money.

1) That's the first thing that kind of supports rising prices being a
bubble.

A while ago I read about "the housing bubble" at
http://www.stock-market-crash.net/housing-bubble.htm

It is a very interesting argument. The problem is with too much debt
being built up in the economy. It reads:

In recent years, despite the recession, housing prices have risen by
over 43 percent. ... Mortgage rates are at a 40-year low. ... A
major sign that we are in a housing bubble is the fact that fewer people
can afford homes. ... A housing bubble needs a steady stream of
thirsty home buyers.

Just that last bit starts to sound like a "Ponzi scheme".

2) That article argues there is a bubble with housing prices.

Just now I came across an Associated Press article from a few hours ago
that reads:

Is this what a housing bust looks like? New home prices fell last month
by the largest amount in 35 years and owners are being warned to brace
for further declines, especially in formerly hot markets.

...

The sharp slowdown in housing follows an extended boom in which the
lowest mortgage rates in four decades powered sales of both new and
existing homes to records for five consecutive years

Read todays article over at
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/061026/economy.html?.v=10

Anyone in Smallville has the power to wake up.

If your team is unreasonably resistant to change, more often than not, they can be reignited. All you need to do is press on that part where they are passionate.

Epsilon-Delta » Are You on a Pleasantville Team?

Sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.

I don't know if I can attach images. If not the URL to visit is
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20061018.html

Kevin Poulsen in the news.

http://news.com.com/2061-11199_3-6126548.html

"
Police in Suffolk County, N.Y., recently caught a registered sex offender
trolling for underage boys on MySpace, thanks to some code written by
former hacker and current Wired editor Kevin Poulsen.

Poulsen wrote an automated script that scanned the social networking site
for predators, using data taken from the Web site of the Department of
Justice's National Sex Offender Registry. Poulsen claims to have found 744
sex offenders with MySpace profiles so far, including 497 who have been
registered for sex crimes against children.
"

It sounds like a pretty impressive script but it looks like it might have
just searched for the first and last names of known offenders.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,71948-0.html

Apple iPods now come with viruses

Apple says that a "small number" of video iPods, produced after September
12th 2006, were infected with the RavMonE.exe virus.

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/10/17/apple_ipod_infected_virus/

Am I the only one that is struggeling to work from home?

If you work at home or are thinking about doing it check out this thread.

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.402425

It starts out:

Here are my symptoms:
- A complete lack of structure of the day
- F*c**d up sleeping pattern... Getting up way to late, staying up way
to late.
- Don't know when work begins and don't know when it ends.
- Lack of motivation...
- Extremely hard to build discipline
- Loneliness
- Can't concentrate during the day... alot better at night...
- Feelings of frustration because you can't get to it...

Hyperscope - a high-performance thought processor

The HyperScope is a high-performance thought processor that enables you to navigate, view, and link to documents in sophisticated ways. It's the brainchild of Doug Engelbart, the inventor of hypertext and the mouse, and is the first step towards his larger vision for an Open Hyperdocument System.

- http://hyperscope.org/

I wonder how many people would buy this shirt.

The shirt reads "This shirt cost $100".

http://www.cafepress.com/barrysworld/1564082

If someone buys one you make around $85.

ESR's take on Python

http://www.python.org/about/success/esr/

This is probably the third time I've run across this article, but every time I skim it and smile at how well he sums it up for me:

...
So the real punchline of the story is this: weeks and months after writing fetchmailconf, I could still read the fetchmailconf code and grok what it was doing without serious mental effort. And the true reason I no longer write Perl for anything but tiny projects is that was never true when I was writing large masses of Perl code. I fear the prospect of ever having to modify keeper or anthologize again -- but fetchmailconf gives me no qualms at all.
...

The same things happen to me: About half way through my masters degree, I realized that I couldn't stomach writing significant amounts of new code in C++. So I switched to python for a few projects. I rarely code anymore, it's just thesis writing. But sometimes I need to generate new results, new figures, something that I can't generate with my current programs. When this happens and I can use my python program ... I don't have any concerns about doing it. I fear the day that I have to maintain my C++ program that I wrote.

Pythonic Success after PHP Failure

http://www.python.org/about/success/rackspace/

From the article -

...
After a couple of years, the result was a big, un-maintainable mess of thousands of PHP pages and modules that had been written and maintained primarily by one person. The limits of PHP (then version 3) had been stretched thin, the system was too much for one person to maintain, and it was difficult to bring in new people to help with it.
...
Our first attempt to update the system came when PHP version 4 was released. This release promised better object oriented capabilities, and the time was right for Rackspace to dedicate more people to the project.
...

Memory leaks, inconsistent interfaces, inconsistent internal data model, randomly freed objects, multiple object copies despite explicit use of references, internal PHP errors, and untraceable code failures all but made the task impossible to accomplish in PHP.

Even after we achieved a relatively stable code base, we were nowhere near our goal of Core Objects Reused Everywhere because we had to depart from pure object-oriented methods just to work around the problems inherent in PHP. It became clear that PHP was unsuitable for our large scale, mission critical projects. A new solution had to be found.

...

I've said it before and I'll say it again... I *HEART* Google

Yes yes, you all know how much I love Google, but docs.google.com is really cool!

... Multiple people can view and make changes at the same time. There's an on-screen chat window for spreadsheets, and document revisions show you exactly who changed what, and when...

You can publish your documents and spreadsheets online with one click, as normal-looking web pages, to just a few people or no one...

Even if they didn't continue providing me with the tools I've always wanted, what's not to love?

Female Web Gamers Outnumber Males 2 to 1

"Female Web Gamers Outnumber Males 2 to 1". Or at least that is what the headline reads. I find it surprising if not hard to believe.

http://www.cio.com/blog_view.html?CID=25580

The most fucked up language. Literaly.

'fuck's per line of code.

How do python people get by without sigils?

Just a thought but a lack of sigils makes python code look a bit funny. :)

I also wrote some C code today and that looked a bit odd too. :)

Indian physicist puts a PC with a high speed internet connection in a wall in the slums.

Hussein sent me this link the other day. I finally got around to reading it. (It's also now on reddit.com.)

It's really interesting. Brilliant. Go read it at http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-Wall.htm .

I tried another experiment. I went to a middle-class school and chose some ninth graders, two girls and two boys. I called their physics teacher in and asked him, "What are you going to teach these children next year at this time?" He mentioned viscosity. I asked him to write down five possible exam questions on the subject. I then took the four children and said, "Look here guys. I have a little problem for you." They read the questions and said they didn't understand them, it was Greek to them. So I said, "Here's a terminal. I'll give you two hours to find the answers."

Then I did my usual thing: I closed the door and went off somewhere else.

They answered all five questions in two hours. The physics teacher checked the answers, and they were correct. That, of itself, doesn't mean much. But I said to him, "Talk to the children and find out if they really learned something about this subject." So he spent half an hour talking to them. He came out and said, "They don't know everything about this subject or everything I would teach them. But they do know one hell of a lot about it. And they know a couple of things about it I didn't know."

It appears adults did not learn as much about the computer as the children did.

The only reaction we got from adults was, "What on earth is this for? Why is there no one here to teach us something? How are we ever going to use this?" I contend that by the time we are 16, we are taught to want teachers, taught that we cannot learn anything without teachers.
- Sugata Mitra

Parents "object to the language" used in Fahrenheit 451

Disclaimer: I feel Fahrenheit 451 is an important book for students to read and understand. I happen to like the book. If you haven't read it in a few years I recommend reading it again.

I'm not sure why I didn't find anything in the book offensive when time and time again I hear people complaining about it. Maybe people don't like how the book describes the popular desire to purhcase more and more televisions and spend time watching television with your "family" who are just characters on the screen.

Anyhow another family is complaining about the book being read in school.

It's just all kinds of filth," said Alton Verm, adding that he had not read "Fahrenheit 451." "The words don't need to be brought out in class. I want to get the book taken out of the class."

He looked through the book and found the following things wrong with the book: discussion of being drunk, smoking cigarettes, violence, "dirty talk," references to the Bible and using God's name in vain.

By chance:

Alton Verm's request to ban "Fahrenheit 451" came during the 25th annual Banned Books Week. He and Hines said the request to ban "Fahrenheit 451," a book about book burning, during Banned Books Weeks is a coincidence.

http://www.hcnonline.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17270600&BRD=1574&PAG=461&dept_id=532215&rfi=6

vmware player

Hey,

One of Tavis's friends posted this earlier. I thought someone might find it interesting.

vmware

I Rock at BASIC

How in the world wide web did I not know about the 'I Rock at BASIC' t-shirt?

So crazy it just might work!

Applying Test-Driven Development principles to your life?

Magnetic resonance imaging of male and female genitals during coitus

Today I was looking for magnetic viewing paper. If you don't know what that is I recommend looking at the pictures over at http://www.matchrockets.com/ether/magfilm.html.

Related to magnetic viewing paper is something called ferrofluid. Read about it at http://www.wondermagnet.com/ferro.html

When I googled for "magnetic viewing paper" it returned a link to some research that showed "[t]aking magnetic resonance images of the male and female genitals during coitus is feasible and contributes to understanding of anatomy."

I didn't know that. In fact I had never given it any thought.

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/319/7225/1596

Loopt launches

loopt turns your cell phone into a friend finder
with detailed maps that show exactly who is where.
Put your friends on the map. See where they are & what they're doing.
Put yourself on the map. Show your friends where you are and what you're doing.

https://loopt.com/loopt/tour.web2.1

I think it's kind of dumb idea and by that I mean I can't imagine using this. I'm busy enough as it is, why would I take time to type into my cell phone to update where I am and what I'm doing?

That said it's kind of a neat idea. I imagine some kids will use it. It might be popular. I can't say for sure.

The other day I was driving and my phone started to ring. I was rather occupied and not about to go digging in my pocket to get my phone. I had the thought that it might be nice if my phone knew when I was in my car and could customize my voice mail message. Then again that just tells someone why I might not have answered the phone. I'm not sure what value that really adds.

Cringely on "unlmited" internet access.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060928.html