Blog Posts

Does Mitt Romney control it all?

Another conspiracy story claiming that Romney through several levels of company, controls a company that makes a type of voting machine that is used in many parts of the country: > “Through a closely held equity fun...

Video made by and for robots

http://images.travelpod.com/bin/tripwow/flash/tripwow.swf Galapagos Slideshow: Pito’s trip to Galapagos Islands was created with TripAdvisor TripWow!

Designed in California, Made in China

James Dyson (the vacuum cleaner guy) said something which may seem obvious but is nonetheless very controversial: > “Apple’s success as a technology company is built on hardware. The current fixation with digital is misplaced.” (fromThe Real Meaning and Future of Apple’s Mantra – Designed in California) Good article. Read it.

Ivory Tower or Trade school?

One of the tensions that I have seen in teaching software engineering is whether something should be viewed as legitimate research or part of the craft of computer engineering. It’s a slippery slope that I myself didn’t have a good articulation for. I came across [this in a newsgroup which I think...

Beautiful Outlook

I don’t know why this has not gotten more press. You should take a look at Microsoft’s new Gmail killer, outlook.com. It’s a totally web based email client, like Gmail, but the user experience is miles and miles better than Gmail. ![Screen Shot 2012 10 16 at 10 31 ...

Securing or attacking Industrial Control Systems

It turns out that Kaspersky Labs is developing a brand new operating system specifically designed to be used in embedded industrial systems and industrial control systems. ...

How are the presidential debates like a Nascar race?

I am looking forward to watching the Presidential debates tonight. But for all the wrong reasons. I believe I know pretty clearly what each side’s positions are and what they points will be. So, like when I watch a car race (which is rarely) secretly I have to admit that I will enjoy the su...

Order in Google arguments

Does Google give a different answer if you reorder the words in the search? What? A trivial question? Have you ever tried to refine a search by reordering the words? Wouldn’t it be useful if you knew for sure that it would or would not make a difference? Experiment: ruby rails bureaucrat gem examples rails bureaucrat gem examples ruby These two searches indeed did produce different results! And not just a reordering of the results. There were at least two results in the top 7 which were present in one and not the other. Q.E.D.

A travesty in a wealthy country

From the New York Times, an article by Nick Kristof, describing a real-life story of a friend of his and health care. Whenever I hear, “We have the best health care in the world”, I think of stories like this....

Vote Buying measures and countermeasures

An interesting question, and an expert answer from a friend of mine. If you are interested in elections and voting and how they can and cannot be bought, you might find this intriguing. By the way, this scheme would never work in the US as we have many mechanisms that would prevent that, but these m...

A philosopher defends religion

I recently subscribed to the New York Review of Books. Not sure this was a good decision as the last thing I need is more stuff to read. I came to it because I kept seeing interesting articles from the NYRB come up on various blogs and searches.  Here’s quite an [interesting book review](http://www...

How much power does it take?

I remember wondering about this when I was in college — this is before I really knew anything about computers. I noticed that our computer center charged by the minute of processor time and it was a lot! I remember people freaking out because their random prime number generator ran overnight an...

Great new book on Object Oriented design (in Ruby)

I first came across Sandy Metz in this video: [vimeo 12350535 w=500 h=281] 2009 – Sandi Metz – SOLID Object-Oriented Design from Gotham Ruby Conference on Vimeo. If you are interested in Object Oriented design you will en...

A list of UI and UX books, articles and links

I created this quick and dirty list of useful resources for some friends who wanted to dig into the latest thinking on web and mobile user interface design. I am sure this list is incomplete and quirky but I thought it would be good to share: - I’ve had great luck with Lynda.com courses. It’s only ...

Is Skype “Full Duplex”?

What an antiquated term: Full Duplex. I don’t know if that term is used anymore but what i mean is this: I use Skype on many many voice calls, either to other Skype users or to telephone. It seems to me that while the other person is talking, I cannot interrupt them. In other words, either I am talking or I am listening, but not both. Am I mistaken? Or is my Skype set up incorrectly? Full Duplex is a term that used to mean, maybe still means, that both parties to a connection can be active at the same time. Last time I used it, it was in reference to a teletype machine!

Sparrow vs. Mail.app and Mountain Lion

Did you hear that Google bought Sparrow? Sparrow is a really cool email client that I for one have been using very happily for a while now. Did you hear the announcement that [there would be no more development of sparrow](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google-acq...

Stand up! No, Sit Down!

You know the old joke that today they say something is good for you, tomorrow it’s bad, and the day after it’s good again? Recently there was a lot of press that sitting 3 hours a day could take years off your lifespan. “[Sitting for More Than Three Hours a Day Cuts Life Expectancy”, so said the Wal...

Hey, you’re an entrepreneur!

I like this quote: “Everyone here introduces themselves as an “entrepreneur.” It’s as if they hand out the title at the airport when you arrive. “Welcome to San Francisco, you are now an entrepreneur! Which start-up T-shirt would you like?” > This belief that everyone is an entrepreneur has a stultifying effect. It can drive founders to seek an easy acquisition instead of a quest for true innovation and a sustainable, profitable business — a truly entrepreneurial challenge.” (from Bits Blog, NYT)

MEN WALK ON THE MOON – This Day in 1969

We spend too much on silly litigation

Lucky Me! After tortured litigation and lots of legal fees (not mine, of course), I am receiving a check for $0.47 as my payout for the litigation between Hanson and Google. What, never heard of Hanson? Well apparently the law suit was about Google doing something wrong in how the charged or paid for Google Adwords. Which I think I might have used a little some long time ago. But really, how does it make sense to pay out 47 cents? I am sure the lawyers (for both sides) are laughing all the way to the bank!