Blog Posts

All my blog posts and articles

Page 57 of 141 (2815 total posts)

November 2012

Intellectual Property? Copyright? Or just a lot of LOVE?

I was rather proud of the art I designed for a t-shirt this summer. It’s cool but of course it’s a direct ripoff, um, no, I mean, it was inspired by a well known piece. If I show you my design, below: ![JBSlogoonly](https://i0.wp.com/salas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/8c814-jbslogoonly.png?resize...

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October 2012

Epistemological Modesty… What?

I was listening to an interview with David Brooks the other day. The interview was conducted by, of all people, Alec Baldwin on “Here’s the Thing”, a show I discovered on public radio. Alec Baldwin is a good actor for a certain kind of role, and can be quite funny, but [we have learned things about...

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History is made

The first personal computer actually made by Microsoft! That’s history. They’ve made mice, and X-boxes, but never desktops, laptops, or tablets.  What impressive me about this computer is that it’s not a me-too. Unlike Android, you can’t pigeonhole it as just another iPhone knoc...

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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...

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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 ...

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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...

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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.

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...

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September 2012

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...

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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...

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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 ...

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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!

July 2012

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...

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