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  • 1 min read

Owner of Segway dies in Segway accident

This is just a weird weird happening:

"His body was found late Sunday morning after a passer-by reported seeing a man plummet 30 feet into the River Wharfe, the police said, adding that a “Segway-style vehicle” had also been found.

They did not say what had caused the accident." (from New York Times)

  • 1 min read

Google’s servers

From an article about Google's hardware:

"Google's big surprise: each server has its own 12-volt battery to supply power if there's a problem with the main source of electricity. The company also revealed for the first time that since 2005, its data centers have been composed of standard shipping containers-each with 1,160 servers and a power consumption that can reach 250 kilowatts." (from CNET)

There are lots of other choice tidbits about the design of the millions (?) of tiny servers that Google uses to run its data centers. Quite interesting.

  • 1 min read

Ok, but what’s a quango?

A BBC Headline says:

"Leaked list suggests 180 quangos to be abolished" (from BBC Web Site)

Inquiring minds want to know, what the heck is a quango? Before you look it up, can you guess? First I thought it was a derogatory word for some ethnic group. Then I thought it might be a currency. Who knows?

  • 2 min read

This never happened: Russian Spy

This never happened…

We were working on some piece of software or something and the Russians invaded our workplace and demanded that we create it for them. We were threatened in big ways. We had a kind of a robot thing small which had a video camera and it was left in the Big room while we were put into a Small room. They demanded that we concede but we would not.

I had doubts about it, why not just do it for them and be done with it? Otherwise we might all be killed and whats the point. We coud get the government to help us write a perfect contract that would make sure that if we did it they would release us what shame would there be in that?

Then they decided to give us a little outdoor break and took us by a big war ship on a voyage. It wasn't clear exactly why but it was a break. We stopped somewhere in the very cold (maybe in the arctic) and everyone was allowed to go above to see it.

Chris went but i couldnt find our camera. There was a huge room for personal belongings on racks and among them many cameras many that looked similar but in the end I talked to someone who said it was dark anyway so i went up. I ended up on a different deck from Chris but i could see her.

Now the ship was goin gvery fast and making a sharp turn so they could show off how cool their ship was and the ship listed so much that I could get my arm and then my legs into the water. It was cold but it was fun. Next we went back below and they served us lunch -- waiters and Russian sailors! I think there was a Rueben and something else.

Then we were below again and we were in a room where sailors were working with equipment and they heard an airplane outside so they immediately did a drill to lock stuff down -- I assume thinking there might be an attack.

Then we were back in the dining room and Chris who had brought some trinkets or notes for the natives got up on a table and got everyone’s attention to make some kind of speech -- probably to tell people what she had brought.

But another guy thiought she was getting up there to sing happy birdthday or to congratulate him on his birthday. He was old.

  • 1 min read

How (not) to design a ballot

My head is full of democracy and elections these days. How come, you ask? Well for the last year or so I've been working for the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation, on elections technology. This month's focus is generating ballots for two elections happening in November. So more than usual, I am dreaming in black and white forms. Anyway…

I came across a couple of instructive blog posts about the new non-lever voting that New York unveiled this month. Predictably, when dealing with humans, some people don't like them. You can't please them all, right? But really the objections raised here are quite legitimate.

If this important yet rather esoteric topic interests you, here are three good links:

  • 1 min read

Ever heard of the Johari Window?

I came across the idea of the Johari Window during one of the presentations at the Bif-6 Conference. I'd never heard of it before. To me it's an interesting formalism to think about ones self knowledge. Reading about the Johari Window on Wikipedia (where else) but it was an interesting way to understanding personality.

"Room 1 is the part of ourselves that we see and others see. Room 2 is t he aspect that others see but we are not aware of. Room 3 is the most mysterious room in that the unconscious or subconscious part of us is seen by neither ourselves nor others. Room 4 is our private space, which we know but keep from others." (from Wikipedia)

Who knows if this approach (reminiscent a little bit of Myers Brigss) is well known, respected or in total disrepute. It spoke to me, so I thought I would share it.

  • 1 min read

Future of the university

I saw an article in the New York Times and other places about the future of the University, and even the End of the University. I have a bit of a curiosity about this topic as Lecturer at Brandeis University. Here's a blog post from a Professor of Philsophy at Calvin College analyzing those articles and giving his own perspective, where he says:

I'm very sympathetic to trying to move beyond the department-as-fortress model which currently dominates higher education, despite all of our talk of interdisciplinarity. While we might have a veneer of cross-disciplinary collaboration, the department-as-fortress rears its ugly head whenever we start talking about curricular reform (say, revising the core curriculum of a college)-very quickly principled discussion of what constitutes a good education devolves into a matter of protecting faculty "lines" in "our" department. (from : The End of the University?)

Really interesting article, with a good insight at the end, which had not occurred to me:

"[…snip…] So one scholar will be considering biological issues, another political issues, another aesthetic questions, another ethical and philosophical issues and so. Sounds fabulous. But where did these scholars receive their training in biology, political science, and philosophy? […snip…]"

  • 1 min read

The Tor Anonymizer

Have you heard of this thing, the Tor Anonymizer? Ok again admittedly another highly geeky system, but pretty fascinating. Makes you think that the handwringing worrying of the security wonks isn't as over the top as all that.

Tor is a sophisticated privacy tool designed to prevent tracking of where a web user surfs on the internet and with whom a user communicates. It's endorsed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other civil liberties groups as a method for whistleblowers and human-rights workers to communicate with journalists, among other uses. (from Rogue Nodes Turn Tor Anonymizer Into Eavesdropper's Paradise

Read the article, it's a fascinating look into the world of security.