Thinking of being a deserter
I'm seriously thinking about starting to use a Macintosh for my day to day work computer instead of a PC! Can you believe it? Why?
My research so far says that a fast Mac running OS X is comparable, price performance to a Wintel computer.
I'm a big fan of wonderful design and while I think Windows XP is really nice, I think OS X is just a little bit nicer.
I will get a chance to learn Unix.
I will get a chance to learn OS X.
Change is good.
BTW, Not that that Mac is without fault - it certainly has its share of brain dead usability "features', but all in all it's just easier on the eyes. But what do you care about what I use for development. The real excuse for this post is to quote you a hilarious comment that someone on the Java mailing list said when I posed the question about the trade-offs between Mac and Windows:
"From the opinion of someone coming from the PC world, having a Windows box is like owning a pet. If you want to feed it, walk it, give it baths, and take it to the vet regularly, then Windows is for you. As for me, I waited a year prior to switching, watching a critical senior *nix sysadmin friend of mine for a year after he switched. He loved it. I switched a year after him. I feel the same."
BCC Protocol – Email Morality?
What does the existence of "BCC" (which I think stands for the anachronism "blind carbon copy") tell us about the social norms of emails? This thought occurred to me just now as I was the recipient of an email (corresponding to (3) in the not at all uncommon scenario that I describe below. It is an interesting piece of deception that we all participate in, isn't it? Has anyone ever thought about the morality of email addressing? Scenario:
X sends an email to: A, CC: B and C
A does a "Reply all" so that B, C and X see the response
A sends an email directly to X, BCC to B
Analysis:
X wants to tell A, something, and make sure that B and C also hear. X wants to communicate that the message is meant for A, that A is the one who is expected to respond, but wants each of them to know that the others are getting that same information.
A wants to answer X, and make sure that B and C see the response. Why? Perhaps A wants to make sure that A, B, and C keep their story straight? Perhaps A actually wants to tell B or C something, uses the Reply All as a carrier for that message, thereyby getting some cover.
Now, this gets interesting. Apparently A wants X to think that he is getting some information privately. But at the same time wants B to know that X has gotten this information. Why? Perhaps A would like B to make the same point to X, and make it look like the it was independent. Or perhaps A wants to make sure that if X asks B about it, B says the same thing that A said.
Hmm, sounds like a bit of interpersonal deception is going on here. I am not casting judgement - I've played the role of X, A, B or C more than once. But it does make you think. What would Dear Abby say? Update: As one wag said to me in email: "I think Dear Abby might say that Pito needs a hobby :-)"
[GEEK] Nerd Humor
Amusing. Do you recognize yourself? And while you are wasting time, how easily can you tell a programmer from a serial killer?
When I was younger I used to admire Ayn Rand
I really love her major novels although I haven't looked at them in years. You know how you remember a novel to be great, but upon looking at it again 20 years later, you just don't know what you saw in it? So, as I say, I remember really loving her major novels, but, this makes me think again:
The United States government, however, should not give any money to help the tsunami victims. Why? Because the money is not the government's to give.
From the Ayn Rand Institute. Link.
Folksonomies – Collaborative Classification
There has been a lot of traffic on this new meme "Folksonomies". This Slashdot bit has many of the important links in it, and I can't say that I've read all of it, so what I am describing below may be old hat. I am thinking that while Folksonomies is a kind of catchy, although hard to say or spell word, it is too narrow. Folksonomies, as I understand, refers to a community based way of arriving at a taxonomy of information, basically subjective judgements on what the information is " about." We've seen this in http://del.icio.us and in http://www.flickr.com. It seems to me that there are all kinds of meta data, some subjective, and some objective, which could use the general idea of collaborative classification. For example within BlogBridge, a blog reader, we are building the ability for any user to identify the Country of origin of a certain feed. This is an objective fact, but not one that is easily ascertained. We want to use the knowledge of the community to find out this fact. The experiment is to let any user record what they think the right country is, and relying (or betting) that this will be self-policing, and that people will not be inclined to hack or vandalize this item of information. I think this is a useful generalization of the notion of folksonomies. Whether the term Collaborative Classification is a better will be decided by the mysterious dynamics of blog-meme-flow.
Read this
Grady Booch is one of the luminaries of our field. Take a look at this post and tell me that it isn't amazing and touching to see people revealing a personal side which one otherwise probably never would see.
Elephants are cool!
I just finished watching "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" which had
some really cool scenes with these warrior elephants. So here is a case of
life immitating art: 
Two elephants clear debris in Indonesia 's tsunami-hit city of Banda Aceh January 3, 2005. Eight days on, hungry and sick survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami are waiting for food and medicine in growing desperation as a multinational aid operation tries to reach remote towns ravaged by the waves. (Beawiharta/Reuters)
Suckered again by Microsoft?
I've been using Microsoft Money (their personal finance package) for years now (after having switched from Quicken probably 5 years ago.) I really like it, for what it is. In January of each of the last few years it seems, I shell out another $60 for the latest " upgrade", install it, and immediately kick myself when I find almost no new functionality. It seems like the graphic designers get a turn to play with all the art work and colors but as far as new functionality, nothing. I wouldn't be surprised if the M$ is down to 4 people, with the highest operating margin of any product. This has gone so far now, that they don 't even pretend by putting a "What's new in this release" on the box! Oh and then there's the rebate. I've been screwed by rebate offers (Microsoft and others) so often it's not even funny. I doggedly document, make copies, add reminders to my calendar, and on and on, for a measily $15 rebate, which half the time never happens. How about the fact that there are like 400 different flavors of Microsoft Money - you know: M$ Basic (free after rebate), M$ In-between ($5 after rebate), M$ Advanced, Super-Advanced, Dirt-cheap, Microsoft Money "We'll pay you to take it off your hands" And still, year after year, I fall for it. A perfect pawn for their marketing machine. Anyone else out there have the same experience?
Incredibly cool visualizations
In the realm of interesting visualizations, check this one out. It's a Chess game where the computer's 'thought process' is displayed as it figures out the next move. Via "Bad Magic Number" who said "It's quite an interesting cross between art, programming and chess. "
GMail – Part 3
Continuing thinking about GMail and what Google really is up to. From the Department of Unintended Consequences(via Paul Kleppner):
… somebody has created a Windows file system extension so that you can use your 1gb GMail account as a remote file system!
It's a crazy hack. But it makes me think that something like this could easily be done as a true service by Google (with sensible protocols).Check out the Gmail Virtual File system hack. Pretty neat. My guess is Google loves this kind of thing, and at the point when it starts being a noticable stress on their system (never) they will either start offering it themselves (with ads) or prohibit it. Love them unintended consequences! p.s. Happy 2005!