Technology
gregladen | April 13, 2008On April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic. In less than three hours, the unsinkable ship sank to the bottom of the sea. A total of more than 1,500 lives were lost.
The events surrounding the sinking of the Titanic may be more of a reflection of human social ineptitude (to put it kindly) than technological hubris.
Of a total of 2,223 people, only 706 survived; 1,517 perished.[8] The majority of deaths were caused by victims succumbing to hypothermia in the 28 °F (â2 °C) water. Only two of the 18 launched lifeboats rescued people out of the water after the…
gregladen | April 12, 2008ISO takes full charge of Open XML, sets up 'harmonization' group
We can't call it "Office Open XML" anymore, because it no longer belongs to Microsoft Office exclusively. As of yesterday, International Organization for Standardization committee SC 34 passed a resolution that effectively assumes stewardship of Open XML, the document format standard originally produced by Microsoft, and which is now officially under new management.
A Cleaner, Leaner Jet
JET engines are now so reliable that a pilot can go an entire career without seeing one fail. Autopilots are so good that some airlines have…
gregladen | April 11, 2008Finally, something really important to blog about:
Johnny Lee demos his amazing Wii Remote hacks, which transform the $40 game piece into a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen and a head-mounted 3-D viewer.
Here's Johnny Lee's site, where you can download the software.
See also The Whoops of Wii
drorzel | April 11, 2008Seth Godin offers a parable about toasters and web sites:
We recently acquired what might be the worst toaster in the history of the world. It's pretty fancy and shiny and microprocessor controlled. And it makes toast.
But here's what I have to do to use it:
[list of 10 steps]
He goes on to draw a parallel between the excessive demands of his toaster and paying a $6 bill to EBay, which requires 11 clicks.
My response: Yes, YES, YES!!! What he said!!
There are more examples of this than I can count, starting with the dreadful interface of the new Microsoft Office. The academic "content…
gregladen | April 10, 2008Rube Goldberg is the inventor of the Mouse Trap ... the better mouse trap that is...
He was actually a cartoonist who made famous the Rube Goldberg machines, which were increcibly complicated, intricate devices to do something simple in as many unlikely steps as possible. The board game "mouse trap" is based on this concept. I have a vague memory or Rube Goldberg being featured on a PBS TV show called "The Great American Dream Machine" ... must have been some time before his death in late 1970. Anybody remember that?
Anyway, there is an annual compeition for the Rube Goldberg Prize that…
gregladen | April 10, 2008Shuttleworth is the man behind Ubuntu. He has written an essay on his blog (Here be Dragons) on playing nice with windows.
Windows is a very important platform, and our justifiable pride in Linux and the GNU stack shouldn't blind us to the importance of delivering software that is widely useful. I believe in bringing free software to people in a way that is exciting and empowering to them, and one of the key ways to do that is to show them amazing free software running on their familiar platform, whether that's Windows or the MacOS.
Read the rest here.
gregladen | April 10, 2008A letter from Steven Ballmer to Yahoo:
Dear Members of the Board:
It has now been more than two months since we made our proposal to acquire Yahoo! at a 62% premium to its closing price on January 31, 2008, the day prior to our announcement. Our goal in making such a generous offer was to create the basis for a speedy and ultimately friendly transaction. Despite this, the pace of the last two months has been anything but speedy.
While there has been some limited interaction between management of our two companies, there has been no meaningful negotiation to conclude an agreement. We…
gregladen | April 9, 2008This is a brief overview of one school's foray into the OpenSource operating system Linux.
clock | April 9, 2008A May 9, 2007 post, wondering to telecommute or not.
I will be offline for a couple of days so I will not be able to post at my usual frantic pace. Instead, I decided to write something that will take you a couple of days to read through: a very long, meandering post, full of personal anecdotes. But there is a common theme throughout and I hope you see where I'm going with it and what conclusions I want you to draw from it.
Pigeons, crows, rats and cockroaches
I was born and grew up in a big, dirty city and I am not going back (my ex-Yugoslav readers have probably already recognized the…
drorzel | April 9, 2008The College maintain an "OnCampus" page, intended to serve as a clearinghouse for electronic resources on campus. I have it set as the home page for all my campus computers, because it lets me access a lot of stuff very quickly-- Blackboard, course rosters, academic calendars, etc.
This page has always consisted of two bands of pictures on the left and right edges, with the center of the page being a two-column list of links in a very large font. The links were grouped into ares primarily of interest to students, primarily of interest to faculty, and a third category whose name escapes me.…
gregladen | April 8, 2008A must read for those in the midsts of a decision about their operating system.
All your choices have their technical merits but, you really shouldn't select an operating system based solely on it technical merits. You should instead select one that best suits your usage case. To that end I have done my best to summarize the pros and cons of each operating system from the point of view of the average end user.
Here
clock | April 8, 2008A post from December 5, 2007:
Communication
Communication of any kind, including communication of empirical information about the world (which includes scientific information), is constrained by three factors: technology, social factors, and, as a special case of social factors - official conventions. The term "constrained" I used above has two meanings - one negative, one positive. In a negative meaning, a constraint imposes limits and makes certain directions less likely, more difficult or impossible. In its positive meaning, constraint means that some directions are easy and obvious and…
clock | April 7, 2008Bee and Michael and Chad and Eva and Timo and Cameron will be there. And so will I. And many other interesting people. Where? At the Science in the 21st Century conference at the Perimeter Institute (Waterloo, Ontario) on Sep. 8th-12th 2008. And it will be fun. This is the blurb of the meeting:
Times are changing. In the earlier days, we used to go to the library, today we search and archive our papers online. We have collaborations per email, hold telephone seminars, organize virtual networks, write blogs, and make our seminars available on the internet. Without any doubt, these…
pontiff | April 7, 2008One of the reasons I signed up to develop for the iPhone:
Accelerometers are so cool. And I don't just say that because I'm a physicist.
clock | April 6, 2008Obligatory Reading of the day: Why I feel so strongly about redundant digitization
revere | April 5, 2008Since this piece in Wired referenced an email with a date of April 1 I was pretty sure this was an April Fool's joke. But the joke was on me. It's was for real:
A U.S. government-funded medical information site that bills itself as the world's largest database on reproductive health has quietly begun to block searches on the word "abortion," concealing nearly 25,000 search results.
Called Popline, the search site is run by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland. It's funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, the federal office in charge of…