whimsical bits

And in better news...

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:42:09 -0700

And in better news...: Afghanistan won its first-ever Olympic medal.

The "Fauxlympics"

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:33:38 -0700

Noted sportswriter Rick Reilly takes dead aim at the image management games that China has been playing around the Olympics and points out the great (and absurd) lengths that the host nation has gone to in order to avoid any perceived embarrassment on the international stage.

Sadly, China’s actions over the course of the past year in particular have been reminiscent of the spin games played by the old USSR and ring just as hollow. Sadder still is that it took a sports columnist to make the most pointed remarks about it.

Globe & Mail on iPhone pricing: An exercise in missing the point

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 11:53:00 -0700

Globe & Mail on iPhone pricing: An exercise in missing the point:

Instead of tackling the issue of Canadian iPhone pricing head-on, the linked-to Globe & Mail article reads more like a puff piece on Rogers and its’ “visionary” decision to build out a GSM network as well as a snark against some “Apple diehards” who are the apparent source of the growing discontent over Rogers’ iPhone plans.

To wit:

“It’s just not a responsible business decision for Rogers to blow up all its data pricing. But it has sharpened its pencil. It is watching this very closely. If this starts to truly negatively affect significant opinion — and you have to be careful about 5,000 on a blog versus what’s really meaningful — we will be on top of this thing to ensure that we manage that tension between responsible pricing and not [upsetting] customers.”

Rogers has outflanked its rivals, Bell Mobility Inc. and Telus Corp., by bringing the newest technology to market first and by canny investments in network upgrades. It’s not going to give away the farm to satisfy some Apple diehards, he said.

Rogers is using the iPhone as a flagship product, and one that, when combined with the company’s promotion of Facebook applications and other teen-friendly services, helps position the telecom giant as “hip and cool” in the eyes of consumers, said Michelle Warren, a senior analyst with Info-Tech Research Group in London, Ont.

(Those who are intimately familiar with the state of the Canadian wireless market will be excused if they are stuck between the choice of laughing and then crying or vice versa.)

So let’s get this straight: Rogers is trying to avoid “blowing up” its data pricing (which, for the curious, was until now among the highest in the entire world), and would hypothetically “give away the farm” vis a vis recouping its “canny investments in network upgrades” (does snapping up Fido and removing the last remotely innovative carrier from the market count?) if it dared bring its prices in line with those of AT&T and other carriers.

Aside from having distinct feel of “it could be a lot worse - you should be lucky you’re getting the iPhone at all.”, that line of reasoning completely ignores the larger issues:

There is no unlimited 3G data option, whereas even AT&T’s cheapest plan has such a feature
There are fewer included text messages and voice minutes at all pricing levels
The iPhone will only be availabe with a three-year contract
Rogers has a long history of being extremely unfriendly to its customers (both wireless and cable TV)

And just to throw a bit of salt in the wound, the “unlimited evenings” won’t start until 9pm instead of the usual 7pm. Of course, Rogers and Fido are offering unlimited use of their wireless hotspots (do they have such things? I certainly have not seen such a thing advertised anywhere in Vancouver), which I suppose is meant to make up for the lack of unlimited 3G data usage.

In short, it appears the authors are either quite ignorant of the larger picture around both the iPhone coming to Canada as well as the general sad state of the Canadian wireless industry or they couldn’t be bothered to investigate the issues before writing about them. Instead, they’ve turned out a shallow, one-sided response to an issue that runs much deeper than a simple “pricing clash”.

World's Most Expensive Ethernet Cable?

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:00:30 -0700

World's Most Expensive Ethernet Cable?:

Yes, for the minor sum of $500 USD, you too can own a 6-ft Ethernet cable as crafted by Denon. The description is interesting, to say the least:

Get the purest digital audio you’ve ever experienced from multi-channel DVD and CD playback through your Denon home theater receiver with the AK-DL1 dedicated cable. Made of high-purity copper wire, it’s designed to thoroughly eliminate adverse effects from vibration and helps stabilize the digital transmission from occurrences of jitter and ripple. A tin-bearing copper alloy is used for the cable’s shield while the insulation is made of a fluoropolymer material with superior heat resistance, weather resistance, and anti-aging properties. The connector features a rounded plug lever to prevent bending or breaking and direction marks to indicate correct direction for connecting cable.

Personally, I’m curious about the “direction marks”… I can only assume that the packets move faster when the cable is connected correctly, in which case this discovery has astounding implications for the mere mortals who build out high-tech office spaces. To think that your data could actually be moving slower because all of the Cat-5 cable has been wired backwards… the mind boggles.

However, when it comes to creativity, the product description holds the faintest of candles to the user reviews. Enjoy!

Renting music? How droll.

Tue, 27 May 2008 16:22:34 -0700

Renting music? How droll.: Warner Music’s latest scheme is so absurd that you could almost assume it was a bad April Fool’s prank but then you remember that it’s the music industry - a group of people for whom nothing is too far out in left field if it means that they don’t have to think about fixing their utterly broken business model.

More Google Toys

Tue, 27 May 2008 15:58:38 -0700

I’m still slightly shocked that I managed to go almost 6 months without hearing about it but Google apparently has a dynamic, “call this URL and get a PNG image of your chart” service called Google Chart API. In addition, they have recently released the AJAX Libraries API which provides hosted (and high-speed load times for) versions of several popular JavaScript APIs, including jQuery, rototype, dojo and script.aculo.us.

The Chart API in particular looks like something I’m going to have to go play with…

The Power and the Passion

Thu, 22 May 2008 13:19:05 -0700

Bob Lefsetz’s “Lefsetz Letter” may well be one of the most captivating blogs I’ve ever encountered, and not least because music appears to affect him in a way that’s similar to how it affects me (in short - it can strike to the very core of your being).

His posts often a) remind me of why I love music, b) make me wish there was a Clue Stick large enough to fix what’s wrong with the music industry, c) make me think the music industry will never wake up and realize what music lovers are really interested in or d) - and closely related to (a) - set off an urge to run home, find some particular piece of astoundingly good music, throw it in the stereo and crank the volume to 11.

How not to make your users happy

Fri, 16 May 2008 10:22:59 -0700

When a developer says something like the following, you know they’re not really interested in what their users think - certainly not in understanding their motivation:

IM is about sending relatively short messages quickly, Pidgin isn’t a text editor, if you want to edit code use gedit or something. I see no reason why to have more than 3 lines, there’s e-mail for that. I think the devs share the same opinion, and I don’t think this is going to change.

(Apologies for digging up the past; although the Pidgin fork over the lack of a resizeable input field is old news, I hadn’t seen the comments on the now-infamous bug tracker issue yet and this was just stunning.)

There are numerous articles, blog posts and the like on the topic of building less what your users want than what they need (Kathy Sierra’s post - titled “Listening to users considered harmful?” is one of the better ones) - which is both freeing and burdensome to people who build software that actual humans must use (I count myself in both groups) - but it’s pretty clear from the tenor of the developer comments on that bug tracker issue that they have utterly missed the point.

And yes, we can argue ‘til the cows come home about it being an open source project, and people are free to do what they like, and if they don’t like it they can fork it or use something else or stop complaining, or… Frankly, if you’re not interested whatsoever in legitimate user feedback, I have to question why you’re writing software for other people in the first place.

When Should You Jump? JSR 308. That's When.

Thu, 15 May 2008 08:16:00 -0700

When Should You Jump? JSR 308. That's When.:

Insightful and sobering - I hope Sun is paying attention to its developer community. The JVM as a platform has the potential to be nothing short of amazing, but will Java the language be able to keep the mindshare of highly talented developers with changes like those proposed by JSR 308? Or are formalism and “ceremony” going to rule the near future?

For a somewhat less dramatic take, read “Over complication?” (shamelessly re-linked from raganwald). I think the salient point remains: it seems there is a sea change coming in the Java world and if JSR 308 is a sign of things to come, it doesn’t look like it’s for the better.

Side note: it’s ironic to read of this after spending the last few days mulling over Steve Yegge’s recent Stanford presentation entitled “Dynamic Languages Strike Back” - the comparison is not flattering.

A Day in the Life...

Wed, 14 May 2008 17:06:42 -0700

(an out of the blue IM)

pipeline lead: We're doomed.
me: we are?
pipeline lead: Only temporarily. Normal service will be resumed when C++ dies.

Bravo, Canada

Tue, 13 May 2008 10:10:06 -0700

Bravo, Canada:

Noted copyright law professor Michael Geist makes a convincing argument (not that much convincing was needed in this corner) that Canada is facing a “wireless crisis”:

Canada lags behind technological hotspots *cough* like Kazakhstan and Libya in numbers of mobile subscribers
Mobile data prices are among the highest in the world (which is no doubt partly why the iPhone has taken over a year to show up here)
Canada also lags behind numerous countries on mobile pricing in general

I just hope the CRTC decides that its current - and highly deregulatory - approach has rather badly failed and that Canadians should be getting much better services than they currently are.

A little humor from the i18n trenches.

Wed, 07 May 2008 14:41:00 -0700

A little humor from the i18n trenches.

Environmental Guilt

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:42:46 -0700

Environmental Guilt: I’d sum it up, but he makes too many excellent points to try and in between the vitriol, the comments are also interesting. Read away.

Peeve of the Day

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 08:59:36 -0700

Scenario: a very crowded SkyTrain platform at Broadway Station (the transfer point between the two lines that run through the city). We’re talking at least 2 trains’ worth of people (and steadily increasing) who will be attempting to board already-crowded trains as they enter the station.

Peeve: People who think it’s their divine right to take 2.3 steps into the train car and then stop because they want to either a) be close to the door or morely likely, b) want the coveted “lean against the glass partition” spot - the other ~120 people trying to get on the train be damned.

Folks, just keep walking into the car - especially if an empty train pulls up and the platform is full of people who also would like to complete their daily commute with as little fuss as possible. I mean, seriously: is it really that difficult to just walk as far as you can into the train so others can get on as well?

[It’s always been a curiosity to me how self-centered people get during rush hour / the daily commute - I have a highly unscientific theory that if we all exercised even a little bit of consideration for everyone else (and the general flow of traffic / people), we’d all get where we’re going faster than if we didn’t… ]

Technote #31: The Dogcow

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 07:52:00 -0700

Technote #31: The Dogcow: Some old-school Mac trivia that I stumbled across this morning whilst looking for something else entirely among my unwieldy collection of bookmarks. I wonder if there are any “modern” equivalents hiding in the ADC docs… :)

The price of concert tickets

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 19:00:00 -0800

Bob Lefsetz rants on a subject that has bugged me for years - the astronomical price of concert tickets:

“LiveNation, AEG, the agents and promoters are going to make concertgoing such an exclusive privilege that the only ones able to go are themselves. The regular public is not only being priced out, they’re being insulted. And with fewer great acts to see, and the people with the bread wanting to be up close and personal, who the [expletive deleted] is going to go anymore?

It’s not only Celine Dion, putting her shows on sale over a YEAR in advance. Springsteen sold next summer’s shows before winter had technically started. Now, in today’s “New York Times”, there’s an advertisement for James Taylor’s Tanglewood shows IN JULY!
…
We need an edict. That you can’t put tickets on sale more than two months out. Certainly not more than three. Otherwise, why not sell tickets for 2015? Who cares if Eddie Van Halen falls off the wagon. We’ve got everybody’s MONEY!”

My wife and I saw U2 on their last swing through town and it cost nearly $200 for seats in the proverbial nosebleed section. I’d love to catch Springsteen live, but the price leaves me wondering who loses more - me, for contemplating spending that much on a concert, or Springsteen / his concert promoters / the music industry for treating fans with such contempt as to price shows in the stratosphere.

I sure hope someone in the industry comes to their senses but based on their inability to fully adapt to selling music in the digital age, I’m not going to hold my breath - and as a music lover, that’s a sad admission to make

I missed it by a day, but better late than never. See here, here...

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 08:31:00 -0800

I missed it by a day, but better late than never. See here, here and here as well. Last but definitely not least, the Guardian (UK) provides some important perspective on Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s motivation for apparently making hostage negotiation a part of his government’s policy. Let’s just say that altruistic it is not…

Ruminations on the state of computing science

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 08:07:00 -0800

(Well, ruminations by folks who are smarter than me. Call this “I’m sharing my recent reading list” instead.)

I have run across several thought-provoking blog posts and articles in the past few months regarding the increasingly sorry state of computing science education, which seems to be the result of universities turning to a more practical, “employable skills” focus at the expense of studying less immediately-practical subjects like say, finite state automata.

The following posts are well worth the time to read (in order, as they reference each other somewhat):

Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

Who did kill the Software Engineer?

Two Thoughts on Computer Science Courses

I don’t have many regrets about life, but I can say that I do regret not completing my own CompSci degree - not because it might’ve made me more employable in terms of its presence on my resumé but because, as Cummer puts it above, “… after [eight] years writing various kinds of software professionally I find that every day I wish I’d had a deeper, weirder comp-sci eduction in my youth. I suspect I would have written better code sooner, understood more easier, and saved a lot of the time I’ve spent this last decade and a half playing catch-up (functional programming is a concept only two years old to yours truly… sigh) which could have been used learning even weirder stuff.”

Fourteen must-have e-book features

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 07:54:00 -0800

Fourteen must-have e-book features:

I’m still not sure what Amazon is ‘Kindle’ing (although associating fire and books is oddly amusing) but be that as it may, Steven Poole’s satire is an excellent summary of why I don’t - and probably never will - get into e-books.

His final word on the Kindle is too good not to quote:

via Gruber again, I see that some chucklemeister at BusinessWeek has the horn for the Kindle:

But the digerati don’t get it and don’t like it and that creates a compelling investment opportunity to buy Amazon shares now. The stock market doesn’t appreciate this game changer. Kindle will be the iPod of books — you read it here first.

Ah, the iPod of books. Indeed. How many times have you been sitting on a train or at a café table with a book, and wished to high heaven that instead of a single measly book, you had a playlist — perhaps comprising 2 pages of Schopenhauer, 3 pages of Dan Brown, a paragraph of Cormac McCarthy, a scene of Pinter, and a single brilliantly chosen sentence of Martin Amis?

Reason #10,134 For Not Posting To Tech Support Forums In The Heat Of The Moment

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 11:33:46 -0700

Reason #10,134 For Not Posting To Tech Support Forums In The Heat Of The Moment:

Because the Internet will preserve your hyperventilating outbursts for eternity.

(Incidentally, this is why the first rule of solving computer-related problems is to RT*ahem*M)