Erdos Had The Number First

It’s funny, I never thought about Flash as an application development platform. Its not that I didn’t know you could write programs in ActionScript, it’s just, well, it’s just Flash. I also don’t think this is a positioning problem that Adobe can easily rectify. One of the bigger issues that Flash faces, in my opinion, is that is has some pretty serious Usability Problems and presents issues with search engines and the stuff like that. Sure, Adobe has a download-able accessibility kit, but that is something else rather than a core component of the architecture.Then I read Bruce Eckel’s “Hybridizing Java” posting and I now have to think about it. On one hand, Mr. Eckels mentions that he has been hired by Adobe and that may color his feelings. But he is, again in my opinion, one of the more level-headed technologist out there. I like his books, and pretty much consider him to be someone whose opinion deserves consideration.

I honestly think that my consideration would be a lot easier, though, if the development environment for this stuff didn’t cost about $1000.

Honestly, I’m not sure which is the stranger: the story or the fact that it ran on

Al Jazeera’s English language website. Since I don’t read Arabic, I can’t tell if it’s on that part of the site. But anyway, it seems that the
Gay penguins are being enticed to breed (so their species doesn’t go extinct) and there seems to be some debate about the ethics of ‘turning’ gay penguins straight.

I’m still waiting to hear back from the penguin ambassador to find out if the penguins actually self-identify as gay, or if they are just on the bi now, gay later plan (or the third option ‘I was in college’). until I hear back, I’m going to withhold judgment.

One of the things that made BeOS so freeking cool was the BeOS file system. BFS was, quite frankly, the most advanced file system at the time. It was more like a database than a filesystem, and you could add/manipulate/whatever the file metadata at will. In fact, many applications for BeOS capitilized on the filesystems DB-like properties quite a bit.

For example, document metadata was stored as file attributes. This allowed you to search for a paticular file on your computer using this metadata in a powerful way.

There are a number of problems with implementing a database file system. The book about BFS covers many of these issues but even today there are no real DB based filesystems in broad use.

Enter Google Desktop. It’s funny that the second edition of Managing Gigabytes was relased in 1999.

MG, BFS, and all utilities like them (including Microsoft Indexing Services) are designed to do one thing: Alllow a user to store, manipulate, and find the information they need. GDS succeeds where all of these other fail.

It’s pretty impressive that, yet again, someone from Google has taken tech that was out there, but didn’t really work, and made it no longer out there, but rather it’s Right Here, Now.

Face value | St Lawrence of Google | Economist.com

Even the Economist thinks they’re really trying to build an AI.

I’ve been saying this for a long time. Google is an AI company. I don’t know if they’ll accomplish it, it is certainly a hard problem.

And even saying that doens’t adaquately communicate just how hard a problem it is. I wish them luck, and if they want to hire me, they
already know where to find me.

I think one of the main problems with bloging is the lack of context. You can read my posts, but often I will not really provide any context to what the discussion I’m having really is.

It’s more like reading peoples letters than reading someones journal. It is not like a journal largely because it is meant to be read by others. Journals are often not really meant to be read by others. While there are those who want their journals to be read, by and large a journaler is writing for themselves. Blogs, on the countrary, are to be read by others. In fact, not having your blog read is a sign that you are unpopular or unintersting.

But back to my original point: given that blogs are meant to be read by others there is a problem in that so many blogs lack context that allow them to be read by those who are really other. Sure, if you know me, you can read almost all of my blog entries and they will, within reason, make sense. If you don’t know me, however, some of the will most certainly not.

This lack of context is a real problem for me when the world has begun to view blogs in a more serious light. Bloggers are now journalists in some instances. I think I would prefer that the whole idea of blogging be removed from a special case of writing and treated more like traditional publishing. We are already (as Americans, at least) comfortable in using our feelings about publishers to color or desire to read a given work.

If we do this, then no-context blogs will be finally reduced to what they are: bad writing. Like this, for example.

Honestly, I don’t know who this guy is. What I do know is that

USATODAY.com - A false Wikipedia ‘biography’
his editorial in USA Today reads a tab bit whiney. Yes, a bad biography was written about him. And yes he can’t sue the bastards. This, I think, is his main beef. Clearly, he’s a guy who is used to being able to put the kabosh on someone who is saying mean things about him.

But back to wikipedia. His bio apparently was clearly just crap. Any bio involving a kenedy assassination and moving to Soviet Russia is OBVIOUSLY crap. But there’s nothing that wikipedia can do.

The problem stems from the fact that there are no controls. Wikipedia is a a Tradegy waiting to happen. They need controls, but the system is not designed to have any.

Getting Skittish About Skype

CAMPUS PARIAH
Some organizations are clamping down. Pharmaceutical giant Novartis (NVS ) in Basel, Switzerland, doesn’t let employees use Skype. Neither do Goldman Sachs (GS ) and German chemicals giant Degussa. A growing number of schools ban the technology, including Oxford University, the University of Texas, and the University of Minnesota. In September the French government recommended research personnel at universities and government labs avoid using Skype.

Ok, first pharma is a paranoid monster. They don’t let their employees use many of the instant messaging tools available.

Goldman, thanks to rule 17-4a (SEC) can’t let them use it either, because they can’t record it and store it on WORM drives for 7 years.

The fact that the French and Schools have banned skype has everything to do with economics and NOTHING to do with Skype. France Telecom has always been terrified of VOIP because they will lose their precious (and profitable) monopoly on phone services. The same with schools. Universities in the US
have a long tradition of making a boat-load of money on Long distance charging. Now, thanks to cell phones and VOIP, their cash cow is pretty lean. They’re not going to take that loss of revenue lying down.

Basically, this article is pretty much a shill for Cisco, Avaya, and SBC. “oooohh skype is insecure, don’t use it or someone could intercept it. No kidding? The same is true of ALL electronic communication. Risk is a continuum, just try to understand that Business Week.

CNN.com - Post editor: Woodward ‘made a mistake’ - Nov 16, 2005

You can bet that the press will fall on Mr. Woodward like vultures. The Post has been pointing fingers at the other journalists on the playground for a while about the
whole Plame-gate thing, and now the others have something on Mr. Goody-two-shoes Woodward.

Or do they? Woodward didn’t tell anybody about the conversation. He didn’t write a story about the CIA out of it. When the grand jury asked, he told them what he knew. That all sounds like what you are supposed to do with confidential sources that may or may not be newsworthy. I think that the Wolf-man has forgotten that having a classified operatives name doesn’t make it a story. The story here is that someone destroyed the career of a CIA agent because her husband said some things that powerful people didn’t like. The story here is that the NYT helped them do it.

Bob Woodward didn’t. You go Bob.

I hate to say it, but I think this (MIT suffers hubris over $100 PC idea) guy may have a valid point. I’m not sure that giving laptops to people is a good solution, just in general. I think what india has done with their satalight
system may be a better use of resources. Computing resources can be centralized, and lightweight computer equipment could even be run using the TV as a monitor.

One of the real problems is that this technology isn’t robust enough yet. They are talking about deploying it in regions that may not even have access to paper and pencil, let alone the tech required to connect one of these laptops up to a functioning network.

I don’t know why I found it so funny. I was reading the announcement for a conference and I clicked on a link (what I think was) the text version of the announcement and at the top of the file was a line that read:

This message is intentionally written in French.

I think part of the humor for me is that the sentence implies that other messages may have accidentally been
written in French. As though any text file on the internet may, though inattention or malice, spontaneously turn into a French language document.

Part of this, I’m sure, relates to the fact that many people do feel that English is the Lingua Franca¹ of the internet. People need to get a grip.

Yes, I do realize the irony of the statement.