July 30, 2005
Necessary qualification
Generally, engineers, as well as humans, tend to focus on what is known and not on the unknowns.Bilal Ayyub, Methods for Expert-Opinion Elicitation of Probabilities and Consequences for Corps Facilities, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Institute for Water Resources Report -00-R-10, December 2000, page 6
July 28, 2005
It's all mine
I'd like to highlight a useful OmniWeb feature, called "Save Linked". Say that you happen upon, oh, the Latin Modern fonts in OpenType format. You don't really want to right-click each one and save to disk. So in OmniWeb, you go to File⇒Save Linked⇒Documents..., select the destination folder, then watch as it grabs every single file for you. How handy is that?July 27, 2005
I've got a fever
And the only prescription is a digital cowbell! UPDATE: Whoops, looks like it's a fake.July 26, 2005
Cheers and jeers
Cheers to the Pensacola News Journal for standing up to Wal-Mart. The multi-billion-dollar corporation was peeved that a Florida journalist mentioned certain aggregate statistics involving children of Wal-Mart employees and a Georgia health-care program. So Wal-Mart tried to get this particular journalist fired. The paper stood up to Wal-Mart, even though as a result the paper was removed from Wal-Mart stores. Jeers to Senator Rick Santorum, who has no trouble blaming the Catholic sex abuse scandals on Boston's liberal culture or on the victims themselves, but can't bring himself to blame the sick priests who perpetrate the abuse.July 24, 2005
Truth hidden in acronyms
From a clever commenter on Slashdot...Well, I know what Vista stands for: VirusesAll joking aside, just because Microsoft has officially named its next version of Windows doesn't change the fact that it's still 1.5 years away. (Nor the fact that the last mainstream Windows version, XP, came out way back in October 2001.)
Instability
Spyware
Trojans
Adware
July 19, 2005
Cultural exports
I'm now tempted to fly to Tokyo to try this out:(Helpful hint for those traveling to Japan: You can always get a laugh by yelling "Jesus Christ!")Of course, that's just one parenthetical in an entire article about an encounter between Japanese Jehovah's Witnesses and Japanese Hare Krishnas. [Via Boing Boing]
July 18, 2005
Jump rope for the glory of God
Here's an uplifting clip for you all. Make sure you visit the rest of the Jam Handy website, even though I have no idea what it all means.July 11, 2005
Back in black
If by chance you try to trackback to one of my posts, and it gets rejected, don't assume I killed it on purpose. It may be because the trackback spammers have sabotaged my trackback blacklist.July 10, 2005
Tips for podcasters
I have a couple of requests for the podcasters of the world, especially those of you whose podcasts run in excess of 30 minutes. First, could you please not publish your podcast in 128kbps MP3 files? This is bad for the publisher and the listener: the publisher faces enormous bandwidth bills, and it takes the listener forever to download the podcast. iTunes supports a wonderful codec called AAC, and it sounds surprisingly good at very low bit rates. You could probably get away with 32kbps for voice-only podcasts, and 64kbps for podcasts that include music. Bada-bing, your bandwidth bill is suddenly 25-50% what it was before. Secondly, unless you have an enchanting voice, or have training in radio, the chances of your podcast sounding good are slim. I don't like downloading 100 different podcasts to find the one talented podcaster. Remember, the printing press was invented before the phonograph!July 9, 2005
Capital!
If anybody knows where to find a copy of the CD "Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?", or even a decent MP3 rip, I'd be in your debt. UPDATE: Apple Store, you've let me down. You had a perfect opportunity today to cash in on my childhood nostalgia, but you don't seem to carry out-of-print CDs in the iTMS! It's not like BMG is an obscure label!July 8, 2005
Defense of comments, part 3
Recently, after being inspired by Kevin Drum, economist J. Bradford Delong reminded everyone that the Hebrew Bible tells us π equals three. Within the comments, we get a humorous exchange; first, an apparent Bible-defender notes:3 versus 3.14159 is less than 5% measurement error. In a pre-industrial society. Doesn't strike me as a good reason to get snarky about.So another commenter hits that ball out of the park:
New suggested biblical disclaimer: "The following material should be approached with the understanding that the Word of God has a margin of error of at least +/- 4%."If God really wanted to be precise about the value of π, he could have provided the following formula:
Aliasing
So what's that new QuickTime 7 codec called again? It's not an easy question. Apple mostly refers to it as "H.264", but you can also find references on Apple's website to "AVC" or "MPEG-4 Part 10". It's all the same thing. As if that wasn't bad enough, Apple's developers use another name! If you manage to crash the H.264 decoder with your experimentation (like I did), you might see this:Thread 7 Crashed: 0 QuickTimeH264.altivec 0x99e35c60 JVTLibDecoDispose + 175184 1 QuickTimeH264.altivec 0x99e35990 JVTLibDecoDispose + 174464 2 QuickTimeH264.altivec 0x99e1a454 JVTLibDecoDispose + 62532 3 QuickTimeH264.altivec 0x99e0a9b0 JVTCompEndPass + 17972 4 QuickTimeH264.altivec 0x99e0a250 JVTCompEndPass + 16084 5 QuickTimeH264.altivec 0x99e32cf0 JVTLibDecoDispose + 163040 6 QuickTimeH264.altivec 0x99e32c34 JVTLibDecoDispose + 162852 7 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96Apple's developers still call it the JVT codec, for "Joint Video Team". You can find more on the naming confusion at Wikipedia.
July 7, 2005
We don't need to bring ink and paper into this
A recent conversation at Best Buy, as I tried to purchase the Daily Show DVDs:Cashier: Do you have a Best Buy Preferred Savings card?This happens more and more -- businesses are trying to con you into giving up all of your personal data. I've stopped going to CVS drugstores entirely, because they charge you outrageous prices unless you sign up for their CVS card. (This, of course, entails giving up your address, phone number, etc.) I choose instead to go to Rite Aid, where there's none of that hassle.
Jeff: No.
Cashier: Do you want a copy of Entertainment magazine, or Sports Illustrated?
Jeff: I'm not interested in signing up for the card.
Cashier: No, no, this is free with your purchase.
Jeff: Well, I guess I'll take the Entertainment magazine.
Cashier: What's your phone number?
Jeff: I don't want a magazine, if I have to give you my personal information!
Cashier: [dirty look]
Stalker!
Jeffrey Shallit on the topic of arguing with intelligent-design creationists:5. Dembski labels me “obsessive” for criticizing his work (and also repeats the defamatory charge of harassment). It seems the critic of intelligent design cannot win. If the bogus claims of intelligent designers are ignored, proponents insist their arguments are so strong that they cannot be answered. If ID claims are addressed, but not in great detail, Dembski dismisses the critiques as “uncharitable” or because they do not “engage my technical work”. Finally, if ID claims are refuted point-by-point, Dembski calls the refuter an “Internet stalker” or “inhabiting a fantasy life” or “obsessive”. Contrast this behavior with Dembski’s claim that “I always learn more from my critics than from the people who think I’m wonderful.” If that’s true, it’s a strange way for Dembski to show his appreciation.
July 5, 2005
Three walls of freedom
Back in second grade, one of the fads was "Trapper Keeper forts". You took your Trapper Keeper (and woe unto those who did not have an authentic Trapper Keeper), opened it wide, and stood it up so it formed a wall between you and the person facing you. You could then take one of the enclosed folders and spread it on top, thereby creating a wall for your fort. This was an effective way to ignore the teacher and cause mischief. Sadly, now that I'm out of school, I work in a life-sized version of a Trapper Keeper fort. It's definitely not as much fun.July 4, 2005
By the foot
Scoble, today:Here's an example of some of the negative feedback I'm seeing on blogs today: Greg Dean isn't happy with MSN Search (toolbar team) and gives a few good suggestions to that team. He wants a longer text field to type in. It also demonstrates a reality of software development. We can't do everything in a version 1.0 product.Ah, I can hear the software engineers at Microsoft right now.... "Do you know how much it costs to add one pixel to a text entry box? Do you?" Seriously though, how hard is it to change the size parameter of the input field, and then create a new, bigger background graphic? (Answer: Not hard. Certainly less than one hour of work. The hardest part is figuring out what the new version number should be.)
