If they don't have the same social skill or style
sense, they're extremely interesting people or else they don't get
hired.
—Jane Risen, Google Sales, comments on Google Engineers.
Last Sunday's NY Times Style section had an article about
Google's 300,000 square foot Manhattan office on Ninth Avenue
(location chosen because it sits on a major fibre backbone). In
Mountainview, Googler's get together to socialize every Friday at an
event called TGIF; in Manhattan it's held on Thursdays and called
"Thank God It's Almost Friday". At Google, you're either in sales or
in engineering and at lunch, the two groups are distinctly
segregated.
I was re-waching an all-time favourite episode of The
Simpsons, “Homer Goes to College” (season 5),
written by Conan O'Brien, and I noticed that one (and possibly two)
of the three nerds that Homer meets, used a Mac. The middle computer
is definitely a "1984" Mac and the one on the far right is possibly a
Mac (with 2 floppy drive slots).
Got to play/configure a 17 in. Mac Book Pro that a faculty member
bought with his research grant. Smiles and "wows!" all-round when I
showed how easy it was to install a printer and demo'd the
mouse-based screen-magnifier (Ctrl+ScrollMouse). I am now officially
the Mac Guru in the Department and the number of Macs in the
Department has doubled since last year.
Update Sat Jan 06 10:42:56 2007: Later in the evening,
discussing whether voice-input would help occasional computer users
(like our eldery parents) who need to be frequently reminded how to
use a computer or whose double-click is not entirely consistent. I
demo'd the Mac's Speakable Items feature— "What time is it?",
"Switch to Firefox", "Switch to Finder", etc.— which impressed
the boss because the Mac could understand both my voice and his
voice, without any training.
The Electronics Industry measures a product's success by the number
of years it takes to reach one million households (since the pricing
structure of electronic products is designed with that number). The
VHS cassette recorder took 11 years; the CD player took 4 years, the
DVD player took 2 years, as did the iPod (introduced in Q4 2001,
Apple sold
1M units by Q4 2003). Unlike the iPod, which is an Apple
monopoly, the DVD player is a commodity item whose price keeps
dropping until they can be given away as incentives for other
purchases. The following table (Updated Sun Jan 07 04:51:58
2007: with data for 2001-06), tracks the DVD player prices from the
original US$1,000 in 1997, to the current price of US$28.
Year | DVD Players Sold (% of households) | Price (US$) |
1997 | 315,000 | $900-$1200 |
1998 | 1,018,000 | $750 |
1999 | 4,019,000 (5%) | $450 |
2000 | 5,000,000 | $225 |
2001 | 16,700,000 (28%) | ~$185 |
2002 | (35%) | ~$151 |
2005 | (75%) | $39 |
2006 | (81%) | $28 |
By 1999, 88.6% of households (the maximum) had VCR players. |
The price of DVD players continues to drop by 1.5% every month. In
2006, approximately 70% of Canadian households had DVD players. A few
Sundays ago, I saw a full-page Sony ad in the New York Times
for their BluRay player; the entire face of the player is blue.
iTV renamed Apple TV... wirelessly transfer content to your
TV... USB2.0, RCA, Component Video, 720p HD, 40GB HDD, B,G and N
wireless, Intel Powered... stream up to 5 TVs from one Apple TV... $299,
shipping in Feb. (presentation duration: 12:30-12:40)
Widescreen ipod! "(New Revolutionary) Mobile Phone"... "A
breakthrough internet communications device"... Called
iPhone!... touch-screen... Mouse/scroll-wheel/multi-touch... iPhone
uses iTunes to automatically sync with your PC or Mac...3.5 inch
screen with 160 ppi.. 11.6mm thick... 2MP camera... GSM... Proximity
sensor to adjust display when next to face as well as ambient light
sensor and accelerometer... Changes automatically to widescreen when
you move it to horizontal position... Speaker and microphone... runs
OS X... Quad-band GSM + EDGE. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth too.... demos 3-way
conference call... iPhoto-like software built-in... Seamlessly
switches between Wi-Fi networks... Google Maps with GPS (is this
on-board GPS or wi-fi or cell-tower triangulation?)
"The Internet in your pocket for the first time ever." Huh? I
don't think so. My boss bought a WinCE HP 6545 mobile phone last
month (it's already gone back for warranty repair) that does all
this.
(1:30PM) Google CEO comes onstage... CEO of Yahoo! comes onstage.
iPhone accessories: comes with headphones with integrated
mic. Also has a tiny Bluetooth headset which automatically pairs w/
iPhone... Battery life: 5 hours of talk time/video/browsing. 16 hours
of audio playback... 4GB model is US$499, 8GB US$599...ships in
June... Cingular only... 2-year contract.
Name change... Apple Inc.
Update Tue Jan 09 15:04:01 2007: New "Get A Mac" ad,
Surgery (with a subtly risqué reference to "peripherals").
Here are two photos: Photo "A" is from page B1 of the Globe and
Mail's Report on Business; it shows a balding, middle-aged man
wearing a black turtleneck and blue jeans standing in front of a
large projection of a new, revoltionary telephone/music player/web
browser. Photo "B" is from page B11 of the same newspaper, showing a
balding, middle-aged man wearing a business suit and riding a bicycle
on a stage, in front of a table with a stack of ceramic mugs. The man
in Photo "A" is the CEO of Apple; the man in Photo "B" is the CEO of
Motorola. Would you buy a telephone from the man in Photo "A" or
Photo "B"?
I presume this is from MacWorld. There are no details about the video
available on the YouTube posting. It
looks a sketch being done using Photoshop with stylus input.
Update Sat Jan 13 11:58:57 2007: This is the Axiotron
ModBook Tablet computer with Wacom-enabled pen.
Tiger Multi-session CDs
burning multisession cd
Wed Jan 10 16:32:25 2007
I just found this Tip of the Week on apple.com: Burning
Multiple Times to the Same CD. Why is this setting not
default? Why does it have to be manually enabled?
Fortress Programming Language
fortress
Thu Jan 11 00:27:52 2007
Sun has released the first version of the Fortress programming
language designed for high-performance computing by Guy L. Steele,
which includes parallel computation (among other things) as a core
design feature.
The Nay Sayers
iphone
Thu Jan 11 01:00:18 2007
First, Cisco
sues Apple over the iPhone trademark. Second, some reasons why
the iPhone
may fail (based on the information we know as of now). There are
too many unknown variables at this moment to allow us to determine
the success or failure of this phone. Remember that it was only
announced early because FCC approval takes long and Jobs, "didn't
want the FCC to announce it." Third, will I buy one? No, I don't need
one. I don't have a cell-phone now. I don't have anyone to call and I
don't know anyone that would want to call me where ever I happen to
be. If my Clié stopped working, I would buy a Shuffle to
replace it or maybe a Nano if it can be used as an alarm-clock. But,
if there's a widescreen iPod without the phone (and there will be),
would I buy one? Oh yeah, I think so; just for bragging rights.
Career Day
"pc vs. mac"
Thu Jan 11 18:45:00 2007
Yesterday, my boss gave a presentation at his nephew's high-school
(for a class of 35 grade 10 students; 15-16 year olds, born after
1990) for Career Day; the guest is invited to speak to students about
their career and work. He talked about the engineering profession by
first taking a poll about something the students could relate
to— their home computers. He asked how many people had
computers at home— everyone. He asked how many ran
Windows— all but one— a girl who said that her dad had a
Mac. I expected no student to have a Mac, so I'm impressed.
As part of his presentation, he played the Get A Mac Ad about
computer viruses, not to promote Macs, but to emphasize the
vulerability of Windows/XP when compared to Unix— he gave away
Knoppix CDs (my idea) at the end of the presentation.
Update Thu Jan 11 22:02:14 2007:He had a very frustrating
experience creating his presentation in OpenOffice (switching between
Linux and Solaris) with font unavailability problems and especially
trying to get the Apple-ad to play full-screen when he clicked on a
thumbnail (this involves invoking mplayer with a bunch of
options). He got it working, tested it out and when the time came to
play it, the audio played while the video played; he quit mplayer and
it worked when he tried it again the second time. The other problem
was getting the projector to display video from the Dell craptop
(running Fedora). He actually got very close to doing the
presentation running Windows/XP.
Needless to say, Keynote is the answer.
More Apple Gaga
fanboys
Sat Jan 13 09:11:07 2007
The day after the iPhone appeared in the Globe and Mail
there was a front-page (bottom-left) article about Jonathan Ive
titled, “The Luddite that makes Apple look good”. In
addition, the editorial cartoon featured the iPhone and a
sterotypical nerd wearing short-sleeved shirt with tie, self-repaired
eye glasses and a pocket-protector. At least initially, it will be
CEOs who will be able to afford this phone and AT&T
data-plan.
Cupertino Applestore
applestore clothing
Sat Jan 13 09:55:37 2007
TUAW has a gallery of
photos from the Applestore in Cupertino. It looks like a dated
version of an average Applestore (dark flooring instead of the
ash-blond maple) except that you can buy Apple-logo branded clothing
(long- and short-sleeved Ts and hoodies, children's clothing in pink
and baby-blue and caps) in colors that match the iPod Nanos. I like
the black "I visited the Mothership" T-shirt (I hope it has the Apple
logo on the back).
MacBraniac Challenge
quiz
Sat Jan 13 11:53:46 2007
Christopher Breen hosted this year's Macworld MacBraniac
Challenge. I don't know the answer to any of the questions and as
for the last one I don't know if “banner -w 80 hello” in
Terminal, with the screen turned to face the person, would have qualified.
PiX
pi
Sat Jan 13 23:40:12 2007
While David Bailey's research into the digits of Pi is well known, a
little-known factoid resulting from this work came to light in the
June 10 online edition of Science News. The column delves into the
role of mathematics in "The Simpsons" TV show. In one episode, Apu
claims he can recite Pi to 40,000 decimal places, with the last
digit being one. To get that detail right, the show's writing team
faxed a query to NASA, where mathematician David Bailey— who
worked for the agency from 1984-1998, before joining the Lab— obliged with the digit in question.
— Today
at Berkeley Lab
With PiX,
you can calculate the 40,000th (or any other digit) for
yourself.
Natalie Portman
photos
Sun Jan 14 00:00:39 2007
A completely gratuitous
link to photos of Natalie Portman with her short-hair look (which
I like better than her other looks, perhaps because it reminds me of
Audrey Hepburn).
*Sigh*
Money, Money
money
Thu Jan 18 21:07:17 2007
First, a note about the euro— for the first time since it's
creation, the value of all euro notes in circulation ($828B) has
exceeded the value of all U.S. dollar notes in circulation
($753B); the €500 note is becoming the denomination of choice
for arms- and drug- smugglers who used to prefer $100 bills, which
are now tracked by banks. Second, Apple's 2007Q1 results—
record revenue of $7.1B and record net quarterly profit of $1.0B;
gross margin was 31.2%; 42% of revenue was from international sales;
1,606,000 Macs and 21,066,000 iPods shipped.
netPong
software game pong
Fri Jan 19 13:46:22 2007
netPong
is a multi-player networked Pong game for Macs with a motion
sensor. It can also be played standalone if there is no one else
around. It requires Tiger.
MWSF2007 Google Campout Diary
google mac
Sat Jan 20 10:10:38 2007
Rose Yao, Mac product manager at Google and Mike Pinkerton blog about
their adventure camping-out at Macworld 2007. (Google Mac team has
almost 20 people). Avichal's Garg's Journal is more detailed, however.
State of The Art
technology
Sun Jan 21 15:46:46 2007
"Check In/Check Out" is a regular column I look forward to, in the
Travel section of the Sunday NY Times. Last week, Stuart
Emmerich spent one night at the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong (which
re-opened last September after a $140M, nine-month renovation) where
he needed to retrieve a message left for him:
- You retrieve a voice mail from your phone, which directs you to
the messsage system accessible through your TV.
- You turn on the TV, and 10 minutes later— after getting the
screen cursor to work properly— you read your text message,
which tells you to call the front desk.
- You call the front desk, which puts you on hold while they find
your message.
And what is it? A reminder that the checkout time the next day is
11 AM.
“Hello, I'm a Mac” T-shirt
novelties
Tue Jan 23 20:47:32 2007
I was thinking about the TUAW Applestore
photos and I realized that Apple doesn't have Electric Blue
T-shirts with, “Hello, I'm a Mac”, printed on
the front. I think a lot of Mac users would buy them, I certainly
would. But please, Apple, don't make me go all the way to the
Mothership store to get one; sell them in the local Applestores or on
the web.
Or maybe, I'll make my own.
Power Failure
Tue Jan 23 21:56:43 2007
There was an unscheduled power-outage to our entire building, last
night (Physical Plant has not said why it happened) and all the
workstations were still hung the next morning as they simultaneously
attempted to nfs mount their filesystems when the power came back on;
the switches throttled-back the connectivity as they tried to
cope. ilsa suffered no ill effects as she's configured to
not reboot after a failure.
Singled Out
statistics
Thu Jan 25 08:25:50 2007
Some interesting statistics on marriage collected from an article in
last Sunday's New York Times "Week in Review". 51% of all
women live without a spouse (this includes elderly women who
are widowed). Among college-educated women aged 25-34, 59% are
married compared to 51% of non-college graduates. For women aged
35-44, the rate is 75% married to 62% unmarried. Among men aged
25-34, 50% of college graduates are married while 47% of non-college
graduates are married. In 1960, 69% of men were married; today 55% of
men are married. The subject of marriage was covered previously in my
journal— to summarize: you might was well marry the first woman
that comes along because it is statistically impossible that you
would meet your true love, if she even existed.
I don't understand why people get married. I also don't understand
the concept of love. I do not believe in true love— in fact, I
have very few beliefs remaining. I would love to marry a woman so
high above my class ("out of my league" so to speak) just so on my
wedding day people would whisper behind my back, that my wife could
have done so much better. That would be enough proof that true love
does exist. I would then have to re-evaluate my other beliefs.
It Flies!
hardware macguyver ram memory upgrade
Sat Jan 27 20:01:00 2007
Yesterday, I braved the -25°C temperatures to go pick-up a 1GB
stick of Kingston RAM for mathilde, from a downtown computer
store. I also printed-out the 5 pages related to installing RAM found
in the Powerbook G4 Getting Started Guide. I read and
re-read the steps required to perform the memory installation,
several times. The only tool I needed was a 00 Phillips-head
screwdriver. I had no idea how big or small a 00 screw-head was but I
was sure that one of the flat-head jeweller screwdrivers I had at
home would be adequate. Just in case, I borrowed three Phillips
jeweller screwdrivers from work— "small", "medium", and
"large".
This morning, I started the laundry, made my tea and read the
front section of the morning newspaper before starting on the memory
upgrade. I shutdown the Powerbook, unplugged all the cables, flipped
it over, removed the battery and... none of the screwdrivers I tried
would fit the microscopic screw-heads— all the Phillips-head
screwdrivers, I borrowed from work, were too large and the heads
wouldn't budge when I used a flat-head screwdriver that
fit. KHAAAAAAAAN!!!!!
I brewed another cup of tea and finished reading the
newspaper. Then I made some oatmeal and considered my options. Since
I would be going to Toronto in the afternoon, I could stop by work
and grab the smaller screwdrivers. I was even willing to wait until
Monday as I was in no rush.
Late in the afternoon, I had an idea— I should see if my
Swiss Army Knife had a tool that would do the job. The knife has a
small eyeglass screwdriver that is stored in the corkscrew. I tried
to unscrew one of the screws on the side of the Powerbook and it
worked! So, I shutdown mathilde yet again and... the screws
on the memory-upgrade access-panel wouldn't budge. KHAAAAAAAAAN!
But wait! I thought I should try unscrewing using the tip of the
small knife. It worked!!!!! So, if you don't have a 00 Phillips
screwdriver handy, you can always use the blade/tip of a knife
(that's what MacGuyver would do). I discovered that the bottom third
of the threads were covered in Locktite™— which explains
why they were so tough to unscrew using normal means.
The rest was pretty straight-forward. I rebooted the Powerbook and
checked if the RAM was seen and shut it down again and screwed the
access-panel back on. Everything took about 10–15 minutes.
I now have 1.5GB of RAM and it just flies! Well, it seems
faster, anyway (it might well be a psychological trick).
Love Is...
love
Sun Jan 28 09:31:29 2007
Whenever I despair, I remember that the way of
truth and love has always won. There may be tyrants and murderers,
and for a time, they may seem invincible, but in the end, they always
fail.
—Gandhi
By a strange coincidence, the Second Reading was from
1 Corinthians 13:4-7. Based on this definition, I understand why there
is so much sadness in the world:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast,
it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not
easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight
in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always
trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Corinth is a port city in Greece, visited by the Apostle Paul around
50 A.D. He stayed for about a year during which time he formed the
first Christian church there. He later wrote letters, which are
answers to questions about proper conduct, posed by his followers
there, and collected in the three Books of Corinthians.
Also, the opposite of love is not hate; the opposite of love is
despair. Updated Mon Jan 29 20:02:21 2007: added Gandhi
(assassinated Jan. 30, 1948) epigraph found in the memorable quotes
section of the IMDb entry for Gandhi and a link to the
official translation of 1 Corinthians.
Panther DST Updates
software daylight savings time dst panther
Sun Jan 28 20:15:47 2007
David sent me an email about a non-Apple originated DST
patch for Panther 10.3.9 systems. It would seem that only Tiger
systems are aware of the DST changes beginning in March 2007.
Tim Bray: Which Mac?
hardware
Mon Jan 29 18:02:20 2007
Tim Bray is thinking of getting a replacement
for his Powerbook; he's trying to decide between a Macbook and a
Macbook Pro. I'm suprised that he doesn't get much use from the
backlit keyboard— I guess I'm the only one that prefers to do
computing in the dark far more than is normal; even in my office, the
lights are off.
Bill Evans: The Oslo Concerts
music jazz "bill evans trio"
Tue Jan 30 09:16:51 2007
“The Oslo Concerts” DVD documents two Bill Evans
concerts— the first with Eddie Gomez and Alex Riel on bass and
drums respectively, performed in 1966 (you can view excerpts on
YouTube), and the second concert 15 years later, just a month before
his death on September 15, 1980, with Marc Johnson and Joe La
Barbera.
iPod Shuffle: Now in Colour and Hip
hardware "shuffle 2"
Tue Jan 30 14:29:55 2007
The iPod Shuffle is
now available in several colours: hot pink, lucious orange, lime
green and sky blue; the same shades as the Nano.
The Hipster
Shuffle is a variation on the hipster PDA with MP3 player
capabilities.
iPod Shuffle: Now Submersible
hardware
Tue Jan 30 22:04:45 2007
SwimMan
claims they can convert your shuffle into a submersible
version— 100% waterproof— and includes underwater headphones.
Anatol Rapoport, R.I.P.
obituary "game theory" "prisoner's dilemma"
Wed Jan 31 09:14:39 2007
An excerpt from the obituary, in this morning's newspaper, of
Anatol Rapoport (b.1911), a mathematician at the University of
Toronto:
[1984] saw publication of political scientist Robert Axelrod's
seminal book, The Evolution of Co-operation, which asked a
simple, yet age-old, question: If living things evolve through
competition, how can co-operation ever emerge? A computer tournament
was organized to study the relationship of game theory to evolution— a variation on the Prisoner's Dilemma. Entries came from the
world's top theorists.
Dr. Rapoport entered a program he wrote called Tit-For-Tat,
consisting of four lines of code. It was by far the simplest entry,
and it won. Betraying the retributive implications of its name, the
program opened by co-operating with its opponent. Thereafter, it
played exactly as the other side had played in the preceding game. If
the other side had defected, Tit-For-Tat also defected for that one
game. If the other side had co-operated, it co-operated on the next
round.
"In effect, Tit-For-Tat punished the other player for selfish
behaviour and rewarded her for co-operative behaviour -- but the
punishment lasted only as long as the selfish behaviour lasted,"
observed Metta Spencer, editor of Peace Magazine, on the
occasion of Dr. Rapoport's 90th birthday. "This proved to be an
exceptionally effective sanction, quickly showing the other side the
advantages of co-operating... It also set moral philosophers to
proposing this as a workable principle to use in real life
interactions."
—Ron Csillag
I'll see if I can find some relevant quotes from the book (which
is hideously typeset) and post them later.
Defective By Design Protest
fsf vista
Wed Jan 31 11:53:04 2007
The FSF hosted a Defective By Design protest, titled Bad
Vista, at the New York launch of Microsoft's XP upgrade—
Vista.
Here in Toronto, Microsoft held the launch at an ice-house (a tent with walls made of ice-blocks) at Dundas Square. Yesterday, just before noon, the crowd was sparse (10 people, if you included the homeless people who lined-up for free coffee and then left) but today there was a larger crowd (perhaps 50 people).
Intentional Programming
software language "intentional programming"
Wed Jan 31 23:51:45 2007
There seems to be a marketing campaign for Intentional
Programming, a "language" designed by Charles Simonyi, formerly
of Microsoft (author of Word and Excel) and Xeroc PARC (author of
Bravo, the first word processor). Simonyi left Microsoft in 1991 to
form a company to develop Intentional Programming because Microsoft
decided to use .NET instead. I first heard of this language today,
after reading a gushing review of Simonyi (future cosmonaut) in the
Sunday Business section of last weekend's New York Times,
written by an editor of MIT's Technology Review, which, by some
strange coincidence just happens to have a cover-story about Simonyi.
Expect Slashdot and Digg postings to appear soon. Expect the
concept to dissappear into obscurity. I love the idea, but I just
think it's too complex to implement.