Saturday, August 31, 2013

Tesla outsells Porsche, Jaguar, others in California

Tesla outsells Porsche, Jaguar, others in Calif.

"The swoopy electric sedan outsold all models from other luxury brands Porsche, Volvo, Lincoln, Land Rover and Jaguar during the first half of the year in the Golden State, reports the California New Car Dealers Association, based on new-vehicle registrations.

With 4,714 new Teslas registered over the six months, it even topped some established conventional luxury models like Lexus GS, at 2,298, and Audi A6, at 1,619."

Electric car maker snatches 12 percent of luxury sports category in first half of 2013

Tesla sold more vehicles in California than ten big-name brands:
Buick, Cadillac, Chrysler, Fiat, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lincoln, Mitsubishi, Porsche, and Volvo.
Tesla must be doing something right; the sales numbers speak for themselves. They're producing a product that people clearly are interested in buying; they're also managing to move significant inventory even though their cars start at about $63,000 and rapidly increase in price with options.
If it continue this way, Tesla Motors may become next General Electric :)

That would be an ultimate revenge of inventor Nikola Tesla ,
who confronted with Thomas Edison (founder of General Electric) in "War of Currents".

Tesla was quoted to say this:

Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments.
The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.

- Nikola Tesla

Virtual Reailty Doctors (VR ER)

Technotrends Newsletter: The Virtual ER Is Here Today, Saving Time and Money
By Daniel Burrus


"
Stat Doctors
is a virtual ER offering anytime, anywhere
"

in one example out-of-pocket cost was only $60,
a fraction of the $2,028 that would cost to go to "real" ER

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Calca: Text Editor + Math = "Literate Programming"

iOS app created in C# with Xamarin tools
In fact it was created on Mac, not on Windows!

Calca - The Text Editor that Loves Math


Podcast interview @ Hanselminutes

This is also an example of "Literate Programming"
"is an approach to programming introduced by Donald Knuth in which a program is given as an explanation of the program logic in a natural language, such as English, interspersed with snippets of macros and traditional source code, from which a compilable source code can be generated"

the same author previously created popular iCircuit, also in C#

code reuse from Mac to iOS

Google Nexus 4: $199

Google Drops the Price of the Nexus 4 by $100

"Google has dropped the price of the Nexus 4 by $100. The company announced the price drop yesterday evening via the Google Play Twitter feed. The 8 GB model now sits at $199, marked down from $299, while the 16 GB model has dropped to $249 from $349."

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Automated Driving

podcast: .NET Rocks! Automated Driving Geek Out and Episode 900!

The "self-driving cars" are becoming a mainstream...
The nicer name is "Automated Driving"
and it is coming first on top models from Volvo, Mercedes, BMW, Audi

I Have a Dream

I Have a Dream - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: (50 years ago)
"With a single phrase, Martin Luther King, Jr. joined Jefferson and Lincoln in the ranks of men who've shaped modern America".[6] The speech was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address"

Sunday, August 25, 2013

book: "Thinking, Fast and Slow"

book review and podcast:
#24. A Summary of ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman | New Books in Brief

Daniel Kahneman (Princeton University) is an Israeli-American psychologist and winner of the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He is notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, behavioral economics and hedonic psychology.


podcast: >Daniel Kahneman “Thinking Fast and Slow” @ Seminars About Long-term Thinking

LINQPad, 101 LINQ Samples

Download LINQPad


LINQPad is a C#/VB/F# scratchpad that instantly executes any expression, statement block or program with rich output formatting and a wealth of features that "just work".

101 LINQ Samples @ MSDN

Friday, August 23, 2013

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to Retire

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to Retire Within 12 Months - WSJ.com:
"Microsoft Corp. MSFT +5.83% said Friday that longtime Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has decided to retire within the next 12 months, a move that comes a month after he unveiled a major reorganization for the tech giant.

Mr. Ballmer, who is 57 years old, will depart after a successor has been chosen. The company's board has appointed a special committee—including Chairman Bill Gates—that will consider both external and internal candidates."


Mary Jo Foley brief interview with Steve Ballmer, 2013-08-23

New Books in Brief

A site with GREAT book reviews, and related podcast.

book reviews (blog): New Books in Brief

Keeping you connected to the best ideas in the world of new non-fiction"

related podcast: New Books in Brief



Thursday, August 22, 2013

Elixir programming language: Erlang VM + Ruby syntax

Elixir

"Elixir is a functional, meta-programming aware language built on top of the Erlang VM. It is a dynamic language with flexible syntax and macro support that leverages Erlang's abilities to build concurrent, distributed and fault-tolerant applications with hot code upgrades."

Erlang is a strange language: it is created for making distributed highly parallel systems that "never stop working", and it has syntax of Prolog that is very different from "usual" C-based languages.

Now, there is a new language that has more familiar syntax, and is running on same Erlang platform; and is liked by Joe Armstrong creator of Erlang,
and Dave Thomas, a legend of Agile and Pragmatic Programmer.

@ Wikipedia

Book


Systems that Run Forever Self-heal and Scale @ InfoQ

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

CSS-Tricks

CSS-Tricks:

A blog about modern CSS tricks :)

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Class Central: MOOC aggregator

Class Central • Free online courses AKA MOOC aggregator:
"Free Online Education
Class Central is a free online course aka MOOC aggregator from top universities like Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc. offered via Coursera, Udacity, edX, NovoED, & others"


The Best MOOC Provider: A Review of Coursera, Udacity and Edx

Stanford Online

Apple iTunes U

Tesla's Model S aces federal crash tests

Tesla's Model S aces federal crash tests - San Jose Mercury News


"Tesla Motors (TSLA) says its all-electric Model S sedan has received the highest crash test ratings of any car ever tested by federal regulators.
Not only that: Tesla says it was nearly impossible to roll the Model S over during the tests, and that a machine used to crush roofs in another test broke because the Model S is so strong

...
Of all vehicles tested, including every major make and model approved for sale in the United States, the Model S set a new record for the lowest likelihood of injury to occupants"

Monday, August 19, 2013

Asus "netbook" with touchscreen: $329

Asus - 11.6" Touch-Screen Laptop - 4GB Memory - 320GB Hard Drive

3.1 lb is not too heavy, and proper keyboard and 11.6" screen are useful...

Sunday, August 18, 2013

"SkyDrive" to change name because of "Sky" trademark

Microsoft forced to rename SkyDrive following trademark case with broadcaster | The Verge

"A UK court recently ruled that Microsoft's SkyDrive name infringed on a trademark owned by British Sky Broadcasting Group (BSkyB), and the software maker has agreed to change the name of its cloud-based service worldwide as a result."

After "Metro", this is a second case where Microsoft is forced to change product name because of trademarks.

Samsung Create: Flexible Future Business Plan Contest

Samsung Wants You To Figure Out What To Do With Its Flexible Displays @ TechCrunch

Samsung Create: Flexible Future Business Plan Contest - Pre Promo
calling on the most innovative designers, hardware engineers and entrepreneurs 
to develop new product ideas that put our revolutionary Flexible Display technology 

What is the value of ideas for Samsung?
$2500, $5000, $10000

Last time price of ideas for Samsung was about $1+B,
when it was found to be too close to Apples patents. :)

So if this works, it will be 100 000 times cheaper :)

The creative world needs a better system for valuing ideas
than "all or nothing" patents vs. give away.

Hyperloop review

DraganSr: Elon Musk Explains the Hyperloop:

A few observations after reading the "Alpha Design" of Hyperloop:
  • A very creative and clever design.
    There are many elements that may be usable even without the whole system, but maybe it would not be as effective.
  • I am concerned about very small "gliding" distance of capsule from the tube, if I understand it correctly. That would require very high precision in polishing the tube, and minor errors may get capsule to "bang" the walls of the tube.

  • The "San Francisco" station appears on the map to be on the other side of the bay, across Bay Bridge. If so, crossing the bridge to actually get to San Francisco may take more time than traveling by "tube" from LA.
  • What would be the noise level outside of the tube,
    when a capsule is "flying by"?

  • A "capsule" is in fact an electric vehicle, with some similar elements as Tesla Motors cars. It sounds logical that they would be an ideal manufacturer, if somebody is to make the tube. SolarCity, another Musk's company could set-up the solar power...

  • The most likely financier and first to build a tube may be China...
  • The comparison with "Linux" is a stretch.
    Linus Torvalds actually built Linux, and then it become popular
    because it was Open Source and free. So making at least a prototype would be necessary to compare... 







Saturday, August 17, 2013

Friday, August 16, 2013

Testing JavaScript

Jasmine.js:
"Jasmine is a behavior-driven development framework for testing JavaScript code. It does not depend on any other JavaScript frameworks. It does not require a DOM. And it has a clean, obvious syntax so that you can easily write tests."

chutzpah.codeplex.com
"Chutzpah is an open source JavaScript test runner which helps you integrate JavaScript unit testing into your website. It enables you to run JavaScript unit tests from the command line and from inside of Visual Studio."

"On the AngularJS team, we rely on testing and we always seek better tools to make our life easier. That's why we created
Karma - a test runner that fits all our needs."

JavaScript Promises

JavaScript Promises: by Shawn Wildermuth

A promise is a pattern for handling asynchronous operations. The problem is that essentially when you start an asynchronous operation, you need to execute some code as the operation is completed. Asynchronous code is so common that most libraries have found a solution for passing in callbacks. But there is little commonality to how each libraries does this...

a promise (is a) object that several JavaScript libraries use 
(including AngularJS, jQuery, Dojo and WinJS). 

The asynchronous operation simply returns an object called a promise.
The promise allows you to call a method called "then()" that let's you specify the function(s) to use as the callbacks.

then() function can accept two functions. The first is for the success callback; the second for the failure callback:

var $info = $("#info");

$.ajax({
    // Change URL to see error happen
    url: "/echo/json/",
    data: {
        json: JSON.stringify({
            "name": "someValue"
        })
    },
    type: "POST"
})
.then(function (response) {
    // success
    $info.text(response.name);
}, 
function () {
    // failure
    $info.text("bad things happen to good developers");
})
.always(function () {
    $info.append("...finally");
});

The Hyperloop and Hyper-Innovation

The Hyperloop and Hyper-Innovation | LinkedIn

Windows RT future?

Tablet Tribulations: Asus Dumps Windows RT While NVIDIA Hopes For The Best | TechCrunch


With Asus out, just Dell and Microsoft remain as the only Windows RT hardware providers. Samsung, HTC, HP, and Lenovo previously pulled plans for a Windows RT tablet.

This means that people want "full version" Windows (8) even if it costs $100 more...
Solution: lower size (7"-8") and price ($200-$300) of WinRT devices,
and unified apps for Win Phone & Tablets.


Is It Too Late for Windows RT Tablets?
"I don't think it's too late…but they need to do something they're not good at…trade profits for market share. It worked for the Xbox…"

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Hacking .NET

podcast: Herding Code: "Jon McCoy on Hacking .NET"

whitepapers


Personal Kanban

Personal Kanban 101 | Personal Kanban


"Personal Kanban is a simple way to visualize and control your work."

There are only two real rules with Personal Kanban:
1. Visualize your work
2. Limit your work-in-progress

podcast: Personal Kanban with Jim Benson @ IEEE SW Engineering Radio

Windows 8.1 release date

Mark your calendars for Windows 8.1!:
"Windows 8.1 (will be available) starting at 12:00am on October 18th in New Zealand (that’s 4:00am October 17th in Redmond), Windows 8.1 will begin rolling out worldwide as a free update for consumers on Windows 8 through the Windows Store. Windows 8.1 will also be available at retail and on new devices starting on October 18th by market."

Mars Curiosity rover sings 'Happy Birthday' to itself

Mars Curiosity rover sings 'Happy Birthday' to itself | Crave - CNET:
August 5, 2013: "Anyone listening on Mars would have heard the Curiosity rover singing to celebrate its one-year anniversary since touching down."

Monday, August 12, 2013

Elon Musk Explains the Hyperloop

www.spacex.com/hyperloop

www.teslamotors.com/blog/hyperloop

Design Hyperloop Alpha (PDF)

Revealed: Elon Musk Explains the Hyperloop, His 800 MPH Pneumatic Tube That Could Revolutionize Transportation - Businessweek

details @ Gizmodo




SpaceX founder Elon Musk unveils plans for Hyperloop

The Hyperloop Transportation System consists of a capsule that can carry 28 passengers, steel tubes that will carry the capsule in two directions and a propulsion system, which will travel on a custom route. In Musk's example, the ideal route between Los Angeles and San Francisco is along California's I-5. Traveling at 760 miles per hour, Hyperloop would be able to carry 840 passengers per hour.

Musk believes the best way of creating a faster mode of transport is to design a special environment for vehicles to travel.

The design would create a low pressure system inside of the tubes, to create an atmosphere with less dense air -- having one-sixth the pressure of the atmosphere of Mars. Hyperloop's capsules would be supported using a compressed air reservoir and aerodynamic lift.

An electric air compressor fan mounted in the front of a passenger capsule would transfer high pressure air from the front to the rear of the vehicle, relieving air pressure and create a low friction suspension system.

Hyperloop Physics Questions and Answers @ Wired

This Is the Hyperloop, Elon Musk’s Fantastical Vision of Mass Transit @ Wired

Facebook Graph Search

Facebook Graph Search - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Facebook Graph Search is a semantic search engine that was introduced by Facebook in March 2013. It is designed to give answers to user natural language queries rather than a list of links.[1] The Graph Search feature combines the big data acquired from its over one billion users and external data into a search engine providing user-specific search results."

The feature was developed under former Google employees Lars Rasmussen and Tom Stocky. Lars also co-created Google Maps (and Google Wave) before.

Examples:
  • “Friends who Like Star Wars and Harry Potter”
  • For setting up a potential date, “Who are single men in San Francisco and are from India”
  • For employee recruiting, “NASA employees who are friends with people at Facebook”
  • For browsing photos or planning travel, “photos of my friends taken at National Parks”

The Making of Facebook’s Graph Search @ IEEE Spectrum
Engineers who built Facebook’s Graph Search tell the inside story of how they made Zuckerberg’s dream come true

Sunday, August 11, 2013

zen-coding: HTML and CSS hi-speed coding

zen-coding - Set of plugins for HTML and CSS hi-speed coding - Google Project Hosting:

"Zen Coding is an editor plugin for high-speed HTML, XML, XSL (or any other structured code format) coding and editing. The core of this plugin is a powerful abbreviation engine which allows you to expand expressions—similar to CSS selectors—into HTML code."


Saturday, August 10, 2013

Jim Collins - Great by Choice

Jim Collins - Articles - Great by Choice

"Are you an Amundsen or a Scott?
In October 1911, two teams of adventurers made their final preparations in their quest to be the first people in modern history to reach the South Pole. For one team, it would be a race to victory and a safe return home. For the second team, it would be a devastating defeat, reaching the Pole only to find the wind-whipped flags of their rivals planted 34 days earlier, followed by a race for their lives -- a race that they lost in the end, as the advancing winter swallowed them up. All five members of the second Pole team perished, staggering from exhaustion, suffering the dead-black pain of frostbite, and then freezing to death as some wrote their final journal entries and notes to loved ones back home....

Amundsen and Scott achieved dramatically different outcomes not because they faced dramatically different circumstances...

Throughout the journey, Amundsen adhered to a regimen of consistent progress, never going too far in good weather, careful to stay far away from the red line of exhaustion that could leave his team exposed, yet pressing ahead in nasty weather to stay on pace... In contrast, Scott would sometimes drive his team to exhaustion on good days and then sit in his tent and complain about the weather on bad days...

"Financial markets are out of your control. Customers are out of your control. Earthquakes are out of your control. Global competition is out of your control. Technological change is out of your control. Most everything is ultimately out of your control. But when you 20-Mile March, you have a tangible point of focus that keeps you and your team moving forward, despite confusion, uncertainty, and even chaos."




Themes for Twitter Bootstrap - WrapBootstrap

(low cost) Themes for Twitter Bootstrap - WrapBootstrap

"Bootstrap is an HTML5 & CSS3 framework designed to help you kickstart the development of webapps and sites. WrapBootstrap is a marketplace for premium Bootstrap themes and templates. Impress your clients and visitors while using a single, rock-solid foundation."

Bootswatch: Free themes for Twitter Bootstrap

Bootswatch: Free themes for Twitter Bootstrap

More Apple-Samsung Patent Struggle

Apple iPhone patent violated by Samsung, US trade court rules | Technology | The Guardian:
"Samsung violated two of Apple's iPhone patents and must end US import of some of its products, the top US trade court ruled...
  • Apple lawyer: Apple spent five years and $5bn to develop a product and it was a revolutionary product. Samsung said: 'We can copy it easily.' They spent three months to bring a product to market.
  • Samsung lawyer: monetary compensation would be an adequate remedy for any infringement."




This back-and-fourth is possible because both Apple and Samsung are "vertically integrated" production for the most part, or at least "large enough" (too large to fail?). For most of other companies, licensing to and from others is only option, and consequently it is an open competition, and also "race to bottom" prices and slower innovation?

Friday, August 09, 2013

15 Sorting Algorithms in 6 Minutes

15 Sorting Algorithms in 6 Minutes - YouTube:

Dipl.-Inform. Timo Bingmann

Nuclear Weapons Accidents

Nuclear Weapons Accidents

podcast interview @ explorations


How to read a patent in 60 seconds

Dan Shapiro » How to read a patent in 60 seconds:
"Find the independent claims, and read them
The claims are the only part of the patent that have any actual legal enforceability.  While they’re still a pain to read, they’re forced to be one sentence so at least they’re relatively short (modulo the occasional run-on sentences half a page long).  They can be wicked difficult to parse in detail, but a skim will get you pointed in the right direction. This page also offers a decent primer."


  • Ask Patents
    Ask Patents is based on technology of "Stack Overflow",
    that is by far the best resource for software developers questions and answers.
    Could "Ask Patents" become similar value?

  • Victory Lap for "Ask Patents" by Joel Spolsky
    Here is how it was used to "defeat" a Microsoft patent application by using Microsoft's own "prior art"

  • The Patent Protection Racket by Joel Spolsky
    The fastest growing industry in the US right now, even during this time of slow economic growth, is probably the patent troll protection racket industry. Lawsuits surrounding software patents have more than tripled since 1999.
  • The Daily WTF

    The Daily WTF - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
    "The Daily WTF (also called Worse Than Failure from February to December 2007) is a humorous blog dedicated to “Curious Perversions in Information Technology”. The blog, run by Alex Papadimoulis, “offers living examples of code that invites the exclamation ‘WTF!?’” (What The Fuck!?) [3] and “recounts tales of disastrous development, from project management gone spectacularly bad to inexplicable coding choices.”[4]"


    Thursday, August 08, 2013

    YouTube value

    YouTube value estimated between $15.6bn and $21.3bn | Music Week:
    "The value of YouTube has been estimated to be between $15.6 billion and $21.3 billion. The figures appear in Fortune Magazine where Barclays has also estimated the video platform to have made $3.6 billion in revenue, with 2014 forecasts predicting an increase of 20% to $4.3 billion."


    video: @NBC news

    $1.6 B when purchased 2006...

    YouTube founders try for their next big thing
    It's been eight years since Chad Hurley and Steve Chen co-founded YouTube, a video platform juggernaut where people upload 100 hours of video every minute. Now, Hurley and Chen are at it again, and they haven't strayed far with MixBit, a free app that lets users record, edit, and publish videos on their mobile devices.

    AngularJS: Overview

    AngularJS: Conceptual Overview






    JavaScript dynamic and functional nature + HTML (DOM)
    makes a very flexible platform for new tools
    that are changing nature of (web) software...
    Complex?

    AngularJS: An Overview

    Sun Magnetic Field Flip

    Sun Will Flip Its Magnetic Field Soon | Space.com:
    "In an event that occurs once every 11 years, the magnetic field of the sun will change its polarity in a matter of months, according new observations by NASA-supported observatories."


    Fabless "manufacturing"

    Fabless manufacturing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
    "Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing the fabrication or "fab" of the devices to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. Foundries are typically located in China[1] [2] [3] [4] because of the generally low cost of labor, so fabless companies can benefit from lower capital costs while concentrating their research and development resources on the end market."
    he top 5 sales leaders for fabless companies in 2011 were:[8]
    RankCompanyCountry of originRevenue (million US$)
    1QualcommUSA9,910
    2BroadcomUSA7,160
    3AMDUSA6,568
    4NvidiaUSA3,939
    5MarvellUSA3,445
    I have observed some new brands of ARM processors
    in some Android tablets...

    Note: Qualcomm has higer martket value than Intel,
    and Intel is "vertically integrated" with its own "fabs" for chips,
    as well as its own design of x86 based CPU instruction sets (not using ARM). 


    Wednesday, August 07, 2013

    Email: 5 Sentences Long

    Why Every Email Should Be 5 Sentences Long | Fast Company | Business + Innovation:

    "Long emails are either unread or, if they are read, they are unanswered ...

    SO HOW DO WE STAVE OFF OUR OUTBOX ABANDONMENT ISSUES?

    By making our emails really, really easy to reply to.
    By making them, like a fine product, massively simple.


    The key is understanding if we're trying to get our recipient
    to take some sort of action from the prompt that we give them.

    That action--and its motivation--needs to be as clear as possible,
    delivered as cleanly as possible.


    Since people are both busy and lazy, they're
    "more likely to respond to information requests--
    whether important or trivial--if they're easy to address
    ,"

    ...even if a message is important, if it's too complex, it won't get a response."

    Jeff Bezos: “It’s all about the long term”

    Stop the Presses: A New Media Baron Appears | LinkedIn:
    "Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is buying The Washington Post for $250 M"

    Letter to the employees of The Washington Post

    Ikea's Magic Catalog

    1 | Ikea's New Catalog Magically Transforms Into Furniture | Co.Design: business + innovation + design
    "IN AN AMAZING USE OF PAPER, IKEA’S NEW CATALOG CAN BE PLACED ANYWHERE IN YOUR HOME, AND APPEAR AS ANY PIECE OF FURNITURE ON A SMARTPHONE OR TABLET."
    Place IKEA furniture in your home with augmented reality

    IKEA online catalog

    Tuesday, August 06, 2013

    Pluralsight Acquires TrainSignal

    Pluralsight Acquires TrainSignal | the pluralsight blog

    "the world’s top online training resource for IT professionals."

    It is very interesting to observe exponential growth
    of Pluralsight, a great online service.
    With a little bit of "coaching", and "community"
    it could be a better training than a average Masters degree...

    AGENT Smart Watch

    podcast: Creating the AGENT Smart Watch with Chris Walker of Secret Labs on the Hanselminutes Technology Podcast: Fresh Air for Developers

    AGENT watches



    Netduino

    "The Future of Programming" (1973 :-)

    References for "The Future of Programming"

    Bret Victor - The Future of Programming from Bret Victor on Vimeo.

    Monday, August 05, 2013

    Spark vs. Hadoop for Big Data

    Spark: Open Source Superstar Rewrites Future of Big Data | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com:
    "Spark, and according to those who built it and use it, it’s about 100 times faster than the mighty Hadoop — and could very well replace Hadoop as the stuff that fuels the modern web."
    “The goal is to build a new generation of data analytics software, to be used across academia and industry”

    Sunday, August 04, 2013

    Gravatar

    Gravatar @ Wikipedia

    Gravatar (an abbreviation for globally recognized avatar)
    is a service for providing globally unique 
    avatars 

    Saturday, August 03, 2013

    Angular Seed

    Angular Seed @ GitHub
    This project is an application skeleton for a typical AngularJS web app. You can use it to quickly bootstrap your angular webapp projects and dev environment for these projects.

    including a web server script for node.js

    Angular.js Fundamentals @ Pluralsight

    AngularJS — Superheroic JavaScript MVW Framework

    AngularJS O'Reilly book examples @ GitHub
    @Safari

    OSI vs TCP/IP - IEEE Spectrum

    OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t - IEEE Spectrum

    "How TCP/IP eclipsed the Open Systems Interconnection standards
    to become the global protocol for computer networking"



    In early 90's, I had a chance to learn both TCP/IP and OSI.
    I have learned TCP/IP for an exam at University,
    and then requested a book about OSI to study on my own,
    out of my own curiosity.

    OSI looked "nice an clean", but TCP/IP I could play with.
    It was available on any computer. So it was an easy choice...
    I even wrote a textbook about TCP/IP and was teaching classes.

    OSI was "open" in name, and TCP/IP has truly open nature...

    MSDN + Azure => Aston Martin Seepstakes

    MSDN Windows Azure Sweepstakes

    Activate the Windows Azure benefits (before 2013-09-30)
    included with your MSDN subscription
    and you could win* an Aston Martin.

    Price of Patents: Samsung vs. Apple

    Apple Seeks Obama Reprieve on iPhone Import Ban - Bloomberg:

    "In filings with the agency, Samsung said it offered to license its (4) standard-essential patents to Apple at a rate of 2.4 percent of the handset price “but Apple rejected it without making a counteroffer or attempting to negotiate a better deal....
    Samsung demanded 2.4 percent of Apple’s iPhone and iPad revenues, which would come to about $18 per phone -- a figure Apple called unreasonable."

    Cancel Import Ban?
    Any import ban would have to be reviewed by President Barack Obama and the U.S. Trade Representative, who have the authority to reject an exclusion order on public policy grounds. The last time that happened, President Ronald Reagan in 1987 overturned an import ban on Samsung memory chips. 
    (so Samsung was protected once, now they are on opposite side against Apple).

    Friday, August 02, 2013

    "bike-shedding" law of triviality

    Parkinson's law of triviality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
    "Parkinson's law of triviality, also known as bikeshedding or the bicycle-shed example, is C. Northcote Parkinson's 1957 argument that organizations give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. Parkinson demonstrated this by contrasting the triviality of the cost of building a bike shed to an atomic reactor. The law has been applied to software development[1] and other activities."

    Example of a committee's deliberations on an atomic reactor, contrasting it to deliberations on a bicycle shed. As he put it: "The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum [of money] involved." 
    • A reactor is used because it is so vastly expensive and complicated that an average person cannot understand it, so one assumes that those that work on it understand it.
    • On the other hand, everyone can visualize a cheap, simple bicycle shed, so planning one can result in endless discussions because everyone involved wants to add a touch and show personal contribution

    "NewSQL", MemSQL vs "NoSQL"

    Ex-Facebookers Feed Zuck's Code Into New Data Revolution | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com:
    "“NewSQL” database. Like the NoSQL databases, he says, it scales across many machines, but unlike those older creations, it lets you query your data with tried-and-true SQL, and it provides the consistency you need for transactional applications — or at least some of them. "

    MemSQL offers what’s called an “in-memory database.” Much like a Facebook creation known as Scuba, it spreads information across the memory systems inside dozens of computer servers, bypassing the (much slower) hard disks that traditionally house the world’s information. The end result is a system that lets you retrieve and analyze data at unusually high speeds.

    The idea of a database that runs in computer memory is hardly new. TimesTen, an in-memory database offered by software giant Oracle, dates back to the mid-1990s. But as Frenkiel explains, MemSQL represents a new breed of in-memory database — an in-memory database specifically designed to operate across a large number of machines.

    IBM / InfoQ: "Code Rally"

    Code Rally

    "Code Rally is a fun, social, and unique car racing game based on concepts from artificial intelligence. It challenges your abilities to think ahead and manipulate controls on your vehicle to win the game against your fellow racers.IBM has partnered with InfoQ to create "The Code Rally Challenge", a multi-stage contest where participants with the fastest race times can win great prizes, including one of four Google Nexus tablets and an Alienware gaming laptop"