Bullet Points

It's dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.

-- Army General J. R. McMaster, on the growing use of PowerPoint presentations among military commanders, New York Times, 27 April 2010

Twitter

This is an entirely new addition to the historical record, the second-by-second history of ordinary people.

-- Fred R. Shapiro, of the Yale Law School, on an agreement by the Library of Congress to archive Twitter messages, New York Times, 15 April 2010

50 Years Of Public Computing

I had a good time this morning at 50 Years of Public Computing at the University of Illinois where I attended the session dedicated to the PLATO educational computer system.

http://50years.lis.illinois.edu/bibliography/plato.html

The panelists were Don Bitzer, Peter Braunfeld, and Lippold Haken. Half of the people in the audience could easily have served on the panel as well, and I had the pleasure of hearing many of them reminisce about those good old days. I saw Jim Kraatz and Celia (Davis) Kraatz, Rick Hazlewood, Paul Tenczar and Darlene, Jim Knoke, Jack Stifle, Rick Blomme, John Gilpin, Aaron Woolfson, Helen Kuznetsov, Mike Walker and CK Gunsalus, and many others (my apologies to those I've left out).

Here's a link to the dozen or so pics that I shot today. Sadly, I forgot to bring my camera, so these were taken with me Palm Pre -- no zoom, and today the background (thin drapes over a window) was brighter than the foreground ...

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2065040&id=1191873703&l=c35eb843ef

It was a lot of fun, and it makes me that much more interested in the PLATO@50 Conference coming up on 2-3 June 2010 in Mountain View, CA at the Computer History Museum. The conference is dedicated entirely to PLATO, with the theme "Seeing the future through the past". Here's a link to the Museum's page about the conference --

http://www.computerhistory.org/events/listing/plato-at-50/

Presenters include:
Ray Ozzie (Microsoft's chief software architect)
Don Bitzer (initiator of the PLATO project at the UI)
David Frankel
Andrew Shapira
Dave Woolley
... and many others (as listed at the conference URL, above)

In addition to discussing the hardware and software of the PLATO system, there will also be a focus on the culture of the development team, and the online community that sprang up around the PLATO system.

Besides the conference itself, I'm interested in visiting with the people involved, many of whom I worked with (or went to school with) in times past. I started using the PLATO system while in high school, and was a student programmer on the PLATO System Staff at the UI in my teenage years in the late 70s. I was a software engineer at NovaNET (which PLATO evolved into, locally) for over 8 years, ending in 2002. I also worked on the PLATO system as a computer operator at the UI, and as a programmer for the Department of Defense at Chanute AFB in the early 80s. In all, I worked on PLATO and its descendant systems developing educational software and its related infrastructure over a 25-year period.

At the UI's CERL (Computer-based Education Research Lab) much of the work was accomplished by people who pursued their own interests, and then made that work relevant to the community at large. It was a pleasure to work in that culture.

I plan to go to the conference if I can manage it.

Palm Pre Trvth

Here's an update on the Palm Pre, now that I've been using it for a little over 2 months.

Over Easter weekend, I used it on a trip to southern Illinois. Throughout the trip I used it for GPS, streaming music from the Internet, streaming that same music from the Pre to the bluetooth speakers in my car, and as a phone (all at once). With the Pre plugged into the adapter in my car, it's power draw was close to break even; the battery actually went down a little (from 100% to 80%) during a 2.5-hour drive. Additionally, it got a little warm while charging and running all of these radios & apps at the same time. Once I arrived at my destination, I was able to use WiFi connectivity for faster Internet.

Having always-on Internet in my pocket changes the way I use the Internet. When a point of trivia arises, instead of thinking "I could google that", I just go ahead and google it. I carry my Pre loose in my pocket, though I did apply a full-body Zagg (indestructible, thin, nano-tech) skin.

Pros:

Always-on Internet, with easy access to Google, Wikipedia, Youtube, etc.

True multi-tasking, with notification area for updates from running apps

Automatic, background syncing of contacts, etc. with Internet services; no backups required. If you lose your device, a replacement device will have all of your apps/contacts/etc. automatically, within a few minutes of activation.

GPS with Google Maps built in, 802-11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1

Accelerometer for game control using tilt, shake, etc.

Attractive 3.1" 480x320 display w/3D graphics and 16M colors

Touch-active screen with multi-touch (pinch/spread to zoom, etc.)

Proximity sensor disables touch screen when you hold the phone to your ear

Video playback

Desktop-style web browser

Appears as a removable USB drive if you connect it to your PC, allowing file transfer via drag-and-drop

Ability to use the cellular Internet connection + WiFi to create a mobile WiFi-anywhere hotspot supporting up to 5 other devices (Verizon charges for this, and I haven't actually tried it). Laptop owners who don't mind the cost should love this.

Linux under the hood, with easy access to a root prompt for tinkering; WebOS is a joy to use

Well-developed community of users whose work provides features and enhancements otherwise pricey or not available

Palm App Store & community app store on the device; all software added wirelessly. It's possible to own a Pre and never use its USB cable.

3M-pixel camera with flash and video capture

Regular software updates from Palm (from v1.3.5 to v1.3.5.1, and then to v1.4, since mid-January)

Best cellular connectivity I've had (I no longer need to leave the basement at home when a call comes in)

16GB storage

QWERTY keyboard

Hardware mute, LED notifications, hard volume buttons, all work even when device is sleeping

All-day battery life when you're not torturing the device; I torture mine daily, but I also charge it nightly, and can charge it at work if necessary.

Optional Touchstone charging system (wireless magnetic inductive coupling); I have one at home, and another at work.

Cons:

Biggest problem - the keyboard sometimes bounces and/or drops keypresses, making proofreading a necessity

Lack of a 5-way navigator (up/down/right/left/OK), making editing out those typos more awkward

Touchstone charging devices are sometimes flaky, charging to only about 90% before losing connectivity; I have 2 of these, and one is flawless, the other flaky

Aggressive power-saving; when the device auto-sleeps, the GPS stops updating and needs to re-sync on wake. The background "cron" service also sleeps, though this is moot unless you're tinkering.

GPS draws a lot of power; continuous use of GPS (not plugged in, auto-sleep disabled) yields ~2.5 hours battery life

Streaming music from the Internet and re-streaming it via Bluetooth uses a lot of power; continuous use for music like this (not plugged in) yields ~4 to 5 hours battery life

No expandable memory, though I use a tiny fraction of the 16GB capacity; if I added movie-length videos this might matter.

[Edit -- writing this review was a good exercise; I now feel even better about owning/using my Palm Pre. If the keyboard were more reliable, this device would be nearly perfect.]

Only More So

In today's online world, what your mother told you is true, only more so: people really can judge you by your friends.

-- Harold Abelson, MIT computer science professor, on personal information that can be gleaned from social networking sites, NY Times, 17 March 2010

Crosses The Line

When it works, it's amazingly impactful, but when it doesn't work, it's not only creepy but off-putting. What a marketer might think is endearing, by knowing a little bit about you, actually crosses the line pretty easily.

-- Tim Hanlon of Riverview Lane Associates of Chicago, on advertising aimed at Facebook users, New York Times, 4 March 2010

What People Want

When you're young, you look at television and think, "There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down." But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth.

-- Steve Jobs (24 February 1955-), Chairman and CEO of Apple Inc., Interview in WIRED magazine, February 1996

Pre For Me

Palm Pre+ (Verizon) for me today. I've been carrying a Palm Centro as my combination cell phone/calendar/contacts/clock/music system/data caddy for the past year and a half or so. From the little I've played with it so far, the Pre does *not* feel like a Palm. It does feel like a slick high-tech device.

I've spent over 7 years learning all the Palm OS applications that are useful for the types of things I like to do. I hope it's quicker (and cheaper) to find and learn to use the best Pre software.

Text

I need a better word than unprecedented or amazing to describe what's happened with the text-message program.

-- Red Cross spokesman Roger Lowe, on a campaign that has brought in $22 million in pledges since the earthquake in Haiti, New York Times, 19 January 2010

Alphabet Shop

appleman@ncsa.uiuc.edu

After 19 weeks, I now have a new gig. That's the longest break (by 3 weeks) that I've taken from full-time employment in 30 years.

I work for the Cyber Security Directorate of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, in the Institute for Advanced Computing Applications and Technology at the University of Illinois.

Or, as I tell my kids, I work for the CSD of the NCSA, in the IACAT at the UI, aka the Alphabet Shop.

http://security.ncsa.uiuc.edu/

Texting

People who have something really private to say probably shouldn't do it in a text on their cellphone.

-- Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research group based in Washington, New York Times, 9 December 2009

Tasted It

We got more than just a whiff. We practically tasted it with the impact.

-- Peter H. Schultz, professor of geological sciences at Brown University, on a satellite crash that confirmed the presence of water on the moon, New York Times, 14 November 2009

They Surely Will Abide

My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant, whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace.

-- Alfred Nobel (21 October 1833 - 10 December 1896), Swedish chemist, armaments manufacturer, inventor of dynamite, who in his will used his enormous fortune to institute the Nobel Prizes, as quoted in The Military Quotation Book (2002) by James Charlton, p. 114


[It didn't turn out that way.]

Metal Detectorists

People laugh at metal detectorists.

-- Terry Herbert, an Englishman who found an Anglo-Saxon treasure in a farm field worth an estimated $1.6M, NY Times, 25 September 2009

On All The Time

We have entered this new era where essentially everything is on all the time.

-- Alan Meier, an expert on energy efficiency, on the proliferation of gadgets in American homes, New York Times, 20 September 2009

What Sticks

We are no longer at the point that it is acceptable to throw things at the wall and see what sticks.

-- Michael Snow, Wikimedia board chairman, on steps to impose editorial review on articles about living people, New York Times, 25 August 2009

RIP Les Paul

It has to be said, we must all own up that without Les Paul, generations of flash little punks like us would be in jail or cleaning toilets. This man, by his genius, made the road that we still travel today. I don't know how he did it, but I'm so grateful he did.

-- Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards

Elegance

Two tires held in place by ribbons in the middle, thimbles on the edge.
Rubber with no tread, little weight.
Folded in a pocket with room left over.
A half inch touching earth when not.

One frame of angles connected by braze or fiber.
Smooth and shimmering paint attract the eye.
Like a beautiful woman,
or perfect sunset.

Bar with swooping curls at the ends.
Curls that drop from a straight top
and resting place for levers.
All wrapped in tape to caress the hand.

Cranks and cogs transmit force to a whirring chain.
A chain that runs to a tangle of springs and levers.
telling the machine how fast to go,
how good the beast astride.

A thin piece of leather atop a fragile post.
Material slides over the smooth surface a hundred
beats per minute driving the machine on.
Creating a vision of elegance.

All topped by an amalgam of muscle and bone.
Covered with colors of slick and stretchy fabric,
grasping the bars, sitting on the saddle,
cranking the rings that drive the chain and turn the wheels.

The whole is elegant as it slips through the wind,
along tracks, up hills and down.
Elegant, too, when still.
Waiting to be let loose upon the world.

This piece of elegant artistry that is a bicycle.

-- David Kannas, "Elegance", West Seattle Herald, 30 March 2009

Unaware

A ton of people pass me literally unaware of their surroundings.

-- Matthew Downing, Oklahoma City police sergeant, on erratic behavior by drivers talking on their phones or texting, New York Times, 19 July 2009

Mobile Phone

I'm going to kick his arse. The millions that have been spent on this search, the man hours and woman hours that have gone into it ... all because he goes out on a walk without his mobile phone. The only teenager in the world who goes on a 10-mile hike and leaves his mobile phone behind.

-- Richard Cass, father of British teenager Jamie Neale, 19, who was lost for 12 days while hiking in Australia's Blue Mountains, 15 July 2009

Tranquility Base

Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

-- Astronaut Neil Armstrong, from the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing Module Eagle after landing on the moon. It is estimated that there was 11 seconds' worth of fuel left at touchdown, 20 July 1969

Cartoon Thought Bubbles

You'll have half the participants BlackBerrying each other as a submeeting, with a running commentary on the primary meeting. BlackBerrys have become like cartoon thought bubbles.

-- Philippe Reines, senior adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Times, 22 June 2009

Looking Stupid

[W]e need to be careful that politicians do not get talked into putting legislation in place that, in the end, ends up looking stupid.

-- Charles Dunstone, head of UK ISP TalkTalk, on legislation aimed at limiting file sharing, quoted on Slashdot, 7 June 2009

World Peace

If the militaries of all nations standardize on Windows, then eventually they will all be immobilized by malware -- thus bringing about world peace.

-- Comment by jhansonxi on the Linux Insider Blog, June 2009

EULA

If your advertising giveth and your EULA [license agreement] taketh away don't be surprised if the FTC comes calling.

-- Mary K. Engle, Acting Deputy Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, quoted in The Wall Street Journal, 28 April 2009

Spam Nation II

A year ago today I complimented Google for their ability to filter spam, and griped about the roughly 350 pieces of spam that went into my GMail spam folder on a daily basis. At that time, I had 10,251 messages in my spam folder, and I was receiving spam every 4 minutes, 12 seconds.

I don't know whether we're winning the spam wars, or perhaps Google is doing some upstream spam filtering, but my spam folder currently stands at 1324 messages, an average of just over 44 messages per day, or one every 32 minutes, 37 seconds. That's about an eight-fold improvement, and now I can actually check my spam folder for false positives again!

donald appleman / cerl

The following events all occurred on March 12, 1974 --

* Donna Gail Manson, 19, disappeared from the campus of Evergreen State College, the second of "Son of Sam" Ted Bundy's 28 murder victims.

* John Lennon got into a tiff with a photographer at The Troubador in LA.

* Goldie Hawn was filming "Shampoo".

* Lt. William Calley was freed on bail pending an appeal of his convictions for murdering Vietnamese civilians at My Lai 6 years earlier.

* Paul & Susan Newman were spotted in Beverly Hills at Dan Tana's.

* NASA's Mars 6 spacecraft reached Mars where a descent module broadcast the first data returned from the atmosphere of Mars, for 224 seconds, before crashing into the surface.

* My first PLATO signon, donald appleman/cerl was created for me by Bill Golden.

Sincerely

Dear Sir or Madam,

We are writing to let you know that computer tapes containing some of your personal information were lost while being transported to an off-site storage facility by our archive services vendor. While we have no reason to believe that this information has been accessed or used inappropriately, we deeply regret that this incident occurred and we wanted to explain the precautionary steps we have taken to help protect you. ...

Protecting the confidentiality of this information - and all of our clients' information - has long been a top priority at The Bank of New York Mellon. However, in late February 2008, our archive services vendor notified us that they could not account for one of several boxes of data backup tapes being transported to an off-site storage facility. The missing tapes held certain personal information, such as your name, address, Social Security number and/or shareowner account information. ...

Sincerely, Investor Care Response Team

Well-Laid Plan

A well-laid business plan is no guarantee against the disappearance of the industry on which it is based.

-- Tim Cavanaugh, American libertarian writer and editor, Reason Online, May 2003

Plenty There

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

-- Alan Turing (23 June 1912 - 7 June 1954), British mathematician and cryptographer, Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950)

LHC Day 1

Don't cross the streams.

-- Harold Ramis as Dr. Egon Spengler, Ghostbusters, 1984

--

You can think of each experiment as a giant digital camera with around 150 million pixels taking snapshots 600 million times a second.

-- CERN's Ian Bird, who leads the LHC Grid project, a network of 60,000 computers to analyze what happens when protons are hurled at each other

--

If you can read this, then the Large Hadron Collider did not create any earth-consuming black holes today.

Surreal

When I started Oracle, what I wanted to do was to create an environment where I would enjoy working. That was my primary goal. Sure, I wanted to make a living. I certainly never expected to become rich, certainly not this rich. I mean, rich does not even describe this. This is surreal.

-- Lawrence J. Ellison (born 1944), CEO and founder, Oracle Corporation, from Smithsonian Institution Oral and Visual Histories


Java Developer's Journal (28 August 2008) adds: Technology's highest paid CEO currently is also America's highest paid CEO, namely Larry Ellison of Oracle - who with a fiscal 2008 pay package of $84.6M is the top earner at any of the Standard & Poor's 500 companies. Noting that annual pay totals are "based on salary, bonuses, incentives and perks," the Associated Press reports that Ellison's pay in 2008 was 38% higher than the $61.2M pay package he received in 2007.

Too Depressing

The Current State of Copyright Law is too depressing

I regard myself as a centrist. I believe very much that in proper doses copyright is essential for certain classes of works, especially commercial movies, commercial sound recordings, and commercial books, the core copyright industries. I accept that the level of proper doses will vary from person to person and that my recommended dose may be lower (or higher) than others. But in my view, and that of my cherished brother Sir Hugh Laddie, we are well past the healthy dose stage and into the serious illness stage. Much like the U.S. economy, things are getting worse, not better. Copyright law has abandoned its reason for being: to encourage learning and the creation of new works. Instead, its principal functions now are to preserve existing failed business models, to suppress new business models and technologies, and to obtain, if possible, enormous windfall profits from activity that not only causes no harm, but which is beneficial to copyright owners. Like Humpty-Dumpty, the copyright law we used to know can never be put back together again: multilateral and trade agreements have ensured that, and quite deliberately.

-- Google's copyright man, William Patry, on ending his blog on copyright

Borrowing To Buy To Burn

We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that has to change.

-- Former Vice President Al Gore, urging that the United States abandon the use of carbon-based fuels for electricity within 10 years, New York Times, 18 July 2008

Fryer Grease

Fryer grease has become gold. And just over a year ago, I had to pay someone to take it away.

-- Nick Damianidis, an owner of the Olympia Pizza and Pasta Restaurant in Arlington, Wash., on grease thefts, New York Times, 30 May 2008

Code For The Maintainer

Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code is a violent psychopath who knows where you live.

-- From theC2 Wiki Page, http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CodeForTheMaintainer

269m

Eddy Merckx: 49.431km in 1 hour.

In 1972 Eddy Merckx flew to Mexico City to attempt one of the most challenging monuments in sport: the hour record.

Before the advent of advanced carbon materials, disc wheels and lightweight components, the hour record stood as the ultimate measure of man-powered machine.

The day's effort has only been topped twice by traditional bicycles as recognized by the UCI. In 36 years the distance traveled in one hour has grown only 269 meters.

-- Spoke 'N' Word blog

Ethanol Gold Rush

This is a bit like a gold rush. There are unintended consequences of this euphoria to expand ethanol production at this pace that people are not considering.

-- Warren R. Staley, chief executive of Cargill, the multinational agricultural company, New York Times, 25 June 2006

Probably Not Food

I'd probably give up my cellphone. Probably not food. That's really tough. I like food.

-- Ryan Holt, 21-year-old student at the University of Northern Colorado, on the sacrifices he would make to buy a great video game, NY Times, 29 April 2008

RIP Albert Hofmann

Deliberate provocation of mystical experience, particularly by LSD and related hallucinogens, in contrast to spontaneous visionary experiences, entails dangers that must not be underestimated. Practitioners must take into account the peculiar effects of these substances, namely their ability to influence our consciousness, the innermost essence of our being. The history of LSD to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken for a pleasure drug. Special internal and external advance preparations are required; with them, an LSD experiment can become a meaningful experience. Wrong and inappropriate use has caused LSD to become my problem child.

-- Albert Hofmann (11 January 1906 - 29 April 2008), Swiss scientist best known for first synthesizing Lysergic acid diethylamide, "LSD: My Problem Child" (1980) Foreword

New Questions

The New Questions to ask your physician:

1. If I don't have any symptoms, how are you going to keep me healthy?

2. How would you treat me if you didn't have your prescription pad?

3. How are you going to find and treat the cause of my disease, not just the symptoms?

4. Will changing my food habits and life style contribute to healing me faster?

5. Do you keep records of the treatment prescribed by you to me?

-- Dr. Amit K. Saiya, 2 April 2008, blog excerpt

http://dailymusingsofamit.blogspot.com/2008/04/new-questions-to-ask-your-physician.html

Satellite TV Networks, Cell Phones, and GPS, Oh My!

As you may know, my main interest in [communications] is in the use of satellite relays, which I think may revolutionise the pattern of world communications. To the best of my knowledge, I was the first to suggest this possiblity (see "Extraterrestrial Relays", Wireless World, October '45). ... My general conclusions are that perhaps in 30 years the orbital relay system may take over all the functions of existing surface networks and provide others quite impossible today. For example, the three stations in the 24-hour orbit could provide not only an interference AND censorship-free global TV service for the same power as a single modern transmitter, but could also make possible a position-finding grid whereby anyone on earth could locate himself by means of a couple of dials on an instrument about the size of a watch. (A development of Decca and transistorisation.) It might even make possible world-wide person-to-person radio with automatic dialling. Thus no-one on the planet need ever get lost or become out of touch with the community, unless he wanted to be. I'm still thinking about the social consequences of this!

-- Arthur C. Clarke, anticipating international TV networks, GPS, and ubiquitous phone access, letter to Andrew Haley, August 1956

Spam Nation

I use Google Mail (gmail) as a simple way to get ubiquitous access to my email with good spam filtering. They leave stuff in the "spam" folder for 30 days. And they display how many messages are in your spam folder, so it's easy to tell (roughly) how many spam messages were received per day over the past 30 days

I'm just guessing here, but I seem to get a lot of spam, and I'm awfully glad gmail is good at catching it. For the first time today, my spam folder hit >10,000 messages. It currently stands at 10,251 (it was 10,249 when I started typing this), for an average of 341.7 spams per day, which works out to 14.2 spams per hour, or one spam every 4 minutes, 12 seconds.

Now it's at 10,254, up about 300 since yesterday, which indicates a *lot* of spams in the last 24 hours.

XLink ITC-BT Bluetooth Gateway

Last night I installed the XLink ITC-BT Bluetooth Gateway. It works as advertised, which is very cool. And I got it from TheNerds.net for just $124.99, which is also very cool.

Here's the deal -- I ditched my land line ($65 per month) for an additional cell phone on my Family Share Plan with Verizon Wireless ($9.99 per month). Now, this creates the problem of having a two-storey house plus basement with a single cell phone ringing somewhere inside it when someone calls the house line.

This device is the solution. It connects to your cell phone via bluetooth. It has a phone jack on the back. You connect your house phone(s) to the jack on the back of the device. It delivers a dial tone for calling out via house phones, rings the house phones when a call comes in, and passes through Caller ID, all using the cell phone for connectivity (remember, I dropped my land line).

As a bonus, it can connect to as many as 3 cell phones at once, provides differential ring tones for those cell phones, and allows you to switch among the cell phones as if on a multi-line phone system. It also implements call waiting on your house phones in case of multiple incoming calls to different cell phones.