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bm98on MIT Entrance exam (1869)

Am I the only one who was struck by how much that exam looks like something produced by LaTeX?

http://bm98.posterous.com/did-they-have-latex-in-1869

bm98on Common Programmer Health Problems

That tall decaf from Starbucks is not just a placebo; it has 20mg of caffeine.

See: http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/brewed-coffee/decaf-pik...

bm98on Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

Very blurry indeed.

See for example, "Predictable Programs in Barcodes":

http://repository.upenn.edu/cis_papers/200/

From the abstract: "...In particular, we consider programs for microwave ovens, which provide a basic open API for controlling cooking times..."

The authors were only able to _simulate_ a microwave oven, presumably because the software on real microwave ovens is closed. A reasonable argument could be made that the proprietary nature of microwave oven software has limited innovation in this market.

bm98on Elena Kagan's White House Emails

What's with all the return receipts? Do people really use return receipts that much?

bm98on David Brooks on Complexity

Firewalls are a good computing analogue to the blowout preventers and crosswalks in Brooks' article. When behind a firewall, people tend to be less careful about security.

The acclimation to risk that Brooks talks about is seen in computing all the time too. The longer a security hole goes without being breached, or a software bug goes without consequence, the more likely people are going to underweigh the risk.

bm98on A 2.5 Year-Old Has A First Encounter with An iPad

As a father of a 1.5 year-old who loves the iPhone, this looks very familiar. But toddlers pick up on all kinds of new things incredibly fast, so I'm not sure this tells us much about the learnability of the iPad for computing novices of any other age group.

It seems easier than the typical desktop/laptop, but there are many subtle interactions that have to be learned and practiced to use the iPad. I would like to see how well a 60+ year-old without prior computing experience interacts with it.

bm98on NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

The city is paying some 230 "consultants" an average salary of $400,000 a year for a computer project that is seven years behind schedule and vastly over budget.

This is misleading. The figures in the article are based on the hourly rates charged by the contractor that employs these consultants, not their take home salaries.

This is noted only later in the article:

The actual amounts individual SAIC employees took home are most likely lower than their stated rates, since computer firms typically take a cut of each consultant's charges. Nonetheless, these are breathtaking numbers.

This too is misleading because it suggests that the hourly rate is comparable to the individuals' salaries except for a "cut". In reality, this "cut" is likely 50 percent or more. 60-70% would not be unusual.

This is typical of newspaper coverage of "scandalous" IT contractor pay. The project may indeed be a disaster, but those consultants are not making nearly the money that the article suggests.

bm98on The Buried Treasure in Your TV Dial

Second, over-the-air broadcasts are becoming a nearly obsolete technology. Already, 91 percent of American households get their television via cable or satellite. So we are using all of this beachfront property to serve a small and shrinking segment of the population.

I doubt it's shrinking anymore. Over-the-air HDTV is superior to (compressed) cable and satellite feeds. Plenty of people who never considered broadcast TV when it was analog are now buying antennas replace or supplement their pay-TV.

As more people decide that their TV needs can be met by OTA HDTV and Internet video, it may be cable TV that soon becomes obsolete.

bm98on David Ulevitch: Some thoughts on Google DNS

If Google deletes all of its personally-identifiable data within 48 hours, then the risk to current users of any future privacy policy change is small. The real problem is when a service collects -- and never purges -- data under the guise of one privacy policy, but leaves the door open to adopting a different privacy policy which could be retroactively applied to the data already collected. I'm no lawyer, but the OpenDNS privacy policy does appear to fall into that category: "Your continued use of our sites and services after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change." Right, and if I stop using the service when the policy changes, will my old data be automatically flagged so that it still falls under the old policy?

bm98on Introducing Google Public DNS: A new DNS resolver from Google

"Google Public DNS telephone support * 877-590-4367 in the U.S. * 770-200-1201 outside the U.S."

Telephone support from Google? At first I thought this might be some kind of joke, but I then called and it's just automated help.

bm98on No-contract $30 / $45 Straight Talk wireless plans storm Walmart

Silly newspapers. They want to charge for content but can't bear the thought of losing traffic. So they keep the door open to non-subscribers through Google, and hope subscribers (or potential subscribers) won't find out.

bm98on OpenBSD needs your help - call for donations

When he was 13? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_de_Raadt

bm98on For a Quick Exit, Just Block the Fire Door

It already is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout

bm98on My Software Is Being Pirated

I'm surprised that with all the talk of ethics, no one has mentioned the GNU/Stallman philosophy: those who are unethical are the ones making software but not making it free.