I chose apple. For the record, it was read to me so I could not see the answers. 
Which do you choose?
1. Orange
2. Apple
3. Banana
4. Coconut
5. Pineapple
6. Papaya
7. Mango
8. Cherry
9. Black Grapes
10. Peach
11. Custard Apple
12. Pear
Answers after the jump.
I don’t know why, but I still find it a bit strange to see my own posts to a forum show up in my rss reader.
I’ve resigned to the fact that I won’t be going to Europe this summer. Both the friend I travel with and I just have too much going on. I am starting a new job and just won’t have the vacation time that would do the trip justice. My friend just found out about family events that happen close to the same time frame we were planning to go leaving her in the same boat with no vacation time. Oh well. Makes for a better trip later.
Not all is given up though. There are still plenty of weekend trips to take.
Sometimes one of the things I forget about when writing about tech stuff and what I do is that not everyone knows what I am talking about.
So here is a small lesson that I hope is clear about a comment I made the other day. What did I mean by “How granular are the permissions?”
When dealing with the code that is used to run the world that we know, one of the things that I need to deal with is how much access do I give people.
Just like in the real world you give access to your life on different levels.
These different levels of access to your life change over time. Friends fall from grace as do lovers. Then when the stranger asks you how it’s going and you dump all of your problems on this person raising their access temporarily to your life. Acquaintances become friends, friends become lovers and so on.
This what I mean by how granular the permissions are. It determines how much access I give someone to the secret source code and why.
It’s can be rather complicated and often changes. There is a lot of crossover between them. Knowing how detailed I can get is a must and it determines how policy is set
Whenever I’ve run ads on a website I specifically did not use doubleclick ads. The reason for this was that I never saw a need or that I never liked the big flashing, largely irrelevant ads at the top of my web pages.
Everyday I scan http://carpicarhive.com to make sure that no porn showed up in the database and to quickly remove it if it did. When I did this yesterday there was a big bright red ad for the new Mazda sports car that is now out. A Giant banner, mismatched to both the color and layout of my web page. With a note about doubleclick in small text at the bottom. Kudos to Google for at least making it related to cars, but a little warning would have been nice. Or even the choice to not run a banner ad.
The advertisements have since changed back to text, but I don’t look forward to when they appear again.
I spent some time watching old Steve Jobs presentations. I particularly like the 1997 Mac World presentation which was his first after being asked to return to Apple.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEHNrqPkefI
I don’t really care for the part about Microsoft being a partner, but, in general this talk gives good advice for any company trying to be successful or trying to recover.
I found this while stumbling aroudn the internet. Turns on the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley is on Google Video (youtube)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7941901498664355924
I really like this movie. Everyone growing up has people in movies or sports they look up to and follow. I followed Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Even though this movie is largely fictionalizes the story and gets some things out of order, it’s still interesting and does give some insight.
Over the next week or so I am going to finally break all of my old posts up into categories. Right now everything is filed under “General” which is the default that wordpress comes with. Going though some of my old posts made me realize how drasticly different the topics of the posts get. So in an effort to get a little more orgainized, I’m going to be trying out different categories and see what happens.
I’ve mentioned quite a few times that I believe Google is following in the same footsteps as Microsoft. Perhaps more than Google or even Microsoft want to believe. They are just doing it much faster than Microsoft did. There are a number of similarities I could spend time enumerating but for now I’ll stick to just one. How Google’s market share could land them in a battle with the US Government in an Antitrust lawsuit.
Microsoft had (and still has) the majority of the market share when it comes to desktop operating systems. During the 90s they used this as a way to pressure computer manufacturers to not install other operating systems and software on their computers. Not only could Dell not sell you a linux computer, but on the windows computer, Dell was required to ship MSN software installed instead of AOL, and they were not allowed to offer pre-installed Corel software such as WordPerfect, but could offer Microsoft Office. In essence shutting all of competing software out of the mass production market. Dell isn’t the only company Microsoft did this to. Putting all of the manufacturers into the same position of only being able to ship MS software and still be able to compete. Did you know that companies like Dell and HP only pay around $20 for Windows? Now imagine that they had to pay full retail for Windows for every computer they shipped with Windows. About a $200 difference per computer. This is anti-competitive behavior. It is illegal to use your power to prevent a competitor from being sold along side your own product.
Now lets look at Google. Google currently has about %50 market share of the search market. When people want to find something, they “Google it”. It has been proven that where your page shows up in the search results directly impacts views of your page and in a lot of cases, income generated from it. I’ve seen this myself on one of my webpages*. If your pagerank drops, then your views drop, and your income drops. It’s that simple. Google is also an advertising company. They make money off the text ads and now banner ads with the purchase of DoubleClick. In order to make money they count on their ads being placed far and wide*. This means that any form of paid advertising on other webpages directly competes with their adsense program.
Now comes the possible anti competitive behavior. Google is considering dropping the page rank of web pages that contain paid links. Other than google text ads. Companies don’t pay for ads on low ranking web pages. If you want to maintain your page rank, you would be forced to give up the paid links and go exclusivly with google’s ads which pay at a much lower rate. What do you do. If Google did not have such a high market share and such influence, this really would not be a problem. But because they basicly control how popular a web page is, they can make or break a business that relies on ad or link revenue. They were initally noted for not allowing their search results be influenced by their own advertising revenue, but this idea of lowering a pagerank of a site that is using someone else’s advertising flies right in the face of that. The search results will be influence by their revenue model forming a “Us or no one” advertising system. This is anti-competitive.
I suspect that Google will be looked at hard by our Government as their market share increases and it becomes evedent how much power they have.
* notes after the jump. (more…)
Today is 4/20. That majical, mystical day when people who enjoy smoking pot find another reason to smoke it. (Like that really makes any differences). I have quite a bit of experience with it. Not with smoking it, though I will admit I have a few times. But I’ve been around a lot of it. When I say a lot, I mean a lot.
The area I grew up in is a high production area for marijuana. It wasn’t just my friends were smoking it and sometimes selling it, it was my friends’ parents who were growing it. Not just for their own use, but crops that when harvested often filled up a large number of garbage bags. Mostly their parents were nice people, if not a paranoid. In some cases smoking pot was a family thing.
But operations like these weren’t without their dangers. The parents would often be paranoid and stressed because of the fear of being busted. Perhaps it was the paranoia that went along with smoking pot all the time. You didn’t dare wonder into the woods around their houses. Crops were often set with booby traps that could prove to be fatal. You never knew when you would come across someone’s hidden crop. If you did, you made sure to leave and never go back. I can remember once being shot at by a grower when a friend and I stumbled onto an operation. We ran full speed for three miles until we were safe.
Then there is the price. Several of my friends whose parents grew crops lost their land, homes, and families. Put in jail, or kids taken away and put in foster care. Families broken up because of the stress involved in running something like that. I don’t know a single one of my friends families that are still together today. They all came out alright. Growing up and moving on. Making their own path legally. But you can see the damage when they talk about the past.
In my teenage years, I’ve perhaps seen over a ton of it. I could have easily got into it myself, but the price was too high for me to want to.
No not that kind… sheesh.
Subversion is the name of a revision control system. Like most things GNU, it’s name has a double meaning. I could try to explain the double meaning of this one, but I would also have to describe the history of revision control systems. I would also have to describe what a revision control system is. There are already plenty of books out there that already do this.
Subversion is a product that I need to become an expert at using. I don’t suspect it would be too hard, but while reading up on it and trying some things out, I began to think about how I learned things in school.
In school, we were all given text books. The teacher would often give us reading to do. We would then usually be assigned a few questions to answer. These question were usually at the back of the book. I actually kind of miss these question/answer sections of the book. When I pick up a book now, it sometimes gives a summary, but that’s about it.
What I need is a lesson plan. A step by step series of exercises and questions that will help me get to know my way around this product. Not just for the stuff that I know I need to learn, but the other things that differentiate if from what I am used to.
Here is what I know I need to learn, and a few notes.
A chart comparing the different systems would be nice. Having a set of exercises would be nice too. Perhaps I should create one.
She’s calling again. Three times in 20 minutes this morning. She wants to have the divorce paperwork rewritten. She wants all of the bad removed and update the custody agreement for our youngest son.
It’s not going to happen. Here is why.
Julia,
Having the divorce paperwork drawn up was one of the most painful things I’ve had to do in my life. I am by nature, not someone to point out or even think about all of the bad things that have happened just to use them for gain. That in essence is what I had to do. But every last word is the truth. It is not an exageration like what I have seen in friends divorce paperwork. It is nothing more than a recall of the events that happened.
The statement about endangering the children is completely true. Allowing children to burn toys and set off small fireworks inside the house is not safe by any stretch of the imagination. Allowing a 4 year old kid climb up on parked cars and jump across a 6 foot drop into the yard is also not safe. Demanding that a kid stand outside in 30 degree weather because the house is evil, and not letting him wear a coat because it came from the house also cannot be justified. Trying to convince the kids to go on a road trip with you and your two drug dealing/using boyfriends also falls into that category of unsafe and endangerment.
The statement about abandoning the family is also true. Several times you just left. Several times I filed missing persons reports only to have you found in some strange place unaware of who or where you are. Yes you were dillusional. You somehow justify that as an excuse saying “You weren’t responsible for it because you were manic.” Perhaps you are not responsible for your actions when you are in that state, but I am responsible for the children. How can I justify letting you be fully responsible for children when you cannot be responsible for yourself. You just leaving, dillusional or not, is abandonment. The only difference is that you are not held legally accountable for it.
Furthering the statement about abandoning the family. What about the time you called from the hospital saying you were never coming home again. Found yourself a place to live, then left there with two strange men, only to show up at my house demanding money so that you could move to someplace else. You then disappeared, your car abandonded 300 miles away. Missing for two weeks. That also is abandonment.
As for the custody. I have sole custody of our son. I fully intend to keep it that way. No joint custody. Period. As provided by the statements of abandonment, you have proven that you are not responsible. But this goes even further with your recent bad choices to move in with a known drug user even at the expense of getting to visit with your son. I will not take the chance on having our son exposed to that. Having joint custody would do just that. I will remain the sole decision maker for our son period. Again, saying “But I was manic!” does not change the fact that it happened. What kind of parent would I be to put our son into that sort of danger.
I will continue to fly him to his grandparent’s house where you are living on a somewhat regular basis, but demanding that he be there every other weekend is time and cost prohibitive. I am already spending $300 a month so he can see you, but unless you are willing to pay half, more than once a month is not going to happen. Also, I need to be sure that he is going to visit a stable environment. I will not send him into an unknown without support such as your parents or your sister.
Go ahead and do as I suggested. Anything you want to have changed, talk it over with your lawyer. I will take any responses he or you may propose and I will have my lawyer respond why I am not changing them.
As for the threat of having the divorce revoked because you were in a group home when you signed the papers, not only have you had plenty of time in the last four years to contest it, but if you try, I will pull out all of the stops. I have chosen to hold back thus far, but I will not be so nice in the future. Everything will come out. From your affairs, to your neglegence, to you threatening me with a butcher knife, to the money I gave you for your apartment, to the money I gave you to help you out when you needed food, to the police records of all contact with you. Everything will come up, to the debt that I paid off all of, which under law was 1/2 yours, to the hidden credit cards that I had no knowlege of, but was still responsible for, to you getting credit using my income level as your income….and on and on. All the cards will be on the table. If you don’t wind up owing me money, there is a possiblilty you will owe the state money, and quite possibly wind up in Jail. You will lose what little you have now. Very few things make me more angry than threats like that. You will see a side of me that very, very rarely ever comes out.
Go ahead. Try. I promise to fight back.
The events at Virginia Tech are horrible. My heart and prayers go out to those families who lost loved ones today.
I can’t watch what the reporters are doing any more. They are scavenging. Sensationalizing. Making every last detail big news. Turning tragedy into entertainment. There is something fundamentally wrong when a reporter asks a student who was almost shot how it feels that his best friend is dead instead of him. That was too much. The TV is off.
I think it would do them all some good to watch this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbVeN13wGFc
As thankful as I am for all of the experience I’ve gained over the years at Microsoft, I have to admit that their tactics have been both aggressive and without restraint when it came to squashing the competition. Something you can do when you have all the money. Today they lost a round in their own game. And hard. By a company they did not take seriously a few years ago.
Microsoft for the longest time had the financial power to beat out anyone. Either through power of persuasion (If you support them, then we wont give you the same deal as your competitor) or just plain throwing money at something (Internet Explorer vs Netscape) or outright buying anything that could be competition.
I had read through various tech blogs I watch that Microsoft was bidding on DoubleClick. DoubleClick is behind about 90% of the ads you see on commercial websites, including sites belonging to Microsoft. After failing at their own ad scheme, and losing more search market share to Google, they needed something they new would work. DoubleClick is just that solution. It is already well established, profitable, and growing. Last year DoubleClick took in about $100 million.
Then I hear that Google jumped in and started a bidding war against Microsoft for ownership of DoubleClick. I had a lot of thoughts about this one. Google already has one of the most successful ad revenue generating streams in the world. Are they just after their only compitition? Are they only doing this to force Microsoft to pay more for it and have no intention of acutally buying it? Do they really intend to buy it just to keep Microsoft from having it?
In the end, Google wound up buying it. The winning bidder. They paid $3.5 Billion for it. Or in more revealing terms, 35 times the revenue of DoubleClick last year. Unless they crank up the revenue DoubleClick generates, it is a money loser for a long time to come, on the order of decades.
This was a purely offensive move on Googles part. Microsoft was put in a position they could not win by the only company in the last 20 years to be able to match their financial strength and agressiveness.
It’s one of those very solid landing blows that lets you know the current title holder may be in for a real fight, and may lose.
Lets try this again. Today I signed and returned an offer/acceptance letter for Voicebox. Tomorrow morning I give my two weeks notice at my current employer.
This time I did my research. The company is privately funded meaning no venture capital. It has venture capitalists constantly knocking on it’s door though. The founders of the company have a proven track record with companies in the past. Employee attrition is the lowest I’ve heard about any company. To them, hiring the best candidate doesn’t mean the most technically capable, rather, someone who will fit well on the team. I won’t be working in a single OS environment, but a multiple OS environment.
Not only that, while interviewing with different people, I had some great conversations about things other than work.
There are a number of reasons why I decided to leave intrinsyc. I can’t remember which is NDA and which is not, so I’ll keep quiet about it all. But most of all, everyone seems to suffer from “Not my job” syndrome. No one is taking any risks, no one is questioning what we are doing and why. They are just doing what they are told. I’ve shaken the boat a few times and people just looked at me funny. Throw me a bone here… Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m right. Tell me something. Anything. Don’t just look at me like I’ve just turned glow in the dark green.
“Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.”
“I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I’m dead.”
“Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”
–Kurt Vonnegut November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007
These guys make some very cool stuff! Think about how the computer is access on Star Trek. Using natural language for input. No using a voice to navigate menus or anything like that, just tell the computer what you want and it figures it out.
This blog may contain strong language, insults, opinions, and references to sex which you may find offending and/or may be inappropriate for people under the age of 18. It may contain pictures that depict violence. It may contain pictures that are sexual in nature. The pictures, comments, and posts may insult you, your religion, your family and/or your country.
Link on the picture takes you to the set I took around my yard Saturday afternoon. This little guy is burried back inside a very large bush. There are a lot of these pink flowers on the outside of the bush which is around 15 feet tall. It’s really quite a beautiful bush. It’s located on my neighbors property and climbs through the fence and up into the air. But this one flower seems to be grabbing the only light that reaches the inside of the plant.
Actually it’s a few pictures of cherry blossoms I took while taking my lunch break down by Kirkland. CLick on the picture for more.
In this post I mentioned about planting trees. Well, the seeds I mentioned ordering never arrived. I emailed the website, but they said they mailed them. No real loss. Only about $15. But rather than try again, My girlfriend and I picked up a beautiful seven foot tall red and yellow Japanese Maple. It blooms in spring a fiery yellow and red. It turns green throughout the summer then turns orange in the fall. At left is a small picture of it.
To be honest, I’ve never taken so much care in how a tree was planted. When planting trees in my hometown, I just dug one up and transplanted it to my yard. This one is a little different. It’s not a wild tree that had to be hardy to just get started and survive, this one came in a pot, had been grafted and cared for. So taking extra time and care seemed to be warranted.
I have a great camera that is letting me take some amazing pictures. Pictures I never thought I would be able to take. But I am finding one drawback. Though I would say this drawback is not really with the camera. It’s a 10 mega-pixel camera. Each of the pictures it takes usually wind up being about 4 megabytes in size. Great for detail, terrible for uploading. I’m going to spend the next few days uploading some of the pictures I’ve taken over the last couple of months.
As I upload them, I’ll post a re-sized version of my favorites from each of the sets here with a link back to my gallery for the full sets.
Well, OK, it was more of a guess when I made the comment.
On this blog I made a comment that it would not surprise me if the founder of the Girls Gone Wild videos landed himself in jail because of something he did or said. (or something to that effect, I don’t remember the exact comment now)
I stumbled on this news article while poking around the web tonight.
http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070404/APN/704044207
There is a radio show that comes on late in the evening that I don’t listen to. It just happens to air on the local rock station I listen to. In general I find the host offensive. His total lack of respect towards women is is just appalling. But it is inevitable that I get involved in some late night programming project and forget to change the radio station and notice that this show is on and will hear some argument he is having with a caller. Usually the caller is female, but not always.
They are usually telling the host how horrible he is. How he is such a bad influence. How he is corrupting the minds of youth, and causing violence towards women. The argument usually ends with either the host or the caller hanging up on the other in mid sentence.
I’d like to make a few points on this.
My kids have heard this show on occasion. It was my choice to lead by example. At first, being boys (getting to be young men), they thought this show was funny. When they laughed, I didn’t. When they said something was funny, I disagreed and said why. I pointed out how it was disrespectful, untrue or inaccurate. I pointed out flaws in the hosts comments, the supporting callers comments, as well as the arguing caller’s comments. I made it clear that I did not like the show, but I’d let them form their own opinion.
They don’t listen to the show anymore, by their own choice. They just change the dial.
You can now reach this blog at http://jhires.com
You “should” be able to get to it at the old address of http://rdsd.com/wordpress but I haven’t really tested things out a whole lot at this point.