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Monday, August 23, 2010, posted by @ 9:55 AM
Lady Gaga Sings About Java Programming
Thanks for Seth Friedman, who sent me a link to this gem. Words fail me.
BTW, the lyrics are not fully safe for work. You have been warned. Oh and also BTW, I really like Ms. Gaga's music :-)
Quote of the day:
"And now, I'm just trying to change the world, one sequin at a time."
Lady Gaga
Monday, August 9, 2010, posted by @ 4:56 AM
Young Scientist Journeys
My dear friend Tony Grady (who was, among many other things, one of my roommates at the Air Force Academy) wrote me recently, pointing me to a book to which he contributed along with other alumni from the International School of Bangkok. Young Scientist Journeys was published to motivate young students to pursue a career in science.
Quote of the day:
Numerous are the academic chairs, but rare are wise and noble teachers. Numerous and large are the lecture halls, but far from numerous the young people who genuinely thirst for truth and justice. Numerous are the wares that nature produces by the dozen, but her choice products are few.
Albert Einstein
Wednesday, July 28, 2010, posted by @ 1:58 AM
The Facebook Effect
Mark Zuckerberg and David Kirkpatrick spoke at the Computer History Museum, and you'll find their dialog here.
Quote of the day:
The way of the world is meeting people through other people.
Robert Kerrigan
Tuesday, July 20, 2010, posted by @ 12:24 AM
MacPaint Source Code Released
The Computer History Museum, located in Mountain View, California, is not only a museum of hardware but also a museum of software. As reported by Arik Hesseldahl of Bloomberg today, with the permission of Apple Computer, the Museum has made available the original source code of MacPaint as well as the underlying QuickDraw graphics library.
MacPaint was written by Bill Atkinson, a member of the original Macintosh development team. Originally called MacSketch, he based it on his earlier LisaSketch (also called SketchPad) for the Apple Lisa computer. Bill started work on the Macintosh version in early 1983. He also created QuickDraw (then called LisaGraf) for the Lisa. Andy Herzfeld, another key member of the team, considers QuickDraw "the single most significant component of the original Macintosh technology" in its ability to "push pixels around in the frame buffer at blinding speeds to create the celebrated user interface."
MacPaint was released with the Macintosh in January, 1984. The application was written in Apple Pascal and was packaged in a single file of only 5,822 SLOC, together with an additional 3,583 lines of assembly code for the underlying Motorola 68k microprocessor, used to implement routines needing high performance as well as certain interfaces to the operating system. QuickDraw was the Macintosh library for creating bit-mapped graphics and was used by MacPaint and other applications, and consisted of a total of 17,11 lines of 68 assembly code packaged in 36 files.
Quote of the day:
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
Steve Jobs
Thursday, July 15, 2010, posted by @ 1:17 PM
Pattern-Based Engineering
Lee Ackerman and Celso Conzales have recently published Patterns-Based Engineering: Successfully Delivering Solutions via Patterns. I had the opportunity to read their manuscript while in progress, and very much enjoyed what they had to say and how they said it.
You can follow more of their work here.
Quote of the day:
Research is just like sex. Sometimes something useful comes from it, but that is not why we do it.
Richard Feynman
Thursday, June 24, 2010, posted by @ 10:35 AM
Plato
Back in 1976, I had the opportunity to use Plato. Given that I was at the Air Force Academy, AirFlight was a favorite, but I also remember flirting in chat rooms (Talkomatic) and using instant messaging (Term-Talk). And that was thirty-plus years ago.
The Computer History Museum recently held a retrospective on Plato and the videos of that entire conference are now available here. While you are there, do check out the rest of the videos on the Computer History Museum YouTube channel. There are currently a legion of artifacts, with everything from historic computer films from the 1950 and 1960 decades, to museum lectures and panels, exhibit films, and co-production pieces.
Quote of the day:
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and to savor the world. That makes it hard to plan the day.
E. B. White
Thursday, May 20, 2010, posted by @ 12:35 AM
Complexity and Architecture
If you are a fan of jazz and a fan of programming, you might enjoy the music of the convergently named group Rinse the Algorithm.
Quote of the day:
As complexity starts becoming more and more important, architecture is always going to dominate material.
Alan Kay
Monday, May 17, 2010, posted by @ 1:47 AM
Barbie: Computer Engineer
Barbie Millicent Roberts, the best-selling doll of all time, has launched her latest career as a computer engineer.
Quote of the day:
I want one.
Tony Stark
Monday, May 10, 2010, posted by @ 4:07 PM
System Resonance And The Stock Market
I once drove a really nice car that unfortunately would develop the shakes whenever it reached 60 mph. A little above that speed or even a little below, and the ride would be smooth. I recall another car that would let loose an annoying rattle behind the dashboard at particular fan settings. In each case, these cars were otherwise quite lovely to drive. It was only when certain, fairly narrow, conditions were met that they would act strangely. There was nothing really wrong with either car; both exhibited systemic problems that would manifest themselves when each system resonated in undesirable ways.
Actually, this kind of resonance is not uncommon with complex systems. Hit a series of waves in just the right way and you'll break the back of even the most carefully engineered ship; encounter a particular combination of winds and you'll topple the tallest building. You can design for and test against most such conditions, but the state space of any complex system is such that you can't afford to design and test against all possible conditions. So, common practice is to over engineer the system, be certain that you operate it within its intended design envelope, and when things that you could not design or test for happen, patch the system so that it won't happen again. Hopefully, no one dies in the process.
Now, I'm not a financial expert, but my take is that last week's stock market jitters were a manifestation of this kind of complex system resonance. The new SEC rules that have been put into place are thus a (reasonable) systemic patch, for they attempt to break the dynamic coupling among computer trading on different exchanges, a coupling that could not have been anticipated nor tested for. I say "could not have been anticipated" because you can't a priori predict where and when these kinds of resonances will take place; "nor tested" because the highest fidelity simulation of the market is the market itself, and any lesser simulation would likely never exhibit such behavior at all. At worst, a systemic resonance such as this will tear a system apart. Having a human in the loop or having explicit governors vastly changes the dynamics because, from a control systems perspective, you have a very different frequency dynamic going on, one that will either dampen or neutralize the resonance.
What's the lesson here? Software-intensive system are not immune to such systemic problems. Indeed, as we build more systems of systems, it's increasingly likely that we will see more of these kinds of strange, intermittent behaviors. Problem is, each individual system may be operating perfectly, but it's the combination of such systems under particular operating conditions that produces resonance. When that resonance happens, there will be much finger pointing, but that won't solve anything, because it is a systemic problem. Furthermore, we really lack the analytic tools to test for much less reason about such problems in software-intensive systems. So, the lessons from systems engineering apply to software-intensive systems as well: over engineer them, operate them within particular design envelopes; patch the system when it resonates. I should add that having loosely couples systems helps a great deal too, because you give the system room to move, so to speak.
Quote of the day:
It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order---and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.
Douglas Hofstadter
Monday, April 19, 2010, posted by @ 11:51 AM
Many Bills
IBM has just released Many Bills, a Web-based mechanism for exploring congressional legislation.
Quote of the day:
All the legislation in the world will not abolish kissing.
Elinor Glyn
More blog posts...
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