Surfin' Safari

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Dave Hyatt has got to be one of the bravest people on the ‘net I’ve seen. Consider…

  1. He’s a developer for Apple, working on their Safari web browser…
  2. He keeps a weblog where he…
    1. Tracks and responds to what people are saying about Safari, good and bad…
    2. Reports on which bugs have been fixed and which are being worked on…
  3. …and on top of all that, he’s actually soliciting requests from readers as for what they’d like to see in Safari!

Kudos to Dave for being crazy enough to do this, and to Apple for allowing him to do this. More companies need to realize that this is a real, effective way to encourage their users. We know that Safari is being worked on, we know that it’s being worked on by someone who genuinely cares about the project, and we know that they care about and listen to what their customers want to see in the product. I can’t think of a better way to build and keep customer loyalty than that.

First floor: mens wear, ladies undergarments, and zero-g toilets

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I mentioned this briefly last March, but with the Columbia disaster, the idea of space elevators is starting to float around the ‘net again.

Forget the roar of rocketry and those bone jarring liftoffs, the elevator would be a smooth 62,000-mile (100,000-kilometer) ride up a long cable. Payloads can shimmy up the Earth-to-space cable, experiencing no large launch forces, slowly climbing from one atmosphere to a vacuum.

For a space elevator to function, a cable with one end attached to the Earth’s surface stretches upwards, reaching beyond geosynchronous orbit, at 21,700 miles (35,000-kilometer altitude). After that, simple physics takes charge.

The competing forces of gravity at the lower end and outward centripetal acceleration at the farther end keep the cable under tension. The cable remains stationary over a single position on Earth. This cable, once in position, can be scaled from Earth by mechanical means, right into Earth orbit. An object released at the cable’s far end would have sufficient energy to escape from the gravity tug of our home planet and travel to neighboring the moon or to more distant interplanetary targets.

Fascinating stuff to envision, and according to that article, it could conceivably be a reality in ten to fifteen years.

Part of the fun for me, though, was just tracking the thread across the web. I picked up on this from Doc Searls pointing to Dana Blankenhorn’s series of five blog posts about the idea. Dana’s posts led me to John Stryker pointing out some possible problems. The ensuing conversation in the comments to John’s post included some encouraging words from Michael Laine, the president of HighLift Systems, a company actively working on attempting to collect the necessary technology and funding to put this project into reality.

While this will probably come as no great surprise to those who know me, I’m solidly in the camp of people who would love to see this vision become a reality. If I had the pocket change, I’d write the check myself — unfortunately that’s a wee bit out of my range at the moment. Still, though, I’ll keep hoping.

th3 10rdz pr4y3r

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If Jesus were a modern hacker (L33T HaXX0r):

Our Father, who 0wnz heaven, j00 r0ck!
May all 0ur base someday be belong to you!
May j00 0wn earth just like j00 0wn heaven.
Give us this day our warez, mp3z, and pr0n through a phat pipe.
And cut us some slack when we act like n00b lamerz,
just as we teach n00bz when they act lame on us.
Please don’t give us root access on some poor d00d’z box when we’re too pissed off to think about what’s right and wrong,
and if you could keep the f3i off our backs, we’d appreciate it.
For j00 0wn r00t on all our b0x3n
4ever and ever,
4m3n.

(Via Phil)

What Al said, in tiny bits.

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I’ve seen this all over the ‘net, but had yet to make a link to it. As it’s far past time I did so, here it is: Why Al says that ‘E’ is the same as ‘MC^2^’, as told so that each word has four jots or less.

So, have a seat. Put your feet up. This may take some time. Can I get you some tea? Earl Grey? You got it.

Okay. How do I want to do this? He did so much. It’s hard to just dive in. You know? You pick a spot to go from, but soon you have to back up and and go over this or that item, and you get done with that only to see that you have to back up some more. So if you feel like I’m off to the side of the tale half the time, well, this is why. Just bear with me, and we’ll get to the end in good time. Okay?

Okay. Let’s see….

On a side note, do you have any idea how hard it is to type like this? Lots of hits to this site for help, I tell you! I stand even more in awe of the man who was able to set this down this way — and do it well — than ere I sat down to dash off this post!

(Via MeFi)

Oh, and if any of you fine folk who read my site want to talk back on this post, I urge you to do your best to use this vein also. It will sure put that grey mass in your head to the test!

Networking sex

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When network engineers start discussing sex…

…the average amount of information per ejaculation is 1.56010^9^ 2 bits * 2.0010^8^, which comes out to be 6.2410^17^ bits. That’s about 78,000 terabytes of data! As a basis of comparison, were the entire text content of the Library of Congress to be scanned and stored, it would only take up about 20 terabytes. If you figure that a male orgasm lasts five seconds, you get a transmission rate of 15,600 tb/s. In comparison, an OC-96 line (like the ones that make up much of the backbone of the internet) can move .005 tb/s. Cable modems generally transmit somewhere around 1/5000^th^ of that.

(Via MeFi)

Work, work, work

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Looks like I’m working late tonight. I’ll be here until about midnight or so, and catching a ride home with one of the other guys in the store. Busy busy busy — bleah.

On the upside, I finally got a chance to talk with my boss about my possible future with Xerox, a conversation that I’d been itching for for a while now. When working for Xerox, a temp such as myself can be used for a maximum of 18 months before the situation needs to be re-evaluated. I’ve known that the tail end of my 18 months was coming up fairly quickly, but wasn’t at all sure about what I’d be looking at when it it. Some of my questions finally got answered today.

It started when my boss called me into his office and handed me a Xerox job application. It turns out that my deadline day is February 8^th^ — this Saturday — and if something wasn’t done by then, I’d end up locked out of the pay system. I went ahead and filled it out (getting a paycheck is, overall, a fairly nice thing), and we spent some time talking about my current and future options.

The current situation boils down to this: between now and Friday (since the eighth is this Saturday) Xerox has to make me some sort of offer for employment with them. Exactly what that offer is going to be is unclear at the moment, and depends very much upon a big numbers game within the company involving not just headcount for this printshop, but headcount for the region. Worst case scenario, they’ll offer me a ‘temp-to-hire’ position as a Xerox employee (rather than through a temp agency), best case scenario, they’ll offer me a full time permanent position. Either way, if I don’t like the offer they present me with, I have the option of declining. Should I decline, than they can either restart my 18 month cycle as a temp, or I can choose to wave goodbye and find something else.

I asked about what options might lie for me if I stayed with Xerox — as I’ve mentioned (groused over [whined about]) at times, nearly a decade of working in printshops is quite enough, and I’m getting more interested in finding other avenues to explore. My boss indicated that not only is there generally a good amount of movement within Xerox, but one of the things he’d tried to stress on the paperwork determining what offer Xerox will be making me was my versatility here. In the time I’ve been here, I’ve shown myself not only able to use any of the bindery equipment that I’m technically here for, but also able to run any one of the production printers, both black and white and color, not to mention putting in a few months re-coding an internal website — and doing all this on the base salary of your basic “bindery monkey.” So, while timing is always a bit of a question, it does look like I wouldn’t be stuck “pushing the green button” if I chose to stick around.

There are also various training options that I could take advantage of down the line, from internal training classes to possibly going back to school with Xerox’s help financially (on the assumption that whatever I’m going to school for would benefit Xerox in some way — networking or technology classes they’d be likely to pony up for, underwater basket weaving I’d have to pay for out of my pocket).

So, all in all, it was a good talk, and I ended up a bit more optimistic than I had been before. I’m still somewhat undecided, and definitely keeping my option to just renew my contract employee status and then look for something else in the back of my head, but at the very least, it’s worth seeing what my options are and what Xerox offers me. As long as I’m at least maintaining my status quo, it’ll be worth thinking about — maybe I’ll get lucky and things might even improve a bit. Who knows?

As before, though, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

The case for war

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Gen. Powell made his presentation to the UN today, giving America’s (ahem…Bush’s…) case for going to war with Iraq. I haven’t had time to look over the full thing yet, but the US Department of State has the entire presentation available on the web. I’ll be printing it out and looking it over as soon as I have an opportunity.

Bush sets new record

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304 billion dollar deficit

Well, Bush has gone and set a new record by plunging the U.S. into a $304,000,000,000 deficit, which is only likely to get worse and worse (I’ve seen some estimates eventually putting us at the trillion level) should we start turning Iraq into a molten slagheap. Doubly impressive when only a few years ago, at the end of Clinton’s time in office, the US actually had a $236 billion surplus — according to this infographic, the first time the US budget had been in the black at all since the Johnson/Nixon switchover. Previous recordsetting defecits had been set by King George the First ($290.4 billion) and his predecessor, Ronald Reagan ($221.2 billion).

I guess there’s always that drive to show up your folks by doing them one better, eh? Seems to me that Bush (and the country) would have been better off if he’d tried to show Clinton up by increasing the surplus, but hey, I’m no politician.

And yes, I know that the Sep. 11th attacks have contributed heavily to our current deficit. However, I also know that the surplus was virtually wiped out prior to Sep. 11th with Bush’s tax rebate checks.

Grrr. Can we just get to the next round of elections please? My single vote might not be enough to get Bush out of office on its own, but I’m sure itching to do my part to try.

(Infographic from Yahoo!, via Megnut)

More on Animatrix

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Back in October, I mentioned an upcoming DVD release called ‘Animatrix’ — a series of short animated films set in the universe of The Matrix. It turns out that of the nine shorts that will be on the disc, four are going to be released to the web, and the first has just been posted.

Very interesting stuff, as it turns out. Well animated, and at least in this epsisode, fleshing out the back-story of the universe, taking a look at the creation of the machines and beginnings of their rise to power. In fact, I think that one of the sequences in the short — a robot on trial for the murder of it’s owner — reminded me of one of Asimov’s robot stories, though I can’t bring to mind exactly which one. Or I could be remembering something else, which is entirely possible. In any case, I’ll definitely be picking up the DVD when it finally hits the streets.

(Via /.)

WTC finalists chosen

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The two finalists for the WTC replacement

The two finalists for the project to rebuild on the site of the World Trade Center have been announced.

Of the two, I’m partial to the Think proposals, especially the World Cultural Center. I wasn’t entirely sold on it until I watched the flyover animation of the entire structure, but I have to admit, that’s a very impressive concept. I also liked the effect of the lit ‘towers’ at night (seen at the end of the animation) — in my mind, they tie in very nicely to the Towers of Light spotlights that took the place of the towers for a time.

Daniel Libeskind’s proposal, on the other hand, just doesn’t grab me as much. It doesn’t have quite the same striking visual aspect to it — aside from the spire reaching skyward, for the most part it just comes across to me as one more big building in the middle of New York. Maybe it would work better once realized, but from the pictures shown here, I’d go for the Think towers, myself.

So — which is your choice?