Thursday, June 30, 2005

Kids - how amazing

Jaime left a comment on one of my blog entries - which automatically gets mailed to me. Nothing special, just kind of a tease. I saw she had sent something, opened it and read it, and got all warm feeling inside. Wow... its just kind of amazing how much you can love your kids that just having them blog something back to you makes your heart warm.

I'm so lucky to have some a wonderful family. Love you girls!

AT&T to drop third-party security for its own software - Computerworld

Make sense to me.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

My Philosophy of Worship

When I was starting out, my dad, who was a musician told me, that "You should play each night as if it was your last, knowing you'll be playing forever." Alex VanHalen
Yeah... that pretty much sums it up.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Overheard Conversation

Someone at work was in his boss' office talking about a stolen credit card. He lent the card to his daughter, someone stole it from her, and Friday night charged $800 on it.

If it had been stolen from him, the bank would have covered it. But he gave it to his daughter and it was stolen from her, so its not covered...

Something to keep in mind.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

L.A. Times Suspends 'Wikitorials' - Yahoo! News

This rocks. Not that they had to suspend it because of all the inappropriate use, but that they tried it at all. And that many people used it appropriately. It will happen. I love to see this kind of thing.

Monday, June 20, 2005

WSJ.com - Portals

"Explanations about the source of the Internet's phishing epidemic often involve exotic tales of Asian gangs or the Russian Mafia. It turns out, though, that your average phisher is much more likely to be someone like 'C-Power,' who is probably a teenager somewhere overseas with a computer in his bedroom and a lot of alarming friends in his buddy lists."

Friday, June 17, 2005

iWon

Wow... I signed up for this in the beginning, when there were all kinds of giveaway sites. Then I forgot all about it. The winner for today is a friend of mine! I'll have to check this out and see if I'm still there somewhere...

Thursday, June 16, 2005

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Inconstant Constants -- [ COSMOLOGY ] -- Do the inner workings of nature change with time?

"One ratio of particular interest combines the velocity of light, c, the electric charge on a single electron, e, Planck's constant, h, and the so-called vacuum permittivity, 0. This famous quantity, = e2/20hc, called the fine-structure constant, was first introduced in 1916 by Arnold Sommerfeld, a pioneer in applying the theory of quantum mechanics to electromagnetism. It quantifies the relativistic (c) and quantum (h) qualities of electromagnetic (e) interactions involving charged particles in empty space (0). Measured to be equal to 1/137.03599976, or approximately 1/137, has endowed the number 137 with a legendary status among physicists (it usually opens the combination locks on their briefcases)."
Just kind of funny what numbers have meaning to different people, and that a whole class of people would pick some number like this as a password. I'm sure its true in other fields as well, I've just never heard of it before or stopped to think about it. You think IRS people use some combination of 1040 for their passwords?

Monday, June 13, 2005

Michael Jackson Is Acquitted on All Counts in Molestation Case - New York Times

"Michael Jackson was acquitted today of all charges in connection with accusations that he molested a 13-year-old boy he had befriended as the youth was recovering from cancer in 2003."
In case you hadn't heard...

The Techgurus Blog ? Blog Archive ? First time with the Acrylic Beta from Microsoft

Ran across this. Acrylic is Microsofts answer to Photoshop. I don't use Photoshop, but I know some readers do, so figured I'd post this. This is just one person's prespective, but its always good to see what others think. I didn't read the entire article. It is beta, so some bugs should be expected... but it should be close to being done.

Friday, June 10, 2005

BBC NEWS | Technology | Jackson suicide spam hides virus

The message hopes to catch people's attention because of the huge interest in the on-going child abuse trial.
The fake message contains a web link that supposedly links to Mr Jackson's suicide note.
But anyone clicking on the link will have their PC invaded by a virus that gives others access to that machine.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

komo news | 'This Is Not Right'

"DES MOINES - Cecilia Beaman is a 57-year-old grandmother, a principal at Pacific Middle School in Des Moines, and as of Sunday is also a suspected terrorist."
So much for common sense...

Monday, June 06, 2005

Wired News: Hollywood Orders: Apple Wed Intel

More on Apple's running on Intel

Apple to Use Intel Microprocessors Beginning in 2006

"Apple announced plans to deliver models of its Macintosh computers using Intel microprocessors by this time next year, and to transition all of its Macs to using Intel microprocessors by the end of 2007."

Saturday, June 04, 2005

Gears of War - Xbox 360 Screenshot Gallery - TIME Magazine

Some very cool shots and commentary on the new Xbox 360 console and games. Available around Thanksgiving of this year - in time for Xmas purchasing.

Friday, June 03, 2005

I'm such a geek

In addition to my normal tasks, I'm now a part of another team as well. I'm serving in the role of architect on a new project. One we hope to get a patent on (which would be cool). For now we are meeting to discuss the application, interfaces, etc.

The task that Terry and I have for this week is to flesh out the API and create the initial collaboration diagrams. So I've been mostly holed up in a conference room all day yesterday (and probably most of today), doing Object Modeling with Rational Rose, focusing on class diagrams and collaboration diagrams. I moved my monitor and keyboard down to the room instead of just using my laptop. Anyway, modeling, drawing things on the whiteboards, recording this on the wiki, and creating jpg files for the diagrams and uploading them to the wiki as well. Using the wiki so that we can post fairly real-time progress, and get feedback as quick as possible.

Why am I a geek? Because I'm LOVING this. Its been a while since I've done any modeling, and its just so cool. And last time I did it, most of it was communicated via Word... and now we're using the wiki. It is just that cool. I'm happy.

CNN.com - Microsoft: MSN site hacked in South Korea - Jun 2, 2005

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- Microsoft acknowledges that hackers booby-trapped its MSN Web site in South Korea to steal passwords from visitors. The company says it was unclear how many Internet users might have been victimized."

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Blogger - thanks again

And thanks go out again to Blogger for their "system upgrades". I'm just loving how fast posting is.

For someone who worked on a 300 baud transport into the company databases, its just mind blowing to be sitting in my dinning room, not hooked to any wires, and be adding articles to the internet at this kind of speed. One of the nice things about getting old, you really appreciate advances in technology. And the speed of the computer, transport, etc. is only going to increase. How cool.

[ISN] BT Turns Sheriff On Lawbreakers To Stop Fraud

"'MCI is still cooperating on many aspects of Sheriff,' said Cooper, adding that the company is still expected to deploy the system this year."
Yeah... "still cooperating". For legal reasons (even though this is my personal, non-company related, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer, blog) I'll avoid saying anything else.

But it is an article that has been released and is out there for anyone to read. Gives more details on the system than most google hits.

MCI NL

"Beginning next month, MCI will deliver an anti-fraud solution for its Remote Access customers that allows for the proactive identification, notification and termination of fraudulent customer traffic, which occurs when an end user's account is compromised by an unauthorized user. This unique MCI network enhancement provides customers with 24/7 protection via the company's patented and proven anti-fraud system, MCI Sheriff."
And another annoucement, from the company web site.

MCI aims to make remote access more secure

"MCI says by midyear it will make fraud protection available as a standard part of its dial-up and Wi-Fi-based remote-access services. The new MCI Sheriff technology has been designed to spot fraudulent traffic, such as simultaneous sign-ons, users who are over their traffic limit or traffic originating from certain countries."
And another article. :) - Hey... its my blog. I can be self-promoting if I want. :)

MCI adds SSL VPN, boosts secure remote access - Computerworld

"In May, the company plans to begin offering antifraud protection for Remote Access customers. The new features will use patented antifraud technology called 'MCI Sheriff' to spot fraudulent traffic generated when a user's account is hijacked by an unauthorized user, MCI said."
'MCI Sheriff', yup, that's the system I've worked on for 10 years. It makes the news. How cool! :)

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

TIME.com: It's a Wiki, Wiki World -- Jun. 06, 2005

"Inspired by Wikipedia, a Silicon Valley start-up called Socialtext has helped set up wikis at a hundred companies, including Nokia and Kodak."
And I've been using a wiki for a number of years. Yup, they are definately cool.

The ugliness has to go somewhere

"The ugliness has to go somewhere" - one of our standard design principles. Given there is some complex (or ugly) code that has to be done... do you put it in the client or in the supplier? If you put it in the supplier, then every client gets it for free. If you don't put it in the supplier, so that your class, function, etc. can remain "pretty" and simple, then every client needs to do it. Overall, putting the ugliness in the supplier makes the overall system easier to understand. For some reason not everyone gets this. But its something we pretty much live by.

I had someone ask me yesterday, who had been working on a class for a couple of weeks. "Was all of this that much easier than just the 15 lines of code that I could have hardcoded to accomplish this?" - In other words - was this worth all the effort, given it would replace 15 lines of code with a couple?

And in almost all cases, the answer to that is Yes. For one thing, it took the person a couple of weeks because they are new to OO design and to using COOL (CLIPS' OO language). So it was a good learning experience. But in addition to that
  • The functionality is now encapsulated in one place, so can be maintained and performance tuned in that one place. This is better, even if the code is more complex because it is generic and meets several needs.
  • The functionality, which is complex at times, is now encapsulated in an interface. Therefore, people that want to use the functionality only need to use the simple interface, they don't need to solve the problem or figure out how someone else solved it and copy/paste the code. This serves as a form of documentation as well, which is also a very good thing.

I've heard it said before, "A programmer is someone who will spend 2 hours coding sometihng that will save them 15 minutes." - To some extent that is true - and if that is all it was, it would be a waste of time. But factor in learning, reuse and maintainability, and it is often times the way to go.

WSJ.com - Blogging Becomes A Corporate Job; Digital 'Handshake'?

Paid to be a blogger. That's cool. :)