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June 22 Obama, Reagan and IranFormer president Ronald Reagan is widely regarded as the man that won the cold war. His tactits included a high level of investment on the military. The former USSR tried to match the military expenditure and over years of attrition it failed. Its population was tired and hungry and the slightest chance of reform, coming from an insider caused the whole empire to crumble. Quite a lot of people died on proxy wars, but the mission was accomplished.
President Obama took the chance to extend his hand to the Muslim world, more specifically to Iran, a couple of weeks ago. His gesture is credited by some to have caused an Iranian insider, Mr. Mousavi, to grow on the polls with his softer stance with regard the west. Just for kicks, here an article on Fox News. If you don't know, the way Fox treats Obama is borderline treason in my book.
I have no idea what will happen in Iran, probably a crackdown and hardening of the regime. What I know is that a pacifist gesture created a crack on a pretty nasty regime. That gesture, widely criticized by the chicken-hawk, was way cheaper the Reagan tactics and did not cost a single American life.
I think that was a smart move.
June 21 UpI watched the latest Pixar movie, Up, this weekend with my 5 year old daughter. I think Pixar made a mistake with this one - I recommend against this movie.
What they were clearly after was a positive message about enjoying life, taking on new adventures and cherish, but not cling to your past. What they produced was scary for young children and plain and simple sad for older ones. The message that got to me is that, no matter how happy and fulfilling your life is, certain dreams will remain unfulfilled and in the end everyone dies. Some die lonely.
If anything will change in my life after watching this movie is that I will relax on my diet and make sure I die before my wife.
I think there is space for drama on animated movies and even space for completely adult, serious movies that are animated. Spirited Away, for instance, is a serious movie for older viewers. Akira is another great movie that I think is a classic any movie lover should watch, despite being animated.
Up is not a bad movie, but it is marketed as one thing while delivering something else entirely.
Angry WhopperLast week I tried the angry whopper. The advertisement is awesome, but I got to say... this thing is at most a "mildly upset" whopper, maybe an "annoyed" whopper. I wonder if this was designed in Canada - the angry whopper should come with a strong worded message on a napkin.
There is more punch on the double Texas whopper, and less mayo. At least the jalapenos are not covered in sweet sauce to dull the spiceness.
Speaking of fast food, I just got my annual check-up. Following my high fiber, lots of nuts and fish, only whole grains diet and with little to no exercise I ended up with stellar results. I have never been so healthy in my life, despite eating junk food (minus bread and fries) almost every week.
If I could just figure out how to have six-pack abs without exercise then my hapiness would be complete.
June 13 Sad...How sad is it to check on your own blog and be disappointed there are no updates?
I guess for some that is called an honest day of work.
June 12 Sometimes Work Feels HardThe last two weeks were very difficult, and being sick through part of it did not help at all.
 Credit where credit is due. The Picture is from the Fail blog (http://failblog.org/)
June 04 AIG is Trying to Sue Charities to Get Money BackThis is very hard to believe, but the title is correct. AIG, the insurance company that brought down the market, received tens of billions of dollars in tax payer money, is suing charities that received donations before the company collapsed. They want their donations back to, can you guess? Pay executive bonuses.
Think about it for a bit. Now think some more.
Even the most selfish person on the planet has to realize that, sometimes, when you sue someone, the damage done to your image is more than than the money you get back. This has to be the perfect blend of idiocy and greed - the perfect recipe villains were looking for.
Here is another one that caught my attention. Proctor and Gamble sued the Canadian and British governments to recover taxes they found unfair. The tax? An additional tax on "potato crisps, potato sticks, potato puffs and similar products made from the potato, or from potato flour, or from potato starch." They claimed their product, Pringles, should not be subject to the tax. And they *won* because Pringles is only 42% potatoe. What the heck are the other 58%?
Terrible.
May 22 The Downside (?) of User Generated Content......is that it is user generated. Sometimes it is absolutely hilarious. CollegeHumor.com decided to run a prank on Amazon.com and their readers posted fake reviews for various products.
Here are my favorites. Please read the comments to the comments as well - they add up nicely:
You can find more reviews by using the "related products" suggestion at the bottom of each product page.
Top Songs in Brazil Since 1938This post goes on the "it's been a while since I posted anything" category.
My mother, of all people, sent me a link for a search application that is very interesting. The execution is so crappy that you can see the parts connecting, but I still believe the concept predicts what is to come.
Someone obtained a list of the top songs in Brazil since 1904. For each song they encoded a youtube search query. The result is a database of songs names where some have multimedia records.
The assumption is that youtube has everything there is to see out there and that its relevance is good enough that the top result is what you look for. It has flaws, but works well enough for a non-critical application.
Here is the link: http://www.planetarei.com.br/100anos/index.htm
May 09 Liable for Software DefectsI've been interviewing software engineers for years and I always look for intelligence and coherence. Technical depth is also a must, of course. One of my recurring questions is "what is the major problem faced by the software industry today?" and the obvious follow-up "what would you do to fix it?"
I hear all sorts of answers for that question, and I can guarantee that I am not looking for anything specific other than logical sequitur. If I hear something that makes sense I typically offer my own problem, solution pair and ask for the candidate's criticism. I look for the ability to criticize without being arrogant in a cooperative way.
I tell candidates I think the major problem is that "software makers suffer no consequences for crappy products, turning the balance in favor of 'time to market' instead of good design and focus on the customer". My solution is "forbid the existing end user license agreement terms and make software makers liable for customer losses". A completely non-technical solution with vast technical consequences.
I suspect the European Commission hired one of my former candidates. They are proposing the very same solution. If this passes there will be crazy, crazy consequences for companies such as Microsoft, Oracle and Apple, but also for linux developers and any community or crowdsource projects. They will die a painful death.
May 03 VisionariesIt was November 2002 when I bought the product that put Toshiba on my "dead to me" list: the e740 pocket PC. I waited months for that model, skipping the more popular iPaq, from Compaq. I waited because I wanted a pocket PC with two expansion card slots, specifically a compact flash card and a secure digital card. The idea was to use the compact flash slot with a GPS unit which I bought the same day. The secure digital slot had maps and music files. I still remember writing a review on Amazon.com describing the unit and making a point that the sound quality was not good enough to use it as a "walk-man" (yes, I am that old). The thing that kills me is that I also wrote to someone in a position to create a similar product. The only difference was that that person was an executive that produced mobile phones. Yes, I received a response. It was so dismissive and let-down that I wrote that executive's name on my "never to work for" list. Yes, I like lists. I recently bought a Windows smart phone. After seven long years I bought the product I wanted. It is clumsy, hard to use and has an awful battery life, very likely to compensate for higher CPU frequency required by crappy coding. The Toshiba unit that irritated me beyond belief had basically two bugs. The battery would not last more than 4 hours with the backlit on and Windows had a bug that would turn on the device midnight and not turn it off - ever. So, every night, my pocket pc would turn on and next morning all my configurations were gone. I would back up my data to the memory card, but re-configuring the thing every night was something. Can I write "visionary" under R.I.P. on my tombstone? April 30 Churchgoers Are More Likely To Support TortureAccording to a recent poll, people that are affiliated to a religion are more likely to tolerate torture as an acceptable practice. Why am I not surprised at all?
CNN highlights:
Here is the article: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/30/religion.torture/index.html The company behind the poll (http://pewresearch.org/) seems to be serious, and they run a lot of polls related to race and religion. With regard to torture they sliced and diced the data to see if republicans, democrats or independents would have a bias. If there was a bias by race and so on. They found nothing except for the religious angle. Here is the report that CNN is quoting: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1210/torture-opinion-religious-differences
April 26 Today I Talked to the PoliceI was trying to get to a high school nearby for a recycling event. I want to get rid of old batteries responsibly and avoid polluting the water I drink. The event was scheduled to last from 9am to 3pm, but around 2:30pm the entrance was closed by the police.
I parked my car down the block and walked back, event flyer on hand, and asked the police officer why the entrance was closed. He screamed back "because it closes at 3pm" as if I was a doing awful. I know from past experience there is no arguing with police (or talking, unless they're asking for money on some event), but I instinctively reached for my watch. It was 2:45pm and the flyer said, right at the top, "no entrance allowed after 3pm". So I pointed out that it was not 3pm yet. To what a really pissed small suburban-town cop replied "we have to drain the queue of cars already there".
Awesome. My wish is that everyone on his life will follow his logic. The bank branch, the restaurant, grocery store, doctor, everyone will estimate how long it would take to "drain the queue of customers already in there" and close the door on his face at random times before the closing time. Either that or that he will have to wear a badge that says "I'm paid extra to cover the event, not by hour".
Now I guess I can wait for my first automatically issued traffic ticket.
April 12 Light StuffI have been working on my backyard for the last couple of weekends and today a spring downpour washed away some of the unfinished work. Lame.
This one is worth watching, but you'll need speakers. Not as spectacular as they apparently think it is, but quite nice. I could say exactly the same thing about every movies I saw last year and to all French movies I've ever seen.
If you're interested in hiring them check http://lidorproductions.com/vocapeople/
April 08 DistractedToday I am feeling very distracted. Hard to concentrate. I will probably try to focus on mechanical tasks for the rest of the day - maybe if I do enough of them I can justify today's salary. Probably not - will have to compensate tomorrow.
How distracted am I? Well, this distracted:
April 02 CSI Las VegasI follow the CSI Las Vegas since the first episode - I watched every one of them. When Grissom (William Petersen) left I thought the series would jump the shark. They coopted Laurece Fishburn as a rookie CSI investigator and, let me tell you, he is an awesome actor. The director and writers clearly know that. The new episodes are dark, serious and entertaining. And Laurence Fishburn grills a suspect like no one. I love it.
On other hand, this season of 24 is ridiculous. If it was not enough the torture advocates contrast Jack Bauer with the FBI version of the Marx brothers, now even Jack is doing stupid stuff. After killing civilians left and right and digging a much-desired micro-chip from a corpse chest, he finds the first police officer hanging around, gives him the chip and tell him to 'deliver it to the president at the White House, and no one else'. Well done. That was so absurd that FBI's Malibu Barbie sex tension looks believable.
April 01 My April First HistoryIt was 1986 and I was 13. After a very long 16-month period where I did not spend a dime of my not-so-great, not-so-constant allowance except to buy an illustrated encyclopedia, I finally received the final volume. With each volume I received a coupon. I mailed all coupons and received a G-shock watch.
I bought the collection half because of the books, and half because of the watch. It was an awesome watch.
So, on April 1st, a couple of days after I received the watch, I was walking two blocks from my house when two guys approached. One put a knife to my back, the other to my throat. They wanted my watch and shoes, but settled on taking the watch only - after all, the shoes were too small.
I told a police officer about what happened and he told me to go away, that I could be arrested for trying to pull a prank on him. My friends reacted the same way. I went back home and cried until the next day. The next day my friends believed me, but it was too late. What I felt that day is very, very hard to explain and I won't try.
So this is my April first history.
Every year, on April first, I cannot avoid thinking about every time someone told me criminality is a function of poverty and lack of education. Those two didn't look much poorer than I was, and they were definitively much better off than half of the people I went to school with.
So on every April first I get a little pissed. But tomorrow I will be fine.
Be nice.
March 27 Technical Review - Zune Car AdaptorToday I bought a car adaptor for my Zune. I really like the device and with good earphones the sound quality is very good.
As for the car adaptor, just in case you don't know, it is a FM transmitter. You connect it to the device and use the car radio to pick the signal. You have to configure it to use a frequency not used by any FM station.
Here is the short review: don't buy it. The longer version: When it transmits, which is not always, the signal is very weak. If you're lucky enough to pick the signal, the sound quality is awful.
In my all time electronics sh*t-list here is its standing (worst on top, minus software):
- Toshiba PocketPC e740. By a mile - I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever buy anything from Toshiba again even if it is 99% cheaper than the competition. This deject of the product line was so bad that I have an eternal grudge against Toshiba. I don't like their service department to a point I don't like their families by extension. If you work at Toshiba please do not tell me. And yes, I saved all emails - too bad I did not record the calls.
- Zune radio car adaptor.
- Pharos PocketPC GPS. You can read a short story before it acquires the GPS signal.
Just the thought of the Toshiba PocketPC make me feel better about the adaptor. It is not as bad after all. It did not hurt me, did not lose my data, did not cause me to waste endless hours dealing with support, I didn't have to return it 4 times under warranty and it costed 20 times less.
You know what? It is a nice battery charger that works on my car. Go ahead and buy it, it is worth the U$20 bucks as a charger.
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