boringtechstuff

Ultimate Driving Machine

2009-04-08T10:12:00.000-07:00

I've been putting this off for the longest time and it was supposed to be a birthday gift to myself. Finally, it's here!

Execution

2009-04-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

Here's to careful planning, calculating execution and flawless results.

The future is looking bright.

Burn the Heretics!

2009-02-17T11:47:00.001-08:00

After more than a year in hiatus, I'm back.

Anyway, Dawn of War 2 will be coming out tomorrow and that's compelling reason to create a blog entry.

They Will Survive

2008-01-16T22:02:00.000-08:00

In life, like a game of chess, the battle can't be won without positioning your pieces correctly. In the last 4 weeks, I've been positioning my pieces, ever so calculating, waiting for the right time to deal the final blow.

This issue has to be dealt with, there will be no remorse, no turning back. Focus on the bigger picture and the direction should be clear, no matter how difficult it appears to be.

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MacWorld 2008... *yawn* no 3G iPhone, although I really don't have any plans of buying one.

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700Mhz Auction is a few days from now. I hope Google wins.

World in Conflict

2007-11-28T00:47:00.000-08:00

Been playing World in Conflict the past few weeks now and seems like relief from this addiction is nowhere in sight. Anyway, just wanted to post my realtime stat banner. This actually shows my global leaderboard ranking for multiplayer matches (out of 30,000 players and counting).

Watch the Alpha Geeks

2007-10-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

Note that this article was written way back (in internet time) in 2002. It has striking similarity to what's happening today.

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Inventing the Future
by Tim O'Reilly
04/09/2002

"The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet." I recently came across that quote from science-fiction writer William Gibson, and I've been repeating it ever since.

So often, signs of the future are all around us, but it isn't until much later that most of the world realizes their significance. Meanwhile, the innovators who are busy inventing that future live in a world of their own. They see and act on premises not yet apparent to others. In the computer industry, these are the folks I affectionately call "the alpha geeks," the hackers who have such mastery of their tools that they "roll their own" when existing products don't give them what they need.

The alpha geeks are often a few years ahead of their time. They see the potential in existing technology, and push the envelope to get a little (or a lot) more out of it than its original creators intended. They are comfortable with new tools, and good at combining them to get unexpected results.

What we do at O'Reilly is watch these folks, learn from them, and try to spread the word by writing down (or helping them write down) what they've learned and then publishing it in books or online. We also organize conferences and hackathons at which they can meet face to face, and do advocacy to get wider notice for the most important and most overlooked ideas.
O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference

The 2002 O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference explored how P2P and Web services are coming together in a new Internet operating system.

So, what am I seeing today that I think the world will be writing about (and the venture capitalists and entrepreneurs chasing) in the years to come?

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Wireless. Community 802.11b networks are springing up everywhere as hackers realize they can share their high-speed, high-cost Internet connections, turning them into high-speed, low- or no-cost connections for a larger group of people. Companies like Apple are building 802.11b into their new hardware, but that's just a convenient springboard.

The hackers are extending the range of their networks with homemade antennas--the antenna shootout between Pringles cans, coffee cans, and tomato juice cans, and the discussion of how the ridges in the bottom of a can happen to match up to wireless wavelengths, represent hacker ingenuity at its best. But wireless community networks are only the tip of the iceberg.

If you watch the alpha geeks, you notice that they are already living in a future made up of ubiquitous wireless connectivity, not just for their PCs, but for a variety of computing devices. The furthest-out of them are into wearable computing, with access to the Net as much a part of what they put on each morning as a clean pair of socks.
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Next generation search engines. Early search engines used brute force. Google uses link information to make searches smarter. New search engines are taking this even farther, basing searches on the implicit webs of trust and interest reflected not only by link counts (a la Google) but by who specifically links to whom.

It's easy to take search engines for granted. But they are prototypes for functionality that we will all need when our personal data storage exceeds that which the entire Web required only a few years ago.
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Weblogs. These daily diaries of links and reflections on links are the new medium of communication for the technical elite. Replacing the high-cost, high-octane, venture-funded Web site with one that is intensely personal and built around the connectivity between people and ideas, they are creating a new set of synapses for the global brain. It's no accident that weblogs are increasingly turning up as the top hits on search engines, since they trade in the same currency as the best search engines--human intelligence, as reflected in who's already paying attention to what.

Weblogs aren't just the next generation of personal home pages, representing a return to text over design and, lightweight content management systems. They are also a platform for experimentation with the way the Web works: collective bookmarking, virtual communities, tools for syndication, referral, and Web services.
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Instant messaging, not just between people but between programs. A generation of people who grew up on IM ask themselves why it needs to be just a toy. They are making collaboration, "presence management," and instant communication into a business application, but more than that, they are making messaging the paradigm for a new class of applications. One developer we know used the Jabber instant messaging framework to let him control his SAP database--about as corporate as you get--from his cell phone. Microsoft is busy making instant messaging functionality a standard part of the developer toolkit in .Net MyServices.

Related Reading
Planning for Web Services: Obstacles and Opportunities

Planning for Web Services: Obstacles and Opportunities
An O'Reilly Research Report
By Clay Shirky
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File sharing. Napster may have been shut down by the legal system, but the ideas behind it are blindingly obvious in retrospect. While entrepreneurs mired in the previous generation of computing built massive server farms to host downloadable music archives, Shawn Fanning, a young student who'd grown up in the age of the Internet, asked himself, "Why do I need to have all the songs in one place? My friends already have them. All I need is a way for them to point to each other." When everyone is connected, all that needs to be centralized is the knowledge of who has what.

Perhaps even more excitingly, projects like BitTorrent provide raw Internet performance increases, as downloads are streamed not from single sites but from a mesh of cooperating PCs, a global grid of high-performance anonymous storage. We're also seeing desktop Web sites exposing the local file-system via distributed-content management systems. This is fundamental infrastructure for a next generation global operating system.
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Grid computing. The success of SETI@home and other similar projects demonstrates that we can use the idle computing power of millions of interconnected PCs to work on problems that were previously intractable because of the cost of dedicated supercomputers. We're just scratching the surface here. Large-scale clustering, and the availability of large amounts of computer power on demand--a computing utility much like the power grid--will have an enormous impact on both science and business in the years to come.
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Web spidering. Once primarily the province of search engines, Web spidering is becoming ubiquitous, as hackers realize they can build "unauthorized interfaces" to the huge Web-facing databases behind large sites, and give themselves and their friends a new and useful set of tools. More on this in a moment.

All of these things come together into what I'm calling "the emergent Internet operating system." The facilities being pioneered by thousands of individual hackers and entrepreneurs will, without question, be integrated into a standardized platform that enables a next generation of applications. (This is the theme of our Emerging Technologies conference in Santa Clara May 13-16, "Building the Internet Operating System.") The question is, who will own that platform?

Both Microsoft and Sun (not to mention other companies like IBM and BEA) have made it clear that they consider network computing the next great competitive battleground. Microsoft's .Net and Sun's Java (from J2ME to J2EE) represent ambitious, massively engineered frameworks for network computing. These network operating systems--and yes, at bottom, that's what they are--are designed to make it easier for mainstream developers to use functions that the pioneers had to build from scratch.

But the most interesting part of the story is still untold, in the work of hundreds or thousands of independent projects that, like a progressively rendered image, will suddenly snap into focus. That's why I like to use the word "emergent." There's a story here that is emerging with increasing clarity.

What's more, I don't believe that the story will emerge whole-cloth from any large vendor. The large vendors are struggling with how to make money from this next generation of computing, and so they are moving forward slowly. But network computing is a classic case of what Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator's Dilemma, calls a disruptive technology. It doesn't fit easily into existing business models or containers. It will belong to the upstarts, who don't have anything to lose, and the risk-takers among the big companies, who are willing to bet more heavily on the future than they do on the past.

Let's take Web services as an example. Microsoft recently announced they hadn't figured out a business model for Web services, and were slowing down their ambitious plans for building for-pay services. Meanwhile, the hackers, who don't worry too much about business models, but just try to find the shortest path to where they are going, are building "unauthorized" Web services by the thousands.

Spiders (programs which download pages automatically for purposes ranging from general search engines to specialized shopping comparison services to market research) are really a first-generation Web service, built from the outside in.

Spiders have been around since the early days of the Web, but what's getting interesting is that as the data resources out on the Net get richer, programmers are building more specialized spiders--and here's the really cool bit--sites built with spiders themselves are getting spidered, and spiders are increasingly combining data from one site with data from another.

One developer I know built a carpool planning tool that recommended ridesharing companions by taking data from the company's employee database, then spidering MapQuest to find people who live on the same route.

There are now dozens of Amazon rank spiders that will help authors keep track of their book's Amazon rank. We have a very powerful one at O'Reilly that provides many insights valuable to our business that are not available in the standard Amazon interface. It allows us to summarize and study things like pricing by publisher and topic, rank trends by publisher and topic over a two-year period, correlation between pricing and popularity, relative market share of publishers in each technology area, and so on. We combine this data with other data gleaned from Google link counts on technology sites, traffic trends on newsgroups, and other Internet data, to provide insights into tech trends that far outstrip what's available from traditional market research firms.

There are numerous services that keep track of eBay auctions for interested bidders. Hackers interested in the stock market have built their own tools for tracking pricing trends and program trading. The list goes on and on, an underground data economy in which Web sites are extended by outsiders to provide services that their owners didn't conceive.

Right now, these services are mostly built with brute force, using a technique referred to as "screen scraping." A program masquerading as a Web browser downloads a Web page, uses pattern matching to find the data it wants, keeps that, and throws the rest away. And because it's a program, not a person, the operation is repeated, perhaps thousands of times a minute, until all the desired data is in hand.

For example, every three hours, amaBooks, our publishing market research spider, downloads information about thousands of computer books from Amazon. The Amazon Web page for a book like Programming Perl is about 68,000 bytes by the time you include description, reader comments, etc. The first time we discover a new book, we want under a thousand bytes--its title, author, publisher, page count, publication date, price, rank, number of reader reviews, and average value of reader reviews. For later visits we need even less information: the latest rank, the latest number of reviews, and any change to pricing. For a typical run of our spider, we're downloading 24,000,000 bytes of data when we need under 10,000.

Eventually, these inefficient, brute-force spiders, built that way because that's the only way possible, will give way to true Web services. The difference is that a site like Amazon or Google or MapQuest or E*Trade or eBay will not be the unwitting recipient of programmed data extraction, but a willing partner. These sites will offer XML-based APIs that allow remote programmers to request only the data they need, and to re-use it in creative new ways.

Why would a company that has a large and valuable data store open it up in this way?

My answer is a simple one: because if they don't ride the horse in the direction it's going, it will run away from them. The companies that "grasp the nettle firmly" (as my English mother likes to say) will reap the benefits of greater control over their future than those who simply wait for events to overtake them.

There are a number of ways for a company to get benefits out of providing data to remote programmers:

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Revenue. The brute force approach imposes costs both on the company whose data is being spidered and on the company doing the spidering. A simple API that makes the operation faster and more efficient is worth money. What's more, it opens up whole new markets. Amazon-powered library catalogs anyone?
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Branding. A company that provides data to remote programmers can request branding as a condition of the service.
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Platform lock in. As Microsoft has demonstrated time and time again, a platform strategy beats an application strategy every time. Once you become part of the platform that other applications rely on, you are a key part of the computing infrastructure, and very difficult to dislodge. The companies that knowingly take their data assets and make them indispensable to developers will cement their role as a key part of the computing infrastructure.
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Goodwill. Especially in the fast-moving high-tech industry, the "coolness" factor can make a huge difference both in attracting customers and in attracting the best staff.

Even though I believe that revenue is possible from turning Web spiders into Web services, I also believe that it's essential that we don't make this purely a business transaction. One of the beauties of the Internet is that it has an architecture that promotes unintended consequences. You don't have to get someone else's permission to build a new service. No business negotiation. Just do it. And if people like what you've done, they can find it and build on it.

As a result, I believe strongly that Web services APIs need to have, at minimum, a low-volume option that remains free of charge. It could be done in the same way that a company like Amazon now builds its affiliates network. A developer signs up online using a self-service Web interface for a unique ID that it must present for XML-based data access. At low volumes (say 1,000 requests a day), the service is free. This promotes experimentation and innovation. But at higher volumes, which would suggest a service with commercial possibility, pricing needs to be negotiated.

Bit by bit, we'll watch the transformation of the Web services wilderness. The first stage, the pioneer stage, is marked by screen scraping and "unauthorized" special purpose interfaces to database-backed Web sites. In the second stage, the Web sites themselves will offer more efficient, XML-based APIs. (This is starting to happen now.) In the third stage, the hodgepodge of individual services will be integrated into a true operating system layer, in which a single vendor (or a few competing vendors) will provide a comprehensive set of APIs that turns the Internet into a huge collection of program-callable components, and integrates those components into applications that are used every day by non-technical people.

Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world, and an activist for open standards. O'Reilly Media also publishes online through the O'Reilly Network and hosts conferences on technology topics, including the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and the Web 2.0 Conference. Tim's blog, the O'Reilly Radar "watches the alpha geeks" to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. For everything Tim, see tim.oreilly.com.

Numbers

2007-09-11T23:03:00.001-07:00

A Classic

2007-08-16T19:39:00.000-07:00

I'll take a break from techie stuff for this blog entry and try to write something more important than the latest gadgets, or the fastest computers or operating system -- life, music, beauty, memories...

We've heard this song probably a thousand times, different versions, different genres, different artists, but none of them can capture the simplicity and eloquence of the original. Just sit back, relax and enjoy the show....

Such emotion on the 02:37 mark. The bittersweet feelings and memories of an old man stirred by a passing beauty on the beach of Ipanema. Classic.

Google and the 700Mhz Spectrum

2007-07-25T15:25:00.000-07:00

Last week's turn of events is one for the history books when Google announced in their official blog that they are committed to "putting consumers' interests first, and putting [their] money where [their] principles are -- to the tune of $4.6 billion". According to a letter sent by Google to FCC's Chairman, Kevin Martin.

What is the 700 Mhz spectrum?
The 700Mhz spectrum is the frequency that current analog TV providers use to broadcast their programming. Since Congress mandated a "forced-migration" in 2009 of the American TV broadcast system to digital, the said spectrum will be freed up, hence FCC's auction.

Why is the spectrum that important?
The answer is basic radio physics. At 700Mhz, an operator can cover at least 4 times more area for the same transmission power as a 1900 Mhz cell phone tower. The 700 Mhz spectrum has also this uncanny ability to travel well on all types of terrain and penetrate walls and buildings which is why it was a good choice for TV signals in the first place.

This is where Google comes in. Google is urging the FCC to adopt 4 key points to be mandated to whoever wins the auction.

-Open applications: consumers should be able to download and utilize any software applications, content, or services they desire;

-Open devices: consumers should be able to utilize their handheld communications device with whatever wireless network they prefer;

-Open services: third parties (resellers) should be able to acquire wireless services from a 700 MHz licensee on a wholesale basis, based on reasonably nondiscriminatory commercial terms; and

-Open networks: third parties (like Internet service providers) should be able to interconnect at any technically feasible point in a 700 MHz licensee's wireless network.

If all 4 points are to be enforced to whoever wins the auction, Google is willing to bid at least $4.6B for the spectrum.

Imagine a world where wireless internet access is as ubiquitous as getting a TV reception. A place where you can turn on a device (doesn't necessarily have to be your laptop) and make VOIP phone calls to anyone in the world, surf the net, run video conferences. Tie that up with GPS functionality and you'll end up with a geek gadget unlike any other. The 700 Mhz spectrum will end up as the "third pipe" to the internet world, and with that kind of access, it will compete with the 2 other major broadband providers -- Cable and DSL.

Ok, I'm excited what's the holdup?
Well, first of all, the spectrum won't be free at the earliest in February 2009 when analog TV broadcasts migrate to digital-- so don't expect a gPhone anytime soon. Secondly, there are parties who oppose the current proposals for an open wireless network. Namely, the 800 and 700lb gorillas of the wireless world, AT&T and Verizon, who owns several other spectrums for their wireless services. Uniting with them is Comcast, which is the 800lb gorilla of the cable industry. Ubiquitous convergent wireless service (wireless, phone, internet, all in one) is a big threat to their business model as well as their billion dollar infrastructure that can virtually turn obsolete overnight.

But Google is not without its own share of "allies" in this war for this prime commodity. The WhiteSpace Coaltion, a group of 8 tech companies (Microsoft, Google, Dell, HP, Intel, Philips, Earthlink, and Samsung) was formed that has one goal: to deliver wireless broadband by using the analog frequencies that will be freed up by the 2009 migration.

Money Talks
In the middle of it all are 2 congressmen, Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Joe Barton (R-Tex.) who are oppossed to an "open network" for the spectrum. They have this to say.

"I think the fewer fetters you have in terms of conditions on the auction, the more open the process and the better its going to be," (Barton) said. "I also think you're going to get more money if you do it that way."

"The free market works best. If Google is really right that there is market demand for their model, they should be lining up to bid in a fair auction, without these requirements," Upton said.

Now, a quick Google (no pun intended) in to those 2 congressmen's campaign contributors, comes up with:

Barton: Comcast (#1), Verizon (#10), AT&T (#14), Sprint Nextel (#15)

Upton: AT&T (#2), Verizon (#3), Nat'l Cable & Telecommunications Association (#6), Comcast and Qwest (#7) and Sprint Nextel (#19)

As with anything else in America, follow the money and you will get to the truth.

Speculating Google's next move

Over the course of 7 years, Google acquired 45 businesses and a lot of analysts are speculating that Google is just on a buying spree with no particular direction in mind. I say, they have a clear cut strategy for all their acquisitions. Google pretty much has a monopoly on internet activity, they know how many search hits a company gets, how many feed hits, how well their online ads are doing, even how many site hits the target receives if it is using Google Analytics. Not to mention, Google's page ranks more or less defines how well a web based business is doing -- and that's where they put their money. Here are a couple of Google's acquisitions that may or may not be relevant to their bid for the 700Mhz spectrum:

Acquired in 7/7/2005: Reqwireless, a company who made a Java ME Browser
Acquired in 7/7/2005: Current Communications Group, a company who is developing broadband over power line (BPL)
Acquired in 8/17/2005: Android, a company developing software and operating systems for mobile phones
Acquired in 4/2007: Marratech, a video conferencing company.
Acquired in 7/2/2007: Grand Central Communications, a company that provides services for Managing Voice Communications.

Not to mention all the dark fiber that Google owns.

My take

Fighting innovation is like fighting an uphill battle on roller skates. We currently have a golden opportunity knocking and all we have to do is open the door and let the innovators compete on an open and level platform. The telecom and cable industries have stagnated and rested on their government-mandated-monopoly laurels for far too long, it's time to bring in fresh new blood in to the industry. Overall, the 700 Mhz spectrum is the People's (with a capital P) property and the FCC should act and for People's benefit.

Dream Job

2007-06-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

I found this interesting post on Slashdot today and pretty much sums up what I want in a job

I spent time working up my resume to get noticed at Google or Microsoft to get a job. I really wanted to work in a field that was 'techie' and that I was working for a company I believed in.

Then I got a job at a video game company. It was a smaller firm, but a lot of fun to work at. People were all young (I'm only 26), they had free food and lots of perks. You could go to work in shorts and a tshirt.

But then I started to see the down sides of it all. I worked long hours, and often worked from home. My health insurance wasn't anything special. Being on email till the wee hours of the night was an annoyance.

And then I found another job, and left.

Now I work for a place I have no real feeling of accomplishment, nor is it a place I yearned to work for. But I get in at 10am, I am out the door at the latest by 6pm. I don't work from home. I don't get on email after I leave work. Emergencies come up and then I take care of them, but I am able to separate my work life from my personal life with great distinction. My co-workers are in their 30s and 40s and 50s, all of them have families and leave on time to make sure that they are home to pick up their kids, play with them, and be at their soccer games. They encourage me to leave work and go out on a date, watch a movie, read a book, and do something constructive. They know that working isn't the point of life, but merely a part of it.

And now at the age of 26, I finally have a job that I yearned for, but didn't know I wanted.

Do yourselves a favor -- find a job that will let you live your life reasonably. You will be better at your job because you appreciate it, not because you are dying for it.

Wise words spoken

2007-05-15T16:55:00.000-07:00

In light of Microsoft's recent claims that Open Source infringes on 235 of their patents, Jonathan Schwartz (ironically, of Sun Microsystems) have hit the nail on the head on his recent blog entry.

"So what's my view on this interview in Fortune - in which one of Sun's business partners claims the open source community is trampling their patent portfolio?

You would be wise to listen to the customers you're threatening to sue - they can leave you, especially if you give them motivation. Remember, they wouldn't be motivated unless your products were somehow missing the mark.

All of which is to say - no amount of fear can stop the rise of free media, or free software (they are the same, after all). The community is vastly more innovative and powerful than a single company. And you will never turn back the clock on elementary school students and developing economies and aid agencies and fledgling universities - or the Fortune 500 - that have found value in the wisdom of the open source community. Open standards and open source software are literally changing the face of the planet - creating opportunity wherever the network can reach.

That's not a genie any litigator I know can put back in a bottle."

Lifted from: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/what_we_did

After YEARS of waiting...

2007-05-14T16:08:00.000-07:00

the next few months will be very very interesting...

what's in a number?

2007-05-02T13:35:00.000-07:00

09 F9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88

11,497,989,095,545,517,501

1001 1111 1001 0001 0001 0000 0010 1001 1101 0111 0100 1110 0011 0101 1011 1101

remember kids, google is your friend...

Wireless Freedom

2007-03-27T12:42:00.000-07:00

I finally bought in to the hype and got myself a smartphone.

Instead of singing praises all day long about it, I decided to list down all the things I can do now that I wasn't able to do before and hopefully get the feeling that I can justify the $20/month price tag on top of my regular cell phone bill.

1. Instant access to information, be it flight schedules, weather reports, news, wikipedia entries, item prices during sales, etc.

2. Get directions and traffic conditions via Google Maps-- beats getting lost and being stuck in traffic.

3. Send and receive emails on the fly ('nuff said)

4. IM people in my list around the world either for quick info, or just to past time.

5. Watch TV (via slingbox) while waiting in line in the grocery or post office or in the bank.

6. Book tickets online (via mobile.moviefone.com) before going to the theater and just picking up the tickets at the ABO-- saving time being in line.

7. Get restaurant information on the fly.

8. Finally cancel my internet connection at home (runs around $30 to $40 per month depending on the carrier)

9. And the killer app is.... tethering my phone wirelessly to my Mac! That in itself opens a floodgate of possibilities.

I haven't posted the blog entry I started writing when I was in Las Vegas 2 months ago, but this device will definitely position itself on top of that list.

By the way, the smartphone I bought was the BlackJack (Samsung i607) with the Cingular Broadband Connect plan (aka 3G, HSDPA). $20/month for unlimited wireless internet usage. The speeds are not that bad, 800kbps down and 300kbps up when connected via 3G and around 200kbps down and 50kbps up when connected via EDGE. I'll post instructions on how to tether the Blackjack wirelessly to the Mac as soon as I get the chance.

Video Game Wisdom

2006-10-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

I'm lucky enough to be considered a neutral party when it comes to office politics. I ascribe it to 2 quotes that I've picked up playing 2 of my most favorite RTS games:

"Thread lightly."
-Prince Arthas
Warcraft 3

"Walk softly, but carry a big gun" (figuratively of course)
-Gabriel Angelos
Space Marine, Blood Ravens Force Commander
Warhammer 40,000

New domain, news, updates, etc...

2006-10-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking of getting my own domain to host a website that I don't know what to do with yet. Ho hum.

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On the tech news front, Google bought YouTube for 1.65B (that's Billion with a B). Honestly, it appears like a bad deal knowing that YouTube might be liable for hundreds of millions of dollars of copyright infringement violations. But if there is a company that can pull this off and make it work, it's Google.

Analyzing the numbers further, just mere rumors about the buyout increased Google's stock price by 5%. So in theory, the all-stock purchase of YouTube was actually FREE. GOOG Market Cap: 130 Billion, 5% stock rise just on rumors, do the math.

Sigh, feels like 1999 again.

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I've been reading some science news briefs and came across this interesting development. Watch out band-aid makers!

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Slingmedia just came out with new models to their Slingbox device. That explained the $70 price drop of the original Slingbox the past few weeks. In a related but depressing news, the BETA version of Slingplayer for OS X is not planned for release until the end of Q3 06. Sigh.

My Encounter with Kobe Beef

2006-10-05T15:50:00.000-07:00

I've always been meaning to write about this subject since I had an encounter with it in San Diego a few weeks back in the form of a California roll. Yes, you heard it right, a California roll toped with raw slices of Kobe beef. The taste? Absolutely heavenly. Nevermind the Cali roll. The beef is so tender, that it literally melts in your mouth like strips of butter (minus the guilt and the greasy aftertaste). The flavor is so subtle, that you actually have to psych yourself up before taking a bite otherwise you'll miss the mild beefy flavor and sweet undertones -- reminds me of fine wine.

So what's so "techie" about Kobe beef? Well, the genetics behind it. Even before the buzzword "Genetically Modified Food" caught on, the Japanese were already doing it hundreds of years back through successful breeding and cross-breeding of the cattle species called Wagyu.

That species of cattle is genetically predispositioned to maximize meat marbling. Hence the tender meat. The fat is not just any other fat, it's oleaginous, unsaturated fat -- healthy fat (yeah right!).

What about the myths about cow massages? Well, in a way it's true. Grazing land is so expensive in Japan, that they just massage the cows instead just to get their exercise. Think of it as physical therapy for cows. Today, Wagyu cattle is raised in Australia and the U.S. where there is an abundance of grazing land and they are bred and fed to exacting Japanese secifications. But to be legally called Kobe Beef, the cattle has to be slaughtered in Kobe Japan.

Speaking of which, it has been rumored that they make the cattle drink large amounts sake to make them drunk before bringing them to the slaughterhouse. I don't know if that's true, but it kinda makes sense. Drunk cow = more relaxed = more tender meat. If I were going to be slaughtered, I'd prefer to be drunk too.

Flashback 1997

2006-09-12T21:55:00.000-07:00

The beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning?

Dr. House had it all figured out...

2006-09-11T23:30:00.000-07:00

Today is my personal 9/11

Quote for the week

2006-09-07T15:32:00.000-07:00

a good deed done in broad daylight is oftentimes ignored
an innocent deed done in broad daylight is also ignored
a bad deed done in broad daylight attracts attention, but not too much

a good deed done in secret is considered noble
an innocent deed done in secret is not
a bad deed done in secret is almost always criminal

-Anonymous

No Rest for the Weary

2006-08-12T00:06:00.000-07:00

Having to manage and getting my hands wet on 2 database system projects in the office, reading through tons and tons of white papers and tech specs about the recently released Mac Pro, and devising a computer algorithm to solve a sudoku puzzle on the side, I can safely say that there is such a thing as information overload. But gosh darn it, I can't think of anything else I'd rather do.

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Been contemplating on getting a Slingbox, but was disappointed for not being selected as a beta tester for the Mac version :-( oh well, ho hum. Still a cool piece of technology though. I'll probably get one once they come out with version 1 of their Mac client.

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So my WWDC predictions, didn't exactly materialize, but that doesn't mean it will not happen. There are some still some "Top Secret" features in Leopard, as per Steve Jobs that won't be realeased until nearing the Spring '07 release date. Hence, anything (or maybe nothing) can happen by then.

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Just finished downloading the latest beta version of Vista. I was kinda hoping to get my crummy hands to take it for a spin, but my desktop at home doesn't want to cooperate. From the looks of things, it might be a fried power supply. So until that gets taken cared of (together with a million other projects at home), no PC for me... But the release of Company of Heroes in a few weeks from now might change that. Note to self: Don't skimp on the power supply the next time I assemble a PC.

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On a non-techie note, I'm having my kitchen remodeled. Some nice cherry wood stained cabinets with opaque glass partnered a dark grey quartz countertop should do the trick. I hope I won't go over budget.

4-day weekend

2006-05-24T13:16:00.000-07:00

Just had a 4-day weekend and spent it meeting up with good friends from college. First leg of the trip was the drive from SoCal to San Jose. As with all roadtrips, the journey is the destination. Next we headed to Yosemite National Park where I was able to brush up and fine tune my apperture to exposure to shutter speed combinations in different lighting conditions.

The last leg of the trip was a quick swing to Napa Valley where we sampled different wines, cheeses and olive oils. I think I was able to sample at least 7 types of wine in one of the private vineyards (I lost count after sampling the White Cabernet Sauvignon). A perfect ender to the journey.

That's it in retrospect, there are a lot more things that happened during the trip, which includes skidding off of Hwy 120 atop a 6000 foot cliff, etc. which I'd rather not go in to.

Quote for the week

2006-05-05T16:26:00.000-07:00

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

- Robert Heinlein

Some quick picks...

2006-04-28T17:03:00.000-07:00

I've been polishing my method the last couple of days and as per my last posting, it only yielded 60% accuracy. Not bad really.

Anyway, here's my forecast for the next 5 days. Again, trade at your own risk. I won't go into the detail of explaining how I came up with these figures, it's a messy computation.

Suggested Buys for the next 5 trading days:

SIRI: 6-7%
F: 2-3%
AET: 6-7%
AMAT: 3-4%
UNH: 4-5%

Suggested for Short-selling for the next 5 days:

JDSU: 5-6% decline
LVLT: 18% (a very bold claim) decline
ALTR: 8-9% decline
MU: 8-9% decline
GLW: 9-10% decline

That's it for now. Happy Trading!

Next: Start new blog just for stocks and trading. Will start as soon as funding comes in.

Stock Market Prediction

2006-04-25T11:59:00.000-07:00

I'm testing a new method of making a close-enough guesstimate of Nasdaq QQQQ stock index and here are my positions tomorrow. Disclaimer: This is in NO way valid and/or sound stock advice, so trade at your own risk.

Buys:
MNST: 51.39, predicting at least 2% up tomorrow
AMAT: 17.92, predicting at least 1% up tomorrow
JOYG: 69.63, predicting at least 1% up tomorrow

Shorts:
CA: 24.77, 1% down
TMIC: 36.35, 1% down
TLAB: 16.13, 2% down

Again, these are experimental predictions, do not use as actual trading advice.

Chess Pieces

2006-04-21T11:54:00.000-07:00

The chess pieces are slowly coming into place.

A few weeks ago, Apple released BootCamp, giving Intel Macs the ability to run Windows in its own partition. Step 1: Make it feasible to run Windows natively -- Check!

A few days ago, Apple released Bonjour for Windows. For those not familiar, Bonjour, also known as zero-configuration networking, is a network protocol built-in to OS X which enables automatic discovery of computers, devices, services on IP networks. Step 2. Make it feasible to "talk" to Windows efficiently -- Check!

The only missing piece is something to tie them all together. Step 3: Virtualize! Step 3: Virtualize and run Windows inside OS X with full drag and drop capabilities (via Bonjour), running at native speeds (since Apple has all the tech specs on the hardware) in its own partition (Bootcamp).--Still missing!

My fearless forecast, August 2006 at WWDC. Steve will annouce the third piece as a feature in OS X 10.5 (aka Leopard). You heard it here first folks!

More screencaps...

2006-04-19T22:49:00.000-07:00

Ubuntu Linux running under OS X...

Ubuntu starting up...

Login screen

Ubuntu running showing sound and network preferences screen. Mozilla Firefox in background.

Shutting down...

Promised Pics

2006-04-16T22:42:00.000-07:00

Pic #1: Windows XP loading under Parallels Workstation. Boot time, approximately 5 seconds.

Pic #2: Windows XP running at native speed while Windows Media Player 9 streams audio, AVG Antivirus updating and surfing with Mozilla Firefox. OS X running Yahoo Messenger, Photoshop and iTunes. -- All without a hitch!

Pic #3: Virtual machine resumed from suspend.

Sounds good!

2006-04-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

Last February, I finally traded in my 58,000 Amex points to get a free "clock radio". Not just any clock radio, it's a Bose Wave Music System with the CD player.

Yeah, yeah, I can already hear the audiophiles screaming,

"Bose is an expensive piece of junk"

or

"Oh yeah, you can get better sound with so and so brand"

or

"D00D, 0MG WTF L0LZ BOSE TEH SUXX0RZ BRB"

Well, Bose might not be the BEST out there, but it's definitely one of the most elegant. Sure, it might not have the bells and whistles of the ultra 1337 systems, but most people just want to sit back and listen to a great sounding system without fiddling with ten thousand knobs. Now with that out of the way...

The Good:

1. Great sound! The system actually plays music half an octave lower which makes the output much fuller and clearer. Try playing Mozart's Symphony No.40, KV 550 in g minor and turn up the volume to 65 and you'll hear what I mean. As a sidenote, Mozart's works are considered public domain so feel free to download them from any P2P or bitorrent sites of your choice. Heck, throw in some Bach, Chopin, Brahms and Wagner while you're at it.

2. Small footprint, big sound. No complicated knobs or blinking lights of different shapes and colors. Just a small screen that tells you the time or the song info. Very Zen-like if you'd ask me. It blends very well with any decor.

3. Thoughtful little design considerations like the screen automatically dims depending on the lighting conditions. Or the volume gradually increases when you turn it on so that you won't get blasted with a loud sound if you last played it that way. No external antennas (but it's an optional accessory) or wires. As a matter of fact, the power cord acts as the antenna so that you can get crystal clear reception. It also has some kind of battery inside so that all your settings and the current time will be saved when you unplug it intentionally or otherwise.

4. MP3 CD playback, baby! This is probably my most favorite feature. Let me throw in some figures:

About 120 songs, average 5 minutes per song encoded at 128kbps at 5.5MB in a single 650MB CD is equal to almost 10 hours of continuous music bliss!

5. Basic settings for different types of music- Jazz, Pop, Rock, Classical.

The not-so-good:

1. Just the basic settings for different types of music- Jazz, Pop, Rock, Classical. It doesn't bother me that much, but there are quite a few people complaining about it.

2. Lack of a bass boost function. But it can easily be fixed by doing an en masse bass adjustment on your MP3s.

3. The system doesn't have any controls on the actual unit (due to its simplistic design). Everything is done on a credit card sized remote control-- not advisable if you have kids running around the house.

4. At $499 retail, some might argue that it's too expensive. But I suggest you check it out for yourself at your local Bose store and decide if the sound is worth the price tag. Who knows, with your credit card points or mileage programs, you might get it for free too.

Overall, I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a great sound system without the clutter of big box speakers and complicated components.

On the lighter side...

2006-04-13T22:47:00.000-07:00

On the lighter side of things, a video entitled... firefox and the retarded browsers. Enjoy!

This week

2006-04-06T19:45:00.000-07:00

This week is definitely a week of firsts. A day after Apple announcing their Bootcamp solution for booting Windows XP on a Mac, Parallels, announced that they are releasing a public beta of "Parallels Workstation" for OS X. It claims to be the first Hypervisor-powered Desktop Virtualization Solution. In layman's terms, it means that this software will take advantage of Intel's new VT enhancements and will be able to run multiple OSes in near native speeds.

I'm currently running Parallels right now and just finished installing WinXP, and I tell you, it does run at native speed! As a matter of fact, WinXP boots in about 4 seconds. So far, network and video works good, I haven't played with the sound yet.

Once the full version of this software comes out, I'm definitely buying it! $50, well worth it! Which reminds me, better buy me some stocks of this company.

Speaking of stocks, Apple's stock rose 9% higher yesterday at closing after announcing Bootcamp, and rose another 6.99% today after Parallel's solution was announced.

Wonders!

2006-04-05T10:40:00.000-07:00

Wonders never cease! Windows booting on a Mac with Apple's blessing? Wow!

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Anyway, my weekend project went along really well. I was able to install Windows XP and 2K using Q under OS X. Will post details later on.

Weekend Project

2006-03-31T16:06:00.000-08:00

I've been contemplating the past couple of days if I should dual boot my beloved MacBookPro with WinXP. Being spoiled by OS X's stability, ease of use, and interface, leaving it and booting to an inferior* OS will be just like putting 87 Octane fuel on your Ferrari.

Having said that, here's my plan for the weekend:

1. Try to figure out a way to run WinXP or at least W2K within OS X. Sorry, WindowsME doesn't count!
2. Make sure that either OS will have a working network connection and decent sound and video output.
3. Make sure that either OS will be performing decently.

I'm currently looking at different solutions (QEMU, Q, Xen, WinTel, etc), but looks like Q is the most feasible one. VMWare would've been the BEST choice but they are not making commitments that they will create an OS X port of their software. The WinTel solution looks like a scam in my book (but I've been known to be wrong before). Even though Q is currently just "emulating", OS X kexts are being developed so that virtualization can be implemented.

Will post results once my experiment is done.

*Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing Windows per se. As a matter of fact, I earn my living managing Windows boxes. It's just that running Windows and OS X side by side, I can safely say that OS X wins hands-down-- technically and aesthetically speaking** (IMHO at least, YMMV)

** This is entirely a separate blog entry, err... can of worms. Will work on that once time permits.

Recommended "light" reading links:

QVM86 and kqemu.kext forums
Machine Virtualization
Emulation
Virtualization vs Emulation

The Prodigal Son

2006-03-22T13:47:00.000-08:00

My first computer was the Apple //e, and boy was I a happy camper. I remember programming in BASIC. An address book program, notepad (with no save functionality), even a "guess the number between 1 to 100" game.

Then along came the 8086XT with its myriad selection of games, I was easily seduced to the "other" side. Long story short, Microsoft won the OS wars in the 90's and together with that, I became a part of the whole Windows clone army, through highschool, college and the early part of my professional career.

Fast forward 2006: Being forced (pleasantly) to be working on a Mac 30% of the time in the office, I have decided to take make the switch back and bought a Macbook Pro last night.

Justifications:
1. Where else can you find a commercial UNIX distribution that is VERY stable and yet very easy to use.

2. Dual core processing in a mobile package -- need I say more?

3. The price. It is a common misconception that Macs are expensive, but in fact, it's not, considering that you'll be getting QUALITY hardware in a well-designed package. Case and point: As of press time, a Dell Laptop with a 1.86 GHz Pentium M (not dual core, mind you) processor with almost the same specs as the base package Macbook Pro will yield approximately the same price. I know it's like comparing apples (pun!) and lemons, but just by that sheer comparison, you'll get an idea on the cost per performance ratio. You get #1 as a bonus too!

Geekier justifications:

1. Dual booting Windows XP and OS X on the MBP will be good exercise. (See www.onmac.net for details)

2. I travel a lot as part of my work, and when I'm on the road, I would love to have access to to OS X-specific or WinXP-specific apps that we run in the office without lugging around 2 laptops.

3. Linux apps are just a compile away!

Apple has gone a long way since the Apple //e (3 platform changes, and 4 OS transitions-- I know there are more, but this is as far as I know). I am extremely excited to be back and see the light again.

The physicist, engineer and mathematician

2005-09-21T13:42:00.000-07:00

Physicists see equations as a reflection of reality.
Engineers see reality as a reflection of equations.
Mathematicians haven't made the connection.

One night a physicist, an engineer, and a mathematician each awoke to a fire in their kitchen. The physicist calculated the precise amount of water necessary to extinguish the fire, measure out just that amount of water, poured it on the fire, and went back to bed. The engineer poured water on the fire till is went out, added some more for good measure, then went back to bed. The mathematician proved that is was possible to extinguish fire with water, then went back to bed.

OS X fling

2005-09-08T12:15:00.000-07:00

'Bout 3 weeks ago, I have performed the unimaginable (at least in the last decade or so), and even in some circles, a sacrilegious act.

I have installed OS X on an x86 machine and was successful running it. As a matter of fact, I just had an eerie feeling just looking at the boot-up screen, it's as if hell froze or Microsoft made Windows open source.

Anyway, if you're interested, keep on reading.... Disclaimer: Do this at your own risk.

Here are the steps:

Pre-installation requirements:
a. You need an external USB storage device with at least 7GB capacity. An iPod will work well here.

b. A spare HD with at least 10GB of free space.

c. A LiveCD of any Linux flavor you prefer. And NO, don't get me started about Linspire (Lindows, whatever) being a Linux distro. Grab something real like Ubuntu, Gentoo, Redhat or Suse. In this experiment, I used the Ubuntu LiveCD.

d. An image of the OS X tiger install. Remember kids, it is NOT right to download "tiger-x86-flat.img" from BitTorrent sites like piratebay.org if you are not licensed to do so. ;) Typically, it's a 1.2ish GB *.rar file.

Installation

1. Once you're done downloading the image rar, extract the contents to your external USB device. If you're using Windows, WinRar works well (from rarlabs.com). Total extracted size should be approximately 6GB.

2. Boot with your LiveCD. Make sure you set your BIOS to boot from CD. If you don't know how to do that, this project is not for you. Just kidding, consult your mobo manual for details. Usually the option to boot from CD is in the boot priority menu. For safety's sake, just unplug your primary harddrive and make sure that the only HD plugged-in is your 10GB HD from b..

3. Once Ubuntu finishes loading up its GUI, plug in your USB Storage device. A window should popup that will show something like: /Devices/YourDrivesNameHere

4. Open a terminal window and cd to /Devices/YourDrivesNameHere . Type the command:

dd bs=1048576 if=./tiger-x86-flat.img of=/dev/hda

Remember to replace hda with the other 10GB HD you have on your computer. It will take around 5-7 minutes for that to finish, but your mileage may vary.

5. Shutdown your PC, remove the Ubuntu disc, unplug your USB device and boot from your HD.

Voila! OS X on x86! I'll post some pics once I get the chance.

Current setbacks:

i. If you are using an nVidia or ATI video card, chances are, CoreImage (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/coreimage/) and QuartzExtreme (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/quartzextreme/) will be disabled and OS X will only install a VESA 3 compatible driver. Massive efforts are underway to hack/develop an nVidia driver for OS X native on x86. http://macvidia.plusmediamusic.com/

ii. If your processor does not support SSE3, Rosetta won't run and you won't be able to run PPC compiled programs.

BigD
9/8/05

salting your hashes

2005-09-07T16:12:00.000-07:00

No, this is not a post about cooking or preparing hashbrowns. Rather, this is a post about 2 of my pet peeves -- unsecure systems and weak passwords. It is quite unsettling to know that a simple google search for the term

5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99

will bring thousands of websites, sometimes showing *nix passwd files. Why they're in public domain? I don't know why.

What is the significance of 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99 you say? Well, the string shown above is the MD5 hash of the word 'password'. MD5 is a cryptographic hash function which outputs a 128-bit hash value for any given sequence of bytes -- as short as a character string or as large as a file.

Eg.

md5_hash("password") = 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99
md5_hash("hax0r") = b2a2420416e7b66308f9abb786f973da
md5_hash("apples") = daeccf0ad3c1fc8c8015205c332f5b42

The algorithm for deriving the 128-bit output hash from a sequence of bytes is best described here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5

But in a nutshell, MD5 is like baking. You have ingredients (apples), perform certain operations, peel, chop, boil, etc, then bake, you get apple pie -- or a hash.

Like MD5, you cannot get the original "apples" from the hash, it is mathematically irreversible. That is why it is the ideal kind of data to store as passwords-- you can see it, but you don't understand what it means. Modern operating systems usually store passwords this way and to authenticate the user, the OS doesn't decrypt the password in the password database, conversely, it encrypts the user input and compares it to the stored hash. But I digress.

Anyway, there have been a growing amount of users building MD5 hash dictionaries (ie gdataonline.com) wherein it claims to "crack" MD5 hashes. Nothing wrong with that, except if you use it for the the wrong reasons. True, it does translate your MD5 hashes to it's original form, but it doesn't do it mathematically, the magic is just a simple database lookup of common dictionary words vs its MD5 hash, nothing more.

Which now brings me to the title of this blog entry, salting your hashes. Salting in essence means adding a "secret" sequence of bytes to whatever string you hash to make it less prone to brute force dictionary attacks.

Eg.

md5_hash("XXapplesYY") = 7379d49b310a2d866a4ddf79bd5f09cc

In the above example, XX and YY are my salts.

Salting is but one of the hundreds, if not thousands of ways in securing passwords in applications or websites you're developing. In ensuring that techniques like the ones shown above are employed, we make the net a bit safer for everyone.

bd
9/7/05