The fact that a blog exists on the topic of antenna engineering is proof that we live in marvelous times. AntennaSys weighs in on the much-discussed iPhone 4 antenna issue. I come away with the impression that it’s a flaw that users will have to live with, but that it’s one they’ll be able to live with. If you want to learn more about the iPhone’s display, check out this post by retinal neuroscientist Bryan Jones. Like I said, marvelous times. ...
Season one of Treme is finished, and I totally failed to produce the last two installments of the Treme essential reference. I think it’s because as the season drew to a close, the fictional plot points overwhelmed the factual depiction of New Orleans and its customs that so captivated me throughout the run of the series. To fill in the gaps, I would recommend (as I did every week), Treme explained from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and of course the ongoing series of interviews about Treme at A Blog Supreme. ...
The Telegraph newspaper has the best World Cup coverage. Their live match commentary is often brilliant. Here’s their instant reaction to the late score by the United States that pushed the UK England* into the second spot in the group, where they will likely face Germany in the next round: The USA have come fashionably late to the party, leaving us at the mercy of the Germans. It’s World War Two all over again. ...
Matt Gallagher at Cocoa With Love provides his general model for Cocoa applications. The terminology is specific to Cocoa, but the model applies to nearly all GUI applications. Needless to say, the way you fill in the blanks in his model is what makes an application unique and useful.
Just as background, here’s what the Constitution says about intellectual property: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. The Constitution makes it clear that copyright and patents exist not to make sure that people can profit from their creations but to encourage innovation and creativity. Researchers at the University of Kansas have found that the number of creative works being produced have increased since file sharing became available. It’s important to keep this in mind when people talk about strengthening copyright laws or escalating copyright enforcement. Piracy may be unethical, but it doesn’t seem to be stifling the production of creative works. ...
As I was listening to a car alarm go off last night (and again this morning), I wondered whether as a security measure they are effective at all. My guess was that the massive number of false positives insures that they go completely ignored when they go off. I was right. Transportation Alternatives has the numbers. Don’t go around thinking The Club is a better choice, either. Professional thieves target cars with The Club so that they can avoid walking around with a pry bar. ...
John Siracusa nails the developer mentality when it comes to tools perfectly: And so continues one of the biggest constants in software development: the unerring sense among developers that the level of abstraction they’re current working at is exactly the right one for the task at hand. Anything lower-level is seen as barbaric, and anything higher-level is a bloated, slow waste of resources. This remains true even as the overall level of abstraction across the industry marches ever higher. ...
Interesting post from Greg Street, the lead game systems designer for World of Warcraft, explaining why they are changing the game so that you can’t do the same raid more than once a week. Some of you guys are coming from the angle that players should take responsibility for not playing more than they want to. I agree with that of course, but I also think the game design should not be something that puts that kind of pressure on you. We don’t want to make a game full of traps or temptations that you should have to resist. It’s more fun, I think, if what the game asks of you is reasonable. Killing the same boss twice or four times (as in ToC) or an unlimited number of times (as in the “no loot” model) doesn’t seem reasonable. Neither does having to play Alterac Valley hundreds of times in a weekend to get a prestigious PvP rank. Neither does having to grind for consumables for hours every week before raid night. All of those things are theoretically “features” that players could have shown some common sense and opted out of, but realistically they were just boneheaded design decisions that we needed to fix. ...
This sentence from Dan Froomkin pretty much says it all when it comes to President Obama’s speech on the oil spill: How unmoored from reality are Obama and his top advisers to think that some pretty words with so little substance could accomplish so much? The words weren’t even that pretty. My deeper fear is that President Obama’s limited reach still exceeds the nation’s feeble grasp. Is there a great untapped willingness to take on the challenge of climate change or even moving to cleaner fuels for other, less politically toxic reasons? I don’t see it. ...
Richard Feynman gave Stephen Wolfram the following advice when Wolfram asked about starting his own research center: Find a way to do your research with as little contact with non-technical people as possible, with one exception, fall madly in love! That is my advice, my friend.