Randy Pausch on Time Management
This is a great talk by computer scientist Randy Pausch on the ever evasive management of time.
January 02 2008 | Geek Stuff | 2 Comments »
Archive for the 'Geek Stuff' Category
Sing this song whenever you are scared
I have just recently discovered ‘the show‘ a series of tiny video episodes from and with zefrank. I think he’s funny, Tina doesn’t, but that’s ok. He has great humour and it helps that he thinks, so I don’t have to. I also now that he likes me, he says so on his website!
This video is special. A great song to sing whenever you are scared: “At least I don’t suck at life, I keep on trying despite.”
Great ZEN!
December 02 2007 | Geek Stuff and World Peace | No Comments »
Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law
This is a great talk by Stanford professor Larry Lessig about how the current system of enforced copyright is turning us and our children into criminals for only creative expression.
November 07 2007 | Geek Stuff and World Peace | No Comments »
You can’t shut down the internet
You, yes you, dinosaur of the industrial age, get this into your head: this age is about information and information is really totally different from material matter. One curious property of information is that if you try to take it away …. it multiplies! Not by magic, but by the nature of the human mind which just loves to delve into a big sea of information and reacts strongly to forces that try to dry up this well.
So, read up on the Streisand Effect and learn a lesson. All you RIAA, DCMA, Cease and Desist lawyers and Patent Pushers out there. You are of the past, just lie down and die.
The latest attempted attack on free speech was reported from The Register, in a case of a blogger against an Uzbek Billionaire.
September 27 2007 | Communication and Geek Stuff and World Peace | No Comments »
Bye Bye Gravenreuth!
Gerichtsurteil: Sechs Monate Haft für “Abmahn-Anwalt” - Netzwelt - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten
Darauf haben wir LANGE gewartet! Endlich ist dem notorischen Spielverderber Günter Freiherr von Gravenreuth das Handwerk gelegt worden, jedenfalls fuer kurze 6 Monate und nur wenn die Berufung nichts bringt. Dieser Mensch hat so lange die Softwareentwickler und Domaininhaber in Angst und Schrecken versetzt mit seinen fadenscheinigen Abmahnungen, dass diese Nachricht so richtig gut tut.
Bravo TAZ !
September 13 2007 | Deutsch and Geek Stuff | No Comments »
The problems with OpenID
The Identity Corner » The problems with OpenID
If you are using openId, think again and read the above article. There are so many things wrong with openId, you could just as well put all your usernames, passwords, social security number and credit card numbers open on your website.
September 11 2007 | Geek Stuff | No Comments »
Why Firefox?
… the secret is in the add-ons! Below is a short list of plugins that I would sorely miss would I ever switch to another browser:
- Firebug - a complete Javascript IDE in your browser
- Webdeveloper Toolbar - too many good utilities for web development
- FireFTP - a complete FTP client in your browser
- It’s all text! - edit text from textareas in your desktop editor of choice
- abcTaipu - provides an easy way to insert accented characters into entry fields or textareas, great for writing German or Esperanto on an English keyboard
It cannot be said often enough - Get Firefox Now!
August 17 2007 | Geek Stuff | No Comments »
We Worship MD5, the GOD of HASH (Skrentablog)
In his article “We Worship MD5, the GOD of HASH“, Rich Skrenta shows some of the good uses for the old and trusted MD5 hash algorithm. So what if it’s cryptographically broken? As long as you know about the weaknesses, you can still use it for stuff that doesn’t need to be 110% secure.
In a way this article ties into the same line of thought as “The Architecture of Mailinator“, in that it emphasises that the perfectness or security of systems and algorithms must be seen in the context of it’s use. MD5 is great and fast and creates a collision only after hashing 2^64 items, in the same way to provide throw away emails that noone cares about after 1 or 2 hours, storing them all in memory in a LIFO is a great way of solving the problem.
Goodness or fitness or perfectness of a thing is always relative to the domain or context of it’s use.
August 17 2007 | Geek Stuff | No Comments »
The Architecture of Mailinator
In this article Paul Tyma talks how he designed and implemented his great Mailinator system, a service which provides free short-lived throw-away email addresses. This article is a great read in systems design. The Mailinator receives around 2-5 Million emails a day and runs on a very modest machine with an AMD 2Ghz Athlon processor, 1G of ram, and a boring IDE, 80G hard drive. It also shows that Java is good and solves real world problems reliably and fast.
Links:
http://mailinator.blogspot.com/
August 16 2007 | Geek Stuff | No Comments »
Stephen King: The last word on Harry Potter
Since I was a big fan of Stephen King and am a big fan of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, I read this review with extreme satisfaction. Stephen knows the secret of magic and he acknowledges that Rowling has raised the standard with her Opus Harry.
Just in case you haven’t read the latest book yet and just in case you cared, don’t read the above review just yet, it contains spoilers!
August 13 2007 | Geek Stuff | No Comments »
