Whimsical poetry of the day
Posted on | May 27, 2009 | No Comments
My checkin log of the day:
Revision
xxxx
Author
ezra
Date
2009-05-27 15:34:24 -0700 (Wed, 27 May 2009)
Log Message
bug-xxxx uz was being lazy and fuzzy so checkin is done by ez. sorry for such a whimsy.
Kubuntu 9.04 Quick Review
Posted on | May 11, 2009 | 5 Comments
I just upgraded my work laptop from Kubuntu 8.10 to 9.04. I did the upgrade over a wired connection, and it took me about 5 hours to download and install all the packages.
The upgrade went smoothly, and I couldn’t find any major configuration hiccups that renders my box useless so far.
There are a few things that I like right away when I booted up the first time. The main thing is that things render more correctly. The default font selections are generally smaller than in 8.10, which is really good, because it was too big. Check boxes render correctly, which is great because web pages with a lot of checkboxes, like Gmail, used to render awfully before.
I also noticed that some javascript rendering animations that didn’t work in firefox in 8.10 are working now working. This and the rendering issues are very important to me as a web developer.
Now the bad part… The color theme!! The default color theme seems to me as an unfinished work to me. The color choices are fine for common windows and tools. However, KDE Plasma widgets seem to use inverted colors for background, but they do not invert the text colors! Semi-black on semi-black just do not work in computer screens! I’ve done some color tweakings to get it to be acceptable, but it’s not pretty yet. Shouldn’t the default color theme be at least usable?
The second complain that I have is the speed! The Kubuntu 9.04 Release Page claims that Kubuntu 9.04 is faster than 8.10. Plasma seems to be hogging my processors much much more than before. As I write this blog, several times Plasma seem to suck all the juice that my processors have, and make the desktop freeze for good minute !
Another thing to consider for Kubuntu user is the retirement of K Network Manager widget. They have replaced it with Plasma Network Manager widget. This widget is not added by default to your toolbar, so you need to add it there, and re-configure your connection.
I realize that this is just a quick review, written the same day after my upgrade. I may find more things that I like/don’t like with it. However, I thought I’d write my first impressions.
I am not totally happy with this release (not Kubuntu in general, just the release), but I am not totally dissapointed either. Half a year ago, when I first installed 8.10, I really wasn’t happy with the quality. However, with time as updates came, it became more stable. I am eagerly waiting for updates from Kubuntu in the next few days to make my workstation better.
Twitter discovery, 5/11/09
Posted on | May 11, 2009 | No Comments
Discovered via @christinelu that @jack_welch and @SuzyWelch are twittering! A must follow…
The real reason behind Kurtner’s suicide: Obama
Posted on | April 7, 2009 | No Comments
Like many House’s fan out there, I was stunned that Dr. Kurtner committed suicide in yesterday’s episode.
I said to my wive that Kal Penn, who is playing Kurtner must be getting quite a new job offer that he cannot refuse.
Soon, we found out that Fox has set up an obituary website forKurtner.
Today, we learn the truth behind it all. You may not believe it, but it’s Obama. Click here for detail.
Problem with Open Textbooks: They are Free
Posted on | March 31, 2009 | 2 Comments
Yesterday morning, our fearless leader, Neeru Khosla, barged into a developer meeting, and said, “We have a big problem!” Our dev lead explained to her that we were in a meeting, and people were on the line, conferencing in. She insisted, “I have to let this out. People just don’t believe that our books are free!!”
A little bit of flashback, just a few weeks ago CK12 and the State of Virginia launched the first ever open Text Book entitled 21st Century Physics Flexbook: A Compilation of Contemporary and Emerging Technologies. The launch was very successful, and was followed by several important meetings between CK12 leaders and several key goverment people to pave the way for the creation of more and better open text books. The most ommon remarks that they received was along the same tone, most do not believe that our books are really really free!
Today, we witnessed again a blog post by an active educator and author, Larry Moran, that argued beyond not believing that text books should be free, but went as far as claiming that text books should never be free. His main argument is that good text books take such an enormous amount of effort to create that it shouldn’t be given away for free.
Seth Godin’s thesis about how people are so resistant to change rings a bell. However, like Godin said, resisting to change is just the first step towards being irrelevant. Changes will happen regardless of people resisting it or not.
Open Education Resources (OER) movements will face a battle from the status quo. However, this is nothing more than a deja vu. We have all witness the exact same battle between open source movement against the big giant software companies. Right now, virtually all software companies are at least partially proponent of open source movement. Even Microsoft certified open source software to run on it’s platform.
Mahatma Gandhi said it:
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”
So CK12 is somewhat one of the pioneers of the inevitable, we are making free textbooks. And free doesn’t mean low quality, all our books will eventually allign to government standards.
And yes, the books are free. Free as in free beer, go ahead read them and get drunk in knowledge, and free as in William Wallace’s freedom, go ahead add/modify/customize/share them.
Swoopo is a Scam
Posted on | March 18, 2009 | 18 Comments
TechChrunch has an article about Swoopo saying that it has a Hint of Scam. Well, SHAME ON YOU TECHCHRUNCH!! It doesn’t have a ‘Hint’ of scam, IT IS VERY BLATANT THAT SWOOPO IS A SCAM!
I am very saddened to find out about Swoopo today, in light of the other scams that have been going on right now. So moved that I am, it was hard for me to focus on work. I have to get this article out, and tell the world: SWOOPO IS A SCAM.
Now if you have some patience and curiousity on why Swoopo is a scam, read on:
One afternoon, I was in “Game Theory” class, and our professor David Housman ask the class to engage in a game. David was to sell a hundred dolar in an auction, with a starting bid of just two dolar, with one dolar increment. The highest bidder will walk away with the $100 after paying the bid amount. So if there is only one bid, s/he walks away with $100 - $2 = $98 dolar for nothing!! The only catch, the rule specifies that the ’second highest bidder’ has to pay his/her bid without getting anything.
Try that game in real life, you will for multiply your hundred dolar!! Initially, greed would motivate the bidders, as they are driven by the potential of the money gained. Soon as the bids reaches the fair falue, the potential gain is reduced, but the potential loss for the second bidder increases. This potential loss would then drive the bidders not to loose money, and they would continue to bid well pass the $100 value. Even the winner would loose money. The only guaranteed way not to lose is not to play. Can you see that this is a scam ?
Now let’s consider how Swoopo works. Here are the main rule (there more and there are variations):
- The auctioned are run on a specified time duration.
- Bids starts very very low, they lure people with very high potential gain.
- Each time bidder places a bid, they increase the bidding price by $0.15.
- Each time a bidder places a bid, they pay bidding fee of $0.75.
- Each time a bid is placed, the auction duration is extended.
- The winner gets the goods for the bidding price, which is typically way lower than the street price.
Okay, the rules seems quite inocent, right? Everything seems reasonable. Most people would not count the mathematical implication of that $0.75 bidding fee that they pay.
Let’s consider the ’scam’ that David showed us in the class. In that auction, the second highest bidder has to pay while getting nothing. In Swoopo’s case, it’s not only the the second highest bidder that pays for nothing, but ALL bidders pay the bidding fee, regardless if they win or not.
Just like the classroom scam, it was initially greed that drives the auction. But soon remorse would be the bigger drive. Remember, all bidders carry some cost! They would certainly want to get something to reduce the lost.
Let’s see this real auction that I watched as I wrote this post.
An Xbox 360 Red Elite Edition & Resident Evil 5 was to be offered at $160 when I got to the site. It was just 2 minutes left on the clock, and the auction gets heated. The several contenders who eyed the item started to bid more towards the end time, which unfortunately would also increase the auction time. Because of the high bidding frequency, the auction time gets extended 30 minutes, and during that time the price go up to over two hundred towards the end time. But again, bid frequency increases again just in the nick of time, postponing the end of the auction, and increasing the price. Finally, the auction ends with the selling price of #389.79, only $10 less than the street price. The winner pays an aditional $669 for bidding fee, so the total cost of that Xbox is about $1000. But is that the only income that Swoopo gets? Remember that the losers also pay bidding fees. For this item alone, Swoopo gets about 2600 bids, worth about $1900. So the total revenue for that Xbox is $2200. Is that not a scam to you?
I know that Geithner has been tough with AIG this days, but I hope the government would hire some good Game Theorists to catch these Scamers. I personally consider Swoopo’s scam as more evil than Madoff’s because they target lower class people who has less to spend, and quite likely less power to fight back.
Please help me spread the news, Swoopo is a scam. It should be closed as soon as possible.
‘National Scandal’ BBQ
Posted on | March 18, 2009 | No Comments
So the theme of the day is ‘The Grilling of AIG Execs‘ over the 160+ million dollars that was given away as bonuses for ‘the best and the brightest’ leaders of the company.
People’s outrage over the bonuses is certainly well based, considering that AIG has been given billions of bail out money, and that, considering AIG’s losses, these ‘best and brightest’ were certainly not very bright.
As I was listening to KCBS this morning, I realized is that AIG is certainly not the only scandal case we have. Even today we are still talking Madoff and his scheme. And still linger in our taste buds, the scandal of Enron, and the like.
The second thing that I realized is that everyone is angry, and would certainly like to participate in the grilling. But most people can only share their frustrations with their friends.
So if you marry those two things together? I see a really bright business idea that would do very well. Someone should open a “national-scandal-themed” restaurant, probably a steak house and a bar. The items in the menu should be named according to big national scandals. People who have been bitten by these people or companies can now have a chance to ‘bite’ or ’swallow’ or ’slice’ or even ‘grill’ back at them. Given a a place would for sure do well.
Can you imagine the outrage of conversations that would take place on a such restaurant?
“How would you like your AIG Steak?”
“… Really really really well done please.”
“Can I have the last bite of your Martha Stewart Pie ?”
“… Only if you’d trade me your Octomom Stir-fry.”
If you want to invest in such a restaurant, I want 10% stake for the idea 
Happy 15th Birthday, Linux!
Posted on | March 13, 2009 | No Comments
That is counting from Linux 1.0 release. Linus started writing the code about 3 years before that.
Thank you for running my boxes for the last 10 years..
See: http://i.gizmodo.com/5169216/happy-15th-birthday-linux
Better to Say Sorry than to Ask Permission
Posted on | March 11, 2009 | No Comments
I’ve read that phrase numerous times from the quips of two Bugzilla systems. Both systems did not cite the original person who coined the phrase, which make me believe that it was entered by the founder of companies to encourage employees to take bold decissions.
Once I did consciously decided to do something extraordinarily bold in my first company. I did get into a little bit of trouble, so I did have to say sorry. I am not sure if I would have been better of to ask permission first, no one would ever know. But getting into trouble was never fun, and it would deter most people to be bold.
Today I read the quip again as I was working on my bug queue. So all the memories came back, and something tickled me; I had to find out the person who first coined the phrase.
I then Good old Google helped me find out that Admiral Grace Murray Hopper coined the phrase: “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.”
Now one should notice that Admiral Hopper never said about what is better, she just said about what is easier. There is a big difference there as she was not suggesting any moral weight of being bold. She was talking about practicality…
It’s not hard to deduce that the person who coined the phrase “Better to say sorry than to ask permission” is the person who first wrongly quoted Admiral Hopper. So now it’s really up to you if you want to believe that it’s better to say sorry than to ask around first. I personally believe in being bold, but I think boldness needs to be balanced with wisdom. The more you know about something, the more you can be bold about it.
But worst is if you have to say sorry for doing nothing, not even asking for permission.
Sergei Brin @ 101
Posted on | March 6, 2009 | No Comments
Bay area comute is never boring:
- Accidents are daily phenomenons that you have to consider in your travel plan.
- Nice and rare vehicles are often spotted here. From Ferrari to Maserati to Ducati to Smart. C-class Mercedeses are as frequent as Honda Civics, and Lexuses are just more common than GM cars.
- Phoning without hands free and texting while driving is illegal, but people still pull stunts like shaving or putting on mascara at red lights.
- Obnoxious license plates are fun to spot. I am yet to register mine ‘G3EK1AB.’
- Occasional celebrity spotting are possible.
This morning, I had the rare chance to experience the last. As I merge in from 237 West to 101 North, I was beside a Black Porche Carrerra with “I am feeling Lucky” license plate holder. So I know I was next to a googler, which are plentyful in this area.
I ran through thoughts about Google Page Rank talk that I presented at a Math Symposium at Penn State. I got a kick thinking that Google was actually going to remove the “I am feeling lucky” button from its page. But users seem to like the 2-button page layout.
Approaching the Shoreline exit, the Porsche driver slowed down to merge behind me to take the exit. That’s when I saw the driver of the black Carrerra: Sergei Brin!!
I did consider that I could have forced a face-to-face meeting by slamming my break reall hard. But then that would probably banish any chance for me to ever work for/with him. So I let him go…
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- Interesting story: Fed's been lying about our money supply!! http://mises.org/story/3525 1 day ago
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