Dwayne Phillips ' Day Book

Items I happen to view each day. Science, Techonology, Management, Culture, and of course Writing

This is my day book for this week. I have modeled this after science fiction and computer writer Jerry Pournelle's view, or as he calls it, his Day Book. I encourage you to see Jerry Pournelle's site and subscribe to his services.

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This week: May 13-19, 2013

Summary of this week:


Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday

Monday May 13, 2013

In light of lagging sales, several places are cutting the price of Mac computers.

Sony shows a prototype of a 13" slate with a stylus intended for education applications. As a prototype, there is no price or availability date. Would this work or is it just too big too late?

A city in Spain is installing 10,000 sensors to monitor everything and try to do some good without creating a police state. Good luck.

Every now and then, we are reminded - mobile is dominating the world.

Excellent little thought from Seth Godin, not his main thought but the additional thought: And then you won't waste time doing it over.

From the faces in this video, the Google Glass user interface isn't quite ready.

Colleges are recruiting rich kids instead of poor ones. Sometimes economics is cruel.

This story keeps popping up all over the Internet the past few days. I guess that makes it important. A flying car prototype crashed.

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Tuesday May 14, 2013

The game Puzzles and Dragons is generating $3.75Million a day in Japan alone. What is that game? Are all these people crazy or something?

Google has raised its free online storage to 15GigaBytes. More on the story.

And Microsoft updates its SkyDrive service.

Samsung is running 5G in the lab at 1GigaBitPerSecond.

The Department of Justice collected a lot of phone records from AP reporters. And then the IRS story continues. I thought this stuff went out with that, well, what was his name, oh yes, Nixon. What happened to Hope and Change? More on the story.

Nokia brings out the Lumia 925 phone.

What to expect from this week's Google I/O conference.

This is one of those things we don't want to know, but here goes: there is more bacteria on my iPhone than on my toilet.

Smashwords concludes that $3.99 is the best price for an eBook, if you want to make the most money.

The KiraBook from Toshiba - a luxury Ultrabook $1600.

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Wednesday May 15, 2013

All for charity, coffee with Apple's Tim Cook cost $610,000 at auction.

Do you want paper or software?

A few thoughts on machines replacing people and raising unemployment - the machines don't have to be as good as the people. See, e.g., those stupid person-less checkout lines at the grocery store. I hate them, but they save the grocery story money and supposedly keep the price of food lower.

The Chinese government censors its subjects who disagree with it. Unfortunately, in the U.S. we can't say that we're different - DOJ and AP. And while we're discussing government spying on its citizens, the IRS illegally sent information about conservative groups to liberal media groups.

Those who operate data centers are making all their profits reselling electrical power.

Firefox version 21 is here.

How Senator McCain's talk of fixing cable TV prices will hurt consumers.

Photos show how much the iPhone's camera has improved over the years.

A little more news from Microsoft about Windows 8.1 coming later this year.

Panasonic will send 100,000 solar lamps to places that have no electricity. Good for Panasonic.

Karma is installing free WiFi hotspots on food trucks in New York City.

The fighting in the Senate continues over H-1B visas. It is clear that some do not trust American companies to do what is right concerning looking for Americans to fill jobs first before hiring foreign workers on H-1B visas.

New features for Google Maps appear a little ahead of the I/O conference.

HP brings out its second Android-powered tablet.

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Thursday May 16, 2013

The Google I/O Conference started yesterday, so we have lots of news from there.

A list of announcement from Google.

A lot of information on Google Hangouts.

This fall (real soon now), Google will launch Google Play for Education.

Google has teamed with NASA to create a new supercomputer lab.

Tim Cook will testify before the Senate about offshore tax practices.

Google announces it Google Play Music All Access. The name is way too long.

Google's direction with search.

Tips on working from home. I didn't realize so many women worked in their pajamas - twice the percentage as men.

Our Federal government has embarked on a massive data center consolidation project. A few problems: they don't know how much money they are "saving" and they are far behind schedule. Is there anything else they don't know?

If you don't like the look of Google Glass, you should see the prototypes.

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Friday May 17, 2013

A snapshot in time - best portable computers for business May 2013. I have used the Dell 4700 - recommended for "mobile workstation." It is powerful enough for that title.

The Kepler exoplanet space telescope has ceased functioning only four years after launch. Another NASA premature failure. Keep studying climate change boys and keep neglecting space.

Samsung has sold 10million Galaxy S4 smartphones in less than a month. The definition of success has changed.

It appears that Yahoo is trying to leapfrog in technology by buying companies.

Watch this MIT four-legged robot run.

Google Glass is hacked and Ubuntu runs on it.

Stock prices go down and up, and so now, once again, Bill Gates is the richest person in the world.

The disgrace that college atheletics has become - coaches are the highest paid public employees in the nation.

Tim Cook will ask Congress to lower corporate tax rates. Good luck with that one, but with lower rates, U.S. companies will bring cash, and jobs, into the country. Sounds good to me, but I am naive about such things.

Some good words from an early user of Google Glass.

Check this site for personal web sites - hoverboard.io.

Rumor: Google will release QuickOffice that uses all the latest Microsoft Office file types.

There is something in this story that I don't understand, except that someone is being paid off (graft) and that is the norm in politics, but... Foxconn still works its employees more than the legal limit.

A North Carolina study shows that unemployed Americans don't want and will not stay with farm jobs. Farming is hard word; it always has been and probably always will be.

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Saturday May 18, 2013

MacBook Air supplies are short + WWDC approaches = new MacBook Air coming from Apple real soon now.

The latest FBI request for communications backdoors would harm security for everyone.

Yahoo to buy Tumbler for $1.1billion?

A Beowulf cluster built from 33 Raspberry Pis. Cool.

It seems that meteor showers hitting our moon are quite common. Thank God for our atmospheric sheild

97% of scientific papers agree that climate change is man made. That is the biggest piece of evidence that causes me to doubt all this man-made climate change. 97% of researchers in every field don't agree on anything. This is too suspicious.

Will time at work and schedules for products go away? I doubt it.

Amtrak is boosting its WiFi performance on trains this summer.

Many large organizations are just now moving from Windows XP to Windows 7. That is not a surprise.

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Sunday May 19, 2013

I am not sure of the reason behind this advice as it comes from a billionaire politician, but it is pretty good. Not everyone should go to college. Being a plumber is a pretty good alternative.

22 million user IDs were stolen in Japan. Is everyone ready for national electronic health records?

A typical Craigslist job opening for a writer - write 20,000 words a weeks (a novel every month) for low pay. Beware.

Thoughts on HP and its Android-powered computers.

Apple has $144Billion (with a B) in cash. What it is and isn't doing with the money.

Finally, the Pentagon approves iOS devices for use at work.

Simple, but true, chart on how to get things done. Actually, quite good.

Thoughts on self publishing your books.

Problems of new writers, actually of all writers. Note the notes: new writers have full-time jobs, families, and nothing to write about? Are you kidding? If your life has more things to do than time, you have more things to write about than time to write. Write about all those things that occupy 25 hours a day!

Seeing things and writing. This is how I write. I put something in front of me, or in front of my mind, and I describe it.

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