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.
Go
to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home
Page
Email me at
d.phillips@computer.org
This
week: December February 10-16, 2014
Summary of this week:
- Flappy Bird pulled due to legal issues(?)
- Shirley Temple dies at 85
- Tuesday is "the day we fight back" against surveillance
- Demand for the new Mac Pro is greater than supply
- Toyota recalls 1.9million Prius cars - software problem
Monday
- Tuesday
- Wednesday
- Thursday
- Friday
- Saturday
- Sunday
Monday February 10, 2013
More on the legal issues and pulling Flappy Bird from app stores.
The ten most successful KickStarter projects: video games dominate the list.
Thoughts on Android and how Microsoft might take it from Google - or not.
Profiles of the first 20 Facebook users. Rich kids that attended a rich-only liberal college. Good for them.
I like this in the age where no one believes anyone because we seem to believe everyone has an agenda: "Transparency is the new objectivity."
The great weakness of Microsoft Windows: trying to please everyone.
The age of the private app is upon us. Of course, these private message flow through the vendor's servers, and of course they keep a copy.
Is the tablet dead? A device lost in between the pocket computer (smartphone) and desktop computer?
Email me at
d.phillips@computer.org
Go
to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home
Page
Tuesday February 11, 2013
Today is "The day we fight back" as major websites protest NSA surveillance.
Mark Zuckerburg is one of the biggest donors in the world.
Shirley Temple dies at 85.
Flappy Bird is gone, everyone is trying to fill its #1 slot. How do you replace a best-selling game that no one predicted would succeed and that was written by a complete unknown?
Investors want Microsoft's new CEO to focus on software, not game consoles and tablets. Actually, they want him to focus on brilliant new ideas that will make lots of money.
Protestors block Microsoft shuttle buses in Seattle.
Again, if you don't like what people do in America, destroy their
property, ur, er, wait, maybe that isn't it. Anyways, there was a time
when people would have celebrated a group of people riding together in
a bus instead of driving their individual cars. Oh how times change.
An extensive story about Jeff Bezos and publishing.
(trying to) Adjusting for grade inflation. The numbers don't lie: colleges are giving out A grades to everyone these days. But back in my day...
Private pilots, and the planes they fly, are disappearing.
Is the nook dead? Barnes and Noble fires its entire hardware engineering staff.
Google leases NASA's Hanger One on highway 101 in the valley. You can't miss it when you drive by.
Flickr is now ten years old. The entire web 2.0 paradigm is turning ten.
Email me at
d.phillips@computer.org
Go
to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home
Page
Wednesday February 12, 2014
Coming real soon now from Intel is a 15-core Xeon processor.
Demand for the new Mac Pro is greater than supply. In the local Apple store, they had a few on display for a few days, but now they are gone.
It is official (according to Nielson), Americans spend more time on mobile devices than desktop PCs.
Google is working on operating systems for robotic systems. Can you spell unemployment?
A small bright spot in the desktop PC business is the small computer box.
Produce videos and they will watch: 200million people watched their Facebook Look Back videos.
The Maryland legislature is considering a bill to cut the water and power to the NSA.
A House committee has moved a long a bill that would ban cell phone calls on commercial flights.
Guess what? You can hack an airport x-ray system so you can carry guns and knives on the plane. Are we all ready for the Internet of things?
Yahoo acquires social diary company Wander.
Yahoo is moving the focus of its research labs to mobile.
This story is all over the Internet, so it must be important: Twitter is alterning its design so that it looks like Facebook.
"We can’t allow our leaders to continue to talk about agriculture as synonymous with rural,"
Email me at
d.phillips@computer.org
Go
to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home
Page
Thursday February 13, 2014
Lenovo, the world's largest PC maker, is not selling a lot of tablets.
Must see video of the 1932 Winter Olympics. It seems like more fun back then before Nike and Under Armour took over.
Toyota recalls 1.9million Prius cars for software problems.
Video games sales hit a record high in the U.S. in 2013.
"the problems that lend themselves to bargain solutions have already been solved." - Seth Godin
An FBI agent checked the wrong box on a form. It took 7 years and a $4million lawsuit to correct it. This is typical of government: someone makes a mistake, and the entire government denies the mistake.
Comcast is about to buy Time Warner to make the single too-big-to-fail cable provider in the US.
The 64-bit Windows 8.1 tablets are finally here. Does anyone care?
Facebook is running its own water shuttle in SF Bay. Wait a few moments for the protesters.
Foreign
governments spy on U.S. journalists, and it doesn't matter where the
journalist is sitting. Such is the reach of the Internet.
Private companies cannot compete with government. This is why many ISPs are fight government-operated broadband services.
Email me at
d.phillips@computer.org
Go
to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home
Page
Friday February 14, 2014
Africa
may become the number one drone market in the world. Countries are
skipping over manned air forces and going straight to drones.
Car sharing is reducing car sales. That makes sense and it is terrible news if you build or sell cars.
Most web traffic is by computers, not persons.
How Facebook changed its News Feed algorithm and who it hurts.
Taco Bell will be the first big fast food change to offer mobile ordering (real soon now).
Do good engineering managers exist?
Microsoft has sold over 200million Windows 8 licenses. And most people feel that Win 8 is a failure. The definition of success has changed.
A personal tech strategy: buy Apple hardware, use Google services, buy media from Amazon. Which operating system? Who cares any more.
The world's largest solar power plant is now operating in the Mojave Desert. Let's hope this works.
Email me
at
d.phillips@computer.org
Go
to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home
Page
Saturday February 15, 2014
Photo of the year: African immigrants searching for a cell phone signal.
Valentine's Day was this week, so there are many Internet stories with a romantic twist or something like that. If you can spend $300,000 per night, take a ride on the romantic submarine.
A thought that makes sense to me: The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.
Turn a photo into an oil painting - quick and only $100. Modern technology and cheap Chinese labor make it possible.
There is a lot of chatter about Microsoft Office for iPad and how it might be here before the Windows touch version.
Microsoft pushes their tablets as work machines with Office. If,
however, Office ran on the iPad, Microsoft would sell a lot of copies -
or would it?
Rural hospitals are closing in America. I would rather live in a rural area than a suburban one. Life in rural America, however, is becoming a luxury for the rich.
Apple has produced a Secure Coding Guide for programmers. The document PDF is here.
Email me at
d.phillips@computer.org
Go
to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home
Page
Sunday February 16, 2014
Want some background noise instead of defeaning quiet? Soundrown.com provides many choices.
One person's experience with wearing a camera that took a photo every 30 seconds.
If you want to buy a PC with Windows 7, October 31st is the last date you can.
Legislative reforms on the NSA have stalled in committee. Expect nothing real soon now.
If you cancel your cable or satellite TV, here is how you can still watch your favorite shows.
Kickstarter has been hacked. And some people believe that Health Care dot Gov and all the government networks that attach to it are secure.
And the Forbes web site was also hacked.
Our Federal government is contracting to build a national license plate reader database. What could possibly go wrong?
Who knew you could do all this with OS X Preview?
Techniques for helping work through the uncertainty of freelance work. Good financial advice in the post.
Writer means writing - even on days when you don't want to write.
How one writer has experienced a long career.
Improving as a writer, even with little spare time. A big one is the notebook, paper notebook like in the old days.
Freelance writers and workers are often lonely. There are ways to meet people while working by yourself.
"Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” - Mark Twain
Email me at
d.phillips@computer.org
Go
to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home
Page