George Sudarkoff

Meta-reminders

My wife surprised me with some productivity innovation today. A few minutes ago an alarm on her cell phone went off. When I asked her what it was about she told me that it's a meta-reminder. A couple of hours ago she remembered that she had to remember to do something in the evening and so she set up an alarm without actually remembering what exactly she was supposed to do. Of course, the problem is, she still could not remember it when the alarm went off, so it's really not a very effective innovation, but still it's quite funny.

Indenting code in Python

I'm playing with Python and I must say I'm impressed by its simplicity and power! But I have one (theoretical) problem with its indentation-defines-scope approach. What if (and I stress "if" here) all my indentation goes south, how am I supposed to know what part of the code belongs to which scope? As I said, it is strictly theoretical, as I use source control to store even my perl one-liners. But still, whitespace being semantically that significant is quite frightening to me.

Does free software chill innovation?

David Weinberger writes:

Pito Salas wonders if the market's expectation that broad classes of software just ought to be free is preventing some very cool apps from being developed.

First of all, I disagree that there is such expectation.

Better alternatives always have and always will cost something (money, time, effort, ease of use, compatibility, peace of mind, whatever). People choose free apps (1) because they have extra time/energy to make and keep the stuff working, (2) because they can't afford that beast trying to solve all problems at once, (3) because they are pissed at bad service/support they paid for when using commercial app, etc. If I, for one, find a certain app to be better than its free alternative (and if it's priced reasonably)—I buy it. Also, "free" is a price. Make your stuff better and you won't have to compete with "free".

And if there is an expectation that certain types of software ought to be free, then maybe it's a good thing? Maybe those types of software enable something important and that's why we expect it to be free?

Human population

Since the day I was born (32 years ago), human population has grown by 2,5 billion. We sure know how to procreate!

NS for people

Imagine a Naming Service that maps people's unique identity handles to their phone numbers, mailing addresses, emails and whatnot. How cool would it be to never ever have to notify all five thousand of your closest friends when your phone number changes, or worse yet, when you move to another state! At the post office they would just fetch your current mailing address and route the correspondence accordingly. Same happens when someone is phoning, emailing or instant-messaging you.

Electronic Book

Thomas Nelson, President and CEO of the "largest Christian publishing company in the world" (I could never really understand what the word "Christian" is supposed to mean in relation to anything but the religion itself) has an opinion on what the electronic book might look like.

Personally, I wouldn't buy what he is envisioning, so let me take on his bullets one-by-one:

It looks similar to a tablet PC slate. No keyboard, no monitor, and it folds in half.

Why would you want it to fold in half? What for? Folding in half made perfect sense for paper, it makes very little sense for an e-book.

It is the same size and thickness as a hardcover book, say 6" by 9" by 1/2". Unfolded, it is 12" x 9" by 1/4". It feels great in your lap. It can even be bent slightly like a book, so you can curl up on the sofa and read away.

I want (and expect) it to be pencil-thin or maybe even thinner (if it is flexible)!

It uses a tablet PC interface with a built-in stylus that feels like a high-end pen. You can use it to make menu selections, enter text (via handwriting recognition), or highlight passages in books.

Tablet PC interface is not perfect for PC and it makes even less sense for a book. And I want to be able to manage with just my fingers in most cases.

It weighs less than a 256-page hardcover book (about one pound). It therefore dramatically changes the shape and heft of your computer bag.

Can't argue with that!

It has a battery life of 12–18 hours.

It should have a battery life of a few weeks. Using technology like E Ink it would only need power to refresh the page every few seconds or so.

It completely replaces your computer and runs all your favorite applications.

See my comment for the next bullet.

It has 256 gigabytes of flash drive storage. It has room for tens of thousands of songs, photos, movies—and books. Because it has no moving parts (unlike a hard drive), it is faster and more reliable.

I don't like the convergence of this kind (if it results in one function inhibiting some other). If my e-book can also play music and/or movies—fine, but if those additional features make it a less perfect e-book reader—the hell with them! Electronic book is for reading and maybe occasional writing.

It is wi-fi enabled (of course).

No objections.

It includes a software application similar to iTunes for the purchase and download of books. Heck, maybe it's just a modification of iTunes.

Absolutely! Especially, if the price is adequate.

It has a simple, elegant book reading application, similar to Microsoft’s Reader.

It is a book reading application in itself.

It has a docking station that allows you to use a keyboard, mouse, external monitor, etc.

A Bluetooth keyboard would be more than enough for occasional note taking and blog/comment writing.

It runs an Apple operating system. (Okay, I couldn't resist.)

I don't care what operating system it runs unless it gives me reasons to hate it.

P.S. Perhaps, Thomas, you just need a better Tablet PC?

YURI-5-12-16

Today's couple of songs:

• "Berle" by Griddle
• "More Than 17" by Adrina Thorpe

Bacon-cooking alarm clock

Maker of the day - Matty Sallin, Bacon-cooking alarm clock:

Man, do I love this idea?! Especially, if you extend it to prepare a full-blown breakfast including eggs, toasts and coffee!

Del.icio.us links

And again, I removed del.icio.us links from my feed—I just didn't like it personally, so there, links-for-today-no-more part deux. My bookmarks are still available via a separate feed, so you can subscribe to it in addition to my main feed.

Also, I invite everyone to write your comments in the language you are most comfortable with or see fit better in any particular situation. In the meantime I am going to see if I could find a solution for a semi-automatic translation of your comments.

Simplicity vs Complexity

The other day, while a bunch of us were out drinking beer, a friend of mine slipped a phrase about how he didn't agree with the tendency of dumbing things down for all sorts of users (or something to that effect). Because he is a smart fellow, I immediately dismissed the urge to call him stupid :-) and instead put the thought on the back-burner where it has been slowly simmering ever since.

Just now I remembered that a few weeks back I had a discussion of this very topic with my former co-worker. My own point at that time was very much along the same lines. Specifically, that although, on one hand, I love the fact that I don't have to be constantly peering into the map fearing that I'll miss my turn while driving—we have signs on every turn (or in some cases onboard navigation systems) telling us what to do next, but on the other hand, I am afraid these everyday conveniences take away something important from us. They rid us of that invaluable ordeal of the raw unprocessed life.

Take penicillin (my favorite metaphor for progress)—humans sure do live longer, but we also have even more illnesses that we cannot cure now. Are we sure that by letting the drug help us fight the illness we haven't robbed our bodies of the chance to prepare itself for the fight against some new quickly mutating virus? Seemingly, by "simplifying" our lives we actually make them more difficult! How do we avoid this downward spiral? How do we make our lives more comfortable but not get dumber?

I do believe that simplicity is the main tool in this endeavor. Mother nature (and fellow- humans) will continue to throw new challenges at us. We want to make sure that our newly developed ways of dealing with those challenges are simple enough to be easily reproduced. We should learn to depend on our ways more than we depend on our tools. It is pathetic when a grown man, stranded in the bushes, cannot open a can without a can-opener.

But what is it that I'm really talking about? I know computers, let's talk about computers. Take your average office application—MS Word. How many features does Word have? How many of its features do you personally know and use? Do you use fields or forms? Cross-references? Watermarks? How about AutoSummarize (and why the hell is it spelled like this?), Merge Documents? How many of you even used your own custom styles? Does all this make your writing easier? I don't know about you, but I find myself using TeX more and more often if I need to write a paper. I find TeX to be easier than Word, how about that!? And Word—with all its WISIWIG and whatnot—is supposed to make writing easier!

Now let's look at your VCR (if you still have one). How many features does it have, how many of them do you use? Does it have VCR Plus+? Most probably it does because "VCR Plus+ is available in all major brands of VCRs," according to TVGuide.com. Do you know what it does? Well, me too. But do you actually use this feature? I don't, and I have very little desire to even try. I'm looking at the remote now and here are some of the buttons I am noticing: C/A skip, M/A skip, SAP, ADD/DLT—what the hell are these for?! Does it make me think harder? I don't think so, I think this unnecessary complexity is exactly why I feel a certain dumbness when I try to program my VCR—a dumbness of whoever designed this uninspiring UI.

So, what do you think? Simple of complex?