September 30, 2004
@ 07:01 PM

[via Addy Santo]

Someone over at http://www.anderoid.com/~seander/archives/000111.html noticed a very interesting trend:

Google's index should be growing exponentially to keep up with the growing size of the web.  Google's main page indicates that it searches 4,285,199,774 web pages, and this number has remained the same for the last year and seven months, since around February 8-14, 2003

and they also have a guessplanation for it:

I bet they are suffering from a 4-byte limit with their URL identifiers.  With 4 bytes, which is the natural word-size for the inexpensive ia32/x86-compatible processors they are using, they can store 32 bits, and that means 232 different values, or 4,294,967,296.

Interesting..

Phone with 1.5GB Hard Disk

 


 

September 25, 2004
@ 04:13 PM

A new chip-making technology that uses a special kind of electron microscope to draw the circuits and will lead to better memory chips. NYTimes Link.

Cheese Bar


 

September 18, 2004
@ 03:33 PM

Cool Java Concept Map in Flash

PInvoke.NET Wiki – for calling unmanaged Win32 api functions …

LookOut – Acquired by MS – super fast email search

Effective Java – Book to read

The Taligent Effect

The Taligent effect is what happens when a group of people put adherence to a software trend first and lose sight of the value of shipping software that people will actually use.

BullShit Generator – Really cool … use this while writing proposals and in presentations :D

Clemens Vasters on Open Source – this started a hot debate on Slashdot … [via Don Box]

Dear Aiden,

I think you remember the conversation we had recently at this software conference in Dublin. You came up to me and told me how the stuff I was talking about was mostly useless, because it is closed-source, people need to pay for it and that companies charging for software are evil anyways – especially Microsoft. Unfortunately I don’t have your email, but I am sure this will reach you.

That was in 1990 – let’s fast forward to 2004 and you. All software that you and your father could possibly be interested in has already been written. That’s probably not true, but it’s hard to think of something, right? Ok, the software may not run on your favorite operation system and may cost money, but what you can immediately think of is likely there. So where do you put all your energy? Into this absolutely amazing open-source project you co-coordinate. I mean, really, the stuff that you and your buddies are doing there is truly impressive. There are a couple of things I’d probably do differently in terms of design and architecture, but it works well and that’s mostly what matters. And you do make an impact as well. I know that hundreds of people and dozens of companies use your stuff. That’s great.

If someone installs your work from disc 3 of some Linux distro, they couldn’t care less who you are. The whole fame thing you are telling me only works amongst geeks. The good looking, intelligent girl over there at the bar that you’d really like to talk to doesn’t care much whether you are famous amongst a group of geeks and neither does she even remotely fathom why you’d be famous for that stuff in the first place. I mean – get real here.

.NET Report Card – nice article on InfoWorld

What is a haiku: Haiku is a form of poetry popular in Japan, which is becoming more widely appreciated around the world in this century. Haiku writers are challenged to convey a vivid impression in only 17 Japanese characters.

Avalon is cool:

Spellchecking is enabled either in XAML by writing

 <TextBox IsSpellCheckEnabled="True" /> 

or in code by writing

 TextBox.IsSpellCheckEnabled = True; 

 

September 18, 2004
@ 01:46 PM

At “Crypto 2004” One of the Chinese authors (Wang, Feng, Lai, and Yu) reported a family of collisions in MD5 (fixing the previous bug in their analysis), and also reported that their method can efficiently (2^40 hash steps) find a collision in SHA-0. This speaker received a standing ovation, from at least part of the audience, at the end of her talk.


 

September 9, 2004
@ 07:44 PM

The team, which included folks from AMD (Quote, Chart), Cisco (Quote, Chart), Microsoft Research, Newisys, and S2io, transferred 859 gigabytes of data in less than 17 minutes. It did so at a rate of 6.63 gigabits per second (define) between the CERN facility in Geneva, Switzerland, and Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., a distance of more than 15,766 kilometers, or approximately 9,800 miles.

Scientists are racing to move gigantic amounts of data by 2007, when CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will switch on. This huge underground particle accelerator will produce some 15 petabytes (define) of data a year, which will be stored and analyzed on a global grid of computer centers. High-energy physicists are excited about the LHC because they hope it will allow them to find the Higgs boson, a theoretical particle that they believe creates mass.

http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3403161