I'm moved by seeing Iraqis turn out to vote. And I hope the situation in Iraq improves to the point where candidates don't have to run anonymously out of fear of being assassinated.
I acknowledge that this election wouldn't have happened under the rule of Saddam Hussein. But I can't give as much credit to the US administration as it would like to take. Recall the history that led to this election. The USA wanted more control over the process than it ended up getting. Iraqis who demanded elections deserve credit.
Sunday 01.30.05
From an editorial about the Airbus A380 in a well-known newspaper:
The thing is certainly big - 30,000 tons heavier and 16 feet taller than a Boeing 747, with wings 50 feet wider.Some people just don't grok big numbers. 30,000 tons is about what 100 of these airplanes weighs.
Tuesday 01.25.05
A kilobyte, at least in common usage,
isn't 1000 bytes but rather
1024 (a round number in base 2) bytes.
This is unfortunate; it's confusing for kilo- to mean 103 in some contexts and 210 in others. Same thing for various other prefixes: mega- (1000000 or 1048576), giga-, and so on.
A friend once told me that he didn't like this state of affairs. I told him that a wholly analogous almost-equality existed in his business (sound recording), to wit: half power isn't exactly -3dB. (I realize it may not be immediately obvious why that's analogous to 1000≈1024; if you wanna know, write to me and I'll explain.)
Anyhow. The standards organization IEC evidently shared my friend's distaste for this confusing terminology, and did what standards organizations do: it promulgated a standard. By IEC edict, the prefixes kibi-, mebi-, gibi-, tebi-, pebi-, and exbi- are to be used to refer to 210, 220, 230, 240, 250, and 260, respectively. I might've enjoyed quoting the standard directly, but upon reading the IEC's web site I realized I didn't want to that bad. The IEC will have you pay a handsome price to get the applicable standard from the horse's mouth.
A bunch of computer manufacturers were reportedly sued by computer owners who thought they were cheated by ambiguity in the definition of a gigabyte. The lawsuit requested "disgorgement of ill-gotten profits" (love that legal talk).
What does Tommy say? Kibibyte, mebibyte, and gibibyte are stupid sounding and even if they're gaining some acceptance I don't expect them to take the world by storm.
Friday 01.21.05
There's a big jumbled pile of rocks across the street from me. I hike up there and look out across the desert and feel like I'm in another world. On many occasions, when feeling stuck trying to solve some problem for work, I've made a trip to the top of the rockpile to clear my head. Ideas have come to me up there than had been eluding me.
Wild, what effect a change of scenery can have--which is really a remark about the (limiting) power of habit.
I've been feeling stuck about an engineering problem lately; this afternoon I went to the rockpile and resolved to solve the problem while up there. By saying this is what I will do, I hope to increase the chance that I'll actually do it.
It worked, maybe. I got some ideas up there that I hadn't thought of before. I'm not sure how well they'll pan out, but at least some new thoughts are coming (which wasn't the case for the past few days).
I like the rockpile across the street.
BBC World Service has a nice programme this week about AMD (and their relationship to Intel). Hear Gordon Moore himself explain Moore's Law (and how he never uttered the "18 month" version that has appeared so often in the press).
Wednesday 01.19.05
Sorry I haven't written much lately. I'm up to my ears in work.
I took a break from work today; I went climbing. Or you could say I went driving, today's rocks were three hours south of here (less if you leadfoot it).
Despite awesome January conditions (about 60 degrees and sunny) my partner and I were the only people climbing there. He said he would've liked having other climbers around; I liked it the way it was.
A big flock of ravens flew over me at about 5:00 today; usually I see them in much smaller groups. Ravens are way cool. Any bird that flies upside down for fun is my kind of bird.
Happy nineteenth.
Monday 01.10.05
I like 3-letter words.
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Friday 01.07.05
Brevity is the soul of wit. A letter from Paul Rocklin to the editor of the NY Times:
Apparently the policy on torture of Alberto R. Gonzales and the Bush administration can be summarized in a single sentence: This administration does not engage in torture and will not condone torture - and besides, they deserve it.
Tuesday 01.04.05
From an article with 117 answers to the question "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" --
I believe that human consciousness is a conjuring trick, designed to fool us into thinking we are in the presence of an inexplicable mystery. Who is the conjuror and why is s/he doing it? The conjuror is natural selection, and the purpose has been to bolster human self-confidence and self-importance - so as to increase the value we each place on our own and others' lives. - Nicholas HumphreySetting aside for the moment the question of how accurate a statement that is, I'm interested in how it feels to read it. If it feels unsettling, why is that?
If it feels unsettling because it challenges a core belief about what I am, that tells me I am attached to that belief, and I take that as a warning sign. As I'd written here last year--
Some beliefs offer reassurance and comfort. I watch out for that. I don't want to stake my well-being on a belief; I want to be open to evidence and argument. I'm not going to be open if I'm attached to the payoff of holding a comforting belief.I won't tell you I've mastered this, but it is a goal of mine.
If someone asked me "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it," I'd object to the question. I'd rather be asked what I suspect is true, or what I use as a working hypothesis.
Anyhow. If you didn't find Humphrey's answer unsettling, consider Susan Blackmore's:
It is possible to live happily and morally without believing in free will. As Samuel Johnson said "All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience is for it." With recent developments in neuroscience and theories of consciousness, theory is even more against it than it was in his time, more than 200 years ago. So I long ago set about systematically changing the experience. I now have no feeling of acting with free will, although the feeling took many years to ebb away.Interesting article. It spurred me to add The Edge to the little list of links to the right.
But what happens? People say I'm lying! They say it's impossible and so I must be deluding myself to preserve my theory. And what can I do or say to challenge them? I have no idea--other than to suggest that other people try the exercise, demanding as it is.
Saturday 01.01.05
Red is my favorite color. It can be a bit intense, which is why I didn't use a red color scheme for this page in '03 or '04. But if this journal is to reflect how my life is going, red is only fitting for 2005. So a red it is.
I'll be getting a new (darkish red) roof for my house soon.
I didn't get a red sports car because, well, everyone gets red sports cars. OK, not everyone, but you know what I mean.
Happy New Year, everyone.
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