The human brain is very good — quite excellent, really — at finding patterns. We delight in puzzles that involve pattern recognition... consider word-search puzzles, the “Where’s Waldo” stuff, and the game Set.
Over at Bioephemera, Jessica Palmer agree with Language Log’s Mark Liberman in his admonition against the use of “generic plurals” in science reporting.
Some turns of events in the technology world are truly surprising.Who knew that a couple of guys starting up Google would hit it as big as they did? Who imagined that Facebook or Twitter would turn into sensations? Who had any inkling about how successful the iPhone would be?OK, that last one... not so much.From the day it was announced, the iPhone was a pre-release sensation.
A couple of years ago, I talked about some of the search terms that people have used when they’ve found my blog pages. In the comments, Donna was amazed at the information that’s available to the web sites you visit.My response to Donna’s comment discussed some stuff that’s available, but there are other issues too.
Someone recently sent me a Fox News article from about a month ago. It’s about risks of using public networks, specifically wireless ones — while the issue isn’t limited to wireless, few people wire themselves in any more.The newest trend in Internet fraud is “vacation hacking,” a sinister sort of tourist trap. Cybercriminals are targeting travelers by creating phony Wi-Fi hot spots in airports, in hotels, and even aboard airliners.Vacationers on their way to fun in the sun, or already there, think they’re using designated Wi-Fi access points.
I just spent an extended weekend in Montréal (Picasa album with some highlight photos), and one thing I noted is the parking payment system — New York is adopting a similar system.In some places, they still have the old parking meters (well, for some value of “old”; they’re digital), and I used one of those — you put coins in, and the time on the display increases up to the maximum.
If you’re a Twit... [um, no...] if you like Tweety... [still no...] if you’re a Twitter user [there, that works] you might have been frustrated on Thursday, when Twitter had service problems. So, apparently, did Facebook and LiveJournal, all three hit with denial-of-service attacks Thursday morning. Here’s Twitter’s status message from around 7 A.M.
Computer trends are interesting to follow[1]; they keep changing, and, as with clothing, the chic trends this year soon become passé, replaced by newer ones. It often seems that it’s really the words that change, while the actual trends continue pretty much intact.
I spent last week in Boston, attending the Open Mobile Alliance meeting. Whenever one goes to meetings, one does the dance of the business card exchange. Because it was my first OMA meeting, I had more of it going on than usual, as I met a lot of people for the first time. So I’ve collected a batch of 2-inch × 3.5-inch cards, which I then have to copy information from and put it into my address book. And there’s no hope of reading these things without my reading glasses.They’re inconvenient, to be sure, but they do work, and we’re used to them. Everyone has them.
In the 360 blog (sub-heading, “12 tables, 24 chairs, and plenty of chalk”), blogger Ξ (Xi) recently wrote about “Ethiopian Multiplication” (and followed it up with a series of interesting posts on different ways to multiply, here, here, here, and
Last year, ICANN announced an “open season” on top-level domains, to start some time in 2010. This will dramatically expand the namespace for Internet domain names, and will allow cities, industries, and companies to register specific top-level domains for themselves. What effect will that have on the companies involved, and on the Internet users?
Recently, I was discussing the relative virtues of four-door and two-door cars with a friend. I prefer four-door cars, because they make it much easier for back-seat passengers to get in and out (they make it easier to access the back seat, in general). My friend prefers two-door cars, because he seldom has back-seat passengers, and the larger doors of two-door cars make it easier for the front-seat occupants to get in and out.“But,” I say, “on a two-door car, the doors are larger and heavier.
