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news about technology, including programming, operating systems, and hardware

Another earthquake in Alaska

It was nice and sunny in Alaska yesterday, so I took the day off and drove up into the mountains. On the way home I was driving through a cozy little area known as Willow (it's hard to really call it a town, it's more like just an area), and I thought about looking there for a new place to live this fall. But after a long day in the sun, I was tired, so I came home, took a nap, and quickly woke up to a 5.0 earthquake, centered 16 miles WNW of Willow. Here's one of the maps from the U.S.G.S. website:

Earthquake in Alaska - July 7, 2010

By Alvin Alexander on July 17, 2010

Alaska sunlight on the summer solstice

Ever wonder what it looks like in Alaska at 3 a.m. on June 21st? Keeping in mind that pictures from an iPhone are darker than the actual conditions, especially in lower light conditions, here's a picture from my iPhone at 3:40 a.m. on the morning of June 21, 2010:

By Alvin Alexander on June 22, 2010

So long Firefox, hello Chrome

After constantly restarting Firefox on Mac OS X due to memory leaks, I've finally given up, and switched to Google's Chrome browser. All day today I've been doing all the things I normally do, just using Chrome instead of Firefox, and Chrome is currently using 135 MB RAM, where Firefox would typically be over 600 MB RAM, and I probably would have restarted it once already by now.

By Alvin Alexander on October 20, 2012

Apple promotes Adobe Creative Suite

While Apple and Adobe go back and forth on the topic of Flash, in particular Flash on the iPhone, I woke up to this email message from Apple this morning, showing the Apple Store promoting the Adobe Creative Suite (CS5):

Apple promotes Adobe Creative Suite (CS5)

This feels like one of those awkward moments ...

 

By Alvin Alexander on August 6, 2011

Ditch Facebook

Unethical ... amoral ... backstabbing ... stealing ... cheating ... web pundits these days are using all sorts of words to describe Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. This image says it all:

Gizmodo's Ban Facebook image

By Alvin Alexander on May 26, 2010

The "Delete my Facebook account" search trend

Kudos to whoever first noticed that when you type the phrase "How do I" at Google, the fifth item in the list is now "How do I delete my Facebook account".

I'll show that image in a moment, but first, here's a more powerful image from Google Trends that shows the search trend for the phrase "facebook delete account":

By Alvin Alexander on August 30, 2011

Facebook "privacy": Be social, or else

Facebook privacy update (May 3, 2010). Here's the synopsis of my latest interaction with Facebook privacy:

By Alvin Alexander on February 6, 2011

Is Microsoft dead?

Today's announcement that Google is buying BumpTop continues the string of Google and Apple buying up technology companies so fast you'd think they were, well, Microsoft, at least "Microsoft back in the day".

I'm reminded that ~10 years ago Bill Gates said about Sun Microsystems (and I'm paraphrasing here):

"Sun is dead, they just don't know it yet. Their business model consists of selling overpriced servers, and sooner or later the market will realize that."

Having watch RISC processors lose their speed advantage -- and then switching to Linux as a result -- I agreed with that assessment, and in 2009 it finally came to fruition as Sun was bought by Oracle.

Which leads to the question: If Bill Gates could look at it objectively, would he say the same thing now about Microsoft?

By Alvin Alexander on August 9, 2011

Arizona Immigration Law, the U.S. Constitution, and Software Requirements

As the Arizona Immigration Law continues to make big news here in the United States, I decided to read the United State Constitution for the first time in thirty years.

As someone who has written dozens of software requirement specifications, the first thing that jumps out at me is that the U.S. Constitution would have never been approved as a requirements specification on my projects. Terms like "people", "person", "tranquility", and "unreasonable" are so vague that from a software decision-making process, they are useless.

All I can imagine at the moment is going up to Mr. Washington and Mr. Jefferson, and saying:

"Excuse me gentlemen, I'm working on the security model for our web app, and I'm wondering if you can clarify a few terms for me?"

By Alvin Alexander on April 30, 2010

devdaily.net website

Too funny, I just realized I own the devdaily.net domain, so I just posted a goofy website created with iWeb out there, just so there would be something there besides a blank page.

Here's a link to the main devdaily.net web page, and here's a link to the devdaily.net blog, which may or may not contain random thoughts from moi from time to time. Oh, and sorry about those ad banners at the top, that's what you get with "free hosting", lol.

 

 

By Alvin Alexander on May 13, 2010
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