CowTalk

Ok let's talk about something that is quite visible to you dear readers, but something that you have probably managed to ignore automatically. Yes, I am taking about those commercial decorations on margin of these pages. But please, don't change the channel quite yet. :-)

1. Advertising Changes... yay!

So what's up there? After being a very small AdSense publisher for few years, I figured that I might well retire before ever seeing another check for ads displayed on this blog; so it might be time to explore options: if not to get higher yields then at least maybe get more interesting ads. I also generally root for underdogs, and at this point Google is the ultimate uber-dog if there ever was one. So why not partner up with some other advertising puppies.

Given these loose goals about the only criteria for finding a replacement would be that it is not Google. And, well, ideally it should not be Apple, and preferably not Microsoft. But latter two are negotiable constraints (in fact, I am tempted to check out M$'s PubCenter; if for nothing else due to its catchy name!).

2. So... ?

But enough background discussion: in the end, I decided to change my ad provider from the big G to an unknown-before-about-a-week-ago company called AdBrite. Mostly because they topped this Handy List of Google Adsense Alternatives. And finally, as of today, I bothered to change blog templates for the change to take effect.

3. Can hardly contain my excitement <yawn>

At this point I am curious to see to what kind of ads they might be pushing to my blog. I sort of wish it was something that lots of people found totally repugnant yet completely fascinating... but chances for that are probably low. We'll see -- maybe I need to cycle through variety of ad sales networks before choosing my poison.

4. Commercial Proposal by Author

By the way, if anyone actually wants to actually advertise here -- buy a section for month-by-month advertising, selling something that actually relates to something I have written about -- let me know. I am open to bids and can show google analytics statistics for pricing, so you have a fair idea of what you'd get.
The only limit I will put is that monthly ad space rental fee has to be non-zero positive number in full US dollars. :-)
(you can consider it as the auction starting price)

Posted by Tatu Saloranta at Tuesday, June 29, 2010 6:42 PM
Categories: Philosophic
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Term "Rock start programmer" is thrown around casually when discussing best software developers. But as with music, true stars are few and far between. While knowing the lifestyle can help, you got to have the chops, be able to influence and inspire others, and obviously deliver the goods to fill the stadiums, and data centers.

In Java enterprise programming world there are few more worthy of being called a rock star than Kohsuke Kawaguchi. List of projects he has single-handedly built is vast; list of projects he has contributed to immense, and his coding speed mighty fast (as confirmed by his use of term POTD, Project of the Day -- very very few individuals write sizable systems literally in a day!). It all makes you wonder whether he is actually a mere human being at all (maybe he's twin brother of Jon Skeet?!). For those not in the know, list of things he has authored or contributed to contains such programming pearls such as Multi-Schema Validator, Sun JAXB (v2) and JAX-WS implementations, Hudson, Maven, Glassfish, Xerces, Args4j, Com4j, and so on and on (for a more complete list, check out his profile at Ohloh; read and weep)

But to the point: it seems that mr. Kawaguchi is now moving on from sinking ship formerly known as Sun. This is not a sad thing per se (we all gotta move on at some point), nor unexpected -- steady stream of Sun people leaving Oracle has been and wil be going on for a while -- but it still feels strange. End of an era in a way; gradual shutting down of Sun brand. Image of a lonely cowboy riding against Sun settings (pun intended) comes to mind.

Anyway: rock on Kohsuke, onnea & lycka till! I look forward to seeing exactly what awesomeness you will come up with next!

Posted by Tatu Saloranta at Friday, April 09, 2010 8:39 PM
Categories: General, Java, Philosophic
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(warning: this is another rant. Sorry!)

Here's another improvement in my daily life: after more than a year of space-shuttle-lift-off noise, short-but-brutish uptimes, and countless curses, family's lean old Dell XP "work"station is out for good. Its only agreeable attribute was its slim neat looks (and sort of neat mechanism used for case, allowing its easy opening -- too bad there's not much to do even if you can open it easily). Good riddance, music to my ears.

The replacement, HP Pavilion Slimline, actually looks every bit as good as its predecessor. But otherwise the two are polar opposites: new box is quiet, as reliable as expected (i.e., "just works"), and its only design flaw is that it comes with an OS written by a company based in Redmond. But that I can live with, since it's not my work machine. :-)
And even Windows seems to have improved a bit between versions (new one has Windows 7, previous one whatever preceded Vista).

Anyway: I just thought I'll share my distaste with Dell products (maybe I should actually include "not-so-good" lists on my semi-professional home page?) now that I am getting rid of them.

It all started couple of years ago, when I decided to stop wasting my time on building my own PCs from components (which made sense after college, could save some money). I figured that with time I spent building PCs, and then troubleshooting problems with components, it just didn't make a whole lot of sense. And so I thought I'd go with something that other customers in general had found usable: back then Dell had highest customer ratings of all PC companies; and save for one friend of mine (who had already fought with Dell's phone "support" people, due to problems with memory chips that were failing; and that no amount of rebooting would ever fix), I wasn't aware of huge problems with the company or its products.

What I found out by experience makes me suspect that the company that had gotten good reviews had been abducted by aliens, and replaced by an ersatz replica or something. Correlation between happy customers and company that produced crap I bought just is not there. I am not talking about customer support (no point calling them wrt. badly designed piece of hardware, IMO, it is not not something a script-reading underpaid remote helper can help a lot with), but rather about quality of hardware. My experience beyond PC fiasco was that their products are competitively priced, but have low quality. For example, laser printer that I bought to replace trusty old Apple writer (which, after having bought second hand, served us for 8 years; for total lifetime of probably 15 years; and would have worked well but I couldn't find new toner cartridges for reasonable prices any more!) was inexpensive, and worked fine for a while. Like, maybe a year. And then broke down. The only thing left are LCD monitors, which I have to admit were reasonably priced, and still work. In fact both are still in active use. So I guess they do produce something other than lemons.

Thinking about that last sentence: I guess I could put my feelings into fitting slogan: Dell -- General Motors of Computers.
Feel free to quote.

ps. I am happy to admit that after kicking that incompetent CEO of theirs out, HP seems to have done nice comeback. Good for them, and us.

Posted by Tatu Saloranta at Friday, March 26, 2010 10:37 PM
Categories: Philosophic, Rant
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Here's another detour from the usual technical content. Just for fun, let's talk about some lighter subject: subjective feeling of rewards, in context of some bigger thing like, say, US health-care reform.

As background, I admit that while I have significant interest in on-going process of getting universal health-care available here in the United States, I don't have much to say about goal itself or road there. Much has been said; most of essential aspects, and ton of crap beyond that. So it is enough to state that my father is an M.D (outside of US); that I have been familiar with amounts US overpays for its health-care (100-150% higher per capita than any other country -- this has been widely known since 90s); and that I am aware of how much good that spending has done to national health, statistically (wrt. infant mortality, life expectancy -- very little). And from this you can deduce what I think is the right way forward.

But regardless of my personal opinions, there are still things I find interesting about the meta-process. Here are some easy predictions to make, assuming reform bill passes (which seems quite probably at this point):

• Sky is not going to fall: it is enough to look back in history for all significant changes, from end of Prohibition, to US social security system bootstrapping to civil liberties, to welfare system reform. Things are not going to be altogether different, even if things got royally clustered on short term (wrt. systemic changes)
• Rate of improvement is going to be slow: system doesn't even kick in for couple of years; but beyond that, well, there is always huge inertia with bigger changes

These are trivially obvious things. But there is one more easy prediction to make, something based on basic behavioral psychology, that I find more interesting:

• People who are rooting for the reform will find passage of the Health-care bill VERY rewarding, especially so on short term.

Why so? Isn't it "known truth" that this bruising long process takes joy out of victory? That there's long process of healing yadda yadda?

No: absolutely on contrary! It has been proven time and again that the reward one gets from achievements is proportional to effort that was needed to get it done (in case of outside observers, effort may well just consist of following up on events and of emotional attachment, worry and so on -- nonetheless more involvement than with most political causes)

So if the reform had passed easily, it would have gotten at most lukewarm feeling of accomplishment, soon to be diluted by other matters. Bigger the fight and fiercer the resistance, the sweeter is overcoming of these obstacles.

And guess what? Both sides know this, at some instinctive level. Why they don't seem to know it at conscious level I don't know. Or perhaps it just seems better not to spell it out. But to figure this out, you just have to read, say, "Predicably Irrational" (chapter about trying to buy season tickets from no-lifers who have spent almost a year doing stupid stunts, to get the tickets; and value them almost an order of magnitude higher than ones who did NOT get the tickets, after similar amount of effort), or about any other recent pop behavioral science book.

Actually, given this, I'm pretty sure Obama team knows this; and possibly made good use of it during campaigning (they won it, and supporters got nice kick out of prolonged battle -- this, too, was researched [I saw a reference from SciAm, forget where the study was published]). They seem well-versed in theory (and perhaps practical art) of basic behavioral patterns.

Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to host parties like ones they have after one's national team has won soccer world cup or something. :-)

ps. Of course, if the effort was to fail, its opponents would get similar highs, enjoy the rewards. Hitting the brick with your fist only hurts if the dang thing does NOT break.

Posted by Tatu Saloranta at Friday, March 19, 2010 10:22 PM
Categories: Philosophic
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Here's something new: some good reading ("Ron Paul's money plan is far from golden") at CNN (sic!): this time about nostalgic folly of returning to the "gold standard". It is surprising that someone whose intellectual aspirations are bit above those of his supporters (ok, granted, that's a low bar), one would be so mistaken about realities of tying national currency into amount of precious metal(s) central bank physically has. Maybe this is why central banks are generally lead by people with economic education and experience, and not physicians.

I mean, yes, from laymanperspective, it would seem nice if that green paper that gets printed on would actually have collateral. But impracticality of full collateralization should be obvious: you don't need much of a thought-exercise to see how and why it would fail; and from that point on, to backtrack and see why this realization (when shared by people who control flow of money) means that attempt would be a self-fulfilling failure. And if we were unlucky, slowly cooking but colossal-cluster-magnitude failure.

In addition to the great depression that is obviusly mentioned in the articles, proponents of "strong currency" managed to starve millions of people to death during late 1800s. I am most familiar with a somewhat starvations in Finland (there were 2 instances): globally speaking these were just blimps on radar (sice the whole country population was barely in millions), but death rate from starvation actually exceeded that of world wars... and all that so that central bank could protect value of currency, by not loaning money (or subsidize seeds), managing to keep central bank in black, and peasants hungry or dead. Famine was orginally triggered by weather, of course, but the catastrophe could have been averted by government action. And in similar vain, in more recent memory, depression of early 90s (in Finland) was also deepened by later crop of strong currency proponents, who tried (ultimately in vain) to keep the currency strong by trying to avoid devaluation. In the end they had to let it float anyway (causing run-off devaluation by something like 30% in a week), but so late that much of damage was already done. Fortunately no one starved to death on account of this failure, although unemployment rate tripled closer to 20%.

I am sure there are many more examples; and some EU countries are currently experiencing related challenges (now that they are forced to exercise certain discipline after screwing up their finances before realizing it must be done).

These examples are closely related to "gold standard" part, in that there is simplistic view of nations having to balance their check books on very short term. This is neither practical nor beneficial. And trying to force it to be done does not make it any more practical, beneficial or wise.

And yet -- it seems that principled fools never let facts get in a way of intuitive theories. So I am just waiting for a grand unified theory that binds together ideas of tax-cut for riches, return to the gold standard, and the idea that poor people caused depression (due to welfare costs allegedly being a major contributor to this whole meltdown -- don't ask me how the mechanism is supposed to play; apparently this claim is getting some consideration in tea bagger circles).

Posted by Tatu Saloranta at Monday, February 22, 2010 11:52 PM
Categories: Philosophic, Rant
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Ok, it would probably be time to actually write about something technical -- like, say, ultra-modern Polymorphic Type Handling system thatJackson 1.5 will have ("Lexus of Java Data Binders!") -- but after cranking out three-digit number of entries last year (at least 50% of them technical), I will cut me some slack here. Still, without typing some prose I am worried that my fingers might evolve away, so let's consider something beyond realm of technical stuff.

As usual my inspiration comes from a high-quality affordable US magazine called National Geographic. That's hardly news. But after reading about all these exotic remote locations like Madagascar, or that magical forest/mountain area in China of which name now escapes me, I was somewhat surprised to find that Hebrides (that set of islands on one side of Scotland) not only produces heavenly malt whiskies, but also sports sceneries more celestial than Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. And it's not just that I am getting old: beauty may lie in eye of beholder, but there are certain things that are beautiful regardless of their age (or observer's age). Some landscapes of nature are like that, with or without curvature.

So if you get a chance, have a look at article "Edge of the World", and especially the slide show of photos that accompany it. And picture yourself in one of settings, perhaps sipping a warm glass of Talisker or Laphroaig (latter when visiting, say, Fingal's Cave; former at around those abandoned stone buildings at Hirta, St. Kilda?).

If it wasn't for the fact that kids would probably bore to death in 10 minutes flat, I would be ready to migrate to Hebrides. At least until getting there, and sun sets down & wind sets in and all those little practical details. But in my imagination I am already packing!

Posted by Tatu Saloranta at Monday, February 15, 2010 10:30 PM
Categories: Philosophic
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Color me goofy, but I believe I have written something relevant to this latest interesting article in Fortune, "Can Farming Save Detroit?"... lessee.

Ah, yes, back in October I did point to a related Sci-Am article ("The Rise of Vertical Farms" in "Good news is news too...") that presented and discussed the concept of ultra-modern urban farming. And now Fortune has something more concrete to write about, regarding planned development in Detroit, of all places. It (Urban agriculture in general and the particular project in specific) actually seems to make lots of sense -- I did not know, for example, that there are no chain super markets in Detroit; and conversely there is lots of vacant land, mostly (formerly) residential (meaning no toxic industrial waste). There's no point in just repeating all potential benefits here: just suffice it to say that if done correctly, it could be a significant win-win-win situation, from environmental as well as quality-of-food aspect. That it would be done by someone rather unexpected is probably a good thing in itself: seems like lately people that are most unexpected to stand up and do something do just that (like mr. Boone with wind mills etc. etc.). Desire to leave positive legacy is a strong driving force, and continues to influence development in US: it's not just Ivy League colleges that get founded by elderly billionaries (and yet some numbskulls are trying to kill inheritance tax -- how freakishly stupid is that? -- but I digress). Saving the world does kind of top the list of things to do, if you want to leave such a legacy.

In addition to being interesting in and of itself, I find it fascinating how ideas enter mainstream gradually. I am pretty sure that Time and Newsweek pick this up in a month or two; then followed by broadcast news (.... sloooowly), and eventually daily print papers (once everyone is about aware of the thing). I guess this is one more thing to read one of these affordable high-quality magazine US market is (still) blessed with, like Scientific American, Fortune and National Geographic Magazine (and there are plenty more -- these just happen to be ones I have time to read): you get to learn about important ideas, concepts and developments slightly ahead of most others. And if you are even more time-constrainted than I am, well, you can just skim Time or Newsweek, and still be well ahead the curve.

Of course, it could also be that in a decade or two we may be reading articles like this one same way we do now for all those "by 2000, everyone has a personal rocket ship and eats food pills for lunch" future visions... we'll see. It's just that there are actual major problems with current agricultural state of the sart; and I am not thinking of left-wings "agri-biz is bad" angle, but rather more concrete problems of us running out of phospates for fertilization (it is a severely limited natural resource, turns out); loss/compaction of top soil (may need no/low-tilling techniques; but current food crops are not optimized for those); and the perennial problem of over-population and continued world-wide population growth. Oh, and also rabid opposition by well-meaning environmentalists against useful gene-manipulation and breeding techniques.

So, we shall see. We live in very interesting times. As always.

Posted by Tatu Saloranta at Sunday, January 10, 2010 4:19 PM
Categories: Food+Drink, Philosophic
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It is an unfortunate fact of life that "news" services in US are in sorry, tepid state; and to get decent news coverage one has to use better international sources (BBC, or any european agency), or turn to non-daily/non-TV alternatives (magazines, which still offer reasonable in-depth coverage). But this on-going idiotic episode with a celebrity golf player's domestic issues takes the cake as the low point for this decade (maybe competing with media's criticless bashing of UN Iraq nuclear inspectors back in 2002 -- but I digress).

1. What could POSSIBLY be more important issue?

But hey, there have been recent orgies of lesser relevant news (did Michael Jackson's or Ann-Nicole Smith's deaths really warrant being top news entries). Why is this any different? Aside from being even less relevant -- honestly, gossip pages, or perhaps sports section (... which is ridiculously inflated part of local newspapers and TV programmes, anyway...) would have been better placements; and for respectable publications, possibly not even those -- than anything comparable in recent history, there is the thing that there has actually been lots of newsworthy things to write about.

Like, say, that gathering of world leaders in Copenhagen; discussing urgent (and eventually life-and-death) matters of saving the world. And in domestic section, well, there's plenty of economic stuff to write about, or the thing about medical industry and insurance. Oh, and hey, wasn't there a war of sizable portions also going on (actually, two, but who's counting).

In fact, I can't think of a reason for this even ranking on page 7 of thursday edition of the local newspaper. There are tabloids, after all, that could cover this stuff. Well, except that in US, it's not "newspapers vs tabloids"; it's mainstream (tabloid level) and fringes ("news of the world"). Even mainstream sells manufactured controversies (trademark of tabloid in other countries) and social porn.

And yet, somehow what irritates me most is that I noticed that CNN followed up on this stupid episode like a hawk; as if it really was a major story.

2. What did that "N" originally mean?

So why pick on CNN? After all, CNN is to News what MTV is to Music -- sad, irrelevant misnomer. Ted Turner would be rolling in his grave was he not alive. I guess it has more to do with the fact that CNN is ostensibly in the news business. Newspapers and most other networks are in general "media" business; they are also News dilettantes, spewing some amateur-level newsy stuff. But clearly TV networks are more into general entertainment; and newspapers into advertising with some commentary columns (well, actually, they also do do some local news stuff -- useful and sometimes noteworthy -- maybe I am being too harsh -- but only local, seldom even reaching to regional level).

So it's that when even entities that claim to do News fail to do that, well, that's pathetic.

3. Message to mr. Woods

Ok; enough ranting about sad state of US media. But here's a personal message for the nominal cause of this red herring of a news: Tiger, go stuff that golf club up your ass. Sideways. I don't care about your business (personal or otherwise) -- but it appears that your messy business has suddenly become my business. Stop it. Go, disappear. And for crying out loud, don't cry out loud in public. It is so pathetically unmanly that I feel nauseous. So, grow a spine (a pair you apparently already have). Whatever else you do, do NOT cause more media events. You are rich enough to afford to do whatever that other stupid athlete did after murdering his wife (of hey, yeah, come to think of that, do not do what that guy did in the end -- just the initial part of trying to keep low profile).

Posted by Tatu Saloranta at Saturday, December 19, 2009 10:57 PM
Categories: Philosophic, Rant
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Yes, best pop and rock music, as well as sci-fi books seem to have been written in (late) 60s.

Case in point: Philip K Dick's classic, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". What an absolute masterpiece. Very prescient, relevant, and fundamentally deep; all without seemingly trying too hard to be anything more than a decent story. None of wanna-be-intellectual babble -- smart with dead-on style; or trying to predict future -- it is enough to just reflect on reality, observations of human mind, and there you have it.

I originally read this book about 10 years ago, but as a translation (in finnish). It made a big impression even then -- even more so than the movie that was based on it (movie is pretty good too, but book is just so much much better... this even though I read book only after seeing the movie, usually "first one wins").

So: few months back I noticed a paperback english copy at the local book store (no, I don't order all my books online...) and decided to re-read it. Was it still good? Not just good, absolutely positively great. So if you like sci-fi but have somehow managed not to read it, go read it. Same applies to most (or perhaps all) books by PKD of course; like The Man in The High Castle, (written in -62), The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (-65) or Ubik (-69)... the list goes on and on. And even though his later works are very good too (like, say, VALIS and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, his last book), it's something about those books from 60s that has the absolute brilliant genius. Or, shall we say, "shine of crazy diamons" (I know, I know, that's refecence to a great 70s song... but YEARLY 70s, not that far removed). I just wish he had had a chance to write just some more books. Yes, they are that good.

Oh, and just in case you are wondering: his 50s books are strikingly good too. :-)
I love "The World Jones Made" for example. Totally cool book, which somehow manages to mix in strong environmentalist themes (about 20-30 years before anyone else did, it seems), extension of pan-Gaia, and of course plenty of dark humor and bit of political commentary.

Given above, I concur that I am bit of a fan boy. Now, maybe I should get Kindle for Christmas, to be able to read more...

Posted by Tatu Saloranta at Wednesday, December 09, 2009 7:31 PM
Categories: Philosophic
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Ok, in between technical time, it's time to review some goofy stuff while we wait for Santa. Here goes...

1. Can't manage to find time to do something useful...

yet have plenty of time for "time management"?

Sound silly? Have a look at Pomodoro Technique. Great for giggles, as a case study for human insanity.
But if it starts to make some sense at any point, do not hesitate to get some professional help. Immediately.

But then again, there are always some co-workers who might benefit others by such techniques: by not having time to do anything, they could not make mistakes. And that's worth something too (brakes for loose cannons).

update: above comments are just related for application of said technique(s) to software development -- maybe other domains could benefit from intrusive regularly-scheduled interruptions (perhaps augmented by electrical shocks)

2. IRC? Yes, that thing hackers use when they don't want to be overheard!

Oh yes, you can always trust Numb3rs to get technical things FUBAR. Funny stuff.

Now, if you will excuse me, I will have to disconnect from my blog server before connection can be traced by FBI (it's that 30 second rule you may know from movies -- must triangulate fast -- gotta go!)

Posted by Tatu Saloranta at Thursday, December 03, 2009 11:08 PM
Categories: Philosophic, Rant, Silly
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