Randomality

Android + Israel = Market

2010-10-05T22:05:00.001-07:00

One can buy Android apps on Android Market and pay in NIS now... Finally...

Record temperature so far

2010-08-07T04:00:00.001-07:00

My car is normally parked in relatively shadowed area. It is traditional house-on-the-columns kind of building so that the first story provides basic shelter from the elements. Yesterday car's thermometer showed +40C. That's absolute record so far, especially given that the car wasn't parked under the direct sun.

I am not entirely certain if I will not have to post another entry on this rather hot and humid matter...

Geekproof

2010-05-16T00:15:00.000-07:00

The plane was starting on its way from Tel Aviv to Newark NJ. I looked at the display and saw: "ground speed: 404 km/h". Gosh, I thought, something is missing...

Just a random thought, really

2010-04-20T22:42:00.000-07:00

Practical human ethics is inherently asymmetric...

Obsessed with reviews

2009-12-16T10:36:00.000-08:00

In principle the idea of this post occurred to me due to certain rating of my camera that has been published by certain web site and a controversy that ensued. However, it also occurred to me that this can be generalized a little and hence I decided to post this is in my non-photographic blog.

It seems to me that people are obsessed with reviews. I for one admit of being so. Say, you set out to buy something relatively simple and inexpensive. Let it be a very basic cell phone. Likely you would have questions the answers for which will be looked for on the web. The next logical step is to look for review sites and read these reviews because reviews are thought to be comprehensive and you want to see the whole picture.

This is where true madness begins. Here are few points of illustration.

Say, the site also features user comments. If you start reading those, you might loose serious amount of time and gain virtually nothing.
Suppose now, that somehow you've come to think that this very review site you have found is in fact respectable. Now what if this time they did a half-hearted job and you were attentive enough to notice it. Not good, if you ask me. In particular you might have been loosing time in the past reading that site.
Usually, probably for just about anything there is a discussion forum. So you find one and decide to register only to ask a couple of questions. Likely you'll loose more time still. In particular, one of the so called gurus that would answer your questions is in fact a person who read more review sites than you have and assembled authoritative opinion of their own without any particularly real basis.

No, I am not trying to say that review sites or forums aren't worth anything. They are and often valuable information can be found there. However it gets increasingly difficult to find very small gemstones of truth among these haystacks anything but.

I can probably give some examples of what I mean but it may be better if you, my dear reader, thought of your own encounters with "processed and canned" information...

This post may have a sequel...

Why the projects are often late

2009-11-29T22:42:00.001-08:00

Very interesting article that I've stumbled upon. Interesting for those like me who work in computer industry.

Prejudice 2010

2009-10-15T12:16:00.000-07:00

There will be no names explicitly mentioned in this blog entry...

One of the web sites that I regularly visit published recently an article. The article produced rather stirring effect among certain group of people. Suffices to say, I wasn't in any way ecstatic about this article. Well, it happens.

Then, reading certain web forum where a topic discussing this article was being active I noticed rather amazing thing. It was something like this - what do you expect from a guy with so primitive design of his web page? That hit me straight in the face like being extremely prejudicial.

Yet, it seems to be in line with what we really are. A century ago a man was judged by his shoes or jacket. Nowadays it is web page design. But ultimately it is pretty much the same. Sadly, there are things that we don't seem to be making any progress at...

Alpha amusement

2009-10-05T23:09:00.003-07:00

Here is actual screen shot of my question and Alpha's answer...

Commit-kaze

2009-09-24T05:41:00.000-07:00

Commit-kaze is a person who performs heavy source code commit in the evening of the last day of the work week.

(Inspired by my Lojbanian colleagues)

JBO/RU/EN/HEB

2009-09-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

JBO is a standard shortcut for Lojban. No, no, I am fine, thank you very much. However I am getting exposed to Lojban every day now.

You see, I work among a group of rather brilliant young gentlemen. Now, I am not ancient, but I am older than them, and boy, do I feel like a rather old-version sometimes.

So, a word about me. Russian is my mother's tongue. English is my second language which I can speak, read and write, though my accent is heavy and I lack spoken language practice. Finally, I speak fluent everyday Hebrew and I can slowly read. Don't ask me to write though. In principle I can, but I much rather not. So, I call myself two-and-a-half-lingual.

My coworkers are the same for the most part, though their Hebrew is way better than mine. So one would imagine that three pretty different languages are enough for flexing one's mind muscles every day. But you're wrong. They've taken up Lojban - the languages of rules, no exceptions and clear cut logic in everything, grammar and semantics alike.

To have lunch with this group of braniacs is really cool. You see, here in Israel it is kind of customary to mix all the languages one knows. So they would discuss Lojban in a sweet mixture of mostly Russian but with good measure of Hebrew and English spicing the meal, so to say.

This observation in fact, brings me to my first question. Do we have a person walking this Earth whose mother's tongue is synthetic language, be it Klingon, Esperanto or Lojban. Lojban is way more interesting here because it seems to me its concept is unlike any other language. So now, watching and hearing my mathematically endowed friends discuss Lojban I often wonder what it would be like to have Lojbanian (for lack of better term here) study English (the language of infinite hints within clues within double meanings, in my view at least) or Russian (with its amazingly intricate grammar).

I'd make a pause here, but rest assured that this Lojbanic theme with return to this blog...

On preaching the tolerance

2009-06-21T05:32:00.000-07:00

Our world is generally intolerant. Chances are that each of us has something they don't tolerate. It can be something really small such as a smoking neighbor or a something much more significant having to do with politics, ethics or our general outlook on life, universe and everything. Although if one suffers from asthma, a smoking neighbor can be anything but 'something really small'.

It is quite common these days to preach tolerance. It is generally a good thing to be tolerant and it is even better (as in stroking one's own ego) to preach the tolerance in front of the non-enlightened ones.

However here hides a catch. Say, someone were to preach tolerance towards certain group of people. Now, what would happen if opposition would be loud, vocal, offensive and even sometimes violent? Applying similar tactics towards them would be against tolerance, would it not?

Suppose one wants to make a point for the good cause of tolerance in front of a large audience. Will it be ethical to provoke, offend, strongly stir so many people to grab their attention and make them think in the direction one wants them to think?

No, I don't have answers to these questions. I realize I am not very tolerant man in certain circumstances while I can be quite tolerant otherwise. On the other hand, I pay special attention to all those who preach tolerance as much hypocrisy may be hiding beneath those seemingly good words...

This "special" moment.

2009-05-24T22:21:00.001-07:00

Ten minutes ago I called my wife and asked her to register our older daughter with summer camp. Presently I looked at my cell phone call list and saw the call I made ten minutes ago. I had pretty vague memory of that call therefore I called my wife again and asked her if we talked ten minutes ago. Which, as she told me, we did.

On GPS

2009-04-25T22:17:00.001-07:00

I've a cell phone with GPS receiver built in. Some time ago I started using it. The program I am using is freeware and community based. The idea behind it is that at any time you can send a traffic report (say, of traffic jam) via 3G internet that will be received by all other drivers. The program takes into account these reports when plotting a route. It works marvelously. Two things struck me as fascinating about this piece of modern tech.

1. My average speed (as reported by yet another computer, this time on board of my car) has went up from 33 km/h to 40 km/h. Yes, really, Tel Aviv area traffic moves with the average speed of 33 km/h. Additionally I learned of few more ways to get from home to work and back again. Given that I make this commute for close to 10 years now, this is good. And yes, it also makes you think I've a conservative character, which is also true.

2. It did change my perception of time while driving. In fact, when stuck in jam I often feel that I loose much time. It turns out I am wrong. When GPS says I'll be home in 10 mins, it is actually quite right (with 10% precision). So today I was driving to work in some medium to heavy stream of cars and (surprise, surprise) I realized I did not have to change lanes, pass slow truck in front of me, etc. I was going to be arriving to my destination in 5 minutes so that whatever I would have tried to do wouldn't bring me any significant gain. Some nerve cells lived to see the other day...

Your mileage may of course vary.

Technological hypocricy

2008-12-10T22:37:00.000-08:00

I am starting a separate blog where I am going to write random thoughts that occur to me from time to time. Here is the first one.

We choose to prefer the camera that has face detection mode in it while we blame our children for not being able to multiply 7 by 9 without help of a calculator.