And you are here why?

(you can always get it back from the repo) via @FrancescoC

You're in California, at a fun conference, meeting fun people, going out and doing fun things in the evening, drinking fun beer, and falling asleep at fun times which are not too unusual (midnight) because you are, after all, "grown up". Unfortunately, nobody told your body this, and it quite majestically wakes you up at the decidedly un-fun hour of 2 f**king AM because that is 5 AM out east where your body-clock seems to still be residing. After an hour of trying to get back to sleep, you realize that yes, your elapsed sleep for this night is going to be 2 hours. Boundless Joy...

Herewith I present to you a <sarcasm> spectacular </sarcasm> article in The Database Journal on The Hidden Cost of Scaling with NoSQL which includes brilliant  bon-mots like the following ( bolding is mine) Data integrity —In order to achieve high performance despite massive size, non-relational database systems compromise data correctness guarantees. The traditional rules about writing data are loosened, making it far more likely that data can be lost or overwritten. Thus the best applications for a non-relational approach are those that have low-to-medium requirements for data integrity, for example, social media applications. Any application whose data integrity requirements are absolute requires a relational database; NoSQL is a non-starter. Flexible indexing —Relational databases are very good at letting users query data from multiple perspectives. Joins and indexes are not weaknesses of relational databases, they are strengths. To achiev...

So there I was, listening to Seth Falcone (@ ErlangFactory) describe a fairly complex migration (CouchDB to MySQL, etc. etc.).  The theory was that this would take 3 hours - the reality came to around 3 days.  Sounds like badness, right? I say thee nay! In my books, this was actually a pretty huge success - it actually worked .  And that, my friends, is a huge, huge win.  As Clausewitz (or Moltke ?) said a while back, " No campaign survives contact with the enemy ", and in this case, the enemy is Reality, which, my friends, is a harsh harsh mistress. My point?  One of the major advantages of The Erlang Way is that it significantly aids Tap Dancing Under Fire.  Mind you, hot code-loading is probably one of the major advantages here - compile and deploy yer module without having to touch the vast majority of stuff thats out there, and It Just Works. (Incidentally, this is one of those things that you just don't get unless you do erlang.  Ye...

at #ErlangFactory via Jay Nelson

via @nivertech

via Mike Williams (co-Inventor of Erlang)

The debate is ongoing on the Economist website . Schneier's latest contribution is a justifiable (and judicious) outraged rant including such bon-mots as Remember when we would mock Soviet-style “show me your papers” societies? That we’ve become inured to the very practice is a harm.   (The TSA) wants us to trust that a 400-ml bottle of liquid is dangerous, but transferring it to four 100-ml bottles magically makes it safe. He wants us to trust that the butter knives given to first-class passengers are nevertheless too dangerous to be taken through a security checkpoint. He wants us to trust the no-fly list:   21,000 people   so dangerous they’re not allowed to fly, yet so innocent they can’t be arrested. He wants us to trust that the deployment of expensive full-body scanners has nothing to do with the fact that the former secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff,   lobbies   for   one of the companies that makes them. He wants us to tru...

Timeless Yegg-isms abound in this ode to The Mechanics of Addiction masquerading as a Borderlands review .   Borderlands Gearbox somehow managed to make it gritty and ultimately appealing to the hardcore gaming crowd sending out their totally hardcore reviews from Mom's Basement Central  ... in Diablo "co-op" meant "You log in and shout 'Hi Everybody!' and someone kills you instantly and takes every last goddamned shred of a possession you ever owned while mocking your ancestry.   It's OK for the characters to be juvenile. It's OK for the target audience to be juvenile.   But it's a fucking train wreck when the   writers   are juvenile , because they'll alienate everyone above their own level of sophistication -- a demographic that just so happens to have the most disposable income to spend on games it's missing many of the other elements people have come to expect of RPGs -- elements such as "the decisions I make affect the ...

via Larry Swedroe on CBS News Really, really obvious stuff, that is - unfortunately - only obvious in retrospect to most people... Never buy an investment product if there's a commission attached to it. Only work with an advisor who offers a fiduciary standard of care. Only invest in a product if the seller can demonstrate that they also are investing in the same product. Never buy a complex product; if you can't fully understand the nature of the risks and the costs, run as fast as you can because you can be 100 percent certain the complexity is designed to favor the issuer. In other words, you'll be the patsy at the poker table who doesn't know he's the patsy. And if you can't adhere to these rules, hire a fiduciary advisor. The cost of the advice will almost certainly be a small fraction of the value added, simply by making sure you only buy products that are designed in your best interests. The bottom line?  If you don't get it, don't...

Just because.

From " Simha " a Telugu movie, and my current favorite Telugu movie of all time...  

via Anshuman Krishna

If you haven't yet mucked with Java Garbage Collection, you will . Corollary If you don't need to muck with Java Garbage Collection, something will break. Sub-Rule With a double dose of pain and suffering when it comes to Heap Analysis  

From Bloomberg, an interactive map allowing you to not just see how many of you there are, but even more importantly, how you compare against others - e.g., Indians vs Polish, Mexican vs Puerto Rican, etc.  Its absolutely brilliant - go check it out !

Melissa Harris at the Chicago Tribune talks to Ken Griffin - founder of Citadel, and yes, a Billionaire .  The money quote Q. [...] What do you think in general about the influence of people with your means on the political process?... A. [...] I think they actually have an insufficient influence. Those who have enjoyed the benefits of our system more than ever now owe a duty to protect the system that has created the greatest nation on this planet ... Not for themselves, but for their kids and for their grandchildren ... I actually happen to think he is correct.  They do have "insufficient influence". Huh?  What? Look at it this way - a level playing field sucks from the perspective of your team winning.  You want your team to have the most tilted field possible, to ensure your own victory.  This may, of course, suck for the spectators, but thats their problem, not yours, right? So, yes, Ken Griffin is correct, he does have insufficient influen...

AA has its Flagship Lounge at JFK, LAX, Chicago, and Heathrow.  Its there for the AA elite (Executive Platinum) and people traveling Business/First, on all international flights.  Basically, the lounge for those who give AA a lot of money - their "Flagship" product.  And boy, is it a letdown. Well, to be absolutely fair, its not bad by domestic standards, but frankly, that is really, really not saying all that much.  You get some peace and quiet (good), all the bubbly that you want to drink (which, given the quality of the bubbly, is not all that much), and a bunch-a food. Oh man, that food.  Rubber chicken, hockey puck beef, leather salmon, in short, exactly what you expect to get at pretty much any wedding.  The smart thing to do is to just buy a sandwich on the way to the airport and eat it. British Airways, however, is quite the different beast.  They've got lounges all around the world, and they've got cool lounges in their bigger hub...

Last time I was in Heathrow, the chap next to me had, on successive calls, spoken in fluent Italian, Swedish, and English. ( To be precise, the English was fluent, the Italian sounded fluent, and I'm guessing about the Swedish ). In fact, the whole place tends to be filled with polyglots - its terribly annoying. <long pause> Sigh - I just realized that when I'm in India, conversation at home tends to seamlessly switch across at least three languages (English, Hindi, and Kannada). I'm just as bad as the rest of them. Oh, what the heck - Indians! Aargh!   I guess I'll never be a "real" American :-) Come to think of it, Erlang?  Perl?  Java (ugh)?  Cobol?  Lisp?    Aren't most of these languages too?

First class on AA is a lot better than their cattle-car service. A *lot* better. Oodles better. But then again, having a pre-frontal lobotomy without anesthesia is better than flying cattle-car nowadays. All that said, AA First is not really all that good in absolute terms. Its a lie-flat bed, and they " make the bed for you ", which sounds a lot cooler than it is - they basically put a wee mattress on the lie-flat seat.  The " lie-flat " seat is, admittedly, a lot better than the one in Business, but that is only because AA has the patented " lie flat in business class, but by flat, what we mean is lie kind of flat in two possible positions, neither of which is actually comfortable.  Or flat " seats. And the food. Oh my. The "food". Its not bad, really, but in the end its exactly the same damn food that they serve in Business, except that they bring it ' a-la-carte ' (yes there are quotes around it.  And yes, I put them t...

Genius      Obvious in retrospect.     Once you know how its done, you think to yourself " I could-a done that ".  But you didn't...     Examples: Fish sauce & Ragu Bolognese ,   Spanx Sriracha True Genius    Still remarkable in retrospect.    Once you know how its done, you think to yourself " Holy Crap! I could never have come up with that! "    Examples: Alligators, Eggs, and Lambda Calculus General Relativity :

via @popehat referring to the TSA "strongly cautioning" journalists. That is all...

Seriously. You Don't. Wait, I can do better YOU DON'T Ok, a riduclously trite and trivial statement, but the point I'm getting at is that you may think you know what is going to happen.  In fact, for really small time horizons, you probably have a really really good idea.  For example that slice of toast that you just dropped is absolutely positively going to land buttered side down on your expensive persian carpet. But, slide the time horizon out, say, 5 years, and what d'you get?  Is that carpet still going to be there?  Will you still like toast?  Will butter be outlawed?  Who the heck knows? Which is why I love it when our elected officials make decisions based on tax receipts 10 years out.  Remember the crazy Bush tax cuts ?  As a memory jog, we were supposed to have surpluses as far as the eye could see, and decided to cut taxes pre-emptively.  We all know how that turned out. And now, it looks like Medicare growth is slo...

Good Security    Do a bunch of security related shit. Better Security    Then turn off the computer. Best Security    Then pulverize said computer with a sledgehammer. Grand Prize    And chuck the pieces into a black hole

That is all...

Seriously, hasn't this traditionally been the other party's tactic? Something that the PC makers and Android device folks, etc. have adopted? As I've pointed out [The] Apple approach is software dominated while the "other" approach is fixated on hardware specs. Think about it - after an initial flurry of " How great is this iPhone display, wah! wah! w00t! ", you pretty much hear nothing else about it, but do hear a metric ton about Siri, iCloud, Apps, etc.  In the Android world however, virtually all the discussion about the new phones tends to be the exact opposite, i.e., after an initial flurry of " How great is Ice Cream Sandwich, rejoice! ", its all about pen-tile displays, quad-core processors, NFC , etc. To hammer the point home, just look at the discussion of any set of PCs vs Macs - the PCs are all about the latest processor from Intel, screen size, etc. while the Macs have always been about "oooh check out this t...

Long boring post about Java 9/10/... at The Register , but some fun things embedded in there nevertheless. “Java is not the new Cobol,” Ritter said. “I've seen analyst reports where Java is the new Cobol where it drifts off into insignificance but I don't believe it is that way.” which, of course, smacks of Bill Clinton's plaintive " The president is still relevant " line.  I mean, come on, you don't say stuff like that... “This requires more discussion, to make Java a true Object-Oriented language,” Ritter said of the potential move to OO. Which, of course, promptly causes furious head-scratching from the billions of java-dweebs out there who are thinking to themselves " Huh?  I thought it was OO? ".  Of course, there is the simultaneous snickering from all seventeen smalltalk developers out there saying "Well, d-uh. About time too! ". Fun times indeed :-) Note :  For what its worth, my opinion on OO/Java

via @scalzi ( referring to Kirk Cameron) I will defend to the death your right to say whatever ridiculous, ignorant and bigoted thing that has been fermenting in that cracked clay pot you call a brain pan. But the First Amendment also means that when you say such things, other people have the a right to mock you and the silly, stupid words that have dribbled out of your skull through that word hole above your chin. If you call someone “unnatural,” they might call you an “asshole.” That’s the deal. To put it another way: The First Amendment guarantees a right to speech. It does not guarantee a right to respect . As I am fond of saying, if you want people to respect your ideas, get better ideas. Likewise, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence. If you’re going to parade around on television engaging in hateful bastardry, then, strangely enough, people will often call you out on it. They may also call you out on the hypocrisy of maintaining that when   you ...

via @anildash Our god is real and awesome and all-powerful and 100% useless unless his will is enforced by a government we vilify as ineffective and evil.

From EPIC , via Animal , we have the following words that are monitored by the DHS on social media to, y'know, Protect Our Freedoms. Now y'know... 2.13 Key Words & Search Terms This is a current list of terms that will be used by the NOC when monitoring social media sites to provide situational awareness and establish a common operating picture. As natural or manmade disasters occur, new search terms may be added. The new search terms will not use PII in searching for relevant mission-related information. DHS & Other Agencies Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Coast Guard (USCG) Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Border Patrol Secret Service (USSS) National Operations Center (NOC) Homeland Defense Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agent Task Force Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Fusion Center Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Secure Border Initiative (SBI) Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI...