So
Apparently Apple didn't tell the world about it's handy iDDOS feature of the iPhone; places like Duke University had to find out about it for themselves.
The built-in 802.11b/g adapters on several iPhones periodically flood sections of the Durham, N.C. school’s pervasive wireless LAN with MAC address requests, temporarily knocking out anywhere from a dozen to 30 wireless access points at a time. Campus network staff are talking with Cisco, the main WLAN provider, and have opened a help desk ticket with Apple. But so far, the precise cause of the problem remains unknown.
That’s because the misbehaving iPhones flood the access points with up to 18,000 address requests per second, nearly 10Mbps of bandwidth, and monopolizing the AP’s airtime.
Stellar. I suppose for added comic effect, you could 'pronounce' iDDOS like adios...
This would probably make an amusing party question/activity: determining your porn star name. A quick survey via email yielded these gems from some friends: “Fuzzy Boxwood”, “Bituminous Pineglen”(!) and “Buffy Maple”. Based on those results, I could see this really working for someone 'in the biz'.
So Nokia Media Transfer was quietly released earlier in June but it is good that Mac owners are finally getting some Nokia love with regard to supporting software. From the NMT site:
The Nokia Media Transfer application enables you to transfer pictures, videos, podcasts, music, and files between your Nokia mobile device and your Mac.
Of course, this will do nothing to stem the feeding frenzy of people buying iPhones on Friday, but it is nice to have the additional synch features available for the N75 and other N-series phones from Nokia.
It's worth pointing out that you can get the N75 on Amazon for less than $25USD (with an activation plan) versus the $600USD that the iPhone will set you back.
So Taggraph is a wonderful time waster that lets you explore photos on Flickr by searching on keywords then clicking a graph of the resulting images. Harder to explain than it is to do; try it out and see.
So An interesting perspective on spam that takes the point of view that internet email systems are like an immune system and spam like a virus — as measures are put in place to deal with spam, the spam simply mutates to attempt to sidestep the new defenses.
So Altsearchengines is proposing that today (Tuesday, 12 June 2007) be a day without Google and encourages you to use any one of the hundreds of alternate search engines on the inter-webs.
Some ground rules:
1. All day Tuesday, June 12th, don’t use any of the 5 major search engines.
2. Avoid Meta search engines, since most of them include the major search engines. (for this day only! Meta search engines are important; see the Great Debate Tuesday night!)
3. Likewise, the specialized vertical search engines may be too narrowly focused. (for this day only. It’s the vertical search engines that usually search the best; within their niche.)
4. Consider changing your homepage or downloading their toolbar. You can always uninstall everything and change back on Wednesday.
5. On Wednesday, leave a detailed comment under this post and share your experience with the rest of us. Which alt search engine did you chose? How would you rate the experience?
Of course, the sheer irony of this is that anyone who might read this blog post probably found it using one of the 'major' search engines.
So
While much attention has been paid to whether or not Apple will open the iPhone to development I think that a more fundamental question has been missed in the process — why are Steve Jobs and Apple afraid of opening the iPhone to third-party developers? Is it because they have a sense that the underlying OS is not terribly stable? How many times have you heard Jobs use the example '...well, when you install other apps the phone might crash'. Is it because there is not really a robust developer framework that includes exception handling underneath? What is the reason for their reticence?
I contrast to Nokia (and other phone manufacturers) approach of allowing, neigh, encouraging third-party development on their Symbian-based smartphones. Granted, Symbian is not perfect but it does provide a rich and relatively stable environment for the development of everything from games to productivity apps on mobile phones. An those are just the 'native' apps, there are a large number of Java-based apps available for those devices as well. No word on Java on the iPhone as of yet.
With the Apple WWDC revelation cum stopgap announcement that third-party development will be allowed on the iPhone, albeit thin applications that have their UI on the phone and heavy lifting is done off-phone via (presumably) web service calls of some sort. If truly limited to 'Web 2.0 standards' [sic] for iPhone app development, the applications will likely have very limited access to the device itself for integrating with the address book, camera and other built-in functions. To some, Apple's stance on iPhone development will be taken as validation of thin-client/rich-client/services-based development. To others, it will just seem a cop out.
It will be interesting to see how this evolves and whether it will ultimately provide a satisfactory development and deployment environment for non-Apple applications and services. Of course, the resolution of that question won't keep Apple from selling truckloads of iPhones on 29 June.
So JobVent is a place you can go to post anonymous rants about past employers (there appear to be few positive comments from what I have seen).
In some commentaries, the poster gets a little carried away and complains in such a great deal of specificity that it would be relatively easy for the company to identify the poster and possibly pursue legal action against them. The whole thing just looks like a lawsuit waiting to happen. In the meantime, I sure that posters feel at least a little relieved at the opportunity to blow off some steam.
So
There is a lot of good advice in this posting by Marc Andreessen about hiring the best people you've ever worked with. I am glad that he is quick to debunk one of my favorites: the companies that use logic puzzles and academic degrees as interview tools:
Specifically, I am unaware of any actual data that shows a correlation between raw intelligence, as measured by any of the standard metrics (educational achievement, intelligence tests, or skill at solving logic puzzles) and company success.
...
For example, a classic Microsoft interview question was: “Why is a manhole cover round?”
The right answer, of course, is, “Who cares? Are we in the manhole business?”
(Followed by twisting in your chair to look all around, getting up, and leaving.)
I have been in several frustrating conversations with clueless hiring managers trying to convince them to hire very talented, driven and focused individuals who didn't happen to have a specific technology buzzword on their resume. Hire motivated people and they can learn a technology; in fact, they will be eager to learn something new (it's a warning flag if they don't). Hire smug know-it-alls, and they have no motivation to learn anything (they know it all already) and tend to drag down those around them with their prima-dona attitudes.