The Insomniac Coder

I need to find a new home to my trusty Blackberry Curve 8530 (Virgin Mobile). I am throwing in about $20 worth of extra accessories with it. Bidding starts at $50, buy it now for $120, free shipping. Proceeds go to Pedro's Samsung Intercept Purchase Offset Memorial Fund (read: I bought a new phone and I need to sell the old one). The auction: RIM BlackBerry Curve 8530 (Virgin Mobile) USED extras - eBay (item 290529390365 end time Feb-07-11 09:37:48 PST)

Warning: This is a technically oriented rant. It has nothing to do with the money side of PayPal . It is simply about things that shouldn't happen the way they currently do. Dear Geeks That Work for PayPal: I don't know if you people are lazy, or stupid, or simply use cost benefit analysis before you fix the stupidest dumbest fucking things that plague your platform. Somebody came up with an amazing idea: let's add two-factor authentication , and the sonofabitch works just right. I have used your two-factor mechanism with SMS on no less than two carriers, and the VIP token application in iPhone , Blackberry and Android and they all do the job perfectly. The problem is that you have external apps that rely on authenticating with PayPal, and these apps can't handle the two-factor authentication. The first this happened it was with the older version of Blackberry App Word. I assumed that this was the BBAW programmers not implementing the mechanism correctly. I...

You Can Soon Save Your PS3 Games In Thin Air Cloud storage means that, rather than just keeping your save game data on your PlayStation 3 's hard drive , users will be given the option to upload their saves remotely to a server. The advantage of this is that not only does it save the user space on their hard drive, but since it's tied to a PlayStation Network account, it can be pulled down to different consoles whenever and wherever the user desires. A couple updates from now Sony will announce that multiplayer-enabled gaming must rely on this cloud mechanism, which is the beginning of the end for any efforts to exploit the firmware. A couple updates after that, all games will at the very least dump a digital signature of save files to this cloud, so good luck trying to edit a save game. This is not about right or wrong, it just bothers me that none of the news outlets reporting on this is trying to extrapolate what this kind of mechanism means beyond the obvious insur...

Got the phone switching bug again, and this time I am going to try to see if I can live with an Android phone . According to Virgin Mobile, they will be upgrading their Samsung Intercept to 2.2 froyo sometime in Spring, since I am completely new to Android I am not too worried about it yet. And no, I am not interested in a jailbreak. The dots are used for the unlock pattern, which after very little time becomes instinctive, much easier than having to remember a password.  The new phone is slightly longer and narrower than my Blackberry 8530. The back cover is as flimsy.  The Samsung Intercept is of course thicker since it has a slide-out keyboard.  I haven't measured them, but the new keyboard feels at least twice as wide as the one in the Blackberry. The only problem is that due to the USB port being on the top of the phone, and I am a lefty, it is really damn hard for me to type if I am charging the phone. I imagine right handed people have the same ki...

Kill switches can go both ways : It is almost frightening how much faster it is to throw a revolution nowadays than back when I was a teenager.

First Lady Michelle Obama Visits Fort Jackson, SC, to Highlight Intersection of Childhood Obesity and Military Readiness | The White House This is actually one of the chow halls at my Army Basic Training regiment , the 2nd Battalion of the 39th Infantry. That flag is probably covering the tray conveyor window. How do I know? Look at the chairs, our motto is: AAA-O, Anything, Anytime, Anywhere -- Bar Nothing . When we were in basic training most of us were annoyed by having to use it as a greeting (TRIPLE A OH SIR ) but years later I looked into it and learned two things that made me change my mind about it: AAA-O is recognized as a Special Unit Designation , which means that not only it is official, but it can only be used by the 39th Infantry Regiment .  Truth being stranger than fiction, the Germans in WWII were so impressed with the 39th that they assumed AAA-O designated shock troops and they had expected the Allied landings to be spearheaded by troops sporting the AAA...

Cover via Amazon Kindle Books Now Outselling Paperbacks at Amazon : "In a statement, CEO Jeff Bezos said, “Last July we announced that Kindle books had passed hardcovers and predicted that Kindle would surpass paperbacks in the second quarter of this year, so this milestone has come even sooner than we expected – and it’s on top of continued growth in paperback sales.” The company adds that for 2010, it sold 115 Kindle books for every 100 paperback books, and “three times as many Kindle books as hardcovers.” Those numbers don’t include free Kindle books, making the numbers all the more significant." Good news for Amazon, mass publishers and independent publishers that sell for the Kindle platform. Really bad news for anyone that makes a living peddling dead trees. Related articles Kindle Books Now Outselling Paperbacks at Amazon (mashable.com)

Not enough to call it Snowmaggeddon, but enough to screw up pretty much everything in the D.C. Metro area: This is also one of the very first times I have actually seen the HDR feature in my camera work anywhere close to what Sony promises. Related articles Wet snow blankets Northeast as storm gains momentum (reuters.com)

I am absolutely sure that this movie didn't cost $100 million to make: Many thanks to Paul for finding this one.

Zero Punctuation reviews Minecraft :

Amazon is usually good enough about their "are you interested ..." emails as to make them creepy, but I was more than a little pleased to see them screw it up at least once: Out of 8 games suggested, 3 had been already sold back to Amazon through their trade-in program. The fourth game that I highlighted was purchased from Amazon under the same account that received the email. Two of the highlighted games had been originally purchased through the same account that received the email. A "civilian" would go "well, how the hell are they supposed to account for THAT" but this being Amazon, I am sure that it is possible for them to add purchased and traded items as exclusion criteria to the queries used to mine for our emails. I am 49% sure that everyone received the same list of games, but these being so popular maybe it would had been a better idea to refine the criteria a bit more.

The rise of 'we' : "Why modern-day US presidents love the word" I hereby declare today a slow news day. I was ready to say it was the " Royal We " but then it became obvious (as in blinding migraine): that's the first word in the United States Constitution . Wouldn't that render the word as statistically flawed for this study? Just try to visualize President Obama saying the following and tell me it is fair to clump them all together: "We need to get our act together..." "We are going on vacation again, so long, suckers..." "We the People of the United States ..." "We can't decide between Chinese and Indian takeout for lunch, want to weigh in?" "We are living in yellow submarine ..."

Image by pvera via Flickr The Rise and Rise of the Cognitive Elite : "hessian writes 'As technology advances, the rewards to cleverness increase. Computers have hugely increased the availability of information, raising the demand for those sharp enough to make sense of it. In 1991 the average wage for a male American worker with a bachelor's degree was 2.5 times that of a high-school drop-out; now the ratio is 3. Cognitive skills are at a premium, and they are unevenly distributed.'" Maybe I am not awake enough, but the way I read this is "smart people make more money now than 20 years ago, and there isn't that many of them." Is this newsworthy? Unfair? A shock? I really don't get which part of this is newsworthy, unless it is using weasel words to lead people into another "why should college grads make more money" arguments. Or maybe it is trying to be all of the above.  Related articles The rise and rise of the cognitive elite ...

The first frame is EXACTLY what I looked like five minutes ago: A Dangerous Job : Here’s more law .

Found this on Reddit: I want this book to be real : programming The best part is knowing no less than five people that can easily write that book.

HijiNKS ENSUE: They Call Me The Workin’ Man : Here's what I don't understand: why so many people that didn't play Duke Nukem' 3D when it came out are wasting so much energy giving a shit about DNF? Yes, DN3D was awesome, but the damn thing came out 15 frickin years ago, a lot of the people bitching about this game have never played it, I doubt they even saw their parents play it. The sad thing is that the game is set up for failure, there is no way even half of the people are going to be pleased with whatever is published. If it is ever published.

Cracking The Credit Card Code | MintLife Blog | Personal Finance News & Advice This is probably the best presentation I have seen explaining how check digit routines work. We use these at work for non-credit card numbers, and usually you have to suffer through them once. If you are smart and you write proper object oriented code, you'll be able to reuse your check digit for say, Generic Airlines Frequent Flyer, as many times as you want since once they adopt the scheme odds are they'll stick for it for years. When this turns challenging is when the spec documents are sloppy. I implemented one of these check digits for a customer in the hospitality industry, and their example case for the check digit routine had a tiny little redundancy error. The result? My check digit routine was WRONG, but it WORKED with the example account numbers. Fun times ...

The Very Hungry Zombie : If you don't get the joke, check out PJ's favorite book.

I just finished installing the last part of my birthday present (at least according to Ivette), a dual monitor stand for my company-issued 23" screen and the 24" screen I scored last week (the first part of the birthday present). The photo is shot too wide, which distorts the position of the right monitor, in reality it is aligned perfectly with the left one. Some annotations: A: I put a round metal plate above the clamp to spread some of the load on the top surface of the desk (F). This was not needed underneath since there is a metal frame available to handle the load. The desk can take the aggregated load with no issue whatsoever, but I felt nervous about clamping 50 or so pounds of load over less than 16 square inches of plastic.  B: Verizon -issued FIOS router.  C: Comcrap PVR, about to get ditched unless Comcrap starts showing me some love. I am not kidding, you assholes are one phone call away from losing my TV account to Verizon FIOS TV.  D: Dell work l...

World Of Mysteries: Abandoned Remains of the Russian Space Shuttle Project Buran This is a beautifully shot gallery, it reminds me of what happens every time I end up at the Dulles Annex . I particularly love this shot:

My new monitor is a real monitor instead of an  HDTV  (amazing how a 24" HD screen without analog inputs or ATSC tuner is so much cheaper than a 23" HDTV of the same product series), so I just got a Logitech S220 2.1 Speaker System with Subwoofer , an impulse buy and at $23 I didn't think much of it. I didn't even finish reading the product page. The system arrived today, and it came with this little doodad: This little pod is a combination of: Power switch Headphone jack extension Microphone jack extension Volume knob I have been using it for maybe an hour, and I can't understand why every PC doesn't come with a pod like this.The two speakers sound like two tiny speakers, no surprise there. The sub-woofer actually sounds pretty cool, even better considering the whole thing cost $23 including free shipping. 

Image by Eexlebots via Flickr Should Younger Developers Be Paid More? : "jammag writes "A project manager describes facing an upset senior developer who learned that a new hire — a fresh college grad — would be making 30 percent more than him. The reason: the new grad knew a hot emerging technology that a client wanted. Yes, the senior coder was majorly pissed off. But with the constant upheaval in new technology, this situation is almost unavoidable — or is it? And at any rate, is it fair?" Sorry buddy, this is why you never want to know what others are making within your company. What you do want to know is how your salary places within the median for your locality for your field. If you are at the median or above, STFU and keep a low profile. If you are under the median, then you are underpaid. You will need to decide what to do about it, be it ask for a raise, make a move for a promotion or get a job elsewhere. What the other guy makes plays nothing into this. ...

The New Starbucks Trenta Cup Is Bigger Than Your Stomach I am a bit amused that when I saw this my first reaction was not about the price of so much Starbuck's coffee , or the need. I guess that since I am now a bit older and wiser, my mind just went into overdrive with things like: How much would you end up hurting your stomach lining by drinking so much strong coffee in one sitting? Can anyone drink the whole thing before it goes cold? How come it doesn't have a handle? Wouldn't it be too heavy? What about the sleeve? Isn't this against Starbucks' mandate to be douche bags about being a green company? Will they charge companies to advertise in this much bigger sleeve? How come the logos say Starbucks Coffee? Did the logo redesign got canned already? Have the efficiency experts taken into account caffeine rage across the country as caffeine fiends wait extra because of the two douche bags ahead of the line that ordered the trenta half decaf four extra sh...

I’m totally fine, but goodbye for now : " No doubt you’ve seen the news . For obvious reasons I won’t be blogging here anymore, though I will leave the archives up. I hope you’ll pray to whatever God you believe in, and heap endless scorn and abuse on the first goddamn hack that dares to try snooping around to find out what’s wrong. I mean it. No staking out the hospital, no asking around among my friends. No calling doctors and asking them to speculate on what might be going on. Anyone who does that is lower than dog shit stuck to a shoe, and I hope that when you see stories like that — because you will — you use their comment strings to express your outrage for being the kind of scumbags who would put their own hunger for unique visitors and pageviews ahead of a man’s right to privacy. Katie says she will be keeping a list. So, consider yourselves warned. For now, peace out. Much love. Namaste." This is how Fake Steve announced that Real Steve is taking a leave of absence ...

I hate it more because this cover is from 2004 .

Image via Wikipedia BBC News - Today - Remembering 'selfless' Dick Winters US Army Major Richard "Dick" Winters passed this week, he was 92. Major Winter's exploits were documented in Band of Brothers , a book by Stephen Ambrose , and a miniseries of the same title that aired on HBO in 2001. On a related note, there is a movement that is fighting for Major Winters to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions during D-Day in Normandy .

According to UPS , they redesigned their tracking page based on customer feedback. After seeing this, all I can think of is that they have a lot of fucking nerve to claim such a thing. Take a look at this: Let's see... It shows the package on time. Of course it does! And when there's an exception for whatever reason, it will probably say "NEW arrival date is .... and still show it in time." "By end of day" is bullshit because it lets UPS cut down on their workforce and force the remaining drivers in the route to work longer hours. I haven't received a FEDEX package after 5 in almost a year, but UPS keeps showing up as late as 9:00 PM, which is a really long fucking stretch of the "End of day" statement. "Updated" timestamp is a placebo. Of course it will always show a current date/time, just don't expect UPS to poll their database every time you reload the page. Their tracking system is either queued, so you won'...

Bonus points because they ate "Steve," dear leader's real name.

You gotta be kidding me!

Should Employees Buy Their Own Computers? : "Local ID10T writes 'Data security vs. productivity. We have all heard the arguments. Most of us use some of our personal equipment for work, but is it a good idea? 'You are at work. Your computer is five years old, runs Windows XP. Your company phone has a tiny screen and doesn't know what the internet is. Idling at home is a snazzy, super-fast laptop, and your own smartphone is barred from accessing work e-mail. There's a reason for that: IT provisioning is an expensive business. Companies can struggle to keep up with the constant rate of technological change. The devices employees have at home and in their pockets are often far more powerful than those provided for them. So what if you let your staff use their own equipment?' Companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Kraft, Citrix, and global law firm SNR Denton seem to think it's a decent idea.' What stops this company from providing inferior equipment to push t...

Image via Wikipedia What is proper email etiquette? : "Thomas Blaikie and Lucy Kellaway debate the proper way to address people in emails" Easy: Pedro's Rules of Business Email: 1. Must follow the same standards in place for WRITTEN communications. 2. Spell check the damn thing, please. It is embarrassing to all parties when an email has unnecessary typos. 3. Be concise. Be specific. Write in full sentences. 4. Check your tone. 5. Check the stupid carbon copy and blind copy lists! 6. If you are complaining about an error, make sure the error isn't yours. It makes you look stupid and somebody will eventually dig out the email to use it against you. 7. Provide relevant information. If you are sending a screen capture, also send the URL of the page, so others can replicate it. 8. Don't hit the send button if you are upset. I am sure 99.99% of all email clients in use have a draft feature. 9. Don't hey people, it's rude. 10. Always use a signature...

Image via Wikipedia Ready, Aim, Retire: 7 Top Officers’ Epic Implosions | Danger Room | Wired.com It is very hard for me to say this and part of me doesn't want to jinx it: this is the first thing I have read in Wired in over a month that comes anywhere close to real writing instead of mindless drivel. There, I said it. Yes, it was a good read. We were arguing about the CO debacle yesterday. I am sure some dumbass right now is working himself up due to this, but in reality it is simple: certain people need to be held to a higher standard. When a country spends decades grooming you for a position of high trust and responsibility, then they give you command of a $450 million or more warship that helps project American power anywhere in the globe, you are expected to show some common fucking sense. This is not George Constanza ("should I have not done that? nobody told me..."), this is a Naval Academy and Naval War College graduate with almost 30 years of meritorious...