fighting the lack of good ideas
Blaise Pascal, the famous mathematician, philosopher, and part-time theologian, is a fascinating member of history to me. Several years ago I borrowed a copy of his “Pensées” from a friend, and skimmed it. At the time, I was impressed more with the randomness of the collection than with anything specific he wrote. A few days ago,…
Microsoft is trying to buy ~650k IPv4 addresses from in-bankruptcy-proceedings Nortel (for $7.5m). What gets me is that IPv6 has been a standard for over a decade, and yet so few have moved to it. Way back when I was in college the first time – in 2000 – our networking professor told us we…
This morning I saw the headline on InfoWorld: “Oracle stopping development on Itanium — slap at HP or obvious decision?” At my previous employer, we were entertained by a couple visits from both HP and Intel folks ballyhooing the Itanium, HP-UX, and the future of the platform – especially in the database arena. I thought those visits…
My interest in cryptography has extended, now, for more than 15 years. The first book I read on the topic was David Kahn’s seminal work, The Codebreakers. Several years later, I received a copy of the book for Christmas, which I promptly reread. Kahn’s writing style is eminently inviting, sucking the reader into an extensive…
I have read, and reread, Flatland several times. It’s subtitle, “A Romance of Many Dimensions”, would most likely have been surprising when it was originally published in 1884. Edwin A Abbot weaves a tale of exploration, heresy, discovery, enlightenment, geometry, and more in a mere 81 pages (in the copy I have). We are introduced…
I had high hopes for Martin Langfield’s book, The Secret Fire when I purchased it several months ago. The cover headline reads, “the world is under threat… from a weapon launched in 1944”. Sounded good. The back cover, likewise, sounded pretty good, too: Sotheby’s, London, 1936 A paper by Sir Isaac Newton is sold at…
I have a great deal of interest in early-stage startups: they’re generally the most interesting to watch, and if they play their cards right, have the best opportunity to Win Bigâ„¢. Y Combinator is a seed fund organization started by Paul Graham. I first heard about them several years back when a couple friends and…