William Perry on his Confirmation

Nov 162008
 

The following is a hilarious segment of one of former Secretary of Defense William Perry’s lectures in my Stanford MS&E 293 class on national security:

“The Washington Post responded to the announcement by running an article observing that I was soft-spoken and humble, and questioning whether those were the right personality traits for the job of Secretary of Defense. They were simply reflecting the well-known fact that those in Washington that traveled the high road of humility are never bothered by heavy traffic. As a result of the Post article, my confirmation hearing was a surreal experience. Senator Byrd, instead of asking me questions about my views on defense issues, took off on the Washington Post article. He observed that George Washington was humble. Robert E. Lee was humble. And yes, that Jesus was humble. This is true. So he concluded that my humility ought to be an asset. He did concede, however, that in his 40 years in the Senate, he had never before seen humility in a Cabinet officer. After that ringing endorsement, the other Senators fell in line and confirmed me as Secretary by a vote of 98 to 0. After all, they did not want to get on the wrong sides of any of their constituents, who might be admirers of Washington, Lee, or Jesus. That experience was the highlight of my experience with Congress. It was all downhill from there.”

Three Ways to Go Green

Oct 232008
 
  1. Punch everyone leaving a large carbon footprint.
  2. Take a bath in women instead of water.
  3. Email or call your congressperson to urge them to renew the clean energy tax incentives. With the temporarily depressed price for oil, and the dipping economy drying up the investment for new green technologies, especially in venture capital, there is a dangerous risk that alternative energy will suffer a major delay in seeing widespread use. The election is just days away, and if enough people call their congresspeople, they will have no choice but to include energy in their platforms. Go to http://www.wecansolveit.org/ for more things you can do.

Firewalls

Oct 182008
 

“Connecting your laptop to the local coffee shop’s Wi-Fi without a good firewall and thinking you’re secure is like using a condom with thousands of holes in it and calling it safe sex.”

Make sure your Windows condom doesn’t leak.

The Olympics

Aug 202008
 

The Olympics are the only thing I can watch for hours on end besides Star Trek. There are 28 sports, subdivided into approximately 300 events. It’s a three-week festival of the greatest athletes on Earth engaging in (what should be) friendly competition. However, a few things have marred this Olympics for me.

  1. The NBC coverage has been abysmal. There are 28 sports. Yet it seems like all I see is swimming, gymnastics, track & field, volleyball, and the occasional diving event or basketball game. Of course, to be broadcast at all, the event must have an American with a chance of making it to the finals. Where are the world champion fencing, or field hockey, or soccer, or judo, or handball, or sailing, or table tennis, or trampoline, or any of the cycling events?
  2. The live commentators talk about non-American athletes like soulless automata whose only goal is to stop the glorious and pure American athletes from grabbing their obviously deserved golds. Don’t get me wrong. I’m cheering for the US, but like many, I watch the Olympics to witness the best in the world in action, whether or not that be an American. More than a few are very annoyed.
  3. Yes, the Chinese gymnasts are under 16.
  4. Watching any of the good videos online at nbcolympics.com requires Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 as well as verification of cable or satellite subscription. Of course, you can just pretend to have a cable subscription, but using Silverlight instead of Flash was a poor decision, motivated by business deals rather than technology and usability. It might earn Microsoft yet another large anti-trust violation, but of course, not before it weasels its way around Flash and displaces it.
  5. The IOC apparently doesn’t like it when people watch the Olympics. They have sent numerous takedown notices to blogs, YouTube, torrent sites, and other media hubs that have been hosting Olympic content. It will be a sad day when the IOC begins to stand for censorship.

21

Jul 162008
 

I’m finally 21! Thanks to all those friends who made the day awesome– Jessica for calling right at midnight (and sending frequent updates on the 14th about how many minutes there were left to my birthday); Natasha, Catherine, Susan for appearing at my room at 12:04 with my first legal drinks and lots of friendly peer pressure; Ari, Patrick, Brandon, Ben, and others at Palantir; my CS106 sectionees that noticed it was my birthday during IGs today at the LaIR; my parents for the amusing gifts as well as money for a new fridge; the friends who wished me a happy birthday over Facebook or over the phone; the people coming to dinner tomorrow; and of course, Wilbur summer staff (Larissa, Jiahui, Marian, Victoria, Sawyer, Mattie, Isaac, and Tim) for the rich, chocolaty Prolific Oven cake decorated with 21 candles at staff bonding.

I’m past the last hurdle before turning 30…

Mercedes To Ditch Gas Cars

Jul 092008
 

Hot off the presses, and slashdotted, Mercedes to stop producing petroleum-burning vehicles by 2015. This would be quite something if they succeed, and perhaps a much-needed shock to the automotive industry as a whole if they do publicly commit more money to the effort.

Why I Don't Have a Text Message Plan

Jul 032008
 

Whoever was the original brainchild behind marketing SMS as a premium “feature” is both a genius and a idiot. Genius because it is now an $80 billion plus industry. Idiot because transferring text should really not cost that much. According to a Techcrunch article, it costs $1310 per MB of text messaging. This assuming 160 byte messages and the 20 cent charge on the 3G iPhones if you don’t have a plan. According to AT&T’s own 3G specs, the network can provide up to 128kbps in a moving vehicle. So that’s 160*8=1.28kbits for 20 cents, while you can download 10 times that amount in a single second. There’s something terribly wrong. I believe it will only be time before SMS becomes free after a killer phone messaging web app comes along with free messaging that will dethrone the large networks and their monopoly on SMS.

Keyboard Shortcutting

Jun 272008
 

If you’re on your computer or online a few hours each day, and you go to a wide variety of web sites, or use lots of different programs, you have probably realized that using the mouse is a slow endeavor, and that keyboard shortcuts rock.

Here are two that rock the hardest, in my opinion.

1. Launchy (http://www.launchy.net)

Launchy is a text launcher that will revolutionize the way you use your computer. After installing, just press Alt-Space to pop up the launcher, and start typing the name of the program you want to launch, or even non-continuous letters of the program you would like to launch. Then, select from the list using the arrow keys the one that matches. Launchy quickly learns the programs you launch the most, so after a day or two, you’ll be amazing everyone with your program-launching skills.

2. Firefox keywords
What if you can search something on google by typing “g something” on your web browser? Or search Wikipedia by typing “wp something”? Or UrbanDictionary, or YouTube search, or hundreds of other possibilities? Well, here’s a quick guide on how to set those address bar searches up in Firefox.

A. Go the the page with the search box. I used Wikipedia below as an example. Then, right click in the search field, and click “Add a Keyword for this Search…”

B.
The following dialog should pop up:

C.
Type in a name for your bookmark, and a short, easy to remember keyword with which you can use your search. In my Wikipedia example, I used “wp”.

D.
Then, in the address bar, just type “[your keyword] [your search]” and you’re good to go! (Hint: to quickly go the the address bar, just press F6!)

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