Big Dave’s Blog

Leadership: Watching “The War”

I’m also a history buff, especially 1939-1945. Ken Burns new documentary, “The War”, is so far one of the best series I’ve seen on the subject. I know this has nothing to do with technology, but it is about life and what happened in our past to allow us to be what we are today. Ignoring the sacrifices made for the moment, 10 million soldiers coming back from the war went to college on the GI bill. Prior to WWII, the US was still mostly an agricultural nation. Technology gains during WWII as well as all those new new college degrees that followed had a lot to do with our technological progress since.

If you can, check it out. It’s fascinating television.

Scaling Twitter: Making Twitter 10000 Percent Faster | High Scalability

There is some great information in here about scaling a RoR site – or any site for that matter. Earlier this year, I was in a position as the CTO to make a decision whether to migrate my site from Java to Ruby on Rails. I struggled a bit because I had heard of so many scaling problems. In the end (after a lot of testing), I convinced myself that there would be scaling problems, but most of the scaling problems would be due to decisions my team and I made. The problems would not all be with Ruby. Sure, Ruby runs a whole lot slower than Java, but that doesn’t mean there are no Java apps out there that don’t scale. If you architect your site correctly, more CPU cycles should not be a problem. More servers is always cheaper than a few extra weeks of developer time.

Bottom line is to spend your time designing your site to scale and don’t sweat a few extra CPU cycles.

Home Entertainment: Death Star Home Theater – Gizmodo

Ok, this is a little wrong on a few counts, but no one mentions that the business of Star Wars must be very good. The Meridian speakers alone in this room run about $100,000. Not bad…

SWRDA : News Centre

Now this I like. Waves move around, and this system uses the motion to generate electricity. It’s clean, and no one sees it. Keeping everything attached in the North Atlantic seems to be a challenge though. Keep an eye on this. If it works, I suspect we will see more of them. Spending $56M to save over $1B (that’s a B) is tough to pass up.

6th Gen iPods won’t work with Linux, Winamp – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

I’m a big Apple fan, but this upsets me. On my Mac, I use iTunes, but my media library is managed on a Windows server running J. River Media Center (JRMC). iTunes is OK, but it doesn’t come close to what JRMC can do. Plus, I can’t fit my 300+ Gig library on my Mac. With JRMC, I can keep my MacBook Pro and my iPod in sync with different music if I want. Now, it looks like Apple wants to force me to use iTunes. Sorry, Apple, but iTunes is not the greatest. It’s barely adequate. For less than $40, JRMC gets me:

• Library that can handle 10’s of thousands of files effieciently
• Practically infinite control over viewing and sorting
• Support up to 6 zones of audio
• Synchronize to multiple devices with different music and even different formats
• Easily controlled via a remote – I don’t need a monitor, keyboard, or mouse. My server sits in a closet, and I control everything with a programmable IR remote
• Support for 15 UPnP devices (like a Roku Soundbridge)
• Manages my photos and videos from the same application

This is only a partial list. I have no association with J. River. I’m just a happy customer.

Come on Apple, get with the program!

MAKE: Blog: Salt water as fuel?

My gut tells me this may be like the cold fusion tests, but can you imagine if salt water could be used as fuel? The possibilities are endless. Cheap, clean energy…

Eminent Technology

A little on the expensive side, but I love the new way of thinking. When building an audio speaker, it becomes very difficult to reproduce anything near or below 20Hz. The problem is the speaker cone can’t move enough air. These guys decided to use a fan instead. Why not? Fans move air pretty well. I’m curious, however, how they remove the fan noise.

Of course, you could always go this route. Scroll up a bit to see the whole story, but this is a beyond taking audio to the extreme. With this many sources and this much going on, I question how you could possibly control all the wave forms and keep the frequency response flat. Not for me. I’ll stick to high quality amps and speakers.

Lawmakers take aim at patent speculators
Speculator of mundane patents casts a long shadow

It’s good to see that legislators are even looking into patent reform. There are several issues at play here. First, there are the trolls that buy up vague patents and sue anyone even remotely related. They know they wouldn’t win a court battle, but they also know that many companies will pay them off just to go away (often $1M or so). The real problem, however, is the quality of the patents that are coming out of the patent office. The patent examiners are overworked and often not qualified. That results in patents that are often obvious or so vague that you could apply it to almost anything.

I hold a couple of patents, and I have another pending. I remember being pretty amazed at what the examiner would come back with as prior art. The first few times, the patents mentioned were not even close. It was as if the examiner just wanted to make sure we had to go through a few iterations before granting a patent (5 years later!).

This brings up the final part of the problem. It takes way too long to get a patent. In software, 5 years might as well be last century. It’s impossible to know what might come back to haunt you 3-5 years down the line.

Anyone have any experiences with patent trolls?

Management Methods | Management Models | Management Theories

No wonder things are often messed up. How many methods can there be? For me, it’s simple. Lay out the ground rules and goals, and then get out of the way. The people are here to do a job. Let them do it!

Planetary Imagery: 30 Years From Voyager Spacecraft

I admit it. I’m a space and aircraft nut, but the Voyager program appeals to my engineer side as well. It has returned some of the most fascinating data, and it survived years past its expected lifespan. Voyager I & II have been operational for 30 years now. Not a bad piece of hardware and software engineering, don’t you think?