Posts in Category: Technology
Everyting Tech
Book Review: Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computers
Remember your high school computer theory class? References to the “ancient” (in computer innovation time) machines which utilized vacuum tubes, drum memories, ferrite rings? Remember ENIAC, UNIVAC, EDVAC etc? If these terms bring back nostalgic memories of your high school computer course and the thoughts imagining what these machines looked like, then Core Memory is the book to refer.
Lame April Fools!
Today is April Fools day (like you didn’t already know!). In the recent years this day of the year is usually when a lot of lame April Fools pranks are played out across the Internet and blogs. This is getting so old and lame that its irritating, let alone humorous.
This sentiment is shared by others who are tired of the crap being passed off as April Fools day pranks. We need something really good and funny. Not the same prank rehashed year after year. Come on. It’s the Internet which has so many talented funny people creating loads of good stuff. Let them get more coverage than those listed above!
Update: Another one from Gmail
Duncan Riley – You should take a break
and maybe grow a thicker skin at that..
It all started over the weekend – a bitching match going on at Techmeme started apparently by Louis Gray who replied to Duncan Riley’s post on Techcrunch. The comment by Louis Gray
TechCrunch’s Duncan Riley checked in with a quasi-analytic comment this morning
prompted a response from Duncan Riley where he calls Loius Gray a cunt and a wanker. Duncan Riley also says in his post
Notice the put down with “quasi-analytic,” lets not fight on ideas, lets denigrate the messenger.
And on his response, Duncan Riley does exactly that. He describes Louis Gray as
I say A-List somewhat lightly, because the guy who’s come after me is someone who’s called Louis Gray. I’ve been blogging a bloody long time and for a lot of that time I’ve been reporting on the movers and shakers in blogging, and until a couple of months ago I’d never heard of this guy. His about page is as useful as tits on a bull: he does PR for a Silicon Valley technology company and found blogging in 2006. He’s talked about now at the same level as Calacanis, Scoble and Arrington, and yet he’s reached the lofty heights of 735 subscribers in Feedburner; probably more than this humble blog but this isn’t my main outlet.
Which is the opening of his post linked to above.
I found this quite ridiculous and hypocritical of him and said so through a comment on his post (Ah, Duncan was kind enough to delete the comment but I happen to have a copy of it reproduced below)
You say that Louis Gray attacked the messenger? What have you done?
With this idiotic post you have done exactly that.Practice what you preach hypocrite
To this, Duncan responds in a classic teenage fashion (after deleting the comment). He emailed me with this:
Seriously, fuck off.
Well, that is the background so far.
What are you Duncan? An A-lister? You think you are so great that you can try and thrash anyone and if someone calls you out, you go down to teenage expletives. Grow up dude.
If you cannot take comments and disagreement, then get off the blogosphere. You are being a jerk and behaving like a child.
And Duncan, don’t denigrate the messenger, discuss the idea. Oh, you already do not follow what you yourself write. Mea culpa
A very good analysis if also provided by Matthew Ingram.
Twitter and its role
I’ve started to use Twitter increasingly and find it to be a great tool. I joined Twitter when it was quite young, a couple of months after it launched but never used it much (my tweetstats graph) but have started using it more often in the past couple of months.
The main point of Twitter is the conversations it fosters as well as meeting new people. The advantages of Twitter over other forms of communication? Short 140 character messages and the ability to follow someone’s “tweets” without them having to follow you, which in my opinion is a good system.
But it is also flawed. As I stated, Twitter is the new medium for quick conversation outside of email, IM etc. Now the web-interface of Twitter is designed such that if someone posts a tweet to you, it comes in your replies tab but not in your message timeline. For those who have many followers, friends on Twitter, they will get a lot of @replies so can easily miss this.
And this has been a frustration. Many times I have tweeted someone but received no reply. No I guess it because they missed my tweet (and assume that they are not ignoring me ;) ) . I think is fundamentally due to the design of twitter. There should be a way for the recipient to know that someone tried to contact him/her. Not necessarily in their normal timeline but somehow, distinguish that someone who is not on their friends list said something to them. In this manner, twhirl/snitter etc are much better because they show all @replies to the twitterer.
Anyway, I have also come to decide that I will only start following me those who follow me. (with a few exceptions of course 
) If I follow someone and it is not reciprocated in a few days (a week or two maybe) I will un-follow. I think it is just a matter of courtesy if s/he feels that we can, at some point share a good conversation.
My twitter profile is here. Add me if you want to follow me there :)
MMORPG rivalry spills to the real life
This IS reality and not an MMORPG. Keep the rivalry to the game please.
MacBook Air Comparison
Well the MacBook Air has been released by Apple. I think it is a beautiful machine but the specifications of the system sucks. And it’s freaking expensive. I know I wont be getting it anytime ;)
However, I came across an awesome pic which does a feature comparison of the MacBook Air to one of the most popular computers in the history of computing. No surprises that the Air comes out on top. I will let you decide for yourself though ;)
Random Number Generator
– I found this article quite a good take on the US Presidential race. What will it take for politicians to be more honest and actually work for a country and it’s people rather than amassing money or power. I think politicians are the worst scumbags on the face of the planets ahead of lawyers (Matko, no offense meant to you)
(I usually write about politics but this article was a very interesting analysis of the state of politics)
– Devegowda is one of the worst politicians ever to walk this country. And he is scum
– I really really want a MacBook Pro with the new Mac OS, Leopard.
– I need to sleep, write, read and work (in that order) but do not have time to do all.
– I came up with this quote
– Of late, music helps me get through a day
Thus speaketh