Disqus - Latest Comments for jdavid_net

Re: How good is bluetooth at its best?

jdavid_net — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 20:21:16 -0000

It might be better to visually subtract the spectra-graphs as a better way to show the differences.

Re: Can Apple Predict How Long a Transfer Takes?

jdavid_net — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 09:20:48 -0000

The simple answer is nothing is consistent with file transfers, especially with disk access times. If you have 8GB of data to transfer, patch and update you have to copy, delete and process a huge amount of data. You could process that data logically, so it's easier to program, or you could figure out some optimization that was a little less rational, but optimized for disk access.

Rotating disks are the worst for random access, it can take ms to seek to the next random access point before it can get a burst of throughput for a given file. SATA2 drives try to queue files and optimize this path, but they are very, very slow. I suspect that since flash drives do random access in the nanosecond range that for them, it's at-least constant throughput.

For a small amount of data you might know how fragmented the drive is, or at least get lucky most of the time with fragmented data, but doing it at the scale of an OS or a Migration, you are likely dealing with fragmented data.

Finally, how do you calculate %done, or %transfered? Do you do it based on operations? when each operation has a different task size. Do you do it on number of files? when each file might be a different size and various hard drives have different random access characteristics? do you do it based on total data? when lot's of small files take longer than a few large un-fragmented files.

The truth is that your GPS derived estimates have used the data from Millions, maybe more, trips and have compiled that experience in to routes that take a certain amount of time given some key factors. I suppose that file transfer estimates don't have the business value to aggregate and analyze experimentally all of those transfers to produce a better result.

I think this is a problem we are stuck with for at least a few more years.

Re: Maybe We Should Wait Until Ben Affleck’s Been Batman Before Telling Him How Much He Sucked

jdavid_net — Sat, 24 Aug 2013 13:01:12 -0000

Ben Affleck's Bruce Wayne will probably be like his character in Paycheck. I don't think DC Comics has what it takes to do their character's justice. They have consistently made poor choices.

Re: Mission Creep: When Everything Is Terrorism

jdavid_net — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 07:28:48 -0000

Some times I think about the value of being forgetful. I imagine a world where everyone remembered everything and then I asked if that was of great value wouldn't evolution have steered us in that direction? We all have fantastic memories, but there is a certain lack of precision and an acceptance for that frailty. I then wonder if that forgetfulness doesn't make us more human, expanding our ability to love, to be tolerant and to give people a 2nd chance.

As a society we are forgetting how to forget, and I think it sacrifices the oppertunity for some of our most human traights.

Re: Watch for these 17 IPOs in 2013, starting with Box and Twitter

jdavid_net — Mon, 27 May 2013 16:20:05 -0000

What about GitHub?

Re: A Proposal: Renaming Backend/Frontend to Application/UI Developers

jdavid_net — Fri, 03 May 2013 10:32:19 -0000

May I suggest Data Engineer vs. Product Engineer.

I like focusing on the user. I don't really get excited about databases and storing the data. Other engineers get really excited about big data problems and how do you produce the right algorithms to store the data effectively.

As a front end dev i often work on the full stack to solve application problems, but really try to avoid dealing with all of the complexity of an n-tier solution.

Re: Do Not Track

jdavid_net — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 18:20:21 -0000

I agree, tying your facebook, google, and twitter to a page view is still tracking, but Do Not Track will not block these companies from getting data from social widgets on these sites. As it reads if you have logged into a site you can still track the user.

What features should I be missing on wired.com?

Re: Do Not Track

jdavid_net — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:46:51 -0000

which sites? i have flash block turned on in chrome and have yet to see a single bad effect. if you turn on 3rd-party-cookie blocking, you might have some bad effects, but then you can just add an exception for that site.

no matter how bad you think ads are, trust me a web that depends on every view having a 'real id' tied to it, is much, much worse.

sites will need to make money and will need to understand how to sell ads, or how to earn money. right now facebook, google, and twitter are gearing up to sell data to these sites so that they can understand their audience.

doing Do No Track, will shift the hundreds of tracking services out of business and silo all of that power to facebook, google, and twitter. i think it's way better having hundreds of people competing for that data, than having three very private companies doing this.

this is a war being fought behind the scenes and it's not about privacy, its about killing off competition. Do Not Track does not block sites from setting cookies that you have an account with or have 'registered' with.

this is a sneaky tactic keep smaller advertising companies out of the mix. it's a bully pulpet.

Re: Do Not Track

jdavid_net — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:58:26 -0000

the install an ad blocker. or a flash blocker.

Re: Do Not Track

jdavid_net — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:57:18 -0000

You missed a big piece of this. 'Identity (pay) Walls, and Identity (data) Silos'

Right now the web is not only primarily free, but it's also mostly anonymous, in a vague sense of the word. Advertisers don't often know your name, your address or your phone number. They might know what you have bought in the past and a few sites you looked at that help them target ads.

In a world where sites need to get money directly from users they will use an Identity Wall, and will require you to sign in with Facebook, Twitter, and or Google Plus. This Identity Wall will lack even more privacy and instead of your browser managing your privacy levels. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google will be able to broker all sorts of data on your behalf, sometimes for a fee. In some cases, these companies will provide the data free of charge to get more sites to sign up and then have the data for their partners which they might profit off of more directly.

The trade off is that cookies provide advertisers information about the sites you visit, but you have control over this, compared to the Identity Wall scenario that occurs if sites respect Do Not Track, and then enter into data brokerage agreements without your control.

We need a way that makes sense to everyone, while not giving the Social Silos and the Identity Silos all of the power.

Re: HP shifts away from X86 servers

jdavid_net — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:54:19 -0000

i'm pretty sure Intel Atom Chips are x86-64. Is something else going on here? Is HP building a virtualization layer on top of x86-64 and maybe ARM to run services a higher abstraction layer?

Re: Donglegate: Why Tech Culture Hates Feminists

jdavid_net — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 13:26:36 -0000

Ron, I know some effort was made by PyCon to establish norms. In the case or reporting offenses, they amended they by laws after the event to promote people revealing offenses in private. The specific rules were amended to say that public posting on social media is not acceptable.

Ron, If you attended, how were the guidelines distributed? Where they provided upon ticket purchase? At picking up the tickets? Was it grouped together with other brochures? Was it done in a way that ensured all people in attendance knew the rules, the risk and the goals of the community?

I'm pretty sure this could have been done better.

Re: Donglegate: Why Tech Culture Hates Feminists

jdavid_net — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 13:21:22 -0000

That was partly my point. Some people saw it as a professional outing, while others did not. Some were paid by work to attend, while others took vacation time. Some expected a work like atmosphere, while others thought they were on personal time with their friends.

Many in the community were aware of the conduct guidelines, but as I did not attend, I am unsure of how others were made aware of those guidelines.

At other conferences where establishing culture was important, those guidelines were very clearly spoken, sometimes at the beginning of each session.

I praise PyCon for trying, but at the same time, I'd like us to all learn from this and ensure the future communities do a better job of setting expectations.

Re: Donglegate: Why Tech Culture Hates Feminists

jdavid_net — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:37:10 -0000

the real test is if two people are making jokes about one race, and another person hears that joke and feels uncomfortable. Good humor works best at a higher level, however, the world is full of bad comics.

The true problem here is establishing community norms that are acceptable to all parties involved. If you are at a comedy show you may be expecting a few jokes in poor taste. If you are 'at work' you may not be. If you are at a conference with friends, you may or may not perceive that as 'work', and here in lies the crux of the problem.

We had several groups of people and none knew what context to treat the convention. This convention was PyCon, a professional development convention, but imagine it was comic con, pax, or star trek con? toy dog con? equalrights-con? The communal expectations would surely vary.

Going forwards we need to set an expectation of what 'hat' to wear at these conventions so that people are on their best behavior for that context.

I doubt these jokes will stop, nor should they in the 'right context'. Cards Against Humanity is a very popular game, but that doesn't mean that it's always the right time and place for playing said game.

In this case we have two victims, but in the end it was the community that failed to set the correct expectations. In the end we all will suffer the consequences.

Re: Inter-window messaging using localStorage - Ben Summers’ Blog

jdavid_net — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:19:19 -0000

Agreed, We use a document based web for applications. However it's clear today that we are trying to build a web specifically for Apps, including tech like WebSockets, WebWorkers, PostMessage, and LocalStorage. These are clearly features of an App based Web, and we should ask better of our browsers to get things right.

Making the excuse that there is a work around is un-acceptable. We should do better, we can do better and we should fix this so that iFrames ( which are windows ) are treated like windows, unless there is a specific security case not to.

Re: Inter-window messaging using localStorage - Ben Summers’ Blog

jdavid_net — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:10:12 -0000

I'd like it if everything in a browser was not a work around.

Yes you can do it, but do I want to have to 'branch code' every time i have a simular but slightly different need? No, in fact I am working on code that might some day be used as a frame work to make this easier.

We should really work harder on a uniform messaging and storage model for the web.

Re: Inter-window messaging using localStorage - Ben Summers’ Blog

jdavid_net — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:46:10 -0000

This method may allow message passing between tabs, and windows, but it does not do so between iFrames. Two iFrames on the tab will not trigger storage events on each other.

In my opinion this is a bug that should be fixed,

https://code.google.com/p/c...

Re: Why Stealing a $1 Trillion Coin Isn’t Worth the Price of a Getaway Van

jdavid_net — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 11:27:50 -0000

The silly part of it is that some art collector would surely pay millions for a trillion dollar coin. So it's hard to say that it's worthless. It's more likely worth 'pennies on the dollar' (or sub pennies) when you print a 1 Trillion dollar coin. If it's expected value is greater than the cost to steal it you will have some parties interested in doing it.

The 1 Trillion dollar coin is just another way of taxing the american people via inflation. ;-(

Re: Scarlett Johansson Hacker Gets 10 Years

jdavid_net — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 20:03:10 -0000

I wonder how many years the US government would get if they could be charged?

Re: The Gift

jdavid_net — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 18:54:53 -0000

Interesting Paul. I've always believed that God, the most powerful *being* in the universe did give us one thing. The ability to choose what we believe in, and I never thought that was a binary decision.

I love the idea, and the option to debate it. For myself I would have to think about it. In a lot of ways I think most churches are missing the forest through the trees, oddly Revelations in the Bible, mentions this.
A few of my friends have expressed an interest in finding a new faith, and for me, I don't know what that is yet.

;-)

Re: Apple Fixes ‘Potentially Life-Threatening’ Flaw in Maps

jdavid_net — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 18:27:11 -0000

If I was forced to use Apple Maps, i'd leave the platform.

Re: Apple Fixes ‘Potentially Life-Threatening’ Flaw in Maps

jdavid_net — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 18:26:44 -0000

As an Apple user, I am appalled that they have not just allowed users to pay for google maps on their phone. Good mapping software is arguably the most important reason to have a smart phone. I'd call any iOS 6 phone a dumb phone as long as these 'errors' keep occurring. I am an urban dweller and of such not having transit in it self is sickening. I am glad I didn't downgrade to iOS6.

Re: here's what i don't understand about the 'fiscal cliff' | moby.com

jdavid_net — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 22:08:27 -0000

Rational thought about actual math, left the minds of lawyers decades ago. Our political houses are too much of the same mind set. Over half have a Law background. That tends to sway the discussion a bit from, math to litigation. Only 5 have an accounting background. How can we expect these people to make wise decisions if they don't even have a background in science and math reasoning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Re: In Ad Network Nightmare, Microsoft Making ‘Do Not Track’ Default for IE 10

jdavid_net — Thu, 31 May 2012 22:38:00 -0000

Somehow I feel like this gives Facebook the edge, or at least just hurts Google. I think this will just lead to more sites requiring a log in before you can use the site.

Re: Battleship: $200 million under the sea

jdavid_net — Mon, 21 May 2012 19:11:22 -0000

I guess this means that monopoly and Risk Legacy will never make the silver screen ?