Disqus - Latest Comments for rolandksmith

Re: A Tail of (Disk) Corruption and Eventual Salvation

rolandksmith — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:06:23 -0000

The single most risky situation is a systems administrator logged into a production server using the command line. Some years ago I was at a seminar at NASA in Houston about how to write error-free code (you can't) and learned that on systems that were manned-flight rated, they always worked in pairs with one person proofing what the other admin was doing before pressing the "enter" key. Every major downtime instance in my career occurred within milliseconds of a systems admin exclaiming, "Oh sh*t".

Your recommendations are spot on ... and I would add one more: When logged into a production system using the command line, SLOW DOWN and read back the command out loud before executing the command.

Thanks!
Roland

Re: Kindle Is Convenient But Not Always The Best Choice

rolandksmith — Wed, 20 May 2009 22:15:59 -0000

I've been toying with getting a Kindle for a while. The new larger size is good. The lack of color is still a show-stopper for me, though. I'd like to get some, if not all, of my magazines in Kindle form and color is important. Most of the magazines I get end up in the recycle bin and not having to throw them away would be goodness. I strongly feel that the digital version of the book should be at least 20% less than the dead-tree version (same with magazines), and that should not impact the author's take (I fear the publishers would pass the whole cost reduction on to the creator). I do have the Kindle software on my iPhone and find it's just "OK". The screen needs to be a bit larger for these 64-year-old eyes. (For some reason, Disqus isn't responding to me, so I'm having to comment as guest)

Re: Travel and Tragedy

rolandksmith — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:25:19 -0000

I'm curious as to how you handle snail-mail addressed to you back in the United States? I'm sure there have to be tax, government, and other stuff that is being mailed to some address back home.

Re: Rocket Geeks

rolandksmith — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 14:36:18 -0000

Cool article from Wired. I recently took two grandsons to the Space Flight Museum in Huntsville, Alabama where two Saturn V rockets are on display along with literally every model of rockets from 1949 forward. I was fascinated and could have stayed there for a couple of days reliving the beginning days of spaceflight. I remembered again tuning into Sputnik with my ham radio receiver to the wonder of the 7th grade science class, and straining to pickup the transmissions from every Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo flight. Meanwhile, the grandsons were most taken with a life-sized Darth Vadar replica and were ready to leave.

Meanwhile, I'm frustrated with why we aren't already inhabiting Mars let alone having routine round trips to the Hilton or Intercontinental Hotel in low earth orbit. We had such a great start and then abandoned space.

A family member recently complained about sending a $24 million dollar toy to Mars when we have so many problems here at home. I reminded that person (rather forcefully, I'm afraid) that we didn't send $24 million to Mars... We paid people here in the United States $24 million to fabricate a hunk of fairly intelligent metal which we then tossed into space. 'Nuff for now.

Re: Why is the Sundance Film Festival taking place in the Hate State of Utah?

rolandksmith — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:05:30 -0000

I'm very disappointed by the lack of fact and the amount of untruths that are on you blog. For instance, Marriott Hotels are not and never have been in any way financially connected with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Further, you'll find Marriott hotel properties in every venue in the United States where people travel and the properties in and around Utah are small compared to most other parts of the country.

Your utter lack of comprehension of the rights of citizens to vote their conscience is so reminiscent of the days during the civil rights movement as to be contemptible. You would take away the rights of free exercise of religion, free expression, and free association.

There are about 800,000 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the entire state of California. If every one had voted on Proposition 8, they would have made up less than 9% of the voters. If every one had voted in favor, they would have made up less than 15% of the vote. But they did not all vote in favor of the amendment. Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are also free to vote their own conscience regardless of the stand taken by the leadership of the church. In truth, the impact of the Mormon Church on the passage of Proposition 8 is minor and was in no way decisive.

Exit polls show that in California, 70% of African-Americans voted in favor of Proposition 8. Will you also advocate the boycotting of businesses owned by African-Americans? The demographic of African-American voters fully understands the value of having both a father and a mother at the head of the household and probably knows more than any other demographic the detrimental effect of the erosion of institution of marriage and they voted overwhelmingly in favor of the proposition. Their vote was decisive.

You also seem to have forgotten that the residents of the State of California have spoken twice on this issue and both times have voted in favor of a traditional definition of marriage.

Finally, I am very disturbed by your characterization of the State of Utah. Neither the State itself, nor the citizens of the State, nor the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who live in that State are hateful. The state was first populated by people who fully understand the consequences of bigotry and hate. However, you tar yourself with the same brush that you would tar the people of the State of Utah. You are the bigoted, the hater, the one who would curtail the rights and privileges of others. I can easily see you in the white robes and peaked hats characteristic of the Ku Klux Clan. You fit the profile of those who kidnap, beat, and tie folks to fences to die because of their beliefs and lifestyles.

On the other hand, as long as you continue to propagate falsehoods, deal in untruths and half truths, and foment bigotry and hatred, you will have no credibility and will, in the end, accomplish nothing.

Re: i.TV Announces TV & Movies App for the iPhone

rolandksmith — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:29:49 -0000

Jesse, congrats on the new gig ... but I have to say, I really, really dislike the video. Big turnoff... However the app looks very interesting and something I'm very interested in trying. Watching for the announcement on Twitter....

Re: BFF? No Thanks… Being Antisocial on Social Networks?

rolandksmith — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 23:58:35 -0000

Robert, when that happened the first time on Facebook, I had recently read a blog post from Shel Israel about his "Twitter Follow Policy" and, using his as an example, had written my own. Then I got a Facebook invitation from someone whom I really do not want to have associated with my name. So I wrote a Facebook Friend policy and sent that to the person and declined the invitation. It took some time to actually write the policy and I've updated it a couple of times and then made it more generic so I wouldn't have to write one for every social network. So, when someone follows me on Twitter, sends a friend request on Facebook or Myspace, or LinkedIn, etc., the first thing I do is send them my policy (or a link to it) and then make my own decision as to whether or not I will reciprocate. Lately I don't reciprocate very often, though.

Re: Saving Money by Slowing Down: Applying Technology

rolandksmith — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:21:32 -0000

All newer cars have a little interface port, usually under the steering wheel, where a technician can get readouts on a whole bunch of parameters. In looking at the specs for Ford, GM, Toyota, and Honda, all of them have speed, fuel flow, and fuel consumption data available. There is a Palm application (fairly expensive) ( www.aa1car.com/library/ts303e.htm ) that will display information on a Palm PDA. I'm hoping it won't be long before someone does this for a real computer, perhaps even the iPhone. See you on Friday!

Re: Developers Bailing on Twitter

rolandksmith — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:56:19 -0000

Perhaps slowing down the developers is a good thing. I have used Twitter for what it did from the beginning and continues to do rather well ... publish a short message to those who wish to receive it and receive short messages from those people or applications I'm interested in. The basic API services continue to work well, allowing me to capture and save my utterances and those sent specifically to me.

In comparison to the beginnings of other messaging systems on the Internet, Twitter has fared remarkably well. I remember well the pain of email in the early days; silo'd systems, unreliable delivery (it was remarkable when email was delivered faster than postal mail), ascii text only (except for IBM PROFS which, as the dominant email system, didn't work with anything else).... In fact, newsgroups were then the most reliable email system (hence the place were Spam started), and even those took days to propagate.

I consider Twitter to be as revolutionary as email and fully expect it to have it's own severe set of growing pains. The problem with the developer community is that they want full bodied, robust architecture with every bell and whistle from the beginning and can't understand why the service provider didn't start that way. Further, they have their "very important feature" that Twitter MUST have in order to be successful, or rather, for the developer to be successful. Twitter's problem has been one of trying and accommodate every possible developer whim and getting distracted from task #1: making their fundamental offering robust at scale.

As a Twitter user, I'm very willing to cut Twitter some slack as they take a service built on a whim (and one in which the huge popularity surge caught them by surprise) and morph it into a solid offering fully encompassing what they originally intended: a short messaging publish and subscribe system with a public timeline and a stable API.

Meanwhile, I've subscribed to FriendFeed and find it a jumble of mostly uninteresting stuff from people I don't know and don't really care about. I pay almost no attention there as it requires almost constant attention which I'm not willing to give. Twitter, on the other hand, brings to me the important stuff. After being away for a while, it's easy to catch up. I have more receiving options with Twitter, and the organization is logical and meaningful to me. I would never have seen your message about this blog post in the jumble of nonsense on FriendFeed, but there it was on Twitter.

As a user, giving up on Twitter is, in my opinion, a mistake. The news comes to me on Twitter. It continues to be the most reliable method for me to get the important stuff. Long live Twitter!

Re: Wanted: Real, CREATIVE ways to cut commute costs. NOW.

rolandksmith — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:13:03 -0000

One of the fastest ways to cut 20% from commuting costs is to move to 4-day workweeks. Four ten-hour days is eight commutes a week rather than ten commutes a week. A few years ago when I was working for an aerospace and defense contractor we did a three-month test of the four-day workweek. Everyone liked the result ... except for NASA who couldn't grasp the concept that someone might not be immediately reachable because it was their day off.

Re: Google Bullies Blogger to Surrender “GoogleAppsEngine.com”

rolandksmith — Mon, 19 May 2008 11:24:43 -0000

In order to protect their trademark, Google has to send a take-down letter to anyone who puts up a domain that can possibly be construed as coming from Google. The other names you've cited, if they are indeed non-Google properties, have certainly received the letter and will probably get further legal action. Google's take-down letter is fairly mild when compared to some others that I've seen. It needs to be worded strongly enough that it gets appropriate attention.

Trademarks are very different from copyrights. In trademark issues, it is the responsibility of the trademark owner to defend the trademark. Failure to be diligent in defending the trademark can result in the mark being declared "generic", such as has happened with "linoleum", among many others. The word "Google" is becoming so ingrained in our vocabulary that it's now a verb as well as a noun as well as the name of a company, which must be very worrysome for Google's trademark lawyers.

On the other hand, copyright enforcement is in the purview of the legislature (as set out in the Constitution). Congress sets the rules and manages the rules of engagement / enforcement whereas court litigation is the vehicle through which trademark law is both defined and enforced.

Finally, whenever lawyers get involved, the words "fair" and "unfair" have no relevance...!!

Thanks!
Roland

p.s. The domain name in the blog title is missing an 's'....

Re: Phil Windley's Technometria | Final: 2008 Utah State Republican Convention

rolandksmith — Sat, 10 May 2008 20:53:38 -0000

Interesting posts! Enjoyed the live blogging from the convention and your commentary. Makes me think again about getting back in to partisan politics which kind of went by the wayside when I moved to Pocatello from Colorado Springs four years ago. Colorado Republican Conventions were pretty wild affairs given the state offices generally tended to be held by Democrats.

Re: The crazy baseball fan rule (Scripting News)

rolandksmith — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:00:16 -0000

Hmmm... cutting a fine point does help to get to a definition. What's happening in advertising is certainly news to people engaged in the business of branding, advertising, and marketing. This discussion may be akin to Einstein's "Special Theory of Relativity" and his later "General Theory of Relativity".

Fair play and Equal time are, as you point out, neither relevant nor currently applicable. What does seem to have happened in most news departments in the mainstream media, is a shift towards making news rather than reporting news with the accompanying tactic of playing "Gotcha". That fosters an environment where a group, as in the specific situation being discussed, can prepare and air a blatantly biased advertisement which only flirts with the truth, knowing that mainstream media will pick it up and give them audience that they could never have bought otherwise.

Sometimes definitions come by defining what something "isn't". In my opinion, the circumstances I've described are not directly "newsworthy events." However, what could be newsworthy about them is that such tactics are being employed by fanatical groups and the pronouncement that they are NOT newsworthy and will not get further audience.

With that, I'm on to other things....

Re: The crazy baseball fan rule (Scripting News)

rolandksmith — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:34:46 -0000

I'm of the personal opinion that ad's, no matter the subject, are not news and shouldn't be a part of a newcast in any medium. No matter if it's an ad for an automobile or an ad for becoming a space tourist, or an ad for (or against) a politician, it's still an advertisement. By definition, advertisements are NOT news. Further, if a news department shows an ad as part of news, they are, again in my opinion, guilty of giving away air time and equal time should apply.

The irony of this is that TV, radio, and newspapers make their money from advertising. Why do they then give away free air time?

Re: Utah CTO Breakfast This Thursday

rolandksmith — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:13:13 -0000

Phil, have a great trip to China! I'll miss this month's discussion (and I've known for a couple of months that I couldn't be there) due to a Church obligation. I have really enjoyed being at the breakfast and getting to know your group. See you in May!
Thanks!
Roland Smith
http://techmatters.rnsmith.com/

Re: iPhones On Campus

rolandksmith — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:44:36 -0000

If even a third of this iPhone capability really happens, I'd be blown away. Thanks for the link and info. All I really know about Blackboard is their past history of being a patent troll and then losing some of their patents to prior art. I've never seen the application(s) in action but would like to know more about what it should be doing.