Mostly because of things like this:
Electing the Doge of Venice: analysis of a 13th Century protocol.
From the paper:
The most obvious feature of this protocol is that it is complicated and
would have taken a long time to carry out. We will advance a hypothesis
as to why it is so complicated, and describe a simplified protocol with
very similar features.
I was trying to find out why the Daily News included a Perl variable in their headline:
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From a registration page somewhere:
I love to be contacted! Thanks for asking!
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My internet told me so:
(I wonder if that will actually be useful to anyone).
Failures happen; given the 24×7 support requirement (per 4.5), there will be times when something breaks badly enough that senior wizards will have to connect remotely.
- RFC2870, “Root Name Server Operational Requirements”
I just recently spent a few hours diagnosing a very inconsistent network behavior when browsing between websites. I’ve known for a while that it’s probably a DNS issue. After testing, I found that xo.net’s (the bandwidth seller to my ISP) DNS servers are just intermittently dog slow in resolving individual queries, up to 10 seconds a piece.
I demoed using opendns.com’s free resolvers, which indeed are fairly fast, but load my browser with advertising for every domain name typo. Not going to fly.
As a temporary fix instead, I started using local (and my former) universities’ DNS servers, as they’re really quick, reliable, close, and most importantly, wide open to the world. I try to be mindful of using other people’s resources, though, prompting me to ask my coworkers, “Is it ethical to use someone else’s DNS resolver?”
Just today on the NYLUG mailing list was a post about using freely available DNS servers instead of crap ones. Indeed, a list of open DNS servers exists and even conveniently geolocates the closest DNS server. Problem is, the three it suggested for me are also really slow. Where the uni DNS servers are about 20ms away, all three random DNS servers bottomed out at 140ms. It appears that one of them, even, is some guy on an ADSL line.
Which just leads me to believe I should set up my own tinyDNS server and achieve ultimate roundtrip times through tuning. Alas, my router does run dd-wrt, but does not have the necessary memory for yet another service.
Ah the problems a geek faces when he gets home from his day (and, for the last while, night) job.
Gothamist reported on a New York City councilman irately shouting at what appears to be a Norwegian Ali-G style interview. The video was posted:
I think his response was so right on. He seems to think he disrespected both his mother and his constituents. I happen to think his reaction is just what happens when you screw with a real New Yorker.
After I saw this, I reflected how little news is actually made when Putin confirms a long running rumor and how much people actually want to read about “Tweens”:
Then I saw this, and thought, “Man, Columbia doesn’t have an army at all!”
I’m a big fan of management practices where management understands they only earn their money because of the employees under them.
McLaren Mercedes was recently punished by the Federation Internationale d’Automobile (FIA) for improperly handling documents containing Ferrari secrets. The penalty was stripping McLaren of all its constructor championship points they earned this season, awarding Ferrari the win in that competition, and fining the team $100 million. (In real terms, McLaren screwed itself out of a lot of money).
The interesting news: It was reported by the commentators of Speed during today’s Chinese Grand Prix that McLaren Mercedes management will still pay their employees the promised bonus based on the number of constructor points they would have had come season end. In that move, I see a company that recognizes the importance of its employees and cares about keeping the good people that created a potentially award-winning car.
Companies have a hidden incentive in treating its workers well. Sure, it’s hard to identify exactly how much benefit any given employee has on the bottom line, but it’s important to foster an environment that strives for results. Most people will only accomplish that by chasing after the carrot in front of them; one day, the carrot has to be caught for them to continue to the next one.
While I don’t know anything else about the working conditions at the McLaren-Mercedes F1 team, I applaud its management for this decision.
The following is a list of the RSS items I either need to read or think about more.