This is my brain on Informatics and alcohol

Screw it. The spirit of Cherokee Cain and the love of the universe inspire me. Today was an awesome day. I had several epiphanies in the past eight hours. All of them were worthwhile.

A man once said that there is more information in a walk in the woods than there is available on your computer screen. That man was dead on.

Embedded environments will replace the traditional computer and embedded computing is going to change the way we sense our environment.

Connectivity will be the sixth sense. The value of a physical space will be calculated by its connectedness to the digital ether and sensors. New topographies will be created based on digital sensation.

Now constant connectivity to sensors is a huge shift in communication. Once there was only oral communication that depended on interactive human experience. Then there was written communication that depended on disembodied human experience. Now there is sensorial communication that conveys volumes of information without any human intermediation.

And it will be always on. You will be able to experience the life of a tree over years just by listening to the sensors. And it will always be on. What will happen when you can sense the present and the past, and predict the future to startling accuracy? What is a map when it is not a line on a piece of paper, but a video of what your trip will be?

Mapping physical and temporal space onto embedded or sensorial or computational space will drive all of the great shifts in interfaces in the next twenty years.

Mathematics is useful at finding patterns in life and studying its theory lets you see the patterns. You do not have to understand the patterns to use them. I am slightly drunk. So I understand only what I wrote on my arm.

Google Base treading a fine line

Google Base kind of creeps me out. Back in the day the government found the motion picture industry in violation of anti-trust laws because it owned both the product and the means of distribution, resulting in major studios selling off thier theater assests. It would be very easy to make the point that Google obviously controls the distribution of content on the internet via thier search engine. And it is a little disconcerting that by offering free hosting of data, they are effectively gaining control of content as well.

It's not that I think Google has finally turned evil or that there is intent to create a monopoly. I just wonder where all of this is headed despite best intentions.

Shooting up the charts!

I have finally cracked the Google top ten results when you search for "Zubin". That means that I am in the default list! When people look for Zubin, they're going to start seeing me! Of course, the people who usually see me are not looking at pornography and gambling, which is what most people on the internet do. So in order to impress all of my new internet traffic from people looking for pornography and gambling, I am steadfastly resolving to go to the gym more often and sell pictures of myself playing three card monte naked.

I'm Zubin, biatch!

A T.O. to get my head straight

I got an awesome comment from my dad today about this site. He compared me to Terrell Owens and chastised me for talking trash about my University and/or employers on occasion. And he was dead on.

While we may have a certain opinions on life and its constituent parties, and while those opinions may be valid to the individual, we all have to get along in life and part of that means some things should not be handled publicly. So I would like to apologize and note that although I have in previous links negatively opined about some of the things happening in my life both scholastically or professionally, I have a lot of respect for everyone involved and promise to try to present a more balanced view.

P.S. The whole Terrell Owens comparison is that much better if you know that I played high school football and grew up thirty minutes away from Philadelphia, and the Eagles are the only sports franchise I feel comfortable expressing love for.

On monetizing services, Google, why I love Python, and a thank you to Jakob Nielsen for reminding me to name my posts so that anyone can find 'em

Writing papers for grades has taken precedence over writing caustic commentary for the you, my infinitely esteemed readers. I do wonder about you, however, and what this weblog means to you. Would you feel like something was missing if I suddenly stopped posting? As if that has ever happened.

I suppose the reason this came up was that earlier today I was thinking today about what Eric Lippert and Dare Obasanjo mean to me, and what I would do if they ever stopped posting. I think that I would be sad, because I feel like they have been virtual mentors in my development as a geek squad commando. Of course, instead of a mentor, I am something of the wisecracking jackass that sometimes mutters an interesting tidbit, such as any one of the four comments below. So do not be sad as I would be sad. I’m back again... umm, again :)

Google is wrong to monetize the work of authors and publishing houses with their new online library service. The only way that Google library is morally correct in digitizing and republishing the copyright protected work of others is if the service is opt-in on the behalf of copyright owners, not opt-out as it currently stands. Another way might be if they do not place and receive money for ads in the library when serving data from protected sources.

Everyone, including Ray Ozzie of Microsoft, wants to capitalize on the path that Google blazed in using advertising as a way of funding services available for the web. But what is your attention worth? I would shudder to think about what would happen to my work if my version of Microsoft office spouted an ad at me, and in the broader picture, I am concerned about our ability to think slowly and deeply in the digital world, rather than forming quick associations between existing knowledge. Both modes of thinking are valid, but both are also necessary. In a world where media and advertising in particular can drain your attention and focus so easily, where can the mind sit still?

People should not be shocked and awed by Google Base. It’s definitely interesting, but it is not an eBay killer or a way of turning databases into an online service. It is just a way for Google to have proprietary access its content but avoid creating it themselves. I resolve to get interested in Google base when the community adopts it as a platform.

Perl is a giant wooly beast of a language and I think that Python is svelte and agile in comparison. I also think that I am going to turn my back on Perl just as I turned my back on C++, although for different reasons. Perl is too unmanageable for me as a primary language and C++ feels too low level to be an efficient use of my time. Compilers get better every day and hardware does too. My mental agility, however, is not going to follow Moore’s Law, so I don't see myself spending valuable brainpower using a language without a garbage collector, one in which I also have to manually assign memory and worry about buffer overflows crashing the computer. Or one in which I can’t understand what another programmer wrote. Stupid Perl!