via arstechnica.com
Check out the ArsTechinca story for details.
Dan North talks about the tendency developers-becoming-architects have to create bigger and more complex systems. Without trying to be simplistic, North argues for simplicity, offering strategies to extract the simple essence from complex situations.
via infoq.com
Totally worth watching, he has many good points.
The recent deployment of backscatter scanning devices meant for airline passengers has caused controversies focused on both the privacy issues of the scans and the safety of the devices themselves (not to mention the unpleasant alternative of an aggressive frisking). The discussion of safety issues has been clouded by two competing narratives. On one side, there's radiation exposure that's comically low compared to what comes from simply boarding the aircraft and being lifted above a lot of the Earth's atmosphere. On the other, there are arguments that the sort of exposure generated by backscatter devices is somehow different.
To provide a better perspective on matters, we'll explain why both of these arguments are right.
via arstechnica.com
Interesting Ars article on the new backscatter scanners. Does a good job of clearing up some of the FUD flying around.
via primaxstudio.com
This is pretty neat.
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via runblogger.com
It's the first ever virtual turkey trot, and it benefits St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. From Runblogger, here are the steps:
1. Head over to feedtheturkey.com to sign up
2. Post that you are participating on dailymile, Facebook, Twitter, and/or your own blog (feel free to use the image in this post!)
3. Make your donation (levels are easy to handle – $1, $5, or $10) which will go 100% to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
4. Run or walk a 5k (or more) on Thanksgiving day. It can be an official race, a solo effort, or just a fun run with friends.
5. Head back to feedtheturkey.com to post your results, print your finisher’s certificate, and be entered for prize giveaways!
Sounds like fun to me!
And this time, I did it the right way, so I got to run around in the park itself. See my Daily Mile post for details.
I took some pictures on the way:
The cows were out in force in the Walnut Creek Open Space (Acalanes Ridge)
This is heading up the hill in Briones, and I noticed that there was one brown cow.
The view from the top. I had to stop and admire it. I'm not sure my cameraphone does it justice.
Looking back the way I came, towards Mt. Diablo.
Another view from the top.
On the way back down, I got a much better view of the one brown cow.
via boston.com
And that's just one of them. There are plenty more. I haven't been doing well at keeping up with posts on Big Picture, but I'm happy I caught this one.
via youtube.com
While it may not translate to mainstream success, this is one of the big reasons I really like webOS. Not only did HP/Palm invite one of the leaders of the homebrew community to speak at an official event, in the Q&A, someone from Palm asked him "What can we do to make things easier for you?" The webOS dev community is awesome, and Palm's support makes it even more so.
And while Google might like open source and letting devs muck around in the internals, the Android handset makers seem to sing a completely different tune.
Update: Something went horribly wrong with this post. It looks fine in the editor, but it's all screwy when seen on the site. You can click here to view the video on youtube.
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via buzzfeed.com