Special Interest Group on CRAP

For the last few months I have been carrying two smart phones: Motorola Droid on Verizon HTC Nexus One on T-Mobile I’ve been thinking about the relative advantages and disadvantages of the two phones, and it’s a close call. The Droid has a few advantages. The physical keyboard is very welcome, but I find myself [...]

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During my lifetime, there have been several major paradigm shifts in computing. The personal computer Graphical user interfaces (mouse and windowing) The Internet The World Wide Web Laptops (they started out as computers called “luggables”) 802.11 wireless networking Each of these brought tremendous change to the ways that we think about computing. One of the [...]

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There were a lot of things happening 40 years ago this week. You all know about the moon landing – a great achievement for all of mankind, and a lot has been said about it. I find it irritating that people push to go to Mars next, considering that we haven’t even explored the bottom [...]

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One of the most overlooked achievements by man was the landing on the surface of Venus in 1975 by the Venera 9 lander. The conditions on Venus are incredibly harsh, with a surface temperature of 485 degrees. It is still amazing that a spacecraft landed there and lasted for 53 minutes, in time to send [...]

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I have been growing increasingly insistent that scientific publishing should move toward open access. This is caused in part because, as an employee of Google, I have very little access to commercially published literature, in spite of the fact that we drive most of their traffic. For example I have access to almost none of [...]

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I recently visited the Blackhawk Auto Museum and I was reminded of how artistry and engineering can complement each other.

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Picture taken recently at work, taken in the area of parking spaces reserved for electric vehicles. In this picture you’ll see five electric vehicles, including: A Tango A RAV 4 EV Larry’s Tesla (the silver one) Sergey’s Tesla (the red one) A gemcar I can’t wait to park my Aptera in one of these spaces…

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I recently signed up for 23andme.com. I was motivated in part because I don’t know the genetic background on my mother’s side (she was essentially a stolen baby, without any knowledge of her parents). I’m optimistic about science being able to make use of genetic information to improve the human condition in the future, but [...]

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I’ve owned a hybrid car (a Toyota Prius) for almost three years now, and it’s been quite satisfying. It’s amazing to routinely get 50 miles per gallon on every tank with no effort on my part. I just get in it and drive it like any other car. OK well maybe not like my other [...]

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There was a time when commercial publishers provided a crucial service in the printing and distribution of scientific publications. That need has diminished to the point where it doesn’t make sense to continue to use this model. USENIX has announced that they will make all of their conference proceedings freely available online. This marks a [...]

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