Monthly Archives: January 2006

Your papers are not in order!

It’s a sad day for personal liberty here in the USA. News.com reports that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against John Gilmore, who was fighting the secret government regulation that the airlines claim requires US citizens to … Continue reading

Posted in Blog/website/news comments, Freedom and liberty | 1 Comment

Top Ten Things Engineering School Didn’t Teach You

I’m not sure who wrote this originally, but Rich Ries submitted it to Jack Ganssle’s Embedded Muse newsletter. Apparently there must have been some confusion over it, since it mistakenly appeared in the “Joke of the Week” section. TOP TEN … Continue reading

Posted in Blog/website/news comments, Hardware, Software | Leave a comment

The US is not in a state of war

A Slashdot story points to a News.com story which states: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday told students at Georgetown University that a wartime president has the lawful authority to eavesdrop on Americans’ telephone calls and e-mail messages without court … Continue reading

Posted in Blog/website/news comments, Freedom and liberty, Privacy | 2 Comments

Hamming distance conjecture

Someone on Usenet asked how many code points are possible in 16-bit code with a Hamming distance of 5. This type of problem is relevant to error detection and correction. I conjecture that for a n-bit code (where n ≥= … Continue reading

Posted in Computing, Software, Software I've written | 1 Comment

Economic growth vs. poverty relief

Yesterday on BBC World Service (one of the few worthwhile channels on XM satellite radio), there was a brief news item about some organization whose name I don’t recall issuing a report stating that economic growth is not an efficient … Continue reading

Posted in Blog/website/news comments, Rants | 1 Comment

Shredded pillowcase

I was staying at a friend’s house.  The bed in the guest bedroom was somehow suspended over a big hole in the floor.  The hole was perhaps eight feed in diameter, and was over a big fan.  One had to … Continue reading

Posted in Dreams | Leave a comment

Ticket to Ride board game, computer game

I’ve long enjoyed board games, such as Settler of Catan and Puerto Rico. On my trip to Oregon this past November, Torsten introduced me to two new games, Ticket to Ride and Transamerica, both of which are train games. They’re … Continue reading

Posted in Games, Software | 5 Comments

radioSHARK in Linux

Some time back I tried to get a Griffin Technology radioSHARK working in Linux, but ran into USB problems. Now Michael Rolig has gotten it to work. Read on for my experience and suggestions.

Posted in Hardware, Linux | 8 Comments

Balancing Koalas

Steve gave me a nice set of Balancing Koalas, hand made by Tarata in New Zealand. Tarata also makes Balancing Kiwis, Apes, Penguins, and other animals. One of my coworkers said that she thinks they’d be great gifts for children, … Continue reading

Posted in General | Leave a comment

I have a dream…

That one day, we will all be able to work together free of the tyranny of disgusting coffee spills in the kitchen… Of other people’s messes that they failed to clean up for the their fellow compatriots as we barge … Continue reading

Posted in Blog/website/news comments, Humor, Rants | Leave a comment