UPS recently changed its livery to include the slogan "Synchronizing the world of commerce." As a software engineer and programmer with a great interest in synchronization this seemed to be an odd slogan. In software, as in systems in general, being able to synchronize distinct components (say two remote offices) is important as certain operations may require ensuring that components have the same value for some vital information. However, synchronization is a performance bottleneck. When you have a a 30 minute meeting with your four person project group to discuss status, that's two hours of work that's not getting done on the project.

Commerce used to be an extremely synchronous and slow process. Back in Phoenicia, the purchaser arrived in the market and the vendor arrived in the market. This was the first synchronization point. At this point the purchaser browsed (either asynchronously, or while being directed by the purchaser synchronously). If the purchaser did not yet have the vendor's attention, he would now wait (synchronization point) for the vendor's attention before beginning to haggle (this part is a synchronized REPL on both sides). Finally, if there is a sale to be made, the purchaser provides currency, waits for confirmation from the vendor, and then receives and leaves with the product in another synchronous step.

This process hadn't changed significantly since ancient Phoenicia. Less than two decades ago, the most advanced order system would allow you to call on a telephone rather than travel in person, but otherwise the process remained the same. Since the turn of the millennium, most commerce now involves more asynchronous steps. A purchaser now goes online (possibly while the vendor's shop is physically closed and empty), browses and selects an item all asynchronously. The purchaser can make a purchase which is handled independent of the status of the vendor. Once the purchaser completes the purchase, the purchaser is free to do unrelated tasks. The vendor now can acknowledge the order at its leisure, package, and ship the product.

This is where UPS synchronizes the world of commerce. Whereas all elements up until this point could be done asynchronously, the only component right now which can prolong the transaction is UPS which is a bottleneck. The parties must wait for UPS to pick-up the package and subsequently for UPS to transfer the package.

In an asynchronous model, a purchaser has one of two options to determine that it has a package waiting. A purchaser could receive an interrupt (notice) that the package is available (like receiving a subpoena, no matter what you're doing some guy will ask if you know what time it is and suddenly you'll be told you have a package). The other option is that the purchaser could poll frequently, like looking in your mailbox or checking the delivery status online.

In a particularly perverse delivery model however, UPS may operate the last leg in a synchronous manner. This final phase is initiated when the UPS driver arrives at your home while you're at work and announces "Hey, you have a package. Be here in two days between 8am and noon or you'll only have one more chance to get it." At this point you begin your busy wait while the UPS driver shows-up at 2:30pm.

The second language 98% of all software supports.

Because you're using Chromium, fool.

Why must some programs, like the Chromium web browser, try and handle window management and decoration in its own way? Why can't I shade my web browser?

It does everything better than the other options, and thats why it doesn't have to do anything right. Like respect your window manager. Fuck you Google.

Many companies have, either through vulnerabilities sin their own system or through contracted companies, allowed their mailing list information to be accessed via third-parties unintentionally. These companies I would not suggest doing business with, or at least being careful with what information you provide them.

Many companies have, either through vulnerabilities sin their own system or through contracted companies, allowed their mailing list information to be accessed via third-parties unintentionally. Fortunately, many of the technically-literate companies have realized that being forthcoming about these vulnerabilities is best for their public relations. Unfortunately, many of these companies outsource their eMail operations to a handful of companies that do not seem to understand security.

Whether intentional (business relationship) or not (compromised systems), several on-line retailers have provided my eMail address to entities that have then used it to send unsolicited commercial email.

There are some companies who have admitted breaches resulting in mailing list compromises, while there are other companies who have not explained why they provided my email address to spammers.

Anything that centers around something lacks precision. I suppose if you're dealing with a quantum cloud, or proportionally disjointed and poorly thought-out thesis, this phrase might be an apt description.

Rebooting a computer to fix a problem without understanding what is going on will just allow the program to manifest itself. Fix the problem. If a computer needs to reboot in order to work, something is wrong.

The Hewlett-Packard product support knowledgebase has the following, horrible advice:

Tip An occasional restart can be good for your tablet just the way a restart can be good for your computer. Every once in a while, restart your tablet..

The implication is that restarting a computer is actually good. To the contrary, starting a computer stresses components, and doing so frequently will significantly shorten its life. You should never restart your computer except as a last resort.

The Hewlett-Packard TouchPad tablet computer features Palm Computing's WebOS. After the netbook-tablet shift, development of tablets were accelerated and many were rushed to market. Few, however, could match the combination of marketing and accelerated schedule that the TouchPad had. Hewlett-Packard announced the the forthcoming of the tablet in a February 9th, 2011 press release, with placement in Dr. Dre's I Need a Doctor music video. The tablet was released July 1st within the United States, and on August 18th the tablet was cancelled.

October 18th saw the TouchPad get an OTA system upgrade, which confused the mourning users.

Despite its short life, the fact that it was sold ad a significant discount upon its cancellation (half of the estimated material cost) lead to a frantic purchasing frenzy. With dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon processors and 1GB of RAM, the system is more portable and more powerful than a similarly priced netbook. It has its own repository of software called Preware, and is more than capable of running most GNU/Linux software which is accessible through either a Debian or Ubuntu chroot.

Tim Allen grunting.

Home Improvement with three daughters instead of sons, and less humour.

I've contacted Telestial.com (Ekit PTY LTD) about a couple of issues, both before and after purchases. I've found the estimated response time for an initial message has been consistently about two hours which seems rather good--however questions about the service or actual problems are often not resolved or even addressed, and subsequent inquiries can take take much longer, although still within a day which should be considered reasonable in modern day's reduced customer service reality.

I called Telestial.com (Ekit PTY LTD))'s customer support line, and was impressed by being told I was "caller number 2, with an average wait of 2 minutes". After 10 minutes I heard what sounded like a phone being picked-up or some random movement and was promptly disconnected. Upon calling back, I was told I was again "caller number 2, with an average wait of five minutes"--presumably the ten minutes I waited divided between me an the subsequent caller.

Telestial's eMail support has been mixed, but obviously isn't useful for immediate responses.

I have a prepaid SIM from Ekit PTY LTD d.b.a. Telestial.com. I have come across a couple of issues using the phone so far in my attempts to familiarize and verify it works prior to leaving the country.

There is a fairly basic, but sufficient Web-based configuration utility to control the service, which seems effective and changes are instantaneous for all intents. However, the call divert menu is at best confusing. There are two exclusive (radio) options, one allows you to specify individual options (mapping to forward if busy, forward if not answered, and forward if out of reach), and the second option is labeled simply all. As I wanted to set all conditional forwarding options to be the same, I selected the latter radio option. Unfortunately, *all meant unconditionally forward rather than all conditional forwards, which meant I never received an incoming call. Experimentation (but not Telestial customer support who simply suggested disabling the 3G connection on my phone), was able to determine this was the problem.


Now I would feel that this might have been an obvious thing to check, especially if the call were being instead diverted to a number I had chosen. However, what I had chosen to divert all calls to was, in fact, no divert. It would seem reasonable that choosing the no divert option for all calls would try and send all calls to my phone. Instead, it meant that all calls went to an IVR sytem. Disabling voicemail, and disabling all redirects via GSM codes did nothing to address this. Likewise when I changed from "no divert" for "all calls" to simply "no divert" on each of the conditional forwardings, rather than receiving a call-failed situation or endless ringing the call was again diverted to the IVR which meant that in a situation where multiple phones were ringing, the IVR would always answer preventing me from ever getting a call. The bandage solution, as I've failed so far to explain the problem to the customer support, is to set conditional forwards to a number which will wait for a period of time, basically blocking the IVR. This is obviously sub-optimal.

A hamburger with cheese. Not kosher.

Dead cows, charred. Surrounded by bread.

Photography using light above 720nm or thereabouts. Several companies can modify existing consumer level equipment to use this range natively, or to accept all light, thereby requiring a lens-filter to limit to the desired wavelengths.

Infrared photography tends to produce an eery appearance, in part because plant life appears very bright (white), and clouds in the sky stand out much more so than in visible light.

Canon is a Japanese camera manufacturer who makes better cameras than Nikon. Alternatively, Nikon makes better cameras than Canon; it all depends upon which system you bought into.

Nokia used to make tyres and phones.

Erlang was developed by Ericsson, and used to write ejabberd and not much else.

ejabberd is written in Erlang.

One of the one applications written in Erlang outside of Ericsson.