|
|
|
| Related Articles |
| What the doctor ordered |
29 November 2007 |
| <b>LONDON</b> It reads more like a spell from a Harry Potter book than a
medical manual. But 300 years ago women having difficulty conceiving were
advised to drink the spit from a hare’s mouth. A rare copy of <i>The
Ladies’ Companion</i>, or <i>The English Midwife</i>, written by a
Bristol physician, Dr William Sermon, and published in 1671, is expected to
fetch £2,000 when auctioned at Sotheby’s in London next month. |
| |
| Police moves highlight the shortfall in FA resources |
29 November 2007 |
| With all the other ills of the English game to talk about, we had forgotten
about corruption. With the arrest of Harry Redknapp, the Portsmouth manager,
and four other men prominent in football yesterday, an inability to keep
possession suddenly seemed like the least of our worries. |
| |
| Programming less |
28 November 2007 |
| A programming lesson I keep relearning.
The design of the central data structure of an app determines the quality of the app, in every way.
Any extra thought that goes into this, will pay off in:
1. Maintainability of the code.
2. Size of the code (you'll write less code with a well thought-out central data structure).
3. Simplicity of the user interface (the structure inevitably shows through in the UI).
4. Ability to respond to feature requests.
5. Adapt to new hardware, OS changes, other apps.
6. More "it just works" experiences.
This is why it's sometimes the right thing to start over from scratch. Programmers often want to start over because they look at the code and it looks complicated, and they think they can make it simpler if they start over. They're right, of course, it will be simpler when they start over, because it won't do nearly as much as the mature product does. Once they finish building out the feature set, it may well be just as complicated.
It's a judgement call. I remember looking at the source of Unix kernel for the first time as a grad student in Wisconsin, and being amazed at the simplicity and obviousness of the code. I couldn't believe something so simple actually worked. Your code at its kernel level must have this simplicity. But at the edges, where you're accomdating the minds of users, inevitably it gets a little messy. The key thing to look for is how hard is it to add a completely new feature. It should be easy to do that. If it's not, it's likely because of a poorly organized (and therefore not well-understood) central data structure.
I've rewritten apps many times, over many years, because when I wrote the first or second versions, I didn't understand the problem well enough, and the code had turned into a morass of patches and workarounds.
Right now I'm recoding the internals of a special-purpose aggregator. I've written many of these, over the years, always quickly, trying to get something running fast, and then lived with data structures that resulted. This time I'm going slowly and carefully, with an installed base of one (me) and ripping up the pavement whenever I find even a slightly better way of doing something. I have other users who are waiting, but that's life.
5/7/97: "When a programmer catches fire it's because he or she groks the system, its underlying truth has been revealed." |
| |
| Google: Jolly green giant? |
28 November 2007 |
| The search and advertising company is a force to be reckoned with across the Web. Now it's looking to do the same in alternative energy (along with many others, large and small). |
| |
| Google service uses cell towers to locate users |
28 November 2007 |
| Google launched a location service for mobile users on Wednesday that doesn't rely on GPS.Google Maps with My Location, currently in beta, locates users who don't have GPS-enabled phones based on their location to nearby cell towers. The result isn't as accurate as GPS but works for people who lack the positioning technology in their phones."It helps users speed up search by showing the general neighborhood they're in," said Steve Lee, product manager at Google for the service. Without the location service, users must type in their address or neighborhood in order to find nearby businesses using Google Maps.Google Maps with My Location will use GPS data to locate the user if the phone has the capability. But even for users of GPS-enabled phones, the cell location service might be useful, Lee said. That's because the cell tower feature works better indoors than GPS, it doesn't drain the phone battery as quickly and can bring up a result quicker, he said.The service could be useful to a person who might be traveling in an unfamiliar city and looking for restaurants or other businesses. A user pulls up Google Maps and hits the zero key on the phone. A blue dot will appear on the map in the user's location. If the service used GPS in the phone, the blue dot will be solid. If the service used cell towers to determine the location, the blue dot will have a halo around it, indicating that the location isn't precise. The user can then search for nearby businesses.Google says the cell tower technique will locate the user within about 1000 meters. It doesn't use triangulation, which calculates a user location based on the user's distance to three nearby towers. Instead, it essentially shows the range of the tower that the user's phone is connecting to.But the accuracy should improve as more people use the service, Lee said. That's because Google is keeping a database of location queries, minus any personal information like individual phone numbers or names. That will allow Google to learn more precise information about the range of each tower so that it can deliver a more accurate location area to users. The coverage area of cell towers can vary from about a quarter of a mile to several miles based on whether the tower is in an urban or rural area.For now, Google Maps with My Location doesn't feature any advertising, but it could in the future. "This product makes a lot of sense for advertising," Lee said.In order to use the service, phone owners must download a free application from Google. The application will work on BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian phones as well as many phones that support Java. A few notable exceptions include the Samsung Blackjack, Moto Q, and Palm Treo 700W, which don't support the APIs Google requires to find cell towers, Lee said. |
| |
| OLPC sued for patent infringement |
28 November 2007 |
| A Massachusetts company has sued the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Association for patent infringement, charging the project with stealing its designs for a multilingual keyboard.Lagos Analysis Corp., or Lancor, filed the lawsuit Thursday in the Federal High Court, Lagos Judicial Division in Nigeria, where the company owns a patent for a four shift-key keyboard, said Adé Oyegbola, Lancor's CEO.OLPC illegally reverse-engineered the company's patented keyboard, which, with its four-shift keys, allows computers to better handle multiple languages, Oyegbola said. Lancor wants the Nigerian court to award "substantial" damages and issue a permanent injunction to prevent OLPC from manufacturing and selling its XO laptop.Oyegbola said he hopes Lancor can reach a settlement with OLPC before the Nigerian court issues an injunction. OLPC could have "sought a license and gotten it for a minimal fee," he said. "We're hoping ... they can come to their senses, and we sit down and come to a reasonable settlement."Lancor, based in Natick, Massachusetts, has tried to reach a settlement with OLPC but did not get a "reasonable response" from the project, Oyegbola said.OLPC released a statement, saying it has not yet seen the legal filings in the case. "OLPC has the utmost respect for the rights of intellectual property owners," Robert Fadel, OLPC director of finance and operations, said in the statement. "To OLPC's knowledge, all of the intellectual property used in the XO Laptop is either owned by OLPC or properly licensed. Until we have a copy of the claim and have had time to review it, we will not be commenting further on the matter."The goal of the nonprofit OLPC, founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nicholas Negroponte, is to donate laptops to children in developing nations. Through Dec. 31, residents of the U.S. and Canada can donate $400 and get one laptop for themselves, while sending a second to a child overseas.In addition to the Nigerian lawsuit, Lancor is looking at filing a patent lawsuit in U.S. court within three weeks, if the case is not settled by then, Oyegbola said.Lancor's Shift2 technology has been used to create region-specific keyboards called Konyin Multilingual Keyboards, according to the company. Lancor's lawsuit alleges that OLPC purchased two Konyin keyboards and used them to reverse-engineer the source codes for use in OLPC's XO Laptops.Asked about the goals of OLPC, Nigerian citizen Oyegbola said he didn't have a strong opinion. Laptops can be useful to children in Africa, but many of them have more basic needs, he said."Children might not need a laptop," he said. "Maybe instead they need a classroom." |
| |
| 'Cleantech' Investing Gets Its Day in the Sun |
26 November 2007 |
| Everybody seems to be looking for ways to make money on technologies that are said to reduce fossil-fuel emissions, wean the country from foreign oil and, generally, save the world. Venture capitalists have invested $3.64 billion nationally this year in search of promising ideas in what they call... |
| |
| Romney and Giuliani Turn Negative in N.H. |
26 November 2007 |
| CONCORD, N.H., Nov. 25 -- With Rudolph W. Giuliani looking to spring a surprise against Mitt Romney in the state hosting the nation's first primary, the race for the Republican presidential nomination took a sharply negative turn here Sunday as the two candidates traded accusations about taxes, c... |
| |
 |
|
|
|