Mathematicians vs. Programmers

Steve Yegge thought about math and programming and reached some interesting conclusions:

"

1. Math is a lot easier to pick up after you know how to program. In fact, if you're a halfway decent programmer, you'll find it's almost a snap.


2. They teach math all wrong in school. Way, WAY wrong. If you teach yourself math the right way, you'll learn faster, remember it longer, and it'll be much more valuable to you as a programmer.


3. Knowing even a little of the right kinds of math can enable you do write some pretty interesting programs that would otherwise be too hard. In other words, math is something you can pick up a little at a time, whenever you have free time.


4. Nobody knows all of math, not even the best mathematicians. The field is constantly expanding, as people invent new formalisms to solve their own problems. And with any given math problem, just like in programming, there's more than one way to do it. You can pick the one you like best.


5. Math is... ummm, please don't tell anyone I said this; I'll never get invited to another party as long as I live. But math, well... I'd better whisper this, so listen up: (it's actually kinda fun.)

"

He thinks "the best way to start learning math is to spend 15 to 30 minutes a day surfing in Wikipedia".

A solid math background can give you a wider perspective when you try to create an algorithm, you can find interesting ideas and connections that will make your code shine (not just because it works fast and reliable, but because it contains hidden treasures).

Google Mobile Search

Google dives deeper into the mobile area. It seems there is a new GoogleBot that spiders the web and optimize the content for mobile phones. The Google spider has the User Agent; "Nokia6820/2.0 (4.83) Profile/MIDP-1.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.0 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)".

"Google Web Search on mobile phones allows users to search all the content in the Google index for desktop web browsers. Because this content isn't written specifically for mobile phones and devices and thus might not display properly, Google automatically translates (or "transcodes") these pages by analyzing the original HTML code and converting it to a mobile-ready format. To ensure that the highest quality and most useable web page is displayed on your mobile phone or device, Google may resize, adjust, or convert images, text formatting and/or certain aspects of web page functionality." (from Google).

The problem is that, most of the times, Google removes ads from the sites and that makes the publishers angry.

You can test the transcoded version of a page online, if you go to http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=[url address] and replace [url address] with the URL of the site. For example, CNN (mobile version).

Google has been partnering with cell phone hardware manufacturers: Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Benq. For example, Motorola phones will feature a Google button for direct access to Google's site.

As for content, Google delivers mobile search (web search, image search, local search), news, personalized homepage, Gmail mobile, Google Talk for Blackberry.

TouchGraph GoogleBrowser: Visualize Related Sites

GoogleBrowser is an interactive Java applet that shows a graph with related websites for a given site. Double clicking adds more nodes to the screen by retrieving similar-page results from Google. By highlighting a link on the graphical web, you can gain more information, and visit the site.

Google Desktop Should Reinvent Itself For Vista

Google Desktop is a nice piece of software that combines a good local search engine, with web search and some useful sidebar gadgets (or panels, like Google likes to call them).

Unfortunately for Google, the new Windows Vista will include most of these features:

* Windows Search. As you edit and create files in your filesystem, based on settings, it will index your files automatically in the background, making search easier and faster.
* Windows Sidebar. It includes support for Desktop Gadgets, you can download from the Microsoft Gadgets homepage.
* Windows Live Toolbar. Although Internet Explorer 7 will include a search box, Windows might push the Live Toolbar as a nice addition for the browser to boost MSN Search (rebranded as Live Search) share. The toolbar will integrate with the desktop search and the Live products.

So unless Google Desktop reinvents itself, it will be completely useless in Windows Vista which will become the default operating system in the next couple of years.

More about Google:
Google Desktop is back
Google Desktop As Data Recovery Software
Google Strategy In 2006
Google Desktop Is Google Operating System Kernel

More about Windows:
Windows Live Toolbar shines
Road to Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2
Next challenges for Microsoft in 2006

Google + Nike = Joga

Google and Nike launched Joga, an invitation-only social network for football enthusiasts. “Joga bonito” means “play beautiful” in Portuguese

“Joga is unique, because it's an organically growing network of trusted friends. It is one of a kind network that focuses solely on a common interest around the game of soccer. Joga will help you connect to people who share the same passion for the game and also access exclusive content around athlete profiles, video clips and photos.”

Joga is based on Orkut, a social network very popular in Brazil.

Google to Reveal the Contents of a Gmail Account

In a lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission, a subpoena is sent to Google for the complete contents of a Gmail account, including deleted e-mail messages.

In November 2003, the Federal Trade Commission sued AmeriDebt and founder Andris Pukke on charges that the company deceived customers about credit counseling and failed to use customers' money to actually pay their creditors.

Pukke's missing money has been linked to a Belize developer called Dolphin Development, which counts a fellow named Peter Baker as a shareholder. The court-appointed receiver in the FTC case, Robb Evans & Associates, sent a subpoena to Google on Nov. 1 asking for the complete contents of Baker's Gmail account.

The subpoena asks for not only current e-mail but also deleted e-mail: "All documents concerning all Gmail accounts of Baker...for the period from Jan. 1, 2003, to present, including but not limited to all e-mails and messages stored in all mailboxes, folders, in-boxes, sent items and deleted items, and all links to related Web pages contained in such e-mail messages."

Google's privacy policy says deleted e-mail messages "may remain in our offline backup systems" in perpetuity. It does not guarantee that backups are ever deleted. Baker estimated he may have tens of thousands of e-mail messages in his Gmail account.

In a Jan. 31 ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte rejected Baker's objection to the subpeona. She said his attorney could withhold "truly protected" information but must "err on the side" of disclosure. Baker asked the judge to reconsider, but on Monday, Laporte reiterated her decision.

Schmidt: "Office is not the business we're in"

Google CEO Eric Schmidt held a roundtable lunch Thursday with a number of journalists in which he talked about the company, how it is perceived, and where it is headed.

China censorship
To those who talk about embargoing filtering technology to China or other regimes that restrict political information, Schmidt said that personally he was instructed by the example of Cuba. He said the embargo there hasn't worked, with Castro still in power, and with the Cuban people living with technology form the 1950s.

Google growth
Schmidt said he expects advertising will be the growth engine of Google for a very long time. Other growth are might be selling content: video, books. "The next 6 months is when video really takes off."

Google Office
Schmidt said that the acquisition of Writely was not meant to create a competitor to Microsoft Office, which he said solves a complicated and important problem of work productivity. Writely is a server-based editing system where you can move your files around, he said, and there are places where a rich text editor is useful in Google. "Office is not the business we're in" stressed Schmidt.

Google Base vs. eBay
Schmidt said Google Base is just a database of structured information, which is easier to index and rank than regular web pages. Most Google Base information points to eBay or similar sites, so it can't compete with eBay.

Related:
Google strategy in 2006

Best Definition For Google (Video)

If anyone asks you what's Google, just show them this video from a 2005 edition of "60 Minutes" with Lesley Stahl.

More about Googleplex:
Inside Google Campus
Videos From Googleplex

Microsoft Doesn't Trust .NET Anymore

An interesting article presents results of an investigation into usage of .NET on five versions of Windows XP and Windows Vista.

It's quite surprising to see that Microsoft intended to use .NET framework as an important constituent of the Longhorn (Vista) operating system.

"One of the most important things when you think about Longhorn is, it's not just another operating system release like Windows XP or Windows 2000. We think about it more like a wave, and the wave is really made up of more than just any one particular thing. Think about the wave being built upon a foundation of a new platform investment that we've made across the board, built on top of the .NET foundation. And then with Longhorn there'll be client releases and a server release." (Michael Wallent, general manager of the Avalon team, 2003)

Last pre-beta 2 build of Windows Vista (5308) has only 27 managed files (.NET files) and 2464 unmanaged executable files. Microsoft built very few applications in .NET (for example Windows Server Update Services) and doesn't intend to include in its OS a famous .NET application written by a Microsoft employee: Paint .NET.

After an insightful analysis, Richard Grimes concludes that "Microsoft has lost its confidence in .NET. They implement very little of their own code using .NET. The framework is provided as part of the operating system, but this is so that code written by third party developers can run on Vista without the large download of the framework."

Google Desktop As Data Recovery Software

Google Desktop doesn't delete from its index the files you have deleted or moved. Of course you can remove files one by one from the index, but that's not something you would do for every deleted file.

While some people (including me) may say that Google Desktop is not very clever and it should detect non-existent files in its index and remove them, you should also see the bright side. Google Desktop caches files, so if you delete an important Office document, you will have the HTML version in Google Desktop cache. Of course, it doesn't have images, charts or fancy tables, but it does have the text and that's the most important.

So if you don't have a data recovery software, you can use Google Desktop as a partial replacement. A data recovery software recovers complete files (not just the text as Google Desktop does), but it's also expensive.

Google Desktop stores in its cache different versions of a file, so you could use it to track differences between the original document and its later edits.

Related:
Recover lost partitions
System Rescue Live CD