Kyle Brady: A Blog

Apparently human beings can now control the physical structure of water, without having to worry about pesky things like gravity, walls, or any sort of “normal” restriction of a liquid.

Pretty cool, I think. Granted, it’s limited to a minuscule length and width, and surface tension wasn’t even mentioned. But think of the implications…

• Having a problem designing and building an earthquake-proof bridge?
• Are you 9 years old, and want to build a bridge to your neighbor’s bedroom window?
• In the military, trying to get troops across a moat, lake, or other body of water?
• You know that “space elevator” we keep hearing about?
• …and many more…

A bridge to God? Or, if you prefer, Hell?

This has major implications. Imagine if instead of spending years and millions of dollars building highways, the government instead used the already-existing network of electricity to stabilize a small amount of water to server as a road? Or, imagine small islands in the Caribbean… the water already exists, electrify a small portion!

However, this may not be limited to “just” water. If water has this property, why not sand? Or dirt? Or even air? One of the things that are rehashed in science fiction and fantasy novels/movies/comics/games the world over is control over the elements… maybe there’s a grain of truth in that.
Are we that much closer to becoming gods? Awesome.

posted on September 30th, 2007 at 8:49 am by Kyle - Comments

Tags: Future, Physics, Technology

An article over at Wired talks about how the government is supposedly developing (or perfecting) a form of AI that crawls the internet in order to find articles that “sound” like a terrorist.

Interesting. I wonder: if you write an anti-Bush post on your blog, but in a non-combative fashion, do you appear on the list of “terrorist” authors? How does it determine, exactly, the voice, tone, and intent of the author? Tone is sometimes hard to understand in written form, by humans, so how is an AI program going to do any better?

A future friend?

On the other side of the coin, could this be a step towards “true” AI? Meaning, artificial intelligence that actually learns, adapts, and acts based on a dynamic set of self-created methods and instructions… like, for example, the central computer in the movie “iRobot” with Will Smith.

Government funded projects have a habit of trickling down to the general public, after being declassified, and becoming large fixtures in modern technology and every day life. Just look at the microwave, satellite radio, GPS, regular radio, the Internet, etc. I can imagine, in the near future, a library you can use in your own code (much like the standard C libraries) that allows your program to learn, adapt, and rewrite itself as necessary.

And who says the American government is evil?

posted on September 29th, 2007 at 1:28 pm by Kyle - Comments

Tags: AI, Code, The Internet

R/WW had an article today about “Web 2.0 Hit the Mainstream”…

So, 37% use a “web application” on a “regular basis”? Hmm… let’s think for a second. What do you imagine this “web application” mainstream users are …using?

W3 R w3b 2[dot]OH!

The Obvious:

• Gmail / Hotmail / Yahoo Mail / [some other email app]
• Google Calendar / [some other calendar app]
• YouTube
• Facebook
• Flickr
• MySpace
• Ebay / PayPal

The Less Obvious:

• Google Reader / [some other RSS aggregator]
• Box.net / DivShare / [some other file sharing site]
• Digg / [other"social news" sites]

Those are things that have useful integration into daily life, or are used by enough people to have become beneficial for use. But what are people not using mainstream?

Potentially Useful, But Not “Big Enough” …Yet

• Pownce / Twitter / [any sort of messaging community]
• Goodreads / [targeted social networks, mimicking real-life situations like book discussion groups]
• Blogs

Not Useful Whatsoever, And Rightly Ignored

• SecondLife / Gaia / [any type of online "virtual world"]
• [stupid things like "Pirate Poking"]
• Ning / Metacafe / Imeem / [all of the sites that claim to be the "next [whatever]” of “[something]“]
• Mint / [other sites that you give your bank data]
• [anything else that TechCrunch typically loves, but is a copy of something, or has no actual purpose]

Seriously people. When you are thinking of what new project you can start, and hope to be rich off of… you have to think of the end result. Don’t create things that won’t make a dent in the world outside of Silicon Valley or the early adopters crowd. Don’t believe me? Think about the target audience of the successful web-based businesses… what does Amazon do? Or Google? Or AIM?

Let’s be smart about this…

They provide services people want in an easy to use format and don’t target an obscenely small audience.

Why does no-one understand the basics of marketing at these “companies”? No-one wants (or needs) another pointless social network.

posted on September 26th, 2007 at 4:50 pm by Kyle - Comments

Tags: Code, Hmm..., Rant, Social Graph, The Internet

[this is in reference to this post]

As it turns out, the images were being uploaded, but because of the uber-intelligent settings of this particular host, you couldn’t see them when you FTP’d in. You have to SSH in to be able to see them listed in the directory.

Exactly what I was thinking…. “That’s Just Super!”

Why? Because they (the host) decided that all images uploaded through a web-based method (other than FTP or SFTP over SSH2) should be given ‘022′ permissions.

Right. That makes sense. Thanks guys, I just wasted many hours trying to debug something that wasn’t my fault, or even broken.

posted on September 25th, 2007 at 8:13 pm by Kyle - Comments

Tags: Code

I read a story just now about how a telecom company in France is going to provide all of their customers with an OpenID, immediately, without any action on the part of the customer.

OpenID, an open authentication system

In principle, OpenID is a good thing. But there are definitely better ways to “open the social graph.” Here’s a repost of something I wrote on Pownce [reference no longer valid] a little bit ago:

All this talk about microformats and the “open social graph” is all well and good… but how many places are going to open up their data? How many services are going to want o implement a centralized-server setup, and be the center of that wheel?

There is only one real solution: a big-name player in the industry has to step up, and take sides. Google is rumored to be creating a centralized social network database… where all those Web 2.0 services can pull things from (like your favorite movies, foods, hobbies, friends, etc), instead of typing them in 29 million times in different places.

There are only three companies who have the power and capability to do this:
Microsoft, Google, and Facebook (Yahoo is outdated, and no longer matters)

Microsoft isn’t trusted enough to be a part of this, so that leaves the battle between Google and Facebook.

On one hand, Facebook already has the most social network data on the most people, and has already opened up portions of that data. The next logical step would be providing a system of cross-referencing and caching that data through different sites.

Conversely, Google has the power and the money to destroy any market they see fit. Not only do they hold the sway of the search community, but also have data on many many people who use their singular Google Account for many services. They already have this database in place… they just need to expand it. They already have the functionality of access in place (Google Base), it just needs to be realized and publicized.

I’m hoping these changes come soon. I’m tired of hearing about OpenID being the future. I’m tired of re-typing my data. I’m tired of how useless, but highly flaunted, microformats are in a closed environment. I’m tired of small, next-to-meaningless services wanting to be THE hub for all your data.

We need this. We need it now. And if “the Internet” is to become what everyone of Web 2.0 wants it to be, outside of the nerd fiefdom, it needs to be done right… perfectly, the first time.

posted on September 24th, 2007 at 5:20 pm by Kyle - Comments

Tags: Code, Hmm..., Microformats, OpenID, Social Graph, The Internet

Uploading an image via form using PHP is usually pretty straightforward. CHMOD the directory with the proper permissions, and reuse code you created before.

But for some reason, I’m having problems with a specific instance. I’ve tried everything.

PHP, the language of awesome

It uploads the image to the temp location, but then refuses to move it to the appropriate place, and rename it. But pretends it does and executes as successful.

The code isn’t wrong, it’s just reused from things before. The directory is 777, exists, and is path’d correctly. PHP’s SAFE_MODE is off.

People on two separate, and large, forums had no idea what was going on. Neither do some other people I know who code in PHP for a living.

Server issue?

I hate when things like this happen. You aren’t doing anything wrong, and it still doesn’t work.

posted on September 24th, 2007 at 2:11 pm by Kyle - Comments

Tags: Code

Looking for freshly graduated people from business/marketing school that are interested in doing ‘pro bono’ work for a new tech startup in the Bay Area.

Contact sales@myshoutoutloud.com with a resume if interested.

Hopefully a real degree…

[also on Craigslist]

[also on the mySHOUToutLOUD Blog]

posted on September 23rd, 2007 at 9:37 am by Kyle - Comments

Tags: Business, Wanted

Yet again, I have a blog. But this time, it will be different.

No links to funny things. No videos.

Oh yes, I’m back.

This is a “serious” blog. About code, “the industry”, and other “serious” things…

posted on September 22nd, 2007 at 12:28 am by Kyle - Comments

Tags: General