Kyle Brady: Blog » Technology

“Let’s Stop The Nonsense, OK?” [Self]

Kyle Brady — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:10:36 +0000

If you’re one of the people that goes insane and hyper-joyous over things like Twitter Lists, you need to seek medical help – these “features”, used in the loosest sense of the software term, are not something to get overly excited about.

Go check it out.

The F-22: A Bureaucratic Failure to Understand War [OpEd]

Kyle Brady — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 07:05:52 +0000

War is unpredictable and largely unforeseeable – most especially in the manner in which it will be fought.

Why, then, does the United States continue to insist that the “future of war” for America will be mostly in the guerrilla style seen with terrorist organizations? Has both the Pentagon and Congress forgotten the lessons of military history? In preparing a country for future self-defense, or aggressive actions, focusing on the struggles of the present inevitably fails to meet the needs of the future, producing technology and methodologies that is hopelessly unsuited to the now-present theatre of war.

The street-by-street method of war currently being used by American military in counter-terrorism efforts is relatively new, and all branches of the military were largely unprepared for it – in terms of both training and equipment. However, modern troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Middle Eastern locales are almost exactly opposite their peers of a decade ago: their training, equipment, and weaponry is designed and tested heavily to cater to their needs in the closed-in, chaotic environments. The retooling of the military, with a heavy focus on the Army, for urban battlefields has taken many years, but resulted in better personnel gear, the reliance on (and improvement of) unmanned drones, and a rethinking of certain military strategies.

However, the Middle East, and other counter-terrorist or black ops conflicts, are not the only battlefields. True, America is currently embroiled in physical conflicts that classify as counter-terrorism, but other threats from various sources could easily erupt into more violent interactions that would be more akin to “classical warfare” – such as North Korea, China, and Russia. These potential conflicts, or even wars, would be much different from the United States’ current military interests.

In terms of sheer manpower, all three of these potential enemies outnumber the American military by significant ratios – fighting such countries in “hand-to-hand” combat would be both pointless and devastating. These conflicts would be fought, and won, in a more traditional manner resembling more the World Wars than Afghanistan: via air and sea power. Despite this simple, and obvious, fact, funding has been continuously cut to “next generation weapons” over the last decade to focus on the lowly footsoldier, rather than devastating and effective weapons that could start, fight, and finish wars without the death or injury of any American military, and the F-22 Raptor is merely the latest and most public example.

Congress, along with President Obama, has stopped the financing of additional F-22 Raptor fighter jets, claiming that the current 187 Raptor jets in the fleet is enough to serve the country. To put that in perspective, that equates to slightly more than three jets per state if they were to be distributed evenly and domestically, or barely enough to canvas each coast with overlapping defensive areas. Basic analysis shows that 187 stealth, nextgen fighters is not as large a force as one might assume, especially given that modern aircraft carriers hold an average of 48 fighter jets, not to mention that most of the airfleet, such as F-16’s, are the aging products of decades past.

This is not to say, however, that air and sea power is being ignored, because they are, most definitively, not. Certain aspects of what could be classified as “future classical warfare” are being heavily invested in, such as space-based laser weaponry, country-wide protection defense systems, and highly efficient/intelligent drone vehicles. But it is the progress of the recent years that presents a worrying trend, not the lack of modern programs: the tendency to eschew advanced weaponry, gear, or otherwise technology for more immediately applicable technology to the current battlefields. Time and time again, empires and countries alike focused on handling their immediate military needs over innovation and the advancement of their future forces, and ultimately met their own demise as a result – Imperialist England and Cold War Russia are simple proof.

Congress, and the rest of American Bureaucracy, are in a unique position to effect the military investments without having the knowledge, foresight, and impartial judgment necessary to make appropriate decisions – similar problems can be found in Congressional oversight of agencies such as the CIA, who are tasked for intelligence appropriation, but are criticized in a public forum for acting, or planning to act, in accordance with their mandate: protecting the United States via operations on foreign soil. The simple ignorance of many Congressmen is astounding, and is only magnified by giving the same individuals the capacity to approve military budgets when they have, on the whole, little to no knowledge of the needs of the military, let alone any knowledge of details outside basic costs.

Admittedly, the combined budget of the United States Air Force, Army, and Navy is quite an astounding figure, rounding out at an estimated $367 billion per year - not including general "Defense Wide" expenditures. This could likely be cut in any number of ways, such as addressing overspending on certain contracts where bidding is inflated on the principle that "the government can afford it". But the place to do so is absolutely not cutting investments in the future, new technology, or any other advancements that could save American lives while retaining, or increasing, the country’s military dominance – the F-22 is just the tip of the government-funded iceberg.

“The Cloud vs. The Desktop: An Irrelevant Argument” [Self]

Kyle Brady — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:30:27 +0000

New guest post over at the Inquisitr:

These days, tech pundits and futurists can’t go a week without pontificating on the future of computing, wondering (and arguing) whether the computer will be merely a tool to access “the cloud” or as an application set. Even the most inconsequential software release (or failure) sparks this argument - the most recent example is the release of the Opera browser’s repackaging of a personal webserver.

Go take a look!

“Iran techRising” [Self]

Kyle Brady — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 05:44:25 +0000

I was part of a podcast earlier this week that was just published about the Iran "situation" with Michael Sean Wright and Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins, for nicefishfilms / Thinking Out Loud called "Iran techRising".

The podcast can also be found as a series of videos - the sound quality on me gets bad about 20m in for some reason, though.

A Paperless Society: An Easy Place to Start [Old Content]

Kyle Brady — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 19:56:32 +0000

Everyone in the tech world dreams of a day when we're a truly "paperless society" - archives are purely digital, there are no warehouses of file boxes, and memos are never printed. Obviously, we haven't reached this (and may never), but PDFs, email, and assorted other digital tools have helped us come a long way: consider the effect email has had on regular mail (aka "post"), and without much afterthought by those using it.

But to reach such a paperless society, do we really need to develop more tools? The answer is obviously yes, but what if a few tweaks to already-existing technology allowed us a step closer?

The best place to start are credit/debit card receipts.

After you get your daily (or not-so-daily) latte from Starbucks, or coffee from Dunkin Donuts, do you keep the receipt? Be honest - most of the time they'll ask if you want a copy, and click an option to not print one for you. Now consider all the other trivial expenses of life... most purchases don't require you to keep the receipt for warranty purposes. Stamps, a tank of gas, movie tickets, etc. are perfect examples.

Additionally, receipts aren't required for tracking purposes, because of the pervasiveness of online banking. I'm assuming that most people use online banking, at least to some degree, which isn't a bad assumption - if you didn't have the option a year ago, your bank probably got bought by someone that provides it.

If your bank is anything greater than a one-off podunk local bank, they have alot of information on you - email is just one of many personal data items. Online banking takes this one step further, and may have information like a cell phone number... Bank of America has mine as a security confirmation tool via a text-message confirmation code system.

Using an online system, a user could specify a set of rules (or use a default set) that defines when they want receipts: price floors, individual retailers, purchase location, etc. Then, at the time of transaction, the bank associated with the card receives the request, and returns data to the retailer about receipt printing, most likely saying "no receipt". An email could be sent to the user with the purchase data (specified beforehand), or kept in a receipt archive downloadable from the bank.

This is merely inserting a small bit of functionality into technology that already exists and is relatively mature - a set of online options, an added return value to the retailer, and maybe an email sent. I'm not suggesting a tech revolution here.

It could be the beginning of a truly paperless society. I don't have exact numbers, but I would imagine not printing 75% of the modern world's receipts would be a huge paper savings - and alot of trees.

Who knows what would follow? Once the public warms to the idea of not worrying about receipts, perhaps paper currency itself can be phased out (saving not only many trees, but billions of dollars a year). Or maybe train/metro/bus/lightrail/subway tickets via cellphones.

I'm all for this, whatever follows.

ArsTechnica Misses the Point (on Holographic Data Storage) [Expose]

Kyle Brady — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:40:48 +0000

ArsTechnica did a writeup of a new optical disc technology from GE that can produce 500GB storage on each disc... and they were sneering at it. I'm here to clear the air.

Essentially the discs use a holographic imaging technology to accomplish multi-layer storage on a special material that I'm assuming is a variant of plastic. You can read the tech specs on it if you want. But here's a quote from the Ars piece:

If anyone can make the case for a 500GB optical disc in 2011, I'd love to hear it.

Excuse me? I think that's a little overly critical. Maybe there's not a market for ginormous data storage for the average person... or maybe there is?

Consider that the average music collection today is in the Gigabyte range, and can easily reach double-digits. Personally, I'm sitting on about 65GB of music. Not all of that fits on my iPod, and it sure isn't very portable to other devices since the iPod doesn't facilitate easy data transfers.

Ever tried burning some music for a friend on CDs these days? I've resorted to using DVDs because of the larger storage capacity. Who's to say that a 500GB disc wouldn't be useful? You could burn your entire music collection to disc while you're sleeping, pop it in the car on the drive to work, listen from your work computer, etc. All from one disc.

But this is just the immediate and most obvious use. Imagine the implications.

CD technology paved the way of using a combination of lasers and plastic for data storage, quickly followed by DVDs and now Blu-Ray DVDs, each successor having larger storage and a greater feature set. But non-portable storage hasn't changed that drastically in almost two decades... excluding a small minority of solid-state drives (in things like new iPods, netbooks, etc.), we're still using magnetized plates read by a mini robotic arm.

Solid-state drives have their own glories and limitations, which I won't get into. But GE has made a successful application of holographic technology for data storage. Isn't this important? Yes! Once the method is shown to be successful, others are going to look at how to apply the same ideas to their hardware projects, and experiment with improving it.

We're not going to reach ubiquitous and unobtrusive data storage via solid-state drives, unless something drastically changes - the memristor has potential. But it's definitely not happening with standard hard-disk technology.

Holographic pattern storage is likely the future of large-scale data permanence, or something derived from it. And yet Ars Technica missed this crucial point.

“The Rise of Skynet” [Self]

Kyle Brady — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:56:27 +0000

This is my first guest post on a "real" blog... "The Rise of Skynet" on The Inquisitr.

Excerpt:

The reality is that Skynet is quickly becoming a reality, whether we like it or not. And since I haven’t heard of Sarah Connor blowing up buildings, killing people, or traveling through time to avoid robots… I’m not sure there’s anything we can do about it.

Go check it out.

Programmers Are Born, Not Made [Old Content]

Kyle Brady — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:18:15 +0000

[Note: formerly called "Putting Rollerskates on a Cow... Not Always a Great Idea", but has since had its title changed]

Some people seem to think they can just randomly decide to be in the computer programming world because it's a "safer bet" than, say, going into business school at the moment.

And they're wrong.

It's a Lifestyle

Being a programmer, coder, hacker, or any other variant of the idea of creating computer software (on any level) is not something you just wake up one day and decide to do. You can't, even if you wanted to. This isn't the same as studying for 4 years at your favorite college to get a degree in Economics and go pretend you know what all those giant spreadsheets mean.

Programming is typically borne from a love of computers, an obsession with them, and a need to know more. You start tinkering with your Operating System (probably Windows of some sort), modifying things you don't like and figuring out workarounds for those "people are dumb, treat them that way" software design idea.

And then you realize that you can create software. Maybe you start with HTML and websites. Maybe it's PHP in the form of a mashup from your favorite websites. Or maybe you even start playing with C++ or Java.

All while in middle school, or maybe even high school. Because you definitely know you have a love affair with computers before you go to college, and have a high level of proficiency at any number of things computer-related.

Trust Me

I'm not making this up. Us programmers are the same people you called geeks, nerds, and whatever else when we were younger, and now we happen to be the cool kids. It doesn't matter if you're 40 or 20, people put you on a higher pedestal when they know you design software, because they simply don't understand it.

Ask "that guy" that you know about how he got into it. He'll tell you.

It's Important

Why is it important? Because programming is not just about learning how to program, the syntax, structure, and quirks of a language. It's not even about being qualified to cry about pointer management or laugh at people who think Internet Explorer is "the Internet".

It's important because programming has alot to do with how you think. How you approach situations, analyze them, and segment them into solution-oriented tasks. How you continually test your code, trying to account for every possible outcome, and include contingencies for any and all failures.

There's a reason why people are called "Software Engineers" and not "Software Artists".

Read More

If you come across a scientific analysis of programming or how programmers work, take the time to read it. Because current findings are that programmers are not just Engineers, but they're also artists, despite what I said three sentences ago.

Programming requires the massive analytical processes of an Engineer, but it also requires a high level of finesse, creativity, and "out of the box" thinking typically associated with artists.

This means you need both sides of your brain when you are writing your Pizza Hut Ordering System hack.

My Point

So here's my point: these kids may go to school thinking they can just graduate with a Computer Science degree, be programmers, and make lots of money in a secure job. They may even accomplish that.

But they'll never be true programmers. They'll probably hate their jobs. And they'll definitely never do anything great or revolutionary.

True programmers, the ones that change the world, do it not for the money, even though it's nice to have. They do it because they love it. These are the people who have full-time jobs and multiple side projects, always hoping one day to run their own company or get a research grant to do what they want, on their own time.

Some of the best programmers of today and of yore don't even have degrees.

How is having a degree, when you're the wrong type of person, going to make things better?

Come Again, Netflix? [Old Content]

Kyle Brady — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:03:14 +0000

Apparently me wanting to investigate "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" isn't supposed to be easy. See if you can follow the logic on this one.

First, I get an email saying Disc 1 is going to ship from Phoenix, AZ. I didn't really give it much thought at the time.

Then I get this email today, saying it'll be here on Monday.

Monday? Really? What happened to "Next Day Shipping"? I didn't realize that your promises to your customers had a geography clause.

I had previously wondered what happened if a disc in the middle of a series is missing, like "Stargate: SG-1" has a few "long waits" at the moment. Here's what I had found.

So I have a question for you, Mr. Netflix. How can you be intelligent enough to not ship a series when it's not fully complete and waiting for me, but you're not intelligent enough to not ship something when it's "too far away" (geography clause!) to be here on the normal schedule?

Right. Because that makes alot of sense.

--- --- ---

Update (9/25/2008 3:15pm PST): I just got off the phone with Customer Service (no hold times or phone menus!), and they supposedly have a system in place that looks for these sort of things. They didn't comment on the "Next Day" geography clause, but instead said that they usually don't remote-ship things if it's approaching a weekend.

They apologized, and are supposedly shipping out a "Bonus Disk" from my Queue tomorrow.

Hopefully it's one that's local and won't be here next Wednesday.

Update (9/29/2008 9:00pm PST): The disc isn't here yet! Just kidding. I got it on Saturday, and was very surprised that it all went down so smoothly and properly.

Thanks, Netflix, for being awesome. This is why no-one goes to Block...who? anymore.

Microsoft Wants Your Keyboard [Old Content]

Kyle Brady — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:49:22 +0000

Eran Hammer-Lahav ("EHL") wrote up a piece on the weird thoughts Microsoft must have since they just patented, in effect, the "Page Up" and "Page Down" button.

Here's my take on it, with a different end-game scenario than EHL, more-or-less duplicated from a comment I made on his blog:

Microsoft is, and always has been, about collecting as much money as possible, while doing as little as possible. "Stealing" MS-DOS and making huge profits from it, repackaging an OS as a "new" version with very little differences... we've all heard that before.

So why should the keyboard be any different? They could potentially ingest massive profits because unlicensed keyboards (aka "not Microsoft") use the buttons associated with their patent, depending on how the courts interpret the depth and reach of this.

Also, this might be a play at what I've thought they might do for awhile: try and control and own as much of the computer as possible. As people move to Macs and Linux, it's probably becoming more and more attractive for them to disrupt competitors by simply "owning" the technology. If your keyboard (or any other common component) ends up being radically different on a Mac (besides the minimal differences now), users might reconsider switching.

Next they'll concoct a strategy about LCD monitors!