Thursday, March 26, 2009

ipv6 is too long

Anyone else think ipv6 is stupid?

I like ipv4. Its short enough, and when you're in the same network, you can just remember the last 6 digits because the first (up to) 6 numbers don't change. ipv4 has 4+ billion combinations. I do see a problem with that. A normal person on the average will probably need 3 ip addresses. Work, home, mobile. And all the servers, routers, and unmanned devices in the world can probably take place of all the people who currently don't and will not need an ip in the future. Considering we close to 7 billion people now, and considering not all ipv6 addresses being addressable, we'll eventually run out.

The good thing about ipv4 is that DNS doesn't need to come into play. DNS is not accessible because there isn't one on the local network? Fine, no problem, computers can still talk (just give me the last 2 groups of number of your IP). DNS is not updated? No problem, we can talk in and out of the local intranet, just give me your number. DNS is down because rats chewed through some wires? Its ok. We can still send files locally. ipv6 on the other hand, the ipv6 addresses are ridiculously long. Its like trying to remember the cd key of your copy of windows. since when have you memorized one of those? People have problems writing legible phone numbers on scratch paper, or even typing them out. How much of a problem is it going to be to work directly with ipv6 numbers? Think of trying to troubleshoot a connection for an hour not knowing if the ipv6 address has a typo in it.

Or try reading one of these to someone over the phone:
https://[2001:db8:85a3:8d3:1319:8a2e:370:7344]/

Remember to say b as in boy, and d as in dog cause those 2 sound pretty much the same without any context. Might as well use alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, echo, and farfegnugen.

"Oh doesn't work? Can you read it back to me?"

Why do I say ipv6 is stupid? Well there are:
340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 combinations.

Is that too many? Well, here is some perspective. The earth is estimated to be 4.55 billion years old. Wee have gone through about 143,587,080,000,000,000,000 milliseconds (60 * 60 * 24 * 365.25 * 4,550,000,000 * 1000 milliseconds) so far.

Or to put it in better perspective, that means to exhaust ipv6, we would need to assign about 2156 ipv6 addresses for every millisecond, or 2,156,000 ip addresses a second for the next 5 billion years. Considering we have yet to fill 4 billion ip addresses for a population of 7 billion people, I'm going to go out on a limb and say, maybe this number is too big. Too big that it has more negatives than positives. If earth got so populated that if every surface on the planet was able to be stood on by a person, and we stood shoulder to shoulder with a person (with a person immediately in the front and back of you) on every available surface on the planet, then we built 1000 story buildings where we can do this at least a thousand times that would be a population of 5,502,532,127,000,000,000. Say because of nanotechnology, we have to give each cell in the human body an ip address. (we have about 5-10 trillion cells per human body). We would still have the luxury of giving 100,000 ip addresses for each cell in the human body, of every person if the population grew to 5,502,532,127,000,000,000 in 5 billion years.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Apple iPhone 3.0: Hits & Misses

New Features:

-Cut & Paste (for people who insist that they can do actual work on the iPhone). I never needed cut and paste all that bad on the iPhone. It didn't make my list of things I wanted. It'll be there now? Cool, maybe I'll use it when I finally come around to needing it.

-Real Push (No more fake push, also known as pull every 15 minutes). Not having real push for 2 years now, I don't miss it that much. 15 minutes is fine. Too much junk mail these days where I'm in need of immediate notification of emails. It would be good for instant messaging. Lets see if they can do that without costing me money for every IM I get.

-A2DP (strereo bluetooth headphones, no more dropping the iphone in the gym). Why did it take so long you bastards?

-Turn by Turn Navigation (provided the app comes with its own maps.) Look for expensive apps by Garmin or Tom Tom soon. And most likely they'll probably want to charge you subscriptions as well. Two steps forward, one and a half steps back. At least it'll be available. I won't be ditching my Nuvi 360 anytime soon.

Misses:

-Application Data sharing is good, but not as good as application switching support. It I read in between the lines, they are still against any kind of running of more than one application at once, except those controlled by apple. Sucks.

-Still no tethering. They are placing the blame on carriers. My word of advice? Psst...PDAnet by June Fabrics.

-No mention of in application brightness controls. I hate having to start a video, then go back to home, settings, brightness, adjust brightness controls, home, ipod, and if you can remember what you were watching, you can get back to it. Does that seem intuitive?

-No mention of video recording on the iPhone. I'll probably be needing this very rarely, but at the rare times that I'll be using it, it'll probably be a life saver.

-No mention of improved wifi. Wifi speed is terrible on the iPhone. Lets hope they secretly are looking to improve it.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

What is Wok Hay?

Reading this article on chowhound about wok hay, you can break down wok hay into 2 different definitions. One is almost metaphysical. You need to honor the ingredients, and with the right preparation, technique, and skill, the food will give you and enlightening experience. This just sounds like an eastern marketting pitch. "The preparation is very complex, the technique is almost indescribable. And even if could do both, you would need a lifetime to master the skill. Don't bother wasting your time at home, but you can come to my restaurant and you'll be taken on a journey of the senses." Or another common thing I'm hearing goes something like "I take the best ingredients, really honor them by preparing them in a near ritual like preparation technique. I pour all my knowledge, skill, love and heart as a chef when I cook with a wok. And at the end, you get something magical, which is what you're tasting." See, what it really does is add to the mystery of what wok hay is, obscures it, and discourages the breakdown of how to even achieve wok hay at home any further. It makes you want and appreciate it even more. It is effective marketting.

Some people also use the term to describe the aroma and essense of freshly prepared food cooked in or even out of a wok. But I don't think these people are right. A freshly prepared dish with fresh ingredients cannot have the breath of a wok. I understand that the amazing essence fresh ingredients prepared fresh is something just as hard to describe just as wok hay is hard to describe, but they are talking about something entirely different, mixed up with the adjacent properties of wok hay.

The other definition of wok hay is simply its flavor. Probably an average man with an average palate can quickly learn to identify a dish with wok hay when presented with 2 identical dishes (one with wok hay, and one without). But where the challenge is when one tries to describe the flavor. Why? The flavors and aromas are elusive. First, the flavor is different from dish to dish. Second, its more about the method/process than the ingredients, even though the ingredients are integral. Third, its invisible and we make the mistake on trying to identify the ingredient rather than recognizing the method/process. Fourth, people generally don't cook on a wok at home, and even if they did, they don't have the right equipment to generate the heat required so they don't know where the flavor comes from.

So how do you achive wok hay? You need a non teflon surface (a wok is almost impossible to do without), heated enough where the oil would start smoking almost immediately. And while its smoking, you should throw in your stir fry items. Then let the smoke catch fire while you're tossing the things inside. This process marries to elusive flavor to your seasoning.

Here's the proof to my logic. Say you have every equipment, preparation, ingredient, technique, and skill required to cook on a wok. On one wok, you cook at high enough heat for the oil to smoke, and when it smokes you let it catch fire. On the second wok, you cook just below the smoke temperature of the oil. At the end of cooking, food from both woks may look identical, but you can say that food from the first wok has wok hay, and food from the second wok hay has absolutely no wok hay at all.

The second part of my proof is that if you've ever accidentally cooked on a pan where the oil started to smoke, and some of the splattering oil and smoke accidentally caught on fire, and you ate the food anyway. You can argue that there was something extra in there where the flavor was kinda nipping at the heels of flavors associated with wok hay. You can even say it had some wok hay, whereas the food from the second wok mentioned above has no wok hay.

So there you have it. I hope I broke wok hay down so its more tangible. Unfortunately any home kitchen stove won't be able to produce enough heat to cook effectively on a wok. It may even be dangerous too, and I'm pretty sure the smoke detectors would go off. So even though you won't be able to achive wok hay at home after reading this article, you can probably try to nip at the heels of wok hay. Another thing to point out is that it is pretty common knowledge that oil that has reached its smoke point is supposedly very unhealthy with unspeakable amounts of carcinogens and free radicals. Its a little ironic because wok hay is generally associated with freshness and life. Wok hay is translated as "wok breath". Why is it that the better the food tastes, the worse the food is for you? It seems that wok hay is no exception to the rule. I'm sure I'll get no arguments when I say a life without blissful culinary pleasure is a life not worth living. So enjoy your carcinogens and free radicals in moderation.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Monopoly: A new appreciation for an old game

I played a good amount of Monopoly when I was young. And I thought it was a thoroughly entertaining game. But playing it on my iPhone again, I realized we played the game entirely wrong when we were young. I don't remember anyone playing any differently than, maybe buying a piece of property that they land on (people usually didn't buy it). And after a long session, if you were lucky enough to buy all the same colors because no one else bought those colors, the houses and hotels just never seemed like a good investment, so no one would buy them. And the game ended when you accidentally landed on park place (the space that everyone wanted) that someone else owned and it pretty much made you broke.

Being older now, this game immediately made sense. You buy every empty space you land on. It doesn't matter if someone owns 1 out of 3 colors already. it doesn't matter if you own one color of every other color. You buy so that you can negotiate and trade for all the same colors and some money. If someone owns 2 out of the 3 colors, that property is a much better buy because you can probably instantly sell for a big profit, or make some powerful trades. And you should have them throw in a property they don't really care about (because they only have 1 of the 3), but it will be worth it later because you'll be able to make another trade with it in the same scenario.

The game is all about trading, negotiations, and putting up houses and hotels so that you have enough properties that someone can land on and so you can do a lot of damage to their finances. When we were young, no one traded, and rarely hotels got erected. All wrong. Haha.

There are some strategies too. I always thought that the board game didn't come with enough houses. But I realized they did this for a reason. If all the houses are taken, then no one else can build houses, which means they can't do anything with hotels either. You also gotta keep in mind that there are expected outcomes with dice. For example 7 is the most common outcome for a pair of di. And since people tend to end up in jail, 7 steps from jail, and the properties that surround it is the best property to own. I'm guessing the next one would be 7 steps from Go.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Annie Duke is this year's Omarosa

On this year's Celebrity Apprentice, it is apparent that Annie Duke, the professional poker player, is the person that's going to have a lot of friction with the teammates. She's a very assertive woman, and I'm sure she can lead/rule a team of subordinates better than any of her teammates, but she does not understand one of the principal concepts of leadership. You can't lead when you have no followers. Especially when everyone on the team is a bunch of A type personalities/leaders in their own right. To lead leaders, you must establish some rapport. As John C. Maxwell puts it, you must touch people's hearts before you ask for a hand. You can't just go on ordering people around, or even worse, talk down to them in a condescending way. They need to believe in you and your vision to put that trust in you as a leader. That's also why it is pretty moronic to volunteer as the first project manager. You need time to get to know people, and judge people's leadership abilities as they naturally fall in line with time. So when it comes to your time leading the group, you know the key people that you must have on your side so the whole team can function efficiently as one unit.

I'm glad Andrew Dice Clay got the boot. I didn't like his personality. On the outside, he comes off as someone like Gene Simmons of last year. A natural born leader, but on the inside he came off like a schmuck. He didn't want to make muffins because his friends in Brooklyn would make fun of him? He's like 50 or 60 something. And it seems like its an issue he should have solved in his early 20's. He didn't want to participate because he was too cool for that stuff. And he decided it wasn't the competition for him. And to not hurt his publicity, Donald Trump did some damage control and said some nice things to him on his way out. After he fired his ass.

Other thoughts:

I'd still rather prefer to have George and Carolyn in the boardroom. At least previous Apprentice winners. Just seeing his daughter and son there, just seems a little over the top. Ivanka is definitely not an eyesore (she's a total babe and smart too). And I'm sure they both are successful in their own right. But the Apprentice has almost become Trump and his family show. Takes some seriousness away from the whole business aspect.

What the hell is Jessee James wearing? He looks like he just came into the board room from his log cabin up in the mountains. Everyone else is dressed in suits in the boardroom. From his shows, he seems like a smart guy, but I don't think he'll have any muscle to pull in big donations in the end. To get to know A list celebrities and deep pocketted people doesn't seem like his thing.

My guess is that Herschel will be fired eventually in one of these challenges, although his focus on team mentality is great, his vision, goal, and gameplan seemed almost non-existant as project manager.

Dennis Rodman's heart doesn't seem to be in the competition, but he definitely seems smarter than he looks, and if he can focus put his heart into it, he can get far. I'm sure he has a lot of friends with deep pockets. He does have the potential to win, if he wants it. Right now, he seems on the fence.

Scott Hamilton will be able to lead with his heart, but his demise will be his leadership skills won't be strong enough to handle some of these other A type personalities.

Tom Greene is definitely smarter than he looks, but lets see if he can put his game face on for the whole competition so that he'll be taken seriously.

Bryant McNight looks like a well rounded invidual.

Clint didn't speak enough for me to make any kind of assessment of him.

As for women, the only names I recognize is Annie Duke and Joan Rivers.

I am going to guess Annie will stick around because Donald likes to give people with strong personalities a chance, even though the whole team hates them. It also makes for interesting TV. But her unability to work with people will get her fired about half way through.

Joan Rivers is too old to deal or handle the physical stress of this competition. She'll make a graceful exit probably midway through.

Melissa Rivers, Joan's daughter, seems very on point with some key business aspects.

Claudia Jordan, deal or no deal model, seems to be a smart and well rounded individual. Will she have the connections to pull in some big bucks?

Brande, the playboy model, seems to have gained the trust of her team rather quickly. I'll keep an eye on her. And her friends. ;)