Concerns About GNU and the FSF

Corporations like Google and IBM should do more to keep the FSF strong

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ZDNet UK: Is the Affair With Microsoft Over?

"Windows 7" is no longer a top-level section in ZDNet UK and we raise questions about the role of advertisers in news sites

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n-queens

I wake up these days and I complain about the mattress. My lower back hurts and my spine feels scrunched somehow. Twenty-odd years of being hunched over a keyboard or a book or a sandwich has taken its toll on the natural angle of my shoulders. At 29, I’m not old, but I certainly don’t feel young anymore. The signs of aging are noticeable on my skin and in my energy level and by the age of the contestants on reality TV shows. (Remember when any woman over 30 on The Bachelor just seemed desperate?)

For the first time, I’m aware that I’m still living in Body 1.0 as we approach Web 3.0. And it’s not just my body – it’s my Brain 1.0. It gets tired when it doesn’t sleep, and then it can’t sleep because it’s too tired, and then it misses the exit onto the 405 and has to drive four miles out of its way to get home. It picks fights with my boyfriend when he triggers an insecurity, it honestly thought it sent you that file last week, and it has no freakin’ idea which necklace goes with this dress, despite decades of exposure to fashion magazines.

None of the startups I work with today would, in good conscience, release me, even as a minimum viable product. I mean, I’m perfectly likely to die forever, taking all my data down with me, because of a minor miscalculation by an entirely separate person. I’m basically Windows Vista.

So I’ve plunged myself into the semi-escapist world of futurism, of reading everything I can get my hands on about how our bodies and brains won’t be stuck in 1.0 forever. I think about how computing power can and will solve problems much bigger than we can – problems we don’t see, or we can’t imagine have solutions, and we certainly can’t imagine have simple solutions sitting right in front of us.

I think about n-queens.

The n-queens problem is one that most computer science students will be faced with at some point in their undergraduate careers. The problem is this: Given an n-by-n chessboard, how many ways can you place n queens so that none is in a position to attack any other?

My introduction to this problem came my sophomore year of college. The professor handed us two sheets of paper. On one was written the n-queens problem, and the other was a photocopy of an 8-by-8 chessboard.

“Your project,” he said, “is to bring that board back marked with the position of those eight queens.”

The obvious question: “We don’t have to submit any code?”

He shook his head. “No.”

The brilliant teenage minds in the class were confused. “So … can we just figure out how to do it, and mark the board?”

The professor, known for his handlebar mustache and the old-fashioned pipe attached just beneath it, grinned. “I don’t care how you arrive at a solution. But it must be your own work. If you care to figure it out in your head, you are welcome to do so.”

We made eyes at each other around the room. The old man’s lost it, we figured. Oh well. Easy project. More time for beer.

Several days later, I sat down to mark my 8 queens on my chessboard. None could be in the same row or the same column, obviously, so that should narrow it down considerably. After that, it should be …

It was impossible. Hours later, I’d determined with great certainty that it was impossible. I had moved eight pennies around that chessboard ad nauseum. I’d drawn charts and graphs and scribbled out heuristics and lessons learned. Nothing got me any closer. This was a trick question. I’d applied the absolute extent of my intellectual capacity to what should have been a straightforward problem, and I couldn’t solve it. I called in some friends from around my dorm. They applied their own great intellects to the photocopied board, the corners now dog-eared and the page streaked by the pennies, and agreed that it was impossible.

To make sure I’d covered all my bases, I finally sat down to write the code. The computer, I knew, would confirm my findings, but I didn’t want to waver when the handlebar mustache peered over me and asked “Are you certain of that, Ms. Pasulka?”

It turned out to be a simple program, a quick recursive function that, at a value of n=8, can use brute force to arrive at every single one of the 92 solutions.

There are 92 solutions at n=8, from twelve unique patterns that can be rotated or reflected.

If you want a grasp of how un-freakin’-believable that is, sit down and try to find a single one by yourself.

There are over 4.4 billion ways to put 8 queens on an 8-by-8 chess board (that’s 64 choose 8, for anyone doing the math). If you know the queens can’t share a row or a column, congratulations – you’ve eliminated 16.7 million (8^8) of those. In other words – you’re still totally screwed. Even after applying a variety of more complex heuristics, you’re left with an unwieldy number of options, most of which won’t work. The odds of you coming across a solution are dismal.

A computer program of only a few lines can find all 92 solutions in seconds.

Most of college is a blur, but this moment for me is crystal clear, alone in the tiny computer lab in the first floor of my dorm, staring at the output on the screen as the code churned out one solution, then another, and then another. Checking these solutions. Checking each one and then checking it again.

This computer. It was a simple problem and I had been absolutely certain that it had no solution. This computer had solved it. And not just solved it – had found 92 equally viable solutions. I was awestruck.

It’s important for me to remember moments like that, to remember the string of moments where the capacity of these machines left me speechless: the first time my Prolog code solved a problem I didn’t think I’d taught it how to solve yet; watching a stream of data fly across the screen as distributed nodes chose a goal that surprised the team that developed them; even a simple hacked-together operating system I wrote for class, saving files and then, against all odds, reopening those files with the data intact. (Take that, Vista.)

As Body and Brain 1.0 move farther from lower back health and instead log the experience I need to hold strategic and C-level jobs, to move into the world of funding and personnel and spreadsheets and PowerPoint, they also move farther from being a person who knows what a recursive function is, much less writes one.

I need to be reminded that this is why I always come back to the world of software: because of what I felt when that computer solved n-queens. Because the things we can build – the things we do build – with these computers has changed everything and does change everything and will continue to change everything. Because we can teach these computers to make the impossible possible.  

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You need great UX because your product sucks!

If you work at a company, big or small, creating a technology product, you know User Experience (UX) is the *it* thing of the moment. It’s all about great UX, great visualizations, great design, innovative data input, design-driven development, “just like Apple” and the likes. We are all enamored with the endless possibilities of UI / UX that have been neglected for a couple of decades, but now the pendulum has passed that mid-point and it’s on an upswing to the other side, where we put too much focus on UX and design.

Honestly, I should be the last person talking about great user experience. My first startup V1 product was a God awful user experience. Only when we created the V2 of the product it went from awful to awesome. It was a “cultural” shock for me, but at the end I got “it”.

Now, what I see is a lot of startups, investors and entrepreneurs putting excessive emphasis in User Experience. That phrase might not even make sense. How’s it possible to have a UX that is “too good”? Well, it is! Actually, it’s not the problem with a UX that’s too good, but it’s the other variable that is being neglected: value added.

The shittier your product value, the better UX you must have for people to sign up and stick around!

Let’s be clear, I’m not saying there is a trade-off between value and user experience, they go hand in hand, but the lower the incremental value of your product, the better the UX must be to offset it.

To make things even more complicated, “value” is not an absolute variable. It’s a relative variable to every other competitor, substitute, and alternative and for the need of the customers themselves. The jackpot is to find a product where no matter how bad the UX will be, customers will flock to your product and happily (or unhappily) pay for it. Think about how many forms, how many answers, how many hours and how much money you have to pay to get a heart transplant. No one in the history of heart transplants will say, “I won’t do it because I have to fill an 11-page long questionnaire”.

On the flip-side, imagine an industry that has dozens of competitors, each one trying to outdo the next one. If you think about B2C, the only way for you to enter the game is by delivering a kick-ass sign up experience and a kick-ass first time experience, because the tolerance consumers will have to deal with your product is very low. They will balk at the fact the sign up button was too small, or that you asked for their zip code.

I would actually make a case that if you can’t convince a person to go through some hurdles to get to your product, you didn’t create enough value yet, or that you might be attracting the wrong kind of customers.

Now, let’s not get carried away and purposeful deliver a bad user experience, or even involuntarily deliver a bad user experience (the ship for awful UX has left and it isn’t coming back). You must deliver a GAUX (Generally Acceptable User Experience) to even enter the market, unless you have some giant moat (like an exclusive distribution deal with the US Army or a patent on the letter M).

We should spend more time focusing on delivering significant value to end users (the "destination"), where UX is part of that value, instead of building an awesome UX to nowhere.

(picture by mrjoro)

 

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Sony Sports Walkman NWZ-W260 goes for gold

UPDATED: Exclusive pics

Who said that the Sony Walkman was dead eh? Well, we did actually, but the legendary brand keeps a coming. The Sony Sports Walkman NWZ-W260 has just been announced - a sporty little number designed with fitness fanatics in mind.

The W260 is wire free (the player is built into the 'phones) and is water resistant - so it can handle a run in the rain, or a heavy session with a sweaty-Betty. You can even give them a wash after a strenuous work-out and they'll still be good to go.

They are drag and drop compatible but you can also sync your music from iTunes if you'd prefer. They also boast Sony's Zappin tech - which helps you to find exactly the tune you're after to get you motivated (Eye of the Tiger, obviously).

With a fully charged playback time of 8 hours, they are suitable for even the slowest of marathon runners and a 3-minute charge should get you through a 60-minute workout, no problem.

To celebrate the launch of the Walkman W260, Sony has teamed up with Olympic hopeful Marlon Devonish, who's either super keen on the new design, or is contractually obliged to say he is (or both).

"The Sports Walkman keeps me going through all of my workouts in preparation for the 2012 Olympic Games," he said . "The sound is amazingly clear and helps get me 'in the zone' when I'm training, and I love that it's both wireless and water-resistant?so I never interrupt a training session."

The Sony Sports Walkman NWZ-W260 will be out at the end of July - no word on pricing (or how many GBs are on board either).

Tags: Sony Walkman NWZ-W260 Olympics London 2012 Audio MP3 players Sony sony walkman

                   

Sony Sports Walkman NWZ-W260 goes for gold originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:59:00 +0100

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WEBSITE OF THE DAY - Cats4Gold

Get some cat action, before the smart money cleans up the litter tray

We like to think that we’re a pretty astute bunch here at Pocket-lint, so when we see a cast-iron, guaranteed, future-proof investment idea, we jump on with both hands.

This is about as good as it gets. Forget cash, forget commodities, forget bonds - the smart money is in felines.

Yep, that’s right - cats is where it’s at.

Here you simply send in your gold and they’ll work out how much cat you can get for it. Voila - an adorable kitty arrives for you to keep. As they say “swap your shabby tat for a tabby cat”.

The testimonials speak volumes about the amazing value you get from cats, and it’s an investment that’s guaranteed to last. As long as the cat, anyway.

Get in on the action before it’s too late at www.cats4gold.com

Genius.

You can insert your own pussy joke in here if you like too…

Tags: Websites Software Online WebsiteOfTheDay

 

WEBSITE OF THE DAY - Cats4Gold originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 12 Jul 2011 01:00:00 +0100

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Gresso unleashes $30,000 limited edition white iPhone 4

Bank-breaker

The Gresso company, famed for its outlandish mobile customisations, has gone and released a $30,000 diamond encrusted mobile phone.

The iPhone 4 Lady Blanche diamonds also has a younger sister, covered in Swarovski crystals and priced in at $7000.?

Both feature three, independently timed Swiss clocks on the back, showing New York, Paris and Moscow. Alongside these are pearl dials with a choice of either diamonds (the more expensive version) or crystals. Naturally things are hand made using a clever floating diamonds technique that allows for a "unique dazzling".?

Using only odd numbers of diamonds or crystals coupled with clever jewellery work means that especially bright tracks of light are created, making things shinier than shiny.?As if there wasn't enough diamond action already, the entire back of the phone uses solid diamond-coated mineral glass.?

Current release date details remain pretty vague, with things only confirmed as coming out this year. Keep checking the Gresso website if you are interested. Careful though, a few distractions or accidental purchases could easily see you bankrupting yourself in an instant.?

We definitely like the idea of a bit of mobile bling, personally though we prefer something along the lines of the vajazzled Virgin Media TiVo box.?

Tags: Gresso iPhone 4 Phones Apple ios Apple iPhone 4 Mobile phones

Gresso unleashes $30,000 limited edition white iPhone 4 originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:17:00 +0100

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