Slate: The Lewis Model Explains Every Culture In The World

A recent article in Slate briefly discusses British linguist Richard Lewis's theory of how to categorize the behavior of every culture in the world.

I don't think I agree with every aspect of the theory, but it is interesting. I think it will be especially useful in helping to manage business relationships with individuals from around the world. I think it will be far less useful in understanding global politics, since governments often behave in ways contrary to the local culture.

Slate: Tales of an Ex–Microsoft Manager

This Slate article describes a Microsoft practice called "stack ranking" where the actual competence of employees is irrelevant to their compensation, instead dishing out awards and punishments based solely on how they compare against their coworkers.

The result is that instead of A-players wanting to be teamed with other A-players (as Steve Jobs described the natural state of a development organization), you end up with A-players wanting to be teamed with B-players, in order to ensure that their achievements will result in rewards and not punishments. The result is lousy products, engineers that don't care, and managers that are required to make the problem worse.

Why do I get the sinking feeling that most corporations do this, or something equally brain-dead?

Washington Post: Archives readies a schoolgirl’s records and a trove of Jewish treasures for return to Iraq

Washington Post: Archives readies a schoolgirl’s records and a trove of Jewish treasures for return to Iraq

Wow! This find is incredible. I am just very saddened by the fact that all this Jewish material is going to be sent back to Iraq. No Muslim government is going to treat this with the respect it deserves. It should be sent to Israel, where the majority of the formerly-Iraqi Jews now live.

The US Holocaust museum would be another appropriate place.

TechDirt: Feds Threaten To Arrest Lavabit Founder For Shutting Down His Service

Here's the link to the TechDirt article, and the link to the NBC News article it references.

In case you haven't been following this case, Lavabit is (or was) a secure e-mail service. All mail is encrypted so no unwanted third parties (not even Lavabit) can snoop the content. The US government didn't like the idea of an e-mail service they couldn't spy on so they sent him threatening letters demanding access. According to the above linked articles, they wanted a full tap into the content of all messages from all users. Rather than comply with this blatantly unconstitutional abuse of power, the owner shut down the service.

And now the Feds are threatening to prosecute him for doing that!

I'm sure my left-wing friends will see no problem with this, but for the rest of us, this is just another example of the abusive totalitarian nature of the US government today.

CNBC: Xerox machines swap numbers during scans

If someone told me about this in passing, I would assume it to be a big joke, but apparently not:

D. Kriesel, a German Ph.D. student studying computational geometry, encountered a strange problem when scanning a blueprint on a common Xerox office scanner. The numbers denoting the square footage of rooms were totally wrong, and what's more, they changed when he scanned the blueprint again.

Intrigued, Kriesel tried scanning a table of costs and figures. Numbers changed again—but not wildly, just by a little bit: 54.60 became 54.80, for instance. And it wasn't just a blurry scan or a misplaced pixel—these were fully formed, unmistakable characters.

...

it quickly became clear what the culprit was: an image compression algorithm called JBIG2, built into the scanner as the "normal" quality option for those who wanted to save a bit of space on their hard drive (versus "high" and "higher," which made for much bigger files).

Unlike an analog photocopier, or a digital one that simply records the black-and-white values of pixels, JBIG2 examines the whole image and finds pieces that are highly similar, replacing them with a sort of clone-stamped version that saves space. Examples of such pieces of an image might be the pattern on some wallpaper or the top of a fence—or, as it turns out, small letters and numbers that look similar, like 6s and 8s.

All I can say is "d'Oh!"

Terry Moore: How To Tie Your Shoes

I didn't know this either.

Wired: The right way to coil a cable

I didn't know this either. I'll have to start doing this with my own cables.

Slate: Android vs. iPhone: Why Apple still has the edge over Google';s operating system

Farhad Manjoo, writing for Slate, points out that although Google has developed a great operating system in Android, it usually gets mangled into a steaming pile of trash by cell phone manufacturers and phone companies before you ever get to see it.

... Over the last few months, though, I’ve been testing two of the most expensive, most advanced Android phones on the market, the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One. Actually, I’ve been doing more than that. I’ve been using two versions of each of these phones—the standard phone that you get for $199 when you sign a two-year cellular contract, and a second “Google Play edition,” which is a special, full-priced version that features only the essential software you need on a smartphone. (The Play edition HTC one is $599, and the S4 is $649.) I’ve been switching between these four devices, using one or the other as my primary phone at all times.

...

This is one of the most important advantages Apple has over Android devices. When you buy an iPhone, it works exactly as Apple intended; it’s never adulterated by “features” that the company didn’t approve. But when you buy an Android phone, even a really great one, you’re not getting the device that Google’s designers had in mind when they created the OS. You’re not even getting the device that the phone manufacturer—Samsung and HTC, in this case—had in mind. Instead you’re getting a bastardized version, a phone replete with software that has been altered by many players along the way, usually in a clumsy, money-grubbing fashion.

...

There are lots of annoying nuisances like this one, in which Samsung or HTC took Google’s easy-to-use design and monkeyed with it for no good reason. Together, all these little bugs add up to a frustrating experience. In most cases, you can fix the problem; you can replace Samsung or HTC’s apps with Google’s version, you can remove the unnecessary stuff from your home screen, you can opt-out of flashy but terrible gimmicky features (like the totally useless “eye tracking” system in the Galaxy S4). But doing so is too much of a hassle for people who just want a phone that works right out of the box. If that’s what you want, you’ve got two choices. You can pay full price for a Play edition Android device (I’d choose the HTC One over the Galaxy S4, because it’s much more attractive, physically). Or you can buy an iPhone.

Read the complete article here.

Providence and Lion Attacks

A fascinating article, both from the zoological standpoint as well as from the Torah view.

Douglas Engelbart, Inventor of the Computer Mouse, Dies at Age 88 - ABC News

Douglas Engelbart, Inventor of the Computer Mouse, Dies at Age 88 - ABC News

This man literally invented everything we take for granted in computing these days. And he did it in the 60's.

See also:
Wikipedia
The Demo