Max Clark

These two should be fired, they should lose their grants, and they should never work in this industry again. Why? Either they are:

a) The biggest idiots in the world. If you’ve spent years researching a cure for cancer you would be backing up/copying/archiving your data on a regular basis. The sole copy wouldn’t be on one device you carried around with you. And if you had a possible cure, something that would make you famous beyond belief, undoubtedly rich, and most likely win a Nobel Prize even if you didn’t backup/copy/archive your data you would carry the laptop with you everywhere you went.

b) Lying through their teeth. This the is modern day “my dog ate my homework” routine. They’ve spent years or work/money with nothing to show for it, and their laptop with all of their research and data is conveniently stolen from the car. Guess they don’t have to go in front of the review board now and justify their salaries.

Something in my gut tells me the real story here is version (b). Think about it, what would you do with a winning lottery ticket? Personally I’d put it in a zip lock back and then duct tape it to my chest. What do you think?

Computer Stolen Containing Research To Cure Prostate Cancer

An Oklahoma couple is urging thieves to return a stolen computer they say has the power to save millions of lives.

Last Sunday, Sook Shin was carrying a possible cure for cancer on a small Apple computer with years worth of data.

…

Unfortunately, most of the data was never backed up, a mistake Shin said could be a major setback in the fight against cancer.

via Computer Stolen Containing Research To Cure Prostate Cancer – News9.com.

Our best estimates put the number of developers in the world at around 5 million.

Applying the 80/20 rule you can estimate:

• Of those, 20% 1 million want to launch a startup
• Of those, 20% 200,000 have enough motivation to start educating themselves about the process
• Of those, 20% 40,000 will actually start building something
• Of those, 20% 8,000 will actually finish building something
• Of those, 20% 1,600 have prepared themselves enough to achieve some measure of success

To make it into the last group you have to make it through the four above it. What have you done today to move yourself closer to the last group?

via The 80/20 Rule of Startup Founders | Software by Rob.

Gates: Well, Dr. Wakefield has been shown to have used absolutely fraudulent data. He had a financial interest in some lawsuits, he created a fake paper, the journal allowed it to run. All the other studies were done, showed no connection whatsoever again and again and again. So its an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids. Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn’t have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today. And so the people who go and engage in those anti-vaccine efforts — you know, they, they kill children. Its a very sad thing, because these vaccines are important.

via Bill Gates: Vaccine-autism link an absolute lie – CNN.com.

Great Presentation on mongoDB scaling and replication. At Phyber we use mongoDB for schema-less non-durable data storage – in other words, if the database goes bye-bye it doesn’t matter.

If you are using mongoDB, and you data is critical there are some excellent points in here.

The slides may come across as overly negative. After all Urban Airship is actively moving away from MongoDB for our largest and busiest pieces of data. So I want to make 2 things very clear:

1. I like MongoDB and would like to use it again in the future. There’s a lot I don’t like about it, but I can’t think of any “perfect” piece of software.
2. The IO situation in EC2, particularly EBS’s poor performance RAIDing really doesn’t help made life with MongoDB miserable. This story may have been very different if we were running MongoDB on bare metal with fast disks.

via schmongodb slides from Update Portland | schmichaels blog.

This morning the lawsuit against the Mets owners was unsealed. Madoff’s actions were reprehensible and beyond belief. He deserves to sit in jail for the rest of his life.

What I don’t understand is this:

In the suit, Picard is seeking the $300 million in alleged profit as well as a to-be-determined share of the hundreds of millions in principal that Sterling invested with Madoff.

If for some reason you withdrew money from a Ponzi scheme before it collapsed the expectation/law is that you are required to return all of your profit. What happened if you took your cash out to buy something else, what happens if you lost the money? Why are “Net Winners” penalized after the fact? And the one that really gets me, why are they now expected to also take a loss on their principal investment?

How much money is Irving Picard making off of this?

via Mets owners accused of making $300 million in Madoff profit – Feb. 4, 2011.

This is what we’re up against folks.

Probably one of the worlds worst hackers decided to hack his way into my honeypot last week. After enjoying his failure to accomplish anything useful, I decided to youtube the whole thing.

via Worlds worst hacker | George Hedfors.

Man this thing is cool – to bad I’m not 11 with a huge trust fund.

Take the nostalgic design of a 30s grand prix racer in 1:2 scale, a part car-fanaticism and mix it together with a lithium-ion electric motor and you get a powerful toy car for kids of all ages including those experienced driver that are still young at heart. Audi’s Auto Union Type C e-tron is made of aluminum with a carbon-look finish and provides a seat for drivers up to 1.80 meters in height, who then will be offered a top speed of close 19 mph and 44.25 lb-ft of torque for a rejuvenating journey of almost 16 miles.

via Audi’s Toy Car for the Big Boys | Gentleman’s Gadgets | The Source of Inspiration for Modern Men.