John @gruber says it all before the WWDC Keynote...

What strikes me is this. One year ago I was in the same hotel waiting for the same keynote to the same conference. The iPad was a distant rumor, and Steve Jobs was on medical leave, two months out from a life-saving liver transplant. Now here we are, and the iPad is an amazing industry-changing smash hit (I’m writing these words using one), Apple’s market cap has surpassed Microsoft’s, and Steve Jobs is getting ready to take the stage, in his prime and at the top of his game.

It’s been one hell of a year.

via daringfireball.net

Street Giant » Leroy Stick – the man behind @BPGlobalPR

I started @BPGlobalPR, because the oil spill had been going on for almost a month and all BP had to offer were bullshit PR statements.  No solutions, no urgency, no sincerity, no nothing.  That’s why I decided to relate to the public for them.  I started off just making jokes at their expense with a few friends, but now it has turned into something of a movement.  As I write this, we have 100,000 followers and counting.  People are sharing billboards, music, graphic art, videos and most importantly information.

Why has this caught on?  I think it’s because people can smell the bullshit and sometimes laughing at it feels better than getting angry or depressed over it.  At the very least, it’s a welcome break from that routine.  The reason @BPGlobalPR continues to grow is because BP continues to spew their bullshit.

via streetgiant.com

You must click through to streetgiant above to read the entire article...

"It is unwise to design your software for zero defects... especially for spacecraft software." ☛ Gerard Holzmann

The quote above is from an OOPSLA talk that you can find on InfoQ by Gerard Holzman.

I first came across Gerard Holzman in the early 90's while looking for ways to improve the quality of software I developed for distributing real-time updates across a network.   I found his book "Design And Validation Of Computer Protocols"  helpful, but what I found most interesting was the introduction chapter.   It starts as follows...

"The problem of designing efficient and unambiguous communication protocols existed long before the first computers were built."

He goes on to illustrate this point with discussions of communication problems solved with "protocol design" as far back as 458 B.C.  This chapter was fascinating, so much so that he subsequently wrote an entire book on the subject called "The Early History of Data Networks".   That is the book you should read... Communication challenges and "protocol" based solutions throughout human history.   Reading this books gives you the impression that there could be very little ground left to cover in protocol design when computers were invented.