[Fri Dec 26 21:46:12 CET 2008]

Checking out the technology news on the Web, I see a story from eWeek posted on Slashdot about the sales of notebooks surpassing desktop sales for the first time in history. It doesn't surprise me at all. Since I moved back to Spain, I've been using the company laptop to do my work and my wife's MacBook Pro for personal stuff. Yes, I did bring some desktop computers from the US, but to be honest I never set them up again. I just don't need them anymore. So, what did we do when we recently made the decision to purchase a new computer that the kids could use to play their games and do some research for their homework? We bought a smaller MacBook and never looked back neither to the desktop nor to Windows. What do I get from laptops that I cannot get from desktops? Plenty. They are more comfortable to haul around while still providing plenty of power for normal daily usage. Besides, with todays "everything wireless" approach and semi-nomadic lifestyle, they just make far more sense. The way things are right now, I seriously doubt I will ever run a desktop. {link to this story}

[Tue Dec 23 11:05:29 CET 2008]

Although the text is in Spanish, I couldn't help it. I had to link to a story published by the Spanish free daily 20 Minutos listing the 10 worst predictions about technology ever uttered. Some of them are very well known. For example, Ken Olsen's (founder of Digital Equipment Corp.) prediction back in 1977 that nobody needs to have a computer at home —yes, he said this immediately before the PC explosion, which may help explain why his company went the way of the dodo. Likewise, Bill Gates' prediction in 1981 that nobody would ever need more than 640Kb of memory is also well known. However, there are a few other predictions that I had never read of before: Alan Sugar (founder of Amstrad) stating in 2005 that the iPod will never take off; a Boeing engineer stating in 1933 after introducing their Boeing 247 model, with capacity to hold 10 passengers, that nobody will ever build a larger airplane; the maker of the Lewyt vacuum cleaners in 1955 telling the press that nuclear-energy vacuum cleaners would be a reality in about 10 years; or a producer of the 20th Century Fox explaining in 1946 that the TV will be an absolute failure because "people will quickly get tired of spending every night watching a wooden box" (some vision he had!). It comes to remind us that even the best of the best cannot always imagine what things will be like in the near future, although we like to think of them as very skilled at reading the tea leaves. {link to this story}

[Sat Dec 20 16:32:32 CET 2008]

Malcolm Galdwell, the internationally known author of such best-selling books as The Tipping Point or Blink, has just published Outliers, where he examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success. David Brooks published a review in The New York Times a few days ago that is worth reading, as is Gladwell's own reply in his blog and this interview on Canadian public television. In general, Gladwell always makes for an inspiring read and, at least in this case, David Brooks' review also offer a few interesting thoughts:

Most successful people begin with two beliefs: the future can be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so. They were often showered by good fortune, but relied at crucial moments upon achievements of individual will.

Most sucessful people also have a phenomenal ability to consciously focus their attention. We know from experiments with subjects as diverse as obsessive-compulsive disorder sufferes and Buddhist monks that people who can self-conciously focus attention have the power to rewire their brains.

Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can do that are not prisiners of the stimuli around them. They can choose from paterns in the world and lengthen their time horizons. This individual power leads to others. It least to self-control, the ability to formulate strategies in order to resist impulses. If forced to choose, we would all rather our children be poor with self-control than ritch without it.

It leads to resilience, the ability to persevere with an idea even when all the influences in the world say it can't be done. A common story among entrepenurs is that people told them they were too stupud to do something, and they set out to prove the jerks wrong.

It leads to creativity. Individuals who can focus attention have the ability to hold a subject or problem in their mind long enough to see it anew.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The corollary of all this in relation to the way we organize our schools is self-evident, and it's all stuff that we can easily apply. We need many more Malcolm Gladwell's in the world, many more people who are capable to take a new approach to old problems and propose new solutions to them. Even better, solutions that are not driven by ideological premises and prejudices but rather by empirical findings. {link to this story}

[Fri Dec 19 23:37:47 CET 2008]

Just came across a short piece published on Wired about the new LED street lights to be deployed in New York City that sounds quite suggestive. They can be programmed to three different situations: park, street corner and mid-block. Also, as it could be imagined, they also consume far less energy. {link to this story}

[Thu Dec 18 14:29:05 CET 2008]

Tech Source from Bohol publishes an extensive list of keyboard shortcuts for Ubuntu/GNOME that should prove quite useful to all those people out there who rely on the keyboard to do most of their work and avoid using the mouse too much. Mind you, it's not earth-shattering, but useful nonetheless. {link to this story}

[Wed Dec 17 22:09:30 CET 2008]

While reading the kernel section of last week's Linux Weekly News I find an interesting quote by Ingo Molnar:

Meanwhile, 10 years and counting, the Linux kernel still generates a stupid write IO for every file read that apps do. Fortunately hardware designers will get rid of rotating disks faster than we can fix our garing process problems in this space —but it's still a bit sad.

{link to this story}

[Sun Dec 7 14:46:37 CET 2008]

Did you ever experience an issue when using the backspace to delete characters while using Apple Mac OS X terminal application to log into a Linux system remotely using SSH? The solution is quite easy. Just clik on Terminal, then select Preferences, click on the Advanced tab and make sure you check the box for Delete sends Ctrl-H. That should do. If you still experience any problems, this article contains some other configuration settings that you can try. {link to this story}