A Random Pattern

This article really got me thinking. We react to news every day, yet we are generally oblivious to much of the picture behind the scenes. The furor over the NSA wiretapping, the blogosphere blowup over MSN locking out a chinese blogger, and other daily news generally goes to show that once you start really looking into a decision it’s not nearly so easy as we tend to assume (usually in outraged rants to our co-workers).

Take this article on China’s growing energy use. It’s from the perspective of a blog on alternative energy, but there is a lot of valuable insight into international politics and many other areas here. For example:

China has courted oil-rich nations such as Sudan, Venezuela and Iran that are officially out of favour with Washington, even dangling the possibility of using its United Nations Security Council veto to protect them against sanctions.

China last year repeatedly blocked U.N. attempts to punish Sudan for failing to stop atrocities in its Darfur region. China owns a 40 percent stake in the major oil consortium drilling in Sudan, and it buys half of Sudan’s crude exports.

Does that give you a new, refreshed perspective on the Iran relationship we hear in the news? Many of you may already know some of the above, and many of the other points in the article. But reading them from a new perspective often puts the news we know into a different light, with new implications and possibilities of understanding. Give it a read, and tell me what you think.

When I read this Credit Card Rewards article, it answered some of the questions I had, and helped me feel that some options we’ve looked at weren’t “tricks” that would backfire. If you are a careful user of credit cards, and want to improve your understanding of the offers that flood your mailbox, then give this a read. Here’s a blurb:

Why would credit card companies pay consumers to use their cards? Discover, the industry leader in cash-back reward cards, said it gave away $500 million in 2005.

This is, after all, an industry better known for tactics like offering low-interest teaser rates that shoot up or changing the terms of a contract at a whim. Therefore, it may come as a bit of a surprise that many of the offers are credible as well as lucrative for the consumer. Indeed, cash-reward cards may be one of the most consumer-friendly products the industry has ever marketed.

As the article says, if you need to look at the interest rate of the card then you probably need to not be looking at a new card, and instead pay down your current debt. I also highly recommend a financial adviser – our credit union provides a free financial advisor, and yours may also.

My favorite (and the funniest I’ve found) geeky predictions for 2006. Here are my two favorites:

• Another blog search engine will release a list of top 100 bloggers. Every blogger on the list will blog the news in the form of: “Wow, I’m honored to have made it onto the top 100 list” with a link back to the list maintainer’s blog. The list maintainer will in return blog: “I’m honored to see that the list has been covered by such a high-profile blogger” with a link back to the winner’s blog. The link incest will continue for weeks until it has propelled the list maintainer himself into the top 100, at which point the list will be declared a sham and the blogosphere will erupt in outrage.
• The RIAA will be granted its long-awaited patent on the concept of suing your own customers and promptly sue the MPAA for violating it. Buoyed by this success, the RIAA announces its intentions to patent the act of granting patents and threatens to “sue the patent office out of existence” if it is granted.

Hmmm…that first item gives me an idea….

In his famous essay You and Your Research (which I recommend to anyone ambitious, no matter what they’re working on), Richard Hamming suggests that you ask yourself three questions:

1. What are the most important problems in your field?

2. Are you working on one of them?
3. Why not?

Great article – and great excuse to use when the IRS wants to know why you didn’t get around to filing your taxes (here, just read this!). Certainly makes me feel better about procrastinating….just kidding.

I hope if you’re at all technically inclined, that you didn’t miss this little tidbit this Christmas. Google’s Earth program is “tracking” Santa – and boy is he zipping around tonight!! When we were watching earlier, he was hitting Egypt – I imagine he’s moved on by this point to another country.

Never before could you get such a clear visual representation of the sheer amount of work Mr. Claus would actually have before him each Christmas Eve!!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good Night!

Read more at googleblog.blogspot.com…

Or see pictures and summary at Brinke Guthrie’s blog

This explains what the Google Talk team has been doing…. and here I thought they were just goofing off the last few months. (I’m kidding, of course.)

Today, two major advances have been made in the openness of our voice capabilities. This morning, the Jabber Software Foundation (JSF) introduced two new proposed extensions to XMPP, known as Jingle and Jingle Audio. These enhancements describe how to write software compatable with Google Talk’s voice features and have been introduced into the JSF’s standards process where they’ll be reviewed and improved by the XMPP community. To make implementing these extensions even easier, we’ve released a library we call “libjingle.”Libjingle is the very same code Google Talk uses to negotiate, establish, and maintain peer-to-peer voice sessions, packaged as a library for other developers to use in their own projects. By incorporating Libjingle into your project, you enable its users to voice chat with other users of the Google Talk service.

The future of voice communications is looking brighter and cheaper for us consumers, though there’s a big battle still to get through with the major telcos. My advice to them? Figure out NOW how to get on board, cut your losses while you can.

Read more at googletalk.blogspot.com…