My celebrity collage by MyHeritage.com

August 22, 2006 by 18 Comments

The folks at MyHeritage.com are creating some interesting facial recognition software and one of their applications involves uploading a picture, their software recognizes the face in it, then matches it to other faces in their database. You can now get a collage of faces that matches … you can see mine below.

Interestingly, 4 out of 8 of the matches are female faces … I guess if humans have a hard time guessing my gender right (you’d be surprised), it’s no wonder a computer would have just as hard a time.

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Filed Under: Geeking out 18 Comments

Maureen Govern says, “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

August 22, 2006 by 11 Comments

AOL announced yesterday that Maureen Govern is now our ex-CTO. Her short tenure of just under 11 months spanned September 28, 2005, to August 21, 2006. She was brought in to “realign our technology resources to support the needs of our multiple businesses,” according to Jon Miller. Maureen affirms this saying, “All of this requires AOL to be on the leading edge of technology.”

If she was pressured to leave AOL yesterday over the search query data release, that is a very bad omen. For AOL, being risk-averse is a losing strategy. Punishing people for making innocent mistakes is a sure-fire way to only retain those risk-averse people. Those are not the kind of people who embody entreprenurial spirit–the kind of people who give AOL at least a fighting chance at launching products that might actually win in the marketplace.

It can take weeks to push the simplest of changes through our cumbersome development process. But, Maureen Govern’s “Who’s Who” page is already a 404. Go figure. (Yes, I understand it’s a simple copy change rather than delivering actual product functionality so it’s an unfair comparison, but it still highlights how AOL can react quickly, when needed.)

Wherever you are, wherever you go … Maureen, I wish you the best of luck. Keep doing what you think is best and right. It’s a pity things didn’t work out in your favor at AOL. Keep in touch, it’s a small world out there.

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Filed Under: AOL 11 Comments

del.icio.us/dossy links since August 7, 2006 at 09:00 AM

August 21, 2006 by Leave a Comment

del.icio.us/dossy (RSS) links since August 7, 2006 at 09:00 AM:

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Philip Greenspun is hiring AOLserver talent for photo.net

August 21, 2006 by Leave a Comment

Philip Greenspun is looking to hire some AOLserver talent for photo.net! He’s looking for a programmer, a Linux sysadmin and an Oracle DBA. If you’re looking for work, especially with AOLserver, Tcl, Linux and Oracle, then let Philip know you’re interested.

What really caught my attention and made me smile was this:

What might some tasks be for the coming months? Upgrade to AOLserver
4.5 (compile some C code).

I’m glad to see that people are actively planning on upgrading to the latest AOLserver 4.5.0 release. Thanks, everyone.

For those who don’t know who he is, Philip Greenspun is the author of several books (Philip and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing, Software Engineering for Internet Applications used for MIT 6.171). He’s also largely to thank for convincing AOL to release AOLserver as open source software, as one of the creators of the ArsDigita Community System. He’s also the curator of one of the oldest online photography communities, photo.net.

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There’ll be nobody home

August 11, 2006 by 2 Comments

Goodbye, old office. It was nice knowin’ ya. Take good care of yourself.

Dossy's old office in White Plains, NY, #4, now completely empty

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Filed Under: Uncategorized 2 Comments

I really suck at goodbyes

August 11, 2006 by Leave a Comment

The time has finally come for me to pack up my office, 2B-B09, up here in White Plains, NY. Three years ago, around this time of year, I started at AOL and set myself up in this office. I’ve worked with some really great people in this office on a wide range of projects. Over the years, people have come and gone, and the office has become a ghost town, of sorts. Perhaps it is finally time to pack it all in, after all.

Here’s some pictures, to capture some memories, before I put everything into boxes:

Dossy's old office in White Plains, NY, #1
Dossy's old office in White Plains, NY, #2
Dossy's old office in White Plains, NY, #3

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Nobody really wants to celebrate death

August 10, 2006 by Leave a Comment

Hey, Og, I just wanted to comment on your blog entry but since you turned off comments, I’ll do it by posting to mine.

I was simply amazed that none of the news media I had a chance to check
yesterday seemed to have mentioned the tragic date. Worse, none of the people,
except for a Russian friend, I talked to remembered it either.

Last year, Joi Ito wrote an Op-Ed piece for the NYT on this subject titled An Anniversary to Forget. He presents a very intelligent and authentic observation about the rememberance of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings from a Japanese point of view. Perhaps I can also provide one from an American-born-Japanese perspective, as well.

In August, 2002, I had the opportunity to be in Japan. On the date and time
of the bombings, a whole bunch of air sirens went off. I looked at my wife all
puzzled: everyone on the streets were just going about their business as usual.
There was no panicking. This wasn’t an emergency. So, we resumed our walk. Only later, when we returned to my Uncle’s home where we were staying in Nagano, did I find out what that was all about–the anniversary of the bombings. I was embarassed that I even had to ask.

Now, it might be misconstrued from what I wrote above that the Japanese are blasé about the whole event, but that’s incorrect. The bombings have changed the Japanese forever in many ways, from loved ones who were killed to childhoods ruined or destroyed, etc. However, tell me if you know anyone who truly enjoys celebrating death? You can only grieve for so long and then you have to focus yourself on the present and the future. The Japanese will certainly never forget that date in history–even if it’s as subtle as sounding the alarms–but people have moved on with their lives.

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AOLserver, Y2038 and bad MaxIdle/MaxOpen configuration examples

August 9, 2006 by Leave a Comment

Back on May 12, 2006, there were reports amongst some users of AOLserver of their server mysteriously hanging, all coincidentally just around 2006-05-12 21:25 US/Eastern, or 2006-05-13 01:27:28 UTC, to be specific. It turns out it was just 1,000,000,000 (or 10e9) seconds away from the end of time in traditional Unix epoch time, which is a 32-bit signed integer, or 1,147,483,648 seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. You could call this the first “Y2038” bug, which gets its name from the fact that the end of Unix time when represented by a 32-bit signed integer is in the year 2038, or 2038-01-19 03:14:07 UTC to be exact.

Bas Scheffers was the one who recognized the 10e9 coincidence, and soon after ‘Jesus’ Jeff Rogers realized that the MaxOpen and MaxIdle configuration parameters as shipped by default with ACS and OpenACS are set to 10e9 seconds, like so:

ns_param   maxidle   1000000000
ns_param   maxopen   1000000000

Reducing this number to something reasonable (say, “3600”) and restarting the server resolves the issue.

Other folks have already blogged about this issue, but just in case you missed it, here’s a short round-up:

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Phanfare, a photo/video hosting startup, in New Jersey, too!

August 9, 2006 by 1 Comment

Living in New Jersey, I really like to avoid having to go into New York City. But, being a technologist, there’s so many companies there, so often when I’m looking for work, the jobs are all in NYC. Today, I’ve come across a startup right here in Metuchen, NJ, called Phanfare, a photo/video hosting company similar to Flickr and YouTube, combined.

What I like: the CEO, Andrew Erlichson is blogging. What I dislike: they’re in the business of making desktop software. I found this funny:

Instead of a slow and clunky web interface, you interact with a zippy program running on your computer.

Uh, how about a fast and not-clunky web interface, that I interact with a zippy programm running on my computer (you know, that “web browser” thingy)? Hello, 1998 is calling and it wants it’s client-server architecture back.

To be fair, for managing any significant amount of large assets like photos and videos, having a helper application running on the client’s machine outside the browser is probably necessary, due to all of the important security restrictions placed on code that runs within the browser. However, having to support client software across platforms is just such a headache. I’d at least develop it in something portable like Tcl/Tk so the same code could be run without modification across platforms.

Well, I wish the Phanfare team lots of luck: I’d like to see more startups in New Jersey! Perhaps one that I’d really like to be a part of who would like to have me on their team.

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Filed Under: Geeking out 1 Comment

My definition of “software design archeology” and “software anthropology”

August 8, 2006 by Leave a Comment

I recently used the term software design archeology and realized that it’s not a widely used term from what I can tell, so I felt it might be a good idea to clearly present a definition for it. A complementary term, software anthropology should probably get a definition, as the two are related. I welcome any criticism or feedback about my use and definition of these terms, so we can all share a common vocabulary around the activities they represent.

My working definition starts by taking the existing definitions for archaeology and anthropology and replacing the references to humans with the phrase “software design” along with other relevant changes. I’m not sure if this constitutes plagiarism, but it is certainly not what is intended. The definitions I’m starting with are certainly not my own and my new use of them is simply derivative work for the benefit of the scientific community to broaden our shared vocabulary.

archeology[1], n.: The systematic study of past human life and culture by the recovery and examination of remaining material evidence, such as graves, buildings, tools, and pottery.

software design archeology, n.: The systematic study of past software’s design by the recovery and examination of remaining material evidence, such as design notes, chat logs and transcripts, mailing list archives and interviews.

anthropology[2], n.: The scientific study of the origin, the behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural development of humans.

software anthropology, n.: The scientific study of the origin, the behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural development of software.

[1] “archaeology.” The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.
Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 08 Aug. 2006.
http://www.answers.com/topic/archaeology

[2] “anthropology.” The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.
Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 08 Aug. 2006.
http://www.answers.com/topic/anthropology

Is the time ready for such a study to be undertaken by academics? Is there sufficient interest? Would a university recognize this as a worthwhile endeavour? I’ve been thinking lately about pursuing a Masters or Ph. D. degree, perhaps this could be something I could pursue. Any suggestions where to start?

As always, I welcome everyone to leave a comment below. Thanks!

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