Z Trek: The Alan Zeichick Weblog

Google I/O and Apple WWDC are hot

Holy Sellouts, Batman! I received an email from Apple at 6:44am Pacific time on Wednesday, April 25:WWDC2012. Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. June 11-15 in San Francisco. It’s the week we’ve all been waiting for. Register now!A little…

High-PPI displays coming to a desktop near you

Get ready for an onslaught of high-resolution displays, coming to everyone from smartphones to tablets to laptops to desktops.As I wrote about last month in “In the iPad 3 era, pay attention to the pixels-per-inch,”, Apple computers users…

Farewell to Embedded Systems Programming magazine

I wish a fond farewell to Embedded Systems Programming magazine. ESP was launched by my friends Don Pazour (publisher), Ted Bahr (associate publisher) Regina Starr Ridley (executive editor) and J.D. Hildebrand (editor) in 1988.ESP was renamed…

Lessons from 25 Years of IBM’s OS/2

Once upon a time, IBM’s OS/2 operating system was the future. As we commemorate the 25th anniversary of its April 1987 launch, it’s instructive to look back on OS/2’s failure in the market.OS/2 played a large part in my own history. Ted…

Announcing ALAN2012 – the alternative to the TED Conferences

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

With software security, we’re outgunned

The good guys aren’t winning.In the battle to keep our software safe, we are outgunned. To take a minor example: We set up a captcha system to filter out garbage comments on sdtimes.com stories and blog posts. It didn’t take long for hackers…

Android and Linux do the reverse-fork maneuver

Android forked out from Linux. And now, with Linux 3.3 (released on Mar. 18) it has been sucked back into the mainline.The description on KernelNewbies is succinct and clear: For a long time, code from the Android project has not been merged…

In the iPad 3 era, pay attention to the Pixels-Per-Inch

I love, love, love my Dell 3007WFP monitor. The 30” beast – showing 2560 x 1600 pixels – has been on my desk since January 2007, when I bought it (refurbished) from the Dell Outlet Store for $1,162.60.Clearly, I’ve gotten my money’s…
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SQL Server 2012 is not the new iPad

Two important products were introduced this week. One was the new iPad from Apple. The other was SQL Server 2012 from Microsoft. With all the coverage of Apple’s third-generation tablet, everything else in the tech industry ground…

Java, Java everywhere

Would you believe that 18.0% of developers that SD Times surveyed said that their organizations are running J2EE 1.4 in production environments? That’s the version of the Java server-side platform that was officially released in November 2003.…

The secret joy and danger of software updates

The message popped up in my email last week: Canon was offering a firmware upgrade for my DSLR. Why was I in such a hurry to download and install it? Why do I get such pleasure from updating firmware, such delight in seeing new versions of mobile…

Why my MacBook Air is turning into a giant iPad

For a while, mobile devices were expanding to become more like desktop computers. They gained real web browsers, full-featured email clients, installable applications, oodles of functionality. The pendulum has turned, and now desktops/notebooks…

Radio moves from analog waveforms to digital packets

What’s the traffic like? No, not on the notoriously backlogged US-101 cutting through Silicon Valley, not on Route 128 around Boston, not even “The Four Oh Five” in Los Angeles. I mean the traffic through your office’s Internet connection.A…

Looking for the best of the best of the best

Hard to believe it’s been 15 years since “Men in Black” appeared in theatres. The movie is one of my favorites, and a wonderful scene is when an Army officer observes that in its recruiting efforts, the Men in Black is looking for “the…

Services change. Get used to it.

Want to pick a little fight? Talk about football. If you’re in most of the world, the 2014 World Cup is already looming on your horizon. If you’re in the United States, then you’re probably thinking about next month’s Super Bowl XLVI,…

Put away the forklift, I’ve got FORTRAN on my mind

The smell of fresh ink. The source-code listings. The structure. The structure! I am thoroughly enjoying my review copy of “Modern Fortran: Style and Usage,” by Norman S. Clerman and Walter Spector. FORTRAN (or as it’s now called, Fortran)…
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Fast cars! Fast phones! And a new developer conference!

Toys, toys, toys. I love to read about new toys, especially sleek sports cars and nifty computerized gadgets. This week has been a bonanza – from two different directions. You might think my focus would be on the big annual Consumer Electronics…

Securing the data

Whose fault is it when data is stolen? It’s rarely blamed on the programmers. If a company executive leaves a laptop filled with confidential data in a taxicab, you probably wouldn’t blame a software developer. Instead, you’d presumably…

Remembering John McCarthy

Computer scientist John McCarthy passed away in October 2011. In an SD Times end-of-year retrospective, cryptographer Whitfield Diffie wrote a personal essay focusing on McCarthy’s work on the creation of public-key crypto. Diffie’s presented…

Introducing AnDevCon III, May 2012

AnDevCon III – the third iteration of our Android Developer Conference – will be coming back to the San Francisco Bay Area from May 14-17, 2012.We had some excitement scheduling this conference, as those who attended AnDevCon II in November…

Why is video conferencing so hard?

Video conferencing is difficult. Whether you’re using a phone, tablet, desktop or laptop, there are challenges everywhere.• Video conferencing requires that all participants use the same service. Whether it’s Skype, Oovoo, FaceTime, AIM,…

Was Apple right about Flash?

As you may have seen a few weeks ago, Adobe is giving up on Flash for mobile devices, and is embracing HTML5.Flash doesn’t run on Apple’s iOS devices. That’s not news, of course. Flash has never run on the iPhone, iPod touch or the iPad.…

Picture-perfect software

A four-day weekend doesn’t mean four days without work, not in today’s modern economy. However, a holiday does offer a nice healthy opportunity for improving my life/work balance. Although I spent a lot of time in the office over this year's…
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The beauty of Peninsula Temple Sholom

This is one of a series of articles I wrote for the monthly Bulletin of Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, Calif. In our haste to get to services, classes or committee meetings, we sometimes forget to appreciate the beautiful physical…

David Gerrold, Tribbles, cookbooks and more

You are undoubtedly wondering, “What’s going on with the SD Times team? What are those editors up to?” Let's find out:• Do you like tribbles? Read our new online column by David Gerrold, a longtime programmer and writer of the landmark…

Mister Tweetman

Wait, oh yes, wait a minute Mister TweetmanWait Mister Tweetman.Mister Tweetman refresh and seeIf there's a Twitter in your queue for meI been waiting such a long timeSince I was DM’d from that girl of mine.There must be some tweets todayFrom…

On slide rules and smartphones

What does mobility mean to you? To many of us, it means smartphones like Android devices, the iPhone, a Windows Phone, or even a BlackBerry. For others, particularly those who live in the past, it means a slide rule.The notion of mobility came…

Google searches and quantitative methods

Oh, the joy of random Google searches! Earlier today I was looking for something regarding software testing – the details don’t matter to this story. But one of the Google search results brought up a 2008 issue of an English-language Romanian…

No, I am not satisfied

Every time I make a restaurant reservation online, I am sent an email survey after the meal. Every time I get my car serviced, I’m asked about my satisfaction. After I buy something from an increasing number of online merchants, I’m asked…

Occupy Babylon 5

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick