Happy belated women’s day, to my mom and all the women in my life.
Category Archives: Website
The FCC began an investigation in the cable industry last October, to ensure that cable companies would not take advantage of the over-the-air television broadcasting switch from analog to digital in February.
As it turns out, their suspicions were correct. I called Comcast about an unrelated issue recently, and my television lineup became a topic of conversation. Most government-sponsored ads on TV about the digital switch say that if you have cable, you will not need to make any changes. But the representitative from Comcast said, “Oh no, everything is changing.” When asked about the details, he said, “All those TVs you have that aren’t connected to a digital box will lose channels 30 and up.” They’re moving over half of their analog channels to a digital tier, which requires a Comcast-owned cable box to decompress. Renting these extra cable boxes will require all customers to pay more money per month, unless they don’t watch any channels above 30.
Comcast freely admitted it was guilty to me. Probably because I’m just a customer who will be pissed if what he says turns out to be true on February 17.
The FCC investigation has proven difficult. The cable companies are complaining that the amount of information requested by the FCC simply could not be gathered and presented by the deadline. I read that as either their entire IT department is incompetent or they don’t want to get caught. I’m guessing the latter. Big cable is simply ignoring the FCC.
Most recently, the FCC has fined all of the cable companies under investigation a five figure sum for not complying. Laughable! Comcast, the largest cable provider in the US, is a 30 billion dollar annual revenue generator. Proportionately, a similar fine would require me to cut a penny into about 30 equal pieces and give one of those to the FCC.
From an Ars Technica article, which summarizes a letter by Kevin Martin, who was the chair of the FCC under the Bush adminstration:
The price for every other service that the FCC regulates has gone down, Martin charges. Wireless down 85 percent, long distance calling by 50 percent, and international calling by almost 90 percent. But not cable, whose prices the FCC’s now ex-chair says have doubled since 1992.
If cable prices continue to grow at a similar rate, I can imagine a very vivid future without cable televsion. Internet video is growing in quality and popularity every day.
The first rule of Project Euler is you don’t talk about Project Euler. Ha, ha! just kidding.
I haven’t been blogging much lately. My apologies. I’ve found a great new hobby, which has occupied most of my time. I’ve been solving problems on Project Euler. Here is a link to my profile there. Tonight, I just solved my 106th problem, of 222.
“Project Euler exists to encourage, challenge, and develop the skills and enjoyment of anyone with an interest in the fascinating world of mathematics.”
These problems are very interesting and seem tailor-made to someone of my interests. My major in college was computer science, with a concentration in mathematics. Actually for Project Euler, a major in math and some comp sci work would probably serve a would-be solver somewhat better.
Most of the problems require some type of computer program. You’re usually searching for a number with a peculiar property, or adding a bunch of numbers with a similar property. Many involve prime numbers, which can really stretch a programmer’s technique. Some are quite unique. One asks you to evaluate a bunch of poker hands played by two players, asking how many times the first player wins. Another asks you to programmatically solve a bunch of sudoku puzzles. One even asks which squares on the monopoly board game are the most popular, statistically.
A new problem has been posted every week since I joined. I hope they keep this up. I could be solving these problems for quite a while. My progress was very quick (several solutions per day) at the beginning. A couple of weeks ago I had slowed to one solution per day. Now I have to think about a problem for a day or two before a good solution occurs to me. I have quite a few I’m thinking about now.
What makes the site so great is that the problems build upon each other. Knowing how to solve an earlier problem will help solve a later problem. Efficiency is king, so if your solution takes a few seconds, perhaps the forum for the problem will have a faster algorithm. This is where the real learning takes place. Some times I’ll wait a few seconds, or even a few minutes for my program to run, only to find that a technique I hadn’t considered gets the answer in a few milliseconds.
Last week I was proud to have solved my 100th problem, which is somewhat of an achievement. Of all the users that have signed up at project euler, I’m within the top 3%. My preferred language is python. Which is good, because while it is one of the most popular languages on Project Euler, it is also one of the most successful. Soon I’ll write a blog entry about how much I love python. I just started learning it a few weeks before I started Project Euler.
Users are allowed to submit problem suggestions. I just sent my first one. I hope it will be approved, but I understand the approval process is quite long.
Sprint announced yesterday at the National Press Club in Washington DC that Android wasn’t good enough for sprint. If that turns out to be the case when my contract comes up for renewal, I’m pretty sure I’ll decide Sprint’s not good enough for me. If I wasn’t under this contract, I believe I would have switched to T-Mobile, who recently offered the first Android handset, the G1.
With all the companies committed to bringing Android to the market, you’d think Sprint would want to jump on the bandwagon, for fear of being left behind. This is almost as bad as Ford deciding it is going to be one of the few motor manufacturers not looking into alternative fuels/technologies. I smell bad things in both companies futures.
In fairness, Sprint has said it’s committed to bringing an Android product to their lineup eventually. But the clock is ticking. They’ll certainly lose me as a customer if they don’t get one out by next fall. My next phone will most definitely be an Android phone… the only decision to be made is which.
Update: I sent Sprint an email letting them know my stance: Android or die by next year. They called me back, letting me know why they thought Android wasn’t good enough. They listed two reasons 1) it doesn’t support WiMax, and 2) it doesn’t support 3G. This is kind of a ridiculous set of reasons, honestly. My current phone doesn’t support wireless anything, much less WiMax. And neither my phone nor the current city I live in have 3G. So to me, even supporting an older wireless standard such as 802.11b, g or n would be a step up. So my current phone, the Treo, is just as “bad” as Android, in that it support neither feature, and yet it’s still offered? I smell BS.
Quick video tutorial/demo about Google Reader by request.
