General

I just discovered slideshare. I would categorize slideshare as “YouTube” but for presentations. I like the website a whole lot — wealth of information / user generated content, on lots of different topics; there is good stuff, such as Conference presentations, and great technical slides, and there is less useful stuff as well. Presentations are … Read more

In Memoriam | Virginia Tech So many lives lost. Such a wasteful incident. So many lives affected. Students, professors, friends, and families. From different races, and different cultures, and different believes, and different places. From Indonesia, to South America, the United States, and even Puerto Rico. All equally effected. So many beautiful people. So many … Read more

I meant to publish this before… but it is never too late to see an ending like this… While NCAA Division I Basketball gets most of the attention, games like the one below is what makes college basketball exciting… you have to see the clip below of the the final 45 seconds of the Division … Read more

The Mobility Weblog is now accessible via Winksite; just point your desktop or mobile browser to the following URL:     http://winksite.com/eortiz/weblog Thanks to David Harper for his help… Pretty neat… Enjoy… ceo

In this month's COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM (April 2007/Vol. 50, No. 4 37), Jeff Kramer, dean of the Faculty of Engineering and a professor in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, wrote an excellent article that I recommend you go read. “IS ABSTRACTION THE KEY TO COMPUTING?” tackles the following question: “Why is … Read more

What the hell… so there is a new Microsoft XP patch (update)… it is about the “Genuine Windows Notification”… The EULA says “WILL HELP YOU KNOW IF YOU ARE RUNNING A PROPERLY LICENSED…” Hm… is the intention to let me know, or let Microsoft know? “INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR SYSTEM (FOR EXAMPLE, YOUR WINDOWS PRODUCT KEY … Read more

Michael Yuan has a great post on Texas as the best place for software developers… where he summarizes salary data for the top 10 cities in the U.S. After adjusting for cost of living, the first 5 spots are all Texas, with Austin #2. “On average, software developers in Austin are paid $84,460 a year, … Read more

John Backus, a pioneer in programming languages, passed away at the age of 82. He lead the creation of FORTRAN, both the language and its advanced compiler. Also, with Peter Naur, developed the Backus-Naur notation – a (still) very important notation used to describe the structure of programming languages. Great contributions he made to the … Read more

Copyright Royalty Board sets webcast royalty rates for 2006-2010 “The U.S. Copyright Royalty Board set new royalty rates for webcasters operating non-interactive radio stations, which will increase annually through 2010 and require Web radio stations to pay for each song streamed to each user. The rates set by the CRB are in line with those … Read more

The venue and schedule for BarCamp Austin II has been announced… BarCampAustin II will be held at Bourbon Rocks on March 9th & 10th! Schedule of Events: Friday 4:30pm – Refresh meetup 6:30pm – BarCampAustin meetup 8:00pm – BarCampAustin welcome party 2:00am – the bar will close Saturday 8:00am – Setup 9:00am – BarCampAustin opens … Read more