Bernard Cole

• 01.18.2013
• UI design: Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater

When I worked in Silicon Valley and had figured out that it was cheaper to rent a car when I needed it to visit companies than to own a car, I faced the same situation as the engineer from Calgary. Unless I rented the same model from the local auto rental firm, it was the secret handshake all over again in the modern cars with all of the electronics. I was able to avoid most of the problems with the infotainment by making sure that I had 1) a simple mp3 player with FM radio in my pocket and 2) my kindle with some selections fron non fiction books that I could use its text to speech to listen to. For most of the other electronics, it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to find the basic functions - as they were all in different locations and involved different sequences of activation.

• 06.18.2012
• The growing challenge of securing embedded systems

Re cdhmanning. Of course you are right. That is why embedded developers need to look for solutions to the problems where ever they can find them. That was one of the points of the column outlining alternaitve security solutions that can do what RTOSes cannot, whether Stuxnet or any other possible security intrusion.

• 06.06.2012
• Using formal methods for sophisticated static code analysis

Thanks for spotting that. It is fixed now.

• 02.16.2012
• SPI, shoelaces and the future of wireless sensor design

Thanks for catching that. I made the correction.

• 02.08.2012
• Software Defined Networking: The next big thing?

You are right on the numbers of URLs. To be precise sort of, the number of urls available under IPv6 is 340 undecillion addresses. Which is why, I think that standards like OpenFlow are important, to give structure to something that is growing like Topsey in a completely uncontrolled way. It is still like the wild west out there, despite the efforts of the WWW Consortium and the IETF Task Forces.

• 01.24.2012
• My war with consumer electronics

Regarding cell phones and their reliability. As a diabetic all my life, the cell phone gives me access to outside contacts and they to me in case i ever get in trouble. Have not convinced the IRS yet, though, that it would be a legitimate medical expense I could deduct. I tried out a number of GPS services provided with cell phones and they are only reliable in dense, well populated areas. Where I live (actually within sight of cell phone towers on a nearby peak) the GPS is wildly inaccurate, putting me 20 miles from where I really am.

• 01.24.2012
• My war with consumer electronics

re test_engineer, the column I wrote refers to MP3 players, which I take along with me on my twice daily hikes in the wood around where i work and live and listen to music and mostly books - a lot of classic and literary fiction that i never had time to read, lot of books on general issues in science and technology. Don't use smartphones and even resent the features imposed on me by the wireless service provider in the "low end" cell phone that i use: camera, web access of a primitive sort, instant messaging. Used the first occassionally never used the other two. Would rather have much better service, which i still do not have in all areas where i live. Still maintain a separate landline. Only idiots give up the reliability of a landline to make a cell phone their main phone.

• 01.24.2012
• My war with consumer electronics

Sometimes, consumer electronics devices can be dangerous to your health. A few holiday seasons ago, I was trying to open one such product and grabbed a hunting knife to open the packaging, when the scissors, swiss army knife and steak knife I had tried first did work. The knife slipped on the super-hard plastic and I had a cut on my hand seriously enough to take me to a hospital emergency room. As I was waiting for the physician, I saw another patient with a similar injury. She had also been trying to open her electronics device and she had a friend who had the same sort of injury under similar circumstances. It must be a common experience because Black and Decker has a special tool they bring out and advertise on television each holiday season designed specifically for cutting open consumer electronics device packaging.

• 01.09.2012
• It’s Donald Knuth’s 74th birthday and he’s talking

I have added Donald Knuth's videos to a personal archive I maintain of others, including many on the web of stories site, not only for the useful information content I receive, but also to use as a sane place to go where I can regain my own sense of balance lost when dealing with the insanity in the world around me.

• 12.19.2011
• Software liability laws - Part 1

I should have included a link to Thompson's lecture when I posted Jack's column. Here is the link to a site where you can download it free as a PDF file: http://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs251/papers/trusting-trust.pdf