Earth: The Largest Neural Model

It appears that the individuals in population and their interaction with each other very closely models neural activities in brain. The entire neural network can be looked upon as smaller fractal version of human population, with lot fo details vanished. In other words, an alien might prefer to look upon Earth as the planet hosting one huge "brain" instead of individuls independently living their life!

Why BN.com Has To Suck?

I've written quite some code whoes sole users are probably just few dozen people. Even than I'd went to extra-ordinary lengths to make sure that code was having highest number of features and ease of use than anything else that existed and was comparable. There are lots of businesses everywhere ranging from car rental companies to book stores who have, unlike me, thousands and thousands of users every single day, staff of hundreds and millions to dollars spend. To add all the cool features in their services that would delight their users every now and than, it would take probably cost a sub-percent of their revenues. Why it doesn't happen? Why it is so hard for Barnes and Nobel to create a website that can proudly stand besides Amazon in slickness, modern looks and innovation? Cost is certainly not the factor. What is it? Why certain part of eco-sphere is doomed to be second class regardless of available resources to them?

Things Behind The eBay Deal

I couldn't have read more braindead deal than Skype for $2.1 billion. Obviously Skype isn't worth that much (so far it has got invetsments of under $21M). One could have built much more feature rich, customized software for 1000 times less money than that. What about future? Wouldn't Skype have revenues of zillion dollars in 2010? No, it won't. Biggies like Microsoft and Yahoo are already coming up with similar software with far deeper reach than Skype could ever imagine to have. Plus cable companies are throwing away entire need for computer and microphones and have very soon plans to dial from regular phone and route it through Intenet.

So why executives at eBay would decide to through away half of their cash in deal that needs everyone to take microscope to find what's so good about it? There are many deals like that have happened in past where people just can't find justification and had just has to go with the aura of the buyer. My guess is that big heads in eBay is going to get, somehow someway, huge cuts in this deal. The thing is that when company has $4B floating in thier bank account, its not easy for executives to get it simply transfered in their bank accounts. So you go out, cut the deal to buy $2000 car for $200,000, have seller spend $188,000 on things you liked but which you couldn't have directly spent by yourself. And meanwhile, cross your fingers to have journalists think you are a smart guy and have them keep discussing that there must be something super cool in that car that a visionary like you can see but dumbass journalists like us can't. I meant those journalists which your PR department haven't bought out, yet.

Exception Code Template For CodeRush

How CodeRush could miss this template? Anyway you can copy and paste this in CodeRush Options (Expert mode) to have your own!

[System.Serializable]
public class InvalidDataException
{
public InvalidDataException()
{
} 

public InvalidDataException(string message) : base( message )
{
} 

public InvalidDataException (string message, System.Exception inner): base( message, inner )
{
} 

public InvalidDataException (System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationInfo info, System.Runtime.Serialization.StreamingContext context) : base(info, context)
{
}
}

Hurricane Formations

Since yesterday night the question how Hurricane takes birth was eating me away. I resisted googling it and try to find the answer just using what I know. My best bet was 2nd law of thermodynamics (which I've become a huge fan due to this website). The 2nd law essentially says that nature intrisinkly tries to equal out everything. That means if there is high pressure somewhere, the inherent consequence would be nullify the excess and have an equal average pressure everywhere. So I'd been trying to figure out what kind of pressure patterns would be required so a rotation would occur. I planned out a little computer simulation of this with the guess that a ring of low pressure would probably produce hurricane-like whirlpool.

Aha, I was dead wrong. The 2nd law would prevent cyclone from happening instead of be a reason to produce it. My wife intuitively pointed out that hurricane would occur due to warm air that goes up where the cold air is but while it does so, the Coriolis effect kicks in which would produce whirlpool (similar to the whirlpool produced when flushing the toilet). Her intuition is awesomely right. All hurricanes in northern hemisphere go in anti-clockwise and southern hemisphere in clockwise. The huge power that a hurricane demonstrate is supplied by rotation of the Earth which itself is so massive.

I was also intrigued by how hurricanes are named. It turns out some international committee has preset list of names starting with letter A,B, C.. for each year. The list repeats every 6 years (i.e. names for 2005 hurricanes would be same as 2011). While now many names used are male’s names, previously only female names were used to name hurricanes :).