Todd G. Simpson

Here is your guide to "sharking" a car. With Carshark, and a little creativity, you to can make your drive to work more interesting.  In the paper they show you how to hook things up so that you can control a car through WiFi. You are sitting at a red light, and want to have a little fun.  How about sending 07 AE 15 A2; this controls the horn frequency?  Drive-by ringtones.  Could be a $1B business.

This is an interesting project ( link ) and it is good to see that it is kickstarted. The opening video is quite well structured, starting from positive feedback and moving to negative.  I have taken a snapshot of the video at a screen which presages the five areas that will be covered. There is no doubt that Facebook is (1) a valuable service, and (2) has raised some hackles due to their ownership of users data. The area from above that most interests me is the "society" sphere, and what a student at Stanford (from the mobisocial lab...sorry, I don't have an exact name) calls the "circle of like."  Facebook provides great value today to users and to websites, and has created a virtuous circle where clicking "like" drives more traffic to Facebook, and more data / information / knowledge to websites.  I highlight this as the circle reinforces two strong user bases, so displacing Facebook is probably harder than even Google imagines. The main ques...

I have about a 20 minute commute to work, and like to simply relax and listen to the radio.  Lately, however, I can't find a station that is worth listening to.  It is not the innuendo that bothers me, it is the constant, lowest common denominator, one-track, childish innuendo that I find annoying.  So, I switch from channel to channel trying to avoid the announcers.  In the mornings this is almost impossible; every station (except pure classical music) is like talk radio for middle school boys. So, I listened to NPR today, and found it refreshing.  A few of the segments actually caused me to think :-) I also did a little searching, for academic interest, at how close to the line some of the stations are today.  I found this link , which outlines what is "indecent".  The definition is actually quite interesting: "Because the Supreme Court has determined that obscene speech is not entitled to First Amendment protection, radio and television stati...

I enjoy reading layman physics books.  And, I enjoy the Science vs Religion debates, especially those that cast Science as a Religion. Superstring theory has always both intrigued and bothered me. Intrigued as, on the surface, it has a nice visual "ah ha" about it; the universe is comprised of tiny (zero dimension) vibrating strings, which can form chords and harmonies that result in manifestations that are available to the human senses. Bothered as, below the surface, it is a huge mess of mumbo-jumbo that has no intuitive sense to it.  Relative to relativity (sic), this is a fairly easy statement to make; even a layman can get a grasp of relativity through Einstein's own writings.  But, relative to quantum theory, can Superstring theory really have "no intuitive sense".  What I really mean is that superstring theory has no science behind it - no way to test anything.  Quantum theory, on the other hand, has been tested over and over again. [...

I have both a Macbook Pro and a Gateway running Windows 7.  I use both about the same amount. Scorecard for the last month: Windows reboots required:       None Mac reboots required:               Three FYI, I have a lot more software running on my Windows box than I do on the Mac.