Of Hardware and Software

I recently purchased a Sony Ericsson w610i set. If you know me, despite being related to IT, I am not a mobile phone/ gadget freak. This is the first set that I have bought (earlier ones were gifted). A good review of the set can be found here.

Many features of the phone remind me of the early days of personal computers -- of the difference between the electronic circuits and the interpretation of the electrons running through them.

Hardware manufacturers come up with a very well-thought product range; each variation is given a meaningful model number. For example, the "w" in w610i probably stands for "walkman", indicating the dominating music features of the phone. (By the way, do you know "walkman" is Sony's trademark? Walkman's history tells you that the initial attempts to market the product met with little success.) Whenever you see a hardware model, be assured that there is a rationale behind the model numbering. See, for example, how Intel numbers its processors.

Comparatively, I feel ashamed how vague is software versioning and packaging. On the brighter side, software continues to push hardware to its limits. Just like early days of PC, amateurs continue to write software for PDAs and mobile devices. They hack stuff to provide you with more than what comes out of the box. Two very nice examples for Sony Ericsson sets are Float Mobile Agent (Fma) and My Phone Explorer (see the screenshots below). Fma is open source and My Phone Explorer is freeware.






These software let you do amazing stuff like taking complete control of your phone from your PC; take backup of everything in your phone and later restore it; etc. MyPhoneExplorer additionally lets you install .jars into your mobile phone.

Coming to the software side of the Sony Ericsson mobile set, it runs Symbian as its operating system, and of course Java ME. Sony Ericsson has a very nice Developer's Forum for their products.

جو اپنے آپ کو ڈھونڈ لے ۔۔۔

جو اپنے آپ کو ڈھونڈ لے
وہ آسماں اور زمیں ہے
جھلملاتا ستارہ ہے
وہ کہکشاں سے حسیں ہے

The 99 Feet Man

I have come to know that I can only grasp a little when flooded with information. So happened with my recent purchase of Labyrinths of Reason: Paradoxes, Puzzles, and the Frailty of Knowledge. The book is about "scientific method" and its shortcomings. By scientific method, the author, William Poundstone, means beginning with a hypothesis and coming to some conclusion by experimentation and empirical evidence.

I have read quite a few chapters. So far, this is the best thing that I learned from the book (reproduced in my own words):

Suppose, I claim that no human being is longer than 100 feet. Since we don't know the exact details of how height of human beings is controlled, there is no direct proof of the statement. Naturally, we'll have to resolve to inductive reasoning. That is, each example that you see will strengthen your "belief" in the claim. You see Mr. A; ok, he is shorter than 100 feet. You see Mr. B; he is just 6 feet. He also confirms the hypothesis, and so on.

Now suppose that you see a 99 feet man (perhaps, in a circus). Theoretically, that should strengthen your belief in the hypothesis even further (as 99 < 100). But in practice, this example shakes your belief!

I have become a fan of William Poundstone. The first book of his that I came to read was How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle. I bought it because I had heard that they ask weird puzzles in MS interviews. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that half of the book was on the history of the term IQ, the formation of the silicon valley (trust me, it's very interesting), and a general discussion on what puzzles show and what they can't.