Category: Asides

Russian banks are experimenting with adding document scanners, fingerprint readers and even lie detectors to their ATM machines in order to allow them to do things like take loan applications.

The creator of Mad Libs, Leonard Stern, died at age 88 on Tuesday.  The idea was born out of trying to overcome writers block while writing a script for the “Honeymooners” in 1953.

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
~Abraham Lincoln

This is one of my favorite leadership quotes.  Lincoln had an incredible understanding of human nature and it was very evident in his leadership style.

The paid version of Google apps gives you some incredible tools to manage and secure mobile phones at a much lower cost than Blackberry server.

My brother wrote up a nice post about the different online donation options he has looked at using for his non-profit. In addition to the ones he mentioned, Google Checkout is another one worth considering.

Facebook had tournament called their Hacker Cup where competitors tried to solve a series of problems in two hours.  Interestingly most of the competitors programmed in C++.  However Petr Mitrichev who one used Java.  When asked why he used Java, he said:

It’s harder to make a mistake in Java.

I think a lot of programmers miss this concept when it comes to programming.  Some constraints that may seem to slow you down can actually make you faster when you consider the cost of errors.  I’m not trying to say that Java is a perfect programming language.  However, Petr decided that for him and his goals it provided an environment that helped protect against making mistakes–mistakes that could cost significant time to fix.