2006 Year in Statistics

2005:

• Identity Theft Resource Center reports "at least 134 data breaches affecting more than 57 million people": Source
• "10 million cases of identify theft a year, with total losses of $53 billion", says Robert Douglas of PrivacyToday.com." Source
• $30.1 billion spent online shopping by US shoppers, between Oct. 29 and Dec. 23, reflecting an increase of 30% compared to a year ago, a report from Goldman Sachs, Nielsen/NetRatings and Harris Interactive concluded.
• 8% of Fortune 500 blog.
• 12% of Yahoo! users know what RSS is and 4% actually use it.
• 1 in 10 Europeans is conceived in an Ikea bed.
  

Hans Reiser of ReiserFS selling his company to help pay for his defense in murder case

Today while reading slashdot, I found that Hans Reiser, the guy behind ReiserFS is selling his company Namesys to pay for his legal costs. Hans Reiser is suspected of killing his wife, Nina Reiser, a Russian-born Jewish doctor studying to become an OB/GYN. I won't buy his company even if it was free.

Joseph Barbera, died at 95

Joseph Barbara, the guy who along with William Hanna, brought us "Tom and Jerry" (the cartoon show that went on to win seven Academy Awards), "The Flintstones", "Yogi Bear" and "Johnny Quest", among other great titles, died of natural causes at the age of 95. Washington Post: Joe Barbara, cartoon pioneer mourned.

Upgrade your thinking with Mind Performance Hacks

So as I started browsing Safari, one book immediately caught my attention: Mind Performance Hacks by Ron Hale-Evans. Ron is a Yale graduate who has been "thinking a lot about thinking." His online wiki is accessible at ludism.org.

I started glancing through the table of contents and before I knew it, my eyes were glued to a title, "Hack 40. Count to a Million on Your Fingers."

Excuse me? Count to a million on fingers? Interesting.

I have added the book to my favorites.

Estimating roots
To estimate square root of a number (360000) pair the number in digits
36 00 00

and then calculate the square root of the first pair without going over.

6 n n

So we know the square root of 360000 is 6nn.

Similarly to calculate cube root or nth root, create clusters of numbers with n numbers in each segment. For instance to calculate cube root of 364000 create cluster with three digits, like

364 000

Now calculate the square root of the first cluster without going over. So our square root will be

7n
[7*7*7=343]

Traditional methods of estimating square roots.

For more tricks read the book.

Easily reference thousands of books online with Safari

Today, I got to upgrade my subscription to Safari, an online library of more than 4200 books by O'reilly. So far I had the 10-slot bookshelf membership, but as you can expect, those 10 slots got full really fast. After some thinking, today I decided to upgrade to Safari library, which will allow me to access all the books, including Rough Cut books, on demand. Pretty cool, isn't it?

Taso Du Val, my friend and colleague, told me today that he has been using Safari a lot too. This makes me really happy as I had encouraged him in the past to try it out.

So I really cannot wait to get started with reading. I guess, I am going to be spending a whole lot of time on my laptop.

Peter Boyle dead

This is really sad news. Peter Boyle, the guy who played Ray Romano (Raymond's) dad in Everybody Loves Raymond, died today in NYC at the age of 71. I really liked Peter's work as Frank. ELR is one of my favorite sitcoms. Read more at Peter Boyle dies.

Osseous Surgery

This December has been quite a month for me so far. First, the month started with a deep cleaning at my dentist, preparing me for my Osseous surgery. Then this Saturday, I actually went under the knife for my surgery.

For those, lucky enough to not have to undergo this surgery, it involves the Periodontist pulling your gums and then adjusting the bones. Finally he stiches your gums back.

The procedure itself was pretty much painless. The wait was much more terrible than the surgery. However, it was after the surgery, that I started feeling intense pain. I got some good pain killers but they weren't really helping. So I took some Unisom and immediately fell asleep.

Believe it or not, I spent most of the weekend sleeping. During the sleep sessions, I was just craving my favorite foods. As soon as I can start eating properly, I intend to visit all of my favorite restaurants again.

Now that I am during my convalenscence, I don't even want to think about my upcoming 3 more Osseous surgeries next year.