I’ve just booked tickets to go to Pasadena, CA to see my parents, then on to Europe! I’ll be in Madrid, then Barcelona, Spain. The trip will end in Italy, where I’ll see Rome and Naples. Exciting! Drop me a line if you’ve been to Spain or Naples and know fun things to see.
Wikipedia has a great page about eponymous laws, that is, laws named for somebody. It’s a great read:
Wikipedia: Eponymous Laws
The classic example is Murphy’s Law: Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. CS majors probably know about these:
- Amdahl’s Law: Related to speedup of a system as a single component is improved (often used when talking about parallel or multi-processor upgrades).
- De Morgan’s Laws: Rules that govern logical/Boolean expressions.
- Moore’s Law: The complexity of integrated circuits doubles every 18-24 months.
Did you know about these?
- Benford’s Law: In many systems, there is a logarithmic distribution of leading digits; 1 is most frequent, followed by 2, etc.
- Brooks’ Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
- Godwin’s Law: Every internet argument will eventually escalate to the point that someone makes reference to Hitler and Nazism.
- Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
- Hofstadter’s Law: Things always take longer than you expect, even if you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.
- Keynes’ Law: Demand creates its own supply.
- Muphry’s Law: If you write an internet message / email criticizing somebody’s spelling or grammar, you will also make a spelling or grammar error in your message.
- Occam’s Razor: When two explanations are offered for a phenomenon, the simplest full explanation is preferable.
- Parkinson’s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
- Peter Principle: In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
- Sturgeon’s Revelation: 90 percent of everything is crap.
- Wirth’s Law: Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.
I hate the iPhone almost as much as I hate Apple in general. If you buy one, you are buying into an expensive, closed, locked-down ecosystem where one soulless company has control over your device and what you and others can do with it.
Here are just a few of the many links about why the iPhone is crap:
(Full disclosure: I do own one Apple product that I like: an original first generation iPod Shuffle 512mb. The thing gets like 50 hours on a single battery charge, and it’s too cheap and crappy looking for anyone to steal. A workout staple.)