Do I hear racism?

A coworker showed me something interesting today: the latest beta from Google, Google Finance, appears to have a slight problem.

In the management section about Symantec from Google Finance, towards the bottom right of the page, the CEO is apparently caucasian.



However, according to Symantec the CEO looks a little darker. In fact, according to my coworker, Mr. Thompson was one of the first black CEOs in the tech industry.


Record linking is hard, but can we tell the difference between 'W' and 'M'?

[To be fair, Google may have inherited this apparently racist behavior from Reuters, which is also confused as to what Mr. Thompson's middle initial is. Or perhaps, Google is suggesting that Mr. Thompson pull a Michael Jackson]

About DTAM

A wise person once said, “Bad habits are picked up at work.” For most people, blogging is a bad habit - it takes up a sizable amount of time and energy, while contributing little to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness.

So I started reading blogs at my last job. The more blogs I read, the more I am convinced that blogging is a powerful way of communication. Often times invaluable information is distributed via blogging; and the amount of useful feedback one may get is simply mind boggling. Even when there is nothing important to say, blogging is an ok way to keep up with friends. Compared with telephone or email, blogging has the advantage of being less personal, more easily misread, and if done properly, bring in cash. Once I understood the third unique property of blogging, I started on DTAM - dtam talks about m.

Why M? I haven’t done the math yet, but I believe the letter ‘M’ is statistically significant in my life, at least if you only count the last 6.521 years: school (UM), work (IBM), friends (MML, SM, ML, MR) etc…If I were a gambling man, I would put money on M.

Besides, DTAM is recursive.