Archive for the 'Humor' Category
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
The next generation
Interesting comic… how will learning evolve - and what do we define as learning in an age where limitless information is available clicks away? I think the education system needs to refocus on teaching “how to think” and “how to analyze” versus memorization.
Friday, March 28th, 2008
South Park Episodes Are Now Online, DRM Free
Who knew a media studio could actually find a way to do things “right”? Comedy Central and Viacom appear to have “seen the light”. I love the ultimate reason that spurred this effort:
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/03/south-park-to-o.html
South Park fans will soon be able to watch any episode of the seminal animated show free online, thanks to a deal between show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and Comedy Central’s parent company, Viacom.
In an appropriately glib statement, Parker and Stone said they were inspired to start the site when they got “really sick of having to download our own show illegally all the time. So we gave ourselves a legal alternative.”
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008
Seattle Windows glitch ruins fireworks show at Space Needle
Doh! The first thing I thought of was South Park the movie where the general has a Windows 98 computer crash and furiously yells “Get Bill Gates in here!”… nothing like rebooting Windows when the music is going off and a crowd watching … might I suggest another option next year - begins with an ‘L’?
http://www.king5.com/topstories/stories/NW_010108WAB_fireworks_glitch_SW.72e7457c.html#
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008
New Open Season Episode 8
I think Open Season is probably the only podcast session I listen to regularly. What can I say, I’m a sucker for Ashlee Vance’s humor/critique… although I haven’t purchased his book yet…
This episode includes some (dare I say unsupported) speculation on Ubuntu and IBM from Mr. Asay. I guess there’s some evil plot to take over the world in there, but given my job at IBM… I’d probably know :-) I also found it odd that the 1.5 minute speculation bit also became the title (what do you expect from El Reg?). Anyway, listen if for no other reason than Open Season offers Ogg downloads (thanks!).
Anyway, you can listen for yourself here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/28/open_season_8/
Tuesday, December 18th, 2007
Latest review of Windows XP is in - it’s a winner!
If you haven’t seen this yet, it’s worth the 5 minutes to lead the latest Windows XP review. Looks like Microsoft has a winner.
Tuesday, October 16th, 2007
20 years ago….
Tuesday, October 16th, 2007
Quote of the Week
“Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.”
– Stewart Brand
Thursday, October 11th, 2007
Laser engraved Tux on a ThinkPad
Luis came up with a very cool idea - laser engraving a Tux logo onto his ThinkPad. This really is Linux on the desktop.
http://tieguy.org/blog/2007/09/30/why-i-was-asking-for-tux-images-engraved-laser-tux/#comment-25183
Sunday, October 7th, 2007
Ashlee Vance from The Register Interviews Mark Shuttleworth
I saw this just before I went on a road trip back to NY this weekend and burned it to a CD. I’d recommend taking the time to listen to Mark with special focus on the parts where he describes what it takes to have successful outside contributions for open-commercial projects. There is also plenty of discussion on the “troubles” with OpenOffice and outside contributions as well as desktop Linux. And of course, there is the usual Reg-humor to keep the discussion lively.
http://www.theregister.com/2007/10/04/open_season_four_shuttleworth/
Friday, August 31st, 2007
I’m heading out for vacation: back in 2 weeks, have some requests for while I’m out
Tonight I’m heading to Europe where I’ll be hopping around from city to city for the next couple weeks on vacation. So if you see no postings here, I’ve not been kidnapped by Microsoft or some other gang of anti-Linux admins (I narrowly escaped the last attempt).
So I expect the community to do a couple things while I’m out. First, please end this OOXML nonsense and get ISO leadership to step up as a true standards org should. Second, I fully expect Sun and Microsoft to start contributing code and resources into the open Linux community (we welcome you with open arms). Finally, I expect IDC and Gartner to start tracking Linux on non-x86 platforms for once… your customers have no idea just how fast its growing…
So I’ll be back in a couple weeks and will review your progress on these three basic requests ;-)
Saturday, August 25th, 2007
‘Hello World’ rises to the top of Microsoft’s open source successes?
URL: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2174730,00.asp
Just after eWeek ran an article on the Top 25 Microsoft CodePlex projects, SVN takes a closer look at what these projects really are about. SVN finds out some interesting information as he “gets the facts” on Microsoft’s “open source” playground…
Number two is the Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Engine. This “program” is simple sample code for SQL Server. It was last updated on, get this, December 9, 2005. The primary example is, get this, how to do “Hello World” in SQL Server.
Friday, August 24th, 2007
SUNW == JAVA, yes, it’s true.
So I guess Sun really did change it’s ticker symbol from SUNW to JAVA… personally given how much they’ve been touting open source software, communities, etc. I would have personally chosen something different (”OPEN” was my suggestion to a few yesterday). Considering Sun’s growth in Linux according to the analyst firms, perhaps “LNUX” could have been a better choice ;-)
JAVA… hmmm… what does the word JAVA convey these days? I’m not sure I’d pick JAVA… but then again, I’m not the CEO of a public company.
Thursday, August 16th, 2007
The Register: “IBM embraces - wtf - Sun’s Solaris across x86 server line”
Guess even IBM can surprise people at times. A lot of people at Sun and IBM put a lot of hard work into this and should be commended for what was not a clear path at times ;-)
As expected a number of people have overplayed the significance (flame wars abound I’m sure), but once the dust settles, things should be clearer. And also remember, this support is not entirely “new” (check out the date).
I’ll link to El Reg simply because Ashlee as usual made me laugh:
http://www.theregister.com/2007/08/16/sun_ibm_solarisx86/
Oh, and one last thing: Solaris is a binary operating system that comes with a commercial license so please remember that when some people misinterpret Solaris to be some open source activity.
Friday, August 3rd, 2007
Dilbert on open source software
I love the use of open source as an adjective for software ;-)
Anyway, Bob Sutor emailed this to me and I thought it was funny enough to share:
Friday, August 3rd, 2007
IBM POWER processors once again take 100% of Mars’ market share
http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/070803/0285894.html
Saw this quote and had to laugh - apparently the new rovers are powered by IBM Power chips. I didn’t know that all the Mars rovers were using Power chips until I read this - talk about low power, resilient, serviceable, and reliable.
There is a humorous line in the press release copied here:
Raj Desai, vice president IBM Global Engineering Solutions, “With Power-based processors in all three major game consoles, in fifty percent of automobile models worldwide, in sixty percent of the world’s fastest computers, and in one hundred percent of the systems on Mars, Power is truly the most versatile computing platform in the solar system.”
It sounds like the Power processor is the Panasonic Toughbook of processors:
Surviving windstorms with speeds of up to 80 miles per hour and temperatures of -199 degrees Fahrenheit, Power, once radiation hardened, has become the de facto standard for space qualified processors.
Monday, July 30th, 2007
eWeek “Microsoft FUD Watch”
Not many companies produce enough FUD to maintain a “FUD Watch” but it appears Microsoft has hit a suitable level of volume to warrant one. eWeek’s FUD Watch post by Joe Wilcox is available here:
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/corporate/microsoft_fud_watch_62707.html
Wednesday, July 11th, 2007
Rob Weir criticizes sloppy OOXML formulas that made it through ECMA review
Rob Weir is getting some publicity for this very specific critique of the flaws that made it through the ECMA standards body without any real consideration of basic things such as units… oops…
As I’ve shown, in the rush to write a 6,000 page standard in less than a year, Ecma dropped the ball. OOXML’s spreadsheet formula is worse than missing. It has incorrect formulas that, if implemented according to this standard, would raise important health, safety and environmental concerns, aside from the obvious financial risks of a spreadsheet that calculates incorrect results. This standard is seriously messed up. Shame on all those who praised and continue to praise the OOXML formula specification without actually reading it.
Friday, June 29th, 2007
Did you really believe Vista was more secure than Linux, Mac?
I read that headlines the other day that “Vista is more secure than Linux, Mac”, chuckled and moved on. Did people really believe that propaganda? Well, if you did, there’s a full debunkment now over at seclists.org. It seems a certain group in Redmond still have not figured out how to count… or just happen to miss again the fundamental differences between open and closed vulnerability reporting.
BTW, I noticed that my Google Adwords has recently been bloated with “Windows vs Linux” Google ads. They’re from Microsoft - please do click on them proactively - click on them 10 times if you like. I could exclude microsoft.com but when I thought about it - why? Click away, ring up the bill. I’d love to see the invoice report at Microsoft showing detailed billing for the MichaelDolan.com Google Adwords clicks. I also found it funny that apparently someone at Microsoft uses Google to at least buy the Adwords :-).
http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2007/Jun/0528.html
Thursday, June 28th, 2007
Did you violate any patents last April 15? Say hello to tax patents…
Tax strategy patents are on the rise - if you thought software patents were absurd, wait until you (or your accountant) get dinged for violating these. It would be hard to prove infringement, but I suspect Microsoft will eventually find a way to use tax strategy patents to FUD Intuit or wipe out the few users tied to GnuCash (ok, maybe that’s going to far). Actually, this one has little to do with software patents and more to do with patents on how to avoid being hit with a large tax bill at the end of the year. No, I’m seriously not lying.
As is custom, I was about to toss my wife’s Journal of Accountancy into the trash when something I saw made me reach out and grab it back mid-air (btw, my wife never reads them - her firm gets electronic versions emailed to them). The part that caught my eye was an article on “Tax Patents” which I thought was a curious title. How can someone patent taxes was my initial question - then I realized they must mean tax-avoidance patents and that sounded intriguing.
You may find this intriguing too - the article is available online. I’m not sure how we got here, but I think it’s absurd that Joe Taxpayer could be infringing patents by using a “Process for evaluating the financial consequences of converting a standard form IRA to the Roth form IRA”. Yes, that’s a real patent (Patent no. 6,058,376). Even better was the patent on a “Method for Financing Future Needs” - yes, that one too is real (Patent no. 7,149,712).
Anyway, if you’re interested, you can read about it all here.
Sunday, June 24th, 2007
Get Ubuntu Desktop from Windows Marketplace today
Errr… looks like it was taken down. Thank you Google cache for this humorous screenshot:
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