Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Tag: Computers

  • Micro Quorums

    Listening to the Radiolab Bit Flip episode. If you haven’t listened, then you really should first.

  • Quarter the 2006 Price in 5 Years

    I love it when I run across a prediction about the time of the deadline. Jakob Nielsen made one on November 20, 2006 that computers will be 1/4th their current price of $379 in five years. Five years later is November 20, 2011. That is today! In areas like North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia’s advanced countries, […]

  • Linux Adventure Part 3 [SOLVED]

    Linux Adventure Part 1 | Linux Adventure Part 2 \ Use these to catch up on the story. After work and much ridicule from a coworker over this Ubuntu mess, I come home to play some more on this wireless mess. I was even somewhat leaning towards giving the firmware cutter stuff a try. After […]

  • Why Read Books?

    That I read books probably lowers my highly coveted geek cred. Instead, e-books read on the computer screen, phone screen, or e-book reader should have long ago replaced reading on dead wood. Unfortunately, I am intentionally avoiding reading books much on computers, phone, or readers. No purse to carry more stuff. I have big fingers, so […]

  • Computer Metaphors

    An effective way to explain something is to use a metaphor. This can be especially effective by picking an metaphorical object or behavior with which the audience is already familiar. The one I see most often is comparing computers to a car. This morning I saw this on an email list describing a person’s experience […]

  • DDoS of Social Media

    Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and other sites all admitted to suffering from a DDoS attack. It seem to me the purpose of a Denial-of-Service attack (DoS) against a web site is to flood it with so much traffic the site becomes unusable. The DDoS is where multiple other computers are coordinated into launching the attack. All […]

  • Information Should Be Free

    Mark Guzdial makes the point teachers add value to the learning process. Normally, I would agree. However, I got hung up on a misquote from a Walter Isaacson article How to Save Your Newspaper in TIME offering micropayments as the solution to newspapers finding a working model to survive since advertisements are not the right one. Mark said it […]

  • The Digital Switch

    The Long Tail claims consumers, given more options, will reflect their widely varied interests. Physical stores cannot fill all of the demand, so bytes stored on disk are the fastest, cheapest method for getting stuff to consumers. We see a mostly example of this shift in the shift to digital music. Vinyl records were the […]

  • Christmas Blog Post 2008

    Last night I read Uncle Bill’s Christmas letter. He mailed it, but he apparently doesn’t have my postal address so I got the electronic version. Woohoo! His letter recaps the year for his family. Do any of you have such a tradition? Or a family member who does? Oddly my blog doesn’t provide much basis […]

  • Digital Legacy

    A book on time management in talking about long-term goal planning suggests we define the legacy we wish to leave. Coming from academia, I typically think of a legacy as a name on a building, an applicant with an alum for a parent, or a scholarship. However, the artifacts left behind by previous cultures are […]