Chris Farris

If your company seems evil, the best programmers won’t work for you. That hurt Microsoft a lot starting in the 90s. Programmers started to feel sheepish about working there. It seemed like selling out. When people from Microsoft were talking to other programmers and they mentioned where they worked, there were a lot of self-deprecating jokes about having gone over to the dark side. But the real problem for Microsoft wasn’t the embarrassment of the people they hired.

“Businessman Bernard Madoff pleads guilty to bilking investors out of $65 billion in a Ponzi scheme, forcing the Obama administration to withdraw his nomination for secretary of commerce.”

I was working in a job running the campus email system some years ago when I got a call from the chairman of the statistics department. “We’re having a problem sending email out of the department.” “What’s the problem?” I asked. “We can’t send mail more than 500 miles,” the chairman explained. I choked on my latte. “Come again?” “We can’t send mail farther than 500 miles from here,” he repeated.

Sharkoon USB LANPort gets your isolated USB drives on your local network — Engadget.

Just in time for Christmas. Santa, if you’re reading this…… One terabyte ssd hits the shops – The Inquirer.

Is that you need to have ubiquitous Internet to make it work. Google OS: the end of the hard drive? – CNN.com. This looks like a neat device. But if none of my data is stored on the device, it is useless for reading email or working on documents. Wifi coverage is sporadic and expensive. Cellular coverage is even more expensive. WiMax (aka Clear) is only available in a few markets.

I suspect this might be of interest to my political geek friends: How to Make a US County Thematic Map Using Free Tools | FlowingData.

So about 20 days after I get my stuff (new HD, Snow Leopard, Fusion2) to upgrade my MacBook Pro (one of the first intel models) VMware goes and releases Fusion 3. I was just outside the free upgrade window. Bah! I’d installed Fusion, created me an Ubuntu and XP Guest, and verified I had installed all the windows apps I might need in an emergency (ie VSphere 4 client). Fusion2 had some nice features.

I’m cleaning out my office closet and have quite a few things listed on Craigslist: 27″ Sharp TV Forsale – $10 or free 2 input video capture card – $5 VGA to TV (S-Video/Composit) adapter – $20 [I’m cleaning out my office closet and have quite a few things listed on Craigslist: 27″ Sharp TV Forsale – $10 or free