Black holes, LHC, Star Wars, quantum uncertainty… if it is of general geek interest, but doesn’t fit into one of the other categories, it lands here.
Irene has been aquasizing for a couple of months now as part of the recovery process from her hip replacement operation. She’s going an amazing five or six times a week, and it really has been helping her: she’s walking better and better, and has even been able to go on some quiet rides on her horse Spirit.
It’s really not news that Bill Gates is stepping down from his role at Microsoft. I recall him saying pretty clearly five or six years ago that he planned on removing himself from his position within the company before he was 55, and spending an increasing amount of time in his philanthropist role within the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
I was reading one of my news feeds the other day and came across this gem about a woman who beat a dog breeder with a dead chihuahua. Apparently, the dog breeder sold the puppy when it was too young. The purchaser took the puppy to a vet who told her it needed to be returned to its mother, but the puppy died while in transit. The puppy’s purchaser then proceeded to assault the dog breeder using the dead chihuahua as a weapon.
I generally am very happy with my work. My job includes a mix of techno-geeky tasks, all related to the delivery of “rich media” (streaming, podcasting) content. The group I’m in has less than 20 people, and within that group my immediate team consists of four or five folks who design and build applications. But the group I belong to is part of a very, very large company…the best of both worlds, I guess. Some days I am writing server or application monitoring programs to keep track of the state of our streaming infrastructure, other days I’m working on a data model for the next generation of our webcast delivery interface. I never feel like I’m stuck in a rut, the work challenges me mentally, and I am surrounded by people who give a damn- that’s saying a lot.
I was over on Ensellitis’ blog today catching up on what he’s said during the past few weeks. He posted a collection “Stupid Links” a week or so ago, and I hate to say it but one of the links wasn’t so stupid 🙂
Microsoft is giving clearer and clearer signs that they really “get” the frustration and pain their complex and sometimes buggy software causes. Their error reporting features within Windows XP have allowed Microsoft to reduce system problems significantly. But what’s next?
I enjoy…perhaps that’s the wrong word, but I’ll use it for now…catching vendors in obvious disconnects between words and action. Here is one I just found:
I spent a few minutes the other day following a series of threads about a disagreement between a website designer and a “famous” blogger. In summary: a guy paid for someone to re-design their website. Some people criticized the design, and the guy who paid said “anything that’s wrong here is my fault”. Someone sent him a
of a different way the site could have been done, and he posted it saying “there are some good ideas here, I think we might use some”. Then the designer resigned, and some people went ballistic.
Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal penned an article the other day about how the Personal Computer era may be ending, to be replaced by … I’m not really sure, I guess he’s saying purpose built devices for particular purposes. Actually, the way I read his article, I think he’s saying that the “component build” model appears to be a poor one to use for things like iPods, but the technology media seems to have picked up on this being someone yet again predicting the end of the personal computer.
I’m pretty sure that Mr. Mossberg didn’t actually intend to predict the end of the personal computer. That’s been done so many times before its almost laughable. Network Computers were hyped and died in the mid ’90s. We’ve had several generations of game consoles that were supposed to kill the personal computer. And now ubiquitous devices like iPods and web browser/camera/music player/pda/cell phones are going will be the death nell that removes that machine from under your desk.
Bill Gates has responded to this kind of thing before, and apparently he’s written a letter to the WSJ for this one (although I’m not a WSJ subscriber, so I can’t read it). To be honest, Bill, you are wasting your time.
If you buy an upscale new car today or in the near future, say a BMW, Mercedes, or Cadillac, there's a good chance that you won't have a key. Instead,…