This is superb reporting by NPR (link at bottom) on the murky business of software patents and how the real spirit of patent and copyright laws have been subverted by patent mills out to make a quick pile of cash. These days greedy companies get patent protection for the most ridiculous and obscure algorithms. Most — Continue reading »
Microsoft's Fate and DEC
📆 July 17, 2011
In this thought-provoking article titled, "Will Microsoft Learn DEC's Lesson?", the author makes a great comparison between the current state of affairs at Microsoft and the once mighty DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) headed by the late Ken Olsen. I don't know how old the author is and if he remembers the glory days of DEC, — Continue reading »
Server Room from Hell
📆 February 7, 2010
Ok, admit it, how many of you have server rooms that look like below? We did, for a couple of days while we were moving the machines out to a new location. That's a real picture below. Believe it or not this worked out rather well while we finished the migration. The company's web site — Continue reading »
2010 Y2K Fun
📆 January 7, 2010
Happy new year, well, at least if you follow the Gregorian calendar. Every new year just before the calendar turns over I get a little nervous. Nothing like the Y2K time, but some tension nevertheless. The systems I take care of at work have been humming fine for years, at least as far as the — Continue reading »
IE8 and JScript / WSH Bug
📆 December 29, 2009
Had a hell of a time chasing an inexplicable and sudden crash in one of my JScript programs last week. In the end Internet Explorer 8 was the culprit. Thankfully removing IE8 is simply done via the Control Panel and it's rolled back to the previously installed one. Guess we have fair-competition rulings to thank — Continue reading »
Oracle and Sun
📆 December 18, 2009
Oracle reported stellar earnings tonight that promises to send the stock up to a 9-year high tomorrow, at least judging by the after-hours activity. The company's latest acquisition of Sun Microsystems, announced back in August, is still pending EU regulatory approval, but the latest signs appear to indicate that it will clear that hurdle soon — Continue reading »
Cloud Computing Pitfalls
📆 December 8, 2009
From a development standpoint, cloud computing is a flexible and elastic computing environment. Sort of a server with unbound resources capable of running infinite programs for infinite users, with infinite processing power, memory, storage, and bandwidth. Cloud computing is a dream for people like me who are developers at heart but spent much of their — Continue reading »
Madoff's Programmers
📆 November 13, 2009
Bad reputation. Lawyers have it, used-car salesmen have it, priests and clerics have it. And now computer programmers? That's what I thought when I read about the two programmers working for Bernard Madoff's Ponzi investment firm being arrested and charged with fraud. It seems that their skills were put to good use by fabricating reports — Continue reading »
Give a few Sats