Archive about 'Tech'
Dammit, Steven Levy liked the iPhone
One of the few tech journalists that I think gets it right more often than not, Steven Levy liked the iPhone. That’s a pity, I was kinda hoping the reviews would be bad. Not that I want Apple to fail but I just thought the hype was way overboard.
But Levy seems to think the hype […]
A professional writer once again
Okay, maybe not “professional”, more like “semi-pro.” I’ve started writing for the Programming and Development blog at TechRepublic. I’ve signed up to post at least once a week, and yes it’s a paid gig. Not a ton of money per posting but enough to make it interesting.
I don’t know how long I’ll be able to […]
Chinese math education a wee bit tougher than here in the West
Wow, the BBC posted these two sample questions taken from college entrance exams. The first question is from a Chinese university, the second from an English university. They both start as geometry questions, but the one from the Chinese University requires much more fundamental math knowledge and general reasoning skills. Doesn’t take a math genius […]
Oracle making it tough for me to keep my Lenten vow
For Lent you’re supposed to make a personal sacrifice. In the old days that usually meant fasting or at least some kind of abstinence. Like not drinking, or not having sex, whatever. Nowadays most people choose to give up something they like, such as not eating chocolate during the 40 days of Lent.
This year I […]
Another print mag falls victim to the Internet
InfoWorld just announced they’re ceasing publication of the print magazine. It’s all about the Web site and their events business now. No more ad revenue coming in from the print side of the house.
Most of the news I’ve seen, like the New York Times’ recent quarter, shows that the loss of print revenue is far […]
The legal claws come out — old media suing new media
Let’s get it on–Viacom has filed a billion-dollar lawsuit against Google, over copyright infringement on Google’s YouTube service. It seemed inevitable that one of the big old media companies was going to take out the legal dagger and try to force changes at YouTube. And Viacom seems like a good candidate, their Comedy Central clips […]
F-22 fighter jet felled by International Date Line
Scary and funny at the same time–the $125-million F-22 Raptor apparently has a glitch in its software that causes everything to crash when the plane crosses over the International Date Line. Apparently somewhere deep down in the code they forgot to account for the IDL.
Back many years ago, I briefly worked for Simmonds Precision Aerospace, […]
LDAP is a nightmare, even from a single vendor
So we have this Oracle Portal, secured by Oracle Single-Sign-On, which interfaces with Oracle Internet Directory, which is an LDAP-compliant directory service. So the entire software stack, except for the operating system (Windows), is a single vendor’s products. And yet, two of us have just spent the better part of a week figuring out how […]
Akismet is great at catching comment spam
One of the real problems with blogging is all the comment spam that you receive. Mostly trying to use your blog to insert links that will help raise the Google rankings for whatever Web site they’re peddling. It’s unfortunate that people feel this kind of activity is ethical, but clearly there’s a fair number of people […]
Inventor of Ada language dies
I spent a few years (back when I had a full head of hair) working for various aerospace contractors. So I’ve done more than my fair share of Ada programming. It’s been quite a few years since I have touched it though–I threw out all my Ada books when I was packing up to move […]