Author Archives: admin

Internet Security – A View from North of the Border

Posted on January 28, 2012 by admin

Cory Doctorow is a very well known science fiction writer, journalist, and a commentator on technology and social issues. He is interviewed in about the first 15 minutes of the Canadian (CBC) program Spark 170. I think what he’s saying … Continue reading →

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Twitter Logon Problem – Continuous Over Capacity

Posted on January 11, 2012 by admin

For several days I had a problem logging into my Twitter account. I wondered at first whether I had been banned for some reason, but I couldn’t think of any reason for that. Then I checked that I could see … Continue reading →

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Switching to Linux

Posted on January 6, 2012 by admin

This guess post at Greg Laden’s blog gives one man’s experience switching to Linux. It’s a repost from 2009, so the version numbers are a bit different (Ubuntu is at 11.10 now), but it still gives a pretty good idea … Continue reading →

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The Crash of Air France Flight 447 and You

Posted on December 10, 2011 by admin

Popular Mechanics has a tremendously interesting article based on a recent book that provided transcripts of the black box recordings of this flight as it went down over the Atlantic Ocean. For someone who is not a pilot, but has … Continue reading →

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The Ada Initiative – Women in Open Source

Posted on December 10, 2011 by admin

Linux.com reports on the progress in just under a year of The Ada Initiative, which has this mission: “A world in which women are equal and welcome participants in open technology, open data, and open culture. We want women writing … Continue reading →

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Passwords

Posted on November 22, 2011 by admin

SmartPlanet has a list of the 25 worst passwords of 2011. It’s good to read the comments as well. Computer people tend to make the error of thinking that any password that’s hard to guess is good, and the harder … Continue reading →

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RIP Dennis Ritchie

Posted on October 13, 2011 by admin

Dennis Ritchie, the ‘R’ in K&R so familiar to any C programmer, has passed away. I learned C fairly early, though I passed on to C++ as well. I haven’t done any work in C for some time, but my … Continue reading →

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Amazon Eating the World?

Posted on October 5, 2011 by admin

There’s an interesting article in Bloomsberg BusinessWeek titled Amazon, the Company that Ate the World. The title may seem just a bit over the top, but the content is interesting. I enjoyed the commentary on Amazon.com‘s business strategy. I admit … Continue reading →

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Governments Want to Control the Internet

Posted on October 3, 2011 by admin

No surprise there. Freedom of expression threatens would-be (and actual) tyrants. The Economist has some analysis.

Posted in Public Policy, Social Media | Leave a comment

Headlines are Critical!

Posted on September 19, 2011 by admin

Every day I scan around 500 headlines from news services and blog posts. Of these, I will likely take action on around 30 or 40, and many of those will be standard ones that I put into various tags to … Continue reading →

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