With all the high-level talks going on in Washington right now about the great economic crisis and the planned bailout, I found that the following passage from The Lord of the Rings came to mind: So great was the power that Saruman exerted in this last effort that none that stood within hearing were unmoved. [...]
I think it’s hard to imagine the scope of what is being considered. The total cost so far of the bailout, if they throw in the other $700B will be 1.2 TRILLION dollars. You have to wonder, what else could we do with that money…. Lets have a look! You could give every person in [...]
Word comes today that we have the start of another bank run. This one is hitting the Hong Kong based “Bank of East Asia”. According to the BBC: The Bank of East Asia has denied rumours that it is in financial trouble, after thousands of customers queued to withdraw their savings. After weeks of global [...]
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The first column, “Second Class Software Quality for Major IT Projects”, talks about the curious fact that organizations are willing to spend millions, tens of millions, even hundred of millions of dollars on major IT project and yet still nickle-and-dime their software quality assurance (SQA) effort. It doesn’t help that SQA personnel are pretty much [...]
From Military.com (emphasis mine): A Virginia-based company is hoping to test-fly a vertical take-off and landing drone before the end of this year that, ultimately, could do triple duty as strike vehicle, medevac or special ops insertion/extraction plane. The Excalibur is currently being developed as an armed, tactical unmanned aerial vehicle by Aurora Flight Sciences [...]
John Paczkowski has a deservedly skeptical article today on how SanDisk’s announcement of the ‘slotMusic’ format, an effort to put individual music albums on microSD cards — so that you can plug an album into your cell phone or other devices that accept microSD cards. John pretty much sums up the problems with this format: [...]
Continue reading about Solid state music vs. solid state video
Sort of: This stick-figure presentation at Google Docs (warning: explicit language) — which we linked to some months back — still remains the best (simple) explanation of just what went wrong in the global (not just US) financial markets. Think Lehman Brothers, Merril Lynch and Bear Stearns (not to mention Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac!) [...]
Friday the blog world was examining this curious press release from NASA: NASA To Discuss Conditions On And Surrounding The Sun WASHINGTON — NASA will hold a media teleconference Tuesday, Sept. 23, at 12:30 p.m. EDT, to discuss data from the joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses mission that reveals the sun’s solar wind [...]
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When the AP published a bundle of her personal information online shortly after her appointment as the Republican VP pick, there were bound to be ramifications. Some of that information helped motivate the delinquent son of a Memphis TN Democrat Congressman to hack Palin’s personal email account. Sadly for this troubled little dweeb he has [...]
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
Jerry Pournelle over at his blog has linked to the Rudyard Kipling classic. Written nearly 90 years ago, it is remarkably apt right now, as our financial system threatens to melt down over human greed and stupidity: As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the [...]
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