Category: Information Technology

Why you keep children out of data centers

Why you keep children out of data centers

| January 23, 2007 | Reply

The Daily WTF is one of my daily reads. Subtitled “Curious perversions in information technology”, it allows readers to submit wretched source code examples, IT development horror stories, and similar cringe-inducing true-life accounts. (It’s fun to read the comments on source code postings; they bring to mind the old joke, “Q: How many programmers does […]

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Why FastCrawl matters

Why FastCrawl matters

| January 22, 2007 | 1 Reply

OK, so I praised a simple dungeon-crawl game that can be completed in 30 minutes. You may ask, why? Well, here’s this report (in the New York Times, no less) by Seth Schiesel about The Burning Crusade, the new expansion to the massively-multiplayer on-line role playing game (MMORPG), World of Warcraft: The big draw in […]

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A window into the past

A window into the past

| December 31, 2006 | Reply

Gaius at Blue Crab Boulevard has a link to a wonderful set of archives: the complete scanned (and searchable) archives of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (a newspaper) from 1841 to 1902. I love sources of information like this: they remind us both of how different life was back then and, simultaneously, how similar it was. […]

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Newest Contributor: Ruby Raley

Newest Contributor: Ruby Raley

| November 29, 2006 | Reply

I’ve known Ruby for a decade or so. She came up to me after I gave a session at a technical conference on the need for leadership in IT organizations and offered both cogent observations and useful criticisms. We’ve been friends ever since and just recently co-authored an article for Cutter IT Journal titled “The […]

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Into the Storm

Into the Storm

| November 18, 2006 | Reply

I get to have some interesting encounters in my job. For the last 18 months I have been campaigning first in the DoD and then in the commercial space to bring to market a new kind of software. It’s job in life it digest massive amounts of data and event information to come up with […]

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Housing Market – The Makings of a Rough Ride

Housing Market – The Makings of a Rough Ride

| October 30, 2006 | Reply

As per request, some additional information on the housing market in the US. Rather than pull someone else’s good work today, we are going to delve into the output of an interesting and unique piece of software that called “Hardtack”. Hardtack is a system that “strip mines” a variety of MLS databases (real estate multiple […]

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What Were We Thinking?

What Were We Thinking?

| October 15, 2006 | Reply

As Webster has mentioned, some time early in 2006 I started tracking several pieces of the financial sector using a new tool I invented that we named “Boomerang”. Suffice to say it was originally conceived as a tool for intelligence fusion for things like the war on terror. Unable to find a vehicle inside the […]

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Sorry for the slow postings…

Sorry for the slow postings…

| October 15, 2006 | Reply

…I’ve been having network problems downstairs (fixed now), and WordPress has some quirky bug that often prevents me from logging into the blog from my laptop (shortly put, it won’t let me get past the log-in screen when I try to do anything such as write a post, moderate comments, etc.). So, I’m back.  ..bruce..

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Software Archeology

Software Archeology

| October 7, 2006 | Reply

Some folks know that the roots of Apple’s Mac OS X lie in a company and an operating systems called NeXT. NeXT was brilliant stuff in its day, and in time Apple decided to scrap its next generation OS (Pink?) and use NeXTStep as the core for what would become OS X. Some of us […]

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The Triumph of Technology over Guy-ness

The Triumph of Technology over Guy-ness

| September 21, 2006 | Reply

Gizmodo features a special kind of ring, just for guys: The Remember Ring has a special nagging feature, using its “Hot Spot” technology that warms up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 seconds, every hour, on the hour, beginning 24 hours before that “special day,” apparently honoring the anniversary of your voluntary servitude. That’s supposed […]

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