Month: July 2012

Flash memory is cheap, and maybe as cheap as it’s going to be for a while

Dave Farquhar Hardware

If you’re in the market for anything that uses flash memory–USB thumb drives, memory cards, SSDs–this is a good time to buy. Toshiba is cutting its production by 30%, citing oversupply in the market. Read more

It’s going to take me some time to catch up

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized

I had an unexpected death in the family late last week, so I’ve been traveling and not doing any writing the last few days. I had a few things in the pipeline; chances are I’ll just call that stuff good enough and run it until I find my groove again. And if I miss a day or two this week, that’s why.

Yes, an e-reader does change how you read

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized

I’ve read that e-readers change the way you read, but of course up until this week I’ve never experienced it firsthand. I can say that in my limited experience with a Nook Simple Touch, I’ve already noticed it.

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Games would be just what Linux needed

Dave Farquhar Linux , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Valve is intending to develop for Linux, as an insurance policy against Windows 8. I think that will lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. If more games are available for Linux, demand for Linux will increase, along with market share.

There’s historical precedence for this. Read more

Nook won’t turn on? Try these four things.

Dave Farquhar e-readers , , ,
Nook won’t turn on? Try these four things.

Last Updated on September 9, 2018 by Dave Farquhar

I’d owned a Nook Simple Touch for less than 24 hours when I had a problem. So I learned out of necessity what to do when a Nook won’t turn on.

I found several things to try to get them working. Don’t expect the same solution to work every time. But these things are good to know.

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There’s plenty of credit for the Internet to go around

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , , , , , , ,

Last Updated on April 27, 2026 by Dave Farquhar

There’s a crazy rumor going around saying that the government didn’t do much of anything to create the Internet, and that private industry did it all.

I remember the Internet before the private sector got involved in it. I was there.
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Nobody respects craftsmanship anymore

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , ,

The New York Times laments the decline of craftsmanship and its side effects in the United States.

A generation ago, it wasn’t terribly uncommon for men to make their own kitchen cabinets. And those cabinets, if built correctly, would last several lifetimes. The cabinets my great-great grandfather built before the turn of the previous century survived just fine into my lifetime. A year ago, a prospective tenant took me to task for having such handbuilt cabinets in a rental house, and pointed to a couple of other rental houses–with particle-board Home Depot junk in them–as having “better updates.”

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Exceptional–as in exceptions–budgeting

Dave Farquhar Saving money ,

Consider the following scenario:

In [a consumer finance] study, the authors, Abigail Sussman of Princeton University and Adam Alter of New York University, ask you to imagine that one of your favorite bands is performing nearby. The ticket costs more than you would ordinarily spend, but you have never seen this band live and decide the experience is worth the cost.

The next week, your television breaks and you buy a pricey replacement because you only buy a new TV once every few years. A week later, you are celebrating your 10th wedding anniversary. Since this is a once-in-a-lifetime event, you decide that the occasion warrants a splurge.

Here’s how I would handle that sequence of events–a sequence of events that the study found many people Read more

Should you remove all rights from disabled accounts?

Dave Farquhar security ,

I recently had a task: Find an industry best practice that says you need to remove all rights or permissions or groups from the account of a former employee, rather than just disabling the account.

There was only one problem. I could find no such thing. None. Nothing. In fact, I expect this blog entry to rocket to the top of the Google search results for just such a thing, because no such guidance exists. The question is, will anyone else ever search for such a thing. Read more

Phase-change memory could change everything

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

I won’t call it a revolution, because I wrongly predicted that RISC (in the form of DEC Alpha and Motorola/IBM Power PC) would start a revolution. But Micron released a new form of memory this week that promises to at least be a game-changer.

It’s non-volatile like the flash memory in your cell phone, digital camera, or SSD, but with a longer life expectancy, and it’s much faster. It’s fast enough to potentially use it for system memory, as well as storage.
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