All posts for the month July, 2012

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

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.

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

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 [...]

Yes, an e-reader does change how you read

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.

Games would be just what Linux needed

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.

Four things to try when a Nook Simple Touch won’t power on

I’d owned a Nook Simple Touch for less than 24 hours when I had a problem. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to turn on. Searching online, I found several things to try to get them working. None seem to work 100% of the time, and only one worked for me. But [...]

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

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.

Nobody respects craftsmanship anymore

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 [...]

Exceptional–as in exceptions–budgeting

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 [...]

Should you remove all rights from disabled accounts?

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 [...]

Phase-change memory could change everything

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 [...]

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