Author: Dave Farquhar

What to do about PRISM is unclear as of yet

Dave Farquhar security , , , ,

I haven’t written a lot yet about Mr. Edward Snowden and the NSA PRISM program. I will in time, but want to be careful not to be spreading misinformation, and not to merely be repeating what everyone else says.

There’s been no shortage of advice on encrypting your own data, but there is one pitfall to that. Read more

Looking to hire IT talent? Write a good job description

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , ,

I had lunch on Friday with the recruiter who placed me at my current gig. We talked about a lot of things, including our families, but we talked a lot about the tech labor market. It’s growing, finally, and going to grow a lot more in the next few years as Boeing relocates its IT operations to St. Louis, but the market still isn’t what I’d grown used to it being over the last seven years.

One problem he runs into is with clients. They’ll submit jobs that, for example, I’m a perfect match for, and he submits me, and we get no call. Then he follows up weeks or months later, and finds out something completely different. Read more

Snickering at the Emachine

Dave Farquhar Hardware, War Stories , , , ,

For several years, I administered a command and control system for the U.S. Air Force. I sat in a datacenter, surrounded by racks jam-packed full of servers, and they kept the building at 64 degrees year round. I quickly learned to keep a jacket handy. I did several things, but mostly patch management.

Our system consisted of a diverse collection of Dell 1U and 5U servers, HP blades, and a couple of Sun SPARC boxes. It was a professional-looking setup, and except for the times we were doing massive system upgrades, the system generally worked as well as it looked.

Then we got a neighbor.

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Hate is a strong word, but here’s how you irritate your sysadmin

Dave Farquhar Hardware , ,

IT World published something with the inflammatory title of “9 reasons your sysadmin hates you.”

I’ve seen most of these things, but I haven’t seen my personal pet peeve, which is something my management structure calls “shadow IT.”

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Cnet tackles the Gigabit Internet question

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized ,

Cnet questioned the motives of cable operators this week when it comes to offering truly high-speed Internet.

Cable operators argue that the demand for those high speeds isn’t there. It’s not gigabit that consumers oppose nearly so much as paying more than $100 a month just for Internet. The problem is that by the time you pay for super high-speed Internet, cable, and a couple of cell phones, you can easily spend $300 a month, if not more, and that’s the price of a car.

We’re still coming out of a recession, and a lot of people are still trying to get their heads above water after the excesses of the previous decade. But if prices are within reach, people are willing to buy, after a half-decade of austerity.

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SSDs are getting a boost

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

This year’s high-end laptops (such as the Macbook and Intel Ultrabooks) are going to be sporting SSDs that connect straight to the PCI Express bus, bypassing SATA altogether.

Although the speed increase will be less jarring than the move from discs of spinning rust to memory chips was, it will be noticeable.

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This week in mobile

Dave Farquhar Android , , , , , ,

I have zero intention of doing a mobile roundup every week, but it sure seems like there were a few noteworthy developments in the mobile field this week that are worth mentioning. So, here goes.

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Buy or rent? Here’s a datapoint

Dave Farquhar Saving money ,
Buy or rent? Here’s a datapoint

I once looked at a house that spoke loudly to the question of whether to buy or rent. The asking price is about $100,000. It last sold in the late 1980s for $79,000.

Selling for $100K now isn’t a profit. That is why I couldn’t get a house I don’t want out of my head. Read more

How to disable animation on a Hisense Sero 7 Pro (or anything else running Android 4.2)

Dave Farquhar Android ,

Disabling animation is one way to make a Hisense Sero 7 Pro, or anything else running Jelly Bean, feel faster and smoother. That’s a hidden feature, but it’s not difficult to make it visible and selectable.

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The $99 Android tablet of 2013: The Hisense Sero 7 LT (or Lite)

Dave Farquhar Android , , , , , ,

So when I decided to bring myself into the current decade, tablet-wise, I opted for the $150 Hisense Sero 7 Pro, though I was certainly curious about its $99 little brother. Unfortunately, information on the Sero 7 Lite hasn’t been as easy to come by–people are understandably excited about getting a Nexus 7 clone for $50 less that actually includes two desirable features that the real thing lacks. This must be what it felt like to be in the market for an IBM PC/XT when the Leading Edge Model D came out in the summer of 1985. Read more