Author: Dave Farquhar

Microsoft buyouts that worked

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , , ,
Microsoft buyouts that worked

On May 10, 2011, Microsoft surprised a lot of people by buying Skype for $8.5 billion. The deal closed October 13, 2011. I think most people thought Facebook would do it. Now I keep hearing pundits say that this will fail, because Microsoft buyouts always fail.

Thing is, I can think of 11 Microsoft buyouts that worked out really well. Over the years, I think Microsoft has proven itself to be pretty adept at both cloning products and buying products. They don’t always improve them all that much, but they frequently remain popular.

Sometimes I think Microsoft is better at buying products than developing them. After you see this list, you might agree.
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More on the new Intel 320 SSD

Dave Farquhar Hardware, security , , , , , , , ,

A few weeks ago, my security go-to guy, Rich P., bought a new Intel 320 SSD for his netbook.  With my encouragement, of course. It finally arrived this weekend, and he installed it. Rich reports not only faster speed, but also a 30-minute improvement in battery life over the WD Scorpio Black it replaced.

He told me the secure erase function, to enable AES, had a snag. But he solved it. I’m documenting it here in case you ran into the same thing he did.
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Marketing or Engineering?

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , , , , ,

The topic of marketing and engineering came up today. I won’t go into details. I’ll just share what I said about the two, by throwing out a few company names and just a little snippet about each company.

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The Cars got back together?

Dave Farquhar Music , ,

On the radio this afternoon I heard something completely out of the blue: the DJ said The Cars have a new record coming out on May 10 and are doing a small tour. So I came home and checked it out, and, indeed, The Cars, minus the late Ben Orr, are releasing a new record called Move Like This next week. You can listen to it online here.

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I have seen the future, and it’s cheap

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , ,

The computer of the future costs $25.

Its specs aren’t overwhelming–700 MHz ARM CPU, 128 MB RAM, Ubuntu Linux–but it could be a general-purpose computer for some people. Or a thin client. It could also be a tinkerer’s delight, which I think was the developer’s idea.

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Apple-Intel ARM partnership makes sense

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , ,

Rumor is that Apple is shopping around for a new manufacturer for the SoCs that power its mobile devices. And that Intel is interested in the business. I think it makes a ton of sense.
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A firewall to defeat Android location tracking

Dave Farquhar security , ,

That didn’t take long. If you want more control over Android location tracking, Whispermonitor is for you.

Basically, any time an application tries to hit the Internet, it tells you where it’s going and on what port, and you can allow it once, always, or until reboot. Or deny it entirely.

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Quoting famous people accurately

Dave Farquhar net.culture , ,

If you’re going to quote people on the Internet, you might as well quote them accurately. Here are some tips for quoting famous people accurately, based on my own detective work on one of my favorite quotes.

“The problem with quotes on the Internet is that you never can know if they are genuine.” –Abraham Lincoln

The death of bin Laden prompted a couple of quotes attributed to Mark Twain and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to be repeated endlessly on social networking sites. It turned out both quotes were false. Inaccurate quotes also tend to pop up in election years.

Here are some good tips to avoid spreading fake quotes the next time something really newsworthy happens. One nifty trick: A Google search, filtered by date, to see if the quote existed anywhere before the event.

“Abraham Lincoln” may be right, that you can never know for certain, but you can get a really good idea with a little bit of digging.
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Why would anyone want my e-mail account?

Dave Farquhar security

One of my train acquaintances’ e-mail addresses got hacked last week. And yesterday The Consumerist warned not to play games on social networking sites telling people what your royal name would be by substituting things like the names of places you’ve lived for your real name. That led to people asking why anyone would want an Ordinary Joe’s e-mail account.

Ordinary Joe’s e-mail account is priceless, that’s why.
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Random thoughts from the day after bin Laden died

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , , , ,

It was 9:15. I was tired. I’d been reading, then I went to my computer to check baseball scores. I saw that the president had called a press conference for 9:30 CST, with no indication what it was about. 9:30 PM on a Sunday night isn’t when you usually call press conferences, and there’s usually some indication what the subject will be. I was curious enough to click around to see what was going on, but when I didn’t find anything right away, I went to bed.

This morning I woke up, went straight to the Kansas City Star’s baseball page to get an account of last night’s Royals-Twins game, and out of the corner of my eye, spotted the last headline I ever expected to read: “The Raid that Killed bin Laden.” What? Beneath it was a similar headline. I clicked, read the first two sentences to make sure I was reading the right thing, then raced into the bedroom, where my wife was getting our two sons dressed.

“They got bin Laden,” I said. And she did the same double-take that I did, and made me say it again.

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