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
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. Read more
Nook won’t turn on? Try these four things.
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.
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.
Read more
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 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.”
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 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?
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
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.
Read more
Buying that Nook was more work than it needed to be
I drove to the Kmart the 90s forgot–on Manchester Avenue in St. Louis, if it matters–in search of a $70 Nook Simple Touch. I found it in the electronics section, in the very back of the store, in a glass case with a bunch of obsolete stuff. If you need VHS tapes, I know your place.
The price was wrong. That was a bad sign, but I waited until the clerk wasn’t busy.