David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
There aren’t a lot of surprises in this CNN/Money article about debt. On the surface, it shows that wealthy people borrow less money than non-wealthy people. I don’t think that’s news to many people. I also don’t think it’s news that wealthy people’s incomes are growing faster than non-wealthy people.
What I found very surprising, though, is that the non-wealthy used to borrow less money than the wealthy did.
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Barnes & Noble is creating a subsidiary to handle its Nook business. And Microsoft is sinking $300 million into it, making it a joint venture.
Remember, last year, Microsoft sued B&N over its Android-based devices. And B&N put up more of a fight than anyone expected. Read more
PC Magazine posted its reader’s choice awards for home networking equipment Monday. PC Magazine‘s reader surveys aren’t gospel, but they’re valuable. They’re a cross-section of the opinions of people who care enough about technology to read the magazine, and as such, I give it more weight than what, say, Consumer Reports says. Read more
So you replace the hard drive in your laptop with a bigger model, or better yet, an SSD. What do you do with the old drive if it still works?
It’s good to keep the drive for storing backups or for extra storage when you’re working on storage-heavy projects. It’s a lot more convenient for both if you put the old drive in a USB enclosure. Read more
A longtime reader asked me today if it’s OK if he links to me from another forum. He happens to know I don’t especially care for that particular forum, or at least haven’t in the past.
I said that linking to content here is always welcome, and for any purpose. Read more
Micro Center had the Inland warm white A19 LED bulbs on sale this week and had a hard time keeping them in stock. I snagged an 800 lumen (60W equivalent), non-dimmable bulb, which uses 10 watts, for $13. It’s not the state of the art in 10W LED bulbs, but the price is right and it has a 3-year warranty. Read more
The Post-Dispatch ran a piece this morning on how to watch for fake online reviews. It contains some good advice. Read more
Google Drive, on its surface, looks useful. They give me a few gigs of storage that I can access from any computer with Internet access. I could use it like a virtual USB drive.
Except I won’t. The terms of service are too problematic for me. Read more
Andy Black is a former colleague and an Oracle DBA. Several times in the last few years, I ran into problems where I wished he wasn’t a former colleague, because my team got into some jams that I was pretty sure he could have fixed. (And let’s not even mention the time I got blackmailed into building an Oracle server.)
Last year, Andy did a thorough investigation of Oracle performance on SSDs, and observed very favorable results. Read more
Cnet says an SSD price war is imminent as the major makers try to squeeze some competition out of the market.
This could cause SSD prices to deflate a little faster than expected. Read more