1980s

Sculley on Jobs

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Sculley on Jobs

John Sculley famously fired Steve Jobs in September 1985, a move that’s pretty universally panned today. Nearly 28 years later, Forbes asked Sculley about it.

Here’s the money quote:

“He was not a great executive back in those early days. The great Steve Jobs that we know today as maybe the world’s greatest CEO, certainly of our era, he learned a lot in those years in the wilderness.”

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The trouble with routers

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

I see the advice going around, again, to disable the Windows firewall and rely on an external router, the justification being that it makes your computer “invisible.” It doesn’t. Only IPV6 can do that–and then, only if you don’t use it for anything.

The trouble with that advice is that there are botnets targeting routers. Routers are nothing special; they’re small computers running Linux on an ARM or MIPS CPU, typically outdated versions with old vulnerabilities that can be exploited by someone who knows what to look for. One example of this is the Aidra botnet. Typically Aidra is used to attack outside targets, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility for an infected router to turn on and attack the machines it’s supposed to protect. And if you’ve turned off your firewall, then you have no protection against that.
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Bombshell: Ballmer steps down from Microsoft

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , ,
Bombshell: Ballmer steps down from Microsoft

I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Steve Ballmer is retiring. It’s time. If anything, I agree with the people who say he would have been better off retiring years ago. But I really didn’t expect it. In spite of the immense pressure to step aside, at least in public he never gave any indication of having any intention of doing so. Read more

Don’t build a drill press out of PVC pipe

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , ,

This past weekend, Lifehacker posted instructions for building a makeshift drill press out of PVC pipe. Although the finished contraption looks kind of cool, it’s not something you want to build yourself.

My drill press cost me $40. It’s far better and far safer, even though it’s still possible to injure yourself with it. But structurally it’s as sound as it gets, and acquiring it didn’t take me all weekend, either. Read more

I’m glad Ryne Sandberg is getting a chance

Dave Farquhar Baseball , , , ,

I grew up admiring Ryne Sandberg. He was a hard-hitting, smooth-fielding second baseman, and while his hitting statistics look a little wimpy compared to the steroids era, in the 1980s the sight of him in the on-deck circle struck fear in the hearts of opposing pitchers. He went on to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, and I’m glad to have had the chance to watch him play. I watched him a lot, because all the Cubs games were on WGN, which was available nationally.

Now Sandberg is the new manager of the Phillies. As a Kansas City Royals fan–bear with me–I have a special perspective on this.

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Now that Microsoft is IBM, it needs to avoid IBM’s big mistake

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , , , , , , ,

Whether Microsoft likes it or not, it’s turned into IBM. The biggest difference I see is that when Microsoft makes a mistake, it catches up with them much faster than the same mistake did to IBM.

But IBM’s biggest mistake was its adamant refusal to compete with itself. And that’s what Microsoft is going to have to avoid. Like Computerworld says, Apple says if you don’t compete with yourself, someone else will. Read more

What I miss about the old days of computing

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , , ,

Lifehacker asked this week what graybeards like me (mine gets longer every week) miss about the old days of computing.

I don’t think it’s any single thing. Read more

The price of Amazon

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , , , ,

Slashdot posted a link to a New York Times piece that asserts that the full extent of Amazon’s existence hasn’t been felt yet, but it asserts that book pricing is becoming whimsical.

My experience disagrees with that. The market will stabilize. I think the cost fluctuations are because the market hasn’t stabilized yet.

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It’s the end of SSDs as we know it, and I feel fine

Dave Farquhar Hardware , ,

Flash memory’s days may be numbered. The end of the line for traditional flash memory has been predicted for a long time, and gloated about by Luddites who are dead-set against buying SSDs for whatever reason. But I’m not worried about it. All I want is solid-state storage; I don’t care about the underlying technology. The technology behind the RAM my computer uses has changed several times since the early 1980s, and I’m not broken up about it–the SSD in the last computer I built is faster than the RAM in my Commodore 64 was. Speed is good. More speed is better.

So I’m glad to hear about a potential breakthrough in RRAM. Read more

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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