Friday, October 31, 2008

Links for 10-31-2008

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Links for 10-30-2008

  • Netflix Lands on TiVo! - From the comments: "Big picture: this is the death of premium cable. Why pay an extra $5, $10 a month for HBO and Cinemax? Buy the one or two shows you want to watch (DVD, unbox, AppleTV), and get the crappy movies from Netflix." I've never felt that that premium cable was worth it. Certainly as options increase, become even less so.
  • October Surprise: TiVo to Stream Netflix « NewTeeVee - Very nice. I care less about either the TiVo or the Xbox partnership now that I also reattached a Shuttle PC to my TV. But streaming to a television, rather than just a computer, is a big win in any case.
  • Azure manages to avoid a Hailstorm of criticism | Beyond Binary - A blog by Ina Fried - CNET News - "But businesses now have to evaluate not just the theory of whether allowing others to hold their data is a good thing. The reality is that, in many cases, large third parties may be able to do more to protect a company's data than some mid-size firms can do on their own."Organizations have come to say, 'let's compare it to practical alternatives as opposed to some Utopian ideal," O'Kelly said."

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Links for 10-29-2008

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Head of the Charles 2008 Pics


Head of the Charles 2008Another nice year for photography at the Head of the Charles in Cambridge. Here's a link to my better photos from the event.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Links for 10-21-2008

Thursday, October 16, 2008

How Not to Get a Briefing

I regularly receive emails along the lines of the following. (Redacted to protect the guilty.)

We were hoping to schedule some time with you later this month for a briefing with ACME. Your input and insight into the RANDOM TECHNOLOGY market space will provide a valuable forum for ACME's third generation product and technology offering.

Best Regards,
Buffy

I usually just ignore such, but here's the response I would like to send.
Dear Buffy,

You seem to have mixed up my mailing address with some other ghaff who is in the “business” (not that it would be much of a business) of providing free consulting and market intelligence to anyone who drops me a line. I’m sure his input and insight will be commensurate with the high value that you appear to place on it. Good luck finding the other ghaff.
I'm more than happy, in the course of a conversation, to share my views on whatever. However, to brazenly request an hour of my time with the explicit expectation that I'm going to be briefing you for free is just not going to happen.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Links for 10-15-2008

  • Thank you for smoking - Roger Ebert's Journal - "This stamp honoring Bette Davis was issued by the U. S. Postal Service on Sept. 18. The portrait by Michael Deas was inspired by a still photo from "All About Eve." Notice anything missing? Before you even read this far, you were thinking, Where's her cigarette? Yes reader, the cigarette in the original photo has been eliminated. We are all familiar, I am sure, with the countless children and teenagers who have been lured into the clutches of tobacco by stamp collecting, which seems so innocent, yet can have such tragic outcomes. But isn't this is carrying the anti-smoking campaign one step over the line?"
  • Linux and marketing: a rant « Elias Q. Funtybunt’s Pisspoor Pseudonym - "Apple does branding to the same extent as RMS does zealotry and ESR does guns."
  • Technological comebacks | Not dead, just resting | The Economist - "American office workers’ use of paper has actually been in decline since 2001. What changed? The explanation seems to be sociological rather than technological. A new generation of workers, who have grown up with e-mail, word processing and the internet, feel less of a need to print documents out than their older colleagues did. Offices are still far from paperless, but the trend is clear."
  • Google: Raise Your Data Center Temperature « Data Center Knowledge - Nice overview of some of the opportunities and challenges associated with raising datacenter operating temperatures.
  • 451 CAOS Theory » Open source is not a business model - We've very much entered a pragmatic phase of open source.
  • Stuff Michael Meeks is doing - A rather bleak take on the state of OpenOffice development. Based on my (much more peripheral) knowledge of what's been happening there, seems like a realistic assessment.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Links for 10-10-2008

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Links for 10-01-2008

I got out of the link posting rhythm because of lots of travel and other things. Should be back on track now (at least until the end of October).