Dropping everything to vote in our poll
Looking at the results of yesterday's Power Bracket vote, in which Ballmer and Fiorina went down to defeat at the hands of Fiallo and Reyes, a couple of things become apparent:
1. Henry Fiallo of Enterasys and Greg Reyes of Brocade are caring, brilliant (and impossibly handsome) individuals, as deserving of the Nobel Prize for Peace as they are for the Nobel Prize for Economics and Physics, while Steve Ballmer of Microsoft and Carly Fiorina of HP are evil, monopolistic beasts who tore the wings off flies as children and whose only contribution to networking is to destroy it.
2. Employees of Enterasys and Brocade managed to tear themselves from their extremely busy jobs to vote in our poll.
We know these things because many of those employees commented in the poll and because our software logs the IP address of incoming votes (greetings to everybody who used the Enterasys proxy server!).
Interestingly, some of the employees expressed disdain for the other's company, saying they had never heard of Enterasys or Brocade. And at times, they seemed to be in a competition to see who could find the most glowing terms to describe their CEOs:
"Henry is a great employer and he has done a great job of taking over Enterasys and moving it forward as an innovative and successful company."
"Every time I attend a presentation given by Greg, I learn more than I ever thought I could. His insight into the industry is phenominal."
"Henry is the man."
"Greg is the greatest CEO I have ever worked for."
"Henry is a good motivator."
"Greg is a true leader and a handsome man!!"
"Henry plays a better guitar...."
Alrighty, then. Onto today's vote.
Other voices
Aside from totally unbiased employees, others chimed in on the votes. Those who voted for Fiorina and Ballmer said it was obvious why - despite how you might feel about them and their companies, they're still 800-pound gorillas.
With all due respect to the "other" two people, MS is still the top dog (regardless if we like it or not and despite all their arrogance and failings) and HP carries enormous weight. This one was fairly easy.
Still, some voted against Fiorina because of the HP/Compaq merger imbroglio, while others accused Ballmer of only riding on the coattails of Microsoft's success.
01/03/02
The best Apple rumors, ever
You don't see Windows users frothing at the mouth, whipping themselves into a frenzy wondering what new feature Microsoft's about to add to their OS ("ooh, could it be a USB port?!?"). Mac users, though, can't get enough. Their disappointment over iPod (sure it's cool, in an outrageously priced way, but c'mon, it's an MP3 player, not a Segway) was palpable. In the past, Apple's done its best to try to dampen the drooling, but not this time. Every day now, Apple's Web site has some Edge of the Second Coming pronouncement about the MacWorld show next week.
Can't stand the tension anymore? Get over to the Crazy Apple Rumors Site. Sure, there are plenty of other Apple rumor sites, but only this one admits it makes all its rumors up. Its MacWorld prediction:January 7th Keynote To Be A Repeat. Apple To Re-Introduce iPod.
"We just assumed everyone would get it," Apple PR representative Cynthia McLaren said. "Sure, the keynote's going to talk about a 'revolutionary' new product that provides a new level of ease of use. That's the iPod. We did this already. Is it me or should this be obvious?"
Via MetaFilter.
Guess Steve Case isn't getting into Harvard
The Boston Globe reports that, in a reaction to anthrax scares, Harvard decided to send out early-admission letters by e-mail recently. Only problem was that AOL blocked some percentage of the messages to its users as spam, the Boston Globe reports.
01/02/01
Make your own O'Reilly cover
Design Your Own O'Reilly Book Cover does exactly as promised: You type in a title, subhead and author, choose a color and a 19th-century woodcarving of some beast and voila, your very own O'Reilly book cover. Go ahead, be creative with the title and contents.
Via Bill Says This.
Boosting your wireless juice
Turns out the power output of a certain Linksys wireless access point can be controlled through a software setting, which means you can double its output. That this was discovered and documented by a group calling itself the "super secret canadian wireless group" perhaps tells you something about the legality of it all.
Via Boing Boing.
Telnet lives!
There'll always be a telnet, as long as there are people dedicated to doing things like telling the first (the real first) Star Wars epic in animated ASCII art and creating a telnet version.
Via CamWorld.
RELATED LINKS
Compendium archive: Week of 01/21/02 Week of 01/14/02 Week of 01/07/02 Week of 01/02/02 Week of 12/03/01 Week of 11/26/01 Week of 11/19/01 Week of 11/12/01 Week of 11/05/01 Week of 10/29/01 Week of 10/22/01 Week of 10/15/01 Week of 10/08/01 Week of 10/01/01 Week of 9/24/01 Weeks of 9/10/01 - 9/17/01 Week of 9/3/01 Week of 8/27/01 Week of 8/20/01 Week of 8/13/01 Week of 8/6/01 Note: Compendium's entire staff took the week of 7/30 off. Week of 7/23/01 Week of 7/16/01 Week of 7/9/01 Week of 7/2/01 Week of 6/25/01 Week of 6/18/01 Week of 6/11/01 Week of 6/4/01
Tracking down a stolen Mac; Dead C Scrolls; Googlewhacking; How bad is it in the Valley?; Storage lessons from the Wayback Machine; The pub-seeking handheld; Internet gang wars; Outlook XP breaks MIME.
Why should iMac owners have all the eye candy?; Luxo Redux; So you think your job is bad; Google as a DNS replacement? Not so fast; Nokia exec cites stock plunge in speeding-fine appeal; The tragedy of the .coms; The Google parlor game; Some people *like* Steve the Dell Guy; Ban all Microsoft attachments?
Dot-com to bare all; iMac Dance; Wendy's remembers Dave; Search engine bites the dust; Wendy's Web site ignores Dave's death; Geek comic strip; Youngest security expert ever; Spam poetry; Confessions of a hacker; Breathless Apple; Dave Barry does Windows XP.
Dropping everything to vote; The best Apple rumors, ever; Guess Steve Case isn't getting into Harvard; Make your own O'Reilly cover; Boosting your wireless juice; Telnet lives!
This space intentionally left blank (vacation).
The most useless software ever; Is Microsoft getting ready to squash PC vendors?; Excite@Home: The Watergate of the New Economy?; No more 3Com Park. Is CMGI Field next?; Are you an e-bore?; This site'll have you coming and going; Entertainment Weekly's loss of innocence; Ensign Crusher as Entertainer of the Year; Oh, for the old days.
The Museum of Broken Packets; Just in time for Thanksgiving; Tourist Guy found; Why virtual offices suck; A domain ruling that sucks; Hacking the iPod.
Why you shouldn't ship computers via UPS; When .Net requires Java; High-tech grafitti artists; Spam from beyond the grave; New group tries to oversee the whole Internet; Paging Dick Tracy; Students use PDAs to cheat; Windaz for Aussies, Newfies; Another alternative to Passport; A virtual honeynet
Bill Gates: Father of open source; Verizon exec: Monopoly is good; Weird molecule names; E-mail: too much of a good thing?; A cluster of one; More woes for dot-bombers; Spam as weapon in the war on crime; Just when you think the Web can't get any better; Just when you think the Web can't get any worse; More proof I shouldn't be a wiseass; Using your Web logs to ID hacker attacks; Help save the FAQs; Who do you trust, baby?; Powerpuff Girls powerless against virus; Big IP pipe between US, Europe.
The profit of turning thugs into programmers; Work Name Generator; A programmer's lament; The world's best ATM; Are anti-spammers killing people?; Web services and storage; Get your Aerons here; Perl for the XXI-imum century; Microsoft's blocking of non-IE browsers.
Government info taken off the Web since 9/11; Beware hackers who talk too much; A contest you can enter sitting down; Now don't try this in the office; Bob Patterson must die; Finally, a useful 404 page; Tech calls from hell; Teletubbies XP; More XP fun; Anthrax and e-mail; Larry's ID card; World's longest gum-wrapper chain.
Let's drop PDAs on Afghanistan; Voice control? Try grunt control; Spam gets back to business; A content-management portal; Share your system tray with the world; Would you let the recording industry onto your network?; Al Queda's low-tech high tech; 9/11 archive; Shoe company gets open source after all; Pod people, coming soon to a cube near you.
Larry and Scott's dueling ID cards; Cringely: Broadband is dead; The dangers of Photoshop; The dangers of copy protection; Microsoft mining whois for telephone solicitations?; How to REALLY throw a LAN party; Good fences don't make good 'Net neighbors; How Google adapted to 9/11 news; Web services as over-hyped hooey; Why shoe guys shouldn't do open source; Online air hockey.
AT&T waives 9/11 wireless charges for some; Shifting gears; Craig Burton on the Novell/Microsoft suit; In search of the post-PC interface; Vibrating PDAs and wearable phones; Gary Condit's Web site; No, that isn't a real photo of a WTC tourist; How to throw a LAN party; How sucky is your intranet?
For grizzled 'Net veterans; UK ISP forced to pull deceptive ads; Pretty Good encryption controversy; Are you as smart as Miss America?; Really securing your computer; Still lots of insecure IIS servers; Kids, don't try this at home; Anthrax Kills; Larry's national database; Nimda hysteria?
Attack and post-attack items.
999,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall; Finally, a wind-up cell phone; Enough with the ringing!; The VoIP calculator; 802.11b insecurity; Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf explains IOS DHCP; Is ENUM the mark of the devil?; AOL gives user permanent demerit; The Ballmer music video; Cleveland news flash: Y2K was last year.
Re-routing around censorship; Us vs. them in scripting; The boss button; Fighting off the hackers for fun; Peer computing as a weapon of war; Unix poetry; The Windows Fatal Exception Decoder; New Fusion widget: Getting rid of spyware; The sound of 200 cell phones going off at once; Taleban Web site hacked; Hey, sysadmin, remember Sircam?
On the importance of flame wars; Bill Gates sees dead people?; A markup language for grunts and groans; Is Microsoft leaking those Ballmer dance videos?; Good Samaritan not so good?; Steve Ballmer works up a sweat; Open-source wireless cracking; When technology goes too far; Another dumb computer arrest?; Is Cisco Communist?
Moron marketers threaten 'Net users; Finding free wireless access; Complete wastes of time; OS holy war flares in North Carolina; Are programmers weird?; Somebody actually buys an X10 camera; We're number, uh, two!; Those after-hours computer discussions; An entire city running on Linux; Distributed spam fighter under development; Could a Warhol virus infect the entire 'Net in 15 minutes?; Tell AOL what to do with its CDs.
Fusion shatters a myth; Bridging .Net and Java?; AT&T Broadband cuts off non-IIS servers to fight Code Red; Bluetoothless; Tennessee town bites into Apple; And you thought TI-99/4A fans were over the edge; Biometrics coming to your local supermarket; Steve Ballmer a-hootin' and a-hollerin'; Speaking of Web images; Just how far PC prices have fallen; Does Starbucks' CEO get his own wireless strategy?
Crackers getting more sophisticated; Sex and Microsoft Office; The wonders of science, part MXXII; Finally, a useful virus; A shocking game controller; Big Ball of Mud school of programming; Two vitally important new resources; Adobe: Ooops; Eudora Welty, dead at 92; Centralizing Unix administration in Perl; Spellchecking the entire Web.
Worm turns on Microsoft Web servers; The day the ISP died; Cell-phone users have no shame; Even Internet consultants can screw up the 'Net; Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers; The ultimate cup of coffee; The solar-powered ISP; Everhost; Internet VCer: Oops; The Lego Palm and the pink fuzzy laptop; The Microsoft-English dictionary; Putting a loved one in the home.
Saving those all important VoIP calls; This site is a bright idea; Could wireless end messy divorces?; How much will that software really cost you?; Ghosts of failed dot-coms; The spy's guide to securing your Cisco routers; Oprah for Internet czarina?; What's Microsoft doing at an open-source conference?; Like a big pizza pi; Cyber-bullies; Better check your phone bill; Have some birthday pi.
How HP wastes energy to save energy; New toy for the bored and lonely; Weird programming languages; When sponsors are speakers; The case of the disturbing backwards monitor; Congress to ICANN: Drop dead; Yet another video game made into a movie; Smile, you're on Candid (Police) Camera; High-speed hotels; Network Solutions blocking name transfers?
One of the fathers of Usenet dead at 45; Are you ready for insta-spam?; Diary of a site collapse; Skirting the issue; Assimiliating the Web; Trolling for help; Software wars; Rating the rater; True tales from the help desk; How about spam embedded in your mail?
Unix diapers; A beautiful waste of time; A P2P taxonomy; This page is too stupid; Homeless dot-commer bogus?; Whee, Linux is fun!; Blue Screens everywhere; Forget viruses: This fungus eats CDs; Microsoft revises Smart Tags a bit; Homeless dot-commers.
Slashdot crashes the NSA; They may be Smart Tags, but they're not Original Tags; What open source and California wines have in common; Jakob Nielsen no tyro; How to make Windows 2000 really, really secure; Where the Internet begins; A useful computer bug; The clothes make the geek; The end of the Internet; Why PDF bites; Novel use of a wireless phone; Hidden info; When Web sites tell too much.
DSL modems are so '90s; Bye-bye Netscape; Get ready to upgrade those mail servers; The anti-.Net; The real reason to buy a Palm; Anatomy of a DDoS attack; Pain is good.
