Google declares total war on Microsoft, but the main battles are years away
Google blogged Tuesday night about a new project, the Google Chrome Operating System. Highlights include:
Open source
Targeted to appear in netbooks in the second half of 2010
Google Chrome browser + new windowing system + Linux...
Mohammad Asgari, head of Iranian voting IT security, said to be dead in suspicious car crash after leaking true election results
According to The Guardian:The man who leaked the real election results from the Interior Ministry - the ones showing Ahmadinejad coming third - was killed in a suspicious car accident, according to unconfirmed reports, writes Saeed...
The future of analytic technology is becoming a little clearer
I posted today elsewhere about The Future of Data Marts. Key points include:
Data marts aren’t just for performance (or price/performance). They also exist to give individual analysts or small teams control of their analytic...
Hospital turns away ambulances because EHR system goes down
Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis turned away patients in ambulances for two hours Tuesday morning, according to an article in the Indianapolis Star. Why? Because a power surge blew out their computers, which house their electronic...
Some very, very, very large data warehouses
In the course of my research, I'm running across some VERY large data warehouses. Several of them, especially in the web log/network event area, are in the multi-petabyte range. Perhaps most surprisingly, they're run on a broad...
Hacker vs. hacker
The Register ran a long article to the effect of "A guy tried to engage in pedophile activity and got off with a slap on the wrist because he informed on hacker activity." That's distressing, whether or not one agrees with the...
The single stupidest quote in the history of information technology
A reporter just sent me an embargoed press release from IBM which includes the oft-used quote:
By 2010, the codified information base of the world is expected to double every 11 hours.
(Other versions refer to "human...
Why the basically good choice of Aneesh Chopra for US CTO scares the bejeesus out of me
Aneesh Chopra, the newly-announced United States Chief Technology Officer, is getting
rave reviews, including a detailed and highly influential one from Tim O'Reilly.
Chopra seems to be cut from the same cloth as United States...
Stonebraker/DeWitt and eBay slam MapReduce (again)
Last August, Greenplum and Aster Data made a very appealing case for enterprise use of DBMS-integrated MapReduce. Despite slow adoption, I still think the case has merit. Monday, however, was a bad night for the MapReduce advocates....
A simple overview of the Twitter StalkDaily virus
Twitter was hit today by the StalkDaily virus. The long version of the story is in my prior post on the subject, and its comment thread. The super-short version is:1. Twitter had a virus (or worm) whose main symptom is that your...
A Twitter virus shows up: StalkDaily
A Twitter virus has shown up. Tweetstreams, including mine, send out the message:Hey everyone, join www. StalkDaily. com. It's a site like Twitter but with pictures, videos, and so much more! :) (Of course, the URL link is live in...
A piece of career advice almost every IT professional should follow
I believe that almost every IT professional should write a blog. It can be anonymous. It can contain only a couple of posts per year. It can be done for zero cash cost. It can be extremely beneficial to you even if it only ever...
April No-Fooling Day
I'm recusing myself from April Fool's Day this year. Not only were the events of several weeks ago stranger than fiction, but I keep reminding people of them in a plea for tolerance for being behind on my work. So pranking today...
Star Trek parodies, PG-rated and otherwise
The Star Trek:The Next Generation cast came together for a Galaxy Quest-like episode of Family Guy this week. The promo video gives a flavor. It's obvious from this article and Twitter alike that most or all concerned were great...
My favorite celebrities on Twitter
As I wrote before, celebrities are flocking to Twitter. Here are some who I think are using the medium particularly well, and capturing my interest at least occasionally, tech industry folks excepted:Levar Burton is hilarious and...
The Vivek Kundra controversy: Real and imaginary problems with America's CIO
In general, I like the idea of Vivek Kundra having been selected as America's new CIO. He's at least in part a true CIO type, rather than just a CTO, something for which I advocated strongly. He impressed at least some observers...
Two ways the electric grid could go down, causing us all to die (and also to lose internet access)
The New Scientist recently posted a nightmare scenario for the destruction of the electric grid. Apparently, a solar incident no worse than something actually observed in 1859 -- the "Carrington event" -- could destroy all the...
Star Trek:The Next Generation actors discover social media
I recently blogged that non-tech celebrities are increasingly active on Twitter. Subsequently, I got into a meaning-of-life kind of Twitter chat with LeVar Burton, only to find out at that moment that my house was on fire. (I'm not...
Where to find Twitter humor
The New York Times blogged today about humor on Twitter, rightly suggesting that the 140-character limit inspires people to toss off one-liners. Indeed, just such a one-liner was the genesis of a hot-meme-of-the-day, leading to my...
13 reasons social media are like sex
A Twitter quip made the Digg/Reddit/Techmeme rounds recently to the effect that "Social media is like teen sex." (I got it from this blog post.) The three reasons given in the original tweet were:Everyone wants to do it. No one...
