MythBusters 7 Tech Headaches and How to Fix Them

MythBusters 7 Tech Headaches and How to Fix Them – Popular Mechanics

Pay special attention to that first section.

Secret Tech Real Estate Deal(?)

Mystery buyer acquires Sun site on U.S. 36

9NEWS – Article – Secret deal could be sign of things to come

Hmm, interesting… This is located just north of where I work.

I’m concerned that Sun is selling off their campus, especially since they just bought MySQL, but I’m also curious as to who could be moving in…

Geek Funny

Okay, funny for me anyway…

We have a 4TB SAN RAID and one of its partitions is: 1337GB

KDE goes cross-platform with Windows, Mac OS X support

KDE goes cross-platform with Windows, Mac OS X support

I thought this was a really early April Fools joke, but I guess it isn’t.

If KDE became a full replacement for Explorer, that would be incredible. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like that will be the case any time soon. I can’t imagine wanting to replace OS-X with it.

JerkStopper

JerkStopper

I thought this was a joke. Apparently these guys are serious.

I’d certainly rather have my laptop’s USB, network, or modem connectors damaged, or it yanked off a table, than have the power cord harmlessly pulled out of the back if someone runs into it.

It would make more sense if it attached to the locking slot. Then again- the result would likely be one of two things:
Laptop yanked off table. At a minimum- several hundred dollars for LCD replacement.
Power cord permanently damaged- requiring a new power brick. $100+ for new one.

I work in an IT department and we’ve gone through several hundred laptops, many of which are used in travel for presentations, displays, and training. Ditto for my part-time gigs and contract work- lots of laptops. I’ve never seen a power connector failure.

Wait- I take that back- I did see one. On an older laptop (I think it was a ThinkPad) that used a 4-prong connector similar to a PS-2 keyboard connector (really stupid idea). One of our staff TWISTED the connector and bent all the pins inside it, breaking one. It had nothing to do with being “jerked”, just someone who probably shouldn’t have had a laptop (or computer) to begin with.

Well- didn’t P.T. Barnum say something along the lines of: “There is a sucker born every minute.” This company will probably make a fortune.

RIAA Website Wiped Clean by “Hackers”

RIAA Website Wiped Clean by “Hackers” | TorrentFreak

See- “hackers” (really “crackers”, but I think most of us have given up on that) can do good!

MySQL AB :: Sun Buys MySQL

MySQL AB :: Kaj Arnö

(Holy crap!)

Sound Advice: Blu-ray wins in format war, but at what cost?

Sound Advice: Blu-ray wins in format war, but at what cost?

I think everyone knew there was some shady dealing involved in the sudden Warner defection to Blu-Ray. This proves it.

Consumers are going to potentially be subjected to a much more expensive HD media option, because Sony (under the guise of the Blu-Ray group they are the cornerstone of) has been paying off studios to switch. Consumers can’t decide what is right for them, and are going to be subjected to Sony’s typical overpriced/under-performing hardware, and a HD “standard” that is sub-standard as far as many are concerned to HD-DVD.

In a related story:

http://gizmodo.com/344655/porn-studio-ditches-hd-dvd-for-blu+ray-in-2008

I wonder how much money Joon and Digital Playground made under the table from Sony?

(And I guess this means Pirates II is coming out on Blu-Ray, while the original is on HD-DVD.)

Y2K38

Y2K38 Problem

In a lot of ways- I think this is more serious than the “Y2K” problem. I know I use Unix time functions a lot, probably in some way in almost every program I write. Granted- I’ll be 72 at the time, so I probably won’t care. I supposed that’s how all those 2-digit year coders back in the 50s and 60s felt too.

As the article suggests- the 30-year countdown begins this Saturday. After that- problems will start to show up in 30-year amortization software running on Unix systems, and probably other financial and forecasting software that uses a 30-year window.

FortranCodingForm.png (PNG Image, 1573×997 pixels)

FortranCodingForm.png (PNG Image, 1573×997 pixels)

OMG! This brings back memories. Not good ones, but memories.