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As I’ve mentioned, I’m trying out a B&N Nook and an iPad for use in corporate document delivery and overall communications. Here’s a quick snapshot of my findings. A couple notes, the Kindle didn’t make my initial cut for various reasons, primarily because it’s more of a retail outlet than an e-reader. I probably will [...]
Last night I saw a special on the OLPC computers in our area, and whether they’re making a difference. The results seemed to be disappointing. Then today I saw this article today about how a school board had made a bad hardware decision and had to void a contract. It contained this quote at the [...]
I’ve only been in the ‘official’ technology workforce for 15 years, but this is enough for me to sip a beverage, stare at the horizon and wax philosophical about the whole thing. This involves pondering the patterns of the whole and of the parts, and the mechanics in which they interact. I’ve worked at no [...]
In the last b’journal entry I mentioned “black box”. The term “black box” has several meanings but one definition is a “closed system with little understanding of what happens inside”. You feed something into these systems and something comes back out. You don’t know how it works, it just does it. Our economic system has [...]
Here’s a great article about the problems we’re having in copyright. It’s something I’ve written on in the past, and we’re just now starting to see how truly destructive our copyright policies are. They give their own summary, but the basic gist is this. A long time ago copyright was simple: Give the people who [...]
Everyone loves to hate Wal-Mart. And really, I’m not a fan. You go there when you have to or when you need some commodity that will be more expensive somewhere else. Historically the sheer overhead and trouble of getting there, parking, finding the thing, checking out, and simply leaving the parking lot….well, it’s just not [...]
My ‘official’ job and career is CTO of a financial institution….so I’m always studying how people use technology. Here’s a great article by a friend of mine on technology (in this case, databases) in the church. I thought I’d add a couple tidbits to Eugene’s very insightful analysis of databases. First, a good technology solution [...]
Now everyone is trying to figure out ways to get all that AIG money back. Good luck. That’s the problem with bailing things out instead of letting them fail. Why not pay people bonuses? Because it’s “not right”? In a normal market system these bonuses wouldn’t be paid because the company would be bankrupt. But [...]
Which of these options scares you more? A picture of you in college. You are holding a “beverage” and pumping your fist in the air. Your eyes are kind of blankly staring off camera. Or, A huge company that has a database of everything you’ve ever bought…your browsing habits…your viewing habits….your income….every demographic tidbit…..and all [...]
We’re always hearing how copyright fosters creativity and innovation. But we should re-think the right to control content vs the right to profit from it. Case in point: Amazon’s new kindle reader was supposed to have the ability to read e-books to you. This would be pretty handy if you’re blind. Or maybe you just [...]
Welcome to the stock market, circa 1997! I love this little gem: “I think we need to hear some optimistic talk from our leaders and soon.” -Ron Kiddoo, chief investment officer at Cozad Asset Management I love it not because of what it implies…which is bad news. I love it because it matches several patterns [...]
So Circuit City is no more. If you owned stock in CC, it’s now worth nothing…as the fire sale of assets will leave no remaining value. Circuit City fell victim to one of the primary fallacies in dealing with technology. They were, after all, a company primarily involved in tech even if it was selling [...]
This is a sad one. KB Toys is going bankrupt and will be liquidated (go away). We grew up with KB stores, of course. and ever since our kids were born, trips through those cramped mall-based KB toy stores have been a staple. I know my daughter will take this pretty hard…probably harder than the [...]
Individuals get 70 billion in bonuses while my children and grandchildren fund their bailout. Sure, through the labyrinth of accounting it’s not quite that direct. But the fact is that the people who ushered in this catastrophe are walking away with fortunes while citizens (not “taxpayers” or “consumers”) backfill the spoils. This is not capitalism. [...]
I think this is going to turn into a financial musing blog for a couple weeks as I try to get my head around what’s happening. There are huge, huge things at play…and I think it’s going to be very important to think through exactly what it means to be a Christian and an American. [...]
Turns out there’s some compelling evidence that car seats are no more effective in preventing injuries to children than regular seatbelts. In fact, in some cases they are actually worse. Fortunately, there is nobody out there who would benefit from such a pointless rule, and eventually cooler heads will prevail and we’ll change our laws [...]
Our fam saw Wall-E last weekend…great movie. Go see it. But the poor lil’ fella seems to be upsetting quite a few people. Social conservatives think it’s leftist propaganda. Once again these great communicators make it sound like pollution, improper/inadequate waste disposal, and corporate-consumerism-as-diety are conservative ideals. Thanks guys! Meanwhile, the movie negatively portrays fat [...]
Amazing. Check out manual on sabatoge from the O.S.S.. (The O.S.S. eventually became the CIA). Read the handy tips on page 28 or so. Remember that these are things they recommended to destroy and organization’s effectiveness. (11) General Interference with Organisations and Production (a) Organizations and Conferences (1) Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never [...]
(note, watch out for some of the banner ads and links on the page below) (Also note, I messed up the link to point to the wrong website! So try it again…) This one is a little more difficult to grasp, but it illustrates the point. Every picture of a ‘beautiful’ person you see is [...]
Alot of times people ask me “you know that thing you blogged about but didn’t really get too specific? Well…were you talking about XYZ?” The answer is usually no. I don’t find too many specific things to generalize about. However, I often see the same patterns across my family life, my job life, my church [...]
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