The future now
Joel Spolsky has another great piece on Five whys, a highly recommended read for all in technical operations and engineers in general. There is alot to learn from the Toyota example.
In the past my preferred model for technical operations has always been NASA mission control, but I will be looking closely at Toyota Production System for insights that can improve operational preparedness and response.
As expected Tog has come out with a small review of the iPhone user interface. See my earlier post about Tog & the iPhone.
It appears that the patent office has granted Microsoft a patent on sudo. For those that don’t know sudo is a piece of software that allows a user to execute a command with the rights and privileges of another user. It has been around for at least as long as I have been using computers and Microsoft was just granted a patent on it. WTF?
Check it out over at Ubuntu Linux Tips & Tricks.
What the hell is going on at the patent office?
UPDATE: Behold the patent
David Isenberg has a great post into the cell-phone towers and bees controversy. A must read:
isen.blog: Mobile phones, bees and the future: “Mobile phones, bees and the future
I’m wicked skeptical about reports of negative effects of mobile phones (brain cancer, etc.) when the public and the press can’t seem to get worked up at all about way more direct, obvious problems like mobile phones and car crashes (and state legislatures pass stupid laws on same).
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Needless to say if the link between cell-phone towers and a reduction in the bee population is confirmed it means bad news all around…
Technorati Tags:
science, technology, environment
Postgres Release 8.2 today! Yeah!
Go read about the goodness at http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/release-8-2.html
I am in the midst of reading a wonderful account of the early days of electricity, Empires of Light. The books covers the euphoria of the inventions, the easy early money, followed by the grueling work of actually turning it into a business that changed people's lives. A riveting story that should be required reading for today's entrepreneurs. The book covers Edison, Tesla, & Westinghouse in some depth along with the investors who backed them. Its absolutely wonderful reading how Edison's investors had to be convinced that the invention worked and how he missed milestones and the trials and tribulations of raising money.
The struggle between Edison, the visionary inventor, & Tesla, the young upstart is fascinating. A highly recommended read.
Looks like Microsoft is set to unleash unholy anti-piracy safeguards in their next version of Office.
Looks like there is some trouble brewing in PS3 land, NY Times reports the game console is a big miss. This is EXTREMELY bad news for Sony, they have lost the battle in the music player space and are now poised to lose the battle in video games.
Today is that fateful day when Microsoft launches the venerable iPod competitor, the Zune. From all reports the Zune is pretty craptacular . Everything from a bizarre song sharing feature to not even playing previous Microsoft DRM-ed music. I really don't get it, if Microsoft is going to take a stab at the market why don't they actually release something that has a chance?
Update: Even more Zune craptacularness…
It seems that Microsoft is hiring someone to explore bringing Ruby, my new favorite language, to the .Net CLR