Posts by Mike

US dial-a-warrant spy judge: don't trust President, feds

But does it scale

Obviously, the reason that the Bushies sidestepped the FISC was because they couldn't scale up.

The FISC was signing any warrant for an individual action the executive branch asked for, but they were for discreet operations.

The executive branch wanted the NSA to be able to tap all phone calls all the time if there might be a foreigner on one end. There would be millions of those a day, and obviously you can't get a judge to approve that many warrants, no matter how compliant they are.

Nobody likes what they did, and you can definitely question how effective such an operation really could have been. They couldn't find a needle in a haystack, so they got a bigger haystack.

Windows Vista aligned with good management practice

Vista Creeps

Vista is going to creep into the infrastructure if you don't watch it. Like some kind of vine, you'll see it here and there at first. Then, when you stop trying to cut it back and just let it go, it will take over.

Nobody cares about Vista, but its coming on new notebooks and workstations, and some of the players want new notebooks and workstations. It will do one or two 'must have' things that XP doesn't. That's how it starts.

Once your install base of Vista reaches a critical mass, its time to migrate full swing, because the only thing worse than Vista is Vista && Windows XP.

IT shops that are 'in tune' and 'deliver services' don't care about Vista. They're just realistic about how this game is played and accurate in their guesses about the time-line for how it will infect and spread.

Less experienced shops, or less well funded shops, don't see how Vista will make its way in. But it probably will find a way in.

Operating systems are old and busted

How does a clipboard work

So I've got my my word processor running on a virtual machine, and my web browser running safely tucked away on another virtual machine.

I'm a total hack, so for the paper I'm writing in my word processor, I'm citing a wikipedia article. I go to the web browser vm, copy a snippet of text. Go to my email client on that machine, and send it to the email address on my word processing virtual machine. Then, I switch back to the word processing machine, check my email (its lightning quick thanks to my 8 core processor), copy the annotation out, and paste into my word document.

But its secure!

Rivals torture consumers via Microsoft

Choices Good

If I take everything in this article as a fact, here's the problem with it. Right now, MS's search might be better than Google's. But in 5 years, when I'm trying to search my holographic ogg vorbis identity cube, or whatever the cool thing is at the time, I want to be able to switch out MS's search for the new, cool one by yet-to-be determined super hot startup company of 2012.

Its like Internet Explorer. Biggest malware vector in the world, and if you have a Microsoft System that isn't DOS, you can't get rid of it. That's not what I bought Windows for. As a consumer, I want to be able to use the operating system for my benefit, not for the vendor's benefit. If that means mandating that the architecture be modular, so be it -- it's the sane way to design software anyway.

Makes no difference to me, I made the jump to Linux already. Still read articles about Windows though. Old habit, I guess.

Sirius and XM's star-crossed merger

There is competition

I switched to satellite radio (Sirius) in my car, and I would hate to go back to FM.

I have ten or so channels I usually listen to, but on long trips I might go through the spectrum a bit. There are good channels with good music on them. Its not perfect. The programming is very good but not great.

However, no commercials on the music stations I listen to. ESPN radio has commercials. Howard Stern has commercials (though they're really short and infrequent.) But, a) there's always something to switch to in commercials. I never go from a commercial to a commercial. b) I can see on the on-screen display which stations are on commercials and which are not.

I can listen to any NFL game. I can get notifications when scores change in anything except baseball.

Some of the music has stuff you won't find on any other radio station, except maybe some specific college radio shows. There is a classic hip hop station. There is a classic rock station (and it really is classic rock, not just Journey and Steve Miller.) And there's the BBC Radio 1.

Its worth my $10/month.

Regarding the merger, if it happens and they raise the price, I'll drop the service. Its not a utility. I don't need it, and neither does anyone else. So, let them merge. The worst case is they'll jack the price up, or add more commercials -- in which case they're out of business. I'd bet that most consumers of such a luxury item are totally sensitive to the price and quality of service. We do have alternatives. They suck, but they're alternatives.

Palm developing own OS - again

Pulling for Palm

I really hope Palm can get it together. I think my Palm TX is great. It would be nice if it had a phone, but I can live without it. It would be nice if it had better software, but its good enough.

It just does what its supposed to. I don't want to edit MS Word documents on it, and I don't want to pay for that capability.