Posts by BWM

Light, fast ... and pricey: Toshiba's Portégé Z30 – now THIS is an Ultrabook

Best true business laptop on the market

I'm typing this from a Z30, having just retired my incredible Sony VPC Z1 after 3 years of excellent service. I *hate* carrying dongles. The Z30 is the only lightweight (1.2 kg / under 3 lb) laptop I could find that still has VGA for hooking up to corporate projectors and Ethernet for secure networks that don't allow wireless. I laugh every time I see bozos with Apple notebooks who can't hook up.

The screen resolution made me hesitate as I was accustomed to the Sony's HD. But in actual use on the small 13" screen, I'm not noticing much difference. Plus, with the optional and surprisingly cheap dynadock, I hook up to two 24" monitors at my desk, with the laptop's panel as a third screen.

Scientists to IPCC: Yes, solar quiet spells like the one now looming can mean Ice Ages

15 year hiatus in global warming? BULLSH*T!!!

Anytime you see an article that talks about a "15 year hiatus in global warming" or "global warming has paused since 1998" (15 years ago), be sure to turn on the bullsh*t filters.

Teh articles l never say "14 years" or "16 years", and they'll never say "1997" or "1999". Why? Check out this graph:

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn11639/dn11639-2_808.jpg

1998 was an aberration due to Pacific water warming from El Nino. The average temperature had a spike.

Looking at the trend, 5 year averages, it's clear that the warming is continuing. Since 1998, we've have many of the warmest annual average temperatures on record.

IBM axes nearly THREE THOUSAND staffers in North America - union

8,000... keep it in perspective

From the human side, every layoff sucks.

But from the corporate perspective... looking at a couple of sources, between 2009 and 2012, IBM went from 390K+ employees to over 420K. With lines of business constantly in flux and that many employees, 8,000 is, cold-hearted as it may sound, an adjustment.

For an even better perpective, go back to the headlines of the mid-to-late 90s, when IBM and DEC were dropping employees by the tens of thousands.

Thousands rally behind teen girl cuffed, expelled in harmless 'explosion'

Quickly! Check the state prosecutor's home!

Perhaps she has a pressure cooker in her kitchen. Using her logic, that should be sufficient to charge her with terrorism.

Adobe reports great re$ult$ but loses CTO Kevin Lynch to Apple

What's that strange sound coming from Silicon Valley?

Apparently, it's Steve Jobs turning over in his grave. His hate for Adobe was much deeper than his forbidding Flash on iPhones and iPads and rants about the security of their products. It goes all the way back to him never forgiving Adobe for doing a Windows ports of what were previously Mac-only products that generated a lot of Mac sales during Apple's darkest days.

Is Oracle squeezing the MySQL lemon too hard?

Move off MySQL. It's an even bigger mess if you pay for it.

Our company was selling our product with embedded MySQL licenses, which we purchased for each installation. Great product and worth the money... but no longer.

We recently completed a conversion to Postgres because a) the licensing rules as posted on the website had become incomprehensible, b) we could not get a call back when we contacted Oracle for additional licenses and c) the number and differing capabilities of the underlying engines (oh! you need innodb for that!) was making it a mess to work with.

Really, really sad to see such a great product die a death of a thousand cuts.