What the Hell?
By Brian | April 10, 2006
A man was arrested today for jumping the White House fence. Check out this quote:
Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said agents took any breach seriously but that the suspect, who had climbed the White House fence three times before, made ‘no spoken threats’ against the president.
Zahren identified the man as Brian Lee Patterson, 40, and said he would be charged with unlawful entry and contempt of court, for violating a court order to stay away from the White House after he last intruded in February.
Who had climbed the WHite House fence three times before?!?!? Your third offense for that is a court order to stay away from the White House? What will they give him this time, a jay-walking ticket?
Obviously, the guy isn’t exactly learning his lesson…
Categories: The World Wide Weird | 3 Comments »
DabbleDB – What a Cool Company…
By Brian | April 10, 2006
Check this out: Jeff Porten blogged about a product called DabbleDB on his blog, linking to a video demo of the product.
I watched the video and commented on it, and less than 48 hours later, someone from the company responded to my commment with more information. This means the company has folks trolling the blogosphere looking for comments about their products, and then actively engaging potential customers with direct responses. That makes them not only a cool technology company, but one that absolutely gets how to do business in the hi-tech world.
Bravo, guys. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for you. And for others who are hearing about them here, definitely check out the video above…
Categories: Tech Talk | Comments Off on DabbleDB – What a Cool Company…
I Hope They Don’t Change Their Commercials…
By Brian | April 9, 2006
GoDaddy, of risque superbowl commercial fame, has moved its Web Server farm to Microsoft technology, seriously messing with the market share data. The only sign as to why they made the change comes from the standard, double-speak from their COO:
“Microsoft provides an efficient and scalable operating platform, while also providing the performance needed to handle our extraordinary growth.”
Yeah, yeah, whatever. Sounds like code for “it works and its cheaper.” In any case, here’s an example where Microsoft is NOT the monopoly (or even the industry leader), competing in a well distributed market…
Categories: Tech Talk | 4 Comments »
More News Cataloging
By Brian | April 7, 2006
OK, so let me see if I get this straight:
Former Ambassador, Joe Wilson, criticizes the Bush administration over the Iraq war. In response, the administartion declassifies portions of a secret National Intelligence Estimate, which provides (or so they say, anyway) historical context for why we went into Iraq. The President, via the Vice President, authorizes Lewis “Scooter” Libby to release this newly declassified information to Judith Miller of the New York Times. This being the same Scooter Libby who is accused of leaking the name of a CIA agent, Valerie Plame, to the same Judith Miller of the (same) New York Times.
What a fantastic opportunity to news catalog: we can write about this story and attribute signifigance to it by mentioning it along side a story that’s already been established as important (the Valerie Plame leak), and it will wind up on the front page of most major newspapers.
Here’s how we do it: First, we describe the facts of the story. Then, we summarize the facts of the Valerie Plame story, pointing out that many of the same people are involved. Then, in paragraph SEVEN, we say this:
The court documents did not say that Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to disclose Plame’s identity.
After that, we can quote a top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jane Harman, who calls the president the “leaker in chief.” Leaving press secretary Scott McClellan to point out that there’s a huge difference between the President declassifying information and someone leaking classified information to the press (as was the case with Valerie Plame, and also, as McClellan points out, with the information about the NSA wiretapping program). McClellan says:
“Democrats who refuse to acknowledge that distinction are simply engaging in crass politics.”
Which is absolutely right. Of course, he says it in the last paragrpah of the story.
Final result: a large percentage of the people who read this will walk away convinced that George W. Bush authorized Scooter Libby to leak Valerie Plame’s name to the New York Times.
Categories: News and/or Media, Political Rantings | 1 Comment »
More on WinMac
By Brian | April 6, 2006
I’ve got to hand it to those folks over at Apple – they’ve always got a trick up their sleeves. The common zeitgeist was that Apple was going to let the hacker community solve the “run Windows on a Mac” problem, then judge its popularity, then respond with support for the idea only if it seemed viable. Well, the hackers did their part, but less than three weeks later, Apple released a beta version of the supported solution: Boot Camp. Obviously, they had this cooking while the hackers were doing their thing. In any case, Boot Camp, which is in beta now, but will be built into the next version of OS X (Leopard), allows users to select between the Mac OS and Windows XP at boot time – no emulation required. So, users who want/need a Windows environment, but prefer the Apple hardware will now be satisfied with just one machine.
As I mentioned earlier (WARNING: Link contains long, screed-like comments war between me and Jeff Porten), this is has the potential to be a huge financial win for Apple. Not only have studies predicted the potential sale of an additional one million machines (22% increase in sales, 80% increase in market share), but these studies don’t even address the corporate market. If the architecture on these machines is pure (i.e,. the Windows environment is an exact duplicate of what you’d find on a Dell or Compaq machine), I believe Apple can expect to quickly capture some portion of the much larger, and more sustainable, corporate PC market. Wall Street seems to agree with me, sending Apple’s stock up roughly 16% in just two days, increasing the company’s market cap by more than $8 billion. Some analyst quotes:
“In short, we believe this news, more than any news in recent memory, provides a critical boost to Apple’s ability to gain share in the PC market” – JPMorgan Chase
“By doing this, Apple has made a tacit acknowledgement of what many have already said, which basically is: If you’re serious about home computing or small-enterprise computing, you need Windows. There’s no way around it. . . . Apple machines are excellently manufactured, and the performance is far superior. Now you can go in, look at those gorgeous Mac Minis and MacBook (Pros) and view them as a normal PC. You can run XP and never touch OS X, if you don’t want to.” – Forrester Research
Ironically, the only sourpuss in all of this is Apple itself, who has taken a tack that lies somewhere between what I was saying and what Jeff was saying (big surprise there, huh?). They’re positioning this as a way to “make the Mac even more appealing to Windows users considering making the switch,” as opposed to a way for Windows users to buy & use higher quality hardware. They’re also clearly backing away from any association with Windows or its very public security concerns (perhaps to protect their brand identity, as Jeff suggested). Their website warns:
Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it’ll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes.
Ultimately, I think the marketing will follow the market. If the majority of Boot Camp users are Mac users that use Windows sparingly (i.e., only when necessary), then we’ll see the “Switch” ads again. If, however, the majority are Windows users that like the improved graphics, bigger & nicer monitors, etc., and pop over to MacOS occasionally to try something new, then I think we’ll see “Apple is better than Dell or Compaq” ads.
In any case, we won’t see any of this for a while now (mass market appeal won’t happen until the Leopard release, and then it will take some time for corporate America to vette the platform and agree that it’s fully compatible with what they have today). Maybe when all the ’07 budgets come in???
Categories: Money Talk, Tech Talk | Comments Off on More on WinMac
Mactel begets WinMac
By Brian | April 5, 2006
No time to blog on this in depth, but for now: here we go…
More later…
Categories: Tech Talk | 1 Comment »
The Cobbler’s Shoes…
By Brian | April 5, 2006
It seems H&R Block has restated its earning for the last two years, because it made mistakes on its income taxes.
Seriously.
H&R Block said on Friday that it was restating earnings for 2004 and 2005 to reflect previously reported mistakes on its income taxes.
In a series of regulatory filings, H&R Block said it underreported its state income tax liability by $30.5 million through April 30, 2005, requiring the company to lower per share earnings for that year by 3 cents, 2004 earnings by 4 cents and earnings before May 1, 2003, by 1 cent.
Heh…Only 10 days until April 15th. Probably a pretty busy time for them, huh? I guess this year , they’ll be shooting for the “don’t read the paper” crowd…
Categories: Money Talk | Comments Off on The Cobbler’s Shoes…
The Most Trivial Piece of Trivia This Millenium
By Brian | April 4, 2006
At 1:02:03AM tonight, the date and time will be:
01:02:03, 04/05/06
Of course, you know what that means….
That’s right: Absolutely nothing.
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | Comments Off on The Most Trivial Piece of Trivia This Millenium
Fun Facts from Charlotte
By Brian | April 4, 2006
Two fun facts from my business trip to Charlotte:
1) The area of town where all the businesses are, typically referred to as “downtown” in most cities, is conveniently referred to as “uptown” in Charlotte. Takes a little getting used to, but no big deal…
2) Most of the office buildings have this sign posted in the lobby:
No Firearms Permitted on the Premises
Yes, that’s right – I said MOST buildings…
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | Comments Off on Fun Facts from Charlotte
Hey Donald – You’re Fired!
By Brian | April 4, 2006
The University of Pennsylvania, Donald Trump’s alma mater, is giving The Donald’s major casino competitor, Steve Wynn, an honorary degree this year.
Can you get an honorary degree from a university where you’ve already earned an actual degree? Probably not when you’ve got billions of dollars and haven’t donated much (if anything) to the school all these years…
Categories: University of Pennsylvania | 4 Comments »