"If I had felt any unease that I was potentially exploiting a horrible situation for personal gain, it was short-lived. The next four months were the most stressful, difficult, and dangerous of my life until that point, and probably—hopefully—ever. ... On December 31, 2004, I achieved a couple of significant milestones: I made my final student loan payment, and I had a positive net worth for the first time in my adult life. Mortars, rockets, and car bombs aside,
that was pretty satisfying."
posted by Brandon Blatcher
on Sep 15, 2012 -
34 comments
Timely not real-time.
Rhythm not random.
Moderation not excess.
Knowledge not information.
These are a few of the many characteristics of
The Slow Web.
posted by Foci for Analysis
on Sep 6, 2012 -
36 comments
Technology/sex columnist
Violet Blue (
previously) has been
reporting from this year's Macworld trade fair for ZDNet; among her reportage was
a photograph of a woman sitting in a booth, labelled as "The Saddest Booth Babe In The World". Later it emerged that the woman in question was not, in fact, a booth babe (i.e., a model hired to smile, hand out flyers and appeal to the heterosexual male gaze) but rather an iOS developer presenting her products, hence her less-than-effervescent demeanour. Blue's
response was
somewhat evasive, suggesting that her (and, in her opinion, the average attendee's) expectation upon seeing a woman at a booth at a technology event would be that she would be there for decorative purposes.
posted by acb
on Feb 2, 2012 -
160 comments
Malaysia is proposing a
Computing Professionals Bill, based on the
Registration of Engineers Act [.PDF] which makes it mandatory for all practicing "computing professionals" to be registered with a government body. Dealing in the IT industry, including
sending “proposals, plans, designs, drawings, schemes, reports, studies or others to be determined by the Board to any person or authority in Malaysia” without being registered will incur a fine not exceeding RM20,000 (~US$6380) or 6 months in jail.
Malaysian IT professionals and
geeks are up in arms, and similarities have been drawn to
Nigeria's law on computing professionals.
posted by divabat
on Dec 8, 2011 -
26 comments
Entrants in the Philips-sponsored constrained cinema competition
Tell It Your Way were restricted to three minutes and just six lines of dialogue: “What is that?,” “It’s a unicorn,” “Never seen one up close before,” “Beautiful,” “Get away, get away,” and “I’m sorry.” In spite of these limitations, the
winner was surprisingly profound.
posted by ambulocetus
on Aug 8, 2011 -
43 comments
Can't get enough
Whose Line is it Anyway? 71 Scenes From a Hat,
16 Party Quirks,
52 Props,
5 Film Dubs,
84 Hoedowns,
37 Sound Effects,
45 Questions Only,
11 Hats/Dating Service Videos,
52 World's Worst,
13 News Flashes,
35 Let's Make a Date,
9 Press Conferences,
60 Superheroes,
6 Foreign Film Dubs,
29 Irish Drinking Songs,
4 Animals,
9 If You Know What I Mean,
2 Backwards Scene,
54 Greatest Hits,
58 Song Styles,
2 All in One Voice,
21 Scenes to Rap,
3 90-Second Alphabets,
11 Questionable Impressions,
4 Two-Line Vocabulary,
3 Number of Words,
17 Weird Newscasters and (probably the most telling of how much they had to hold back due to censorship standards)
6 Blooper Reels. Prefer the UK version? Every episode of Seasons
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10.
posted by Christ, what an asshole
on Jun 3, 2009 -
70 comments
Where Is Bob? We have a manager — Bob. Bob is incompetent, overweight, unattractive, uncouth, socially awkward, and generally, not a very nice person at all. For a while, we were convinced that Bob had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. But then, something happened — Bob stopped showing up for work on a regular basis. Sometimes he wouldn’t even bother explaining his absence, acting as if spontaneous five-day weekends were simply the norm. And that is how everyone came to wonder —
where is Bob?
posted by nakedcodemonkey
on Aug 15, 2008 -
117 comments
Syd Barrett, the iconic, ephemeral, sadly recently-deceased founder and original frontman of Pink Floyd, recorded several singles and an LP (plus at least one song on their second LP) with the band before his genius was amputated by mental illness and they became an arena rock dinosaur. He also recorded two solo albums, the
making of which was almost as interesting as the gentle, crystalline, almost fractal-like music contained on them. However, as Barrett aficionados have long known, the solo sessions produced many more recordings than were eventually released. Now, though, all known Barrett material that wasn't commercially released has been assembled in a fan-made collection: Have You Got It Yet?,
version 2.0 of which has just been released to the world. More download links inside.
[more inside]
posted by DecemberBoy
on Mar 1, 2008 -
39 comments
Ubuntu has quickly become the number one
Linux distro for the desktop. Not only is it free, but it has also made Linux easier to use than ever. Now,
Wubi enables
Windows users to install Ubuntu just like any other application, so you no longer have to mess around with partitions, burning CDs, etc.
[more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis
on Jan 21, 2008 -
82 comments
25 y.o. whistle-blower. Last Fall, a 24 y.o. by the name of Justen Deal,
blew the whistle on what he perceived to be profligate waste by his employers. As an IT guy at Kaiser-Permanente, he'd seen a $442 million database project scrapped by the new CEO and replaced by a sweetheart deal for one of the CEO's former contractors. Internal estimates placed Kaiser's losses on this new contract at $1.2 billion dollars
per quarter [more inside]
posted by vhsiv
on Apr 25, 2007 -
74 comments
The latest BOFH, or Bastard Operator From Hell. If you read
The Register you're familiar with him... It's the story of an abusive IT guy basically doing whatever he wants to users and getting away with it.
It's been going on for about 10 years,
all of which is archived, so if that one doesn't tease your fancy, maybe some of those will. If you're not familiar with basic IT stuff some of it may be foreign to you, but once I started reading I couldn't stop. Try a couple years back, 2002 is a good vintage. >clickety<
posted by BlackLeotardFront
on Mar 21, 2005 -
48 comments
Google's sorcery You use it, I use it some 30-40 times a day, but did you ever wonder exactly how they do it? The numbers are staggering:
# Over four billion Web pages, each an average of 10KB, all fully indexed.
# Up to 2,000 PCs in a cluster.
# Over 30 clusters.
# 104 interface languages including Klingon and Tagalog.
# One petabyte of data in a cluster -- so much that hard disk error rates of 10-15 begin to be a real issue.
# Sustained transfer rates of 2Gbps in a cluster.
# An expectation that two machines will fail every day in each of the larger clusters.
# No complete system failure since February 2000.
Is Google God?
(via
/.)
posted by daHIFI
on Dec 2, 2004 -
40 comments
Techies Left Behind James Pace Jr. used to work as a steamfitter in a General Electric plant in Bridgeport. That was back in the early '70s, when the grapevine was alive with warnings: These jobs are going overseas. Go back to school. There's no future here.
Pace left the plant, enrolled in computer school, studied information technology and never looked back. That is, not until 23 years later, on the day he was told his $100,000-a-year job as an IT (information technology) consultant had been sent to India
posted by Postroad
on Jan 16, 2004 -
80 comments
Bush Wants $60B for 2004 Fed IT Budget. It's the only area aside from defense that is going to have an increase in spending when Bush releases his budget on 2/3. Mitchell E. Daniels said federal IT projects contain "tons of overlap and redundancies" and "far too many plans for which we do not have good business cases." And here I thought that was just the proper definition of our government.
posted by archimago
on Jan 16, 2003 -
109 comments
Oh no...not again... In the latest twist to the long-running Ginger saga, it's now being rumored that the two-wheeled device unveiled by inventor Dean Kamen last December isn't in fact the real deal.
posted by mathis23
on Aug 19, 2002 -
39 comments
