Beatin' it in Seattle
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Sep 1, 2009 - 37 comments

Over on Slate, Farhad Manjoo writes that corporate IT ought to allow users more freedom in web browser selection and installation rights on their work computers. John C. Welch responds.
posted by porn in the woods on Sep 1, 2009 - 172 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

Hall of Fame member, Phillies broadcaster, and NFL Films announcer Harry Kalas passed away today. At least he got to make his World Series victory call.
posted by SansPoint on Apr 13, 2009 - 26 comments

Last year, Infoworld published their list of the 7 dirtiest jobs in IT. This year, they're back with 7 even dirtier jobs. [more inside]
posted by Afroblanco on Apr 6, 2009 - 38 comments

It's Friday, what better time to relish in the carefree world that was Leave It to Beaver. Even though it was "just" a TV show, how many of us, back in our youth, could relate to anxiety of being given the dreaded note from a teacher? Of course, as with any syndicated sitcom, there are stories behind the various actors. And other stories as well... [more inside]
posted by Oriole Adams on Mar 20, 2009 - 19 comments

Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches - "Physicist Alex Wissner-Gross says that performing two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea."
posted by nthdegx on Jan 11, 2009 - 74 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

Anti-Piracy agents MediaDefender have 700MiB of juicy internal emails leaked on BitTorrent; are in trouble.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 on Sep 16, 2007 - 83 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 IT Crowd is a sitcom produced for Channel 4. Although it follows the traditional laugh-track sitcom format, it manages to have some really funny moments. Season one was only six episodes, but season 2 is due to start this January. Chris Morris is particularly good as the CEO, Denholm. Full episodes can be found on YouTube and Google Video.
posted by cmicali on Dec 18, 2006 - 62 comments

India's Outsourcing Problems One of the most controversial aspects of the global economy has been the newfound freedom of companies from physical location and the subsequent spread of outsourcing jobs. No country had embraced tech outsourcing with the passion of India. Of late, problems there are beginning to rise: engineers start a project, get a few months' experience, and then bolt for greener pastures, bringing a level of attrition that replaces entire staffs within the course of a year. Combine that with salaries in Bangalore that are rising at 12% to 14% per year and it is no surprise that companies are leaving India for a slew of emerging hot spots for IT outsourcing such as the old Soviet Bloc, China, and Vietnam. This comes as companies such as Microsoft continue to laud outsourcing and proudly proclaim that it is here to stay, and it looks as if Ho Chi Minh City will be the next Bangalore.
posted by PreacherTom on Dec 11, 2006 - 19 comments

Half of IT managers admit to hating their users... a lot. - But it's ok, because the users hate IT too. No, they really hate IT. Perhaps IT isn't meeting customer demands. And it isn't like either side's attitudes have changed much over time (July 2001).
In the long term, it simply may never work out between IT and the users. After all, IT support is just like any other customer service job. And we all know customers suck enough for people to start web pages about it... again and again.
posted by smallerdemon on Aug 28, 2006 - 60 comments

How to make friends with your IT department
posted by cbrody on Jun 21, 2005 - 20 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

CEO of eBay's Indian company arrested for an item offered up for sale on his site. Avnish Bajaj, the CEO of baazee.com, an Indian auction site purchased by eBay in June 2004, was arrested on Friday while assisting in the investigation into the attempted sale of pornography by a user on the auction site, and charged with violating the 2000 India IT Act. Bajaj was arrested even though he was not involved in the sale, had it cancelled as soon as it was found, and the people involved had already been arrested.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow on Dec 20, 2004 - 25 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

The Intel IT Manager Game lets you manage an IT department (flash, reg. required, you don't have to enter a valid e-mail address). Here is another attempt (click "Simulation" at the top). For those who rather calculate than point-and-click, try the Ipas TCO simulation. [via Flex-MX Blog]
posted by tcp on Apr 16, 2004 - 3 comments

The IT Conversations motto is "New ideas through your headphones" and offers audio interviews with well-known technology personalities. Ever wonder what Craig Newmark's or Bram Cohen's voices sound like?
posted by turbodog on Mar 30, 2004 - 2 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

We need an "Information Technology Disclosure Act." The Programmer's Guild is pushing for the creation of legislation to require companies which outsource abroad to tell consumers when their sensitive personal information is being sent to companies in other countries. This aspect of outsourcing has gotten little attention, but the SF Chronicle's David Lazarus has reported on it being done by hospitals (like UCSF, which is being threatened over back pay by a transcriber in Pakistan), accountants, banks (BofA), telecom companies (SBC), and perhaps most alarmingly, two of the three major credit-reporting agencies.
posted by homunculus on Nov 9, 2003 - 24 comments

CIO Magazine reports estimates that by the end of 2004 one in 10 IT jobs at U.S. IT companies and one in 20 at non-IT companies will move offshore. And yet, as it turns out...the "savings" that these companies are touting are largely imaginary. (more inside)
posted by dejah420 on Sep 20, 2003 - 20 comments

Does Information Technology(IT) matter? A recent Harvard Business Review paper has been criticized for its controversial stance that IT does not matter. Does it?
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy on May 29, 2003 - 13 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

IT workers get back to basics. (NYT Registration required) An unemployed IT worker who used to earn $125k opens his own crepe stall in NYC. And Jamie Zawinski (a founder of the Mozilla project) quit Netscape, and opened his own bar in LA! What about mainframe programmer with 30 years' experience who just became a chef? Even Dilbert has been having a bad time. Some people will stay in IT regardless, but with the valley's job market stagnant, call centers and programming jobs disappearing to India, and many unfulfilled dot com prophecies, hundreds of engineers are considering dropping IT for more hands-on pursuits. It's like the movie, Office Space. So, has the 'Great IT Depression' led you to reconsider your occupation? (Warning: Slashdot inspired post.)
posted by wackybrit on Aug 11, 2002 - 77 comments

92% of IT workers have used Cannabis. Hmmm .... my code suddenly makes so much more sense.
posted by MintSauce on Aug 1, 2002 - 19 comments

Tech secrets of Cocaine, Inc. - a look at the IT infrastructures of Colombian drug cartels. "I spent this morning working on the budget," the head of DEA intelligence, Steve Casteel, said recently. "Do you think they have to worry about that? If they want it, they buy it."
posted by edlundart on Jul 17, 2002 - 24 comments

Havening (sic) a lousy day? Whenever the IT industry gets me down, I look to this oldy but goody of a link to help me realize that I don't have it all that bad. Have you ever been on any tier of computer support? This is a classic (albeit somewhat cruel) chronicle of working alongside a useless help-desk drone we'll call George.
posted by machaus on Apr 30, 2002 - 25 comments

The Segway revolution has begun. "Three Atlanta, Georgia organizations are the first to buy a fleet of Segway transporters." "Fleet," what a visually scary word. Forget priests touching little boys in naughty places and the numerous wars going on in this world, the fact someone actually bought a Segway is CNN’s new top story.
posted by Werd7 on Apr 24, 2002 - 33 comments

Although there is no mention on Good Mornins America's website, according to this Wired.com article, Diane Sawyer announced that they would reveal Dean Kamen's intensely hyped invention on Monday, December 3rd. Perhaps it will actually deserve to have been listed as one of the best inventions of 2001 by Time Magazine.
posted by UrbanFigaro on Nov 29, 2001 - 22 comments

The Few, The Proud, the Geeky "U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has called for the creation of the technology equivalent of the National Guard: 'That's what I'd like to propose. What this country needs is essentially a technology equivalent of the National Guard: a National Emergency Technology Guard - NET Guard - that in times of crisis would be in a position to mobilize our nation's information technology, or IT, community to action quickly, just as the National Guard is ready to move during emergencies.'" Akk! Volunteer geeks on patrol!
posted by bclark on Sep 27, 2001 - 19 comments

Dave Winer rewrites "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" - In which he muses in an undergraduate manner about why IT is so male-dominated, offering up such gems as "Men are the artists of our species, women are the infrastructure". As you'd expect, this hasn't gone down with some. The gas is on, let's flick the zippo...
posted by GrahamVM on Aug 26, 2001 - 63 comments

WhatIs - Definitions for thousands of the most current IT-related words. Not everyone knows about this site. It is pretty helpful for a quick lookup for anything computer related.
posted by sikander on Jul 11, 2001 - 3 comments

Just because we can we should? Is this another case of rabid technology or will it really be useful? Can't the $225 per playstation-console be used to oh, say... clean up their water... or.. send a real life human being to their country to properly educate them?
posted by tsidel on Jul 6, 2001 - 18 comments

Forbes.com suggests you IT people use shareware or freeware office packages instead of that expensive Microsoft stuff.
posted by jhiggy on May 2, 2001 - 14 comments

Male geeks have more sex than the average Joe. Are they simply lonely liars determined to screw up a survey or is this a natural evolution of an IT industry constantly on edge?
posted by ed on Apr 20, 2001 - 27 comments

Project 'IT' Tons of info about this mysterious device! Does 'IT' stand for Individual Transportation?
posted by stevridie on Mar 11, 2001 - 17 comments

NSA has lost the techno war. It says. But do we believe them? Or is this merely intended to lull us into complacency?
posted by Steven Den Beste on Feb 19, 2001 - 25 comments

IT gets a domain. The interesting thing is now maybe less how world-changing IT might be (most dreamers I know, at least, have gone from wide-eyed Bradburian dreaming to the expectation of disappointment to resigned cynicism by now), but how the commercial game will play itself out. I feel all dirty now.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken on Jan 27, 2001 - 6 comments

"IT," also known as "Ginger," has not yet been released by its inventor, but we'll be glad to notify you by e-mail when we actually know what IT is and if IT will be available for purchase from Amazon.com.
posted by endquote on Jan 24, 2001 - 6 comments

New take on IT News.com has a different skew on what IT might be.
posted by Brilliantcrank on Jan 15, 2001 - 10 comments

A wearable car? is this really 'IT'?
posted by tiaka on Jan 12, 2001 - 40 comments

What is "IT"? National Medal of Technology winner demos some kind of hush-hush invention to Bezos, Jobs, and Doerr: the consensus view is that it's bigger than the PC. Either one of the most stunning inventions of all time or one of the most stunning publicity stunts of all time. Possibly both.
posted by grimmelm on Jan 9, 2001 - 77 comments