One Hundred at SJSU

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Vista Tweeked For Performance

Operating Systems, Get Out Of My Way

I put Vista on a diet. This is my Vista system. I want an operating system that gets out of my way. That is why I loved Windows 2000. Operating systems should help me find and launch my applications and files fast. Then, the operating system should let my applications talk to my hardware efficiently. Then, it should disappear; go away and let me get my work done! Anything more than that is a bunch of crap.

When you spend the time to take away the animations and the glitzy Las Vegas interface, what I call the fat, Vista does a pretty good job. I wish I could get rid of more of the fat in Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard.

Technorati Tags: Windows, Microsoft, Apple, Vista, ssloansjca

Patterson in the Times

Patterson makes the New York Times

Patterson, the tiny central valley town my older sons grew up in, made the New York Times today.

Staff Layoffs at San Jose State?

Notice of Layoff

I have received information from a reliable source that a notice of layoff has been issued at SJSU. I do not yet know if this is a singular incident or whom is affected by it.

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Busy Days and Nights

Susie is very busy these days

My wife Sue is a lead technical writer and she has been quite busy. Since companies have moved from printed to on-line documentation delivery, documentation is no longer based on print based production cycles. Documentation is constantly being reviewed and revised and so writing organizations are hard pressed to keep up. Deadlines are constant.

Privacy and Viacom vs. YouTube

The Mercury News has a great article on the Viacom vs. YouTube/Google Ruling:

A federal judge in New York has ordered Google to turn over to Viacom a database linking users of YouTube, the Web's largest video site by far, with every clip they have watched there.

More information on this topic is also available here on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Deeplinks Blog. According to that post EFF plans, "to continue discussions with the parties on ways to protect the privacy of the YouTube users and ensure that their rights under the Video Privacy Protection Act are given effect."

Besides troubling legal questions this brings up troubling privacy concerns. If all this information is being cached about us can and will be able to be demanded successfully by parties able to compel a judge to sign a discovery order; is it ethical for companies to keep such data? Does this question of business ethics get sticky now it has been shown that litigants can get to it? Will this have a chilling effect on how people use the Internet? I mean, why wouldn't it?

Technorati Tags: Free Speech, Web 2.0, Media Law, Internet Law, Privacy, ssloansjca

We need to be teaching social networking

Beehive: IBM's Facebook for business

If you don't think we should be teaching social networking skills, think again! Our students may be at a competitive disadvantage if they do not know how to use these tools:

Beehive is an internal social networking site that gives IBMers a "rich connection to the people they work with” on both a personal and a professional level. Beehive helps employees make new connections, track current friends and coworkers, and renew contacts with people they have worked with in the past. When employees join Beehive, they get a profile page. They can use the status message field and the free-form “About Me” section on their profile page to let other people at IBM know where they are, what they are doing, and what they are thinking. Beehive also lets them post photos, create lists to share their thoughts, and organize events.

I am impressed by the work IBM has been putting into using Web 2.0 technology. IBM has been an innovator in the use of social networking technologies such as Second Life and now Beehive. Beehive is another excellent example of their work in the Web 2.0 collaboration and community building space. It is good for us that IBM has also been great about sharing what the are doing with education.

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Alliance for Enterprise Macs

Five vendors forge alliance promoting Macs on Windows in Enterprise

According to Network World:

The efforts of the Enterprise Desktop Alliance (EDA) – which was formed Monday by Atempo, Centrify, Group Logic, LANrev and Parallels – are not about displacing Windows but raising awareness that the Macintosh is a viable alternative because it can be managed using integration tools and existing Windows infrastructure.

Technorati Tags: Mac OS X, Macintosh, Apple, ssloansjca

Pedestrian vs. Bike at SJSU

Tuesday morning I was walking from the bookstore to my office. I came upon a bicyclist and a pedestrian yelling at each other. The pedestrian said, "watch where you are going, you almost hit me!" The cyclist said, "(expletive deleted but it started with F) next time I see you I will hit you!." After the cyclist left I spoke to the pedestrian. He said he was going to file a complaint with the university police department.

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Lovely Light Returns

The return of beautiful light

The wind has blown the smoke away. The sky is blue and the sun is normal again. Life is good.

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