Category Archives: Life

Which Oar Best Rows The Boat

Posted on August 22, 2013 by M@

Ted Dzuiba wrote a post that boiled down to identifying his own “language bigotry” as a step along the way to software engineering “Mastery”. He’s absolutely correct about introspecting why one chooses to “fight” other languages. And by saying “languages” I could … Continue reading →

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Video Captcha Prior Art

Posted on March 5, 2012 by M@

Nucaptcha claims to have invented video captchas. They didn’t. Neither did I, proabably, but I have talked about them publicly a few times, including this blog post from 2009.

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Reliance On GPS Is A Liability

Posted on December 16, 2011 by M@

I’ve written a couple times previously about how we shouldn’t rely on GPS solely. It appears the US government might have just come to that conclusion as well. GPS is awesome, but it cannot be the only mechanism used for … Continue reading →

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GPS Jamming: For Fun Or Profit

Posted on March 8, 2011 by M@

From this /. article. I’ve written about the dangers of relying on GPS previously. “A simple $30 GPS jammer made in China can ruin your day. It doesn’t just affect your car’s navigation — ATM machines, cell phone towers, plane, … Continue reading →

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The Risk of Aircraft Navigation Modernization

Posted on March 23, 2010 by M@

We love technology. If you’re reading this, you at least can use a computer, possibly have an RSS reader, probably have an interest in geeky things, so I don’t need to go into proving that statement, methinks. One problem with … Continue reading →

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MySpace Openly Selling User Data

Posted on March 16, 2010 by M@

Per this  /. post, MySpace is now openly selling user data. If you don’t think FaceBook et. al. can and will (and do) do the same when it benefits them, you’re sorely mistaken. “one-time leading social network is now selling … Continue reading →

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On Leadership

Posted on March 10, 2010 by M@

[NOTE: This essay was originally written for a now-defunct publication, and was never published. The exclusivity period granted to them has expired, and it is being reprinted with minor edits.] It’s rare that I quote the US Military, however they … Continue reading →

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Generating Work

Posted on February 8, 2010 by M@

Accidents happen. No seasoned analyst, admin or engineer I know hasn’t typed ‘reboot’ in the wrong term window, deleted the wrong file, created the odd network loop, etc. These are generally accidents: what was being done was judgmentally sound, however … Continue reading →

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Ruminations on "The unspoken truth about managing geeks"

Posted on September 10, 2009 by M@

Jeff Ello wrote a great piece in Computer World about managing “geeks”. It’s getting a lot of press, good and bad, and really sparked me back into this conversation. If you replace “geek” and “IT pro” in the article with … Continue reading →

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Distributed By Design

Posted on September 2, 2009 by M@

The Internet, by taking its name literally, means “the network between networks”. 40 years ago today, the Men and Women that first started implementing the technologies that grew up to be the Internet didn’t want to create one network- they … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Life, Opinions, Work | 1 Comment