Category — General

And You Thought Your Cubicle Sucked?. Plastic::Work::Disaster: Here's a company so bad that it took PBS, the CBC and a three-part New York Times story to tell us how bad it is. Put on your safety goggles before you watch, read or click. [Plastic: Most Recent]

wow, and i thought farming was dangerous…

The Mini-PC.

A new half-size laptop that weighs less than a pound and is just one inch thick from Vulcan, a company owned by that other Microsoft billionaire, Paul Allen. The Mini-PC will run Windows XP, and have integrated WiFi, a 5.8-inch screen, a 20GB hard drive, and a built-in mini-keyboard.
Read

[Gizmodo]

the world needs more keyboards that we can't really type on.

UK racks up record games sales. Far out [The Register]

oh oh oh, again, we find sales up and no university thinking very hard about what to do about computer games….

SUV Owners and Terrorism. I've come to admire Arianna Huffington for her passionately progressive politics. Once a tunnel-visioned right-winger, she opened her eyes to… [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

this is fairly clear to me, suv's fund terrorism much more than drugs, etc.

Cult Barbeque Products - just had dinner with our friends Steve & Jamie, and learned that Jamie gave Steve a Big Green Egg for Christmas.  Anyone else out there hear of this thing? It's the ”original ancient Kamodo cooker” based on an idea that is 3000 years old (yeah, I think I remember reading the hieroglyphic account of this when I was at the Louvre).  They even have a user forum. [Ernie the Attorney]

now barbeque is an art that i haven't practiced in a while, but yes, for those in the know the big green egg is a premiere bbq device. It comes highly recommended from many of the top trade publications in the field.

Trepia

“Trepia? is a revolutionary networking application that lets you instantly meet other Wi-Fi users in your vicinity.

Using patent-pending technology, Trepia? discovers other Wi-Fi users in your area by analyzing base-station access patterns.

Other users will simply appear on your contact list, allowing you to communicate with them. Seek out new people and make connections easily: Trepia? makes you part of an instant community where ever you go.” [via DotBlog]

Could be interesting for gaming, and it should do well on campuses (as noted by Richard).

[The Shifted Librarian]

the world is changing faster than most of us seem to keep up, esp. technology wise.

the wonderful wizard of mars. The System Administrator's Guild demonstrates true geek wisdom in governence. Like the scientist-intellectual class in Kim Stanley Robinson's epic Mars Trilogy, the members of this Guild elect volunteer leaders to fulfill the group's administrative functions. Robinson's democratic fantasy land–where there are no real politicians–is often overshadowed by the sheer scientific whiz-bang wonderment of his novels. The trilogy is great not for its descriptions of space elevators and artificial gravity but rather because it is a fine example of Feministische phantastische-utopische Literatur and represents insightful social commentary. It even has its own little world-wide subculture, whose members most hopefully sit around and fantasize about how a newly-habitable world–made possible by the genius of the human mind and the skill of human hands–is politically, socially, economically, spiritually and environmentally shaped by the powerful and influential “First Hundred”. Although the Sysadmin Guild's most recent executive board election showed a relatively poor voter turnout–touted on the site to be a “very high” 28.5%–I can't help but think they may be on to something. Perhaps a healthy disinterest in ruling and wielding power would be good back here on Earth [NYT]. [MetaFilter]

amazing, amazing, amazing, this post is just too much stuff to even relate, in the end, i am calling the post a fiction.

Originality in Free Software. When we talk about user-supported software and business models, it's easy to forget that most use of Free Software is by or on behalf of businesses. Some businesses use it heavily enough to justify employing maintainers of Free Software. If you are employed by such a business, does that mean you have found a successful Free
Software business model for yourself? [Advogato]

business, why business, why not just give it away.

Helium Performance. Free and Open software development is frequently based around a suite of collaborative tools and processes. Last Fall students in a design patterns course mixed some agile methods with a little sauce of their own for some interesting results. [Advogato]

this is the sort of thing that more universities should be doing… instead of trying to sell stuff.

Battle of Brooklyn, Part 2. Last month, Wall Street Journal columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz published a searing indictment of the tenure debacle at CUNY's Brooklyn College…. [Critical Mass]

it seems to me, from what i have read so far that the individual made their voice heard, and then in a most inappropriate fashion tried to leverage their minority opinion to over-run the opinions of the majority, who it might be noted were managing the dept. just fine. Now, the appeal to the media is trying to do the same thing. The person has a voice, but the key to tenure is whether that voice in the department will harm or help the department as a whole. Collegiality is also not something small or trite to consider, you could end up working with a person for 40 years, and if they are not collegial then there are serious problem.