Author: Kelly Adams

This author has written 776 articles

SCO sells company so they can continue litigation: how very American!

SCO used to sell operating systems and related software based around Linux, Unix, and in their early years Xenix. A few years ago they decided to start suing everyone they could think of with the claim that companies like IBM, Novell, and RedHat had “stolen” their Unix intellectual property. You can read all about the legal history of it here at Groklaw. After years of losing every legal battle they started, facing counter-suits from the people who *really* own the Unix intellectual capital, and filing for bankruptcy, they are doing the only reasonable (at least in America) thing: they are selling all of their real assets so that they can continue the legal battle

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Auto workers union says “no cuts!”

The auto industry is suffering. The U.S. auto industry, all three main manufacturers, are all on the verge of bankruptcy. Sales have dropped 15% in 2008, and another 15-20% is expected in 2009. There is no doubt that the problems have been building for decades, with fat-cat auto executives selling Hummers and Quad cab pickups to the lazy and rather ignorant Joe Sixpack customer. Whatever the cause, the whole industry stands on the edge of the abyss: in a couple of years, there could be no “made in America” cars whatsoever.

A part of the conditions for the U.S. government bailout was that automakers have to reach agreements with their unions to cut wages and reduce staffing levels. Yet the unions say “we won’t take cuts!”

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It just can’t get any better… XBox 360 RROD ends my lovely week

I decided to play a nice, enjoyable game on my XBox 360 tonight after a week filled with Vista and PC hardware problems. And what should greet me?

  RROD.gif

Yes, the fated Red Ring of Death. And yes, I took the pictures that went into the above animated GIF, so this is my actual RROD 😉

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Hard drive failure + Vista’s broken image backup = unhappy geek

I seem to attract hardware failures like rotten meat attracts flies. Maybe it is because I sometimes run slightly “bleeding edge” gear, or perhaps it is something environmental (* /em looks accusingly at seven cats shedding hair into computer intakes*) Whatever the cause is, I take steps to make sure I have reasonably current backups of my systems. Unfortunately, that rarely seems to save me from frustration…

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Christmas day

It is Christmas day. We are still “snowed in” here, with another 20 – 30 cm since last night piling up. The snow is beginning to slow down, and may be turning to rain soon.

Irene got her main Christmas present a few weeks ago: Coco, who makes cat #7 in our house: you can click on Coco to see the rest of our Christmas pictures.

coco.jpg

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Apparently my Gallery had NSFW comments..

Google sent me an email the other day telling me that my site had “inappropriate” content:

As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on pages with adult or mature content.

Adult? Mature? On *my* site? Hmmm, this required some further investigation. It didn’t take long to find the problem- Google even gave me a sample URL. Apparently, sometime in the last few weeks some comment spammer bot found my photo gallery and started spewing link-farm comments in random spots throughout. And of course, the only person who has to do more work in this process is me.

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Months of deep sea diving required to fix New York plumbing problem

The massive mechanisms and constructs that keep modern society functional occasionally amaze me. A good example is this story from the New York Times regarding the efforts being made to fix a water leak in one of their main supply tunnels.

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Thin wedge driven into WPA wireless security protocol: TKIP compromised

A lot of folks these days have at least part of their home network on wireless ethernet, or WiFi. I have two wireless access points in my house, for example, and plan on adding a third. Wireless networking has security considerations: unless your WiFi network is encrypted, someone outside your home can use your bandwidth or, potentially worse, intercept your data. Wireless security was improved significantly a few years ago with the introduction of WPA (WiFi Protected Access) after the previous security method, WEP (Wireless Encryption Protocol) was “cracked”. Since then, wireless networking has been pretty much secure against any intrusion. Until now…

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The economy: why am I optimistic?

The global economy has collapsed, the stock market is decimated, we are all going to lose our jobs, and the sky is falling! Oddly, none of the recent economic turmoil has scared me. In fact, when stocks bottomed out (presumably) a couple of weeks ago, I started buying shares. I’m not Warren Buffett, but I now own a couple hundred shares of GM, and twenty-some shares each of Apple, Microsoft, and RIM.

Am I crazy? I’m hearing of people selling their houses and buying gold, stocking up on tinned goods and toilet paper, and most of all desperately trying to convert any equity investments they have into or some kind of guaranteed investment. There must be something wrong with me that I keep feeling this strange compulsion to go buy more stock…

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