Tech Op/Ed

This article was published on ComputerWorld on September 8, 2009 -
 
I can sum up every article, book and column written by notable management experts about managing IT in two sentences: "Geeks are smart and creative, but they are also egocentric, antisocial, managerially and business-challenged, victim-prone, bullheaded and credit-whoring. To overcome these intractable behavioral deficits you [...]

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For the non-Reddit folks out there, this pic http://imgur.com/UhZqz.jpg of the Reddit Alien was lovingly rendered by redditor "3danimator" (I’ll update when I find out the name/site).   I had an hour to kill so I thought I’d have a little fun.  Here’s a reddit alien autopsy; horrifying and adorable.
Click for a (not much larger) image
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Sure, but can it run Excel? –
The 3d animator in me appreciates big iron, massive compute clusters and grid computing.  As my compatriots at Pixar and LucasFilm will attest, there is NEVER enough computing power for what we want to do.
But my day job is to handle the computing needs of a top tier [...]

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News, Movies, and The Life Random –
A little about how my brain works: I was watching the news, hearing about those football players lost at sea, and I saw how big and obvious the overturned boat looked from the video.  Then I thought of the movie Cast Away, wondering just what I would do [...]

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digg_url=’http://techoped.com/2009/01/21/the-real-meaning-of-comcast-generosity/’;

 
In the old days -
10 years ago, I entered the “broadband” world as a DSL customer with GTE.  I started at 768 kbit/s service, and it was about $35/mo.  A lot has happened since then, GTE spat out Verizon, and eventually offered more speed for the same money.  Cable modem service was pretty lousy until [...]

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digg_url=’http://techoped.com/2008/07/17/8-things-we-hate-about-it-critics/’;

The last thing an opinions writer wants is to be discovered by their, how shall I say it, least “defendable” post.  But sometimes a little unvarnished opinion leads to a moment of clarity that objectivity would otherwise muddle.
Such a moment was provided to me a month ago when I was doing one of my (many) [...]

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Six months ago I got a sneek peek at the iPhone.  A beautiful piece of machinery lacking only in 3 critical places:  It is a 21st century network device tied to a stone-age cellular network.  Its on-screen keyboard is clumsy (though far better than others up to that point).  It is a new OS and [...]

On their web site, the FTC estimates that "as many as 9 million Americans have their identities stolen each year."  There are 300 million people in the US… you can do the math.  On average, they say, you will likely be impacted by identity crime several times during your life.
In the IT world, we’ve [...]

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digg_url=’http://techoped.com/2007/06/07/the-iphone-is-great-for-everyone-else/’;

Stephen Colbert may not be able to get his hand on an iPhone, but yours truly can. :)  (Sorry Stephen, but you’re still our #1 American).
I spent some hands-on time with the iPhone a couple days ago and came away with the same general impression that most have had up to this point, except for [...]

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As any start-up blogger knows, no matter how great (or poor) your content is, getting people to read it is the big trick.  Tech Op/Ed, for example, is here for general technology editorials, but I wanted to get some IT management topics off my chest first, and these articles appeal to a certain niche of [...]