A Little Ludwig Goes a Long Way

A smattering of opinions on technology, books, business, and culture. Now in its 4th technology iteration.

Yahoo -- Icahn is a better option??

13 May 2008

OK Yahoo could have been a Microsoft division, all of Microsoft’s internet ambitions would have been handed over to them, they would have been able to run semi-autonomously.

Or they can be ripped apart by private equity guys like Icahn – massive layoffs, milking their current traffic levels for cash flow, spinning off parts.

This is preferable? Did Yahoo management not foresee this??

Getting rid of an HP4550

13 May 2008

I had an HP4550 printer for years that I picked up at a liquidation event. It has been a workhorse but it died in the last 6 months, some ugly hardware problem. The cost to fix would have been 4x the cost of new printer so I just decided to junk it. The problem is, it is huge and weighs like 100 lbs and the recycling guys would have laughed at it. So I spent sunday taking it apart – taking every screw out, every piece apart. My gosh I now understand why this thing was so freaking expensive, hundreds and hundreds of screws and parts. It is now a giant pile of scrap metal and plastic that I can fit in the recycling bin and get rid of. I have new appreciation for the recyclers of the world.

College Charity Bowl

13 May 2008

OK if you are going to give money to disaster relief this week, might as well make sure you participate in the College Charity Bowl. OSU currently lagging but I have just done my part to fix that so stay tuned.

NCAA APR -- Another Preposterous Requirement

09 May 2008

SportingNews.com - Your expert source for NCAA Football stats, scores, standings, and blogs from NCAA Football columnists

Rather than some sort of conspiracy, the APR and its sanctioned, slow strangulation of smaller schools unable to pay for massive academic support centers is the result of something even more unstoppable and faceless: bad policy.

Exactly. The big schools have the dollars to pay for staff and facilities to manage APR. Small schools do not. That is why 35 out of 37 schools punished this year come from non-BCS conferences. Just another face of the ridiculousness of the current “student-athlete” pretense.

OSU v USC, early thoughts

08 May 2008

Getting geared up for this game already. A classic for so many reasons.

First of all, a great personal history with the Buckeyes – been at their games since I was a kid, we are alums, my father played for Woody, my grandfather was an alum.

Amd the schools have a great history, particularly in the Rose Bowl. My dad was on the team for the ‘55 win and national championship; I remember the great ‘69 and ‘74 wins, and still suffer from the ‘73, ‘75, ‘80, and ‘85 losses. I hated John McKay and his teams.

In this century, Jim Tressel and Pete Carroll have arguably been the best coaches with the best programs, albeit stylistically very differently – Tressel is buttoned-up, a solid midwestern values kind of guy. Pete is a flashy new media loosey-goosey kind of guy, and I have hated him.

So a great early season matchup this year, and particularly so, because a family member will now be attending USC! So I am going to have to cheer for the Trojans in every game except the OSU matchup – that is going to take some getting used to.

OS X Home Control Server

08 May 2008

[Perceptive Automation Releases Indigo 3.0, Mac OS X Home Control Server eHomeUpgrade](http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/2008/05/07/perceptive-automation-releases-indigo-30-mac-os-x-home-control-server/) – I’m going to need an X10/zwave control program for the mac for future halloweens, perhaps this one.

Networking a mac and a xp computer with a kodak 5500 printer - FixYa

07 May 2008

Sigh been trying to make this work and it looks like it never will – Networking a mac and a xp computer with a kodak 5500 printer - FixYa – apparently a lot of printers don’t support the necessary features for network use from a Mac. So I am going to have to buy another freaking printer – official Mac driver support here – you have to make sure you get one with a “modern” driver.

PS Thanks to the Pure Networks guys for helping me figure this out.

Recent Books: Thirteen, Monsters of Templeton, Glasshouse, Ghost War

06 May 2008

More airplane reads, I have been doing a lot of air travel:

* “The Ghost War”:amazon by Alex Berenson. Good cloak and dagger tale, china and the us brought to the brink by a rogue megalomaniac general. No new ground here but well written with a nicely flawed hero. * “Glasshouse”:amazon by Charles Stross. Far distant future, nano-enhanced humans fighting off bad guys who are infecting human society with the nano equivalent of a virus. Fun romp, nicely imagined. Stross is reliably entertaining * “The Monsters of Templeton”:amazon by Lauren Groff. A young woman returns to her hometown in a moment of personal crisis and delves into her own surprising past, uncovering a lot of dark family secrets. Oh and there is a sea monster too. And a ghost. Tho the titled monsters are generally the human and personal kind. * “Thirteen”:amazon by Richard Morgan. Wow, way better than I anticipated. Crazy mix of biotech, world domination schemes, secret agents, super humans, social criticism, with some extreme objectivism thrown in.