Category Archives: tech
Apple’s new PR boilerplate signals change in direction
I just noticed this today, but it happened a couple of months ago. There’s no more “Apple ignited the personal computer revolution,” which had been there since at least 1998. Here’s the new boilerplate, which first appeared on June 28, … Continue reading
HOWTO install the rjb gem on Ubuntu and Mac OS X
Here’s how to install the Ruby Java Bridge (rjb) gem on Ubuntu Linux and Mac OS X: Ubuntu Linux (10.10) # aptitude install openjdk-6-jre-headless openjdk-6-jdk # JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk gem install rjb Mac OS X 10.6.4 # JAVA_HOME=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Home gem install rjb
Why you should fix the bug
Or “how I tried to save Apple $11,000,000”: Avoids $1,000 in costs versus waiting until your customers catch the bug in the field, causing the team to remedy the problems, rush out a patch release, and/or go to heroic lengths … Continue reading
How to install MediaWiki on a subdomain
Here is how to set up MediaWiki on a subdomain and use pretty/short URLs. This was tested on July 1, 2010 with MediaWiki 1.15.4, PHP 5.2.8, MySQL 5.0.90 and Apache 2.2.11. This assumes you are in a shared hosting situation, … Continue reading
how to delete .svn directories
find . -name .svn -type d -print0 | xargs -0 /bin/rm -fr
Dogs don’t buy dog food
A customer is someone who buys software. A user is someone who uses software. When it comes to enterprise software, these stop being the same person. This is why enterprise software is so bad.
Pac-Man ate my RAID
[>....................] recovery = 2.5% (3836544/152247936) finish=35.1min speed=70370K/sec [>....................] recovery = 3.0% (4642752/152247936) finish=37.5min speed=65481K/sec [===>.................] recovery = 15.2% (23276800/152247936) finish=32.2min speed=66725K/sec [===>.................] recovery = 18.4% (28154624/152247936) finish=28.9min speed=71392K/sec [====>................] recovery = 21.5% (32802560/152247936) finish=28.6min speed=69451K/sec [=====>...............] recovery = 28.3% (43166336/152247936) … Continue reading
Excel is not a database
The New Organizing Institute Education Fund, in conjunction with the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation released the 2nd Annual Survey of Civic Engagement Technology. The report is full of interesting information on how nonprofits (mis)(ab)use technology to manage their organizations. … Continue reading
Inspired by Cory Booker
The closing plenary of the Personal Democracy Forum — an hour long — was a great discussion between Cory Booker, Arianna Huffington, RNC tech chair Saul Anuzis, PDF founder Andrew Rasiej, NYT Times tech writer Nick Bilton and Tim O’Reilly. … Continue reading