By Mark O’Neill Contributing Writer, [GAS] If you blog for a living like I do, you’ll know that some days the words just don’t come. For hours, you’ll sit there looking for stories or you’ll try to make the words come out to no avail. Or you’ll simply not be bothered, give up and watch […]
By Mark O’Neill Contributing Writer, [GAS] First it was Chinese and Iranian bloggers getting the boot in from their government, then a Russian blogger received a suspended prison sentence for saying nasty things on his blog about the local police. Now the Memphis Police Department (MPD) in the good ol’ US of A is attempting […]
To kick off this post, we’ll start with an excerpt from The Wind from the Sun, a short story by Arthur C. Clarke: “Hold your hands out to the sun. What do you feel? Heat, of course. But there’s pressure as well – though you’ve never noticed it, because it’s so tiny. Over the area […]
By JR Raphael Contributing Writer, [GAS] This is heavy, Doc: Marty McFly’s original hoverboard from the Back to the Future series is up for grabs on eBay. Oh, and it’ll run you at least $30,000. Price aside, though, this would be a pretty sweet purchase. Used in both BTTF II and III, the board is […]
By Mark O’Neill Contributing Writer, [GAS] Gmail has introduced the ability for its users to access their email through a secure “https” connection. Previously, if you wanted to access Gmail through a https connection, you had to use a Greasemonkey script or Gina Trapani’s Better Gmail Firefox extension. But now Gmail has integrated it right […]
By Mark O’Neill Contributing Writer, [GAS] Professor Randy Pausch, the man who brought us the inspirational speech “The Last Lecture” has died of complications from pancreatic cancer. The speech, delivered at Carnegie Mellon University, was an urge by Pausch to celebrate life and do great things. This was made all the more poignant given the […]
When you say “scripting language” these days, most programmers think of Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, ASP, or JavaScript. But the history of scripting languages starts much earlier than any of these. The Early Days: JCL At least as early as 1964, programmers realized that having to do everything in code, including copying files, was too tedious. […]
By JR Raphael Contributing Writer, [GAS] You’ll soon be able to find an open parking spot without having to do any actual searching in part of California. San Francisco is getting ready to debut what’s being billed as the largest mesh wireless parking network ever created. Streetline, a local company, is setting up 6,000 sensors […]
Last week I wrote about Terry Childs, the jailed network administrator for the City of San Francisco who, if the press is to be believed, went nutty, changed the admin passwords, and then locked everyone out of administration of city systems. It was the cyber equivalent of swallowing the key. In a twist to this […]
By Vaughn Brown Guest Blogger It’s not easy to break into corporate IT, unless you’ve got more than some hope and a little courage. I should know, since I’ve spent nearly two decades overcoming one struggle and stumbling block after another and am finally arriving at true IT happiness. My story, titled “The Paper MCSE,” […]