Battle of the Anonymous Wind Mailers

Our mailbox has, over the last few days, become a battleground for the pro and anti wind groups here. First we got an anonymous mailer (from a ‘neighboor’) attesting that anticipated benefits to an area resulting from wind development might not materialize now that the ‘Green Energy’ bill has removed local zoning controls. Then today [...]

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The Hassle Factor or Delusions in Technical Adequacy

As I get older, one of the things that strikes me is the prevalence of poor design in technology and (unfortunately) human affairs. It may just be a fundamental shortcoming of ourselves as a species — this overweaning sense of self-importance that gets attached to everything.
Take product design, for example. For a number of years [...]

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Neurotic Products

Over the last few years I have attempted to incorporate a number of system administration applications into my environment (from a certain major vendor). But in every case, after a few weeks or months of frustration, I pulled it out. What I found was that in my small environment the constant demand for attention to [...]

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Citizens or Consumers — The Crunch Comes

There have been some interesting comparisons of the present day to the years around the Great Depression. There certainly have been some big slides in the market and huge fortunes (and a lot of retirement funds) have been severely hit. And there is a huge wave of layoffs triggered by the collapse of international trade. [...]

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The Problem of Nuclear Waste

I have followed the debate on storage of high level nuclear waste for some time. The discussions have been interminable — worse that the recently concluded US presidential campaign. The questions of safety for unimaginable terms were fascinating — especially how one would guarantee the isolation of the chosen site for many thousands of years. [...]

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Process Optimization and the Current Financial and Economic Crisis

One of the main mantras I have heard over my working life is the phrase — ’squeeze out the fat’. Process optimization has been a major contribution to profit margins in many businesses — the same businesses that are suffering in this current collapse.
Not only do we find companies that have moved from maintaining a [...]

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Virtualization — Problem Solver and Problem

I read with interest the article in the latest canadian computer dealer news about executive dissatisfaction with virtualization. While many companies are doing it — no doubt because the trade press screams that this is the wave of the future, etc, business executives are left wondering where the business case is for this technology. I [...]

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Layering or Why Nothing Works

Having been involved with computers for 50 years now I have certainly seen some changes. As machines have become faster and memory cheaper the accessibility of increasingly powerful capabilities to average programmers has improved. But the results are not always much of an improvement — in my jaundiced view things are prettier but flakier than [...]

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Greed and Market Chaos and Canadian Elections

While I am dismayed at the continual chaos in financial markets, it is interesting to note that in the US, at least, this chaos is traceable to the systematic dismantling of regulations designed to protect the investor. There has been a mantra chanted by the ’suits’ that unrestricted free markets are the universal solution to [...]

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Just buy the stuff and stop complaining

I wonder if vendors really care what the service life of equipment is any more (assuming they ever did)? I read in the computer press that the useful life of a computer is purported to be three years. I am sure that the hardware vendors would be delighted if we would just discard our stuff [...]

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