Archive for November, 2009

Man loses job after searching too hard for aliens

An employee of an Arizona school district is asked to resign after school officials allege he had downloaded alien-seeking software to all the district’s computers.

Originally posted at Technically Incorrect

Online Retailers: An Early Holiday Peak?

Aggressive, early discounts by e-tailers prompted heavy buying through “Cyber Monday,” but consumer holiday spending could falter overall

Microsoft Dropped Office Accounting: Why the Surprise?

Sure, Microsoft’s decision to discontinue its Office Accounting software leaves small businesses in the lurch. Our bad: We should have seen it coming

Google hosts energy experts amid climate talks

Next week, the international community plans to discuss climate change and green energy, and U.S. energy experts kicked things off at Google’s offices Monday

Nintendo primed for holiday console dominance

Based on Thanksgiving week numbers provided by Nintendo, an analyst has concludes that the Wii appears likely to have far outsold the Xbox and PS3 in November.

Eclipse tells ex-community director to ‘go away’

Bjorn Freeman-Mason had become a thorn in the Eclipse Foundation’s side, so Eclipse executive Mike Milinkovich very directly said, “You’re a jerk. Go away.”

Practice overtaking theory in cloud computing

The practice of using cloud computing to solve real development, deployment, and operations problems is generating more buzz than the vision and theory.

Samsung Galaxy i7500 mobile phone

Android phones aren’t the rarities they used to be. In fact, they’re more common than X Factor rejects, but that doesn’t mean they’ve become uniform or commoditised. Few are alike, with varying speeds, software and specs giving enough variance to make them as diverse as, well, X Factor rejects. In this case, it’s the latter than makes the Samsung Galaxy impressive.

Even running vanilla Google software, its technical prowess puts it a cut above its rivals.

Rebooting Britain: Make carbon emissions hurt

By law, Britain is committed to reducing carbon emissions 80 per cent by 2050 and we haven’t a hope of achieving that target, even if we go ahead with all the nuclear power stations and wind farms that are now being argued over. The big problem will not be fixing the infrastructure, it’s lifestyle: we insulate houses, and people turn up the thermostat and start wearing T-shirts in winter; we build low-energy schools and people drive to them in 4×4s.

The time has come to put the stark choice to the public: start making meaningful lifestyle decisions, or face energy rationing. Without this debate individuals will continue to shelter behind “somebody else’s problem” arguments and the odd low-energy light bulb.

Stephen Gately death is Google’s most searched term of the year

While the people of Glasgow and Belfast have been looking for more work, those in Cardiff fretted about contracting swine flu. And the whole country seemed to be interested in the likes of Lady Gaga, New Moon and Twitter.