Month: June 2005

When grades become meaningless. Over the weekend, the Washington Post had a column about grade inflation written by Alicia Shepard, a journalism professor at American University. The piece didn't approach the subject from the perspective of documenting the existence of grade inflation, though; that much was (and is) assumed to be true. Instead, Shepard relates… Continue reading When grades become meaningless

Audit finds Homeland Security IT not ready for disaster. IT operations within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are generally unprepared to recover from a major disaster, a government audit has found. The report, published Wednesday by the DHS Office of Inspector General, found that nearly 80 percent of the department's IT facilities lack… Continue reading Audit finds Homeland Security IT not ready for disaster

Knowledge Work as Craft. Jim McGee has fascinating post called “Apprenticing at Light Speed” about “knowledge work as craft” and the strains that the pace of change place on the apprenticeship model (we are all apprentices). The money quote (among many choices): “That leads me to my more fundamental concern about apprenticing our way to… Continue reading Knowledge Work as Craft

Lenn Pryor, formerly of Microsoft, newly of Skype, is a media hacker. [Scripting News]

CNet interviews Mark Spencer. CNet just posted an interview with Mark Spencer, the guy behind Asterisk. There aren’t a huge number of details, except for this one: [Digium] has something that eluded many a Silicon Valley wannabee during the bubble: real revenues. The company pulls in about $10 million a year Zing! Way to go… Continue reading CNet interviews Mark Spencer

A Decade of PHP. By nat 10 years ago to this day, Rasmus Lerdorf made the first release of PHP. It was slow to take off as this graph shows, but when the sleeping tiger awoke … Kapow! I had dinner last night with Rasmus, and he's still the sanguine man he always was. He… Continue reading A Decade of PHP

Cracking WEP in 10 minutes. Yesterday I started noticing referral traffic from myscreencast.com, a phpbb-based community site for finding and sharing screencasts. The most entertaining one I found is called Cracking WEP in 10 minutes. It was produced with Camtasia, but the action takes place in Whoppix, which describes itself thusly: Whoppix is a stand… Continue reading Cracking WEP in 10 minutes

Genes affect women's ability to reach orgasm. LONDON (Reuters) – Women who have difficulty reaching orgasm can blame it on their genes. Like heart disease, anxiety and depression, scientists discovered in a study of 1,397 pairs of female twins there is a genetic basis to female orgasm. [Reuters Health eLine]

Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas. Scott Berkun's article, “Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas,” is a thoughtful examination of why ordinarily rational and intelligent people defend and hold on to the silliest ideas and practices.  Much of it has to do with ego or simple group thinking.  I agree with Tasha at Sites and… Continue reading Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas

more on small. What do you do once you realize the power of small? (tiny correction… eBay has more than 8,000 employees! That's a lot of mouths to feed). It's one thing to say, “yep, of course, small is the new big.”  It's quite another to actually do anything about it. For the last six… Continue reading more on small