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UN panel urges greenhouse gas reductions now. Technologies are available to significantly reduce greenhouse gases but nations must adopt them far more aggressively to avert the worst consequences of global warming, the leading scientific authority on climate change said yesterday. [Boston Globe — Front Page]

The end of “desktop vs. web apps”. Hybrid apps are no longer the future—they’re now. In my career I’ve heard lots of predictions—Apple will go out of business; soon there will be only six or seven websites; the browser is dead; we’ll all be running “thin clients”; Java will replace C/C++ everywhere—that I haven’t believed.… Continue reading The end of “desktop vs. web apps”

200th DNA exoneration tomorrow. Today’s Chicago Tribune has a remarkable article about the exoneration of Jerry Miller. Miller, an Army veteran who’d never been convicted of a crime, was identified in a police line-up by two eye-witnesses, and ended up serving 25 years in prison before being cleared by DNA collected at the scene of… Continue reading 200th DNA exoneration tomorrow

The Essence of Duct Tape Marketing. Duct tape (the tape) is simple, effective, and affordable—it’s not always the prettiest solution, but it does always work. The central theme of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide by John Jantsch is that effective small business marketing is a system—not an event—composed of… Continue reading The Essence of Duct Tape Marketing

Scaling to multiple databases with Rails. Remember that point about Rails lacking an easy-to-use way of dealing with multiple read/write databases? Strike that. Nic Williams has released Magic Multi-Connections. It makes it dead easy to use a cluster of databases to scale read and write speeds higher than a single connection would ever allow. That… Continue reading Scaling to multiple databases with Rails

The yaTimer – a very handy utility. If you are a freelance consultant, writer, or designer, this versatile software timer may be what you have been looking for. It makes keeping track of multitasking activities almost painless. I have been searching for a better way to keep track of how much time I spend on… Continue reading The yaTimer – a very handy utility

Primal Issues. What few in the media (but a great many down on the street) are saying about the Virginia Tech massacre is that law enforcement botched the whole thing. Between the time Ho began firing in the dorm and when he started exterminating people in Norris Hall was a gap of two hours, during… Continue reading Primal Issues

Cluster-like Non-Clusters for SMB Messaging Regardless of size, no business can afford to be without e-mail access these days. Combine that with the more and more services we pile on these mail servers and you’ve got the making of a perfect SMB disaster. Mail servers are far more than just “mail”, they drive groupware functionality,… Continue reading Cluster-like Non-Clusters

Required Reading: Microsoft Security Explained. This is not a joke, not a Geek Squad employee recording their customers in the shower, not a deathbed confession of who killed JFK. This is real. This is the most eloquently put illustration of Microsofts incompetence / ignorance. I wish I could write like this but unfortunately I’m the… Continue reading Required Reading: Microsoft Security Explained

CentOS 5 is Out!. Congratulations to the CentOS team. They released CentOS 5.0 today, which is the free version of the Enterprise Linux OS. Basically they take the source for Redhat Enterprise Linux 5.0 and recompile and rebuild a solution so you can install and run it.. Free vs. $3K, easy choice if you know… Continue reading CentOS 5 is Out!