Paul McNamara

Author Archives: Paul McNamara

Google seeks $19.8M tax break in Iowa

Google needs a tax break like Bill Gates needs food stamps, yet that isn’t stopping the search giant from asking for $19.8 million in “economic development incentives” from Iowa to build a $1-billion expansion of its growing data center facility in Council Bluffs.And, well, why not ask? The company has already been given $16.8 million in tax breaks to build out the various stages of the existing Council Bluffs facility, which opened in 2007.According to this Omaha World-Herald report, the latest tax break is expected to be approved by the Iowa Economic Development Authority and the Council Bluffs City Council with little or no opposition.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

43% of Slashdotters call ISPs liars

I know what you’re thinking: Only 43%?But we’re talking here about a single question: “How do your actual ISP speeds compare to the advertised speed?”And as you can see from the screen capture of the poll results above, roughly four in 10 of some 5,000 Slashdotters who bothered to weigh in say their actual speeds are slightly lower or significantly lower than what their ISPs advertise.Yes it’s an online poll and hence a self-selected sample, but these are people who by and large care more and are better equipped to make this judgment than other ISP customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Update: That shocking video about ESD

Yesterday we posted a collection of anecdotes from IT pros telling of the times they have witnessed – or have claimed to have witnessed – damage done by electrostatic discharge (ESD).Only this morning did I remember this semi-famous YouTube video – seen 2 million-plus times – and that I did a post about it a few years back: There was considerable debate in 2013 about whether the guy in the video was shocking himself on purpose or for the laughs. So I emailed him and asked. He insisted it was legit.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The shocking truth (and lies) about ESD

A participant in Reddit’s forum devoted to networking asks: “Has anyone here ever destroyed anything via ESD (electronic static discharge)?”Oh, yes, indeed they have, as a sampling of the anecdotes will reveal, though there were also skeptics and one fellow who told me via email “that most failures claimed to be ESD-related are probably covers for something else.”First time for everything I recently had a user plug an HDMI cable into a Dell E7440. He was touching the shielding and a nice big blue spark jumped from the cable to the laptop and cooked the motherboard. It was the first time in 12 years doing IT that I've ever seen something die from ESD.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bet you’ve never heard Beethoven on a Tefifon

Unless you are German or collect vintage audio equipment, chances are you have never even heard of the Tefifon. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, since virtually everything has a Wikipedia page. The Tefifon was a German-developed and manufactured audio playback format that utilized cartridges loaded with an endlessly looped reel of plastic tape (much like the later 4-track and 8-track magnetic audio tape cartridges) with grooves embossed on it, similar to the ones on a phonograph record. Born in the 1950s, it never really caught on, but it’s a fascinating contraption. For a better sense of the Tefifon and how it works, I recommend this 11-minute video from a blog called Techmoan.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How the Apple Watch is like Google Glass

The Verge has a terrific “day in the life” review of the Apple watch today, written by editor-in-chief Nilay Patel, that puts the device through its paces morning, noon and night.It’s a lengthy read and I thought one of its most telling points, near the end, was worth noting here: After the gym, I head to Betony for drinks with Eater managing editor Sonia Chopra so we can talk about a future of food series for later in the year. So far I’ve mostly used the Watch either alone or in an office environment, but it’s really different to have a smartwatch in a bar: here, even small distractions make you seem like a jerk. Sonia’s trying to describe the project to me and find ways to work together, but I keep glancing at my wrist to see extremely unimportant emails fly by.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The IPad arrived five years ago today

The first version of Apple’s tablet that redefined tablets was released in stores and delivered to homes on April 3, 2010.We’ve collected a bunch of pictures taken that day and you can see them here.While sales growth for the iPad has slowed recently, the device was an immediate hit when it arrived and has proven to be among Apple’s most successful products.From an Apple press release two days after the first release: Apple today announced that it sold over 300,000 iPads in the US as of midnight Saturday, April 3. These sales included deliveries of pre-ordered iPads to customers, deliveries to channel partners and sales at Apple Retail Stores. Apple also announced that iPad users downloaded over one million apps from Apple’s App Store and over 250,000 ebooks from its iBookstore during the first day.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The day the first iPad arrived

April 3, 2010Image by REUTERS/Robert GalbraithTablets had always flopped so there was no shortage of naysayers pooh-poohing Apple’s new iPad when the first model was delivered to homes and made available in stores on April 3, 2010. While sales growth has slowed recently, the naysayers could not possibly have been more wrong. Here are some images from the iPad’s debut day.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

‘One-sentence stories’: An oxymoron from the New York Times for the Apple Watch

I figured this had to be an early April Fool’s Day joke … or the New York Times doesn’t understand that “one-sentence story” is an oxymoron.And a spokesperson for the newspaper tells me via email that it’s no joke. A press release reads: The New York Times has developed a new form of storytelling to help readers catch up in seconds on Apple Watch. One-sentence stories, crafted specially for small screens, will provide the news at a glance across many Times sections, including Business, Politics, Science, Tech and The Arts.One-sentence stories are accompanied by The Times’s award-winning photography and short, bulleted summaries. Readers can use Handoff to continue reading any story on iPhone or iPad, or tap “Save for Later” to build a personal reading list.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Taking a moment to thank the Internet, Google and Howard Johnson’s

Oh, sure, we take this stuff for granted today (except for Howard Johnson’s). Yet every now and then I feel a need to thank the Internet and Google for doing what they do best: finding answers to questions that would otherwise nag me no end.This morning I read a story about the impending closure of the Howard Johnson’s restaurant in Lake Placid, N.Y. As the story noted, this iconic eatery, owned and operated by the same family for more than 50 years, is one of only three HoJo’s restaurants still in operation in the United States.Where are the other two?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

‘When will IPv4 become obsolete?’

On Reddit’s forum devoted to networking – r/networking – a user asks: “I know that IPv4 is all out of addresses, and most devices are running both IPv4 and IPv6. How long is it going to take before we no longer see both addresses on a device, but only IPv6? 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? Does anyone have an estimate?”Oh, yes, they do; in fact, 82 Redditors offer their views on the matter. Here are a few that represent the general tenor: Well since I still support IPX for some legacy apps ... in 100 years. Right after POTS dies. And then only after another 30 years. General IPv6 adoption is 18 months away. My college prof told me this in 1995, and he's still right. Not in our career lifetime. IPv6 will take off during the year of the Linux desktop. You'll pull IPv4 from my cold, dead hands... But there were also a fair number of more nuanced replies:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Amazon’s drone ‘win’ will prove fleeting

Late last week the FAA gave Amazon permission to move ahead with its experiments to develop a drone-driven package-delivery system.Bottom line first: I believe this whole concept is ludicrous – which is an upgrade from my initial reaction: publicity stunt -- and that nothing like it will be an important package-delivery mechanism for Amazon or anyone else in our lifetimes. (Everything happens eventually.)But just to play along, it would appear that the FAA’s biggest stipulations – the experimental drones must be operated by licensed pilots who must maintain line of sight contact with their craft – are deal killers if they prove permanent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Yahoo’s reported willingness to pay $11M for ‘insurance’ was the real March Madness

You may recall that last year around this time Yahoo, Warren Buffett and Quicken Loans teamed up to offer this challenge: If anyone could pick the winner of every single game in the NCAA’s 64-team, six-round March Madness basketball tournament, he or she would win a billion dollars.No one met the challenge, or came close. In fact, the tournament wasn’t even half over before the final perfect bracket sheet was no longer perfect. This came as no surprise to anyone, in large part because the odds against completing the challenge successfully were one in 9 quintillion or one in 128 billion, depending on who’s doing the math, according to this explanation in Slate.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Musk needs to tap the brakes a bit

Oh, that Elon Musk. Always saying the most provocative things, such as yesterday when he addressed attendees at a Nvidea conference and suggested that driverless cars will someday bring about a ban on the human-driven kind.“It’s too dangerous,” he said. “You can’t have a person driving a two-ton death machine.” To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Yes, I still have an answering machine

This morning I mentioned my telephone answering machine in passing and a colleague reacted as though I had just confessed to still having an 8-track in my car.“You must be the last person on the planet to still be using one,” he said dismissively.In fact, I am not. It took me all of two attempts to find another colleague who also still has an honest-to-goodness physical answering machine.A bit of Googling failed to produce any statistics, but it did uncover a New York Times story reporting on what was then a relatively new phenomenon of answering-machine ownership by consumers. It was published in 1982, which -- pardon me for living -- doesn’t seem all that long ago.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Oldest dot-com address sits sadly underused 30 years after its historic registration

Someone had to go first, so on March 15, 1985, Lisp computer maker Symbolics, Inc., registered the Internet’s first dot-com address: Symbolics.com.Sunday will mark the 30th anniversary of that registration.The Cambridge-headquartered company went out of business about a decade ago (though remnants live on) and in August 2009 the Symbolics.com address was sold for an undisclosed sum to XF.com Investments, whose CEO Aron Meystedt said in a press release: “For us to own the first domain is very special to our company, and we feel blessed for having the ability to obtain this unique property."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple stores redefining mall economics

If you’ve visited an Apple store at your local mall the chances are good that you’ve visited a crowded Apple store at your local mall.And, not surprisingly, those crowds don’t necessarily get right back into their cars after buying their iWhatevers. They do more shopping. In fact, an Apple store alone can boost overall mall sales by 10%, says one research firm, and Apple is using that clout to its advantage.From a Wall Street Journal report: In the past, malls typically operated according to a straightforward bargain. Department stores that anchored the ends of the malls either owned their own stores or paid almost nothing aside from fees to maintain common spaces in exchange for drawing much of the traffic, while specialty retailers in the smaller spaces between the anchors typically paid the bulk of a mall’s rent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Funniest video about Boston winter e-vah

I’d pay good money to watch Ken Burns watch this hilarious YouTube video: “Facebook Statuses About the Boston Snowstorm With Sad Civil War Fiddle Music.” (Some NSFW language.) Thanks, Safety Whale Comedy Collective; we needed that.One of the voices on the video, actor and filmmaker Harry Aspinwall, tells me the back story via email: “My friend Luke Palmer made it after I wrote the final quote, about eating dogs and so on, as a Facebook status. He commented by posting Ashokan Farewell (the fiddle piece, which has been used in Ken Burns' stuff about the Civil War) and it sort of went from there. He got me to record the male voices.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Reminder that the Internet, too, could have saved Coca-Cola from ‘New Coke’ debacle

Don Keough, retired chief operating officer at Coca-Cola, died earlier this week at the age of 88. He is described in a Fortune headline as “The real boss behind Coke's secret formula.”Among the accomplishments credited to Keough is one that directly involved that secret formula, namely convincing CEO Roberto Goizueta in 1985 to reverse course on the disaster that was “New Coke” in favor of returning to the original recipe.News of Keough’s death had me rereading a 2010 Buzzblog  post that involved this thought experiment: Let's rewrite history: It was 25 years ago tomorrow, April 23, 1985, that the world's most famous soft drink company committed arguably the world's most famous product development/marketing gaffe: New Coke.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Minus 8 degrees is pretty nippy for these parts

I took the above picture after dropping the kids off at school this morning.Now I understand that in places where some of you folks live a temperature reading of eight degrees below zero is called Tuesday. I do get that.However, I am also certain that this is the coldest outdoor temperature that I have ever experienced personally in my 50-plus years of living here in Massachusetts.In fact, I don’t recall anything close.The good news? It took my mind off all the snow for a few minutes. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

1 … 13 14 15 16