Yoz Grahame describes Steve Jobs’ keynote speeches:

I’ve been watching them since he returned to Apple in 1997, despite the fact that I’ve never owned any Apple gear. I know I’m not the only one hypnotically drawn to his performances. I’m a Windows user, but I don’t watch video presentations from Bill Gates (well, not often) or Andy Grove.

Whether you love or hate Apple and its products (personally, I’m all over the map on that one) you can’t deny that Jobs is a demo master. There are few better examples of technology theatre than one of his keynotes.

I couldn’t agree more.

I have started using Wordpress to manage this site instead of my home-brew system, ProntoType.

I built ProntoType because I needed sub-categories. Wordpress has sub-categories. ProntoType also had another unique feature. Categories could have custom data fields associated with them. There were good reasons for this. For example: in my Wine category you could search by the type of wine, the label, vintage, or any of the other data types.

Another example is the weblog category in ProntoType. This is where I point out interesting articles or sites on the web and ProntoType had a specific field for the URL so that it could be consistently presented.

I switched to WordPress mainly because I wanted to update the look of the site and my style sheet was a nightmare. It was easier to switch CMS, select a theme, and customize it…I think.

Bruce Schneier wrote about a recent Minnesota Appeals Court ruling which stated that the presence of encryption software on the computer was properly viewed as evidence. In his writing he interpreted this as evidence of criminal intent. If that was the case this would be a very very dangerous precident.

He wasn’t the only one to react this way and a rash of debate broke out on the internet about it. A look at other possible interpretations, asserted that the most plausible was not evidence of criminal intent but of consciousness of guilt. That’s still a bit of a stretch, but not as bad of one. At the very least, however, the evidence has bearing on the case because it illustrates a certain baseline of computer knowlege for the defendant. I am sure a popular defense in those types of cases is ignorance about how computers work.

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Who wants to start a mainframe consulting company? I’ve always said it was cheaper to do it with mainframes than an army of PCs and everything that comes with PCs. -Brian

From News.com:

The mainframe is often viewed as a cobwebbed hunk of iron that’s only good for housing legacy data. But in 2004, the year Big Iron turned 40, mainframe revenue actually grew by 44 percent compared with the year before.

In one important respect, the mainframe business is showing its age, as the people who know how to maintain these machines steadily join the ranks of the retired.

These days, most computer science programs no longer offer comprehensive mainframe instruction. The absence of new blood comes as nearly 80 percent of the people who work in mainframe support are 50 years of age or older. With more than 70 percent of the world’s digital information residing on the mainframe, companies are now hard-pressed to find skilled staff to support these critical systems.

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