My god, I’m glad I don’t work for these guys. Summary: a post about a company that has a Weekend Password-Change Team — once a year, people pick new passwords and email them to the IT dept, and the Team spends a weekend changing all the passwords for the employees.
That sound is your jaw hitting the keyboard…
Anyone who’s a fan of the vi editor knows how difficult it can be to pick up for new users: the command language is powerful, but hard to remember. The handy cheat sheet(pdf) is a useful companion.
And for the record, I use both vi and emacs, so no flamewar from me. ;-)
I was speaking with a friend who hates Windows, but hates macs even more. He mentioned that he’s considering moving to Linux, and asked for my assistance, since he knows I’m a fan. I happened to ask if he’d considered a Mac, since OS X is such an improvement over the previous generations, and in fact has many of the advantages of Linux.
In response, he asked, “what’s so nice about OS X?” My response would make an excellent slogan:
OS X: Unix, only shinier
According to Business Week, Sony is looking to be first-to-market with an E-Ink based electronic book reader. Anyone who’s tried the last wave of ebook readers — be it a special-purpose device or a PDA — knows about the problems. The DRM is problematic, the display is hard to read even when properly backlit, and the battery life is laughable.
The E-Ink technology is pretty impressive stuff — there was a Sony-developed device using the technology that was only released in Japan. The contrast is similar to a paper page without the use of any backlight, and the current page remains displayed with the power off. That means that the only power that comes from the batteries is used when “turning” the page. Nifty.
All that remains to be seen is if Sony gets the DRM problems solved. The Japanese device was a bust despite winning all sorts of tech awards, because the only way to get books was through a subscription service that deleted books after 60 days. Fortunately, it appears as though Sony won’t be the only one going to market with the E-Ink readers, so competition will hopefully sort things out before too long.