fighting the lack of good ideas
A recent question (“Is it possible to trace someone using Google during an online exam?“) on superuser had me thinking about asking the right question again. I want to design an online exam for over 1000 students via around 50 computers right after the vacation ends. Now the problem is that I have heard that…
Slashdot has a post on gamification in the workplace today. One of the myriad replies was from a poster, gomoX, who was pushing his company’s gamified tech support tool (invgate.com/en/service-desk/gamification). I’m all for product placement and pushing when it’s relevant (and here it most certainly was), but I don’t like the general concepts in that…
Dave Winer had an interesting take on the recent Twitter-NYPD flare-up. Personally, the thought of any government organization demanding records without a warrant is abhorrent. However, since the entire point of Twitter is to make your tweets public … then what is there to subpoena? They’re all out there – visible to the world… Unless the user…
Tax Day in the US is “late” this year because the 15th of April was a Sunday. I was able to prepare and file my taxes early-ish (January) thanks to a proactive employer who got our W2s out quickly. Every month I look at my pay stub, and am appalled at how much the various…
Following-up a recent post on copyrights, I want to share some further thoughts I have on the topic, and about patents, too. First of all, the concept of a copyright is meant to protect the author from others unduly benefiting from their work. One obvious conclusion to make from that statement is that after the…
ars technica has a great article on some short-term, easy-to-implement fixes to the current copyright fiasco in the United States. I have a bevy of thoughts on this myself, but not quite enough time today to write them down.
If you ever install or setup something that someone else will have to maintain, please, please, please follow as close as possible the vendor’s typical installation process. And whether you go “standard” or not, please, please, please document everything you do! Those of us who will come after you will be intensely grateful for your…