Thirty-four years in IT – The System Office, Novell Directories, and Building a State Backbone (Part 3)
Unfortunately nearly all the work we put into administrative and academic technology had to be abandoned. As a part of a larger initiative across the state, the various colleges and universities were being merged together into a single system that today is know as Minnesota State. In that process our ... Read More
Thirty-four Years in IT – Networking and Software Development (Part 2)
At the college we were extremely fortunate to have a president who had a very forward looking view of technology. In the mid 1980s he was already using personal computers regularly and had written some of his own software. Sometime around 1988 or so he described what he thought would ... Read More
Thirty-four Years in IT – Instructor, Machinist, CNC and CAD/CAM (Part 1)
As I've now ended 34+ years of public service, I'm going to burn a few posts on where I've been and what I've tried to accomplish.Like many people my age, my path toward a career in technology was non-linear. My first stop after a Baccalaureate in Physics was a move ... Read More
On aging (software)
I’m looking at an old (early 20th century) hand-crank record player that was handed down to me from my great-grandmother. It’s a simple wooden box with a spring & flywheel mechanism that spins the turntable at a somewhat constant speed, a metal needle that rides in the grooves of a ... Read More
Blog: Resurrect or Die?
This blog has been idle since 2012. Does anyone care?Like many, I let this blog die. I think that’s happened for a variety of reasons, both personal and professional.Relevance: Most of what I was posting was clearly not going to make any difference to myself or anyone else. Posts that ... Read More
The very four digits that Amazon considers unimportant…
"The very four digits that Amazon considers unimportant enough to display in the clear on the Web are precisely the same ones that Apple considers secure enough to perform identity verification..." Honan wrote.Four digits, when combined with my home address and bank account number were all it took for me ... Read More
A letter to our Apple Account Exec
A couple of days ago myself and a colleague of mine ran into our Apple account exec. The conversation ended up in the security space, as is probably appropriate considering Apples recent performance in that area. Our account exec quickly followed up with a request for our contact information (good), ... Read More
OT: A plan.
Aaron Smith posted this story about the kindness of an NYC cab driver. It's a good read, and it reminds me of something vaguely similar that happened to be a few decades ago.I had just moved 400 miles from home to a small town in Minnesota near where my grandfathers ... Read More
Apple joins the big leagues
I've been hearing 'OS X is secure' for a decade now. For a decade, I've been challenging that assertion. The challenges to that assertion generally end up with a response of 'because it's Unix' or 'because it's not Microsoft'. I don't recall 'OS X is secure' assertions being backed up ... Read More
Twenty percent of all households have at least one bot-infected computer
...and 5% of all enterprise 'assets' are infected. From Gunter Ollmann, VP of Research at Damballa in this post on CircleID:"...on average, between 3-7% of assets within enterprise networks are identified as being infected...""Within the ISP/Telco world that have chosen to deploy the Damballa CSP product, between 18-22% of unique ... Read More
