I’ve always complained about printers, somehow in the last 15 years they really haven’t improved much.  They are cheaper, they now use USB instead of the parallel port, and they now have a bunch of features that also don’t work.  However, they are unreliable, contain expensive ink, and did I mention they are just unreliable? [...]

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First let me give a brief description of what a “network externality” is from Economic Theory.  Many products benefit from having others use the same or compatible products.  For example, there is no benefit to being the only person in the world with a fax machine, the benefits of having a fax machine depend on [...]

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Every futuristic movie or book  that includes some kind of year in the title should receive some kind of acknowledgment when that year finally arrives.  In 2001, our predictions about an intelligent computer taking over the mission and having space exploration to distant planets did not quite arrive as in “2001:  A Space Odyssey.” This [...]

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I will soon be putting together a Windows Home Server from a spare computer and parts, and consolidating hard drives into that, in doing some reading on the new product I came across this ad gimmick from Microsoft, an entire children’s book explaining to children why there is a server in their home.  Apart from [...]

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For some reason lately a reoccurring topic of conversation has been when and if the end of POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) will arrive? In talking with people who work in industry the feeling I got was that the end was a long ways away, mostly because land lines are everywhere, in every home, and [...]

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