After convincing my boss and *his* boss about the benefits of Skype, yesterday was the day I was going to demo it to show how it works, benefits, video, etc.

Suffice to say, the demo did not go well.

I use GWT. It's a pretty nice toolkit for web pages that is all Java; it compiles the Java to Javascript so there are some classes that you can't use (AWT, Swing, etc.). I've found the performance to be good (certainly better than the big Flex apps I'm using it to replace) and being able to stick with one language through everything is a big plus. You can still use CSS to format the output, so you don't have to stick with a single look or have to dive into the html/javascript to change it.

It's definitely an interesting take on an idea dominated by things like JQuery, Delicious, etc.

Cobol might be a pretty easy joke for obsolescence, but remember that Cobol was written by a woman in a time where the industry was far more male dominated than it is today.

Though I've never programmed in Cobol, it made a big impression on me as a kid to show that anybody could program a computer, or use a computer to create something cool.

I got "lucky" to solve a problem for someone back in college: she had written her thesis on a 3.5 floppy, had no backup (this is when you had to go to the "computing center" to work, as practically no one had a machine of their own, so you had to take all your stuff with you), and had run the disk through the washing machine.

She came in, crying hysterically (it actually took a few tries just to figure out what was wrong), and realized what had happened. I had one of the few "eureka!" moments of my life, and grabbed another floppy, carefully cut it open, did the same with her disk, then air-dried it. I put the platter in the "new" disk, with its dry fabric covering (whatever that stuff was...), taped it shut, and put it in the Mac (SE...no hd) and yep, the disk was readable and I was able to get her thesis off and onto a network drive, then we copied it back onto a new disk and assured her I'd hold onto the thesis on the network drive until the end of the semester.

Funny thing, she kept the disk I had used, taped around the edges, and the next year I saw her again and asked how things were, and she was still using it. Go figure.

Wow...from the Wikipedia article I went to the product's homepage, and most of it is filled up with a big blue box that has a two sentence blurb that invites you to click more to get ... a few more sentences, emphasizing its ODBC and JDBC connections. The rest of the page seems to be general support and contact stuff. Pretty sad product homepage.

So the article itself is /.'ed, but using Google, I can't seem to figure out what database CA has that everyone is theoretically migrating off of. I knew CA had a lot of products, mostly related to the mainframe, but an actual honest-to-goodness "select * from table" database? News to me.

I have a compact camera that fits in my pocket that takes *better* pictures than my big DSLR did; I have a (sadly, no longer working) Nikon D1X that is exactly what a professional camera looks like; big body, takes all Nikon lenses, but only shoots 5mp. Compact cameras can shoot up to 14mp, last time I looked. Say what you will about the lens, compact cameras can produce spy-agency-worthy images of ... uh ... whatever is spy-agency-worthy in Kuwait.

They wanted to improve 3270 terminal handling.

I read the headline and my first thought was "wait...the company that wrote Extra? They're still around?" Then all those nightmares of HLLAPI programing came back and I sat under my desk and cried.

...and watch me through the window as I play Crazy Taxi and Jet Set (Grind) Radio on my Dreamcast. After that, I'm going to bring it down a little with some Shenmue.

Sigh, even if I'm modded down to oblivion, I've got to say it: the Dreamcast was probably the best console ever created, in terms of graphics quality (Soul Calibur just like it played in the arcade!), awesome games (see above, plus Marvel vs Capcom), and experimental "what were you smoking when you came up with that???" games (Pen Pen Trilcelon, Seaman, Space Chanel 5). It was the console that really breached the chasm between the old school Nintendo-era sprite games and the $50 million mega sequels of today. It was the last console where big publishers could take a risk insofar as they were going to have to actually put it on a disc and sell it in the stores, as opposed to just downloading it to the console today. Plus not only did it have the modem/nic attachment, it also had those mini games that doubled as memory carts. I remember playing Tetris on one waiting for the train.

From the description above, it sounds like going home to discover main street's all boarded up and tumble weeds roll down the sidewalk. Sigh...you can't go home again, even with video games.

Oh, wait, yes you can....I'll just fire up my Dreamcast!

The Beatles on iTMS is a great example of holding out too long for some unknown reason; as others have said, anyone who wanted Beatles music on their ripped it long ago from the CDs they waited in line to buy because "the Beatles records are now available on CD!!!!!!!"

From everything I've heard, it was EMI and the Beatles themselves who apparently either saw no need to have their music available for download, or wanted some insane amount of money that it made it a non-starter. This was probably one of the rare moments where Steve Jobs was chasing *them* to do a deal, and they still held off.

I fired up iTunes and looked through the albums, mentally checking off the tunes I've been listening to for years on my computer from ripping them from my CDs, and I realize I have no need to purchase anything. Thanks guys, day late and a dollar short.

Check out the geek atlas. There's a lot of places that are very heavy on the geek factor, plus generally interesting to see.

Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!

I think you're right; the tech world is full of weirdness right now. Everyone was familiar with the whole "windows on the desktop, unix on server, mac for graphics" paradigms, but with the rise of the smart phones, cloud, social-media-everything, it really is a new world, but not new enough that you can't read the billboards.

Awesome times if you embrace the weirdness; people who hold fast to the way it used to be will ....HEY GET OFF MY LAWN!