lines in the sand

Old becomes New

Today I received an email from a tech firm pushing a webcast about one of the current latest things in networking - centralized computing.

Learn how thin clients are simplifying corporate computing environments and helping companies deal more effectively with their IT security, management, and budgeting needs.

When I got into IT it was on an IBM midrange computer.  Each workstation was a "dumb terminal", the "network" was a more or less direct connection to the computer via twinax (if you don't know, you don't want to,) and all the computing was done on the System 34.  It was secure because it wasn't hooked up to anything else.

Then PCs started turning up with desktop modems, software and internet connections: EDP DP IS IT shops feared losing control of computing.  It's been a struggle, but we've made headway with proxies, firewalls and switches, got help and incentive from the spammers, hackers and even Senator Sarbanes and Congressman Oxley.

Now the advance of technology lets us give users dumb terminals thin clients, do all the work on a central computer server and any contact with the outside world has to go through us.

That was a close one.

Way to go, Joe!

Yesterday the Smithsonian awarded  Joe Kittinger its highest honor, the Lifetime Achievement Trophy, for jumping out of a perfectly good helium balloon - at over 102,000 feet.

A few years ago he and I worked in the same building and occasionally shared an elevator (must have been quite a come-down for him), but I had kept up with his doings since the 1960 leap; test pilot, fighter pilot, POW, record-setting balloonist, entrepreneur and barnstormer.

When Life Magazine published the cover above I was 11 years old and a space junkie since Sputnik .  From the accompanying article I learned he had attended the Bolles School in Jacksonville, about a mile from my house.  Instant hero.

In my opinion, of course, the award was long overdue.

Great video of his Excelsior jumps on YouTube.

No Offense

Warren Meyer posts on the Right Not To Be Offended, but the best part is in the comments.

You do have the right to not be offended. Simply stop caring about what everyone thinks of you! If everyone operated under the premise that only their own opinion of themselves matter, they won't constantly be offended by what things strangers may be saying. The only person making these people feel offended is themselves---hence, they need to grant themselves the right to not be offended rather than letting a higher authority take away everyone else's explicit first amendment rights.

But you can go even further and embrace the offense.  British soldiers once tried to anger colonials, naming them after the simpleton in a song called "Yankee Doodle".  Instead of becoming angry they took on the name with pride and often still do.

To the PC crowd, this would be counter-productive, though.  Their offense is not about the power an insult can have over its target.  It's about self-proclaimed victims using it as a tool to gain power over others.