Google OS — Goobuntu

Remem­ber the other day when I not-so-sarcasticly sug­gested that Google might make an oper­at­ing sys­tem and how funny it would be because they pose the biggest threat to the fal­ter­ing Microsoft Borg Collective?

Well…

Google con­firms devel­op­ment of a desk­top OS.

It isn’t clear yet what their inten­tions are, but know­ing Google, they will likely be good.

 

Toenails & Fingernails

By pop­u­lar demand I have decided to re-post my Toe­nail and Fin­ger­nail Clip­pings Col­lec­tion. This time I have added a scan of the Weekly World News arti­cle that I appeared in. There are also all of the orig­i­nal pics.

Enjoy.

 

From this person’s site comes the Top 10 Rea­sons Geeks Make Good Fathers:

1. LEGOS. The Geek is really more of a Man-Child than an adult. In their minds, they are still 10. They freakin’ still love to play with their legos, and have never grown up. I have one friend, WHO WILL REMAIN NAMELESS, that still has legos in his room. He doesn’t have kids. Just legos. Of course, my chil­dren love legos and Steve will lov­ingly spend hours play­ing legos with them.

2. VIDEO GAMES. Due to the whole Man-Child thing as stated in #1, the Geek loves video games. And he’s good at them too. My hus­band is the hit of all the kids’ friends because not only can he talk video games, he plays them too. If my chil­dren get “stuck” while play­ing their Game­boys and bring it to me for assis­tance, all I can do is fee­bly hold it and say ” Mommy doesn’t know how to play this.” Daddy, how­ever, can beat the game.

3. MATH. A huge plus here. No mat­ter how old they get, Steve can still help with the math home­work. My abil­ity to be of assis­tance is going to last another few years before *I* end up throw­ing the math home­work across the room in disgust.

4. SMART KIDS. Smart Geeks make smart chil­dren. Although for the most part, it’s great to have really intel­li­gent chil­dren, when your just turned two year old is using the word PREPOSTEROUS cor­rectly, it makes for some dif­fi­cult times as they get older. I lit­er­ally spend a large part of my time schem­ing to stay one step ahead of my old­est child.

5. UP ON TECHNOLOGY. The beau­ti­ful thing about hav­ing a Geek for a par­ent is that you aren’t won­der­ing what your chil­dren are doing online. You *KNOW* what they are doing online and you can limit it if nec­es­sary.
It’s fab­u­lous peace of mind.

6. SCIENCE FAIR PROJECTS. Chil­dren of the Geeks always have the coolest sci­ence fair projects. And you don’t have to cajole your Geek into help­ing. You’ll find him fid­dling around with the sci­ence mate­ri­als whether you asked him to help or not.

7. TOY ASSEMBLY. You will never, ever have to spend six hours of your life, that you will never get back, try­ing to assem­ble some 2,000 piece toy at 3 am on Christ­mas Eve again. The Geek can do it in min­utes flat. Usu­ally with­out the direc­tions. Whereas I have tried to assem­ble toys and said “Mommy has to go to the bath­room” just so I could escape and scream into my pil­low in frus­tra­tion, if the Geek is around, he can take it right off your hands. I now just say “Daddy is really good at this, let’s wait until he gets home.”

8. GADGETS. Never again will you have to won­der what that new elec­tronic toy is that all the kids have. In fact, your Geek will prob­a­bly already own it. The prob­lem arises when the Geek won’t share with the chil­dren. “Daddy, I want a dig­i­tal cam­era.” After the child leaves the room: “I’m not spend­ing hun­dreds of dol­lars on a dig­i­tal cam­era for him, he’s too young.” I say “Let’s get him a cheap one.” Steve looks at me as if I just said Aliens are invited to din­ner. ” To have it take crappy pic­tures?” He scoffs and walks away in dis­gust. No sub-par elec­tron­ics in this house! How dare I sug­gest it.

9. SMART IS COOL. Hav­ing a Geek for a father instills the mes­sage into your chil­dren that smart is cool. They idol­ize Daddy. Hope­fully, they’ll want to grow up to be just like him.

10. BEING IDOLIZED IS GOOD FOR YOUR GEEK. Course, you have to be care­ful that his head doesn’t get TOO BIG.

 

The Fall of the Roman Empire

I made the pre­dic­tion a few months ago that the begin­ning of the end has already started for Microsoft. They have shot them­selves in the foot too many times, and oth­ers are pick­ing up the slack. Linux will only play a par­tial role. Google, Apple, Mozilla, and the open source move­ment are the dri­ving fac­tors behind the falling giant.

This arti­cle has a lot of good points as to why they have already started tumbling:

* Finan­cial growth has slowed and its stock price remains flat
* It missed the trends in Inter­net search and music down­load
* It’s still fight­ing anti-trust in Europe and Asia
* AOL instant mes­sag­ing con­tin­ues to dom­i­nates the IM land­scape
* The verb for search­ing on the Inter­net is Google
* Alter­na­tives exist to Microsoft’s core business

Add to that the fact that Win­dows Vista won’t be debuted until the end of the year (if that), and we see ample time for the recent trends to develop. Google OS, anyone?

 

21st Century Computing

An inter­est­ing arti­cle on what tech­nol­ogy will be like in 2001 (writ­ten in 1989). They got a lot right, under­es­ti­mated a lot of things, and over­es­ti­mated others.

 

Work

Jeff

Yes, this is where I work.