I found this site a while back but had forgotten about it. However, since I just bought new computers I was in the market for more blank DVDs but I couldn’t remember the difference between DVD-R and DVD+R.

How To Choose CD/DVD Archival Media is a very informative blog article. It gives the history of both CD and DVD technology, the differences between the various flavors of the media available, and which format you should choose for archival purposes. The author also has a recent update listing his choices for CD/DVD burners.

In a nutshell, the author recommends Taiyo Yuden media, which apparently is difficult to find outside of Japan; however, it’s the most reliable of all media on the market. Also, don’t spend the extra money on gold CD-Rs because they don’t give you much benefit for the price. Oh, if you’re buying blank DVDs, get DVD+R if your computer will handle it; they are better quality and generally perform better.

On Slashdot today there was an article from Computer World entitled 10 Things We Hate About Laptops. As I was reading it, I couldn’t believe some of the things being said. I’ve used laptops for a while, though I’ve never had to support them for other people. However, I found much of what was said to either be fallacious or misleading. > more <

Found an article this morning discussing 10 dirty secrets of the IT industry. It’s quite interesting and enlightening. Not to mention pretty truthful, at least in my experience. The comments are also interesting.

If you work in IT or are planning on it, I recommend taking a read. One of my favorites (mainly because I see it far too much in the military/government sector):

3.) Veteran IT professionals are often the biggest roadblock to implementing new technologies

A lot of companies could implement more cutting edge stuff than they do. There are plenty of times when upgrading or replacing software or infrastructure can potentially save money and/or increase productivity and profitability. However, it’s often the case that one of the largest roadblocks to migrating to new technologies is not budget constraints or management objections; it’s the veteran techies in the IT department. Once they have something up and running, they are reluctant to change it. This can be a good thing because their jobs depend on keeping the infrastructure stable, but they also use that as an excuse to not spend the time to learn new things or stretch themselves in new directions. They get lazy, complacent, and self-satisfied.

For what it’s worth, here’s a picture of Ubuntu Linux running under VMWare Fusion on my new Macbook Pro. You can’t really see the lighted keyboard very well because the backlight is white.

Linux on Mac

Obviously this makes it very easy when developing software since I can test it on any necessary operating system. An advantage of using VMWare for the virtual machine is that VMWare provides several dozen “pre-built” images that I can download and install, giving me access to components I wouldn’t normally be able to have.

Plus, I can now play games in Windows without having a separate machine and I don’t have to mess with Fink or DarwinPorts to have Linux programs running under OS X.

I just treated myself to an early Xmas present. I bought a new Macbook Pro earlier this week and it’s great.

The laptop it replaces was a Sony Vaio, which is roughly five years old. The hard drive was starting to die (lots of clicking noises) and the CD drive was effectively dead. Oh, and the PC Card slots were also toasted. Linux ran reasonably well on it so that’s why I’ve kept it for so long. > more <